How better to start off the new year than with the smile of this lovely young woman, who will knock your teeth out with a stick if the situation calls for it?
She’s Ella Shelton and she scored the first-ever goal in the new Professional Women’s Hockey League. She plays defense for NY, but apparently is not averse to scoring a goal from time to time. Ella will be 25 in two weeks and also plays on Canada’s national team.
NY shut out Toronto 4-0 in the league’s inaugural game last night. The other four teams in the league are Ottawa, Boston, Minny, and Montreal.
How new is this league? The teams don’t have nicknames yet. We’ll keep an eye on it. And on Ella, of course.
Here she is in her team sweater. What’s that? — you think I misspoke and should call it her team “jersey?” Well, old-time hockey traditionalists will tell you those tops the players wear are sweaters. But that term is giving way to the more modern “jersey,” they’ll grudgingly concede. Too bad. Why, the next thing you know, there’ll be women playing hockey too. D’oh!
Can you quantify hatred and bigotry? What’s their price? Well, it’s probably higher in NY, but in Kentucky it’ll cost you $360,104. That’s right, Kimmy. Remember Kim Davis’s 10 disgusting minutes of fame back in 2015. She’s the county clerk in Lexington KY who refused to do her job and issue marriage licenses to gay couples. She believed so strongly in her bigotry that she spent five nights in jail defying a federal court order until she caved and allowed the licenses to be issued by her staff. Lunatics on the right called her their Rosa Parks. Her defense — that God is a bigot too — didn’t fly in court.
A lawsuit filed against her by the ACLU and a gay couple was successful and the couple was awarded $100,000. Davis was also required to pay the victors’ legal fees of $260,104. Yikes — that’s almost as much as the caterer’s bill!
Nice shot, Philly.
In this poem from today’s Writer’s Almanac by Barbara Hamby, the mockingbird addresses a coreopsis. If you’re like me, you’ll need to be informed that a coreopsis is a flower. Here’s one:
You’ll also want to learn that a duodecimo is a book the size of about 5 x 7.5 inchies. That size is obtained by printing on sheets folded to form 12 leaves (24 pages).
Okay, here we go. It’s a little long and is called “Thus Spake the Mockingbird.”
The mockingbird says, Hallelujah, coreopsis, I make the day
bright, I wake the night-blooming jasmine. I am
the duodecimo of desperate love, the hocus-pocus passion
flower of delirious retribution. You never saw such a bird,
such a triage of blood and feathers, tongues and bone. O the world
is a sad address, bitterness melting the tongues of babies,
breasts full of accidental milk, but I can teach the flowers to grow,
take their tight buds, unfurl them like flags in the morning heat,
fat banners of scent, flat platters of riot on the emerald scene.
I am the green god of pine trees, conducting the music
of rustling needle through a harp of wind. I am the heart of men,
the wild bird that drives their sex, forges their engines,
jimmies their shattered locks in the dark flare where midnight slinks.
I am the careless minx in the skirts of women, the bright moon
caressing their hair, the sharp words pouring from their beautiful mouths
in board rooms, on bar stools, in big city laundrettes. I am
Lester Young’s sidewinding sax, sending that Pony Express
message out west in the Marconi tube hidden in every torso
tied tight in the corset of do and don’t, high and low, yes and no. I am
the radio, first god of the twentieth century, broadcasting
the news, the blues, the death counts, the mothers wailing
when everyone’s gone home. I am sweeping
through the Eustachian tube of the great plains, transmitting
through every ear of corn, shimmying down the spine
of every Bible-thumping banker and bureaucrat, relaying the anointed
word of the shimmering world. Every dirty foot that walks
the broken streets moves on my wings. I speak from the golden
screens. Hear the roar of my discord murdering the trees,
screaming its furious rag. The fuselage of my revival-tent brag. Open
your windows, slip on your castanets. I am the flamenco
in the heel of desire. I am the dancer. I am the choir. Hear my wild
throat crowd the exploding sky. O I can make a noise.
You know the expression “I wasn’t born yesterday?” Well, J.D. Salinger was born yesterday, on Jan. 1, 1919. The J. D. stands for Jerome David. The Catcher in the Rye started off as a short story called “Slight Rebellion Off Madison.” It was slated for publication in The New Yorker, but Pearl Harbor was bombed and its publication was nixed because it was deemed too trivial for the newly serious times.
Salinger expanded it into the novel. The New Yorker refused to publish excerpts because they said that the children in it were unbelievably intelligent, and the style of the novel was too “showoffy.”
He was married three times and had two children. His son Matt is 63 and an actor. He appeared in Revenge of the Nerds and Captain America.
Let’s turn to the puzzle. At 30D, the clue was “Annoying process” and the answer was RIGAMAROLE. Well that set off the commentariat, let me tell you. Many expressed a preference for RIGMAROLE, dropping the first A. We checked with our buddy Miriam Webster. She says it’s “preferred” without the A, but sticking that A in does not make it incorrect.
Commenter Joe D. asked some other folks: Alan Jay Lerner and Richard Harris. Give a listen:
Heidi KLUM popped by at 29D. Did you know she has a daughter who’s a knockout too? Heidi is 50 now.
She has four kids: 3 boys and Leni, who is 19. Here’s Leni. Could you plotz? Phil! She’s only 19, rich, and lawyered up. Don’t you dare get any closer!
I’m not going to try to top that with a human, but Rex is continuing to post holiday pet pix from his readers for just this last week. So here’s Woody. (Woof!) And Rex paying tribute to his dog Gabby (“Gabs”), who passed away in 2020.
See you tomorrow everybody. Thanks for popping in. BTW, Owl Chatter is heading out to the west coast from Jan. 4 to Jan. 14 and posting may be spotty. We’ll see.
The Wellington Files 