The Wellington Files

  • Nina Gilbert Raised Her Hand

    I see the Phillies have the best record in baseball as of this morning, and that’s with their star SS Trea Turner injured. The Yankees sit atop the AL, just a smidge above the O’s. Our Gnats briefly surfaced above .500 about a week ago, but have slipped to 20-23 now and the lineup is looking pretty weak. Here’s manager Davey Martinez, after a good cry.

    This piece by Blake Ward is from tomorrow’s Met Diary.

    When the tenth anniversary of my move to NYC came around, I selected a Friday evening in June to celebrate with a barbecue at my Gowanus apartment.

    String lights swayed in the breeze. The coals glowed white hot in the grill. The popsicles were organized in the freezer.

    One thing was missing: a cooler for drinks.

    I walked to the nearby grocery store to pick up one of those inexpensive foam coolers that seem to be ubiquitous in the summer.

    But after a fruitless lap around the aisles and a series of head shakes from store workers, I felt defeated and turned toward the door.

    “Amigo!” a voice from the storeroom in back yelled.

    I walked over to find a young man grinning and gesturing toward some empty cardboard boxes. He quickly fortified one with some layers of discarded Styrofoam and added a big black trash bag as a liner.

    Together, we emptied some beer and two bags of ice into our new makeshift cooler, and I carried it proudly back to the party.

    The drinks stayed ice cold all night.

    Today’s puzzle headed right for the Dirty-Old-Man Department — our favorite! The clue at 1A was “Where you might shop for the sheer fun of it?” and when I saw it fit, I filled in VICTORIA’S SECRET right away. It led me to post this story on Rex’s blog:

    “My daughter just turned 38, kinehora, has five children of her own (all gorgeous), and is an excellent RN in oncology. But back when she was in her nursing program there were a few rough periods, to put it mildly. During one, the State of NJ, in its wisdom, took away her driver’s license. So I became her father/driver.

    “I got a call from her in school one day saying she forgot her notebook on her desk at home and really needed it, so could I drive it over? She gave me the classroom location and said I should just walk in through the door and she’d see me and come get it. I found the notebook, drove to the school, and located the classroom.

    “I opened the door and stepped in. The professor stopped talking, and about 25 exquisitely beautiful 19-year-old women all turned to look at me. I became a stammering Ralph Kramden: ‘Homina, homina, homina,’ I explained. Finally, my daughter (enjoying the scene enormously) rescued me by coming over and taking the notebook. I later described the experience as stepping into the VICTORIA’S SECRET catalog.”

    Phil! Get out of there! What the hell is wrong with you??

    One funny feature of the puzzle was at 3D the clue was “Nun’s habit?” and the answer was CELIBACY. So it had celibacy crossing Victoria’s Secret. Make up your mind!! Maybe the nun was reaffirming her commitment after a visit to the store, because the answer at 16A was I MEAN IT THIS TIME.

    In John McPhee’s piece in the New Yorker of 5/20/24, Tabula Rasa, he writes about a faux final exam he tortures his students with.

    O.K., I would say, this is your final exam. Everything rides on it. Write these twenty words and spell them correctly. Moccasin.

    I gave them plenty of time to wonder if there were two “c”s and two “s”s or one “c” and two “s”s or two “c”s and one “s.” Next?

    Asinine.

    Braggadocio.

    Rarefy, liquefy, pavilion, vermilion, impostor, accommodate. By now, they were flunking out. Years before I even started to teach, I had clipped the test from Esquire, where T. K. Brown III, compiler of the twenty words, wrote that “impostor” is the most misspelled word in the English language and “accommodate” is the word misspelled in the greatest variety of ways.

    Mayonnaise.

    Impresario.

    Supersede, desiccate, titillate, resuscitate, inoculate, rococo, consensus, sacrilegious, obbligato.

    Raise your hand if you spelled all twenty correctly.

    No hands.

    Nineteen?

    In 1975, Nina Gilbert raised her hand.

    Eighteen, seventeen, sixteen . . . Across the years, zero to very few hands would go up until the countdown got into the twelve-to-six range. After six, for humanitarian reasons, I stopped asking for hands. At Nina Gilbert’s level, in five decades, no one else would raise a hand.

    Nina Gilbert was a music major. She became an arranger and composer of choral music, ran education programs for the Boston Lyric Opera, and taught sequentially at Hamilton, Lafayette, U.C. Irvine, and the Webb Schools, in Claremont, California.

    Moccasins: two Cs, one S.

    Happy Birthday Tina Fey, born on this date in 1970 in Upper Darby PA. She’s been married to hubby Jeff Richmond for 23 years and they have two kids. He’s also in show biz. Tina can get pretty sexy. Love the stilettos, girl! Could she be hitting on Phil? Nah. I mean he’s cute. And he’s got that blind thing working for him. But, nah. Not Tina Fey. You might have better luck with that moccasin girl, Philly. Just sayin’.

    “I got into medicine because I have a passion for confirming people’s birthdays.”

    OK. I think that’s enough nonsense for today. Georgie — let’s post and then kick back and relax. How are we fixed for Diet Cokes? Do we have any without the caffeine? — it’s almost five.

  • The Chynna Syndrome

    To our Jewish readers: Do you feel the love? Have you ever felt it more? The House Republicans are falling all over themselves with love for us. Speaker Johnson travels all the way up from DC to save us from the anti-Semites at Columbia. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) was with him and a shouting match erupted at one point. “I love the Jews more!,” she shrieked. “No — I do! I love the Jews more!,” Johnson countered. Back in DC, Foxx’s committee (Education) sent a blistering warning to Harvard as well: “We love the Jews!,” it said. “Like, totally.”

    Johnson, of course, shares the views of Christian Nationalists, and Foxx is stridently anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ, pro-Trump, and on and on. She even voted against Hurricane Katrina aid. And Owl Chatter doesn’t recall them speaking up at the time of the Charlottesville “Jews will not replace us” rally. But that’s okay — all is forgiven. We love you too, Ginny and Mike! We love you!

    I thought a TANGRAM was what you get when you leave your grandmother out in the sun too long. But according to 40A today, it’s a seven-piece puzzle.

    It’s a “dissection” puzzle, meaning you dissect the puzzle pieces and use them to form other shapes. The tangram’s historical Chinese inventor is unknown except through the pen name Yang-cho-chu-shih (dim-witted recluse). (Not kidding.)

    Over 6500 different tangram problems have been created from 19th century texts alone, and the current number is ever-growing. Fu Traing Wang and Chuan-Chih Hsiung proved in 1942 that there are only thirteen convex tangram configurations (configurations with no recesses in the outline). Here they are:

    And here are some popular tangram configurations. That shark is not the shark from the Jaws discussion from yesterday.

    3D: “Pleated garment.” KILT.

    This semester, every now and then, on my walk between Penn Station in NY and the subway on Sixth Avenue, I pass by a man walking towards me wearing a kilt. He has a serious don’t-mess-with-me look on his face, and walks with great assurance. I take it as a good omen when I see him. The dictionary defines kilt as a knee-length skirt of pleated tartan cloth. It was traditionally worn by men, but is worn by women now too. Needless to say, Phil was eager to take on this assignment.

    Here are some lasses helping him out of some ditch he fell into. C’mon girls — put your backs into it!

    And what did you say to upset this one, Philly? Can’t you see she’s armed?

    Does she look like her mom? Or should I say her “MAMA?” This is Owen Elliot-Kugell, (Mama) Cass Elliot’s daughter.

    Cass and Michelle Phillips were in the puzzle today as MAMAS. Michelle, I am happy to see, is still among us, and will be turning 80 in a few weeks, kinehora. She has 3 children, including Chynna Phillips. Here’s Chynna with hubby William Baldwin. They have 3 kids too.

    I’m closing the shop now — that woman in the green kilt with the sword is scaring me. See you tomorrow.

  • Overcaffeinated Roosters

    I saw the movie Jaws by mistake. I thought I was going to see “Jews.” But I stayed anyway and it was pretty gripping. I bet you all remember that first girl that was eaten? The actress was Susan Backlinie and she’s finally dead for real, at the age of 77, from a different but no less deadly kind of attack — a heart attack.

    You may not have realized you saw her again, about ten years later, in a falling elevator in The Towering Inferno. As you can see in the first photo, above, she was fitted with a harness in the shark scene and tugged to shore by ten men on each side, giving the effect of being dragged by a shark. Spielberg called it one of the most dangerous stunts he ever filmed. It took three days to shoot. When Richard Dreyfuss saw how the scene turned out he told Susan he was absolutely terrified. The screams were actually Susan screaming but were recorded later. For authenticity, Spielberg poured water down her throat as she was screaming — what later was termed waterboarding in another context. (Not kidding.)

    Susan was a state freestyle swimming champion in high school. In her later years, she sometimes attended “Jawfests” and said many fans blamed her for their fear of swimming. The comment she heard most often, she said, was “You know you kept me out of the water.” Susan is not in the famous Jaws poster that has Susan’s character Chrissie swimming on the water’s surface while the huge shark looms below. It’s a different swimmer, from the book cover, a model named Allison Maher. Here’s Allison, with her little baby shark.

    Susan is survived by her husband, Harvey Swindall, who learned early in the marriage not to grab at her legs. “And no biting, sweetheart.”

    This poem is from today’s Writer’s Almanac. It’s called “Walking Distance,” and it’s by Connie Wanek.

    for Stanley Dentinger (1922-2004)

    Walking distance used to be much farther,
    miles and miles.

    Your grandfather, as a young man
    with a wife and new baby son,

    walked to and from
    his job, which was in the next town.

    That was Iowa, 1946,
    and it was not a hardship

    but “an opportunity,” which is youth speaking,
    and also a particular man

    of German descent, walking on good legs
    on white gravel roads,

    smoking cigarettes which were cheap
    though not free as they’d been

    during the war. Tobacco
    burned toward his fingers, but never

    reached them. The fire was small and personal,
    almost intimate, glowing bright

    when he put the cigarette to his lips
    and breathed through it.

    So many cigarettes before bombing runs
    and none had been his last,

    a great surprise. Sometimes he passed
    a farmer burning field grass in the spring,

    the smoldering line advancing toward the fence.
    He had to know what he was doing,

    so near the barn. You had to be close
    to see the way

    blades of dry grass passed the flame along
    at a truly individual level,

    very close to see how delicious a meal
    the field was to the fire

    on a damp, calm, almost English morning
    ideal for walking.

    In the puzzle today the clue at 67A was “Where to find a very wet sponge,” and the answer was REEF. Rex commented: “My theory is that things that live their entire lives under water are not, in fact, wet. You can only be wet on land. In the ocean, you just … are.”

    Hmmmmmm.

    The theme was very clever, IMO. It led to a nice “aha moment,” as the expression goes, when you finally grok it. (BTW, my good friend Miriam Webster assures me that grok is a legit word (a perfectly cromulent word): it means to understand profoundly and intuitively.) There was a series of starred clues for which the answers made no sense. E.g., Why is “Gone” SOME NERVE? And why is “Scoop received in a call” ICE CREAM?

    Well, the revealer appears at 63A: ALL FOR ONE. The expression “all for one and one for all” tells you you need to substitute “one” for “all” in the clues, and vicey-versey. So “gone” becomes “gall” and SOME NERVE makes sense then. And “scoop received in a call” becomes “scoop received in a cone” so ICE CREAM makes sense.

    Unrelated to the theme, at 37D the clue was “Head of lettuce?” and the answer was CFO (chief financial officer). You had to think of lettuce as the old slang term for money. And what was nice was the F from CFO intersected with the last letter of RED LEAF, which is a variety of real lettuce. The clue for RED LEAF was “Colorful variety of lettuce,” but Mr. Grumpypants felt the need to note: Red leaf lettuce is colorful in name only. It’s probably 95% green!!

    Hrummmmph!

    Another nice touch was at 48A “A notable Guinness” was ALEC, of course, and the clue at 6D was “Some Guinness records” which was FIRSTS.

    Jean Arp’s sculpture “Shirt Front and Fork” was cited as the clue for ARP. Here it is:

    At 45A the clue was “With every detail perfect,” and the answer was TOAT (to be read: TO A T). I wrote: If I were the constructor, I would bag TOAT. (No response yet, thank goodness.)

    One of the clues was “It gets the ball rolling.” It inspired the NYT, in its Wordplay column, to include this photo:

    Those are bowling pins made of ice from a summer festival in Tokyo.

    Speaking of getting eaten (above), do you know who said the following recently?

    “Has anyone ever seen “The Silence of the Lambs?” The late, great Hannibal Lecter. He’s a wonderful man. He oftentimes would have a friend for dinner. Remember the last scene? “Excuse me, I’m about to have a friend for dinner,” as this poor doctor walked by. “I’m about to have a friend for dinner.” But Hannibal Lecter. Congratulations. The late, great Hannibal Lecter.”

    That was Trump, at a rally in NJ. Frank Bruni cites it in his newsletter noting that Trump has been unusually unhinged of late, even by his own standards. For one thing, Bruni notes that Lector has not died in any of the novels he’s in. So why call him the “late” great Hannibal? Here’s JF from the film.

    From Bruni’s “For the love of sentences” feature:

    In The Atlantic, Tom Nichols wrote: “Democracies have always had conspiracy theorists and other cranks wandering about the public square, sneezing and coughing various forms of weirdness on their fellow citizens. But even in the recent past, most people with a basic level of education and a healthy dollop of common sense had no trouble resisting the contagion of idiocy.”

    In the NYT, J Wortham studied Brittney Griner’s technique and admired “the way she lifts the ball over the rim and into the net as gently as if she were returning a lost child to a parent.”

    And, last, my favorite: In The Arizona Republic, Ed Masley appraised a recent Rolling Stones concert and wrote that Mick Jagger’s physicality “invites you to imagine Mikhail Baryshnikov raised by a family of overcaffeinated roosters.”

    egs posted this today on Rex’s blog: “Wanna know how to feel young at age 70? Go to the Rolling Stones Hackney Diamonds tour sponsored by AARP! I was one of the younger of the 75,000 boomers watching Mick strut his stuff in Seattle last night. I mean, if you’re going to have AARP sponsor your tour, couldn’t you make it a series of matinees? We got home at 1:15 am! But Mick still puts on a great show. Go if you get a chance.”

    Dylan fans will recognize this photo from the album cover of “Bringing It All Back Home.”

    It was taken by one of Phil’s heroes, Daniel Kramer, who died late last month at the age of 91. It was shot in the living room of the home of Dylan’s manager, Albert Grossman, near Woodstock, NY. The woman in red is Sally Grossman, Albert’s wife. That’s a cat on Dylan’s lap, and Kramer explained that he took only ten shots that day and the one you see was chosen because it’s the only one with the cat looking at the lens. It earned Kramer a Grammy nomination. He also shot the cover of “Highway 61 Revisited.”

    Dylan had already released three albums before he caught Kramer’s attention. In February 1964 Kramer heard him singing “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” on the Steve Allen show and “was riveted by the power of the song’s message.”

    He harangued Grossman’s office for six months trying to arrange a photo shoot. Finally, Grossman himself took the call and said OK. A one-hour shoot turned into a five hour shoot, and for the next year Kramer was Dylan’s shadow. Photos began appearing in publications and Kramer eventually published one collection in 1967 and another in 2018, containing hundreds of shots.

    It was during this period that Dylan shocked the world by going electric at the Newport Folk Festival. As Kramer put it, “Bob didn’t really want to be Woody Guthrie. He wanted to be Elvis Presley.” Kramer said the significance of the Newport moment was overblown. He saw Dylan make the conversion months earlier at a photo shoot in the recording studio for “Bringing It All Back Home.”

    In October 1964, Dylan was slated to perform in Lincoln Center, and its management told Kramer he was restricted to a glass-enclosed balcony during the performance. Dylan told Grossman to let Lincoln Center know that if Kramer couldn’t go wherever he wanted to go, the concert was off.

    In late 1965, Kramer moved on from Dylan, not wanting to be limited. He continued to connect on an intimate level with luminaries. “I had a writing lesson from Norman Mailer, and boxing lessons from Frazier and Ali,” he told The Times.

    Kramer is survived by no immediate family members. He was married to his wife Arline for 48 years until her death in 2016. The last word on her lips was “Cheese.”

    Thanks for stopping by. See you tomorrow.

  • Foul, Out of Play

    Ever feel lucky? Maybe when looking for a parking spot? Throwing money out on a lottery ticket? Josh George said he used up all of the luck for his life on Monday at a Royals/Mariners game in Seattle. You hear about this?

    It was a normal-sized crowd for a Monday — 15,000 fans. And, in fact, George was packed in with quite a few others in his section down the left field line. Maybe there was some karma at play because the batter was also named Josh: Josh Rojas. Brady Singer was on the mound and there was nothing at all unusual at play when Rojas sent a foul ball sailing out to left. Josh George made a damn good play on it — reaching out, snaring it, and bringing it in to his chest. He was thrilled and held the ball up to show it off. Who wouldn’t?

    Singer was tossed a new ball and Rojas resettled himself into the batter’s box. He fouled the next pitch off too, also down the left field line, and OMG — pretty much to the same spot. George didn’t catch this one on the fly, but it hit his arm, and fell to the ground. He bent over and got it. Two foul balls on two consecutive pitches. Jesus F*cking Christ!

    According to a report by Josh Kirshenbaum for MLB.com — OMG — another Josh! — this is starting to freak me out — George was invited back to the stadium the next night where he arrived wearing the same teal Mariners jersey and navy Seattle Kraken cap that is apparently the luckiest outfit in the Pacific Northwest.

    Rojas autographed the two balls for him, and he was given the honor of throwing out the first pitch. Actually — the first two pitches! — how cool is that?

    Special thanks to Owl Chatter reader villawash for a correction to yesterday’s post. It originally went out stating that the Doc was holding a cicada — but it’s not a cicada! Not sure what it is? A butterfly? Here’s a cicada, on its upward climb:

    This poem is a little long, but what else are you going to do with your time? Seriously. It’s by Denise Duhamel and is called “I Have Slept in Many Places.” It’s the Poem of the Day from the Poetry Foundation.

    After Diane Seuss

    First in the womb, my own space capsule
    in my mother’s universe, my eyelids sticky with pre-birth,
    then the incubator and crib, which I didn’t recognize
    as a prison until years later when my sister stood inside it
    and I, rising from my first big-girl bed, unlatched her
    because she was hungry for breakfast. Then my grammy’s
    four-poster, kiddie sleeping bag, the hospital bed,
    where I was hoarse after I relinquished my tonsils. A mat
    during kindergarten naptime, the backseat of my mother’s car,
    another hospital bed with silver bars on the side
    where I wrote my first stories. The double bed I shared
    with my sister when our twins gave out. A college dorm
    mattress with another girl’s period stain, a damp study-abroad
    bed in Wales, Eurail seats where I could sleep overnight
    and save money on a hostel if I picked the right schedule.
    Hostel bunk beds with bathrooms down the hall. A friend’s
    waterbed, another friend’s bed on her father’s boat.
    Then my cousin’s hand-me-down mattress
    in my first apartment in Boston, a boyfriend’s bed
    in Revere, a bed of another boy hoping to make
    my Revere boyfriend jealous. Sublet beds,
    a bed in a furnished studio apartment in Tucson
    where there was no way of knowing who’d slept on it
    before me. Futon in the East Village right on the floor.
    Same futon on a used loft bed to suspend me above the mice.
    Then a lavender pullout Mary Richards couch.
    Vacation beds, hotel beds. More boyfriend beds
    in Brooklyn and Alphabet City. Hotel beds.
    Florida marital bed and another hospital bed—
    this time surgery. Divorce bed (same as marital bed
    with mattress flipped for good luck). Evacuation beds
    during hurricanes. My true-love’s bed with its magic
    mattress topper. I know I am forgetting so many places—
    subways, lounge chairs in the sand, Amtrak seats,
    movie theaters, hammocks, my niece’s college graduation
    (I had taken a Vicodin), conference beds, beds at colleges
    or hotels after I’d given poetry readings, emergency row
    plane seats, on my mother’s breast when I was an
    infant, in my father’s arms after a childhood asthma attack.
    My parents’ bed after their deaths. I’m heading
    for the hard coffin bed myself, my eyes sewn shut
    against insomnia. I’ve asked the undertaker
    to press glow-in-the-dark stars inside the lid.

    The puzzle today might have been neat if it were your birthday. The theme was Happy B-Day! There were four long answers with at least 3 Bs in them. The best was clued well with “Brewer’s implement.” Answer: BASEBALL BAT. But I hadn’t even noticed the best part — every single clue started with the letter B. It was impressive that the constructor could accomplish that in a way that did not call attention to itself. It would have been “cleaner” had there been no other Bs in the grid (other than the ones used for the theme), but there were several scattered about.

    Caitlin Clark scored 20 in her debut, but the team lost pretty badly, her shooting wasn’t crisp, and she had a lot of turnovers. Inauspicious, but so what? She’s great. It’ll work out.

    See you tomorrow.

  • Okay Boomer

    If I dug and dug — visited and revisited all of my usual haunts — I might come up with a better opening for today’s nonsense, but I doubt it. This is by Denise Levertov and is called “Animal Spirits.” It appeared in today’s Writer’s Almanac.

    When I was five and
    undifferentiated energy, animal spirits,
    pent-up desire for the unknown built in me
    a head of steam I had
    no other way to let off, I ran
    at top speed back and forth
    end to end of the drawingroom,
    bay to French window, shouting–
    roaring, really–slamming
    deliberately into the rosewood
    desk at one end, the shaken
    window-frames at the other, till the fit
    wore out or some grownup stopped me.

    But when I was six I found better means:
    on its merry gallows
    of dark-green wood my swing, new-built,
    awaited my pleasure, I rushed
    out to it, pulled the seat
    all the way back to get a good start, and
    vigorously pumped it up to the highest arc:
    my legs were oars, I was rowing a boat in air–
    and then, then from the furthest
    forward swing of the ropes

    I let go and flew!

    At large in the unsustaining air,
    flew clear over the lawn across
    the breadth of the garden
    and fell, Icarian, dazed,
    among hollyhocks, snapdragons, love-in-a-mist,
    and stood up uninjured, ready
    to swing and fly over and over.

    The need passed as I grew;
    the mind took over, devising
    paths for that force in me, and the body curled up,
    sedentary, glad to be quiet and read and read,
    save once in a while, when it demanded
    to leap about or to whirl–or later still
    to walk swiftly in wind and rain
    long and far and into the dusk,
    wanting some absolute, some exhaustion.

    Ever hear the cicadas when they’re really roaring/buzzing? It’s pretty impressive. They have spent over a decade underground. Then they bore through the soil and up to the treetops. What they do next — what you hear like vuvuzelas at a soccer match — is buzz for a mate. We’ve all been there. Some of us are still trying to get down from the tree. Don’t rush me!

    This dude may look like a rapper or break dancer (says my inner racist), but it’s Dr. Sammy Ramsey, an entomologist at U. of Colorado Boulder. He’s got something other than a cicada in his hand, valued at two of whatever it is in the bush, as the saying goes.

    According to the doc, there are seven species of periodical cicadas, called magicicada.  “There’s no other thing like this in the world. You can only experience this crazy, mass emergence of periodical cicadas in North America. So they earned a reputation for being magical.

    “We have a rather unusual occurrence this year: Two different broods are going to emerge at the same time.  Brood XIX emerges every 13 years and Brood XIII emerges every 17 years. They only sync up every 221 years.

    “Every emergence is an amazing feat of coordination. Then, once they are all out and in a tree, males will coordinate their mating calls with each other. They all fly to the same tree and coordinate this whirring sound. That sound isn’t ever a single cicada, or an uncoordinated patch of cicadas. That’s them all linking together and producing this amplified sound to sing to as many females as possible.

    The doc goes on to explain:

    “Cicadas wait until the evening to emerge from the ground. This is the most vulnerable stage of their entire life cycle, so they wait for dusk because squirrels and birds are less inclined to come after them.

    “Look for cicadas burrowing out of turrets in the ground. They’ll climb up the nearest vertical surface — the side of a house, trees, vehicle tires or anything else they can find. The backs of their exoskeletons will split open and out will crawl a squishy, white organism. It takes time for cicadas to harden, so they’ll just have to sit there for a while, barely able to move.

    “Eventually, they will gain the capacity to fly, and the males will sing. Their song will grow in intensity over about a week and a half as more cicadas come out of the ground, until it is a constant sound during the day. Look into the trees during this time and you might see cicadas darting back and forth. Those are the males, looking for a female who has snapped her wings to signal interest in mating. The hottest ones will be smoking a cigarette and wearing a tube top.

    “A little over a month after they show up, it’ll be over. By mid-July there’s usually not a periodical cicada to be found.”

    Hey — have you been missing Caitlin Clark heaving those threes up, or driving the lane? Me too. Well, her first pro game is tonight. We can catch her on ESPN2 at 7:30. Her Indiana Fever is playing the Connecticut Sun. Break a leg, CC!

    In today’s puzzle, 58A was “Wharton or Sloan, informally,” and the answer was BSCHOOL, for Business School, duh. We sent Phil out on an assignment to NYU, but it didn’t go too well. He got this one shot before security was called. At least he didn’t leave any equipment behind this time as he fled.

    “Okay Boomer?” was a cutesy clue at 19A for TNT. Are you familiar with the insult? I hope not. It’s what a millennial hurls at an old fogie (Boomer) dismissively.

    “You know, all that time buried in your phone isn’t doing you any good.”

    “Okay Boomer.”

    21D was new to me: “Traveling fashion sale featuring the work of a specific designer.” TRUNK SHOW. Wikipedia says a trunk show is an event in which vendors present merchandise directly to store personnel or customers at a retail location or other venue such as a hotel room. It may allow store personnel to preview merchandise before it’s available to the public. A particular designer may be present to add to the experience. The merchandise is often transported in a trunk — hence the name. They are popular in the bridal industry.

    The Onion featured this story today: A Day In The Life Of Rudy Giuliani

    After years of serving in some of the highest positions of the U.S. government, Rudy Giuliani has had an unprecedented fall from grace, forcing him to file for bankruptcy last year. Here’s an inside look at how the once-beloved NYC mayor now spends his days.

    • 9 a.m.: Top-up embalming fluid.
    • 11:46 a.m.: Reset pigeon traps.
    • 1 p.m.: Two-hour nap to digest stray cat he had for lunch.
    • 3:20 p.m.: Beg stranger at adjacent urinal to be his accountant.
    • 5:02 p.m.: Take “Which Sex And The City Character Are You?” quiz.
    • 6 p.m.: Dinner of whatever adhered to sole of loafer over course of day.
    • 7:43 p.m.: Scan family tree for potential fourth wife.
    • 9 p.m.: Lay out tomorrow’s barrel and suspenders.
    • 9:45 p.m. Have his sexual advances stopped by a hand to the forehead.
    • 10 p.m.: Desperately try old gate code at Gracie Mansion.

    At 25D, “Hum bug?” was BEE. It led Son Volt to share this song by Laura Cantrell with us. Exquisite.

    And here’s Laura. Nice shot Philly. Hauntingly beautiful.

    And, again.

    Hey, remember a short piece we wrote on Art Schallock, who pitched for the Yanks in the early 50s and just turned 100? He responded to my polite request for his autograph with two signed index cards. A little shakily, but not bad for 100. Thanks Art!

    See you tomorrow! Thanks for stopping by.

  • Job Opening

    Dave Barry defined “old person” as someone who remembers when there was no velcro. Well, it was on this day in 1958 that Velcro was patented by Georges de Mestral, an electrical engineer from Switzerland. The name comes from the French words velour (velvet) and crochet (hook).

    Mestral invented velcro after he took a walk through burdock and studied the burrs he removed from his clothing and from his dog under a microscope. It’s not clear how he got his dog under the microscope, but that’s not our concern. He found tiny hooks attached themselves to fabric or fur, and the rest is history.

    Here’s how Michelle Cottle’s Op-Ed piece starts today:

    “Americans like feeling as though they know their political leaders personally. And yet I think many of us now feel we know a little too much about Kristi Noem.

    “First, you definitely do not want the South Dakota governor to pet sit. Just, no.

    “Second, when it comes to reminiscing about meeting world leaders, Ms. Noem has a touch of George Santos about her.”

    Georgie! Free publicity! You’ve still got it, buddy!

    This is she, killing something else. Jeez Louise, girl, — give it a rest! Don’t go all Dexter on us!

    The puzzle was very neat today. The theme centered on the phrase that spanned the center of the grid: HOLE IN ONE SHOT. The first O was shaded to represent a golf tee, and the last O had a little flag in it to represent the hole. And a trail of Os running up and down the entire grid ran from the first one to the last one, representing the hole-in-one shot clanking around on a miniature golf course and rolling in. (A separate answer at 18A was MINIGOLF.)

    If you did the puzzle on the NYT App, when you finished, a little yellow animated golf ball popped off the tee and made its way via the Os into the hole. Adorable. Aside from the long path of Os, there were no other Os in the grid, a nice touch. See if you can follow the path of Os starting from the O in 33A and ending with the one in 35A. I’ll wait.

    William Mathews wrote this poem called “Iowa City to Boulder.” It appeared in today’s Writer’s Almanac.

    I take most of the drive by night.
    It’s cool and in the dark my lapsed
    inspection can’t be seen.
    I sing and make myself promises.

    By dawn on the high plains
    I’m driving tired and cagey.
    Red-winged blackbirds
    on the mileposts, like candle flames,
    flare their wings for balance
    in the blasts of truck wakes.

    The dust of not sleeping
    drifts in my mouth, and five or six
    miles slur by uncounted.
    I say I hate long-distance

    drives but I love them.
    The flat light stains the foothills
    pale and I speed up the canyon
    to sleep until the little lull
    the insects take at dusk before
    they say their names all night in the loud field.

    The ban in Nassau County preventing transgender women from participating in team sports as women was thrown out by Justice Francis Ricigliano of Nassau County Supreme Court. The ban had been imposed by the bigot Bruce Blakeman, the county executive who was found to have exceeded his authority.

    Phil refuses to photograph the schmuck. He suggested we go with a red-winged blackbird from the poem instead. Good idea.

    How do you feel about mutton chops? It was in the puzzle at 50A, well, one of them was, clued with “Cut of meat that lent its name to a facial hairstyle.” MUTTON CHOP. Rex was troubled that there was only one chop in the answer. The poor fellow will have to grow another, he pointed out. This guy grew a pair. Back away slowly Philly. He seems upset about something.

    Do you know the difference between a lamb chop and a mutton chop? Lamb chops are small cuts of meat from young sheep, typically between four months and a year old. Mutton chops, on the other hand, refers to meat from adult sheep at least a year old. And most sheep sold as mutton are well over two years.

    Egsforbreakfast shared this today:

    NEWS FLASH!!! The NYT is looking for a puzzle editor. Not the big one, but a nice job. Qualifications:
    •
    3+ years editing puzzles for publication
    •
    An appreciation for word games and puzzles
    •
    Basic experience with web production, and basic knowledge of web tools and interfaces
    •
    Basic knowledge of journalism ethics and standards

    Responsibilities
    •
    You will report to the Editorial Director and are responsible for editing and creating and quality puzzles for New York Times Games
    •
    Duties may include working on the New York Times Crossword or a new beta game
    The pay is $100,000.

    Commenter Gary replied:

    I would like to apply for that job. Here are my qualifications:

    1. I am very good at complaining about puzzles.

    2. I have been writing “uniclues” now for almost two years and only about 1000 people have complained about them.

    3. I own a computer and I think it connects to something called an internet.

    4. I work well with others as long as they agree with me.

    Oy. Tired. See you tomorrow.

  • Playing Catch

    In the puzzle today, at 31A “Metal ring that holds a pencil’s eraser” was FERRULE. How’s that for obscure? Why in the world would there be a word for that? Well, it’s not just the thingie holding an eraser on a pencil — it’s any “ring or cap, typically a metal one, which strengthens the end of a handle, stick, or tube and prevents it from splitting or wearing.” OK.

    Guess what? It’s a different word if you lose one of the Rs. “Ferule” means a flat piece of wood, like a ruler, used to punish children. Ouch!

    Al Oerter was in the puzzle today at 97D: “Discus thrower in the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame.” I knew the name. He was the first to win gold in the same individual event in four straight Olympics: ’56, ’60, ’64, and ’68. Carl Lewis and Michael Phelps did the same years later. Oerter was from Astoria, Queens, NYC. (Hi Bob and Justine!) He threw college discus at U. Kansas.

    In the 1960 Olympics, Oerter outthrew his teammate who held the world record at the time, and had perhaps the greatest name in the history of Olympic sports: Rink Babka. Rink was from Cheyenne, WY.

    As a child, Oerter frequently traveled to his grandparents’ in Manhattan and admired their art collection. As a retired athlete, he became an abstract painter. For his “Impact” series, Oerter would lay a puddle of paint on a tarp, and fling a discus into it to create splashing lines on a canvas positioned in front of the tarp. If the discus landed painted-face up, Oerter would sign it and give it to whomever purchased the painting. He founded the Art of the Olympians organization, supporting the work of Olympians in the arts.

    He was humble and funny. He said: “I don’t think the discus will ever attract any interest until they let us start throwing them at one another.”

    Oerter suffered from heart disease. When he was advised to seek a transplant he refused, saying  “I’ve had an interesting life, and I’m going out with what I have.” He passed away on October 1, 2007, in Fort Myers, FL, at the age of 71. He was survived by his wife and two daughters, long-shots all.

    This painting, not from his Impact series, is called Red Chair. You can see his signature in the corner.

    It was good to see you in the puzzle, Al. Rest in peace.

    This poem, from today’s Writer’s Almanac is called “I Ask My Mother To Sing,” and is by Li-Young Lee.

    She begins, and my grandmother joins her.
    Mother and daughter sing like young girls.
    If my father were alive, he would play
    his accordion and sway like a boat.

    I’ve never been in Peking, or the Summer Palace,
    nor stood on the great Stone Boat to watch
    the rain begin on Kuen Ming Lake, the picnickers
    running away in the grass.

    But I love to hear it sung;
    how the waterlilies fill with rain until
    they overturn, spilling water into water,
    then rock back, and fill with more.

    Both women have begun to cry.
    But neither stops her song.

    At 108D, I learned a new word. The clue was “Polemology is the study of them” and the answer was WARS. Working off of the W, at 108A, the clue was “Picture book with characters like Odlaw, Wizard Whitebeard and Woof” and the answer was WHERE’S WALDO. Here’s Rex: “Characters? Don’t you just find the stupid stripe-shirt / ski-hat guy in a crowd? Is there really drama? A narrative arc? ‘Characters’ implies such things. I had no idea.” He also confessed to not knowing “polemology,” for a while oddly thinking the answer was TARS. But he knew that had to be wrong, because it would have made the across answer THERE’S WALDO, which he noted would have made a hell of a sequel. (Ha!)

    Speaking of obscure: the clue at 42D was: “______O’Malley Dillon of the Biden White House,” and the answer was JEN. Gimme a break. Here’s a nice tune though.

    This Tiny Love Story was in the NYT today. It’s by Rebecca Gaghen Veron.

    I was 41, single and no longer looking. Rushing back to work from lunch, I was climbing the Metro stairs when a briefcase brushed against my leg. A tall man in a Barbour jacket excused himself — a rarity in Paris — and smiled, revealing his dimples. We entered the same Metro car, and five stops later, both exited. “Madame, if you do not stop following me, I will call the police,” he said, as we waited to cross the street. His dimples reappeared, and soon after, I was no longer single.

    The following is from a piece in the Times today by Jessica Shattuck.

    I have never played on an athletic team. As a child, I was not fast or coordinated or interested in anything that involved chasing, catching or otherwise playing ball.  But in the long, cold and gloomy spring of 2020, I found myself the mother of an 8-year-old son who wanted nothing more than to play ball. This was the heart of early Covid; there were no organized sports, no activities, no babysitting, no school. 

    Will was an excellent coach: He broke the actions of catching and throwing down into a series of discrete steps: Crook your elbow just so, put your weight into the throw, follow through after release. We fell into a rhythm and played for hours on our dead-end street.

    We also weren’t talking. I am a writer who loves putting things into words, but Will doesn’t always love my questions or my boring mom-talk gambits. Here our closeness was measured in tosses, not words. Best of all, by the simple necessity of keeping the ball in the air, we were both fully present.

    Our game, miraculously, continued even after lockdowns were lifted. I still love the satisfying smack of the ball into the mitt, the almost magical feeling of stopping it midair. I like the thrill of reaching some number of consecutive catches, the singular focus of our combined concentration. Most of all I love spending the time, outside, with my son.

    Will is 12 now, and on a travel baseball team. We have reversed roles: Now I’m the one asking him to get up off the couch and play.

    Parenthood is so full of letting go — not just of children turning into young adults and leaving home, but of so many little selves along the path to adulthood. The smiley, round-cheeked toddler becomes the shy 7-year-old; the thoughtful, shaggy-haired kindergartner becomes the clean-cut fifth grader. Sometimes the urge to hold on feels almost frantic. The only way to pin time down is to remember: this moment, this boy, this place. Ritual and repetition.

    When we first started playing, we would begin a few feet apart and with every completed catch take a step back, expanding the distance between us. Now when we play, I’m all the way up by the neighbor’s pine tree, and Will is down by the mailbox. He is almost a foot taller than he was at the start. Even if it’s been a while, the muscle memory kicks in: Catch, draw your arm back, crook your elbow, let go.

    Phil was sober just long enough to snap this Mother’s Day shot for us before keeling over. A young mom and her daughter in the traditional garb of Ukraine. Hang on tight, Mom.

    See you tomorrow!

  • Goat Yoga

    I’m wearing my classic Brooklyn Dodgers cap today. The Dodger blue offsets my bright fire-red shirt nicely. I grew up within earshot of Ebbets Field for the last few seasons the Dodgers played there. I could hear the shouts of fans from the back porch of my house. But I never got to a game at Ebbets. The first game I went to was at Yankee Stadium a few years after the Dodgers left Brooklyn. I saw some games at the Polo Grounds, but those were Mets games before Shea Stadium was ready for them. The Giants were long gone for SF by then. Anyway, like Moses, who got to see The Promised Land but was not able to enter it, I was able to hear the shouts from Ebbets Field but never walked through its gates.

    This story from tomorrow’s Met Diary is by Linda Cahill.

    Overjoyed at seeing a fantastic play on Broadway, I exited the crowded theater and headed for the curb.

    As I stood there waiting for my husband to pick me up, I felt a gentle tug on my sleeve. I turned to see a small, older woman standing next to me and smiling.

    “Are you crossing the street?” she asked. “Will you take me with you?”

    “Oh, no,” I said, laughing. “You don’t want me to help you. I’m legally blind.”

    She replied that she could see but was terribly afraid of falling. If I held onto her as we crossed so she could get her bus, she would watch the traffic for both of us.

    I hesitated but agreed, and clinging to each other, we crossed the street successfully.

    My husband drove up and was surprised to see me on the other side.

    At 33D today the clue was “Fitness class often put on by a farm.” You hear about this? It’s GOAT YOGA. I thought G.O.A.T. must stand for something, like it sometimes does. But it doesn’t. This is yoga that is done amidst goats. You heard me.

    “Goat yoga classes typically take place in a farm or outdoor setting, allowing participants to connect with nature while practicing yoga. The session starts with an introduction to the goats, where participants have the opportunity to meet, pet, and bond with them. This initial interaction helps create a relaxed and joyful atmosphere.

    “Once the yoga practice begins, the goats freely roam around the participants, sometimes even joining them on their mats. While the goats may climb on participants or nudge them playfully, their presence is meant to bring laughter and joy rather than distract from the yoga practice. The goats’ unpredictable behavior adds an element of surprise and excitement to the session, making it a truly unique and memorable experience.”

    A commenter named Gaius Maximus wrote: Now that I know that goat yoga is a thing that exists, the world seems like a slightly worse place than it did when I got up this morning.

    Well, thank you, Mr. Grumpypants!

    Way up there at 1D, this was a great clue: “‘No, you’re the one getting worked up!’” The answer was I’M CALM. I remember seeing Forum on Broadway with my mom. Zero Mostel was out that day, so Dick Shawn took over. Didn’t matter – we had a blast.

    I couldn’t get 15A for the longest time: “Asked for the fish, say.” I knew it started with M and ended with ED. It was MEOWED. Of course.

    And 33A was terrific: “Was treated unfairly, informally.” Answer: GOT THE SHAFT.

    And 6D: “Gross home?” NPR (Think Terry Gross.) Ever wonder what she looks like? The face that goes with the voice?

    Phil! C’mon – really. Cut it out!

    That’s better.

    OK — let’s close with a bang. At 43D, “Rocks” was FISTS. What? You know, from rock, scissors, paper. That’s your cue Mick!

    See you tomorrow!

  • A Pina Colada at Trader Vic’s

    So my doctor says I shouldn’t swim in the ocean. He’s worried about harpoons.

    Ba da boom.

    But, yikes, I just learned how deadly the seas are for whales — and that’s without us even trying to kill them. A cruise ship docked in Brooklyn last week with a 50,000 pound endangered sei whale pinned to its bow, dead. It was a 44-foot adult female (and kinda cute, according to our panel of male whales). She was well-fed and healthy, so a collision with the ship was the cause of death.

    According to the Atlantic Marine Conservation Society, 30 large whales met this same fate last year, just along the NY/NJ coastlines. And worldwide the loss of whales runs (swims?) to 20,000 annually. WTF!! In this particular instance, in its defense, the operator of the ship, MSC Cruises, said the company has protocols to avoid crashing into whales. Deck officers receive training on protecting marine life and the company sometimes alters its itineraries to avoid areas where whales have been spotted.

    Good! And it should help that they are kind of big, no?

    Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-NJ) is seeking to tighten enforcement of ship speed restrictions in the NY/NJ ports. While white-bellied sei whales usually live far off shore, climate change has brought more whales closer to shore.  Here’s one now! Wow — what are the odds?

    How’s that for a cheery opening?

    Well, I’ve blubbered on long enough.

    So whadya think? Will the lady of the hour alter the course of history? Somebody has to or we’re f*cked up the kazoo. Here’s a nice shot Phil copped for us of SD with her daughter.

    “Any other weaknesses?”

    At 41D today, the clue was “Italian seaport that’s home to Miramare Castle,” and many of us did not know TRIESTE, in part because it “looks” French, not Italian. But commenter Steve shared this, putting us to shame: On March 5, 1946, Sir Winston Churchill delivered “Sinews of Peace,” a message heard round the world that went down in history as the “Iron Curtain Speech.” “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an “iron curtain” has descended across the continent.

    At 12D, “Snowdrops, for spring” was EARLY SIGN. They are flowering bulbs. Also known as Galanthus. Here you go. Thanks Phil!

    Even better — commenter Andy shared this: Tchaikovsky wrote a set of 12 piano pieces, one for each month of the year. The April piece is called “Snowdrop.” 

    Did you know that “Lie, in slang” is CAP? That was news to me. It means “to lie (duh), set up a false front, bullshit.” It’s from hip-hop as far back as the 80s and often appears as “no cap,” meaning, no lie or it’s true. Here’s Rex on it (he’s an English prof): I am quite certain that CAP will have put nails in more than a few solvers’ tires today. Hard, hard generational divide there. I forget where I (recently) learned that meaning of “(No) CAP,” but I know that after I learned it, I marched into class and asked my students if they knew the term, and yeah, they all knew it (and laughed at me, I presume affectionately).  [OC note: I ran it by Lianna too. She knew it.]

    8D generated a great back-and-forth. The clue was “Who soliloquizes ‘The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run.’” The answer is AHAB, you know, from Moby Dick (see whale discussion, above). It set Rex off, as follows:

    “My only other significant gripe with this puzzle is the clue on AHAB (8D: Who soliloquizes ‘The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run’), specifically the use of the term ‘soliloquizes.’ I know you want to misdirect people, it’s fun, etc., but that is a term for drama. ‘Hey, remember that famous AHAB soliloquy?’ No, you absolutely do not, because there’s no such thing. Hamlet has soliloquies, Macbeth has soliloquies, and almost certainly IAGO has soliloquies, which is what I (and, please tell me, many of you?) put in there at first. That quotation sounds very poetic, Shakespearean, even, and if you’d told me IAGO’s soul was grooved to run on iron rails, I’d’ve said ‘yes’ (and also ‘why are you talking like that?’). I love good misdirects, but that was a cheap one.”

    But commenter Joe Dipinto laid waste (IMO) to Rex’s stance (albeit with quotes from Cliff Notes and SparkNotes):

    Note that this chapter (37) has stage directions at the beginning and in the middle. From now through Chapter 40, the novel will take on the style of a play. The novel shifts into first-person narration from Captain Ahab himself. Since the novel is temporarily turning into a play anyway, you can think of it as a soliloquy, a dramatic monologue laying out the internal reflections of a character.
    — from SparkNotes

    and —

    In these chapters [37-40], Melville continues to present dramatic scenes, using brief stage directions, soliloquy, and dialogue.
    — from CliffsNotes

    Anony-mouse tossed this in:

    i think soliloquy was fine. so does merriam webster
    https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/soliloquy

    1 the act of talking to oneself
    2 a poem, discourse, or utterance of a character in a drama that has the form of a monologue or gives the illusion of being a series of unspoken reflections

    I loved 1A: “Pop of color for an interior designer.” Answer: ACCENT WALL. Neat, right?

    7D was well-liked: “One who can’t handle their moonshine well?” Answer: WEREWOLF. 34A was strong too: “Evidence of a past personal connection?” Answer: NAVEL. (Get it?)

    Son Volt treated us to the Jerry Garcia Band’s version of the appropriate song. but I like how Elle and Toni treat it:

    And how about “Verklempt” at 24A as a clue for TEARY? Gotta love it.

    So Linda and I drove out to Sellersville PA last night to hear Alasdair Fraser and Natalie Haas perform. Incredible traffic doubled the drive time to 3 hours, but we built in enough of a cushion, so it worked out. A tractor-trailer turned over on Route 78, nailing 4 cars and shutting down all three lanes for hours. Yikes! We drove through a lot of nice local areas. Traffic was still backed up as we sped past it in the other direction 6 hours later!

    The show was terrific: they were at the top of their game. They saved Josefin’s Waltz, featured on Owl Chatter recently, for their encore. At the end, Alasdair said, let’s all dance our way out of the theater and into the streets and stop traffic and go on all night. Then he said, Or maybe just lock down the place and play in here all night. Alas, it wasn’t to be. The average age of the audience looked to be about 85, so we were all pretty tired as it is. But I had mentioned Alasdair in a comment on Rex’s blog relating to a puzzle clue for “fiddleheads” and this morning I found this response:

    “I love Alasdair Fraser. Saw him (and his ‘anarchist’ – I think that’s what he called them – band of fiddlers) at the SF Opera House once where he never really ‘ended’ the concert. Just continued playing as he & his band walked off the stage, up the aisles, and out onto the sidewalk where they continued to play for another half hour or so.”

    Here’s a nice reel to send us off tonight. Thanks for stopping by!

  • Dick Rutan Runs Out Of Gas

    Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis is on display at the National Air and Space Museum in DC along with the Wright brothers’ Flyer. And a third plane there is the Voyager, in which Dick Rutan, along with Jeana Yeager, made their historic flight around the world without refueling in 1986. Rutan died on Friday, at age 85, in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.

    The flight took nine days to complete. This is what Trip Gabriel wrote in Rutan’s obit in today’s NYT: “Putt-putting at low altitudes, taking catnaps to steal sleep, nearly slamming into a mountain in Africa and almost ditching in the Pacific Ocean, the Voyager and its crew limped home on fumes from empty fuel tanks two days before Christmas.”

    Jeana is not related to Chuck Yeager, and a background story is that Rutan and Yeager were on very bad terms by the time they made their flight together. Just last year, Rutan, recounting their feat, stated that after they landed, Jeana “got out of the airplane and went back to Texas, and I’ve never heard from her again.” Ouch.

    Dick Rutan’s brother Burt designed the ultralightweight plane, first sketching it on a napkin in a Chinese restaurant in Mojave, CA. The advent of new material made it possible. The success of the historic flight revolutionized the airline industry, leading directly to today’s wide-bodied 787s and Airbus 350s.

    Dick’s brother said that when Dick was born he didn’t have a birth certificate — he had a flight plan. He earned a pilot’s license at 16 and joined the Air Force at 19. He flew 325 combat missions in Vietnam, earning the Silver Star, Purple Heart, and five Distinguished Flying Crosses. He is survived by his wife Kris, his brother, sister, and two daughters. His sister Nell, a retired flight attendant, flew more miles than either of her brothers.

    While being interviewed by the LA Times in 2001, Rutan rolled up the sleeve of his flight suit and rubbed the arm he used to control planes. “See this right here?” he said. “This is the velvet arm. It is without equal in the universe.”

    Rest in peace, Commander.

    This poem by Suji Kwock Kim is from The Poetry Foundation. It’s called “Montage with Neon, Bok Choi, Gasoline, Lovers & Strangers.”

    None of the streets here has a name,
    but if I’m lost
    tonight I’m happy to be lost.

    Ten million lanterns light the Seoul avenues
    for Buddha’s Birthday,
    ten million red blue green silver gold moons

    burning far as the eye can see in every direction
    & beyond,
    “one for every spirit,”
    voltage sizzling socket to socket
    as thought does,
    firing & firing the soul.

    Lashed by wind, flying up like helium balloons
    or hanging still
    depending on weather,

    they turn each road into an earthly River of Heaven
    doubling & reversing
    the river above,

    though not made of much:
    some colored paper, glue, a few wires,
    a constellation of poor facts.

    I can’t help feeling giddy.
    I’m drunk on neon, drunk on air,
    drunk on seeing what was made
    almost from nothing: if anything’s here at all
    it was built
    out of ash, out of the skull-rubble of war,

    the city rising brick by brick
    like a shared dream,
    every bridge & pylon & girder & spar a miracle,

    when half a century ago
    there was nothing
    but shrapnel, broken mortar-casings, corpses,

    the War Memorial in Itaewon counting
    More than 3 Million Dead, or Missing—
    still missed by the living, still loved beyond reason,

    monument to the fact
    that no one can hurt you, no one kill you
    like your own people.

    I’ll never understand it.
    I wonder about others I see on the sidewalks,
    each soul fathomless—

    strikers & scabs walking through Kwanghwamoon,
    or “Gate of Transformation by Light,”
    riot police rapping nightsticks against plexiglass-shields,

    hawkers haggling over cell phones or silk shirts,
    shaking dirt from chamae & bok choi,
    chanting price after price,

    fishermen cleaning tubs of cuttlefish & squid,
    stripping copper carp,
    lifting eels or green turtles dripping from tanks,

    Hanyak peddlars calling out names of cures
    for sickness or love—
    crushed bees, snake bile, ground deer antler, chrysanthemum root,

    bus drivers hurtling past in a blast of diesel-fumes,
    lovers so tender with each other
    I hold my breath,

    dispatchers shouting the names of stations,
    the grocer who calls me “daughter” because I look like her,
    for she has long since left home,

    vendors setting up pojangmachas
    to cook charred silkworms, broiled sparrows,
    frying sesame-leaves & mung-bean pancakes,

    men with hair the color of scallion root
    playing paduk, or GO,
    old enough to have stolen overcoats & shoes from corpses,

    whose spirits could not be broken,
    whose every breath seems to say:
    after things turned to their worst, we began again,

    but may you never go through what we went through,
    may you never see what we saw,
    may you never remember & may you never forget.

    There’s a story about baseball autographs in the NYT Styles section today, not Sports. It’s about ballplayers seeking autographs from each other — typically, from the current stars. A clubhouse attendant may be drafted to make a request of a visiting team member. Rookies are hesitant to bother big stars. Graciously, when Derek Jeter entered his final season with the Yankees, he let it be known that he’d be happy to sign for any major league player, i.e., rookies needn’t be shy. Conversely, pitcher Zack Greinke is known to be a big Mr. Grumpypants about it.

    Did you know Derek and his beautiful wife Hannah have three daughters? Good luck when they are all teenagers at the same time, Captain.

    Steve Albini passed away on Tuesday in Chicago. He was only 61. Steve was a very well-respected musician, producer, audio engineer, and journalist. He was critical of the music industry, arguing that it exploited and stylistically homogenized artists. He refused to take royalties from artists he worked with, arguing that it was unethical. He credits his career in music to hearing the Ramones’ first album when he was 14 or 15. One of his bands was Big Black. Here’s one of their tunes. Turn it up, and give it a minute to get going.

    Rest in peace, Steve.

    Headline in The Onion: Trump Drapes Jacket Over Head So Nobody Can Tell He’s Sleeping In Court

    The puzzle was pretty crafty today. It used roman numerals as words. For example, at 30A, the clue was “‘Everything will be fine,’ in old Rome?” and the answer was DONIIRRYABOUTIT. If you replace II with TWO, it becomes DON'[T WO]RRY ABOUT IT.

    For “Do a judge’s job,” the answer was WVIIIHEEVIDENCE. Replacing the VIII with EIGHT gives you W[EIGH T]HE EVIDENCE.

    At 51D, the clue was “Like the smell of a pub:” BEERY. Some would have preferred Noah BEERY, Jr., the dad from the Rockford Files.

    Thanks for popping in. See you tomorrow!