Owl Chatter friend Boston Don apprised me of a grievous error in yesterday’s post. I had John Hiatt dead and buried but he lives! In fact, Don tells me he’s turning 71 tomorrow (Sunday), kinahora. Happy Birthday JH! Don surmised, rightly so, that I was confusing him with John Prine, who did pass away three years ago from Covid, at the age of 73. To honor his memory, please enjoy this remarkable song, Lake Marie. Standing by peaceful water. . . .
Today’s poem from The Poetry Foundation is called Have You Prayed? When I first read it, I failed to notice the poet’s name, and I got the feeling while reading it that he must be Jewish, because he made me think of my father. But his name is Li-Young Lee and he was born in Indonesia to Chinese parents.
When the wind
turns and asks, in my father’s voice,
Have you prayed?
I know three things. One:
I’m never finished answering to the dead.
Two: A man is four winds and three fires.
And the four winds are his father’s voice,
his mother’s voice . . .
Or maybe he’s seven winds and ten fires.
And the fires are seeing, hearing, touching,
dreaming, thinking . . .
Or is he the breath of God?
When the wind turns traveler
and asks, in my father’s voice, Have you prayed?
I remember three things.
One: A father’s love
is milk and sugar,
two-thirds worry, two-thirds grief, and what’s left over
is trimmed and leavened to make the bread
the dead and the living share.
And patience? That’s to endure
the terrible leavening and kneading.
And wisdom? That’s my father’s face in sleep.
When the wind
asks, Have you prayed?
I know it’s only me
reminding myself
a flower is one station between
earth’s wish and earth’s rapture, and blood
was fire, salt, and breath long before
it quickened any wand or branch, any limb
that woke speaking. It’s just me
in the gowns of the wind,
or my father through me, asking,
Have you found your refuge yet?
asking, Are you happy?
Strange. A troubled father. A happy son.
The wind with a voice. And me talking to no one.
I’m not going to be writing much tonight. My brain is tired from the Crossword puzzle tournament I attended in the city today: Lollapuzzoola. I loved it and did better than in the last one I went to, but I think the puzzles here were easier, and that was the consensus at my table — that most of them were a bit too easy. But there were five of them, plus the schlep in and out of the city, and you have to understand I haven’t done any real work since 1986. So I’m a little tired.
It was lucky that I signed up a few days ago, because they reached capacity and stopped selling tickets at some point.
The way it works is you earn points on each puzzle. You get a certain number for each correctly filled square with a 100-point bonus if they are all correct. And you earn a point for every second left on the clock. For example, if it’s a 20-minute puzzle and you finish in 15:35, you earn 265 “time” points — for four minutes (240 seconds) and 25 seconds under 20:00.
They had an interesting side feature. Everyone got 8 tickets to use if you wanted to. Each could “buy” you an answer. Say you were stuck on 15 across and you needed it to open things up. You write 15A on a ticket and hold it up. Someone comes and gives you the answer. But it costs you 25 points to do that and you cannot earn the 100-point bonus if you do that. I didn’t use any of my tickets. There were 7 of us at my table and only one solver used a ticket once.
I was able to complete all five puzzles and I earned the 100 bonus points on four of them. I had only one wrong on the other one, so pretty damn good, right? But I didn’t rack up enough points on time to really score high. Out of 170 solvers in my category, I finished at #97. But get this — I finished six slots ahead of Seth who constructed that puzzle we discussed that appeared in the WSJ this week. How the hell did that happen? Nancy — find out if he wasn’t really trying or if he was sick or something.
This was very funny IMO — the fifth puzzle was a tuchas extravaganza — how great is that? The theme was PIN THE TAIL ON THE DONKEY, and there were a bunch of long answers all containing the letters ASS in circles (as part of other words). But they each had two clues and you had to answer it first normally on the paper, and then “pin” the alternate (second) answer onto the second S in the ASS (the “tail” of the donkey). They gave us little pin thingies.
They gave away individually packaged OREOs — Oreo being the official cookie of Crossworld, for obvious reasons. So I grabbed a bunch and threw them in my bag. On the subway down to Penn Station the prettiest little 2-year-old girl got on with her mom and sat down next to me. I asked the mom if she was allowed to have cookies and gave her one of the little packages. It turns out Oreos are her favorite! Hooray!
See you tomorrow — thanks for popping in! If you skipped the John Prine song, scroll back up and listen to it!
The Wellington Files 