The Wellington Files

According to an article dated last February, you can count the number of Jews who play football in the NFL on one hand: thirteen. (Wait. What?) Alright, forget the hand thing, that’s not the point. The point is, it’s great that RON MIX was not only a Jewish football player for eleven years a long time ago — he’s in the pro football Hall of Fame. He’s also in the puzzle today, full name: RON MIX, at 104D. He is still living, at 84.

Mix was 6′ 4″ and weighed 250 when he played, so I’m guessing he didn’t encounter too much anti-Semitism. If anyone did cross him, you could probably say about him what they used to say about a federal agent caught in the woods by bootleggers: “He may get better, but he’ll never get well.”

Mix was an outstanding offensive tackle for the LA Chargers in the old AFL, from 1960 to 1969, after an All-American college career at USC. Get this — in those ten years of pro ball, he was penalized for holding only twice. Football fans will appreciate how amazing that is.

Mix is a mensch, which is hard to say ten times fast. In 1965, the AFL planned for its All Star game to be played in New Orleans, but the Black players organized a boycott. They said they wouldn’t play in a city that denied them basic rights — to eat in restaurants, get cabs, etc. Mix was the first white player to join them, after which others did as well. The game was relocated to Houston.

Ron married Patti Match, and for a time they were known as Mix and Match. No, I made that up. His wife was Patti Lanphier, and Mix wrote a very beautiful article about her for the San Diego Tribune when she passed away last February. They had three children: Carrie, Kathleen, and Charles. This is a story he told about her:

Patti was known for her organizational skills and ability to come up with inventive solutions to problems. This was best displayed when a crisis arose during the preparation of a major fund-raiser. Twenty-five members and board members of this charity had volunteered to set up and decorate tables for an event that would have 2000 people. On the morning of the event, only three volunteers showed up. Patti called the Commander of the Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego, explained the problem, and asked him to send 25 recruits to assist. He did. The recruits remained as her special guests at the dinner.

He concluded by writing: Patti, my darling Patti, I was blessed with your presence for 58 years. I shall attempt to temper the sadness by cherishing the memories, but I know that I shall grieve until I am gone.

The Chargers retired Mix’s number (74) when he retired in 1969. But he unretired and played for Oakland in 1971. The Chargers owner was miffed and “unretired” Mix’s number so it’s in use again. Booo!

His mom must have said: “Go ahead and play that game with the silly hats, but, for me, maybe you can go to law school too?” So Mix earned a law degree during the off-season and maintained a practice after he retired from football. He got involved with some shady deals, however, and ended up pleading guilty to tax fraud. He was disbarred in 2019, and penalized fifteen yards. (Sorry, I made up that last part about the fifteen yards. Hard to resist.)

Here’s a bad joke for you: Three Jewish women are talking. The first says, “I’m so proud of my boy Abie, he’s a doctor.” The second says, “I’m proud my Ronnie too — a lawyer.” The third says, “My Alex is a rabbi.” Aghast, the first two say: “A rabbi!! What kind of job is that for a Jewish boy??”

Here’s a shot of Mix.

And here’s some wine you can use at your next Shabbat dinner. That’s our man on the label.

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Actress Gal Gadot, who played Wonder Woman in the movies, is not your typical starlet. At 18 she was crowned Miss Israel, and then served two years as a combat fitness instructor in the Israeli Defense Forces. She was ranked the third-highest-paid actress in the world in 2020, with annual earnings of $31.5 million. In her most recent film, she co-starred with Kenneth Branagh, Tom Bateman, and Annette Bening in Death on the Nile (2022), directed by Branagh. She’s the GAL in the grid today at 90 down.

Gadot, fellow Wonder Woman actress Lynda Carter, and U.N. Under-Secretary-General Cristina Gallach appeared at the U.N. in October 2016, the 75th anniversary of the first appearance of Wonder Woman, to mark the character’s designation by the U.N. as its “Honorary Ambassador for the Empowerment of Women and Girls”. The gesture was intended to raise awareness of UN Sustainable Development Goal No. 5, which seeks to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls by 2030. The decision was met with protests from UN staff members who stated that the character is “not culturally encompassing or sensitive” and served to objectify women. As a result, the character was stripped of the designation, and the project ended. (Hrrrrrrrumph.)

Gadot is married to an Israeli real estate developer and they have three little Wonder Women — ages 1, 5, and 11.

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Talia Shire, clued by her Godfather role, played Don Corleone’s daughter Connie, and was a beautiful bride (below). I gotta say, though, it strains the credulity to imagine her the victim of domestic abuse, doesn’t it? Don F**king Corleone’s daughter?? How Neanderthalic does that husband have to be? Jeeeesh. In the photo, below, note how Santino has him arm around his dad’s shoulder, and Brando has his hand on his granddaughter’s. Lovely.

Shire was born in Lake Success, NY, in 1946 and is Francis Ford Coppola’s sister and actor Nicolas Cage’s aunt. She received Oscar nominations for her portrayal of Connie in The Godfather, Part 2 (Best Supporting Actress), and for her portrayal of Rocky’s girlfriend Adrian in Rocky (Best Actress).

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Probably a coincidence, but 9D today was “Convict, in old slang.” YARDBIRD. And, of course, Jeff Beck, who died this week, started out with The Yardbirds. Here’s a tune from 1966.

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The clue at 68D, for NORM, was “Just what you’d expect.” I love when things set our favorite commenter off. Here’s where LMS went today:

“Just what you’d expect” – mediocrity and apathy. It’s everywhere. I get that I’m cynical, but still. Yesterday I found myself roped into going to a women’s excursion where we made pottery coffee mugs. There was a table with stamps to press little sayings on your mug, but they were all so positive and, well, disingenuous. Thankful, Grateful, Blessed, Always be Positive blah blah. I told the person next to me that I was too cynical for these and was there anything snarkier? Something like Surely not everyone was Kung Fu fighting woulda worked, but, oh well. Didn’t matter; I couldn’t separate my mug from the bottle I had molded it around, so I just gave up and left with my friend, hoping that no one noticed the huge clump of misshapen clay at my place that probably screamed I don’t give a &%$# and just want to leave here to take a nap!

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At my birthday dinner last night, I ordered a Brooklyn Lager and the waitress said “I had a feeling you would.”  I said — “I grew up in Brooklyn.”  And she said — “I thought so – my grandmother lives there, and I felt the vibe.”  I didn’t take it as an age insult because she was clearly wonderful.  The football game was on the TV and it was very loud.  So I said — I’m a football fan, but it’s on so loud — can it be turned down a bit?  She said she’d try, but then came back and said, her boss says they can just turn it down a tiny bit, but how about moving upstairs?  So we did and it was much quieter.  Then, out of the blue she came back and said, My boss feels bad about your having to move, so the beers are on us.  Isn’t that nice?

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Thanks for stopping by — see you tomorrow!

When there’s a clue about whales, if the answer isn’t WHALE, I’m pretty much at sea. So the clue in yesterday’s puzzle had me beat: “Streamlined type of baleen whale.” Let me put it this way — the “streamlined” part was no help at all. Have you heard of RORQUAL? Sounds like a treatment for something. “Don’t take Rorqual if you are dizzy, vomiting, or prone to falling down stairs.”

Most rorquals feed by gulping in water, and then pushing it out through their baleen (bristle-like) plates with their tongue. They feed on crustaceans, such as krill, but also on various fish, such as herring and sardines. They often enjoy some schnapps after the herring, if the kids are asleep. Speaking of kids, a rorqual’s pregnancy will last 11 to 12 months, towards the end of which she will go around joking that she “feels like a whale,” a line that never gets old in the rorqual community.

On Hollywood Squares, George Gobel was once asked “Who is pregnant longer — your girlfriend or your elephant?” and he immediately shot back “Who told you about my elephant?”

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The other odd bit of underwater life in the puzzle was a SEAL ADDER. Oh, wait. Never mind — it’s a SEA LADDER — feature of a boat that divers use. Sorry.

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James Beard, whose culinary award was noted in the puzzle yesterday, has been dead since 1985. He was 81 when he died. He was a chef, writer, teacher, and pioneered TV cooking shows. Julia Child said: “Beard was the quintessential American cook. Well-educated and well-traveled, he was familiar with many cuisines but remained fundamentally American. He was a big man, over six feet tall, with a big belly, and huge hands. An endearing and always lively teacher, he loved people, loved his work, loved gossip, loved to eat, loved a good time.”

Beard’s renovated brownstone at 167 West 12th Street in Greenwich Village houses the James Beard Foundation, and is North America’s only historic culinary center. Here’s a shot of him.

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Two pop icons were in the grid yesterday, Ringo STARR and (yes, yet again) Taylor Swift (not complaining). Ringo is 82 and has been married to his second wife, Barbara Bach, for 41 years. He has three children — all from his first wife, Mary Cox. Barbara is 75, but used to be younger.

And Swift was pulled in from left field to clue the simple word STAY, with “When said three times, 2012 Taylor Swift song.” It’s a catchy pop tune, with a symmetrical chorus: “Stay, stay, stay — I’ve been loving you for quite some time, time, time.” In her intro, she admits to her fans that she writes a lot of breakup songs: they make her feel better. “But sometimes people stay.”

Here’s a live performance of it for you teeny boppers: and get off my lawn!

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According to The Writer’s Almanac, today’s the birthday of Emily Hahn, who wrote 54 books and over 200 New Yorker articles. She died at age 92 in 1997. The New Yorker called her “a forgotten American literary treasure.”

She was the first woman to earn a degree in Mining Engineering at U. Wisconsin. She chose that major when an advisor told her women don’t have the brains for it. But she left the field after a year, finding the work unsatisfying. Before turning 30, she was a tour guide in New Mexico, worked for the Red Cross in the Belgian Congo, lived with a tribe of Pygmies for two years, and crossed Africa on foot. She then lived in China for a time, had two daughters, and eventually settled back in NY.

At her funeral, her granddaughter Alfia gave the eulogy and said: “Chances are, your grandmother didn’t smoke cigars and let you hold wild role-playing parties in her apartment. Chances are she didn’t teach you Swahili obscenities. Chances are that when she took you to the zoo, she didn’t start whooping passionately at the top her lungs as you passed the gibbon cage. Sadly for you, your grandmother was not Emily Hahn.”

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Today’s puzzle was very fresh with loads of nifty terms and very little “Crosswordese.” No OREOS, and no Mel OTT or Bobby ORR. First, the grid design is elegant. Look how symmetrical the design is, below. Here’s how Rex describes it:

“I really liked the shape of this grid, and the unexpected way it unfolded. It just has so much . . . let’s call it “flow.” It basically has all the symmetries (mirror symmetry along the axes and diagonals, plus rotational symmetry—not just 180-degree, but 90-degree as well). It’s essentially a cloverleaf, with four corner loops, so you can go spinning around the black squares in all different directions and then go shooting off down the road, and you never find yourself stuck in some dank corner with no one to come to your rescue.

Six down is WHATCHAMACALLIT — a terrific crossword word. And the puzzle has lots of neat sound effects: BLAT, WHAPS, and NEIGHS. Venerable women DORIS Day and SALLY Ride offset THE BACHELORETTE.

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“Harry Belafonte’s catchword” is at 47D: DAY-O. How often do we run into Harry anymore? Born on March 1, 1927, he is still living (95!). His album Calypso (1956) was the first million-selling LP by a single artist. He’s been very active politically and was close with MLK. Jr. He’s in the Rock and Roll HOF, and won three Grammys, an Emmy and a Tony. Get this — his paternal grandfather was a Dutch Jew of Sephardic Jewish descent. Harry’s a Yid!

He was married to his first wife, Marguerite Byrd, from ’48 to ’57 and had two daughters with her. His second wife, Julie Robinson (of Jewish descent), and he were married for 47 years (!), and they had a boy and a girl. They divorced in ’08, and Harry is now married to photographer Pamela Frank. He has five grandchildren.

Belafonte was an active critic of the Iraq War, and a verbal battle flared up involving him and Colin Powell and Condi Rice. Here’s what he said:

“There is an old saying, in the days of slavery. There were those slaves who lived on the plantation, and there were those slaves who lived in the house. You got the privilege of living in the house if you served the master, do exactly the way the master intended to have you serve him. That gave you privilege. Colin Powell is committed to come into the house of the master, as long as he would serve the master, according to the master’s purpose. And when Colin Powell dares to suggest something other than what the master wants to hear, he will be turned back out to pasture. And you don’t hear much from those who live in the pasture.”

Powell called the remarks “unfortunate.” Rice was not as restrained. “I don’t need Harry Belafonte to tell me what it means to be Black,” she said.

Another comment Belafonte made calling George W. Bush a terrorist ignited a great deal of controversy. Hillary Clinton refused to acknowledge his presence at an awards ceremony that featured both of them.

I tried to find a shot of him in a yarmulke. No luck.

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That’s it for today! Thanks for stopping by — see you tomorrow!

It is with great sorrow that Linda and I note the passing of our wonderful friend Susan, who passed away last night in Middlebury, Vermont.

Susan was very beautiful — she looked a little like Nicole Kidman to me. When I saw her a few weeks ago, it was clear that her disease had done damage — she was thin, her hair was short, she was pale. But she had just become beautiful in a different way, that was all.

We wish her peace. Our hearts go out to Robert her life-long companion who (she said last week) gave her the gift of laughter. And much more, I’m sure. And to her “bestie” Lizzie, her closest friend. As the end neared, and many of Susan’s buddies closed in to offer help and comfort on a daily basis, Liz noted she was “the captain.” Aye, aye, Captain!

Robert and Liz said this Irish poem sent by a friend comforted them in the closing days:

On the day when
The weight deadens
On your shoulders
And you stumble,
May the clay dance
To balance you.
And when your eyes
Freeze behind
The grey window
And the ghost of loss
Gets into you,
May a flock of colours,
Indigo, red, green
And azure blue,
Come to awaken in you
A meadow of delight.
When the canvas frays
In the currach of thought
And a stain of ocean
Blackens beneath you,
May there come across the waters
A path of yellow moonlight
To bring you safely home.
May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
May the clarity of light be yours,
May the fluency of the ocean be yours,
May the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
Wind work these words
Of love around you,
An invisible cloak
To mind your life.

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Here’s a poem by Ted Kooser, from Winter Morning Walks.

I saw the season’s first bluebird
this morning, one month ahead
of its scheduled arrival. Lucky I am
to go off to my cancer appointment
having been given a bluebird, and,
for a lifetime, having been given
this world.

If you like spoonerisms, today’s puzzle is for you. What’s a spoonerism? Fair question. It’s when the initial sounds or letters of two or more words are transposed. “The Lord is a shoving leopard,” is not a bad example. (“Loving shepherd,” would be the correct form.) The term has nothing to do with spoons. It’s derived from an Oxford don, William Archibald Spooner, who fell into them naturally.

There were four in the puzzle today:

“Pamphlets on how to use marinara?” was SAUCING FLYERS, a spoonerism with “flying saucers.” (See how it works?)

“Grocery store worker on the days leading up to Thanksgiving?” was STUFFING STOCKER, for “stocking stuffer.”

“Bookie?” was BETTING GETTER, for “getting better.”

“Devices that help dentists monitor anaesthesia?” was NUMBING TRACKERS, for “tracking numbers.”

A spoonerism is also known as a marrowsky or morowski after an 18th century Polish count, who was also prone to them. (Not really, though — I’ve never heard that used.)

On an episode of The Jack Benny Program in 1950, Jack mentions that he ran into his butler Rochester while in his car that was on a grease rack. Mary Livingston was supposed to say “How could you run into him on a grease rack?” but flubbed her line with “How could you run into him on a grass reek?” The audience broke up into so much laughter Jack was unable to reply as the show ran out of time.

Here’s a nice sports spoonerism someone noted: Paul Blair (Ball Player). Blair was a brilliant center fielder, one of the best ever to play the position. He hit an inside-the-park home run one game, and a reporter chided him afterwards, saying the fielder should have caught it. Blair’s perfect response was: “There’s only one man could’ve caught that ball — and he was running the bases.”

“Kniferism” and “forkerism” refer to changing, respectively, the vowels or the final consonants of two syllables, giving them a new meaning, e.g., the “Duck and Doochess of Windsor.”

Here’s Reverend Spooner, carefully running down some wordplay.

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The oddest clue/answer today was at 51A: “Winners of a 1932 Australian “war.” Ans: EMUS. Here’s from Wikipedia:

The Emu War, also known as the Great Emu War, was a nuisance wildlife management military operation undertaken in Australia over the later part of 1932 to address public concern over the number of emus said to be running amok and destroying crops in the Campion district in the Wheatbelt of Western Australia. The unsuccessful attempts to curb the population of emus, a large flightless bird indigenous to Australia, employed Royal Australian Artillery soldiers armed with Lewis guns—leading the media to adopt the name “Emu War” for the operation. While some of the birds were killed, the emu population persisted and continued to cause crop destruction.

Needless to say, Welly and Wilma, and all of the owls behind owl chatter were quite happy to learn of the war’s outcome.

Here are some battlefield photos. Warning: not for the faint of heart.

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From the ridiculous to the sublime. 63A “En pointe,” — ON TOE. It’s from ballet, of course, and is a very difficult stance to maintain without doing damage to the toe or foot. Special shoes are used to provide support (pointe shoes). I once mentioned to Carl that I was going to the ballet, and he exclaimed: “Bolshoi!”

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GLEN Campbell popped by today, even though he died in August 2017 at the age of 81. He was born in Delight, Arkansas. Campbell was married four times and had nine children. He also had a fling with Tanya Tucker in between wives #3 and #4. They recorded the single “Dream Lover” together, and sang the national anthem at the 1980 GOP convention. My favorite of his hits was “By the Time I Get to Phoenix,” which was written by Jimmy Webb. Frank Sinatra called it “the greatest torch song ever written.” Here it is, in 2:52. Try not to wonder, as I did, if his head is made out of silly putty. It must be the makeup.

When Campbell starts singing, above, the fans applaud when they recognize the song. It reminded me of what Tom Rush (who will be 82 next month, and majored in English Lit at Harvard) does when that happens. He starts a song, the fans applaud, and he stops and says: “I haven’t sung it yet.” Then he pauses, puzzled, and asks “Have I?” And then he goes, “Aw, what the hell, I’ll sing it again.” (Now I wish I had shared Tom Rush singing “Urge for Going” with you instead of Campbell. But Glen was in the puzzle. We’ll save Tom Rush for another day. Maybe he’ll make the grid — it’s certainly a puzzle-friendly name.)

How are we doing on the midterm?

See you tomorrow!

Below you will find the Owl Chatter Midterm Exam. There are 25 multiple choice questions. It’s an open book test. A prize will be awarded to the highest score. In the event of a tie, the winner will be chosen at random while I’m drunk.

Please submit your answers via email to: aliveson@aol.com. Deadline: 11:59pm, Sunday, January 15, 2023. Answers are based on the material presented in Owl Chatter through the Jan 8, 2023 post. (If the chatter conflicts with reality, the chatter wins.)

Have fun class! Results will not be posted, except for announcing the winner. So any morons out there shouldn’t worry about being embarrassed by low scores. You might as well try — there’s a good chance nobody else will.

Owl Chatter Midterm Exam

1. The NYT crossword puzzle grid of Sunday 12/22/22 was controversial because its design appeared to show:

a. A Christian Cross
b. A symbol disrespectful to Muslims
c. A swastika
d. A Jewish Star of David

2. The word “sockdolager” played a role in:

a. Washington’s crossing the Delaware
b. Jefferson’s drafting the Declaration of Independence
c. Lincoln’s assassination
d. The moon landing

3. Complete this phrase: Happy as a clam ———-

a. in high water
b. in cold water
c. on the beach
d. in the sun

4. Who is a patron saint of Owl Chatter?

a. Ana de Armas
b. Arthur Sullivan
c. Joe DiMaggio
d. Taylor Swift

5. Which song did Taylor Swift write in response to a bad review?

a. Red
b. Mean
c. Shake It Off
d. Sticks and Stones

6. What type of institution was named to honor Portia, the Shakespearean character in The Merchant of Venice?

a. a nursing school
b. a business school
c. a medical school
d. a law school

7. A “smew” is a:

a. bird
b. rodent
c. cactus
d. fish

8. A lawyer named Sue Yoo is an example of a(n)

a. metonym
b. homonym
c. holonym
d. aptronym

9. Who was born on Pi Day (March 14th)?

a. Groucho Marx
b. Albert Einstein
c. Isaac Newton
d. Marie Antionette

11. Marathon runner Lonah Chemtai Salpeter runs as a citizen of what country?

a. Kenya
b. The U.S.
c. Israel
d. Ghana

11. Ai Weiwei created an artwork out of 100 million what?

a. pebbles
b. sunflower seeds
c. shoelaces
d. dried leaves

12. Where would you find a “second line””

a. Chicago.
b. Disneyland
c. Los Angelas
d. New Orleans

13. Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia means:

a. fear of long words
b. fear of large mammals
c. fear of loud noises
d. None of the above

14. “I’m not really a waitress” is:

a. a line in a movie
b. a line in a song
c. a shade of nail polish
d. the name of a book

15. “Nugatory” is a word used by whom in Owl Chatter lore?

a. William F. Buckley
b. Pat Moynihan
c. Rodney Dangerfield
d. Lisa Simpson

16. Vuvuzela is:

a. A country in South America
b. A skin blemish caused by the sun
c. A popular Peruvian casserole
d. A horn that produces one note when blown into

17. Hall of Famer Rod Carew was born:

a. in a taxi
b. in a hospital room
c. on a train
d. in a baseball stadium

18. Cellist Charlotte Moorman won fame for playing the cello:

a. With her feet
b. In Hanoi during the Vietnam War
c. On top of the Washington Monument
d. Topless

19. What part of Mary in The Pieta had to be replaced by using a block from her back after vandalism?

a. Fingers
b. Nose
c. Elbow
d. Foot

20. Melville’s “Moby Dick” was based on an actual whale whose name was:

a. Whitey
b. Big Whitey
c. Mocha Dick
d. Larchmont

21. What color is the Esperanto flag?

a. Green
b. Red
c. Taupe
d. There is no flag

22. In the 2012 Olympics, gymnast Aly Raisman used what music for her gold-medal-winning “floor final?”

a. Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off”
b. The Norwegian National Anthem.
c. The Beatles’ Let It Be
d. Hava Nagila

23. The late Don Christopher of Gilroy, CA, was known as “The [what] King?”

a. Garlic
b. Turnip
c. Pumpkin
d. Avocado

24. What was Cincinnati Reds pitcher Tom Browning wearing when he pitched his perfect game?

a. Two wedding rings from two marriages
b. A Jewish “Chai” pendant
c. Red underwear
d. No underwear

25. What opera did Puccini die before completing?

a. Tommy, the Rock Opera
b. Turandot
c. La Boheme
d. Madama Butterfly

Boy, things must really be bad out in California: Zelensky just sent them a planeload of stuff to help out — mops, hair dryers, buckets, rocket launchers — Oops — how’d those get in there!!?? Iryna! — not the launchers!!

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Let’s hit the ground drooling today — 29D: “Beauty pageant founded in 1959 as a mail-in photo contest.” It’s the same one the dressing room for which Trump bragged about barging into while the contestants were dressing: MISS TEEN USA. (I think that sentence holds together — if not, feel free to rearrange the parts.) Rex’s comment was “Ew, very high creep factor.”

No one from NJ has ever won. Da noive!! Who are these judges? My Zoey turns seven on Friday — she’ll knock ’em dead when she gets there. (And don’t start me on Lianna!) Here’s Zo Zo:

And here are two former contestants: One in the “girl-next-door” category, and one in the “cover girl” camp. Teens! Could you plotz?

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Back on earth, there was an extraordinary obit in the NYT today for Adolfo Kaminsky who died in Paris on Monday at age 97. He forged documents as part of an underground cell in France working against the Nazis that saved 10,000 lives, mostly children. His work as a clothes dyer and dry cleaner made him an expert in removing ink. At one point he was asked to produce 900 documents in three days to save 300 children. He stayed awake for two straight days and finished, telling himself: “In one hour I can make 30 blank documents. If I sleep for an hour 30 people will die.” Later in life, he used his skills to help Americans evade the draft in the Vietnam era, an effort close to owl chatter’s draft-dodging heart. In 2016, he told the Times “I saved lives because I can’t deal with unnecessary deaths — I just can’t.”

He came close to being caught once, on the Paris Metro. A policeman asked to inspect his bag, which contained forging tools. Thinking fast, Kaminsky said: “It contains sandwiches — do you want one?” The cop moved on.

In 2010, his daughter Sarah told a story. She had received a bad grade in school and needed her mother to sign it. She faked her mom’s signature. Her mother found out and was angry, but Adolfo laughed and said she should have done a better job: “Can’t you see it’s too small?”

Here’s a shot of some docs he worked on, and then one of Kaminsky with his daughter. A righteous man – may he rest in peace.

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I won a teaching award in 2013 and it came with a small stipend. So I blew $200 of it on an autograph of Satchel Paige I had been coveting. It’s gorgeous. He’s in the puzzle today at 33D.

Paige started pitching pro ball in the Negro Leagues with the Chattanooga Black Lookouts in 1926. His brilliance was legendary. Sometimes, he would ask his fielders to sit down and then strike out the sides. He was only able to pitch in the Major Leagues starting at age 42 in 1948 for Cleveland. It is still the oldest debut in MLB history. He pitched his last game at age 59, again the MLB record. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1971.

Paige’s year of birth ranged anywhere from 1900 to 1908, to hear him tell it. He said: “I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it a hundred times: I’m 44 years old.” But in 1948 Bill Veeck, Indians’ owner, went to Mobile, Alabama, with Paige’s family, to see the actual birth certificate. It said his DOB was July 7, 1906. Veeck later also traveled to Kenya for Obama’s.

Joe DiMaggio said Paige was the best pitcher he ever faced. He threw nothing but fastballs. He was ranked 19th best ballplayer ever, by the Sporting News. A statue of Paige was unveiled in Cooperstown, NY, in 2006. He had seven children with his wife Lahoma.

Many wonderful quotes have been attributed to him, the most famous being: “Don’t look back — something may be gaining on you.”

“Just take the ball and throw it where you want to. Throw strikes. Home plate don’t move.”

“Work like you don’t need the money. Love like you’ve never been hurt. Dance like nobody’s watching.”

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Here’s what LMS said about SLOG, clued as “difficult, unfun chore.” “My sloggiest of SLOGs is emptying the dishwasher. I don’t like changing sheets, either, but the payoff is much greater. Spending a few hours in pristine, unwrinkled, clean sheets at the end of the day is so much more enjoyable than spending them in an empty dishwasher.”

There was some grumbling about the use of the word ADULT as a verb! The clue was: “Fulfill mundane but necessary responsibilities, in modern lingo.” LMS confessed to liking it, however:

Rex, I can’t share your hatred of the verb “to ADULT.” Indeed, I think it’s a terrific lexical repurposing that in one simple word encompasses those rites of passage like getting your oil changed, paying for car insurance, changing the ac filter in the ceiling, watching your cholesterol, blah blah. Sure, it implies that being grown up is hard, but being a grown-up *is* hard. If Matt Damon can “science the sh%$ out of this” up on Mars, then my kids can ADULT the sh%$ out of their lives. Which they’re doing beautifully I’m proud to report.”

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Let’s close today with an ANSEL Adams photo. He was in the puzzle too.

That’s it for today, folks. I’ll be posting the midterm tomorrow! Try to get a good night’s sleep.

The puzzle’s theme today was HELLO KITTY, clued as “Fictional feline from Japan, or how one might greet [the four long answers],” which were PINK PANTHER, TONY THE TIGER, COWARDLY LION, and CHESIRE CAT.

Commenter Burghman says that Hello Kitty is not a cat!! What? Well, he’s sort of right. (Her full name, BTW, is Kitty White.) She is an “anthropomorphized” Japanese Bobtail cat — i.e., a cat to which is attributed human form or personality. She has no visible mouth and wears a red bow. She lives in a London suburb with her family and is very close with her sister Mimmy, who wears a yellow bow. She was created in 1974 by Yuko Shimuzo, and her first item was a coin purse introduced in 1975.

As of 2014, there were 50,000 Hello Kitty market lines, including a wine collection. Her value is estimated at $8 billion a year. And now she has a NYT puzzle honoring her. Meow!

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Proving the contention that there is pretty much nothing in the world that cannot stir controversy, commenter John H said: “Pet Peeve: The word that Tony the Tiger stretches out is “theeeeeir” then the emphatic GREAT! Not the other way around.” But if you listen to this actual ad, you’ll see what’s what:

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Aside from all those cats, there was an ANTEATER in the grid today. An anteater can stick its tongue out up to 24 inches, and flick it in and out of an anthill up to 150 times a minute. It may consume up to 30,000 ants/termites a day. An aardvark, which has a much funnier name, only goes half as far with its tongue, but it manages fine with the ant eating. Here’s a cute anteater, followed by a ‘vark.

Christine LAHTI is the grid today, right next to DECAF, someone noted. So you can ask your barista for a decaf Lahti. She’s a “Michigan girl,” born to a nurse mom and surgeon dad and she received her BA in Drama at UMich — Go Blue! She played Dr. Kathryn Austin on Chicago Hope from 1995-1999 for which she received a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a TV Series Drama, and a bunch of nominations. She is 72, and will be celebrating her 40th anniversary with hubby-director Tom Schlamme in September. They have 3 kids.

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And Pam from The Office came by — the great comic actress Jenna Fischer! What a treat! Until looking through some of her pix, I hadn’t realized how much she looks like my beautiful daughter Caitlin in some shots. And here are two Pam quotes: “I hate the idea that someone out there hates me. I even hate thinking that al-Qaeda hates me. I think if they got to know me, they wouldn’t hate me.” And in a separate context: “I don’t care what they say about me: I just want to eat.”

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I hadn’t planned on poems or poetry today — there’s nothing poetic in the puzzle — but they kept hitting me over the head, everywhere I turned. Two major obits in the Times, and then The Writer’s Almanac told me it’s Philip Levine’s birthday — he was Poet Laureate of the U.S. in 2011-2012. He was from Detroit, thus the cap (below), and was known as a “working class” poet. He passed away in 2015 at age 87.

He said: “You have to follow where the poem leads. And it will surprise you. It will say things you didn’t expect to say. And you look at the poem and you realize, ‘That is truly what I felt.’ That is truly what I saw.”

Next is Naomi Replansky, who was born in The Bronx, and died on Saturday at 104. She attended Hunter College! Here’s her poem “An Inheritance.”

Five dollars, four dollars, three dollars, two,
One, and none, and what do we do?”
This is the worry that never got said
But ran so often in my mother’s head.
And showed so plain in my father’s frown
That to us kids it drifted down.
It drifted down like soot, like snow,
In the dream-tossed Bronx, in the long ago.
I shook it off with a shake of the head.
I bounced my ball, I ate warm bread.
I skated down the steepest hill.
But I must have listened, against my will:
When the wind blows wrong, I can hear it today.
Then my mother’s worry stops all play
And, as if in its rightful place,
My father’s frown divides my face.

And last is Charles Simic, Poet Laureate of the U.S. in 2007-2008, who died yesterday at 84. The idea of old age and death did not faze him, according to the Times. A spring day made him so happy, he said, that even if he had to face a firing squad he would “Smile like a hairdresser/Giving Cameron Diaz a shampoo.”

That’s a nice thought to end on. See you tomorrow!

If you enjoy picking nits, Crossworld is for you. Today’s clue at 33D was “San Pellegrino offering,” and the answer was LEMON SODA. Innocent enough? Hardly. It was taken to task on two grounds: Sanpellegrino is one word (OMG, it is!), and their product is “Limonata, a sparkling lemon beverage,” not “soda.”

If you go to the company website, it does confirm the “one word” gripe. The mineral water is S. Pellegrino, but the company is consistently listed as Sanpellegrino. They don’t use the word “soda” themselves, preferring “sparkling beverage,” or various other terms, but defenders note that since it contains sugar and is carbonated, it meets the definition of soda. Sheesh.

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“Music Mann?,” at 41A was AIMEE. She was born in Richmond, VA, and is 62 years old — yikes! She’s six feet tall, with long arms to reach all the way down to lace up her boots. Oh, hi Aimee — didn’t mean to interrupt. Owl chatter here.

When she was three, her mother had an affair and became pregnant and her parents divorced. Aimee was kidnapped by her mother and her new boyfriend and taken to Europe. Her father, a marketing executive, hired a private detective, who brought her back from England a year later to a new stepmother and two stepbrothers. Aimee said her father was like a stranger when they were reunited, and she did not see her mother again until she was 14. It scarred her.

In addition to her prodigious musical successes, she was in The Big Lebowski, and, on TV, in The West Wing. Mann said songwriting is “an exercise in order… To attempt to describe something — to make connections, to put pieces together, to try to sum up complicated ideas in a three-and-a-half minute song — that’s trying to put chaos in order for me.” She names Leonard Cohen and Elton John among her influences.

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For puzzles, it’s important to remember that it’s SACHA Baron Cohen, not “Sasha.” He’s a pretty serious guy, when not in the role of a lunatic like Borat. He says things like: “I remember, when I was in university I studied history, and there was this one major historian of the Third Reich, Ian Kershaw. And his quote was, ‘The path to Auschwitz was paved with indifference.’ I know it’s not very funny being a comedian talking about the Holocaust, but I think it’s an interesting idea that not everyone in Germany had to be a raving anti-Semite. They just had to be apathetic.”

Cohen is not a religious Jew, but tries to keep kosher and goes to services about twice a year. He married actress Isla Fisher after she converted to Judaism and they have three kids. In 2015, they donated $500,000 to Save the Children to help vaccinate children in northern Syria against measles; they donated the same amount to the International Rescue Committee, also aimed at helping Syrian refugees.

After Borat, the government of Kazakhstan threatened Cohen with legal action. The NYT reported that Cohen (in character as Borat) replied: “I’d like to state that I have no connection with Mr. Cohen and fully support my government decision to sue this Jew.”

He was, however, defended by Dariga Nazarbayeva, the daughter of Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who stated, “We should not be afraid of humor and we shouldn’t try to control everything.” The deputy foreign minister invited Cohen to visit the country, stating that he could learn that “women drive cars, wine is made of grapes, and Jews are free to go to synagogues.” After the success of the Borat film, the Kazakh government, including the President, altered their stance on Cohen’s parody, recognizing the invaluable press coverage the controversy created for their country. And the number of men who are married to goats has dropped substantially.

Cohen played Abbie Hoffman in the Trial of the Chicago 7 film in 2020, and guest starred in a Simpsons episode as a quick-tempered Israeli tour guide.

Did someone mention Abbie? — former Sandwich Man in the dorms at Brandeis? Here’s a quote: “Women’s rights? I can’t support women’s rights. The next thing you know, men will want rights too!”

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At 39A, the clue was “‘A guy walks into a bar’ may start one,” and the answer was JOKE. Here’s Norrie’s favorite (Hi Nor!) — A skeleton walks into a bar. The bartender says “What’ll it be?,” and the skeleton says: “A beer and a mop, please.”

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At 44A, the clue was “Cocktail named for two iconic beverage brands,” and the answer was JACK AND COKE. The JACK is Jack Daniels, of course. Remember Pacino in Scent of a Woman asking Charlie for a “John Daniels?” Charlie says, “Isn’t it Jack?” and Pacino replies: “Well, when you’ve known him as long as I have . . . “

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I don’t know why I find this poem by Ted Kooser so moving. It can’t be that I’m getting soft, because I’ve always been soft. Anyway, it’s called “Splitting an Order.” Thanks for stopping by. I’ll see you tomorrow.

I like to watch an old man cutting a sandwich in half,
maybe an ordinary cold roast beef on whole wheat bread,
no pickles or onion, keeping his shaky hands steady
by placing his forearms firm on the edge of the table
and using both hands, the left to hold the sandwich in place,
and the right to cut it surely, corner to corner,
observing his progress through glasses that moments before
he wiped with his napkin, then to see him lift half
onto the extra plate that he asked the server to bring,
and then to wait, offering the plate to his wife
while she slowly unrolls her napkin and places her spoon,
her knife, and her fork in their proper places,
then smooths the starched white napkin over her knees
and meets his eyes and holds out both hands to him.

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The Jets season has mercifully come to a close. Faced with a chance to make the playoffs for the first time in who-remembers, they lost their last six games, failing to score a single touchdown in the last three. It’s a good thing I’m not the sort of fan who gets bitter (much). Here’s their poor coach. He had a full head of hair when the season started.

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Have you heard of the word “supervocalic?” Rex used it today. It describes a word that contains all 5 vowels (excluding y). Supervocalic itself is supervocalic, btw. In today’s puzzle, the clue for 14D was “Ambidextrous features?” and the answer was AEIOU, because “ambidextrous” is supervocalic.

That’s the sort of thing, incidentally, that may be on the test. Have I not mentioned the test? — I’ll be posting your owl chatter midterm exam probably sometime next week. It will be all multiple choice questions — no essays. It will cover all owl chatter posts up to today’s: January 8. That’s a ton of material, so don’t leave your studying for the last minute (and don’t spend all your review time drooling over Taylor Swift or Ana de Armas, fellas.)

The highest test score will win a prize. In the event of duplicate results, ties will be awarded. No, that last sentence was a joke — in the event of duplicate high scores, a winner will be selected at random by my granddaughter Zoey’s cat Emily, whom you can see napping, below.

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It’s Elvis’s birthday today, born in Tupelo, Mississippi in 1935. When he was eleven, he asked his parents for a bike, but they couldn’t afford one and got him a guitar instead — for $12.95 at Tupelo Hardware. His family moved to Memphis two years later. When he was 18 and working as a truck driver, he spent $4 to record two songs as a gift for his mom. The recording studio also housed Sun Records, owned by Sam Phillips. Phillips heard Elvis singing and asked if he knew any more songs. Ka Boom!

You know what Elvis looked like. Here’s Sam Phillips.

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Nice to see Hall of Famer Rod CAREW in the grid today at 78A, clued by reference to his seven A.L. batting titles. Only Ty Cobb won more (12 – yikes!). Even though I was expecting a lot, his Wikipedia writeup blew me away. E.g., he appeared in 18 straight All-Star games. Chai! He hit .388 in 1977 and was the A.L. MVP. Get this — the A.L. batting title — the award itself — was named after him in 2016. So if you win the A.L. batting title now, you are the “Rod Carew American League Batting Champion.” (The N.L. crown is named after Tony Gwynn.) Carew stole home 7 times in 1969. How do you do that, even once?

Carew is a “Zonian,” i.e. born in the Panama Canal Zone, which was a political entity at the time (it was since absorbed into Panama). He was actually born on a train that was in the Zone. His mother was Panamanian. The train was racially segregated; white passengers were given the better forward cars, while non-whites, like Carew’s mother, were forced to ride in the rearward cars. Traveling on the train was Dr. Rodney Cline, who delivered the baby. In appreciation, Mrs. Carew named the boy Rodney Cline Carew. [My grandson Leon was named after one of Caity’s doctors. The circumstances were markedly different: Caity just liked the doctor’s name: Leon.]

Carew never converted to Judaism, although he wore a chai necklace during his playing days. His first wife, Marilynn Levy, is Jewish, and he was a member of Temple Beth Shalom in Santa Ana, California. Their three daughters, Charryse, Stephanie, and Michelle, were raised Jewish and had their bat mitzvahs there. When Michelle died of leukemia at age 18, services were held at Beth Shalom, and she was buried in the family plot at a Jewish cemetery in Richfield, Minnesota. Carew has always identified as Episcopalian. (It sounds like he was “Jew-ish.”) Carew and Marilyn divorced in 2000, after 30 years of marriage.

In September, 2015, Carew suffered a major heart attack, and he received a heart transplant on December 15, 2016. Carew’s heart was donated by former Baltimore Ravens tight end Konrad Reuland who had attended middle school with Carew’s children. Carew participated in the 2018 Rose Parade aboard the Donate Life float, in honor of Reuland.

Here’s an autographed card of Rod Carew from my collection.

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Speak of the devil — or, in this case, angel. The lovely ANA de Armas made the grid again today at 120A. Hi Ana! You are always welcome at owl chatter.

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I was today old when I learned from the puzzle that an ATOLL is an island formed by a coral reef that forms around an underwater volcano. There are about 440 in the world, most of them in the Pacific Ocean. Over time the volcanic island subsides leaving a lagoon surrounded by the reef.

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Department of Corrections. How fitting that IOWAN is the answer at 39A today, clued by “Like Captain James T. Kirk, by birth.” Iowan Pam tells us Bill Lee is wrong about Iowa being flat, as noted yesterday. But it’s more likely it is I who am wrong in remembering his quote. It may have been a different state, if not the state of confusion. [Don: you read Lee’s book — can you help?] Here’s Pam’s note. (Maybe it was Kansas.)

“Iowa is not flat, but rather a state of rolling hills. Growing up I had a big one to climb to get home by bike or by foot. If you want flat, drive across Kansas!
Here is a link to a picture of the beautiful fields of dreams and please note the undulations!”

Please accept sincere owl chatter apologies for dissing your home state, Ms. Smith.

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I’d like to end by sharing a picture of Rex Parker, whose daily blog on the NYT crossword was a small part of the inspiration for owl chatter. It’s a silly picture of him with his cat, Olive, who died last year.

And here is what he wrote about her in summing up his 2022:

“I love the photo both because you can tell how goofy she is, and how goofy she made me. Her loss hurt for the obvious reasons, but also because she was so much a part of my daily routine, my daily rhythms and rituals. She was everyday. Quotidian. Just . . . on me, near me, being a weirdo, especially in the (very) early mornings when I was writing the blog. She took me out of myself. She also made me aware of how much the quotidian matters, how daily rituals break up and organize the day, mark time, ground you. They’re easy to trivialize, these rituals, precisely because they aren’t special. Feed the cats again, make the coffee again, solve the crossword again, etc. But losing Olive made me reevaluate the daily, the quotidian, the apparently trivial. In a fundamental way, those small daily things are life. No one day is so important, or so different from the others, but cumulatively, they add up, and through the days upon days you develop a practice—a practice of love, care, and attention given to the things that matter.”

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Happy puzzling, everybody! See you tomorrow!

After yesterday’s segment on Yo Yo Ma, dare we discuss another cellist: Charlotte Moorman? Oh, we have to. There’s always room for cello.

Moorman was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, on Nov. 18, 1933 and died in NYC ten days short of her 58th birthday. She was a cellist but better known as an advocate for, and performer of, avant garde music. She was the founder of the NY Avant Garde Festival. Upon graduating from Julliard, she began a traditional career but was pushed towards the avant garde by her friend and roommate Yoko Ono. Moorman said that one day she grew tired of a Kabalevsky cello piece she was playing, and someone suggested that she play John Cage’s “26 Minutes, 1.1499 Seconds for a String Player,” which, among other things, requires the performer to prepare and eat mushrooms. Once you color outside the lines, all hell breaks loose.

For the sixth Festival she performed a piece called Sky Kiss while suspended in the air from helium-filled weather balloons.

On February 9, 1967, Moorman performed Nam June Paik’s Opera Sextronique. During the first movement, Moorman played Elegy by Jules Massenet in the dark while wearing a bikini that had blinking lights. For the second movement, she played International Lullaby by Max Mathews while topless, and was arrested mid-performance. She was not able to return to perform the last two movements. She was charged with indecent exposure, though her penalty was later suspended, and she gained nationwide fame as the “topless cellist.” She was fired from the American Symphony Orchestra. (Fuck them!) Following Moorman’s death, Paik made a film entitled Topless Cellist (1995) about her life and avant-garde performances.

Here are some pix.

In the September 12, 2016 issue of The New Yorker, Hilton Als reviews an exhibition on Moorman in an art gallery. He states: “One sees Moorman as she left us: electrified and alive to the ideas that she put forth as true performer-revolutionaries do, by making an example with her body, right there, naked and playful and truthful, in real time.”

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It’s Zora Neale Hurston’s birthday today (Saturday). She was born in Notasulga, Alabama, in 1891 and grew up in Eatonville, Florida, the first incorporated African-American community in the U.S., with a population of about 125. Hurston loved it there. She is best known for the novel “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” which I’m glad I read. She studied anthropology at Barnard College on a scholarship. She was the only Black student at Barnard. She founded the Harlem Renaissance and was honored with a U. S. postage stamp, but died in poverty in 1960 and was buried in an unmarked grave.

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The clue for 32D today was “Bill Clinton played one on ‘The Arsenio Hall Show’ in 1992,” and the answer was TENORSAX. It prompted egs to chime in with:

Was it the soprano’s gun that killed him?
No, the TENORSAX.

I like seeing Yiddish in the puzzle. The clue at 38A was “He’s a mensch.” ANS: STAND UP GUY.

MEEPLE was new to me: “Human-shaped board game piece.”

Everyone’s fave today was 33A: “Eco-centric college class,” and the answer was ITALIAN LIT. Get it? “Eco” is the writer Umberto Eco.

Heard of Eero Aarnio? Me neither. It’s a clue puzzlers refer to as a WOE —What on earth? He’s a Finnish interior designer, 90 years old now, who designed the bubble chair and other items that formed part of pop culture in the 60s. The bubble chair was suspended from the ceiling.

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Ken JENNINGS of Jeopardy fame hit the grid at 15D. As many of you know, he won Jeopardy 74 times in a row, netting over $2.5 million while doing so. He was beaten by Nancy Zerg on his 75th appearance. The Final Jeopardy category was Business & Industry, and the clue was “Most of this firm’s 70,000 seasonal white-collar employees work only four months a year.” Zerg knew it (H&R Block), but KJ blanked and guessed Fedex. Alex Trebek called Zerg a “giant killer.” (She came in third in the next show.)

Jennings is an active Twitter user, and some of his tweets have been controversial (which is a euphemism for assholey). In 2014, he angered disability rights groups by tweeting, “Nothing sadder than a hot person in a wheelchair.” He may not be a mensch.

Here’s Nancy Zerg.

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For some reason, the commentariat got into bad (punny) jokes about the 50 states today. They were really bad, e.g., “You don’t like my Maryland joke — stop being so crabby.” There is a point at which jokes are so bad that they become funny for being so bad. These didn’t get there — they were unredeemingly bad.

But they reminded me of a line I liked about Iowa by Bill Lee, the wonderful pitcher for the Red Sox many years ago. He said Iowa was so flat, you could stand on a chair and watch your dog leave you for three days.

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We schlepped into the city to see a production of Gilbert & Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore at Hunter College by the NY G&S Players today. The cast was terrific — every song was done well. And the silliness was relentless. As the lights went down, we were asked to silence our devices and locate the emergency exits and lifeboats. When the Captain stepped on board the ship, he assured the crew he had just tested negative for Covid.

I hereby appoint both of them (W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan) the Patron Saints of Owl Chatter. Here’s a quote from it:

“I am poor in the essence of happiness, lady — rich only in never-ending unrest. In me there meet a combination of antithetical elements which are at eternal war with one another. Driven hither by objective influences — thither by subjective emotions — wafted one moment into blazing day, by mocking hope — plunged the next into the Cimmerian darkness of tangible despair, I am but a living ganglion of irreconcilable antagonisms. I hope I make myself clear, lady?”

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Thanks for stopping by!