There’s a terrible pall over Owl Chatter headquarters. Our George was sentenced today and will be going off to the Big House for over seven years. Ouch. And we don’t mean Michigan’s football stadium. We will miss you terribly, Georgie. Stay strong. I don’t think I’ll be able to look at a can of Fresca without tearing up. Get through this and come back to us Buddy. Meanwhile, we’re just going to remember the good times.
The puzzle today, by Adrian Johnson, was full of neat stuff. Sometimes an answer just doesn’t make any sense to me. In that case, I resort to Rex’s column hoping he clarifies it, or some member of the commentariat does. For example, at 7D today the clue was “Ran through some laundry, maybe,” and I had no idea why the answer was BLED. But Rex explained it: “Laundry is (notoriously) sharp, so when you run through it, you cut your feet and they bleed.” Thanks! Makes sense now.
A HIDDEN STAIRCASE ran right across the grid — i.e., not very well hidden. The clue was “Passage in a mystery novel?” and it brought back Nancy Drew memories for some. Barbara S. was able to recall that “The Hidden Staircase” was book #2 in the series (right after “The Secret of the Old Clock”). And two folks had stories to share (one of them was me!).
Here’s what egs wrote: My father was an architect and my brothers and I grew up in a house he designed. It was a lovely house, but for some reason we always expressed a sort of amazed disappointment that there was no secret staircase or hidden passage. I mean, if you can design your own house, obviously you’d incorporate the good stuff like that. Right? Well, many years later, he and my mom built a second home. When we visited, the grandchildren were delighted beyond words (as were my brothers and I) to find that when you tried to pull from a built-in bookcase a book titled “The Hidden Passage,” the whole bookcase swung open to reveal a small playroom. From the inside, a button could be pressed to open a completely disguised exit door onto a stairway middle landing. It has, of course, remained one of all of our fondest memories, even though dad is long gone and the house long sold.
And here’s mine: About 30 years ago, on a family trip to the Grand Canyon, Zion and Bryce, one of the rooms I booked for us turned out to be a tacky space above a gas station on the outskirts of a small town in Utah. It had anti-charm — you could look out the window at the gas pumps. But it was clean, roomy, cheap, and my wife didn’t chew me out too badly over it. The gas station had what we would call today a convenience store behind the pumps that sold maps (remember those?), candy, and weird stuff that must have been sitting there for decades and is probably still there. I felt a bit sheepish for subjecting my family to such a dump, but the more little odd spaces my kids found, the more excited they got. My son’s joy exploded when he found a back staircase that led directly down to that little shop. “Dad!! We have our own private candy store!!” Every once in a while — not often — you get lucky.
At 27D, for the little answer ITS, the clue was “‘Baby ___ You’ (Shirelles hit).” Rex shared it, along with a cover version by some British band.
We have a very special birthday to celebrate today. Owl Chatter’s Poet Laureate Ted Kooser is 86, kinehora. Happy Happy Kooz!!
I am going to steal shamelessly from the nice write-up in The Writer’s Almanac today and then share the poem of his it included.
He wanted to be a writer, but he flunked out of graduate school. So he took the first job he was offered, at a life insurance company, and he worked there for 35 years. He said: “I believe that writers write for perceived communities, and that if you are a lifelong professor of English, it’s quite likely that you will write poems that your colleagues would like; that is, poems that will engage that community. I worked every day with people who didn’t read poetry, who hadn’t read it since they were in high school, and I wanted to write for them.”
He resigned himself to being a relatively unknown poet. Then, in 2004, he got a phone call informing him that he had been chosen as poet laureate of the United States. He said: “I was so staggered I could barely respond. The next day, I backed the car out of the garage and tore the rearview mirror off the driver’s side.”
This poem is called “A Rainy Morning.”
A young woman in a wheelchair,
wearing a black nylon poncho spattered with rain,
is pushing herself through the morning.
You have seen how pianists
sometimes bend forward to strike the keys,
then lift their hands, draw back to rest,
then lean again to strike just as the chord fades.
Such is the way this woman
strikes at the wheels, then lifts her long white fingers,
letting them float, then bends again to strike
just as the chair slows, as if into a silence.
So expertly she plays the chords
of this difficult music she has mastered,
her wet face beautiful in its concentration,
while the wind turns the pages of rain.
An article by Antonia Hitchens in the April 28th New Yorker is all about the sycophancy that has gripped the GOP, and serves as a large-scale emetic for the rest of us. If you’re not familiar with the term sycophant, this should help. [OMG, I only just now realized how much Rubio looks like George Santos!]
The story starts with Rep. Andy Ogles who proposed changing the 22nd Amendment to allow Trump to serve a third term. A criminal investigation into his fundraising activities was withdrawn by federal prosecutors the following week. (One was a GoFundMe account that raised $25,000 for a burial garden for stillborn babies that never materialized.)
At a cabinet meeting during which Secretaries took turns gushing, Brooke Rollins (Agriculture) said: “Your vision is a turning point and inflection point in American history.” AG Bondi said: “You were overwhelmingly elected by the biggest majority–Americans want you to be President.” And Rubio said: “What you’re doing now is a great service to our country, but ultimately to the world.”
Wait, it gets better.
GOP Rep. Anna Paulina Luna proposed legislation to arrange for the carving of the figure of DJT on Mount Rushmore. Rep. Brandon Gill proposed a bill requiring Trump’s image on $100 bills. Rep. Claudia Tenney’s legislation would make You-Know-Who’s birthday a federal holiday. Rep. Addison McDowell wants Dulles Airport to be renamed Trump International, and Darrell Issa is nominating Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. “No one deserves it more,” Issa said.
Hitchens attended a meeting of the House Committee on Natural Resources where Marjorie Taylor Greene was seeking to have the Gulf of Mexico’s renaming apply more broadly. Jared Huffman, the ranking Dem railed against the rampant insanity on display as business as usual (“crazy, destructive, incompetent, and corrupt”). After the hearing he suggested an amendment to rename Earth “Planet Trump.”
Here’s Huffman.
See you tomorrow!
The Wellington Files 