This poem by Leo Dangel is from yesterday’s Writer’s Almanac. It’s called “In Memoriam.”
In the early afternoon my mother
was doing the dishes. I climbed
onto the kitchen table, I suppose
to play, and fell asleep there.
I was drowsy and awake, though,
as she lifted me up, carried me
on her arms into the living room,
and placed me on the davenport,
but I pretended to be asleep
the whole time, enjoying the luxury—
I was too big for such a privilege
and just old enough to form
my only memory of her carrying me.
She’s still moving me to a softer place.
If you’re a girl and your name is Sydney, it would be good if you were beautiful. The actress Sydney Sweeney is. (Her middle name is Bernice, if you must know.)
Her ad campaign for American Eagle has caused a bit of a flap over charges that it contains racist dog whistles. Woof! I didn’t even know dogs could be racist. Although I have heard of race dogs.
An op-ed piece in the NYT by John McWhorter has a great title: Do These Jeans Make My Ads Look Racist?
The issue is the interplay between jeans and genes. In one spot, Sweeney says, “Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality, and even eye color… My ‘jeans’ are blue.” The ad says “Sydney Sweeney has great genes” with the word genes morphing into “jeans” a moment later. So — is this white nationalist crapola about blond blue-eyed folks forming a superior race?
McWhorter (a Black Columbia prof) raises the issue of whether there’s a statute of limitations on historically tarnished expressions. He’s inclined to let this one go. “Language changes, culture changes, labels are reassigned. And a blonde, blue-eyed actress talking about jeans–or even genes–is just a pun, not a secret salute to white supremacy.”
Sydney herself has caught some sh*t for staying silent about it. We asked Owl Chatter style and culture consultant Ana de Armas to weigh in. Ana’s Louis Vuitton ads have generated no controversies — only enough drooling to call for flash flood warnings. She says flatly: Leave the girl alone. She’s gorgeous. Let her work.
The Owl Chatter community, of course, is free to form its own opinion.
The theme revealer in yesterday’s puzzle was at 39A: “Ones paying flat rates.” It’s a pun on a flat as an apartment, and the answer is TENANTS. But you need to read it as TEN ANTS, like the insects, because at ten points the letters ANT are smooshed into a square and function that way both down and across.
E.g., the answers L[ANT]ERN and REDUND[ANT] cross at the [ANT]s. Here’s what the completed grid looks like — crawling with ants. (See ’em?)
That HANA up there at 68A is Hana Mandlikova, the Czech–Australian tennis star who was ranked as high as #3 in the world back in the ’80s. She was inducted into the Int’l Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport RI back in ’94, but has avoided visiting the Hall because the tickets are expensive. She says she may pop in when she qualifies for the senior discount (she’s 63 now).
And the VERA up there at 54D is Vera Farmiga, the actress, a Jersey girl from Clifton. She’s Ukrainian. I missed her performance as a drug addict in “Down to the Bone” in 2004 but she got raves for it. Phil caught her pulling out all the stops (smoky eyes; bed head).
From today’s puzzle I learned about suhur and iftar. I’ve long wondered about the long fast period of Ramadan. I can barely go 20 minutes without grabbing something. Well, first of all, Ramadan does last a month — from one crescent moon to the next (29 or 30 days). (The next one starts Feb. 19, the ninth month on a lunar calendar.) So it’s a month-long fast, but you only fast during the daylight hours. A pre-dawn meal is eaten called the suhur. That is why during the before Ramadan the sales of alarm clocks in Muslim neighborhoods soar. An evening (post-sunset) meal is also eaten, called iftar. Iftar was the answer in the puzzle, clued with “Evening meal during Ramadan.”
Did you know that female aphids that don’t enjoy the dating scene can have kids without mating with a male? It’s called telescoping generations. Aphids are small sap-sucking insects like the greenfly and blackfly. There is also a fluffy white wooly aphid. It’s pretty and is sometimes called a cotton fairy. Hope it dates.
The clue for APHID was “Insect that can reproduce with or without mating.”
Riverdale Joe shared a story with us today. The topic of Rhode Island came up because Sam is there this weekend for his friend-also-named-Joe’s bachelor party. Sam is flying back to Motown on Sunday from the airport that serves four cities in the Providence area: The Rhode Island T. F. Green Int’l Airport. (T.F. Green was an RI Governor and Senator.) The four are Providence, East Providence, Warwick, and we couldn’t recall the fourth (Cranston). When we were guessing, I offered Minsk. Here’s the story it brought to mind:
A gentleman had to get to Minsk but did not have the money for a train ticket. He got on the train nevertheless and started heading to Minsk. When the conductor asked for his ticket, he said he did not have one, so he was kicked off at the next stop. He waited for the next train there, and got on it when it came. Again, when he told the conductor he did not have a ticket he was kicked off at the next stop. When the third train arrived, he got on and the scene repeated itself — he was kicked off at the next stop. While waiting for the fourth train he ran into an acquaintance and they started chatting. His friend asked him where he was heading. He said “Minsk, if my ass holds up.”
Joe then explained that as the tale crossed over the Atlantic to the new country, the destination morphed from Minsk to Winnipeg. “Winnipeg, if my ass holds up.”
Now, Minsk, obviously, is perfect. Winnipeg we’re not sure of. So your assignment, dear readers, is to see if you can come up with something funnier than Winnipeg in the U.S. or Canada. So far all I can think of is Boise.
We reached convicted sex monster Ghislaine Maxwell sipping a marguerita by the side of her private pool at her federal facility, livid. “What the f*ck is with this goddamn chef they got me? I had to return my steak twice this week. Can someone instruct the idiot on the difference between medium and medium-rare? Jesus! There is a difference you know.” The President’s lawyers apologized and have assured her it’s being taken care of.
(You know you’re spending too much time on this topic when you can spell Ghislaine correctly from memory. Oy.)
Special Owl Chatter farewells and thank yous to ex-Gnats Kyle Finnegan and Alex Call, both of whom we enjoyed watching play ball very much. Two menschen. Happy to see KF heading to Detroit, his hometown, where he will certainly see playoff time. And Alex is heading to the World Champion Dodgers. Not too shabby.
See you tomorrow Chatterheads.
The Wellington Files 