With Taylor and Travis working out how to keep in touch with her tour starting up again and the football season moving into its second half, we asked Taylor about Joe Alwyn, whom she dated for six years and, by all reports, could very well have married. Happily, she told Owl Chatter he was a mensch. She has nothing bad to say about Joe. They worked together on ten of her songs. But, ultimately, they were not close enough a fit to make a go of it: for one thing, he shied away from the limelight, and she is, uh, she is the limelight. Phil got this nice shot of them for us. After that, please enjoy one of their songs: Evermore.
Today’s poem from The Writer’s Almanac is by Richard Allen Taylor and is called “The Next Generation of Mourning.”
I have begun, like my mother before me,
to cross out names. She lived to read the obituaries
of all her friends. In my generation, the first girl
I ever kissed is dead, complications of pneumonia.
I saw the email on the way from something
important to something suddenly not, and felt
nothing, as if a high-powered bullet had passed
through me without hitting heart or head or bone.
Later: the ache as I remembered
when we were 16, in a state
of mutual crush, and rode to the lake—
that parent-approved, church-sponsored
alternative to a real beach trip
with tiki bars and carnal temptations—
and made out in the back seat of a red ’64
Chevy Impala with Ray driving and Mable
looking back now and then to wink and grin.
Soon the romance was over and we moved on,
but never forgot that date, and when
I saw her forty years later we still joked
and smiled about that ride and wondered
whatever happened to Ray and Mable.
It’s Harold Ross’s birthday today, co-founder of The New Yorker. He was born in Aspen, Colorado, in 1892, and died in Boston in 1951. He got interested in the newspaper business when he found out that journalists got to go on police patrols and ride fire engines. The first issue hit the stands on 2/21/1925 and it proceeded to lose $8,000 a week. But when E.B. White and James Thurber came aboard, it took off.
Ross himself never fit in with The New Yorker’s audience. He was gap-toothed, his hair was always a mess, and he spoke with a Western twang. He wore ill-fitting dark suits, and James Thurber said, “[He looked like a] carelessly carried umbrella.” He was always full of energy that he didn’t know what to do with. He once had his office soundproofed because he couldn’t stand distractions, but then he was distracted by the silence. He hired most of his staff himself, but whenever someone had to be fired, he either left the building or hid in a coat closet.
He believed in accuracy above all else, and pioneered the use of fact checkers for everything, including fiction and cartoons. He never let a cartoonist draw a lamp without showing the cord plugged into a socket.
“If you can’t be funny, be interesting,” he said. Happy Birthday, Ross.
The Yanks had a disappointing season in 2023 and so did their rookie shortstop Anthony Volpe — at the plate — but not in the field. Yesterday, he became the youngest player ever to win the Gold Glove award at shortstop. He’s the first Yankee rookie ever to win a Gold Glove, and only the second Yankee ever to win it at shortstop, the other being Jeter, who won it five times.
Kudos Volpe!
Owl Chatter fave Adolis Garcia of the World Champion Texas Rangers snared the Gold Glove for his outfield position too. We’ll be keeping an eye on Adolis. He’s electric.
Today’s puzzle was very clever, IMO. 56A was the “revealer” and it was: “Where your eyes might stay during a suspenseful scene … or the only place you’ll find the ‘eyes’ in this puzzle.” The answer was GLUED TO THE TV. Then each long theme answer had a “TV” in it with a letter “I” “glued” to each side. E.g., TRANSIT VISAS. There were no other I’s in the grid.
The answer at 32A was NOEM, clued by “South Dakota governor Kristi ___.” It raised Rex’s hackles because she is an ardent right-winger. So I suggested two alternate clues that would have been less emetic:
1. Chomsky typo.
2. How a triskaidekaphobe would alter the English alphabet.
The second one garnered a few nice comments. Jberg noted, though, that if you removed the M, the N would just replace it as the 13th letter. I replied asking him to please stop being so reasonable.
Good night — see you tomorrow.
The Wellington Files 