When I first read this beautiful love poem called “March” by Jessica Jiang, the Poem of the Day from the Poetry Foundation, I thought the poet was thinking back to when she was in college, because it refers to a dorm room. But Ms. Jiang is still in college, a senior at Williams. Any of you see her at the Tunnel Cafe last July 4? Maybe with Tiffany?
March
Tiffany,
I’ve gotten used to sunlight with you,
but no pressure! Just—
spring doesn’t hurt as much anymore.
Your softness,
as the green seeps in.
I’ve got only 27¢
and some soul
to spend on you.
Sudden sunlight striking through,
to find myself kneeling.
My bones shattered
then welded
into this sudden page
and you.
In a dorm room,
we make sin out of our bodies,
such joy despite illegality.
There is no shame in love
like this: our mouths open,
gasping white plumes,
we send messages to the sky.
Yesterday
I opened my coat
and your yellow hair flew out
like a migrant bird.
I watched the wind take it upward
and I was beside you, flying.
My beautiful daughter Caitlin sent me this photo of her (and our) Zoey. (Hey, are those PRIDE sox, Zo?) We moved a gorgeous dollhouse into Zoey’s room yesterday that had been in my office at Hunter for decades. Caity wanted to let me know that when she went up to check on Zo early this morning this is how she found her. (That’s a cello she’s holding in her hands, btw.)
This is the conversation between Linda and me that ensued:
Avi: That Zoey is so sweet.
Linda: They all are.
Avi: That’s right. They all are. We deserve some of the credit, don’t we?
Linda: Yes. Most of it.
Avi: Maybe all?
An unvaccinated child died from the measles yesterday in Gaines County in West Texas. The county is home to thousands of Moronites, an insular Christian group that historically has had low vaccination rates. Oops, I’m sorry — it’s Mennonites, not Moronites. The county’s vax rate is 13% below what is needed to prevent outbreaks. Criticize the Jews all you want — who doesn’t? At least we don’t kill our own children out of idiocy. Jeez Louise.
RFK, Jr., “downplayed” the death (that’s the word used by the NYT), noting it’s “not unusual.” That should be comforting to the parents. In The Measles Book, published in 2021, Kennedy wrote: “measles outbreaks have been fabricated to create fear,” leading government officials to “inflict unnecessary and risky vaccines on millions of children for the sole purpose of fattening industry profits.” The outbreak in West Texas has spread into New Mexico. Junior has blood on his hands. He’ll be knee deep in it soon.
Miriam Webster’s “Word of the Day” is doff. I almost skipped reading about it thinking it was nothing special — that it just means to take off your hat out of respect. But I was wrong. First of all, it’s not limited to hats and is unrelated to shows of respect. It simply means to take off any article of clothing. Best to think of it as the opposite of don, which it is. It’s from “to do off,” as don is from “to do on.” Juliet used it in her “rose by any other name” speech: “Romeo, doff thy name; / And for that name, which is no part of thee, / Take all myself.” [Sigh.]
True to form, our Phil broke into J’s bedroom (climbed through the famous window) for this shot. We normally berate Phil when he does that, but we can’t this time — she’s too beautiful. That’s Hailee Steinfeld, btw, engaged to marry NFL QB Josh Allen, who is apparently not deterred by her tragic death. “Nobody’s perfect,” he reasoned.
The puzzle by David Steinberg was brilliant today. The theme was POCKETS. There were four across answers that were types of pants: TROUSERS, BLUE JEANS, CORDUROYS, and JODHPURS (look it up). Each of these, fortuitously, has the letter U in it. That U served as a “pocket” to hold something from the crossing down word. E.g., at 4 down the clue was “Shook one’s defender, in sports lingo.” The answer is GOT OPEN, but all you could fit into squares was GOTO and the “pen” fit into the U from TROUSERS, see below. Similarly, the “glove” at the end of BIG LOVE fit into the U of BLUE JEANS; the “phone” at the end of PERSEPHONE fit into the U of CORDUROYS; and the KEY at the end of MICKEY fit into the U of Jodhpurs. When you finished, these neat pictures appeared in your completed grid:
Note there are no other Us in the entire grid, a nice touch.
Too bad David didn’t put BRASS in one of the pockets.
Commenter Egs noted: The items are the things, employed in the exact order, that I spend the bulk of my days looking for every time Mrs. Egs tries to embark on any outing……glove, pen, key, phone.
Continuing with the pocket theme, a commenter suspiciously calling him or herself Mae W. wrote simply “No banana?” It recalls Ms. West’s famous line: “Is that a pistol in your pocket or are you just glad to see me? (The pistol is sometimes replaced by a banana.)
The puzzle also asked us to know who the author of “Dubliners” is. JOYCE, of course, and it led Son Volt to share this song with us, that includes a reference to JJ.
Rex’s write-up today (he loved the puzzle too) included a reference to Musk’s Nazi salute. It generated this back-and-forth by commenters:
It started with Rachel, for the defense:
As the granddaughter of a Survivor I am very sensitive about anyone who would make that salute and I don’t think Elon Musk did that. Here’s what I do know for a fact: Elon Musk visited Auschwitz-Birkenau on January 22, 2024. This private visit took place before he attended a conference on antisemitism organized by the European Jewish Association in Krakow, Poland. During the visit, he was accompanied by his young son, as well as by Rabbi Menachem Margolin, and Holocaust survivor Gidon Lev. Musk laid a wreath and participated in a memorial ceremony at the site, which was a former Nazi German concentration camp where over 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, were killed during World War II. Pretty sure he didn’t give a Nazi dog whistle salute a year after that visit. It was just an awkward gesticulation used as a desperate attempt by his political opponents to vilify him.
Sir Hillary countered: Your last sentence seems to be the point you really wanted to make, which is of course your right. But how can anyone be “pretty sure” about what Musk thinks or does? Face it — none of us has any idea what’s going on in his head — “mercurial” doesn’t even begin to describe the way he rolls. If that’s why you like him, fine, but your argument in this case might be more convincing if he didn’t have [Germany’s right-wing] AfD leadership on speed-dial.
Later in the day, Rachel took some heavier hits:
Anony Mouse I wrote: You have no way of knowing his motivations for any of the above, but what we do know is how his supporters are interpreting his salute to validate and further their own racism. Being a descendent of a survivor doesn’t mean you get to justify harmful rhetoric as “he didn’t mean it.”
Anony Mouse II: You’re just gaslighting yourself. There’s nothing awkward about it, he clearly planned it ahead of time, and he’s had every opportunity to apologize and clarify, but he’d rather court neo-Nazis.
Anony Mouse III: You should be ashamed for defending this guy.
Anony Mouse IV: What horrid propaganda. Guy is a neo-Nazi. Idiocy to pretend otherwise: https://www.npr.org/2025/01/27/nx-s1-5276084/elon-musk-german-far-right-afd-holocaust
Frank Bruni’s “For The Love Of Sentences” feature was on fire this week. First, our sports consultant Sarah was delighted with this description of a hockey game in The New Yorker by Louisa Thomas: “Skaters turned and arced, arced and turned, their jerseys, bright against the white ice, reorganizing like a kaleidoscope.”
Sticking with sports, in The Athletic, Brendan Quinn and Brendan Marks visited with the young Duke basketballer Cooper Flagg and his parents: “Mom has a tendency to dominate chats, cutting in like an 18-wheeler changing lanes with no signal. Cooper is said to get his basketball moxie from her.”
Last, this hysterical quote in The Atlantic by Gary Shteyngart appraising his own body (or, rather, his punishing self-image of it): “When I finally found people to have sex with me — I had to attend Oberlin to complete the task — my expression upon disrobing resembled that of a dog looking up at his mistress after a bowel movement of hazmat proportions.”
It reminded me of Rodney Dangerfield’s comments on his own looks: “When I was born, the doctor slapped my mother.”
Enough. See you tomorrow.
The Wellington Files 