Yesterday’s Michigan win over Maryland, was much more difficult than expected. It was a real Yogi game — it wasn’t over till it was over. The final score was 31-24. Four of our points came off of safeties, which is unusual. One from an intentional grounding call against the Terps from their own end zone, and the other on a blocked punt. On the punt, the ball rolled into their end zone and would have been a TD for us had we recovered it, but a Terp alertly kicked it out of bounds for a less disastrous (for them) safety. Neither our running game nor our defense was dominant. We did enough to win, but as a Maryland fan tauntingly said to some Michigan folk as we were walking out — “You almost lost to an unranked opponent.” The guy behind me replied: “Almost.”

Linda, Phil, and I were seated in a section that was almost entirely Michigan fans. Overall, the Maize and Blue was well-represented – maybe 25-30% of the crowd? I’m not sure you can tell from this shot Phil took.

I love looking at all the different Michigan hats and shirts. My favorite new one that I saw was a sweatshirt in Michigan blue that just said “OF” in maize (yellow) lettering. Nothing else front or back. It must be the OF of University of Michigan, no?

It was a good little outing. We stopped at our favorite place in Baltimore for dinner (incredible pizza) — Joe Squared, and stayed at a very comfortable Best Western in North East, MD, a bit up Route 95 from Cal Ripken Stadium where the Aberdeen Ironbirds play. “North East” is the name of the town, not a region in Maryland. It’s sort of a silly name, because it will only be north east of you if you are standing south west of it. If you are north east of North East and someone asks you, how do I get to North East?, you’ll have to say, “Head south west to get to North East. Don’t head north east because you are already north east of North East so heading north east will not get you to North East.”

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Todays’ poem from The Writer’s Almanac is by Sharon Olds. It’s her birthday today — she’s 81, kinahora. I guess it’s especially for you moms out there, but I think the rest of us can relate to it too. It rewards re-readings.

First Formal

She rises up above the strapless, her dewy
flesh like a soul half out of a body.
It makes me remember her one week old,
soft, elegant, startled, alone.
She stands still, as if, if she moved,
her body might pour up out of the bodice,
she keeps her steady gaze raised
when she walks, she looks exactly forward,
led by some radar of the strapless, or with
a cup runneth over held perfectly level, her
almost sea-sick beauty shimmering
a little. She looks brave, shoulders
made of some extra-visible element,
or as if some of her cells, tonight,
were faceted like a fly’s eye, and her
skin was seeing us see it. She looks
hatched this moment, and yet weary—she would lie
in her crib, so slight, looking worn out from her journey,
and gaze at the world and at us in dubious willingness.

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In 2005, during W’s presidency, Laura Bush invited Olds to The White House. She declined, and wrote an open letter published in The Nation. It concluded with: “So many Americans who had felt pride in our country now feel anguish and shame for the current regime of blood, wounds and fire. I thought of the clean linens at your table, the shining knives and the flames of the candles, and I could not stomach it.”

Her collection Stag’s Leap, published in 2013, won the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry. She was the first American woman to win it. It also won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

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Today’s Modern Love column in the NYT by Rick Newman starts out with the following:

She offered to bring fancy cheese, the kind that costs $35 per pound. I said a couple of supermarket slabs would be fine, for one-fourth the price.

Four days later, she dumped me.

Was it the cheese? Did the cheese represent something bigger? Or was the cheese just an innocent bystander? I had been through too many breakups to let it go. I had to parse the cheese.

[I’m not going to give away how it ends, but here’s the artwork that accompanies it.]

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Today’s puzzle was a pun-fest centered on Thanksgiving Dinner. E.g., “Pro tip about seasoning stuffing?” was SAGE ADVICE. And “Selects green bean casserole, candied yams and mashed potatoes?” was CHOOSES SIDES.

Pabloinnh noted: This was my kind of puzzle, with cool mellow puns, which is to say, no hot cross puns.

The clue at 108A was “Make cranberry sauce from scratch?” and the answer was KICK THE CAN.

Rex poster Gary shared this tale: Here’s my cranberry story: Like many, we grew up with cranberry from the can and it was served in the shape of the can. Nobody thought this was weird. When I brought my future wife to her first Thanksgiving with us, she was helping with meal prep and took a fork to the cranberry cylinder, ya know, to make it look not like it came out of a can, and mom flipped out. We got through the incident, I got married to her, she’s by far the best cook I’ve ever met, and we have homemade cranberries with orange in it these days.

Beezer responded: Gary, I laughed out loud at your wife’s cranberry faux pas! The first Thanksgiving I hosted for my husband’s family I made real cranberries AND giblet gravy. Neither were touched. I got the message and just decided there were two less things I had to worry about for future Thanksgivings.

Teedmn has the last word on the topic, and a neat piece of advice:

 My family also served the cranberry sauce in the can shape, with a couple of slices pre-sliced before bringing it to the table. I’ve shown a couple of people the cool hack of how to get the sauce out in one piece by putting a hole in one end before opening the other end. Works like a charm.

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58A was “Features of a vacant stare:” DEAD EYES. Creepy.

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And 35A sends us off tonight: “Time to head out:” LET’S GO. Remember The Feelies? Me neither.

See you tomorrow.

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