Here’s an ironic headline for you: Tom Brown Jr., World-Renowned Survivalist, Is Dead at 74.
Brown was the country’s leading authority on wilderness survival. For most of his life, he took on the greatest survival challenge in the world: New Jersey.
This is from his obit in the Times:
His preferred wilderness was the Pine Barrens, a vast, unpeopled expanse of sandy forest that stretches across the middle of New Jersey. He would disappear into the woods for weeks at a time, often with nothing but the clothes on his back, and emerge ruddy in health and even a few pounds heavier.
When he was 7, he befriended a boy named Ricky, whose grandfather Stalking Wolf was a Lipan Apache from New Mexico who had moved to New Jersey to be near his son. Over the next decade, Stalking Wolf taught the boys the ways of the forest. Both Ricky and Stalking Wolf died when Tom was 17, and he left home to wander the country for the better part of a decade, living mostly off the grid.
He came back to NJ in the mid-1970’s, provided training, wrote books, and helped legal authorities with wilderness tracking. E.g., he was brought in to help locate a mentally disabled man who had gone missing for days in the Pine Barrens. When he found the man, they both sat down and cried.
He wrote 16 books that sold 2 million copies. Two of his sons followed their dad and are survivalist trainers. Taking their cue from Brown, he is survived by his third wife, Celeste; three sons, Cody, River, and Tom III; his brother, Jim; four stepchildren; and three grandchildren.
Here’s a shot of the Pine Barrens.
And here’s Tom, several hours after rigor mortis set in.
Rest in Peace Tom.
Mark Heath, of the Dull Men’s Club (UK) shared that he organized his shed and can declare that he owns ten hammers.
Lori Smith said: “Let’s see ’em then!!” So Heath came back with:
Eamonn Flynn noted: I see a mallet hiding among them. And Heath said: Ah, you got me there.
Sterling Chamberlain said: I know a bloke that has 11 — sorry. And Heath replied: No, no, it’s not a race.
Steve Bunting asked: Are any of them left-handed?
Jonathan Shepard said: I’ve got 105 friends.
That prompted Matt Matterson to say: Excessive!, and Roland Bushell to ask — Where do you keep them?
Back to hammers, Jackie Hunt said: Damn, I thought 3 was enough!
Gareth Edwards: I have around 30. Most of them do not identify as hammers, but are used as such.
And, last, if you prefer the macabre, Liam James asked: “A new one for each murdered prostitute?” [Yikes! Where’d that come from?]
Goethe was born on this date back in 1749. He said: “One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.”
Or read an Owl Chatter post!
It’s also Rita Dove’s birthday today: she’s 72. Her dad had a masters degree in chemistry but had to work as an elevator operator because he was Black. He eventually became the first Black chemist to work for Goodyear. Rita was brilliant in high school and was expected to become a lawyer or doctor. When she said she was going to be a poet, her dad said he didn’t understand poetry and asked her not to be upset if he didn’t read her poems. Her college profs urged her to take a more practical direction. You probably know where this is headed. She won a Pulitzer Prize for her work, was the first Black Poet Laureate of the U.S., and has been awarded 29 honorary doctorates, including from Harvard and U. Michigan. She frequently appears in NYTXW puzzles and has had soap named after her. She has been married to a German writer/professor, Fred Viebahn, since 1979 and they have a daughter, Aviva.
This is a poem of Dove’s that we’d bet even her dad would understand. It’s called “Scarf.”
Whoever claims beauty
lies in the eye
of the beholder
has forgotten the music
silk makes settling
across a bared
neck: skin never touched
so gently except
by a child
or a lover.
Happy birthday, Madam Laureate.
BTW, I posted the headline on Tom Brown, above, for the Dull Men’s Club — “survivalist dies,” noting it was the most ironic headline I’ve ever seen. And Adrian Bull quipped: “He had one job . . . . “
Puzzles sometimes use the clue “Losing tic-tac-toe line” for the answer XOX, OOX, etc. Apparently, this has driven some people batty and one of them posted (as Anony Mouse): Only “xxx”and “ooo” are losing in tic-tac-toe. The former is losing if you are playing o’s and the latter is losing if you are playing x’s. They are also winning lines for the player playing X’s and O’s, respectively. All other lines are neither winning nor losing.
OK. Thanks.
One of my favorite people in Crossworld is Wyna Liu. I met her once just to say hi and she seemed very sweet. She puts together the daily Connections puzzle that many of us enjoy (or the opposite of enjoy, depending on the day). Anyway, she was the constructor of yesterday’s XW in The New Yorker and it had one of the greatest ever clues/answers, IMHO.
The clue was: Ruminations such as “Whenever you clean something, you make something else dirty” and “If Cinderella’s slipper actually fit perfectly, it wouldn’t have fallen off.”
And the answer was: SHOWER THOUGHTS.
Wow.
Can’t top that. See you tomorrow.
The Wellington Files 