Be careful today, folks. Bad things happen on April 14. The Titanic hit the iceberg on this date in 1912. And back in 1865 on this date, Abraham Lincoln was shot in Ford’s Theater by Alec Baldwin, whose famous line echoes through the years: “Who f*cked with this gun?”
This song is by Lonesome Bob and is called Waltzing on the Titanic.
This poem was in yesterday’s Writer’s Almanac. It’s by W. S. Merwin and is called “Sun and Rain.” It has a smidgeon of Ted Kooser in it, it seems to me.
Opening the book at a bright window
above a wide pasture after five years
I find I am still standing on a stone bridge
looking down with my mother at dusk into a river
hearing the current as hers in her lifetime
now it comes to me that that was the day
she told me of seeing my father alive for the last time
and he waved her back from the door as she was leaving
took her hand for a while and said
nothing
at some signal
in a band of sunlight all the black cows flow down the pasture together
to turn uphill and stand as the dark rain touches them.
One of the words I missed in today’s Spelling Bee was muumuu. Ridiculous. You are only supposed to use words that are in common use. Is this even a word? It looks like the answer to: “What does a cow who can’t spell say?”
Speaking of cows, there was an excellent clue/answer in today’s NYTXW. The clue at 74A was “A bull market it is not!” And the answer was CHINA SHOP.
21A was good too — “Results of an iron deficiency?” And the answer was CREASES. I agreed with the commenter who thought “wrinkles” would be a better answer. A crease is something you might put in on purpose, using an iron. Like a pleat. So there wouldn’t be an iron “deficiency” in that case. I know, I know — a few more of those and I’ll be joining the American Nitpickers Association & League (ANAL).
The theme was brilliantly executed, IMHO, not surprising since one of the constructors was Jeff Chen, an old pro and frequent collaborator. The other was John Rippe who works in the Office of Protected Resources at the National Marine Fisheries Service. The puzzle is a paean to the ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT, which appears in it at 112A and 114A, and which John works with on his job.
There were seven theme “sets” with two clue/answers for each, one depicting the word with the endangered animal in it (labeled BEFORE), and the next after the animal has gone extinct, God forbid (labeled AFTER).
So, for example, a before clue was “Begin operating effectively,” and the answer was GET IN GEAR. Do you see the TIGER in there? GET IN GEAR. Then, the after clue was “Actress Rowlands.” The answer for that was GENA, which are the letters that are left once the TIGER is removed (goes “extinct”). I hope you can see what’s happening because it’s amazing. That happens six more times in the puzzle,
Since Earth Day falls on April 22, it’s a fitting puzzle for this month.
Rex went off, and rightfully so, on 92A. The clue was “Biden’s signature 2022 legislation addressing rising prices, for short.” The answer was IRA.
Here’s Rex:
My final comment is “who is responsible for Biden’s branding?” and “can they try harder?” I can’t think of a more confusing, and therefore useless, term for your “signature legislation” than IRA … an initialism that already exists— multiple times over. “Thank god for Biden’s IRA, right?” “Uh … you mean his retirement account?” “No, the IRA! Biden’s signature legislation!” “The Irish Republican Army? He legislated that?” “No, the other IRA! It’s very well known, why don’t you know it!?” I had to look up what it stood for. I wasn’t aware he had any “signature legislation,” but then I have tried very hard not to pay attention to US politics since 2016, so the IRA could’ve been any three letters and I’d’ve bought it. “Oh, of course, the ZWO, I absolutely knew that Biden … did … that.”
When I was with a small law firm in Rochester NY one of my partners, whom I’ll call Jerry because that was his name, was a liar. He lied to everybody about everything. You had to remind yourself when listening to him not to count on anything he said. He said whatever he needed to say at any moment to advance his cause and he forgot it as soon as the moment passed. Our secretary Sylvia once said she was upset that Jerry promised her something and failed to deliver. I was shocked that she actually counted on it. I said, “Sylvia, don’t you know by now that, to Jerry, the truth is a coincidence?” I got the hell out of there as fast as I could.
Of course, Trump is from the same school. This was very well expressed by Jamelle Bouie in the NYT today: “You should think of Trump as a purely instrumental speaker. It does not matter to him whether a statement is true or false. It does not matter if one statement contradicts another in the same speech or in the same paragraph or in the same sentence. What matters to Trump is whether the words serve the purpose at hand. His fundamental lack of interest in the truth value of words is the only context that matters.”
Well put, JB.
There is craziness throughout the land. Did you see the story in The Times on teen sex by Peggy Orenstein? I mean the story is by Orenstein – not the sex.
It’s become routine for strangulation — choking — to be part of sex for kids these days. The practice has spilled over into the culture from pornography. In a survey of 5,000 students at a Midwestern university, nearly two thirds of the women said they had been choked during sex by a partner; one-third in their most recent encounter. Forty percent of the women said they were between 12 and 17 the first time it happened. [Hold on a sec — you’re supposed to get sex with the choking? On my dates, I just got choked. D’oh!]
Jeez Louise — what the hell is going on? If you google the topic you will find articles guiding you on how to choke your partner “safely.” Orenstein notes: there is no safe way to strangle someone. Hello? Shouldn’t everybody know that? Am I missing something? If I ever tried anything like that, I’d wind up with two black eyes and be limping for a month.
In addition to the possibility of, you know, death, getting the oxygen cut off to your brain (hypoxia) has dangerous effects which may only show up years later. It’s like what’s been discovered is happening to football players. Women who have been choked more than five times are two and half times as likely to be suffering from severe depression compared to women who have not been choked. Every year, the number of women reporting extreme effects from strangulation rises: neck swelling, fainting, loss of control of urinary function.
But let’s move on — it’s too depressing and horrifying. Bennett Braun is dead. He was 83. You hear of this guy? Me neither. He was a Chicago shrink who worked with his patients to release repressed memories of abuse by devil worshippers. His work gained wide acceptance, so much so that a “satanic panic” exploded in the 1980s and 90s. A unit dedicated to these “dissociative disorders” was opened at the Rush Medical Center in Chicago. In dozens of cases his patients “discovered” memories of being tortured by satanic cults and in some cases having participated in the torture themselves. It fed into elements in pop culture such as heavy metal music and the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons. It was all bullshit, it should go without saying, and left a black mark on the psychiatric profession.
After interviewing a woman from Iowa named Patricia Burgus, Braun claimed not only that she was the victim of satanic ritual abuse, but that she herself was a “high priestess” of a cult that had raped, tortured and cannibalized thousands of children, including her two young sons. She was institutionalized for three years and separated from her kids. Heavily medicated, she had come to believe the doctors — that she recalled torches, live burials, and eating the body parts of up to 2,000 people a year.
Well, she finally came to her senses and sued Braun and the hospital, claiming they implanted false memories in her head. A settlement was reached for over $10 million. “I began to add a few things up and realized there was no way I could come from a little town in Iowa, be eating 2,000 people a year, and nobody said anything about it,” Mrs. Burgus told The Chicago Tribune in 1997.
Yup. Makes sense, Mrs. B. Welcome back to Earth.
A year later the unit at Rush was shut down and Braun’s license was suspended by Illinois for two years. He moved to Montana which issued him a new license and he opened a private practice there. But in 2019, one of his patients sued him for overprescribing medication that left her with a permanent facial tic. Those can be pretty sexy, but apparently not in her case. She also filed a complaint against the Montana Board of Medical Examiners for granting him a license, despite knowing his past. They took it away in 2020.
There’s a special place in hell for doctors who betray the trust of their patients. Settle in Braun.
Let’s tip-toe away from all of that lunacy and share some wonderful news. Puzzleman Will Shortz is recovering well from his stroke and returned to his Sunday morning feature on NPR today. (He’s still in therapy.) Greg Pliska had been standing in for him. Shortz was gracious in thanking Pliska:
“You know, a few weeks ago, Greg Pliska did a tribute puzzle to me in which every answer was a familiar two word phrase or name with initials W.S. So I wanted to return the favor. Every answer today is a familiar two word phrase or name with the initials G.P.,” Shortz said to the contestant Scott Manas.
“Here you go. What you step on to make a car go faster,” Shortz asked.
“Gas pedal,” Manas answered.
Welcome back Shortz!
Picked nit of the day: 108D: “Assistant of classic film” was IGOR. It generated this note:
No, IGOR was not Dr. Frankenstein’s assistant in the “classic” movie; the assistant’s name was Fritz. There was an Ygor [sic], played by Bela Lugosi, in the 1939 sequel “Son of Frankenstein,” but he was not an assistant to the good doctor. It wasn’t until the 1974 Mel Brooks parody “Young Frankenstein” (a fine comedy, but not the “classic” film indicated by this clue) that an actual “Igor” showed up in Doc F.’s lab.
Hrrrrrrrrrumph!
Manager: Our starter’s getting rocked. Anyone ready in the bullpen?
Pitching Coach: Bummer.
Manager: Look, it happens. He just didn’t have it today. Who’s ready out there?
Coach: Bummer.
Manager: Will you please get over it! — it’s not the end of the world. Now, who can give us a solid inning or two?
Coach: Bummer.
Manager: What the hell is wrong with you? Are you on something?
Coach: No — I’m trying to tell you — bring in Bummer — Aaron Bummer, that tall lefty out there. He’s the perfect guy to face these hitters.
As you may know, Rex is a great cat lover. Today he posted a picture that was sent to him by a reader. It’s a tuxedo cat named Oreo.
Several readers posted comments on how cute Oreo is. A few said they had tuxedo cats of their own. I had never heard that term before, but it makes sense. I chimed in with a post saying I had a rented tuxedo cat.
FYI: there is a correct way to spell “Jeez Louise.” That’s it. When I spelled it Jeeze, I was corrected. See you tomorrow everybody!!
The Wellington Files 