The school year has started up — not for me, — but for our magnificent seven: Robin (nee Lianna), Zoey, Leon, Raffi, Izzy, Morris, and Harold. Is that seven? Alright. Yes, even little Harold who turns one on 12/10, kinehora, is in school. The oldest, Robin, turns 16 in a few weeks and is sophomoric at Morristown (NJ) High. Go Colonials!
And so it’s fitting that we open today with this note of reminiscence by Hannah Morrill in Wirecutter that made it into Frank Bruni’s “For The Love of Sentences.”
“I’m in the aisles of Staples — no limits, no budget and no parents in eyeshot. My cart is loaded with slabs of loose-leaf paper, packs of unsharpened pencils, a row of yet-to-desiccate markers. There’s no subject I can’t conquer, no friend group I can’t infiltrate, no style trend I can’t master. In all the days since, and through all my life’s small and large moments — from first sips of morning coffee to the literal birth of my children — I’ve yet to top that boundless optimism of back-to-school shopping.”
[Eyeshot!]
Addendum: Davey Johnson. I learned some neat Johnson trivia today. He got the last hit Sandy Koufax surrendered before retiring. A single. It was in the sixth inning of the second game of 1966 World Series in which the Orioles swept the Dodgers. It was the first World Series ever won by Baltimore. The Dodgers only scored two runs in the entire series — both in the first game. And they only had three hits in two of the games and four hits in the other two. Jim Palmer bested Koufax in Game 2. The other Oriole winners were Dave McNally, Moe Drabowsky, and Wally Bunker. Don Drysdale took the loss in two of the games, and Claude Osteen in one.
Johnson’s crowning achievement was managing the Mets to the 1986 World Series Championship, their only other win besides the 1969 “miracle.” And did you know about Johnson’s link to the earlier one? Davey made the last out in the 1969 WS, flying out to Cleon Jones in left.
Last, in 1978, Davey became the first player to hit two pinch-hit grand slam home runs in one season. He was with the Phillies and they were the only two homers he hit with the Phils that year. Daryl Strawberry, whom Davey later managed, hit two pinch-hit grand slams in 1998.
[Side note: Strawberry is the only player to have played for all four teams with a NY heritage and no other teams. They are, of course, the Yankees, Mets, Dodgers, and Giants.]
In today’s puzzle at 10A the clue was “Animal that moos,” and the answer was COW.
How the f*ck are we supposed to know that? Do I look like I live on a goddamn farm?
At 15D the clue was “Can-opening mechanism,” and the answer was POPTAB. I was okay with that. It seemed like a reasonable variant of poptop. But quite a few commenters would not abide it. Here’s Rex:
“Somehow crossword constructors have convinced each other that POP TAB is a thing. Seven NYTXW appearances overall, four just since 2022. I’m guessing that the ‘tab’ part of a pop-top can is what’s meant by this ‘word,’ but I’ve never heard anyone actually use it and dictionaries are likewise giving a big shrug. I mean, it sounds like a thing, but I just don’t think it’s a thing.”
And a Jimmy Buffett fan shared this lyric from “Margaritaville.”
I blew out my flip-flop
Stepped on a POP TOP
I broke my leg twice, had to limp on back home.
But then there’s this for the TAB people:
Let’s give Anony Mouse the last word:
“We always called pop (soda) can openers pop tabs. Back in high school we had a whole thing about them and you saved them for your girl (or boy) friend and could cash them in for kisses. If you got the tab off with the swivel piece intact, that was worth more…”
[Exactly how much more we’ll leave to your imagination.]
While we’re on the topic, did you know that the “Flower symbolizing early love” is the LILAC? Now they tell me.
At 2D the clue was “Higher than on the totem pole,” and the answer was ABOVE. But did you know the idiom “low man on the totem pole” is culturally insensitive? Rex cited this from Forbes.com:
“Totem poles are sacred objects used by many Indigenous and Alaska Native Nations of the Pacific Northwest to honor a deceased ancestor or share an important event. This idiom denigrates these sacred objects. Further, the idea that the lowest figure on the totem pole is the least important is also incorrect. In actuality, the designs on the bottom are often considered the most prestigious because they are the ones that will be seen at eye level.”
We’ll close tonight with this poem by Sonia Gernes. It’s called “Little Sisters” and was in today’s Writer’s Almanac. It is not for the faint of heart. See you tomorrow.
This birthday I have reached the age
where my mother bore
the last of her dead daughters—
one that was whisked away
before its first clean cry
could scour the naked room, the later two
a blue that refused to brighten.
“Baby Girl, Infant Daughter of …”
the little markers said
and I listened from behind the stove
in her last pregnancy,
watched her body swell and sag,
knew from the shape
of those whispered words
that something was amiss—
she was weighted already
with two small stones.
Summer mornings I called them forth—
the little sisters I had never seen—
made them faces
from the old ache
in the air above the garden,
hair like mine
from the grassy space
where root crops should have been.
I learned of blood tests, transfusions,
the factor called Rh,
my little sisters
dreaming their aquatic days
on lethal ropes, my mother
almost dead.
Now at the kitchen table
lighting candles on a cake,
I am empty-handed,
empty-wombed,
no daughters to give her
as she counts again
my miraculous birth,
fourth and forceps-born,
her last survivor in that war
of blood with family blood.
I reach for her hand and hold it,
but there are spaces here,
tender lacunae we cannot fold away.
Still somewhere the hand-stitched garments,
the gingham quilts, the counting game.
Still the soot-smudged corner
where I crouched beneath the stovepipe
and fingered like a rosary
the small pebbles of their names.
The Wellington Files 