In the puzzle today, the clue at 37D was “Proprietor of cheeses and butters” and the answer was DAIRYMAN. Malaika, the guest blogger for Rex today, said she had never heard of the term. She had heard of milkman, but not dairyman.
Of course, Tevye, from Fiddler on a Hot Tin Roof (as my brother used to call it) was a dairyman. If you look up Tevye in Wikipedia it calls him a dairyman first and only secondly a milkman. Here’s a joke from way back when Fiddler first came out and you had to wait forever to get tickets:
For one afternoon performance, a man in the audience noticed that an entire row of seats was empty except for one woman sitting in the middle. He went up to her and said “Madam, it’s impossible to get tickets for this show. Do you have any idea how all of the seats in this row could be empty?”
And she said, “Well, sadly, this seat next to me was my husband’s. And since we got our tickets months ago he passed away.”
And the man said — but all these other seats? The rest of the row?”
And she said — “Oh, those are our friends. They’re all at the funeral.”
DAIRYMAN in the puzzle opened a door for a commenter to Rex’s blog who calls him or herself the Greater Fall River Committee for Peace & Justice.
“My grandfather was a dairyman. He started out as a milkman when he first came to America. He had to get up at 3:30 in the morning to drive the truck to the farms and pick up the milk to deliver by dawn. In winter my grandmother also had to get up at 3:30, because in order to start the truck, boiling water had to be poured into it, and only women could boil water at that time, I am told. By the time my grandfather retired and moved to Florida (where the trucks start in the morning all year) he was running an operation that not only bottled the milk and cream, it churned the butter, made buttermilk and sour cream and ice cream and cottage cheese and even flirted with things like kefir.”
[Was there some law against men boiling water? I don’t get that part of it.]
The puzzle defeated me today. I couldn’t get LYRA as the “harp-shaped constellation.” I committed to lyre and it screwed me up. Oh, well.
Here’s an old star map from 1825 with LYRA on the right, next to Cygnus. I had no idea so much was going on up there. Jeez Louise!
This was a great clue: “Mine is ⬛️⬛️⬛️-⬛️⬛️-⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️: Abbr.” Get it? The answer was SSN, which is usually very boringly clued.
Another good one was “____-violence (really tearing into an Indian appetizer?)” The answer was NAAN. Although, I think of naan as a bread rather than an appetizer.
Raymond Swan, of the Dull Men’s Club, UK Chapter, shared this yesterday. I’m not sure it’s dull enough, but it got by the monitors.
“I made a small error whilst driving the other day which seemed to enrage a fellow motorist, he blared on his horn and was screaming at his windscreen red faced. So thinking I must have ploughed over a line of ducklings following their mother across the road or ran a school bus full of 7 year olds into a ditch, I pulled over and when he came alongside I rolled down my window and asked what the issue was.
“‘You’ve come up the slip road and left your left hand indicator is on as if you were going to turn left however you’re going right!!!’ (I was in the lane to go right).
“I looked at my indicator, noticing my error and said in as friendly a voice possible ‘Oops you’re right, I bloody well have, sorry about that mate!’
“The angry guy’s whole demeanor changed instantly and he smiled as he said ‘oh no worries, just thought I’d let you know’ gave me a little wave and drove off.
“I think most of the time, road rage comes from people not acknowledging their own mistakes along with the issue of people getting enraged by small errors and blowing them out of proportion.”
I commented that my brother believed there were only two kinds of drivers in the world: Raving lunatics who don’t belong on the road, and him.
Sandra Davies came back with this tale:
“My brother was once angrily shouted at by another driver in a double queue of traffic. He had no idea why. They then both pulled up at traffic lights that had just turned to red and my brother took the opportunity to nip out of his car, tap on the other driver’s window to enquire what on earth he’d done to incur the other bloke’s wrath and apologise if appropriate. To his surprise, the man just slid down in his seat, said ‘nothing! Nothing at all’ and quickly wound up his window. Somewhat perplexed, my brother got back into his car and went on his way. He later recounted this strange interlude to me. I said ‘you don’t think the fact that when you got out of your car, he noticed that you’re 6’ 4″ and built like a brick shithouse, and that may have made him think he might not get home alive if he entered into a debate about driving etiquette?’”
Donald Payne, Jr. easily won his primary for re-election to his House seat for NJ yesterday. It helps when you are running unopposed. He’s the son of Donald Payne, Sr. (duh), who was the first ever Black House rep from NJ. He served from 1989 until his death in 2012. Oh, did I mention, Don, Jr. is dead too? Sorry. He died over a month ago from a heart attack at age 65. There will be a special election to replace him on the ballot. Here’s the dad:
Dave Ikin of the Dull Men’s Club (UK) posted the following, with a photo:
“For an initial 75p outlay this box of cereal will probably last me for 25-30 breakfasts. Obviously milk is a minor associated cost with this. However, is there anything better value pound for pound for your breakfast?”
There were 105 comments. (I’m not kidding.) My favorites noted the condition of the box, that it seemed a bit rudely opened.
Martin Brown asked: Did the packaging offend you in some way? Ikin replied: No. Brown explained: It’s a reference to the way it was opened. Ikin: Thanks. Ikin again: Dull Men’s Club is great, isn’t it? Brown: Sure is.
Charlotte Henry was horrified: What did the box do to you ? Or were you simply so ravenous for cornflakes that you had to massacre the box like that? 
Ikin: Was starving. Plus, the box just split open like that.
Ruth Howard: Was it opened by wolves?
Ikin: People seem very triggered about the box.
He posted a second shot of it, from a different angle:
The more substantive comments addressed the portion size Ikin described. They didn’t agree that he could get 25-30 breakfasts out of it. David Griffiths asked: How much do you eat — an egg cup? Ikin: No. John Fowke: Are you a mouse? (No reply.)
Many comments strongly preferred what they called porridge, but which I think we’d call oatmeal, both in terms of cost and nutritional value. Others suggested eggs.
Not wanting to end today’s post abruptly with that image, we called in our style/culture consultant, Ana de Armas, to see what she had to say about the issue.
Ana: How did he open the box? It’s all torn.
OC: Seriously.
See you tomorrow!
The Wellington Files 