Here’s a Monday morning poem for us by Sahar Romani (After Rumi, After Terence Hayes), called “Sign.” It’s from Poem a Day (Poets.org).
What aren’t you willing to believe. A heart
graffitied fuchsia on the street, a missive from another life.
Remember the stem of lavender you found
in a used copy of Bishop’s poems, a verse underlined:
The world is a mist. And then the world is
minute and vast and clear. Suddenly, across the aisle
a woman with your mother’s bracelets, her left wrist
all shimmer and gold, you almost winced.
Coincidence is the great mystery of the human mind
but so is the trans-oceanic reach of Shah Rukh Khan’s
slow blink. Each of us wants a hint, a song
that dares us to look inside. True, it takes whimsy
and ego to believe the universe will tap your shoulder
in the middle of a random afternoon. That t-shirt
on a stranger’s chest, a bumper sticker on the highway upstate.
Truth isn’t going anywhere. It’s your eyes passing by.
I’ll never forget a sign I received a long time ago. A “bump” was detected on Caity’s belly at a routine checkup when she was about 1 and a half. (Sam wasn’t born yet.) So we started visiting surgeons to try to find out what it was. At one extreme, the good one, it could be nothing (a cyst). At the other, it could require surgery, treatments, who knows what? We schlepped out to Long Island to see a specialist, and into Manhattan. Jersey, too, for sure. It was an every-waking-moment type of concern. Caity, at the time, was not only the apple of our eye — she was the whole eye. [Note: Still is.]
I was riding the bus from Manhattan home from work (train service from Penn Station to Chatham had not yet started), and for some reason I took a seat way up front. We were off the highway and coursing down Main Street in Chatham and the driver suddenly applied the brakes for no apparent reason. Luckily, he was able to see in time what I watched a few seconds later. A mommy duck led her six little ducklings calmly across Main Street in downtown Chatham, while rush hour traffic in both directions halted. I took it as a sign from the Universe that Caity would be okay. And she was. The bump turned out to be nothing. And the following Sunday evening, we had roast duck for dinner. (No we didn’t.)
It’s time for our annual “Justice for Jerry” appeal. As many of you know, I am Chair of the “Free Jerry Sandusky Committee.” If you haven’t gotten your “IF HE HAD GONE INTO THE CHURCH HE’D BE POPE BY NOW” T-shirt ($25), bumper sticker ($8), or button ($5), what better time than now? With a sexual abuser about to take over the White House with a cabinet full of predators, and “the church,” what? about 90%** abusers?, how can we in good conscience keep Jerry behind bars? $100 donors will receive a “Penn State: Not State Pen” baseball cap; and, for $250, a personally autographed bath towel.
[**exaggeration for dramatic effect, aka lying.]
Remember yesterday’s “Art Heist” puzzle that I (and Rex) raved about? It turned out to be one of the most divisive puzzles in recent memory. While many of us loved it, I would say the majority of Rex’s commenters not only hated it – they reviled it. Yes, they viled it and then re-viled it. Here’s a sampling of rants:
Came here to post for the first time ever and state how much I hated this puzzle. HATED IT.
Hated this puzzle. From start to finish, absolutely hated it. The hint made no sense. The resultant answers were nonsense. I hated hated hated it passionately. Oh, also, I hated it.
When I saw the constructor’s name I was really hoping to love this puzzle, having attended a wonderful stage performance last summer in which David Kwong delightfully combined magic and crosswords. Instead I found myself almost screaming in agony by the time I gave up and opted for “reveal puzzle” in the app.
I’ve been doing the NYT crossword for three decades and this was the worst, least joyful puzzle I’ve seen them publish. Chose not to finish – a first for me.
In a class by itself. WOAT. Absolutely WOAT. Gimmick piled on gimmick piled on gimmick piled on errors. I. Do. Not. Understand. Why. NYT. Published. This. Mess.
I do the Sunday puzzle to be entertained – hard, easy, whatever. Not to be tortured. I almost threw it against the wall. It was overly ambitious, convoluted & impossible (for me) to even want to “try” to solve. It put me in a bad mood & I wish I had gone back to sleep. Worst puzzle of the year.
I find it interesting that this puzzle was so polarizing, with some people loving the creativity and some people hating it. Count me in the latter camp, as I found this to be perhaps the least enjoyable puzzle I’ve ever completed.
It’s a rare day that I’m willing break my streak because a puzzle is so unpleasant that I can’t bear to finish it. This is one of those days. As so many others here have noted, it was ugly, fussy, and filled with gibberish. Awful, awful, awful!
I love art and artists and couldn’t believe how much I hated this puzzle. It’s Sunday. I want a cup of coffee and sit down and just finish a well-done puzzle. This isn’t it. This was miserable and zero fun at all.
Maybe my least favorite puzzle I’ve ever done.
I hated, hated, hated this puzzle. Just an unpleasant slog, constantly having to backtrack to figure what on earth was missing from which answer.
I knew all the artists but HATED this tedious, pedantic, boring slog of a puzzle.
Perhaps the least enjoyable puzzle I’ve done in 5+ years of NYT crosswords.
An interesting clue/answer from yesterday’s XW was “Opened or closed like an eye, in film lingo.” The answer was IRISED. You know about this? I didn’t. It’s when a scene in a film is started or ended with a circle opening or closing. An “Iris In” or an “Iris Out.” This short clip is interesting (or boring).
The following paragraph opens a story on the front page of the NYT today as if it’s business as usual and the country has not spun its way into utter insanity:
“The lawyer helping Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pick federal health officials for the incoming Trump administration has petitioned the government to revoke its approval of the polio vaccine, which for decades has protected millions of people from a virus that can cause paralysis or death.”
You know you’re in la-la-land when you look to Mitch McConnell for support. Happens that McConnell was a polio survivor as a child. So he’s sorta in favor of the vaccine, along with any human being who has a brain. Here’s how the Times put it:
Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, a survivor of childhood polio, said in a statement: “Efforts to undermine public confidence in proven cures are not just uninformed — they’re dangerous.”
“Anyone seeking the Senate’s consent to serve in the incoming administration would do well to steer clear of even the appearance of association with such efforts,” he said.
Owl Chatter has gained exclusive rights to a conversation between the Senator and RFK, Jr. on this very topic.
In the interest of full disclosure, there is a family member close to us who is opposed to vaccines. Our grandson Leon, who is six, is seeking to end all childhood vaccination programs on the grounds that “they hurt.”
Here’s a very pretty tune by Kate Wolf shared with us by Son Volt, linked to the answer ACROSS from today’s grid. It’s called “Across the Great Divide.” Hi Kate!
We’ll finish today with a Holiday pet pic shared by Rex. It’s Donut!
Woof woof.
Pleasant dreams. See you next time!
The Wellington Files 