This poem is from The Writer’s Almanac. It’s by Sally Van Doren and is called “Defiance.”
We were drawn that way at a young age on the main line
west from St. Louis to the Columbia spur north to Moberly
where our grandparents picked us up at the station
and showed us the quarry behind their house on Gilman Road,
warning us not to try to jump off the edge of the cliff
with an umbrella the way Uncle Robert had.
Our mother had traced our blood to Squire Boone, Daniel’s brother.
It coursed through our father’s veins when, as a sixteen-year-old
with a summer job on the railroad, he fought to get the cinder
out of the tracks that blocked the switch as the 12:05 bore down on him.
Sixty years later his grandsons spin the wheels of their three speeds
on the gravel path above the wide brown river, sweating
as their knees pump on pedals their feet have out-grown.
We stay at a bed and breakfast on the bluff, walking down
to Dutzow for the Friday night fish fry. Back on our bikes
on the Katy Trail the next morning, stopping along the way
to swing on the vines and poke our heads in the caves,
we race the last mile to the marker in front of the Boone Homestead.
Republican Congressman Kevin McCarthy of California died yesterday at his house in Washington, DC, at the age of 58. The cause of death was not available, but it is widely known he was suffering from assholism for many years. McCarthy is survived by his wife, Judy, and their two children. Here they are during happier times.
In 2015, McCarthy was accused of having an affair with Representative Renee Ellmers of North Carolina. It may have caused him to drop out of the Speaker’s race at that time. In his defense, McCarthy said “Ellmers is very pretty and used to be a nurse. I’m only human, fellas.” [Alright, he never said that.] McCarthy and Ellmers denied the allegation.
McCarthy’s mom was a homemaker, and his dad was an assistant city fire chief. His maternal grandfather was an Italian immigrant, and his paternal grandfather was Irish. Following in his dad’s footsteps a bit, he worked as a seasonal firefighter while he was in college.
McCarthy was the first Republican in his immediate family: his parents were Democrats. He was on his HS football team. When he was 19, he ran his first business: selling sandwiches out of the back of his uncle’s yogurt shop in Bakersfield.
Here’s a nice story about him:
In a September 29, 2015, interview with Sean Hannity, McCarthy was asked what Republicans had accomplished in Congress. He replied by talking about the special panel investigation into the 2012 Benghazi attack (in which Islamic militants attacked the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya). Republicans said the purpose of the committee was to investigate the deaths of four Americans. But McCarthy said, “Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she’s untrustable (sic). But no one would have known any of that happened had we not fought.” The comment was an admission that the investigation was a partisan political undertaking rather than a substantive inquiry. His remark was described as a classic “Kinsley gaffe” (defined as when a politician accidentally tells the truth). Several days later, McCarthy apologized for the remarks and said the Benghazi panel was not a political initiative.
Thanks for clearing that up, Kev.
Rest in peace.
In the puzzle today at 53A, the clue was “fa-la connection,” and the answer was SOL. Some folks thought the answer should just be SO. That’s how it’s pronounced. (“Sew, a needle pulling thread.”) Here’s the story:
It’s a music education system called solfege (from sol and fa).
In eleventh-century Italy, the Guido of Arezzo invented a notational system that named the six notes of the hexachord after the first syllable of each line of the Latin hymn “Ut queant laxis,” the “Hymn to St. John the Baptist,” yielding ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la. Each successive line of this hymn begins on the next scale degree, so each note’s name was the syllable sung at that pitch in this hymn.
Ut queant laxīs resonāre fibrīs
Mīra gestōrum famulī tuōrum,
Solve pollūtī labiī reātum,
Sancte Iohannēs
The words were written by Paulus Diaconus in the 8th century. They translate as:
So that your servants may, with loosened voices,
Resound the wonders of your deeds,
Clean the guilt from our stained lips,
O St. John.
“Ut” was changed in the 1600s in Italy to the open syllable Do, at the suggestion of Giovanni Battista Doni (based on the first syllable of his surname), and Si (from the initials for “Sancte Iohannes”) was added to complete the diatonic scale. In Anglophone countries, “si” was changed to “ti” by Sarah Glover in the nineteenth century so that every syllable might begin with a different letter.
Questions?
Ready to go back to 1965 now?
Thanks for popping by! See you tomorrow.
The Wellington Files 