The Wellington Files

  • Time After Time

    The embarrassment that is the Jets is taking a back seat to that of the Bears, if only briefly. Their flub in front of a national audience at the end of Thursday’s game against Detroit was a work of art. Dictionaries are already preparing their new editions to include a photo from the final play next to the definition of “screw-up.”

    The Bears were down by only a field goal and were on the Lions’ 41-yard line with 32 seconds left and one time out. It’s a no brainer at this point: run a pass play to gain 5 yards or so for an easier field goal. Stop the clock by having the receiver run out of bounds or, if needed use the timeout. Then tie the game with a field goal. The only thing they had to do was hurry just a little bit — thirty-two seconds is a lot of “end-of-game-football time.” You hurry now and then, right? We’ve all hurried. But they didn’t. Precious seconds passed while they lined up sloppily at scrimmage, and then, insanely, seven or so more seconds passed before the QB called for the ball to be snapped. The coach could have stopped the clock by using the timeout but didn’t. There were less than ten seconds left when the ball was snapped. The pass sailed into the air helplessly and hit the ground, incomplete, with no time left. And the entire city of Chicago knows what it feels like to be a Jets fan week after week after week. The coach, who shall remain nameless here, is on suicide watch, and has already been fired. Ouch. And this pretty cheerleader’s work was all for naught.

    What many of you probably don’t realize is that this loss comes just a few weeks after another last-second improbable Bears loss to a Hail Mary pass by Washington’s impressive rookie QB Jay Daniels. Our Phil was on assignment for that one and captured the reactions of Bears fans. It lasts about two min. Stick around to the very end.

    I loved today’s puzzle, and not just because I was able to finish it. It was full of “chattiness.” E.g., at 11A the answer was HERE’S A THOUGHT, and right above it was SO WHAT? At 10D, the clue for a grid-spanner was “Breakup line.” I immediately filled in: “It’s not you, it’s me” but it was one letter short. Turned out to be: THIS ISN’T WORKING.

    The clue for another grid-spanner was “Haughty self-important question,” and the answer was DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?

    Pabloinnh wrote:

    “DOYOUKNOWWHOIAM is super obnoxious. My favorite reference to this came during a Red Sox game when announcer Jerry Remy was complaining about an imagined mistreatment by an underling of some sort, and fellow booth member Sean McDonough asked him ‘Don’t they know who you think you are?’”

    Egs chimed in with: Haughty amnesiac walks into a bar. The bartender says “the usual?” Amnesiac replies DOYOUKNOWWHOIAM?

    The clue at 1A was “Handle for a knife.” It’s HAFT, of course, but I confused it with HASP for a while. Commenter Lewis opined that it would have been a wonderful clue if the answer were MACK. (Think of handle as meaning “name.”)

    At 1D, the clue was “At-home distraction,” and the answer was HEY BATTER BATTER. And, for the other meaning of “batter,” right next to it the clue was “End result of a starter,” and the answer was HOMEMADE BREAD (think sourdough starter).

    Another nice pairing of long answers came near the bottom where the clue was “Fateful encounter,” for DATE WITH DESTINY. It was right above DELICATESSEN, so in case the date doesn’t go well, you can take solace in some corned beef on rye. Or sourdough.

    At 29A the clue was “Cooks up, so to speak,” and the answer was IDEATES. Here’s Rex on it: “The only place I’ve ever seen anyone IDEATE is in crosswords. Seriously, a word that would not exist without the generous support of Big Crossword.” But commenter Anony Mouse shared this old IBM ad:

    At 48A the clue was “Nearly every third baseman and shortstop in M.L.B. history.” Got it? The answer was RIGHTY. It’s awkward for a player who throws left-handed to field a grounder at third and have to waste a moment turning around to throw to first. So left-handed throwers just don’t play third base.

    In Aug 2017, Anthony Rizzo was shifted to third base from first by the Cubs in the ninth inning of a game when they ran out of position players. It was the first time in over twenty years that a left-handed thrower played 3B anywhere in the major leagues and the first time since 1895 one had played for the Cubs, who were known as the Colts back then. Rizzo was only the seventh left-throwing third baseman in all of MLB since 1913, joining Mario Valdez, Don Mattingly, Terry Francona, Mike Squires, Charlie Grimm, and Hall of Famer George Sisler.

    Remember this Cindy Lauper song? I always liked it.

    It was a favorite song of Tommy Nasseri’s, Marcella’s brother. Tommy just vanished, like, mysteriously, in Doyle, CA, 25 years ago. Marcella figured he was dead and just hoped to recover his remains somehow someday. But when she saw a story in USA Today asking for help identifying a man found sitting on a curb in LA, it struck a chord. The man was unable to communicate. But the arched eyebrows, rounded nose, and deep-set eyes were Tommy’s, and fingerprints confirmed it. Marcella’s working on getting them reunited and raised $7,000 to help fund a medical transfer and items such as clothing and art supplies for him so he can draw. She also picked up a device that will allow him to listen to music Marcella remembered him liking. It included the Cyndi Lauper song, “Time After Time.”

    “If you’re lost you can look and you will find me. Time after time.”

    We end tonight with “Hail to the Victors,” the Michigan fight song. They were heavy underdogs against hated rival Ohio State today in Columbus — the spread was more than two TDs. I almost didn’t watch. The ‘Rines struggled all season and were only 6-5 and unranked, compared to the Buckeyes who were 10-1 and ranked #2 in the nation. But they held their own and then some for most of the first half, which ended 10-10. Things stayed tight through the third quarter. We were helped by two missed field goals and then made one of our own, late in the game. The final desperate attempt for OSU fizzled and it was over. Michigan 13, Ohio State 10. Sweet. See you tomorrow!

  • Big Pun

    I’m thankful for my beautiful owls who mean so much to me. Here are Welly and Wilma, the owls behind Owl Chatter, getting a little sun on our front porch. (Special shout out to Jenny their very special friend and creator.)

    Some holiday headlines from The Onion:

    Man Getting High And Eating Taco Bell Thousands Of Miles Away From Family Having Best Thanksgiving Of Life

    Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Balloon Floats Away After Handlers Let Go To Check Their Phones

    Dave Holmes of the Dull Men’s Club (UK) posted the following:

    Went shopping for onions today. Decided that the 4kg net-bag was the best value, whilst removing said bag from the top shelf several onions fell out of a hole in the netting on to the floor. I picked up the fallen onions and pushed them back through the hole, I then checked the shelf for any other loose onions, which there were 3, I duly put them into my bag and then checked them out.

    On my way home I started thinking, maybe I missed some escaped onions, or maybe I had added onions to my bag that had come out of another bag, potentially shop lifting. As soon as I got home I weighed my bag of onions to find it weighed 4053grams. Worried that I had unwittingly stolen an onion by mistake I weighed each onion in the bag individually. None of the single onions weighed 53grams, even the lightest onion weighed in excess of 53g so I concluded that I must have purchased the correct amount of onions and that the generous supplier must have rounded down to 4kg when packing the product. A worthwhile exercise.

    Kevin Hitch: That story brought tears to my eyes.

    Trevor Syrett: Bravo, peak dullness! Bringing this group back to its roots.

    Neil Christie: How many onions do you need?

    Rob Upham: 4kg? That’s shallot of onions.

    Julia O’Connor: Maybe you picked wrong onions up from the floor and the total with other onions would have come to exactly 4kg.

    But I replied to Julia: What’s a “wrong” onion? What “other” onions? By his account, he picked them all up.

    OMG, this woman looks like an onion. How does that happen? Was her mom an onion?

    Best clue in today’s puzzle: “Pitcher for the reds?” Six letters. No, it’s not gullet (for Don Gullet). The tipoff is the lower case R in reds: It’s CARAFE (reds here are red wines). (And, I know, I know — don’t write in — Don Gullett spelled his name with an extra T so it has seven letters.) Here’s a shot of Gullett, amazingly, pitching with no left hand. It was detachable.

    I don’t think this counts as nitpicking — it’s a good point. At 31D, the clue was “Best possible,” and the answer was IDEAL. Here’s the comment:

    IDEAL and “Best possible” are not the same thing. “Best possible” is the best you can achieve short of the IDEAL, which, by definition, is an “idea” of perfection that is unachievable.

    NYT persists in making this error. And, no, it is not close enough for crosswords.

    I made my living on this question, and my reputation depends on it.

    [I was puzzled by that last sentence, but then I noticed the name of the poster was P. L. Ato.]

    The puzzle theme today was “stacks.” It set up four three-square stacks. For example, three across answers were [smoke] screen; goes up in [smoke]; and bum a [smoke]; and in each the “smoke” was smooshed into a single square (it’s called a rebus), and the three “smokes” were right on top of each other forming a smoke “stack.” There was also a “hay” stack, a “short” stack, and a “sub” stack. Clever.

    One of the answers for the “sub” stack was TURKEY [SUB], clued with “Common order at a hoagie shop.” A nod to Thanksgiving. Several nitpickers, however, noted that hoagie shops are limited to the Philly area and one would not order a “sub” there. [I say CEFC (close enough for crosswords).]

    Re: stacks, Rex shared this song.

    There’s a black crow sitting across from me
    His wiry legs are crossed
    And he’s dangling my keys, he even fakes a toss
    Whatever could it be that has brought me to this loss?

    Commenter Son Volt cited the Thanksgiving connection to Arlo’s “Alice’s Restaurant” so I was able to attach a note for the folks in Rexworld mentioning Alice’s passing just last Thursday, as we discussed recently in our post “Alice Doesn’t Live Anymore.”

    A visitor to the puzzle was a rap artist I hadn’t heard of (not that I’ve heard of many) known as BIG PUN. He wasn’t a punster: It was short for Big Punisher, and his real name was Christopher Lee Rios. He passed away in 2000 at the age of only 28, from being literally “big.” He weighed close to 700 pounds and his heart could not handle it. I will not share the song of his that Rex shared, but it’s called “Still Not A Player.” I’m generally not a fan of rap (though I’m not a hater), but I enjoyed it. I guess it says something that it still has currency 24 years after his death.

    Looks like he might have been a Yankees fan. He was born in the Bronx and is wearing a Yankees’ cap in some of the other pictures I found.

    There are people who don’t mind cats. There are people who like cats. There are people who love cats. And then there was Harold W. Sims, Jr., of whom it was said in the headline of his obit in the NYT today, that he “poured his heart” into cats. Sims passed away earlier this month in Sylva, NC, at the age of 89.

    Sims, a retired college prof, poured his life savings into his own no-kill animal shelter and founded the American Museum of the House Cat. His love for cats began when he volunteered at an animal shelter after retiring from teaching. His first cat was a Persian named Buzzy.

    The shelter, named Catman2, started as a shed in his backyard, and expanded into a 4,000-square-foot house that Sims outfitted, with cat towers, cubbyholes and all the toys his new tenants could swat a paw at — but not a single cage.  (They’ve committed no crimes, he said.) Over the course of three decades the shelter found homes for over 5,000 cats.

    The cat museum opened in 2017 and was a success. Sims built a new home for it in Sylva, NC, in 2023. Thousands of visitors come by each year to take in wall after wall of cat-themed paintings, rows of display cases full of antique cat toys, and a child-size, cat-themed carousel.

    Some of the displays are macabre, including a petrified cat found in a 16th-century English chimney, and a mummified cat from ancient Egypt, which Sims had X-rayed to make sure it contains actual feline remains. (It does.)

    His love for cats grew out of his belief that they are a better version of ourselves. “Cats don’t discriminate. They don’t care if you’re white, Black or yellow. Plus, cats don’t care about what other cats have. A cat has what it has, and that’s fine with him.”

    Sims is survived by Tortie, Clarissa, and Eskimo. Rest in peace, Dr. Sims.

    This poem by Margaret Saiser is called “Thanksgiving for Two.” It’s from The Poetry Foundation.

    The adults we call our children will not be arriving
    with their children in tow for Thanksgiving.
    We must make our feast ourselves,

    slice our half-ham, indulge, fill our plates,
    potatoes and green beans
    carried to our table near the window.

    We are the feast, plenty of years,
    arguments. I’m thinking the whole bundle of it
    rolls out like a white tablecloth. We wanted

    to be good company for one another.
    Little did we know that first picnic
    how this would go. Your hair was thick,

    mine long and easy; we climbed a bluff
    to look over a storybook plain. We chose
    our spot as high as we could, to see

    the river and the checkerboard fields.
    What we didn’t see was this day, in
    our pajamas if we want to,

    wrinkled hands strong, wine
    in juice glasses, toasting
    whatever’s next,

    the decades of side-by-side,
    our great good luck.

    An article in the current New Yorker about “The Golden Girls” reminded me how good the writing was for that show, although I did not watch it very often. It mentioned how the show shattered the taboo against “senior sex.” The character Blanche boasted of having had 143 paramours. The writer Erin Donnelly counted 165 depicted or referred to over the course of the show, “although questions remain about the precise number of Flying Fanelli Brothers.” “Oh, back off, Blanche,” she is told in one episode. “Not all of us have been classified by the Navy as a friendly port.”

    “Maureen says I need glasses, but I don’t know. What do you guys think?”

    Armas — what gives? Owl Chatter’s style and culture consultant, the beautiful Ana de Armas, has gotten herself into a little hot water for dating Manuel Anido Cuesta, the stepson of Cuba’s repressive president, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez. Here they are, below. For the life of me, I can’t figure out where his left hand is.

    “It’s truly disheartening when someone, particularly a fellow Cuban, aligns themselves with a regime that has brought so much pain and oppression to our people,” wrote fashion and travel influencer Luis Caballero. “For any Cuban to not only support such a regime but also engage with its inner circle — like dating Díaz-Canel’s stepson and advisor — feels like a betrayal of the shared struggle for liberty and justice.”

    Ouch.

    Here at Owl Chatter the feeling is everyone should be allowed one dalliance with a repressive regime. We’re sure she’ll dump the creep in due time.

    See you tomorrow!

  • Pool Chalk

    Fearsome Dominican baseball slugger Rico Carty died at the age of 85 last Saturday. He had 15 brothers and sisters. His dad worked in a sugar mill and his mom was a midwife. His first full season was 1964 and he hit .330, second in the majors only to Roberto Clemente. But his career moved forward in spurts with long absences due to a plethora of injuries, and he missed the entire 1968 season with tuberculosis. His only post-season appearance was in 1969 with Atlanta against the Mets who were on their way to their miracle WS win against Baltimore. They disposed of the Braves in three games. Carty went 3 for 10 with four runs scored.

    In 1970 he started off hotter than hell and was batting .436 at the end of May. He wasn’t included on the All-Star game ballots since they had been made up too early, but fans mounted a write-in campaign for him which garnered over 500,000 votes, and Carty started in the NL outfield alongside Mays and Aaron. It was his only All-Star game.

    His last season was 1979 with Toronto after which he was released at age 40. The last of his many injuries was crazy — he reached into his carry-on bag and stabbed himself with a toothpick. I’m not making that up — it’s from the NYT obit. I guess those little f*ckers can do more harm than you think. He finished with a career BA of .299 and 204 home runs.

    Here’s how the obit ended:

    In 2019, asked about the faster pitching in the modern game, Carty replied: “You think Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Dick Allen, Roberto Clemente, Orlando Cepeda couldn’t hit this pitching?

    “I’d kill it.”

    Rest in peace, Rico.

    OMG, Leonard COHEN is in the puzzle today. Right up there at 2 Down: “Poet Leonard.” The crossing C was from ACHE, and here’s his lyric from “Tower of Song:” Well my friends are gone and my hair is grey. I ache in the places where I used to play.

    This lyric is from his song “Did I Ever Love You?”

    The lemon trees blossom
    The almond trees wither
    Was I ever someone
    Who could love you forever?

    This poem is called “Juke” and it’s by Diane Seuss. It was the poem of the day today from the Poetry Foundation. (Anybody else smell gasoline?)

    What kind of juke do you prefer?
    For me, it’s the kind with three
    songs and thirty-seven blank
    title strips. Three songs, and two
    are “Luckenbach, Texas.”
    The third is beautiful and arcane,
    but the patrons hate it,
    and the record skips.
    I prefer the three-song juke
    and the three-toothed human

    smile. I found the juke of my dreams
    in a bar called “Chums,” no clue
    the origin or meaning
    of the quotation marks. It was a prime
    number of a bar, and now it’s dead.
    One night, drinking half-and-
    halfs, half beer, half tomato juice,
    with schnapps chasers, a cheap
    source of hallucination.
    A soon-to-be-defrocked Catholic

    priest, Vic Jr., my mother, and me,
    our faces streaked blue with pool
    chalk, juke red as a beating heart,
    and just a strip of hollyhocks
    and a tree line between us
    and the northern lights.
    I was young. I looked like a Rubens
    painting of a woman half-eaten
    by moths. What lucky
    debauchery, the ride back

    on a washboard dirt road,
    taking everything for granted,
    flipping off the aurora borealis
    like it was some three-toothed human
    in flashy clothes dancing
    to get my attention.
    I wasn’t a mean drunk then,
    just honest.
    Next morning, mom walked in
    on the naked priest

    in the shack’s garage,
    washing himself with a rag
    and cold water from the well
    in a metal dishpan. I’d later do dishes
    in that pan and wash my hair
    in that pan. We popped popcorn
    on the one-burner wood-burning
    stove and ate it out of that pan.
    I’m talking about a time and a place.
    All I can say of it is that it was real.

    The song choices were limited,
    so the grooves were dug deep.

    Here’s Diane.

    At 40D, for “Maori ceremonial dance” the answer was HAKA. Earlier this month, the New Zealand parliament exploded as Maori members protested proposed changes to a treaty by performing a HAKA on the parliament floor. I mean no disrespect in pointing out that part of the dance involves “jazz hands,” a topic that came up recently in Owl Chatter. Take a look:

    Have you heard the term BEL ESPRIT? It was new to me. The clue was “Clever person.” I generally like learning things from puzzles, but, tbh, I usually forget whatever it is in short order. Next week a clue will be “bel esprit” and I’ll be certain it has something to do with cheese.

    The puzzle’s theme today generated a bit of an uproar. The revealer clue placed across the center of the grid was “Corn, beans and squash, in Mesoamerican tradition,” which, as it turns out, is referred to as THE THREE SISTERS. Then in the top half of the grid, the three Bronte sisters appeared: CHARLOTTE, ANNE, and EMILY, of course, which was fine. But the bottom half was “graced” by the appearance of the three Kardashians: KOURTNEY, KIM, and KHLOE, and the commentariat was outraged!!

    Here’s a sampling:

    First, equating the Brontes with the Kardashians borders on criminal, and, second, calling the Kardashians “Showbiz” implies they have talent which is just wrong!

    Debasing the Brontës by this gratuitous grouping with the Kardashians and causing revulsion in solvers by the very inclusion of the Kardashians does not make for a good puzzle.

    Couldn’t get past the Kardashian thing. This puzzle sucked.

    Pairing the Brontes with the Kardashians?? An outright insult to women everywhere (spoken as a male with three highly accomplished sisters). For shame Joel Fagliano! [Joel is the current NYT puzzle editor.]

    A couple of us didn’t get our panties in a bunch. [First time I’ve used that phrase — it’s great!] Here’s what I posted:

    I’m going to try to be charitable (not in the sense of donating money, perish the thought) — perhaps the constructor was going after the humorous effect of juxtaposing the more refined trio of sisters with the far less refined ones. Like the NYer cartoon in the fancy dining room of the ocean liner. Seated at the table are all the diners dressed to the nines and one fellow shirtless, sweaty, and covered in coal dust. He’s saying: “The captain couldn’t make it this evening. I’m the stoker.”

    Leonard — Can you send us off tonight?

    See you tomorrow everybody. Happy Thanksgiving!

  • Alice Doesn’t Live Anymore

    On this date in 1835 Andrew Carnegie was born in Dunfermline, Scotland. Known now mostly for his role in the famous joke: “How do I get to Carnegie Hall? Practice,” he was in fact a well-known industrialist and philanthropist in his day. His dad was a weaver and political radical and instilled in Andrew strong feelings for social justice and equality.

    When he was twelve, Andrew worked as a milkhand for $1.20 a week, roughly equivalent to what a CUNY professor makes today. He amassed a fortune in the steel industry, then sold his business and gave it all away, establishing, among many other things, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and 2,811 libraries. He also donated 7,689 organs to churches to, as he put it, “lessen the pain of the sermons,” thus putting a different slant on the term “organ donor.” (OK, OK, I’ll pipe down. (Hi Carl!))

    This poem by Max Early is called “Delayza’s Necklace.” It’s today’s “Poem-A-Day” from Poets.org.

    We enter to sounds of bells.
    The hall’s warmth evokes
    an imprint of my small self
    standing by my grandparents.
    Their presence I sense
    in drums and singers’ voices.

    Collective breath of all colors
    hovers above the leaping herd.
    Eagle and hawk feathers adorn
    the deer dance’s rhythmic scent—
    forest evergreen, damp earth.

    Delayza puts her hand in mine.
    The seated crowd hinders her view.
    I lift her above the masses—
    a butterfly beyond reach.

    Her irises bloom to the choir
    and drumbeats rumbling
    nearby snowflakes.

    I set her among the gold straw flecks
    glistening on the mud plastered floor.
    Her body sways back and forth,
    she stands on tiptoe
    to see over the crowd.

    A charcoal faced hunter
    in camouflage shirt and jeans
    trots towards the small child.
    He places a coral bead necklace
    over her head as she smiles
    at her new delight.

    In the puzzle today, “*to wrangle, per an idiom” was LIKE HERDING CATS. I don’t recall seeing this ad on TV, but veteran Rexblog commenter Nancy shared it. (Love the lint roller.)

    Here’s some personal material Rex posted today. I’m sharing it because it’s about a dad and his daughter and it’s sweet.

    Daughter’s home for Thanksgiving week—we saw Wicked yesterday (starring Cynthia ERIVO of last Sunday’s puzzle fame). I don’t think I’d been out to the movies alone with my kid, just me and her, since … like, Madagascar (2005)? No, Happy Feet (2006)? Something like that. So fun. She’s taller now, and has a bigger vocabulary, so the experience is slightly different, but still a joy. I think the thing I’m proudest of though, is that when I asked her what snacks she wanted from the concession stand, her unhesitating reply was “Popcorn, Junior Mints.” That’s … that’s my movie snack order [single tear rolls down my cheek]. “She’d grown up just like me / My girl was just like me…”

    Headline in The Onion: Billionaire Who Bought Banana Duct-Taped To Wall for $6.2 Million Plans To Eat It.

    Pardon my crowing, readers, but a post of mine in the Dull Men’s Club (UK) generated 8 “likes,” one “wow,” and 67 comments! There’ll be no talking to me for a while, not that anyone talks to me anyway.

    Here’s the post with the photo I attached:

    I have this mug that I like. For one thing, it has a bunny on it. But if I’m drinking coffee and it has cooled down, when I go to zap it in the microwave it says on the bottom Do Not Microwave. I saw online that this may be because it has little bits of metal in it and can spark, or is too thick and may heat unevenly. But it hasn’t sparked and seems to heat well enough. Can I ignore the warning or will something horrible happen, like I’ll be poisoned somehow? (Apologies if you deem this insufficiently dull.)

    Andy Spragg: Definitely sufficiently dull.

    Andy Lucas: The bunny will slide off the mug down the plug hole if using a microwave, maybe put it in the freezer for an hour to confuse it.

    My reply: The bunny or the mug?

    Murray Atkinson: If it says it on the bottom, how did you read it when full of coffee?

    My reply: I was doing arm-lift exercises while holding it, glanced up and noticed it. Good question, though.

    Tony Ross: Only the bottom can’t be microwaved. So just use a bottomless mug.

    My reply: Some diners in the US offer a “bottomless cup of coffee.” I’ve never taken it literally before.

    Igly Mark Harris: It will hold the radiation and release it into your bloodstream causing mutant growths all over your body.

    My reply: Is that bad?

    Matt McCree: Live life on the edge, ignore all warning labels and tread your own path.

    Allister Rushforth: The blue paint contains lead and if you nuke it it softens and may turn the bunny green.

    Finally, from Debbie Vogel:

    Wear oven mitts when you remove it from the microwave. The cup will be hotter than the contents. Let it sit until the heat transfers out of the pottery and into the liquid. Stirring makes this happen faster. If it is not some type of pottery and is instead a plastic it has the potential to either melt or catch fire. I microwave my stoneware cups all the time. I have found the longer they have had to dry since last washing, the less hot they get. I assume the unglazed area on the bottom rim absorbs moisture when washed. That retained moisture then reacts under microwaving to heat the cup and create a burn hazard.

    What?

    If you’re like me, you think Arlo Guthrie’s famous song was called “Alice’s Restaurant.” You know — where you can get anything you want. That was the name of the album it was on, his first. But the song was actually “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree.” I mention it because Alice was Alice Brock, and she passed away last Thursday in Wellfleet MA (Hi Don and Jenny!) at the age of 83. It was a song/story combo plate, of course. Arlo was visiting Alice and her husband Ray for Thanksgiving and went to take some trash out to the city dump with a friend, actually quite a lot of trash. But the dump was closed so they added it to trash they saw was dumped in a ravine. It was traced back to them via some mail it contained, resulting in their arrest. Alice bailed them out, and they were fined $50 the next day in court. Much later, Arlo was able to avoid the draft due to his criminal record. This line in the song, a question Arlo asked at the induction center, sums up those crazy days as well as anything: “You want to know if I’m moral enough to join the Army, and burn women, kids, houses and villages after bein’ a litterbug?”

    But this should be about Alice. She helped write the first half of the song. Arlo wrote the draft part. She was born in Brooklyn and attended Sarah Lawrence College but left during her sophomore year “to support unpopular causes.” She married and moved to Stockbridge MA with her husband and worked as a librarian in a private school. She was the shusher. (No she wasn’t.) She opened the restaurant, the “Back Room,” having been nagged into doing so by her mom. It was only open for a few years.

    Director Arthur Penn made a film based on the song in 1968. Alice was a consultant and made a cameo appearance. Patricia Quinn played Alice in the movie. In one of those little twists life enjoys throwing at us, on the day the wedding of Alice and her husband was filmed for the movie, the actual couple’s divorce became official. This is Pat Quinn.

    Her last years were marked by financial and health problems. A friend set up a GoFundMe site and it was mentioned in a story on NPR. More than $170,000 poured in from fans of the song in just a few days.

    Alice is survived by three step-children, two grandchildren, one great-granddaughter, and two great-great-grandchildren, all of whom get anything they want.

    Here are Alice and Arlo in 1977.

    And here’s what it’s all about. If you’ve never heard it, it’s certainly worth 16 and a half minutes of your time. I’ve heard it a bunch of times, including just a few years ago when I saw Arlo perform in Newark with his beautiful daughter opening for him. Still enjoy it.

    Rest in peace, Alice.

    Thanks for dropping in.

  • Onion Rings

    Isaac Bashevis Singer was probably born 120 years ago this week in Poland. There’s some question about his birthdate since he may have made one up to avoid the draft. (Was it that easy?) He wrote in Yiddish on a Yiddish typewriter, and then translated his writings into English himself. On Yiddish being a dying language, he said, Yiddish has been dying for 100 years and I’m confident it will go on dying for another 100 years. Upon being asked if he believed in free will, he famously said “We must believe in it — we have no choice.”

    When Singer received the Nobel Prize in 1978, he delivered part of his acceptance speech in Yiddish, and said, “Yiddish has not yet said its last word. It contains treasures that have not yet been revealed to the eyes of the world.”

    There is a collection of Yiddish typewriters in the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst MA which Linda and I saw last July when we were up for the Klezmer festival, Yidstock. Here’s one. It must work from right to left.

    I heard Singer speak once, I forget where. He was wonderful (vu den?). If you’d like a taste, seek out his short story “The Admirer.” It’s a real hoot. (It appeared in The New Yorker of 1/6/1975.)

    Barry Howard, of the Dull Men’s Club (UK) writes: The gritter/salt spreading truck goes past our house at precisely 21:30 every time it’s needed. [OC note: By my calculations, that’s 9:30 PM].

    Roger Allen: Sounds like the only time it’s needed is 21.30.

    Barry replied to Roger: It’s a very small truck.

    And I wrote to Barry: I fail to see the relevance.

    Steven Henry: Personally, I’d wait up for that.

    Paul Bryant: I got knocked off my bike by one of those lorries once. I yelled at them through gritted teeth. [OC: Ha! Gritted teeth!]

    David Fisher: We had a competition a while ago to name a new gritter our council had just got. And Gary won.

    I asked David what some of the other entries were. Am awaiting his reply.

    Barry didn’t include a photo with his post. So we sent Phil over to England to look into it. It might have looked like this, he reported.

    I’m not sure why I love this story from today’s Met Diary. It’s by Carrie Klein. I do remember that for my second year in law school I was sharing grad housing with several friends. We bought groceries as needed and then the year ended and we had to clear out. The only item left on the last morning was some pancake mix we bought the very first day and never used the whole year. So for our last breakfast there we made pancakes and they were good.

    Dear Diary:

    In 1966, when I was still in high school, my older sister and I were allowed to go to New York on our own for the summer. It was the first time we had flown on a plane.

    The only advice we were given was to stay at the Martha Washington Hotel because it was only for women and to send home every day one of the stamped postcards we had been given to prove we were alive.

    The hotel was dark, old and hot, but it had what was described as a “roof garden.” There was no actual garden, but the roof offered us our first glimpse of the city’s skyline.

    My sister had heard that the “happening” place in the city that summer was Greenwich Village. So after one night in the hotel, we walked down Fifth Avenue to Washington Square and then onto Sullivan Street.

    We struck up a conversation with a man who was fixing a doorknob. We asked if there were any apartments available in the building. He said someone had just left a fully furnished place a few days earlier. The rent was $30 a week.

    We dragged our suitcases 30 blocks downtown and moved in. “Summer in the City” was the big song that year, and this was going to be ours.

    After settling in, we were hungry. We searched the kitchen to see whether anything edible had been left behind. All we found was a greasy bottle of oil, a half-full bag of flour and a few onions. My sister had a eureka moment.

    “Let’s make onion rings!” she said.

    On this date in 1632 the philosopher and mathematician Baruch (or Benedict) de Spinoza was born in Amsterdam. He was Jewish and received a Jewish education in a Talmud Torah. However, like many Jews, he got in big trouble for his affinity for Bacon. In his case, it was Francis Bacon. Also Rene Descartes. He was accused of putting Descartes before des horse. So the rabbis gave him the boot for thinking outside the box. And stay out! He supported himself as a lens grinder. Did you hear about the optician who backed into the lens grinder and made a spectacle of himself?

    Spinoza’s most important idea was that everything in the universe is made of a single material: gabardine. [No, not gabardine.] Also, that everything in the universe is subject to natural laws. He said that the soul and the body are not separate, but two parts of the same thing. He believed that God did not stand outside the universe, but rather that the universe itself was God, and that everything in the universe was perfect and divine.

    OK. Whatever. I am way too stupid to come near any of that. Here’s Benny:

    This poem is called “Permission Granted.” It’s by David Allen Sullivan and was in The Writer’s Almanac earlier this week.

    You do not have to choose the bruised peach
    or misshapen pepper others pass over.
    You don’t have to bury
    your grandmother’s keys underneath
    her camellia bush as the will states.

    You don’t need to write a poem about
    your grandfather coughing up his lung
    into that plastic tube—the machine’s wheezing
    almost masking the kvetching sisters
    in their Brooklyn kitchen.

    You can let the crows amaze your son
    without your translation of their cries.
    You can lie so long under this
    summer shower your imprint
    will be left when you rise.

    You can be stupid and simple as a heifer.
    Cook plum and apple turnovers in the nude.
    Revel in the flight of birds without
    dreaming of flight. Remember the taste of
    raw dough in your mouth as you edged a pie.

    Feel the skin on things vibrate. Attune
    yourself. Close your eyes. Hum.
    Each beat of the world’s pulse demands
    only that you feel it. No thoughts.
    Just the single syllable: Yes …

    See the homeless woman following
    the tunings of a dead composer?
    She closes her eyes and sways
    with the subways. Follow her down,
    inside, where the singing resides.

    Special kudos to our gorgeous granddaughter Robin (nee Lianna) who crewed for the Morristown HS production of Shakespeare in Love. We saw the show last night and loved how much fun the cast was having with it. The girl who played Gwyneth Paltrow was beautiful (and talented) and Will was great too. A swordfight had us worried someone might actually get hurt. Zoey and Leon saw it with mom and dad too.

    “Will you join the crew again for the Spring musical (Les Miz)?” we asked Robin. Yes! she answered without hesitation. Kinehora – can’t wait!

    Hey, GP — you’ve got some competition down in Mo-town.

    Mark Cairns of the DMC (UK) asks: “Should we ban the use of the exclamation mark? In denoting excitement it surely sets itself against our very creed?”

    Wow. Unsurprisingly, it generated quite a hubbub: close to 70 comments.

    John David Salt opined: If we do, it’s going to cause minor inconvenience every time anyone wants to discuss the !Kung people of the Kalahari, or refer to the Devonian village of Westward Ho! It will also be mildly inconvenient for mathematicians to have to write out “factorial” in full.

    Tim Lockley added: particularly as matters ferroequinological are a popular subject here, and the only railway with an exclamation mark in its title would be excluded (the BA&WH!)

    Ian Smith: No, but we should frown upon its excessive use. Only use one, and where the situation clearly excuses it. And don’t get me started on the near-criminal random use of apostrophes..

    Laura Wilson: I’m a proponent of bringing back the interrobang.

    OC note: The interrobang is new to me. Here’s one:

    Ronnie Dykes makes an excellent point: We’re not dull because we don’t get excited; we’re dull because we’re excited by things that others consider to be dull.

    Murray Atkinson: Should we ban all punctuation used incorrectly? In doing so we would surely improve literacy.

    Andy Spragg: in the same way as, e.g., banning driving faster than the speed limit prevents that from happening, you mean?

    Murray: Yes.

    Dave Greenslade: Banning it will screw up thousands of passwords on accounts as many people use it as the special character now increasingly required in passwords.

    To which Mark Cairns replied: I just mean banning it here, Dave — not in the whole world.

    I suggested not banning it outright, but requiring that it only be used horizontally.

    OMG, readers — is it just me? I find that entire discussion hilarious. (Okay — George and Phil say it’s just me. Still.)

    See you tomorrow!!!!!

  • Who’s Taylor Swift?

    Well, it looks like we don’t have Matt Gaetz to kick around any more. Next up for AG is Florida’s Pam Bondi. I remember her from a set-to she had with Anderson Cooper a few years ago — she set off his bullshit detector and he didn’t hold back. But first, let’s have a look at her — we understand a president’s cabinet appointments are expected to act as cheerleaders for the administration — but in this case Trump picked an actual cheerleader.

    Give me a T! Give me an R!

    The Anderson Cooper flap occurred after the terrible killings in the gay nightclub in Orlando. With public sympathy soaring for the gay community, Bondi came out as their legal champion. Cooper started getting calls from gays in Florida pointing out that she was full of shit — she had done nothing but actively oppose gay rights from Day One. So he called her blatant hypocrisy out on live TV on CNN. Here’s how one report on it went:

    Bondi, of course, is an utterly unprincipled toady who has not hesitated to parrot Trump’s nonsense about the 2020 election and immigrants.

    OLIVIA RODRIGO was the centipede of the puzzle yesterday — she ran right down the middle with her full name, boringly clued with “youngest artist blah blah blah something.” She is half-deaf in one ear? I think that means she has no hearing in that ear or it’s very weak. Certainly hasn’t held her back. She’s 21, an only child, born in California to a school teacher mom and family therapist dad. She identifies as a Filipina-American. Taylor Swift’s songs inspired her to begin songwriting. (Tay is 13 years her senior.) Wow — she’s pretty too. Trump should appoint her Sec’y of the Treasury or something.

    At 54D, the clue was “Part of OOO.” I had no idea why the answer turned out to be TAC. Do you? (Think TIC-TAC-TOE.)

    Do you know what “bêtise” is? Its origin is French, but it’s an English word that means foolishness. The answer for the puzzle was IDIOCY.

    Did you know “Google’s former motto” was DON’T BE EVIL? I had no idea. I didn’t even know it had a motto. It’s current motto is “Do the right thing.” Does every corporation have a motto? I looked up a few. IBM’s is “Think.” Mott’s motto is referred to as a slogan. Is that different from a motto? Anyway, it’s a little clunky: “Feel Seen — Real Apples Make Real Good Applesauce.”  (Needs work, amirite?)

    “Where small plates are served?” was a cute clue for KID’S TABLE.

    At 4D, the clue was “[Hey! The light turned green!]. Answer: TOOT TOOT.

    And this one had me flummoxed: “Makeup brand known for its risqué product names.” NARS. (Some in Crossworld would call that a WOE, for “What on Earth?”) Its product names include: Orgasm, Adults Only, Take Me Home, Start Me Up, and No Shame.

    I’ve started marketing some cosmetics too. Mine are called: Help Me Up, Take Me To The ER, Seniors Only, and No Prostate.

    It is amazing what these cosmetics can do. Here’s what this woman, above, looked like when she started.

    I am certain I finished today’s puzzle in my fastest time ever for a Saturday. It’s not that I’m getting smarter, believe me. It was just way too easy for a Saturday. They generally take me 30 to 40 minutes and today was under 15. When I entered the tournament last summer I asked them what category I should apply for: local or express. I told them I am routinely able to finish the Saturday puzzle. They said express is for people who can finish the Saturday puzzle in around ten minutes. Yikes.

    At 46A today, the clue was “Easily stacked pet food,” and the answer was TUNA CANS. Rex commented: “Pet food,” you say? I’ve been eating “pet food” all these years?

    I can’t recall a puzzle that had a sweeter opening than today’s. At 1A the clue was “In need of a trim, say,” and the answer was SCRUFFY, and right below it was “Romance language?” for I LOVE YOU. Awwwww. We love you too!

    16A was “Something that may be passed down in a family.” I had no idea. It took me almost all of the crosses to see RECIPE. Of course! Good clue.

    Hey Taylor! Guess who made it into the grid today? “One of football’s Kelce brothers.” It’s Travis’s brother JASON! Whodathunkit? Jason’s 37 and he and wife Kylie are expecting baby #4.

    And speaking of Ms. Swift, she graces the cover of tomorrow’s NYT Book Review. It’s for a review of a book about her by Rob Sheffield called “Heartbreak Is The National Anthem: How Taylor Swift Reinvented Pop Music.” Not to dis the Times, but the photo isn’t nearly as nice as the shots of TS our Phil sends in to us. (Love you, Philly!)

    A sad note, for our Brandeis friends. Barney Schwalberg passed away last Sunday night. He was an Economics professor who had a great influence on me. We had been in regular touch via email from around 2013 to 2018. When I received a teaching award from Hunter in 2013, I mentioned him in my speech, so I reached out to him to share my good news. I never took him down from the pedestal I placed him on years ago, so it was quite a thrill when we started a regular correspondence. Mr. Schwalberg and Mr. Liveson became Barney and Avi. He had retired by then and advised me: “Don’t retire!” When it fit the topic, I’d share one of my ridiculous jokes with him and he told me once he repeated them at dinner to his friends at his senior living facility. You can imagine how that made me feel.

    His health took a downturn and his notes stopped coming. I reached out several times, even trying through Brandeis or his daughter. It was she who passed the news on to me and several others via an email yesterday. But I hadn’t heard from him since 2018.

    It’s funny that I’m writing this after that short item on Taylor Swift. When Barney and I reconnected he reminded me of a moment in one of his classes when he used Sophia Loren in an example, as a beautiful woman. But he called her “Sophie Loren” and a student yelled out “Sophie?” Schwalberg shot right back — “Well, to her friends.” He was proud of that. I noted that each generation has its own icons. I said if I had to pick a beautiful woman to use in an example in my class, I wouldn’t be able to use Sophia Loren. I would probably use Taylor Swift. And he wrote back: “Who’s Taylor Swift?”

    The note from his daughter included links to several obituaries but I have been too emotionally afraid to look at them. I guess I’ll force myself to after a while. She mentioned that a memorial service will be arranged at some point and she’ll send the details.

    In his honor, I am posting this 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.

  • Give Me the Cat

    This searing poem is from the “poem-a-day” feature of poets.org. Thanks again, Pam! Hey, wait a minute — anybody else smell gasoline?

    Poems are bullshit unless they are broken 
    like a horse, like a dog kicked in the ribs, 
    Like your favorite toy that’s missing an arm.

    Love can make you feel used.
    I want the poem that limps back to me.
    Poems should hurt like love,
    like ice water on your teeth
    like a massage to smooth out a cramped muscle.

    Give me the poem that’s like leather.
    Give me the poem that smells like gasoline.
    I want a poem that is a warning,
    a poem that makes me check to see
    if I left the shotgun by the door,
    a poem that’s a runny nose, a sneeze, a poem
    that’s the moment the sky turns green.

    By Kenyatta Rogers (after Amiri Baraka and Stefania Gomez)

    This woman, below, is a bigot. Phil refused to photograph her, so I had to get it off the internet. Take a good look. They don’t make ’em much more repulsive than this.

    She is Nancy Mace (R-Bigot, SC). Upon learning that Sarah McBride was elected from Delaware as the first openly trans Congressmember, Mace sprung into action and introduced a resolution that would bar her from using the women’s bathroom. Speaker Johnson, of course, supports it.

    “Sarah McBride doesn’t get a say,” Mace told reporters. “I mean, this is a biological man.” She said that Ms. McBride “does not belong in women’s spaces, women’s bathrooms, locker rooms, changing rooms — period, full stop.”

    Like her supporters in the GOP, Mace is a moral degenerate who traffics in hate. Blacks, Jews, and gays are harder to target, so thank God for the transgenders. Otherwise, what would the GOP do? Never mind that trans children are committing suicide at horrifying rates – who the f*ck cares about them? Pile on! [The NIH reports: 82% of transgender individuals have considered killing themselves and 40% have attempted suicide, with suicidality highest among transgender youth.]

    Here’s what the NYT article states:

    “In the House, Republicans have spent the last two years routinely proposing legislation seeking to roll back the rights of transgender people. And across the country, Republican-led state legislatures have tried to pass laws requiring people in government buildings to use bathrooms associated with their sex assigned at birth.

    “But with Ms. McBride’s arrival in Washington, House Republicans for the first time have a transgender colleague to target in their own workplace.”

    McBride’s reply, of course, was gracious:

    “Each of us were sent here because voters saw in us something that they value. I have loved seeing those qualities in the future colleagues that I’ve met and I look forward to seeing those qualities in every member come January. I hope all of my colleagues will seek to do the same with me.”

    Wisconsin Rep. Mark Pocan, chair of the congressional equality caucus, issued a statement saying: “Speaker Johnson’s holier-than-thou decree to ban transgender people from using bathrooms that align with their identity is a cruel and unnecessary rule that puts countless staff, interns, and visitors to the Capitol at risk. How will this even be enforced? Will the Sergeant at Arms post officers in bathrooms? Will everyone who works at the Capitol have to carry around their birth certificate or undergo a genetic test?” 

    LPAC issued this statement:  “If this was truly about creating safe spaces for women, why isn’t there more of an uproar from Mace and her colleagues about the fact that a man found liable of sexual abuse is our president-elect, and that several of his high-level appointees have been accused of sexual assault?”

    Here’s Sarah, below, holding it in.

    We love you, Babe – Owl Chatter has your back. Stop by anytime for a cold Fresca — and you can pee anywhere you want around here. That’s what we do. Which reminds me — George!! We need more TP!! Can you run out to Shoprite? The keys are near the door; here’s a twenty.

    Have you seen the initialism TL:DR? It’s for “too long; didn’t read.” Someone sends you a text or an email that is just too f*cking long. You reply: TL:DR. The former chair of my dept, whom I loved, Marjorie, aleha hashalom, once forwarded to me a grade appeal that a student submitted. It made War and Peace seem terse. I told Marjorie I was setting up a meeting with the student and then I asked: Is it me, or does she seem a bit wordy? Marjorie’s response had me laughing out loud. She wrote back: “Wear a hat.” (I took it mean the sh*t’s gonna fly.)

    Anyway, today’s puzzle used TL;DR as its theme. It had three long novels as theme answers: DAVID COPPERFIELD, ATLAS SHRUGGED, and LES MISERABLES, and at 56A the “revealer” clue was “Cheeky review” of those books, with the answer: TOO LONG DIDN’T READ.

    Separately, at 5D, the clue was “Cry over spilled milk, perhaps?” and the answer was BAD KITTY. Well, Rex is a serious cat lover and a literature prof, so all of this was just too much for him to bear. Here’s the rant:

    Wow. A puzzle for people who hate reading. And cats. I am … neither of those people. The entire puzzle seems to exist so that the revealer can sneer at the idea of reading long books, which is to say, sneer at the idea of reading in general. You know what’s TOO LONG and I wish I DIDN’T READ? That revealer. That “review” isn’t “cheeky,” it’s idiotic. Nobody writes it out like that. It’s TL;DR, and only TL;DR. Plus, are these books really so “long?” They don’t strike me as iconically long. Not like War and Peace or Infinite Jest or, if you really want a doorstop, Clarissa (~950,000 words!). DAVID COPPERFIELD is just … a novel by Dickens. I read it earlier this year. It’s normal Dickens novel length—roughly the same length as [deep breath] Martin Chuzzlewit, Nicholas Nickleby, Bleak House, Little Dorritt, Dombey and Son, and Our Mutual Friend (all 340,000+ words). And while it’s true that I have not read LES MISERABLES or ATLAS SHRUGGED, it ain’t because they’re “TOO LONG,” for god’s sake. I don’t demand Reverence of Literature from my crosswords, but this kind of shallow sneering nonsense can … let’s be unprofane and say “take a hike.” Oh, is the book long? Is reading hard? Are you tired? Do you want a lollipop? Grow up. You don’t have to read books if you don’t want to, but your inability or unwillingness to read anything longer than a Tweet is a You problem. Don’t blame the books. The books are exactly the length they’re supposed to be. Also, if you’re shouting “BAD KITTY!” at your actual kitten for any reason, let alone for the mere fact of “spilling milk,” I’m taking your kitten away from you. Why are you giving the kitten milk, anyway? You clearly shouldn’t own a cat. Give me the cat. You go manage your anger. Kitty and I are gonna curl up with a long book.

    [Ouch.]

    At 25D, “Character in a classic whodunit” was MISS SCARLET. Remember her . . . in the library with a rope, maybe?

    Did you know the model for that image of Miss S was Kedakai Turner, wife of the late James Lipton, of Inside the Actors Studio? JL was also from Detroit.

    Or was it in the conservatory with a knife?

    See you tomorrow Chatterheads.

  • A Quiet Soundtrack

    Headline from The Onion: Trump Locks Bathroom Door So Elon Musk Can’t Follow Him In.

    Ravel’s Bolero premiered on this date 96 years ago. I know — seems like just yesterday, amirite? This poem is also called “Bolero.” It’s from The Poetry Foundation and is by Keith Leonard.

    From the kitchen, I catch the neighbor
    cross the street to switch off my car’s interior lights.
    He returns to his house without announcing the favor.
    For the last three years, a friend has woken early
    and walked the beach, combing for bottle caps
    and frayed fishing line. She mentions this
    only casually at lunch, after I’ve asked
    what she did that morning.
    Care has a quiet soundtrack: the sycamore’s
    rustling leaves, your nails tracing my shoulder blades.
    A melody that repeats—a bit like Ravel’s Boléro.
    When it was first performed, a woman shouted,
    Rubbish! from the balcony. She called Ravel
    a madman. I think I understand. I wish I didn’t.
    I’ve been taught that art must have conflict,
    that reason must meet resistance.

    Special thanks to OC reader Pam for sending in a poem we’ll be sharing tomorrow, and for sharing a new source of verse for us to plunder. You da bomb, Pam!

    In Contract Law, when a contract right is assigned (transferred), the assignee “steps into the shoes” of the assignor. So he or she (the assignee) is subject to any defenses that can be raised against the assignor. On my law midterm, I presented a situation involving that principle and the question was whether the assignee should get paid. Most students got it right, explaining that the assignee “steps into the shoes” of the assignor. But my favorite answer was the student who wrote — the assignee does not get paid “because she stepped on the assignor’s feet.”

    You cannot make this stuff up, folks.

    At 2D in the puzzle today the clue was “Reef predator with extendable pharyngeal jaws.” Needless to say, I had no f*cking idea. It turned out to MORAY EEL. Commenter Conrad posted: “When the reef predator with extendable pharyngeal jaws hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s a moray.”

    And Rex noted: It’s very fun to say “extendable pharyngeal” over and over again. It’s like something out of Gilbert & Sullivan: “In short, in matters vegetable, extendable, pharyngeal, / I am the very model of a model Major-General!” Then he shared this clip which I have watched over and over with no diminution in pleasure. What has happened to mankind in between Gilbert & Sullivan and our movies like Dumb and Dumber? Is it any wonder the election turned out as it did?

    At 54A, the clue was “Domesticated” (five letters) and I correctly slapped in TAMED right away. But it got one commentator’s goat, so to speak. Here’s what he or she (probably he) posted: TAMED and “domesticated” are two different things. NYTimes repeatedly allows this erroneous conflation to appear in its Crossword. And, no, they are not “close enough” for a crossword. Persisting in this error just contributes to dumbing-down in general.

    But he didn’t explain the difference, so I looked it up. Then I posted this reply:

    “I see the distinction — thanks! ‘Taming is conditioned behavioral modification of an individual; domestication is permanent genetic modification of a bred lineage that leads to, among other things, a heritable predisposition toward human association.’ Either the distinction is blurring in popular usage over time, as sometimes happens, or the NYT deems it close enough for Xwords, even if many of us don’t. As for the ‘general dumbing down,’ we’ve passed this point long ago.”

    There was no further discussion.

    According to the NYT, Texas education officials backed on Tuesday a new elementary school curriculum that infuses material drawn from the Bible into reading and language arts lessons. Texas was the first state to allow public schools to hire religious chaplains as school counselors, and the Republican-controlled legislature is expected to try once again to require public-school classrooms to display the Nine Commandments (Trump removed the one on adultery, you may recall).

    In Oklahoma, the state superintendent has begun buying Bibles for classroom use, and sent a video to schools last week inviting students to pray for Mr. Trump. [What?? Not kidding.]

    Gov. Greg Abbott said the lessons would “allow our students to better understand the connection of history, art, community, literature and religion on pivotal events like the signing of the U.S. Constitution, the Civil Rights Movement and the American Revolution.” You know how hepped up he gets on the Civil Rights movement.

    An effort to reject the Biblical curriculum lost by only one vote 7-8, with, amazingly, three Republicans among the magnificent seven. Now, that’s a miracle.

    The Oklahoma business, above, piqued my interest. Here’s what I was able to uncover after extensive research (you know, a minute or two online). It’s a story by the public radio station down there (KGOU).

    State Education Superintendent Ryan Walters sent superintendents an email Thursday afternoon mandating districts show students a video of him announcing the new “Office of Religious Liberty and Patriotism” and inviting students into a prayer for President-elect Donald Trump, among other topics.

    The email said districts are also required to send the video to all students’ parents.

    In the video, Walters says the “radical left” is attacking religious liberty in schools, patriotism is being “mocked,” and there is “a hatred for this country pushed by woke teachers’ unions.” [Of course!!]

    He invites the students to pray with him, clarifying they don’t have to join in. [Well, that’s a relief.]

    “I pray for our leaders to make the right decisions,” Walters said. “I pray in particular for President Donald Trump and his team as they continue to bring about change to the country.” [Yes, in particular — those prayers give God a little extra nudge.]

    Walters also prays schools “continue to teach love of country to our young people, and that our students understand what makes America great.” [Right! And what is that again?]

    In the video, Walters sits next to a Bible and a mug that reads in Latin, “If you want peace, prepare for war.”

    The attorney general’s office did not immediately return a request for clarification on whether the State Department of Education has the authority to mandate the video be shown to students and sent to parents. Hmmmm — that could put a crimp in it, no?

    Here’s Da Supe with his war mug. God bless America.

    Yuck. We can’t close with that creep. Here are Caity’s four “littles.” And out in Michigan Morris turned three today, kinahora. Good stuff!!

    See you tomorrow!

  • Happy Birthday Mickey!

    “The Captain,” a song by Kasey Chambers, may be familiar to you. It was played on Episode 8, Season 3, of The Sopranos. Chambers is 48 and Australian. She lives in Copacabana — not the famous nightclub — it’s a suburb in New South Wales, Australia. She has three kids from two different dads: a son, Talon, who is 22, another son, Arlo Ray, who is 17, and a daughter, Poet Poppin, 13. Poet Poppin!

    Things are so random in Crossworld. We’re only meeting Kasey because the clue yesterday at 11D was “Iconic landmark in Yosemite Valley.” It’s EL CAPITAN, of course, which naturally led commenter Son Volt to share Kasey’s song with us. Here’s a shot of Kasey Phil got by sneaking into her bedroom, followed by the song.

    Jane Kenyon wrote this poem, “The Painters,” and it appeared in yesterday’s Writer’s Almanac.

    A hot dry day in early fall….
    The men have cut the vines
    from the shutters, and scraped
    the clapboards clean, and now
    their heads appear all day
    in all the windows …
    their arms or shirtless torsos,
    or a rainbow-speckled rag
    swinging from a belt.

    They work in earnest—
    these are the last warm days.
    Flies bump and buzz
    between the screens and panes,
    torpid from last night’s frost:
    the brittle months advance …
    ruts frozen in the icy drive,
    and the deeply black and soundless
    nights. But now the painters

    lean out from their ladders, squint
    against the light, and lay on
    the thick white paint.
    From the lawn their radio predicts rain,
    then cold Canadian air ….
    One of them works way up
    on the dormer peak,
    where a few wasps levitate
    near the vestige of a nest.

    Should we consider yesterday Mickey Mouse’s birthday? It was on 11/18 in 1928 that the first sound-synchronized cartoon to attract widespread public notice, Walt Disney’s “Steamboat Willie,” premiered in New York. The black and white cartoon featured Mickey, Minnie, and Pegleg Pete and lasted seven minutes. With Walt Disney as the voice of Mickey, the cartoon was a big hit.

    I’m picking her first for my team — whatever the sport. Thank you puzzle for introducing us to this incredible athlete: SHA’CARRI Richardson. Word of her exploits hadn’t reached me under my rock. Just look at these pics:

    Sha’carri won the Silver Medal in the 2024 Olympics in the 100 meter race and anchored the U.S. relay team which won the Gold in the 4 x 100. She ranked #1 in the world in the 100 meters in 2023. She ran for LSU in college, identifies as bisexual and has a girlfriend. She is known for her colorful hair and long nails and was inspired by the late Flo-Jo (Florence Griffith Joyner). Just one more shot, if you will — she’s spellbinding. Here’s the shot of her Vogue used for one of its covers.

    The puzzle was by an excellent constructor, Erik Agard, and was a paean to Black female athletes. Besides Sha’carri, Brittany GRINER and SIMONE Biles were featured. It was African-American in general with VIVECA A. Fox and OCTAVIA Butler tossed in, along with MLK and Carlos Santana. And Whites were excluded — even GAGA wasn’t clued via Lady G, its clue was “Head over heels.” As Rex noted, there are many puzzles with no Blacks, so this may have been intended as sort of a corrective.

    At 51D, the clue was “Quintet found in a supervocalic word.” It’s AEIOU. Supervocalics are words that contain all five non-Y vowels. Supervocalic is one itself. In “facetious” and “abstemious” the fivesome appears in order. In others they are rearranged via, [drum roll], a vowel movement.

    A supervocalic tree is the SEQUOIA. Personal fave: cauliflower. I was today years old when I learned about EUNOIA — the shortest supervocalic. You know when a comic says, “Wow, this is a great crowd?” Well, eunoia is the good will that speakers cultivate between themselves and their audiences, a condition of receptivity. The one time I saw George Carlin perform, he played with that — he encouraged us all to get together again for reunions, and appointed “row monitors.”

    At 20A, the clue was “Like content that causes secondhand embarrassment.” The answer was CRINGE and it set off a flurry of complaints. People didn’t like it used as an adjective: they wanted the answer to be cringey or cringy. Commenter Digital Dan expressed himself in verse.

    CRINGE as an adjective: Hate it.
    SPEND as a noun. Detest it.
    COMPUTE as a noun. Abhor it.
    CLICHE as an adjective. No. Just no.
    FRAUGHT without an object to be with (preferably PERIL). Perish the thaught.

    My bro-in-law Mitch had a brother-in-law via his sister, Arden. His name was Marv. Marv was not well-liked, especially, and most importantly, by Arden. They eventually divorced. My brother Jay famously remarked about him: “Marv you can harve.”

    I gave exams in both of my classes today. They went well — no obvious cheating. That’s all I ask. I’ll be grading them for the next few days. There’s an exercise I won’t miss in retirement. One more to go in each class.

    At 22D today, “First name in civil rights history,” wasn’t Medgar — it was the big one — MARTIN. Son Volt, who seems to be in charge of musical references for The Commentariat, shared this tune by the Jayhawks with us. See you tomorrow!

  • A Foundation of Fevered Mendacity

    Today’s puzzle is all about a HOT AIR BALLOON. First of all, look at the grid.

    Next, the puzzle places you in it because four theme answers have you seeing things from way up in the sky. Girl: WEE LASS; Dwelling: TINY HOUSE; Vehicle: MINIVAN; Neighborhood: SMALL TOWN.

    The clue for the HOT AIR BALLOON itself at 93A is “Whimsical method of transportation depicted in this puzzle’s grid.” Rex took issue with it:

    “Look, up in the sky! It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s … a HOT AIR BALLOON. Is a HOT AIR BALLOON a ‘whimsical’ method of transportation? Why? I think of it as just …  a method of transportation? Whimsy not required. Where is the inherent whimsy? I don’t get it. The HOT AIR BALLOON the first successful method of human flight. I guess you can make it whimsical by turning the balloon into various novelty shapes, or by using it to race around the world in 80 days, but ‘Whimsical method of transportation’ seems odd, or oddly narrow, as a description here.”

    Several commenters disagreed, noting that HABs are whimsical because you don’t know where you will land. Also, wouldn’t it be whimsical to go somewhere via a HAB? – who does that?

    And, while we’re on the topic:

    Connie: “Oh, Professor — you’re full of whimsy.”

    Groucho: “Can you notice it from there? I’m always that way after I eat radishes.”

    This story is from today’s Met Diary. It’s by Rayna Rapp.

    Dear Diary:

    It had been raining in the city for two days straight, and I was on my way to Times Square for the opening night of a film festival.

    I waded into the Seventh Avenue subway at 14th Street, but the 1, 2 and 3 trains were all shut down because of flooding.

    I splashed my way across to the Eighth Avenue trains. An A was waiting but delayed. The doors kept opening and shutting. I finally managed to squeeze inside a car tightly packed with riders.

    Suddenly, the train lurched forward. A woman in the middle of the crowded car began to hyperventilate.

    “Let me out!” she yelled. “I have to get out. I can’t stay here.”

    Recognizing that she was having a panic attack, people sprang into action. Somehow, space opened up around her. Someone lowered a window. Someone else produced a bottle of water.

    And then a man holding a wand jumped directly in front of the woman.

    “Watch the wand closely,” he said. “I promise it will be OK. I’m just going to lightly hypnotize you.”

    He kept the woman’s eyes focused on the wand as he talked to her quietly until we reached 34th Street.

    When the train stopped there, everyone filed out in perfect order, helped the woman onto the platform and then packed back into the car for the trip uptown.

    The tall and very beautiful KERI Russell dropped by today at 24A: “Actress Russell.” I watched all of the seasons of The Americans a few years ago — it was my go-to on the treadmill. Her hubby on the show was the Welsh actor Matthew Rhys. He won an Emmy for the role, and she a flurry of noms.

    Actually, Keri’s 5′ 4″ — that’s average height. She just seemed tall in the show. And Rhys, who seemed short, is 5′ 11″. I had no idea they got married IRL too. They had a son in 2016. I loved it when Keri was accosted by some thug, sprung into action, and tore the poor guy to shreds. She’s 48 now and was born in California. At 15, her dancing landed her a role on The All-New Mickey Mouse Club. Other cast members were Ryan Gosling, Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, and Christina Aguilera. She took off from there.

    Rhys is a supporter of Plaid Cymru, actively supporting Welsh independence. In 2008, Aberystwyth University honored Rhys as a fellow. (Gimme an A!) He was also honored in ’08 at the Welsh National Eisteddfod by being accepted as a member to the druidic order of the Gorsedd of the Bards for his contributions to the Welsh language and Wales. His bardic name in the Gorsedd is Matthew Tâf. (What?)

    Here they are. What the hell is she wearing?

    Ever hear of DALE Chihuly? Me neither. “Glass artist Chihuly.” He is 83 now and is well known in the field of blown glass “moving it into the realm of large-scale sculpture.” If you google him, you’ll see some amazing stuff. This is all blown glass.

    Mark Allcroft of the Dull Men’s Club (UK) posts: I reckon if the minute hand on a clock was extended to 106,731,951 miles, the tip of the hand would be traveling at the speed of light. (In a vacuum)

    Murray Atkinson: Sounds about right.

    David Votomov: How would you fit something that long in a vacuum? My Dyson even struggles to pick up matchsticks.

    David Thornton: At my old school, they had clocks that had a minute hand that only moved from one minute to the next. There wasn’t an in-between place it could point to. In theory, that minute hand on this clock would therefore break the speed of light…

    Jeff Mang: How would you know what time it is?

    Mark Allcroft: Stand well back.

    Murray Atkinson: Have numbers near the middle?

    Tony Moran: Please show us your “workings.”

    Mark Allcroft: speed of light = 670,616,629.3844 mph. So the second-hand will move 670,616,629.3844 miles in one revolution. So the circumference off the clock is 670,616,629.3844 miles. Divide by 2 pi to get the radius i.e the minute hand length.

    Tony Moran: Thank you. I concur.

    Ken Irvine: wait a mo… doesn’t time shift as you get closer to the speed of light? The tip of your minute hand would be getting ahead, then behind, then ahead… dependent upon your PoV

    Tony Moran then posted this:

    .

    In case you haven’t seen this, it’s from Roxane Gay’s op-ed piece in the NYT today:

    Mr. Trump’s voters are granted a level of care and coddling that defies credulity and that is afforded to no other voting bloc. Many of them believe the most ludicrous things: babies being aborted after birth and children going to school as one gender and returning home surgically altered as another gender even though these things simply do not happen. [OC note: Don’t forget the pet-eating Haitians!] Time and again, we hear the wild lies these voters believe and we act as if they are sharing the same reality as ours, as if they are making informed decisions about legitimate issues. We act as if they get to dictate the terms of political engagement on a foundation of fevered mendacity.

    We must refuse to participate in a mass delusion. We must refuse to accept that the ignorance on display is a congenital condition rather than a choice. All of us should refuse to pretend that any of this is normal and that these voters are just woefully misunderstood and that if only the Democrats addressed their economic anxiety, they might vote differently. While they are numerous, that does not make them right.

    These are adults, so let us treat them like adults. Let us acknowledge that they want to believe nonsense and conjecture. They want to believe anything that affirms their worldview. They want to celebrate a leader who allows them to nurture their basest beliefs about others. The biggest challenge of our lifetime will be figuring out how to combat the American willingness to embrace flagrant misinformation and bigotry.

    Georgie! Get that woman a Diet Shasta from the fridge!

    I watched the first half of the Jets game and then, mercifully, went on a shopping run to Costco and missed the rest. The Jets fell behind 13-0 and were unable to muster even a single first down until a little over 2 minutes remained in the half. But they scored at that point and so trailed only 13-7. Then, as the game was winding down, they kicked a field goal to go up 27-22. OK! They just had to keep the Colts from scoring a TD with about 2 min to go. They couldn’t. Indy went up 28-27 with 40 seconds left. OK, now they just needed to get close enough for a field goal. Again, couldn’t. Another home loss to a mediocre team. Record is 3-8 now.

    See you tomorrow!