It’s Flag Day. Good day to learn the meaning of vexillology, courtesy of Miriam Webster’s Word of the Day. It means the study of flags. I didn’t know it could be an area of study.
What did you major in?
Flags.
Any particular specialty?
Red ones.
Billy Collins wrote this poem, and it was in today’s Writer’s Almanac.
Genius
was what they called you in high school
if you tripped on a shoelace in the hall
and all your books went flying.
Or if you walked into an open locker door,
you would be known as Einstein,
who imagined riding a streetcar into infinity.
Later, genius became someone
who could take a sliver of chalk and squire pi
a hundred places out beyond the decimal point,
or a man painting on his back on a scaffold,
or drawing a waterwheel in a margin,
or spinning out a little night music.
But earlier this week on a wooded path,
I thought the swans afloat on the reservoir
were the true geniuses,
the ones who had figured out how to fly,
how to be both beautiful and brutal,
and how to mate for life.
Twenty-four geniuses in all,
for I numbered them as Yeats had done,
deployed upon the calm, crystalline surface—
forty-eight if we count their white reflections,
or an even fifty if you want to throw in me
and the dog running up ahead,
who were at least smart enough to be out
that morning—she sniffing the ground,
me with my head up in the bright morning air.
Helen of Troy’s mom was LEDA. It says so right there at 7D in today’s puzzle. So Son Volt shared this song by Hozier with us (“Swan Upon Leda”). Hozier’s Irish. I’m including the lyrics because he wrote it to support American women upon the overturning of Roe v. Wade. I’m way too stupid to understand most of it, but at least I can tell it’s beautiful, as is the photo Phil sent in posted below it.
“Swan Upon Leda”
A husband waits outside
A crying child pushes a child into the night
She was told he would come this time
Without leaving so much as a feather behind
To enact at last the perfect plan
One more sweet boy to be butchered by men
But the gateway to the world
Was still outside the reach of him
Would never belong to angels
Had never belonged to men
The swan upon Leda
Empire upon Jerusalem
A grandmother smuggling meds
Past where the god child-soldier Setanta stood dead
Our graceful turner of heads
Weaves through the checkpoints like a needle and thread
Someone’s frightened boy waves her on
She offers a mother’s smile and soon she’s gone
The gateway to the world
The gun in a trembling hand
Where nature unmakes the boundary
The pillar of myth still stands
The swan upon Leda
Occupier upon ancient land
The gateway to the world
Was still outside the reach of him
Would never belong to angels
Had never belonged to men
We visited Colonial Williamsburg with the kids when they were little. Loved it. Sam was a riot getting confused about stuff like “about face” when he was in the regiment. Must have been those draft-dodger genes I gave him. We were waiting on line for something and a little girl in period garb came up to Caity and showed her how to play with a hoop, one of the things kids did back then. I mention it because Rex did in his puzzle review today. It came up in a very roundabout way. The clue at 36D was “Oldest sports franchise that has never won a championship in the ‘Big Four’ leagues (N.F.L., N.B.A., M.L.B., N.H.L.)” Answer: (Atlanta) FALCONS. Here’s Rex on it:
“I used to love their helmets, back when I really cared about football (i.e. in elementary school). Got a whole set of football helmet magnets from IHOP when I was like 9 and I cannot overstate how much those magnets solidified my understanding of the league and its iconography. I can still feel those damn things. In the olden days, we didn’t have ‘devices,’ so we had to play with refrigerator magnets for fun. It was that or hoop rolling. And we were happy.”
[OC Note: It’s still a big deal at Wellesley College on May Day.]
BTW, in the nit-picking department, two commenters took the constructor (Barbara Lin) to task on the grounds that the Minny Vikings have gone longer than the Falcons without a title. But I was able to come to her defense. It’s true that Minny has never won a Super Bowl (or Superb Owl, for that matter), but they did win the NFL Championship in 1969, the year before the NFL and AFL merged. So Minny did win a league championship which is what the clue referenced.
With my MLB-TV subscription, I am able to watch the Gnats games with their announcers. So I’ve grown fond of Bob Carpenter who is 72 but is just a big kid. All announcers (I think) keep score of the game, so they can refer back to what happened, but Bob is really serious about it, and has even published a scorebook. (bcscorebook.com. $30) I used to keep score of games I went to when I was little. It’s a lost art — I never see anyone keeping score anymore.
Anyway, Ryan Zimmerman (retired Gnat) was guest-announcing with Bob at today’s game and Bob reminded Zim of a game-winning HR he hit against the Yankees on Father’s Day back in 2006 when he was just starting out his career. They showed a replay of it. And what I particularly liked was Bob Carpenter had brought his old 2006 scorebook to the game and opened it up to that game and had Zim autograph it for him. Carpenter has announced he’s retiring after this season. Boo hoo.
Anne Meara, aleha hashalom, was in the puzzle today. What a treat!
Quick, watch this so you’ll be in love with her. Wait — from a 30-second Jack-in-the-Box commercial? Yup. Guaranteed.
Anne, of course, was married to Jerry Stiller, and Ben is their son. They also had a daughter, Amy. Jerry and she were married for over 60 years until her death at age 85 in 2015. Anne converted to Judaism six years after marrying Jerry and insisted she did not do it for Jerry, but because “Catholicism was dead to me.” She took Judaism very seriously and Jerry quipped that he became more Jewish because of Anne. After suffering a series of strokes late in life, she lived at the Hebrew Home for the Aged (Hi Justine!).
Stiller and Meara were on the Ed Sullivan show 36 times.
There were two nonsense words in the puzzle today. At 5D, for the clue “As if!” the answer was PAH. Rex and the commentariat were quite miffed at PAH. It lead me to post: “PAH might have been less objectionable if it were clued with ‘Two of them follow OOM.’”
The second one was at 32A where “Moved clumsily” was GALUMPHED. That’s actually a real word now, but it started out as a “made-up” word in Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass. Good word. Everyone loved seeing it. Rex went so far as to say it might have been the highlight of the puzzle for him. (It was Anne Meara for me.)
Last note on the grid: At 49D: “Ones who never apologize, say.” Answer ASSES. Yup. (I’d include a photo of You-Know-Whom here, but Phil won’t let me.)
Happy Flag Day, Chatterheads. See you tomorrow!
The Wellington Files 