The Wellington Files

  • Breeches Roles

    What an unusual turn of events. Back on January 3, 1993, the Houston Oilers took a 35-3 lead over Buffalo early in the third quarter. Stick a fork in them, right? What’s more, Buffalo’s starting QB (Jim Kelly) was out and backup Frank Reich was playing. But Reich led the Bills to a 38-35 win in what was then (and until yesterday) the greatest comeback in NFL history.

    Fast-forward to 30 years later: the same Frank Reich began this year as the head coach of the Indianapolis Colts, but he was fired just last month. So yesterday, under new leadership, the Colts pulled out to a 33-0 lead over the Vikings early in the 3rd period. Again — the fork, right? NO! The Vikings rallied for a 39-36 win in overtime, eclipsing the record for the largest comeback by one point. Here’s Frank Reich.

    That’s not all. Matt Ryan was the poor Colts QB who fell victim to the Viking comeback yesterday. He was also the losing QB for the largest Super Bowl comeback, when Tom Brady’s Pats stormed back to beat Ryan’s Atlantans in 2017. The Falcons were up 28-3 late in the 3rd quarter in Super Bowl LI, but lost 34-28. Here’s Ryan, in happier times.

    So, if Reich were linked to another NFL comeback, it would be The Third Reich, right? Which brings us to a very unusual issue that arose on today’s NYT puzzle. Here’s the grid:

    Take a close look at the grid design (squint). Here’s what commenter “egsforbreakfast” wrote. (And he’s generally a sane and interesting voice.)

    “I’m a bit surprised that no one (including Will Shortz, Jeff Chen, Rex and others) has noted that squinting at this grid gives you a giant, unambiguous swastika. I’m not saying that it was intentional, but it’s just so inescapable that it’s hard to think about anything else.”

    Others agreed with the observation, but “Geezer” said: “Egs — You’re funny and I like your posts but I worry about you.”

    “The Joker” added: “When I squint and look at the grid I see people hallucinating.”

    Anonymous said: “When I squinted at this puzzle, I saw the Shroud of Turin…”

    My view? Well, it is a bit suspicious that the constructor’s name is Anoph Ditler. (No — it’s Ryan McCarty.)

    I’m in the “Not a swastika” group. I agree with “Lewis” that’s it’s a “gorgeous swirling hypnotic” grid. He points out that McCarty’s puzzles are known for “stunning” grid designs. My vote is “not guilty.” But it’s right up there for you to see — you decide.

    Wait, wait — hold on a sec! The clue for DORIC at 60 across is “Style of column at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate.” And here’s from Wikipedia: “When the Nazis ascended to power, they used the gate as a party symbol.” Yikes!  Now I don’t know what to think. Can’t I do a goddamn crossword puzzle without having to worry about the Nazis??!!

    By the way, there was some more input on the BBL/barrel issue discussed at nauseating length in yesterday’s owl chatter. Here’s a note: “Long ago, in the early ‘40s, I asked my Vancouver longshoreman dad about this. He told me it was to differentiate between BALE (BL) and BARREL (BBL).” Sounds good to me.

    Nazis aside, there were some neat items in today’s puzzle. At 67A “Joke that goes over the line?” was CRANK CALL. (Get it? — phone line.)

    And “Joint accounts?” at 94A was POLICE REPORTS (joint = jail).

    Nice clue at 70A for MADE PROUD: “Caused to kvell.”

    And I learned that the largest U.S. state capital by population is PHOENIX, AZ. Wow.

    “Volleyball star-turned-model Gabrielle” is REECE (81A). In her book My Foot Is Too Big for the Glass Slipper: A Guide to the Less Than Perfect Life, Reece writes that “to truly be feminine means being soft, receptive, and – look out, here it comes – submissive.”  On The Today Show she said that women being submissive in relationships is a sign of strength – not weakness. Her second book: Another Load of Crap, is due out in the Spring.

    Here she is at the gym.

    At 41D, I learned that the “term for a male opera character played by a woman” is PANTS ROLE. These are more commonly called breeches roles or trousers roles. (Breeches are tight-fitting knee-length pants which were standard male garments when these roles were introduced.)

    Most often the character is of a very young man whose part is to be sung by a mezzo-soprano or contralto, hence the need for a woman. The most frequently performed breeches roles are Cherubino (The Marriage of Figaro), Octavian (Der Rosenkavalier), Hansel (Hansel und Gretel) and Orpheus (Orpheus and Euridice).

    Because stage plays generally have no requirements for vocal range, they do not usually contain breeches roles. But Sarah Bernhardt (below) once played Hamlet as a breeches role.

    Some critics thought these roles were just a trick to allow audiences to see women’s legs on stage. (I wouldn’t put it past us.) Here’s a verse suggesting that regarding the famous breeches actress Susanna Mountfort:

    You’ll hear with patience a dull scene, to see,
    In a contented lazy waggery,
    The female Mountford bare above the knee.

    Here’s Sarah B. (Not a leg shot, though. Sorry fellas.) I couldn’t find Susanna.

    Life in the age of Alzheimers. Here’s a piece from Met Diary today by Patricia Fernandes.

    Dear Diary:

    We were on a trip to New York and got a restaurant recommendation at the hotel where we were staying. Small, we were told, but the food is good.

    When we arrived, we wiggled our way to our table. We were careful not to knock over glasses or bruise our elbows as we settled in after a day of adventures in the city.

    After we finished our meal, our waitress returned to the table. “Sorry,” she said to my husband, “I don’t remember what you ordered for dessert.”

    He looked at her blankly as he often does in such situations.

    “I’m sorry,” he said, “I don’t remember either.”

    A woman at the neighboring table piped up.

    “He ordered apple pie with ice cream,” she said.

  • Roll Out The Bbl, We’ll Have A Bbl Of Fun!

    There’s a less-than-great Steven Wright joke in Saturday’s puzzle: “I spilled spot remover on my dog and now he’s gone. ” (A better line of his is “I’m having amnesia and deja vu at the same time: I think I’ve forgotten this before.”)

    The clue for 10D was “Crude meas.” and the answer was BBL — the abbreviation for “barrel” of crude oil. The question arose among the commentariat as to why the second “B” is part of it. This was posted on the issue first:


    “In the early 1860’s, when oil production began, there was no standard container for oil, so oil and petroleum products were stored and transported in barrels of all different shapes and sizes (beer barrels, fish barrels, molasses barrels, turpentine barrels, etc.). By the early 1870’s, the 42-gallon barrel had been adopted as the standard for oil trade. This was 2 gallons per barrel more than the 40-gallon standard used by many other industries at the time. The extra 2 gallons was to allow for evaporation and leaking during transport (most barrels were made of wood). Standard Oil began manufacturing 42 gallon barrels that were blue to be used for transporting petroleum. The use of a blue barrel, abbreviated ‘bbl’” guaranteed a buyer that this was a 42-gallon barrel.”

    However, serious doubt was cast on this via Wikipedia, with proof:

    “The ‘b’ may have been doubled originally to indicate the plural (1 bl, 2 bbl), or possibly it was doubled to eliminate any confusion with bl as a symbol for the bale. Some sources assert that ‘bbl’ originated as a symbol for “blue barrels” delivered by Standard Oil in its early days. However, while Ida Tarbell’s 1904 Standard Oil Company history acknowledged the ‘holy blue barrel’, the abbreviation ‘bbl’ had been in use well before the 1859 birth of the U.S. petroleum industry.”

    And here are two cites pre-dating 1859:

    Niles Weekly Register, June 15, 1816. Supplement.
    Page 369.

    “23,650 bbls. tar”; “6,015 bbls. flour”; etc

    William Cobbett, Porcupine’s Works, Vol. VIII, May 1801. Page 462

    “The schooner Columbus, Mason, from St. Vincent’s, for Kennebunk, was boarded by a French privateer, which detained her six hours, and took out of her 60 gallons of rum, a bbl. of sugar, &c.”

    So it’s a bit of a mystery, as far as we can tell at the moment. And, of course, who cares anyway?

    The Writer’s Almanac informs us that on this date in 1989 the first episode of The Simpsons aired. Yikes! — Sam, who is a big fan, – had just turned one year old. We spent many happy family hours watching that show together.

    TWA states:

    It has become a point of pride to appear as a guest voice on The Simpsons. The usual pop culture suspects are well represented, but creator Matt Groening often draws from a deep pool of literary glitterati as well. Alumni include David Mamet, James Patterson, Michael Chabon, and Jonathan Franzen. Even the notoriously reclusive Thomas Pynchon has “appeared” twice, but his animated counterpart always wears a paper bag over his head.

    Groening has described the Simpsons characters as “creatures of consumption and envy, laziness and opportunity, stubbornness and redemption. Just like the rest of us. Only exaggerated.”

    Here’s playwright David Mamet:

    There was a funny New Yorker cartoon about a month ago. It was a funeral scene. It was called “Death of a Prankster.” The widow was addressing the people in attendance with her children by her side. She was reading somberly from a card, and saying: In lieu of flowers, please send two dozen anchovy pizzas to Robert Anderson, 19 Foxview Lane . . .

    We had cirrus clouds the other day, and today we had STRATI (“overcast clouds”). These are low-level clouds characterized by horizontal layering with a uniform base. More specifically, the term stratus is used to describe flat, hazy, featureless clouds at low altitudes varying in color from dark gray to nearly white.

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

    All feathered out in clouds,
    the wind’s a mockingbird this morning.
    Out of its mouth
    the piercing whistle of a red-tailed hawk,
    the caw of a crow.
    No hawk or crow to be seen
    from one downy gray side of the sky
    to the other.

    Ted Kooser won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 2005 and served as the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress for several years. He was diagnosed with cancer in 1998 and started taking a two-mile walk from his home in Nebraska each morning during his recovery from surgery and radiation. He had to stay out of the sun due to skin sensitivity, so he took the walks before dawn.

    He grew depressed during the ordeal, and stopped reading and writing. But he started pulling out of it as winter came on and he found himself trying his hand at a poem after one of his walks. He then got into the habit of writing a poem after each walk, pasting it on a postcard, and sending it to a poet-friend Jim Harrison. His book Winter Morning Walks are 100 of those poems.

    Several of the poems were put to music by composer Maria Schneider and performed by Dawn Upshaw with the New Jersey Symphony. That’s how I learned about him — I was at one of the performances. Schneider and Upshaw were also recovering from cancer during the project.

    I lack the capacity to appreciate any poetry more complex than “Roses are red,” but these seem simple enough even for me.

    Thanks for stopping by! Happy Puzzling!

  • Jacks and Jennies

    In connection with the Melvil Dewey discussion in owl-chatter a few days ago, Bob chimed in on his degree in Library Science.

    “The MLS program at Queens College was challenging at first, but got easier as the courses became more interesting. The attitudes of some of my fellow students were sometimes puzzling to me. We had an introductory cataloging course and I found it fascinating to learn from a very erudite and entertaining professor about the history of cataloging, the achievements of Melvil Dewey and others who followed in his footsteps. But so many of my classmates didn’t care to hear about any of that history. They wanted to cut to the relevant stuff – how to actually catalog a book or other type of material. Any history or development of concepts were of zero interest. Where was their curiosity? Didn’t they as librarians have a thirst for any kind of knowledge, let alone the development of the very field they were entering? Really very disappointing. I don’t think I’d want to ask those uncurious types a reference question or ask for guidance on a research paper. “

    To which I would add – F**king kids! And get off my lawn!

    BTW, that’s a line I’ve been enjoying using at every opportunity lately. Whenever you are complaining about a younger generation, you should add “and get off my lawn.” That makes it clear you’re a crotchety old-timer who has no patience for anyone younger than 65.

    That commenter the other day who observed about the tuchases that they are “coming at us in droves” knew what he was talking about! Today’s puzzle had another convocation of ASSES, at 15D. They were nicely clued with “Jacks and jennies.” What the hell is going on at the staid NY Times?

    It made me look up what a group of asses is called. There’s a bit of a story. You will find (as I did) that a group of asses is often referred to in references as a “pace” of asses. But in Lipton’s book on the terms of venery “An Exaltation of Larks,” which is absolutely wonderful, he clearly explains that “pace” is incorrect, and it should be a “pass” of asses (which he describes as “euphonious”).

    But we can do better, no? How about a “rearing” of asses? A “bottom” of asses? A “scratch” of asses? A “pinch” of asses? (That may be my favorite.)

    If we have an “unkindness” of ravens (which is the correct term), we can certainly do better than a pass of asses. Please chime in! (Carl? I need you!)

    I’m going to move on now, before anyone accuses me of bottom feeding.

    Lawyers! Any of you hear about the RED MASS? It’s at 17A: “Annual Roman Catholic service for members of the legal profession. (The red comes from the outfits of the officiants.) A Red Mass is a Mass celebrated annually in the Roman Catholic Church for all members of the legal profession, regardless of religious affiliation: judges, lawyers, law professors, law students, and gov’t officials, marking the opening of the judicial year. The first recorded Red Mass was celebrated in the Cathedral of Paris in 1245. In certain localities of France, the Red Mass was celebrated in honor of Saint Ives, the Patron Saint of Lawyers. I had no idea we law folk had a patron saint.

    One of the better-known Red Masses is celebrated each fall at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in Washington, D.C. on the Sunday before the first Monday in October when the Supreme Court convenes.

    Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg attended the Red Mass early in her tenure on the Court, but stopped due to her objection to the use of images of aborted fetuses during a homily opposing abortion.

    Here’s the interior of St. Mathews Cathedral.

    Don’t put that BAD JUJU on me! Ever hear that expression? The clue at 1A was: “Fallout from a hex, perhaps,” and it means bad luck, negative energy.

    I hope I haven’t told this joke already (too lazy to check). This guy was a real schlemiel — a loser, nothing good ever happened to him — bad juju. But one morning he was having breakfast and he dropped his toast and it landed with the buttered side up! Amazing. He had never had good luck before, so he called the Rabbi and told him what happened and asked: “Does this mean my life is changed now? My bad luck is over?”

    The Rabbi said: “I don’t know, but I’m meeting with the Council of Rabbis this week. I’ll ask them.” The Rabbi comes back a few days later, and calls the guy and says: “You’re still a complete loser. Still a hopeless schlemiel.” And the guy says, “But how do you explain that the toast landed with the buttered side up?”

    “Yes,” the Rabbi said, “I asked that of the Council. They said you buttered the wrong side of the toast.”

    Superman’s mom popped by the puzzle, at 46A: LARA (full name Lara Lor-Van). She was played in “Man of Steel” by Israeli actress Ayelet Zurer. So Superman had a Jewish mother! “So maybe you can take ten minutes off from saving the world and call your mother, Mr. Big Shot – would it kill you?”

    It was a very good puzzle — hard but doable: a perfect Friday. At 55A “Some hair dressings” was POMADES. How often do you hear that word? Here’s what Wikipedia says: Pomade is a greasy, waxy, or water-based substance that is used to style hair. It lasts longer than most hair-care products, and often requires multiple washes for complete removal. The pomades of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries consisted mainly of bear fat or lard. (Yum!) Lanolin, beeswax, and petroleum jelly have been used in modern pomades.

    I’ll let myself out now — don’t get up.

  • Rosabelle

    Mills Lane died last week. I know — right? — you didn’t even know he was sick. Lane was the boxing referee who worked the Tyson-Holyfield fight in which Tyson bit off part of Holyfield’s right ear and spit it to the mat. Tyson was outraged at getting head-butted in the earlier round. Reb Hillel of Minsk noted it was a variation on the biblical “eye for an eye.” Sort of “an ear for a butt.”

    Amazingly (and I am not making this up), Lane did not stop the fight after the ear biting — he only deducted two points from Tyson. And let me repeat — Tyson actually bit off a piece of Holyfield’s right ear. The fight was only stopped later in the round when Tyson bit into Holyfield’s left ear!

    “One bite is bad enough,” Lane said after the fight. “Two bites is not deserved.”

    Ya think?

    Before the fight, a memorabilia collector from Canada offered Lane $200 for the shirt he wore refereeing the fight and he accepted the offer. Once the fight gained its notoriety, Lane thought he could have gotten $4,000 for the shirt, but he honored the agreement.

    Do you give a damn? On this date in 1939 (12/15), Gone With The Wind opened officially in Atlanta after three days of parades, receptions, and a costume ball. Confederate flags and false antebellum façades covered the city. Democratic Governor Eurith D. Rivers declared the day a state holiday, and asked Georgians to dress in period clothing. Jimmy Carter remembered it as the biggest event in the South in his lifetime, even bigger than Purim. The cast attended the premiere, with the notable exception of the African-American performers, who were prevented by Georgia’s Jim Crow laws from sitting next to their white co-stars.

    Today’s puzzle, at 40 across, asked for the first name of Houdini’s wife. It was BESS. Can you imagine being married to that guy? Forget about tying him to the bed, right?

    Bess was first courted by Houdini’s younger brother Theo while she was working in Coney Island in a song and dance act. But she fell in love with Harry, and they married on June 22, 1894.

    They worked together as “The Houdinis” for several years before Harry hit it big. But they continued to perform their signature trick together, “Metamorphosis,” throughout his career. In this trick, one of them would be handcuffed and locked in a trunk, a curtain would descend briefly, and when it was lifted they would have changed places. Linda and I have figured out how it’s done and will be happy to perform it for you the next time you’re over. I just need a little extra time getting out of the trunk if my back is acting up.

    Bess also looked after their menagerie of pets, collected dolls, and made the costumes for Harry’s roadshow. Due to a medical condition of Bess’s, they did not have children. After Harry died, Bess briefly performed a vaudeville act in which she froze a man in ice.

    Bess tried to contact Harry after his death via seances, with a code that only Harry and she knew about, to be sure that the medium was not a fraud.  (Occasionally, instead of a medium, she used a large or an extra-large.) The code included the word “Rosabelle,” the name of the song Bess sang in her act when they first met. “Rosabelle” was also inscribed in Bess’s wedding band. The other words corresponded to a secret code used to pass information between a magician and his assistant during certain acts. It spelled out the word BELIEVE.

    She tried one final seance on Halloween in 1936 on the roof of the Knickerbocker Hotel in Hollywood. When it failed she put out the candle she had kept burning for ten years. She said “ten years is long enough to wait for any man” (especially if he’s dead, we might add).

    Bess died from a heart attack when she was 67. Her family did not let her be buried with Harry in Queens, because she was raised Roman Catholic and Harry was Jewish. She’s up in Hawthorne NY instead. Rest in peace, Bess and Harry.

    A special shout out to Roy who emailed me that when he was a little leaguer he had (if memory serves) a Curt Simmons model baseball mitt. There was some owl-chatter yesterday about CS, on the occasion of his death. I sent Roy a “curt response.”

    “Pouring gravy on, say,” at 42D, turned out to be SAUCING. A little awkward, but good enough to invoke “Sauce” Gardner the excellent first draft pick of the Jets who is having a superb rookie year. That phenomenal nickname was coined by a youth coach of Gardner’s when he was six, based on his play on the field. He called him “A1 Sauce Sweet Feet Gardner,” and “Sauce” stuck. He was born in Detroit but Michigan stupidly failed to scoop him up with a scholarship, and he played his college ball at Cincinnati. How sweet is that sauce? — he signed a four-year rookie contract with the Jets for $38.7 million, guaranteed. He is also in partnership with Buffalo Wild Wings to endorse a new sweet and spicy BBQ sauce called the Sauce sauce.

    Rex Parker’s daily blog on the NYTXW is in the hands of guest bloggers while RP is vacationing in New Zealand with his wife (a native). Today’s guest just issued a profanities-laced rant on how bad the puzzle is. (It’s not nearly that bad, IMHO). The commentariat exploded, with 275 comments, mostly very upset at the rant. More than twice as many comments as usual. But this note was fun:

    From the South Yorkshire Times, 1951:

    “Whenever ‘Mark Twain’ became angry he would utter a torrent of profanity that would cause his horrified wife to flee. For many years she pleaded with him to stop this vicious habit.

    “One morning she decided to teach him a lesson. Twain was shaving, and he cut himself. Immediately the room was filled with foul imprecations. Without pause he went through his entire repertoire.

    “When he finished, his wife repeated his speech, word for word. Twain looked up, mildly surprised, and then said calmly, ‘You have the words, my dear, but you don’t carry the melody.’ “

    Thanks for stopping by!

  • Uskudar

    My beautiful granddaughter Lianna played viola in her 7th grade orchestra’s holiday concert last night and it was absolutely wonderful.  Their final selection was a gorgeous Turkish folk song I had heard before:  Uskudar.  Here are two versions almost as good as Lianna’s:

    The words translate to:

    When we were going to Uskudar it started to rain.
    When we were going to Uskudar it started to rain.
    The clerk is mine and I’m the clerk’s, and no one can interfere.
    My clerk looks so good in a starched collar.

    When I looked for my clerk, I found him at my side.
    My clerk looks so good in a starched collar.

    I checked the program to make sure Lianna was listed (with the proper spelling), and I noticed that almost everyone in the viola section had a beautiful and interesting name, either first or last.  Here they are: 

    Lianna Becerra
    Jennifer Chukwukere
    Doga Demir
    Aiden Frank
    Layla Green
    Bryson James
    Genesis Martinez
    Devi Ray
    Rio Reyes
    Ashley Sutton
    Enzo Tolentino
    Maya Tung 

    And that’s just the violists.  There were cellists named Brighidin Boyen and Haydn Lee (Haydn Sikh would have been better), and violinists named Adrija Adhikary, Xiomara Tepetitla Luna, and Gem Gold.  Gem Gold!

    The puzzle’s theme today was “Lucky Breaks,” and things we associate with good luck were “broken up” into separate word segments.  For example — can you find “horseshoe” in ABHOR, SESH, and OEUF?  

    It triggered this very important flow of data:

    Lucky Charms cereal debuted in 1964 with oat pieces in shapes of bells, fish, arrowheads, X’s, green clovers, pink hearts, orange stars, and yellow moon marshmallows.

    Currently:
    Heart Charm – Gives life to objects
    Star Charm – Power of flight
    Horseshoe Charm – Power of speed
    Clover Charm – Power of luck
    Blue Moon Charm – Power of invisibility
    Rainbow Charm – Power to teleport
    Red Balloon Charm – Power to float
    Unicorn Charm – Brings color to the world

    The inclusion of PANERA in the grid, boringly clued as “Big bakery/cafe chain,” led to a big soup discussion on Rex’s blog.  This was fitting because the constructor was Matthew “Stock.”  The commentariat was invited to list their favorites.  I posted the following:

    Hot and Sour

    Matzoh Ball (fluffy, if possible, and not too salty)

    Split Pea

    The Meyersville (NJ) Grange used to host a monthly soup contest during the winter.  For $7 you could sample dozens of wonderful soups and pasta dishes.  If you brought an entry, you got in for free, and prizes were awarded to the top six vote-getters.  The first time I participated, I entered an escarole and white bean soup.  It was a little bitter from the escarole, and my daughter still roars at the memory of the first guy who tried it.  He turned to the fellow behind him and said “Stay away from that one.”

    Old New Yorker cartoon:  A long table full of somber monks in their cowls hunched over bowls of soup.  A monk at the head of the table is ladling out the soup and he says:  “Forgive me brothers for breaking the sacred vow of silence, but I, for one, am tired of vichyssoise.”

    “What sharing is, per a rhyming expression,” was, of course, CARING.  LMS chimed in with:  “My colleague will share any part of her lunch with any student. I’m always stunned at her generosity. The day after Thanksgiving break, she shared her leftovers with so many students that what was supposed to be her lunch all week was gone in one day. I, on the other hand, will turn off my lights, close my door, and wolf down my lunch in a corner like a little selfish, unsharing pig teacher.”

    There were some tuchas sightings today!  Hurrah! First — a plural! — the clue was “Burros” and the answer:  ASSES.  It caused one fellow to note:  “Now they’re coming at us in droves!”  Ha!  There was also SASS, and TESSA, which is ass-backwards and a semordnilap.  What is a semordnilap, you ask?  Well, it’s “palindromes” backward, but it’s different from a palindrome.  It’s a word that spells a different word backwards.  TESSA — ASSET.  A palindrome spells the same word backwards:  MADAM, or RADAR.

    “Cousin of a cassowary” was EMU.  And I loved this note — “How do cows communicate in the digital age? EMU”

    Curt Simmons, who died Tuesday at age 93, had a very solid career, mostly with the Phils and Cards. He was the last living member of the Whiz Kids, the 1950 Phils who won the pennant. He anchored the staff with Robin Roberts. His lifetime record was 193-183 with an ERA of 3.54. A three-time All-Star, he won the World Series with St. Louis in 1964.

    On June 2, 1947, Phillies owner Bob Carpenter arranged an exhibition game between the Phils and a team of High School All-Stars. Simmons, who was then 18, pitched for the high schoolers in front of 4,500 fans and struck out eleven Phils. The game ended in a 4-4 tie. He was later signed to a contract by Philly with a large bonus. Both Hank Aaron and Stan Musial named Simmons the toughest pitcher they faced in their careers.

    A note on owl-chatter at the two-month mark:  Every day I wake up and have no idea what I will write about.  And almost every day a whole bunch of wonderful nonsense pops up!  If Seinfeld was a show about “nothing,” I think owl-chatter is a blog about nonsense.  I do the puzzle and read Rex Parker’s blog and the wonderful comments it sometimes inspires.  I check to see if anyone died, especially old ballplayers.   Sometimes an item in The Writer’s Almanac tickles me, or other things I peruse.  Sometimes something so beautiful wafts by that it moves me to tears.  And I love looking for pictures.  Thanks for visiting, but honestly, if there were none of you, I’d still crank it out.

  • I Cry Sometimes

    Two seemingly unrelated answers caused our favorite commenter (LMS) to make an unusual association from today’s (Tuesday’s) puzzle: 63 across was “Smooch,” for the answer KISS, and 38 down was “Mammal with a two-foot long tongue,” for ANTEATER. How does that lead to Gene Simmons, and who the hell is he anyway? Well, he is the bassist for the rock band KISS, and he is well-known (apparently) for having a very long tongue. I couldn’t accept this on faith, so I googled him and it opened quite a nest. First, here he is in his stage get-up with his famous tongue hanging out.

    Now, get this — he’s 73 and was born in Haifa, Israel, as Chaim Witz. He was a CUNY student, having attended The College of Staten Island. His mother was a Holocaust survivor. He’s married to actress Shannon Tweed (they have two kids), but from 1978 to 1980 his partner was Cher, and from 1980 to 1983 his partner was Diana Ross. How did I not know any of this? What rock have I been living under?

    He’s had a whole bunch of controversial doings, but this one stands out for me: During an interview on the National Public Radio program Fresh Air in 2002, Simmons told Terry Gross: “If you want to welcome me with open arms, I’m afraid you’re also going to have to welcome me with open legs,” paraphrasing a lyric from the Who’s 1981 song “You Better You Bet.” Gross replied: “That’s a really obnoxious thing to say.” In a 2014 interview with The Huffington Post, Simmons noted he was upset over what he perceived as Gross’s “holier-than-thou” attitude, which included mislabeling his band Kiss as “the Kiss.” Uh huh — “the Kiss.” I guess it’s okay then.

    Well, now that we all know about Gene Simmons and his tongue, I can share a comment on today’s puzzle by LMS (who is a teacher of problem children by profession). Here it is verbatim:

    So yesterday this guy came past me, on his way to search (alternative school, kids with ankle monitors and court dates. . .), with a KISS tee shirt on. I asked him if he was a fan, and he was not. He just happened to have that shirt. I helpfully told him about Gene Simmons’s seven-inch-long tongue. He smiled. But wait – there’s a prequel. . . this guy is not one of my students, so I don’t know him. More often than not, he wears sunglasses, but not in the bone-head-I-wanna-be-a-school-clown kind of way. At least this is what my spidey sense was telling me. He’s always alone, always quiet. Last week I found myself in the hall with him – just the two of us, and he had his sunglasses on. So I went for it, Question – why do you wear sunglasses so much? He looked down at me (this tall guy with long dreads dipped red at the ends), seemed to take my measure, and said, I cry sometimes. I was stunned. I said, Oh wow. Right? I bet you feel kinda protected, kinda like you’re in your own little room? He nodded, Yeah. Like that. I told him, I totally get it. I cry a lot and would love to feel that kind of safety. I usually just tell people I’ve been sneezing. But I sure wish I could wear your sunglasses sometimes. We nodded and communed in our appreciation of his sunglasses. Jeez Louise, don’t judge these kids – they’re just doing their level best to play the cards they’ve been dealt.

    The puzzle’s theme was flowers with unusual names, clued in wacky ways. The clue for one of them was “The third ‘little pig’ with his house of bricks?,” and the answer was WOLFSBANE. Here’s what it looks like up close:

    And here’s a poem that was posted:

    Even a man who is pure of heart,
    and says his prayers by night,
    may become a wolf,
    when the wolfbane blooms,
    and the Autumn moon is bright.

    Back to LMS, in a lighter vein, she says:

    “I did a brief Google dive into flower names and found a bunch that could pass as a Shakespearean insult hurled at an enemy:

    “Be gone, you Swamp Lousewort, you Humped Bladderwort!
    A pox on you, Bastard Toadflax and your Mad Dog Skullcap of a father, too!
    Out of my sight, you Cheeseweed Pussytoes!
    Viper’s Bugloss! Scurfpea!”

    Now, to be fair, she did some combining. E.g., Cheeseweed is a separate plant from Pussytoes. Still, it’s all great IMO.

    BTW, here’s some Cheeseweed with a ladybug, followed by those pesky Pussytoes.

    The clue for BABYSBREATH was “What might smell of Gerber’s products?” We’ve all seen these delicate little things, right?

    And LADYSLIPPER was “Object found by Prince Charming after the clock struck midnight?”

    “Pancakes with sweet or savory fillings” was the clue at 27 across, and the answer was CREPES. One person said he wrongly filled in BLINIS first, and he was berated by “Vlad P.” who said:

    “BLINI is plural you soulless, capitalistic pig. One BLIN, two or more BLINI. There’s no such thing as BLINIS.”

    Okay —- noted!

    Finally, six down was “Wispy clouds,” which was CIRRI.

    It leads to my graceful closing – this poem by Ted Kooser, from Winter Morning Walks:

    Horsetail cirrus miles above,
    stretched all the way from Yankton to Wichita.
    I stoop on the road, small man in coat and cap,
    tying his shoe.

    A curled, brown leaf lies on its back,
    lifting its undistinguished edges
    into the glory of frost.

  • Martha Washington’s Muffins

    Lee Lorenz died last Thursday. He was 90. Lorenz had over 1,800 cartoons published in The New Yorker over 40 years, and was its cartoon editor from 1973 to 1997. He introduced some controversial, “edgy” cartoonists to the magazine, e.g., Roz Chast.

    “There’s nothing more futile than trying to explain a cartoon to someone who doesn’t get it,” Lorenz said. He cited an illustration by Jack Ziegler of a man standing at the counter of the Bureau of Missing Toast as he tearfully shows a clerk a photo of a well-done slice of bread.

    “It didn’t seem like the craziest thing we’d ever run, but I had people come up to me and say they didn’t get it — or like it,” Lorenz said. “On the other hand, Jack got a half dozen pieces of toast in the mail.”

    In a Lorenz cartoon I like very much, a grumpy old man is standing before Saint Peter at the pearly gates. Saint Pete is looking through his big book and says: “Ah! Here you are — over on the shit list.”

    The pretty famous “I say it’s spinach” cartoon is by Lorenz. A little girl is looking at some vegetable on her plate, and her mom says “It’s broccoli, Dear.” And the little girl replies: “I say it’s spinach, and I say the hell with it.”

    Rest in peace, Lee Lorenz. Thanks for all the laughs.

    Wanna feel old? Jessica Alba, in the puzzle at 58 down today, is 41 and has three kids. She didn’t marry for money, but her husband’s name is Cash Warren. The first pics of her oldest daughter, Honor, appeared in OK! magazine and earned JA $1.5 million.

    In 2014, Alba appeared in Henry Louis Gates’s genealogy series “Finding Your Roots,” where her lineage was traced back to the ancient Maya civilization. The research indicated that her surname was not inherited from a Spanish man, since her father’s direct paternal line (Y-DNA) was Haplogroup Q-M3, being Indigenous in origin. [Huh?] Her father’s matrilineal line was Jewish and revealed that lawyer Alan Dershowitz is a genetic relative of hers. [I did not make that up.]

    Alba, but not Dershowitz, was listed on Playboy magazine’s “25 Sexiest Celebrities” in 2006, and she appeared on its cover. She sued Playboy for its use of her image without consent, which she contended gave the impression that she was featured in a “nude pictorial.” She later dropped the lawsuit after receiving a personal apology from Hugh Hefner, who agreed to make donations to charities Alba supported.

    In June 2009, while filming “The Killer Inside Me” in Oklahoma City, Alba pasted posters of sharks around town to bring attention to the diminishing population of great white sharks. It was speculated that she would be charged with vandalism, but none of the property owners wanted to press charges. Alba apologized and donated money to the United Way, whose billboard she obscured with one of the shark posters. Here’s the poster, followed by the lovely Ms. Alba herself.

    The NY-area football teams (both of whom play in Jersey), got off to surprisingly decent starts this season after years of dreadful futility. It induced in their fans what I like to call “delusions of adequacy.” But both teams have come back down to earth of late, the Giants with a thud — a 48-22 drubbing at the hands of Philadelphia. I liked the headline in the Times today: “Playoff-Bound Eagles Deliver Cold, Hard Truths.”

    It’s Sam’s birthday today! He’s 34, kinehora. Happy Birthday Sam!

    I was driving with Caity recently and we both yawned, one after another. It reminded me of a yawn theory that Sam’s friend Joe Urbelis propounded years ago. I thought it was something like there was only one original yawn in the world and it just keeps getting passed around. But Sam says it’s a bit narrower. It’s that you will only yawn if you see someone else yawn. So, e.g., if you yawn on an airplane, it’s because a yawn came in at the door and was going around the plane.

    I reminded Caity of Joe’s theory, and she reminded me that, years ago, I came up with an explanation for why we yawn when someone else does. It’s because when someone else yawns, your body sees it and says “Hey, that’s a good idea!”

    Here’s a family story from about 11 or12 years ago. I can pinpoint it because Lianna was still sitting in a high chair and she’s 13 now. Linda, Caity, Lianna, and I were having dinner “out,” i.e, we picked up food at Whole Foods and were eating it there in a dining area they used to have, pre-covid. I remembered that Linda and Caity had been planning to make muffins that day for Caity to bring to some event, so I asked how it went. Linda said “It was fine,” in a tone I had come to learn means it was a disaster of catastrophic proportions. “What happened?,” I prodded, and Linda said “We had a little trouble getting the muffins out of the pan, but it worked out.”

    “Next time, we can use liners,” Caity said, and Linda said “or we can cut up parchment paper.”

    So I said, “Parchment paper — is that the crinkly yellowy paper they wrote the Declaration of Independence on?” And Caity said, a little snippily, “Yes, Dad, that’s exactly what it is.”

    So I said, “Well, young lady, I’ll have you know it just so happens that Martha Washington once accidentally used a copy of the Declaration of Independence to make muffins. And when George came home and realized what happened he was furious. “What am I supposed to tell Thomas Jefferson when he comes over later?,” he asked her. “He’s been working on that thing for weeks!”

    And Martha just smiled, because she knew how much George loved her and that he could never really be angry at her. She said, “George, it was an accident — he’ll understand. Offer him a muffin — they’re delicious!“

    And Caity’s and Linda’s were too.

  • In Like Flynn

    All birds have tail feathers called “pinions” that help them fly. Crows have 3 pinions and RAVENs have 4. So the difference between a crow and a RAVEN is just a matter of a pinion. (Carlos, that was for you, courtesy of an LMS post.)

    That came up because RAVEN was a puzzle answer today, clued as “Cousin of a crow.” Here’s a shot of each, alphabetically. They do bear a striking resemblance. BTW, a group crows is a “murder of crows,” and a group of ravens is an “unkindness of ravens,” both reflecting their dark reputations.

    My brother loved this “saying:” You can tell a happy motorcyclist by the bugs in his teeth.

    Today’s puzzle was all about bugs. It was called “Step On It,” and several commenters, including Rex, took the constructor to task for the violence of the title. C’mon fellas, it’s just a crossword puzzle.

    In various answers, different insects were to be filled in in one square (a “rebus”). For example, for the clue “Having an impeccable reputation,” the answer was ABOVE REP[ROACH], with the “roach” squeezing into one square. It formed part of the down answer too: “Brings up, as a subject;” answer: B[ROACH]ES.

    My favorite was for “louse” (singular of lice): the great Peter Sellers character: INSPECTOR C[LOUSE]AU, with the down being: SILK B[LOUSE].

    For “fly” we had IN LIKE [FLY]NN. And did you know where the expression comes from? It’s at least in part from Errol Flynn, the actor, who was reputed to be quite the ladies man. But get this:

    “In later years, the rhyming phrase became associated with actor Errol Flynn, who had a reputation for womanizing, drinking, and brawling. In late 1942, two underage girls accused him of statutory rape. A group was organized to support Flynn named the American Boys’ Club for the Defense of Errol Flynn (ABCDEF). Flynn was acquitted. According to etymologist Michael Quinion, Flynn’s reputation as a ladies man increased, leading to the connotations of the phrase ‘in like Flynn.’”

    Another etymologist presents evidence that it refers to Edward J. Flynn, a NYC political boss who became a campaign manager for the Democratic party during FDR’s presidency. Boss Flynn’s candidates were almost automatically “in.”

    On the “bug” theme, LMS shared the following:

    Omigod. Friday I had a conversation with Mr. Burch (head custodian and Supreme Wonderman of the Universe) about stepping on bugs, namely – my inability to do so. I had reported yet another Hot-Wheels size ROACH in my room. He grinningly asked if I had stepped on it.

    Me: No! [shiver] I could never recover from the crunch.
    Burch: The pop? I love that pop.
    Me: I can’t kill any bug. What if it just told its kids it’d be back in just a sec and they’re all waiting? I know the thought is ridiculous, but still.

    More on bug squishing. A comment noted:

    In India I saw a procession of Jain monks. Two monks with brooms walked in front of the high priest sweeping the path so he wouldn’t step on any living thing. (Of course they could not pay close attention to where they were stepping so who knows how many bugs they squashed in preserving their leader from sin.)

    Jain prayer

    Forgiveness

    I forgive all living beings,
    may all living beings forgive me.
    All in this world are my friends,
    I have no enemies.

    For the very common answer ELSA, the constructor reached pretty far: “Internet star Majimbo known for her comedy videos.” Kenyan Elsa Majimbo’s satirical monologues usually feature her eating potato crisps, leaning back to a pillow, and using a pair of tiny 1990’s sunglasses as a prop.

    Amelia Boynton Robinson was a civil rights leader in Selma, Alabama, and a key figure in the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches. She was awarded the Martin Luther King Jr. Freedom Medal in 1990. She sat in on the puzzle today at 64 down.

    In early 1965, Amelia Boynton helped organize a march to the state capital of Montgomery, initiated by James Bevel, which took place on March 7, 1965. Led by John Lewis, Hosea Williams, and Bob Mants, and including Rosa Parks among the marchers, the event became known as Bloody Sunday when police stopped the march and beat demonstrators after they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Boynton was beaten unconscious; a photograph of her lying on Edmund Pettus Bridge went around the world.

    Boynton was a guest of honor at the ceremony when Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into law. In 2015, she attended the State of the Union Address at the invitation of President Obama, and, in her wheelchair, was at Obama’s side as he and others walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge for the 50th anniversary of the march. She died in August of 2015, eight days after her 104th birthday.

    Lets’ close today with a Brandeis story. You may recall the TV game show from a very long time ago: The GE College Bowl, hosted by Allen Ludden. Four students from each of two colleges would wage a battle over quiz questions. Brandeis was on when I was a student there. Our first match was against U. of Chicago and we won but just by a hair. It later emerged that we were wrongly awarded points for answering Monet, when the correct answer should have been Manet. (Or vicey versey.) They decided to split the winnings from that match (scholarship awards) and run a rematch the following week (which Brandeis won handily). Anyway, get this — The clue for 104 down today was “Painter Edouard often confused with painter Claude.” Of course, the answer is Manet. (Or Monet.)

    This is by Manet. What a shayna punim!

  • Emily Dickinson’s Funeral

    Let’s open with a special shout-out to old friend Bob (and Hi Justine!). Bob was the head librarian at the School of Visual Arts. He started as Assistant Shusher and worked his way up. Bob earned a Masters in Library Science after Brandeis and he kept telling us it was a challenging program. I’d say, How hard can it be? What do you need besides the alphabet?

    And the reason for the shout-out is it’s the birthday of Melvil Dewey (1851), of the Dewey Decimal system. Dewey put himself through college (Amherst) working in the library and was appalled at how disorganized their “system” was. The system he devised is a series of classifications divided and subdivided into subjects with a decimal number assigned to each book.

    As a youth, Dewey advocated spelling reform; he changed his name from “Melville” to “Melvil,” to drop “redundant letters,” and for a time changed his surname to Dui. (That didn’t catch on, you may have noticed.) He was the head librarian at Columbia University and a founding member of the American Library Association. But he resigned in 1905 amid widespread allegations of sexual harassment, racism, and anti-Semitism. Yikes! Bottom line: Not a mensch.

    Here’s a poem by Ted Kooser, from Winter Morning Walks (2000):

    The sky hangs thin and wet on its clothesline.

    A deer of gray vapor steps through the foreground,
    under the dripping, lichen-rusted trees.

    Halfway across the next field,
    the distance (or can that be the future?)
    is sealed up in tin like an old barn.

    It’s a good day for a poem because it’s Emily Dickinson’s birthday too (1830). She wrote about 1,800 poems but only ten were published in her lifetime. She spent hours in the kitchen with Margaret Maher, the family’s Irish maid, baking breads and cakes, and scribbling poems on chocolate wrappers and the backs of shopping lists. Maher dabbled in poetry herself; they wrote poems back and forth to each other. Dickinson trusted Maher with her poems — literally. She stored them in the trunk that Maher had brought over from Ireland. Maher did not honor’s Dickinson’s request to burn her poems after her death.

    When Emily died, her family honored her request to have her coffin carried not by Amherst’s leading citizens, but by six Irish farmworkers — all Dickinson employees. Thomas Kelly, Maher’s brother-in-law, was the chief pallbearer, and they carried her coffin out through the servants’ door.

    Here’s a joke freshly stolen from Vermont Lizzie’s 8-year-old friend: How much do Santa’s reindeer cost? Nothing — they’re on the house.

    Today’s puzzle had some clever clues:

    “Let-them-eat-cake occasion?” Answer: CHEAT DAY (think diet)

    “Mug shot subject?” Answer: LATTE ART

    “Evidence of one’s hang-ups?” Answer: DIAL TONES

    Heard of Leo Baekeland? Father of PLASTICS? Me neither. He was a Belgian chemist, born in 1863. His invention of Bakelite, an inexpensive, nonflammable, and versatile plastic, marked the beginning of the modern plastics industry. He was on the cover of the September 9, 1924 issue of TIME. We had Katherine Ross from The Graduate in owl-chatter recently. You may recall this line from the movie too: “Just one word, Ben: Plastics.”

    Time for another adventure in mathematics! Judy, pay attention. The clue for 37 across was “Mathematician Terence who won a Fields Medal at age 31.” Answer TAO. Here’s a (lengthy) comment by TTrimble that I found absorbing despite understanding very little of it. Amazing what these puzzles elicit.

    “Terry TAO is an unusually brilliant mathematician. Many consider him the best mathematician working today, with no sign of slowing down. He also has a great talent for collaboration, and has spearheaded a number of “polymath projects” which seek to crush problems through crowd-sourcing. It’s not easy to find problems that submit to such an approach (and to skillfully herd a crowd of mathematical cats), but he finds them. A great example came after the breakthrough of Yitang Zhang in 2013 in the area of number theory.

    “In case you haven’t heard of this, I’ll explain. Number theory is full of really hard problems, many dating to antiquity. It’s been known at least since the days of Euclid that there are infinitely many prime numbers. Those Greek mathematicians were also interested in “twin primes”: pairs of primes differing by 2: 3 and 5, 5 and 7, 11 and 13, etc. Are there infinitely many pairs of twin primes? Everyone thinks so, and there are statistical heuristics that suggest so, but we seem to be very far from being able to prove this. The breakthrough result of Zhang (who held a very modest position as a college lecturer), a bolt from the blue, is that there are infinitely many pairs of prime numbers that differ by less than 70 million (to prove the twin prime conjecture, you’d want to replace that 70 million by 3). His proof rocked the mathematics world: although 70 million sounds like a lot, it was a significant toe in the door. And it rocketed Zhang personally, when he was close to 60 years old, from nameless obscurity to a distinguished professorship at UCLA, where Tao himself works. Anyway, Tao and others started a polymath project to refine Zhang’s methods, to see how far they could whittle that number down: Zhang knew 70 million was overkill, but getting any number was the significant thing. Polymath 8, with Terry Tao at the helm, sought to extract maximal juice from Zhang’s (and related) methods, and succeeded in lowering that number from 70 million to 246. He (Tao) is not only an insanely powerful mathematician, but a class act.”

    Ouch, my brain hurts. Can we get back to Taylor Swift? Here’s Terry Tao.

    I’m sleepy now. See you tomorrow.

  • Tay-Tay

    According to The Writer’s Almanac, it’s poet John Milton’s birthday today (1608).  Hands up if, like me, you forgot to send a card.  After attending Christ’s College in Cambridge, he underwent six years of intensive independent study, reading literature, mathematics, and languages. But how hard could the math have been — it was 1630, they were only counting up to around 25 by then, right?  

    Milton was 34 when he married 17-year-old Mary Powell. He proved to be too strict, though and she went back home after a month.  They later divorced and Milton kept all the appliances.  He wrote Paradise Lost when he was blind, impoverished, and living in seclusion.  I guess he bought into that lemons/lemonade thing.  Happy Birthday, JM!

    Harvard envy.  Near the basement entrance to Hunter, there’s a chalkboard that has imprinted on it over and over: Before I die I want to:__________________.  Today I noticed someone filled in “graduate from Harvard.”  It reminded me I saw a Hunter student once wearing a sweatshirt that said HARVARD on it in large letters, and beneath it, smaller, it said “(not really).”

    One complaint some folks had about today’s puzzle was that it had “UP” as part of answers too many times:  BUYING UP, UPON, DON’T GET UP, and POP UP SHOP.  It didn’t bother me.  In fact, I liked how DON’T GET UP crossed SIT STILL.  And it reminded me of the following which I shared with the commentariat via a Rex post:

    Victor Borge used to tell of a relative of his who was a chemist but dreamed of being an inventor.  He came up with a formula for a new soft drink and sank all of his savings into it.  He called it “4 Up,” but it failed and he lost everything.  He spent years improving the formula and saving up cash and tried again, this time calling it “5 Up.”  Again, it failed and he was ruined.  Undaunted, he spent years revising the formula once more, went into debt, and produced it under the name “6 Up.”  This time when it failed he grew depressed.  He died several years later, embittered, never realizing how close he had come.

    The clue for MAGPIE was “Bird that can recognize itself in a mirror,” and Wikipedia confirms that the Eurasian magpie is one of the most intelligent creatures in the world. 

    On the other hand, the term “pica” for the human disorder involving a compulsive desire to eat items that are not food is borrowed from the Latin name of the magpie (Pica pica), for its reputed tendency to feed on miscellaneous things. 

    You can refer to a group of magpies as a “mischief” of magpies, or a “charm” of magpies, among other less adorable terms.  The first syllable “mag” was added to its name from the woman’s name Margaret, or Meg, which was considered to be the name of a talkative female chatterbox (the bird chirps a lot). Here’s what this smarty-pants chatterbox looks like:

    It’s about time! — The electric Taylor Swift was in the puzzle today at last — we were asked for “the nickname of singer Swift.”  It’s TAY-TAY.  It’s appropriately crossed by SUPERNOVA, cutely clued as “Huge pop star?” 

    Years ago, I was corresponding with an old professor of mine (Barney Schwalberg), who famously in class once mentioned Sophia Loren when he needed an example of a beautiful woman.  But he called her “Sophie,” and when a kid in the back exclaimed “Sophie?,” Schwalberg said, “Well, to her friends.”  There was a New Yorker article out at the time on how each generation has its cultural points of reference, and I cited it and noted that if I had to use a beautiful woman in an example in one of my classes, I wouldn’t be able to use Sophie Loren — I’d use Taylor Swift.  And he wrote back to me:  “Who’s Taylor Swift?”

    She was born Taylor Alison Swift (it’s her real name), in West Reading, PA.  She’ll be 33 next Tuesday (12/13).  Her rise was almost Mozartian — she signed a songwriting deal with Sony when she was 14, and a record deal when she was 15.  Her dad was a stockbroker and her mom a mutual fund marketing executive.  Her grandmother was an opera singer, and one of Swift’s earliest musical memories is hearing her grandmother singing in church.  She was named after James Taylor.  (Wow! — that’s news to me.)  

    Swift identifies as a pro-choice feminist, and is one of the founding signatories of the Time’s Up movement against sexual harassment.  She advocates for LGBT rights, and has called for the passing of the Equality Act, which prohibits discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity.  Swift performed during WorldPride NYC 2019 at the Stonewall Inn, frequently cited as the birthplace of the modern gay rights movement. She has donated to LGBT organizations.  In August 2020, Swift urged her fans to check their voter registration, which resulted in 65,000 people registering to vote within a day after her post.

    She must be the most photographed woman on the planet. I’m going to pick one that’s not too sexy — I’m a married man!

    Unfathomable grief.  I woke up today to the weekly Story Corps feature on NPR: People telling “stories from the heart.”  It was a conversation that took place in 2017 between the parents of a child killed in the Sandy Hook massacre: their six-year old daughter Avial.  The mother requested that it be replayed for the tenth anniversary of the killings, which is coming up this week. 

    The mother started by explaining that Avial was not supposed to be in school that day: a family outing to New York had been planned.  But the class was making gingerbread houses and Avial so much wanted to participate that they brought her in.  After the shooting occurred it was chaotic and parents were seeking out their children and the father discovered that Avial was among the missing.  He placed his hands on his wife’s shoulders and looked her in the eyes and said he had to tell her directly so she wouldn’t hear it from someone else, that Avial was probably dead.  The mother said it was hard for months and it’s been years and it’s still hard, all the time.  The father said it’s with him every waking moment and he feels it in his sleep sometimes.  

    He asked her what she missed most about Avi and she said, “the weight of her arms on my body when she’s hugging me.  And her cheeks.”  They later had two more children. He asked her what she fears most for her children and she said even though it’s statistically improbable, she fears that they will be shot.  But she’s living her life without letting herself be ruled by fear, and she is doing her best to give her children the tools to enable them to not live in fear. She closed by saying, “And I love you,” and he closed by saying “I love you too.”  The program’s theme music came on, and the program’s host said that a year after that story was recorded the father died by suicide at the age of 49.

    It seems like more than ten years ago to me, but it’s ten years ago this week. It took place on December 14, 2012.