Crazy stuff — here this is, our 700th post (!!) coming on my 75th birthday, kinehora. What are the odds? We celebrated at the Pru last night at the Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) game: Sirens vs. Frost. How could you not love a team that has an “official” bra?

They wished me Happy 75th on the Jumbotron, or whatever that is: Me and a couple of 12-year old girls. How great is that! The game was terrific — our Sirens beat the Frost via a shootout. That means it was tied at the end of regulation play, and still tied after a 5-min OT period. Then individuals took turns (like in soccer) and finally the Sirens emerged on top.

The fans were great. There were 1,780 of us on a frigid night in Newark. The Sirens colors are Miami Dolphin teal, orange, and black.

Corinne Schroeder is our goalie and she saved our asses repeatedly last night. She was named the #1 star of the game. Sarah Fillier was star #2 for scoring the game-tying goal with only a minute left on the clock. Whew! (Or as the Sirens fans say: WEE WOO!)

And that brings us to our very exciting announcement: Sarah F has signed on to join the Owl Chatter staff as our sports consultant!! I know — amazing, right? She’s very smart (played college hockey at Princeton), but agreed to join us anyway!! Welcome aboard, Girl! Can’t wait for you to meet Phil and George. You like diet soda? George is a genius with it.

Not only is Sarah very smart and drop dead gorgeous (see below), she is tougher than nails. After being checked into the boards last night a bit nastily, she quickly sent a return message via elbow that was quite clear.

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Let’s turn to some wordplay. What’s unusual about the phrase “cardboard box.” Look it over; think about it. (Tip: I hinted at it somewhere above.) I’ll give you the answer later.

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I am happy to share my birthday with Ruth Reichl, whom the Writer’s Almanac refers to as a “food writer.” Ruth is 77 today, kinehora. She was sort of propelled into her field by her mom, who was a terrible cook. Her brother described their mom as “a menace to society.” She is a UMich alum (Go Blue!) and is best known for her years as food critic for the NYT. In that capacity, she went to extreme lengths to make sure restaurant owners and chefs didn’t recognize her. She made reservations under different names and switched credit cards regularly. She had 12 different personalities with full disguises for each. Here’s RR, below. If you google her and click on “images,” you’ll see why she has been described as “always smiling.” (There was a bit of spinach in her teeth in this pic originally, but Phil was able to photoshop it out.)

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We’ve all had our turn: Jews, Blacks, Gays. And women, of course, for sure. The turns are not completely over, but the current focus is certainly on the trans community. There’s all the hateful legislation promoted by the Repubs denying medical treatment and driving up suicide rates. But you can better see how insidious the hatred is in the smaller ways it’s expressed. In his op-ed column today in the NYT, Zeynep Tufekci notes that Zuckerberg’s Meta, to placate the MAGA-lomaniacs no doubt, has removed tampon dispensers from its men’s rooms. They were formerly provided for transgender or nonbinary employees. They were replaced by F*CK YOU stickers. Also — get this — users of Facebook’s Messenger App can still customize their “wallpaper,” but can no longer use themes containing the colors of the trans and nonbinary flags. (Not kidding.)

These colors can still fly at Owl Chatter. Here’s the trans flag. Hang in there kids.

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Give up on “cardboard box?” OK, here’s the answer: If you remove the first and last letters, you’re left with “ardbo ardbo.” Well, I didn’t say it wasn’t silly.

Phil!! Get her out of there!! What the hell is wrong with you!!

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Did you hear about DJT and the Jimmy Carter business? So Carter died on 12/29, and Biden, as is the tradition, ordered that the flags be flown at half staff for 30 days on federal property. You may not have detected the “problem,” but Trump did. That means it would be at half staff for his inauguration. Here’s what he wrote:

“The Democrats are all ‘giddy’ about our magnificent American Flag potentially being at ‘half mast’ during my Inauguration. They think it’s so great, and are so happy about it because, in actuality, they don’t love our Country, they only think about themselves.

“In any event, because of the death of President Jimmy Carter, the Flag may, for the first time ever during an Inauguration of a future President, be at half mast. Nobody wants to see this, and no American can be happy about it.”

But Truman died on Dec. 26, 1972, and the flag was at half staff for Nixon’s inauguration. Even Nixon was man enough not to let that bother him.

It should go without saying that Trump’s toady, Squeaker of the House Johnson, has announced that the flag at the Capitol will be raised to full staff on Jan. 20 “to celebrate our country coming together behind the inauguration of our 47th President.” Florida, Alabama, Texas, Iowa, and Nebraska are following suit.

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This poem is from the Poem-a-Day feature of Poets.org. It’s by Kerry Hardie and is called “Acceptance.”

Yesterday it was still January and I drove home
and the roads were wet and the fields were wet
and a palette knife

had spread a slab of dark blue forestry across the hill.
A splashed white van appeared from a side road
then turned off and I drove into the drab morning

which was mudded and plain and there was a kind of weary happiness
that nothing was trying to be anything much and nothing
was being suggested. I don’t know how else to explain

the calm of this grey wetness with hardly a glimmer of light or life,
only my car tyres squishing the lying water,
and the crows balanced and rocking on the windy lines.

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And, while we’re in the poetry section, in Frank Bruni’s “For the love of sentences” feature, after snippet upon snippet of Trumpiana, he let this one drop. It’s by Alexandra Petri from the Washington Post:  a welcome to an impending addition to her family, about to arrive:

“I watch your sister walk and talk and tell me about the world. There she is, planted in time, decades after me but still close enough that we will share the view from our windows for a long time. It is with her that I, myself, feel most like a window. Through me, everyone I’ve ever known and loved and lost is peeking out to greet her, in little fragments of song and familiar turns of phrase and the way I fiddle with my chin when I get nervous. I wish I could tell them about you.”

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Today’s puzzle is by two old pros, Rachel Goldstein and Adam Wagner. Without even going into the clever theme, there were lots of little goodies.

At 34D, “Something to put stock in,” was CONSOMME. At 42D, “Button clicked to advance to a YouTube video,” was SKIPAD. The intended answer was SKIP AD, but it left a bunch of folks wondering what a SKI PAD is. Answers like that are called DOOKs. It’s from when someone was driven crazy wondering what a DOOK is when the answer was meant as DO OK. (There are no spacings in XW answers.)

8D was a great clue: “Something a meter reader reads?” Answer: POEM (Get it?) And did you know this? At 49A the clue was “Affirmation not usually spoken at a Jewish wedding,” and the answer was I DO. Is that true? How did I not know that?

At 43D, the clue was “Aid in self-reflection,” and the answer was MIRROR. Some beautiful women don’t know that they are beautiful, Phil tells me. They are the ones with a special kind of beauty. It’s good if someone lets them know, he says.

Remember this old tune? Nico and the Velvet Underground.

I’ll be your mirror
Reflect what you are, in case you don’t know
I’ll be the wind, the rain and the sunset
The light on your door to show that you’re home

I find it hard to believe you don’t know
The beauty you are
But if you don’t, let me be your eyes
A hand to your darkness so you won’t be afraid

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We’ll let that send us off tonight. See you tomorrow!