As usual, coverage in the NYT lags badly behind our coverage in Owl Chatter. They finally splashed some ink on the wonderful PWHL season that just ended with the Minnesota Frost hoisting the Walter Cup for the second year in a row. To its credit, admittedly, the Times gave the league good coverage. It’s growing beautifully with two new teams joining next year: Seattle and Vancouver. The downside is the makeup of the current six teams will be changing dramatically as players are drafted to stock the newbies. Each current team will only be able to protect 4 players. Happily, it is expected that Laura Stacey, below, and Marie-Philip Poulin will both be protected by Montreal. They are married to each other!

Gah! Those sexy uniforms do a number on me every time! Here’s the duo, off-ice.

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Poet Major Jackson wrote the following note about the poem of his we are sharing, below:

“To an immense degree, I, like many, have been deeply impacted by addiction. My last painful encounter with a family member who battles substance abuse seeded the start of this poem. So much energy and resources have been expended over the years. And yet, we remain hopeful, maybe, to our demise. Our love is cavernous.” 

Addiction

A family spots their brother sleepwalking 
in a narrow hallway. He is cooking in his dreams, 
pretending chef, moving around a kitchen, 
screaming humbug at dried bits 
of onion powder in a spice container, and so
takes off to the grocery store,

his hands miming a driver’s 
who is having a heartfelt
conversation with a passenger
which could be any one of them. 
They are careful not to wake him 
for fear of triggering a heart attack 
or a fall down the stairs.

He bares his teeth which means he is now
a canine, most likely a pit bull; his eyes
go dark as a chimney, so he hums a little 
Scottish ballad about time.

They hope he finds his way back.
They tire of circling him and think, by all means,
continue your travels in your cardboard world. 
His wife feels ever his value
and grabs their hands and shifts when he shifts
and falls when he falls.

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At 55A today the clue was “Sounded like a brook” and the answer was GURGLED. It confused commenter Gary a bit: “I thought brooks babbled, now I learn they gurgle. Do oceans still roar? And what exactly are rivers doing other than rushing? We have a fountain that gets water all over the patio.”

And here’s jberg on Rice-a-roni: “So you’ve got Rice-a-RONI for people who have rice but want it to feel like pasta, and orzo for people who have pasta and want it to feel like rice. Why don’t they just switch their plates?”

Right off the bat, at 1D today, the clue was “Genre for Count Basie or Charlie Parker,” and the answer, of course, was JAZZ. Rex commenter Son Volt shared this song with us. I had not heard of the song or The Felice Brothers from under my rock.

But the puzzle was not otherwise about JAZZ — it was about FIDDLER, as in “on the roof.” SUNRISE and SUNSET worked their way up and down the grid in circled letters (along with GOOD MORNING and NIGHTY NIGHT).

Rex shared this song by Caroline Polachek.

A Yiddish writer Sholem ASCH was in the puzzle too. Here’s what I posted on Rex’s site:

It was nice to see Sholem ASCH in the puzzle, a great Yiddish writer who lived from 1880 to 1957. It was a different Sholem, though, Sholem Aleichem (1859-1961), also a Yiddish writer, who wrote the stories of Tevye the Milkman upon which Fiddler was based. A warm memory of my youth was seeing Fiddler on Broadway with my mom. My brother used to call it “Fiddler on a Hot Tin Roof.” I catch it now from time to time in High School productions in North Jersey and it never fails to get to me.

See you next time, Chatterheads. Thanks for popping in!