This poem is called “Proposals.” It was in The Writer’s Almanac today and is by Cecilia Woloch, a Pittsburgh girl, 69, who lives in LA now. She’s part Roma, and an alum of Transylvania U in Lexington Kentucky. How’s that for creepy? (The college part, not the Roma part.) It’s a real college: Kentucky’s oldest university. It’s the alma mater of two U.S. vice presidents, two U.S. Supreme Court justices, 50 U.S. senators, 101 U.S. representatives, 36 U.S. governors, and 34 U.S. ambassadors, making it a large producer of 19th-century U.S. statesmen. Its sports teams are “the Bats.” Just kidding. Should be the Bats, but they are the Pioneers. Bore-ring.
Here’s what Cecilia looks like. You may want to know after reading her poem.
Mistaking me for someone else, he asked me to marry him. This has
happened more than once. The first time, I was eighteen and the boy had
a diamond ring in a box. It was the Fourth of July, it was dark, he said, Happy
Independence Day. Of course, the ring was too large and slipped right off
my finger into the grass. (It belonged to someone else: the woman he
married, eventually.) And when I was twenty-one, that redhead, sloe-eyed
and slinking out of his grief, said he’d imagined I’d be his wife. But he was
mistaken. It wasn’t me. Then a drunk who drove too fast, who threw the
proposal over his shoulder like some glittering, tattered scarf. I staggered
out of his car, saying, No thanks, No thanks, No thanks. And the man over
eggs one morning, in the midst of an argument, saying he planned to wait
for spring to ask for my hand, then he never asked. (So of course, I married
that one for a while; spent years convincing him I was not his cup of coffee,
not his girl.) And in Prague, on a bridge called the Karlův Most, a stranger,
a refugee, who mistook the way I stared at the river for thinking of suicide.
Who mistook my American passport for his ticket out of there. And
others-the man whose children grabbed the food off my plate, called me
her; the man in Chartres Cathedral humming the wedding march into my
ear. And tonight, at dinner with friends, happy, discussing their wedding
plans, a man I’ve known for a couple of hours turning to ask me to marry
him. I don’t know who they think I am. Do I look like a bride in these rags
of wind? Do I look like the angel of home and hearth with this strange green
fire in my hands?
If you think you had mean or strict parents (I don’t – quite the converse), consider Rudyard Kipling, who was born on this date in 1865. He was British, born to British parents in India, where his dad had a teaching assignment as an artist. To protect him from a pandemic, they sent him back to England where he was in the care of a mean couple who once made him go to school with a sign on his back that said LIAR. Ouch! The closest I came was when a group of us took to slapping KICK ME signs on each other’s backs. Good times.
As I’ve noted before, the commenter Son Volt regularly includes links to songs that are connected in some way to clues/answers in the day’s puzzle. Today, grimly, in connection with WENT PFFT, he linked Leonard Cohen’s “Democracy.”
In connection with SQUALL, he shared this Guy Clark song. (Click.)
At 2D, the clue was “And _______ bed.” Answer: SO TO. I knew it, but didn’t know it comes from Samuel Pepys’ diary. Also learned that Pepys is pronounced Peeps. (Not kidding.) Pepys was second cousin to Edward Montagu, the first Earl of Sandwich, who played a large role in his life. Edward was not the Sandwich after whom the sandwich is named. That was John Montagu, the fourth Earl of Sandwich.
This may be how it happened: Lord Sandwich was a very conversant gambler, the story goes, and he did not take the time to have a meal during his long hours playing at the card table. Consequently, he would ask his servants to bring him slices of meat between two slices of bread, a habit known among his gambling friends. Other people, according to this account, began to order “the same as Sandwich!,” and thus the “sandwich” was born.
The Carnegie Deli on Seventh Avenue in Manhattan closed about ten years ago. If you ordered a corned beef sandwich there, it was a bit pricey, but here’s what you got (he wrote, wiping away tears).
Here are the first three lines of a poem that did not make it past the Owl Chatter guard puppies.
ice in the grass of want:
queen of leaf-
rot, I’ve let go—
Let’s finish today with the story that was selected by readers as the best Met Diary entry of 2025. It’s by Richie Powers and is called “Unacceptable.”
Dear Diary:
I went to a new bagel store in Brooklyn Heights with my son.
When it was my turn to order, I asked for a cinnamon raisin bagel with whitefish salad and a slice of red onion.
The man behind the counter looked up at me.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t do that.”
See you tomorrow Chatterheads! Thanks for stopping in.
The Wellington Files 