The Wellington Files

  • Tay!

    Word of Taylor’s selection as Time Mag’s Person of the Year yesterday even reached me under my rock, thanks to an excited email from OC reader River Road Norrie (Hi Nor!). There are three versions of the cover on sale, none of which does her justice, in our view. Tay’s cat Benjamin Button shares the spotlight with The “Purr”son of the Year on this one. (She has two other cats: Meredith Grey, named after the character from Grey’s Anatomy; and Olivia Benson, also named after a TV character (from Law & Order: SVU.)

    The obvious question is, how does boyfriend Travis Kelce feel about cats? Well, we know he’s a dog lover — he has two. And we know his first pets, when he and his bro were little boys, were cats. So that might lead us to conclude he’s pro-cat too. But an old tweet surfaced in which he said cats “creep him out.” Hmmmm. Owl Chatter’s view? Take a look at her again. The man is all in on cats, believe me.

    Owl Chatter got through to Swift the moment her selection became known. She was very emotional. She has still not gotten over losing “her Yev” (Yevgeni Pregozhin, the Russian mercenary and caterer with whom she grew very close last year). “I know, in time, I will be okay,” she told OC. “Yev kept telling me to be strong ‘like Russian bear.’ But it’s very hard. It hurts that I can’t share this with him.”

    Swift keeps this family shot with her whenever she travels and stays in close touch with his widow Lyubov, whose strength is an inspiration to her.

    In addition to their beautiful daughter Polina, above, left, the Pregozhins had a son, Pavel. Taylor tells us the t-shirt Yev is wearing, above, was a Chanukah gift from her last year. (Yev was Jewish.) He made Phil wait for the shot so he could throw it on.

    Owl Chatter couldn’t be more pleased with the fast start our new staff member, former Congressman George Santos, has gotten off to. He’s a delight to have around the office. Very sharp dresser — unlike Phil and the rest of us. (Sorry Philly, just calling ’em as we see ’em. Maybe you can take some tips from the young man.)

    George has been busy on the website Cameo, selling cameo videos of himself to customers. He started charging $75 a pop, but it skyrocketed and his fee is up to $400 at last report. Senator Fetterman (D-PA) ordered one (for $350) to send to ethically-challenged Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ). In it, Santos is telling Menendez to stay strong and not let the haters get him down. Fetterman took some sh*t for spending money on Santos, but waved it off. “Get over it,” he said. Meanwhile, the website says Santos has already earned more from the site than his full-year’s salary in Congress ($174,000).

    Needless to say, having GS on the staff is not hurting our coffers either. The minifridge is bulging with diet soda — and not the cheap store brand either! (Burp!) Thanks Georgie!

    Here he is, outside our offices on his first day.

    “There has to be another way.”

    Yikes! I don’t know what to make of this post from late yesterday regarding yesterday’s puzzle with the double-H grid and all the double-H theme answers. It’s by ghostoflectricity:

    “I haven’t done today’s crossword and may not do it, for the first time in well over 40 years. HH? Really? The code term, also rendered as “88,” for antisemitism, white supremacism, and neo-Nazism (it is generally taken to be an abbreviation for “Heil Hitler”). Once again, the NYT, notoriously slow to call out antisemitism and the murder done in its name (see its thoroughly dishonorable coverage of the Holocaust as it was actually unfolding back in the ’30s and ’40s, deliberately minimizing what was happening), through its clueless and despicable puzzles editor Will Shortz, publishes a puzzle that is a PAEAN to a movement already on the rise for years. What’s the matter, NYT, not enough antisemitism in the nation for you already???”

    The following is from the ADL (Anti-Defamation League):

    “88 is a white supremacist numerical code for “Heil Hitler.” H is the eighth letter of the alphabet, so 88 = HH = Heil Hitler. One of the most common white supremacist symbols, 88 is used throughout the entire white supremacist movement, not just neo-Nazis. One can find it as a tattoo or graphic symbol; as part of the name of a group, publication or website; or as part of a screenname or e-mail address. It is even sometimes used as a greeting or sign-off (particularly in messages on social networking websites).”

    But then the ADL goes on to say:

    “It should be noted that 88 can be found in non-extremist contexts. The number is used by ham radio operators to mean ‘hugs’ or ‘hugs and kisses.’ Also, a number of NASCAR drivers, including several very well-known ones, have used the number 88, resulting in various automobile stickers and other forms of merchandise sporting that number.”

    Wikipedia also states: “Neo-Nazis use the number 88 as an abbreviation for the Nazi salute Heil Hitler. The letter H is eighth in the alphabet, whereby 88 becomes HH.”

    And get this — “The number is banned on Austrian license plates due to its association with ‘Heil Hitler [and] where H comes in the alphabet.’ In June 2023, the Italian Football Federation (FIGC) and the Italian government announced that the number 88 would be banned from use in Italian association football, as part of a joint initiative to combat antisemitism. This followed an incident in March of that year in which a Lazio supporter wore a club shirt bearing the name ‘Hitlerson’ and the number 88, which led to the supporter receiving a lifetime ban from attending Lazio matches.”

    But there doesn’t seem to be any follow-up from the commentariat today, or any mention in the media that I could find. Seems like the issue is not being picked up. I googled “hate symbol NYT puzzle” and nothing came up for yesterday’s XW.

    NYC papers have started crowing “It’s a JUAN-derful life,” ever since the trade went down bringing ex-Gnat slugger Juan Soto to the Bronx. Soto was a central figure on the DC squad that won the 2019 World Series and is widely considered one of the best hitters in the game. He’s also a sweetheart — hard not to love. I recall a post-game interview after he stroked a game-winning hit on a 3-0 count. “Was there any thought of taking that 3-0 pitch?” Soto was asked. “Hell No!,” he exclaimed.

    For all of his accomplishments, he’s still only 25. In the 2019 Championship drive with the Gnats, he won the Babe Ruth Award for the best performance in the post-season. In 2020, he won the NL batting title with a gaudy .351 average. He won the Silver Slugger Award four times (best offensive player at his position), and is a three-time All-Star.

    Juan is Dominican and has never been married. He has an older sister and a younger brother, Elian, who is 17 and plays 3B/OF in the Gnats minor league system. His dad, Juan, Sr., is a salesman and played ball for a local men’s team. He pushed Juan to focus on baseball. Good move.

    My Yankee fanhood has waned in recent years. But I’m back now. Play ball!

    Wow, Bridget Ziegler is hot!! But let’s all stay calm and get the story out.

    Well, first of all Bridget is your basic right-wing monster eager to sacrifice innocent children’s lives for cheap political gain via the anti-gay, anti-trans agenda. A member of the Sarasota County (FL) school board, she is a prominent supporter of the “Don’t Say Gay” law. How prominent? Sh*t — she stood behind DeSantis when he signed it. She co-founded the right-wing Monsters for Liberty — sorry, I mean Moms for Liberty (but is no longer an officer), and often posts against trans rights. In one post she wore a t-shirt that said: “Real Women Aren’t Men.” As clever and nuanced as that is, it hasn’t caught on as a rallying cry.

    But now it emerges she has admitted to having sex with a woman. Wait — isn’t that gay sex? Hmmmmm. And that’s nothing compared to what hubby Christian is being charged with — yikes! Rape! And he’s the Chairman of the Florida GOP. Let’s go back a bit — it’s a bit of a tale.

    So, Bridget confirmed to the cops that she and her husband Christian had 3-way sex with a woman over a year ago. A repeat performance was scheduled for October 2nd, but Bridget couldn’t make it. Apparently, Bridget was the main draw for the woman (can you blame her?), so when she learned it would just be Christian and her, she bailed. Christian went anyway (uninvited) and raped her. He says it was consensual. He also says he filmed the encounter, which certainly got everyone’s hopes up, but the video has not been found. Rats!

    Everyone in the Florida GOP, from DeSantis on down, is calling for Christian to resign, but he’s refusing. (Gotta love it!) Someone should pay for our man George to send a Cameo video urging him to stay strong. And Bridget is being urged to quit the school board. Hang in there, girl!

    Here’s how local news covered it:

    Tough it out, Zieglers! — we need more like you in public service.

    “You’re turning into your mother.”

    See you tomorrow! Happy Chanukah!

  • Let’s Get the H Out of Here

    The theme of the puzzle yesterday was “OUT OF” SORTS, meaning different two-word combinations where both words go with the words “out of.” For example, FASHION LINE. “Out of fashion,” and “out of line” both work. Or PRINT ORDER. “Out of print,” and “out of order” both work. Remember “out of order” in Pacino’s great scene?

    Out of order!?
    I’ll show you out of order.
    You don’t know what out of order is, Mr. Trask.
    I’d show you, but I’m too old. I’m too tired. I’m too fucking blind.
    If I were the man I was five years ago, I’d take a flame-thrower to this place! (Slams cane on table.)

    Out of order? — who the hell do you think you’re talking to?
    I’ve been around, you know?
    There was a time I could see — and I have seen.
    Boys like these — younger than these — with their arms torn out, their legs ripped off.
    But there is nothing like the sight of an amputated spirit.
    There is no prosthetic for that.

    I identified the quote as “Pacino, Scent of a Woman.” And egs posted this response (my posting name for Rex’s blog is Liveprof):

    “Liveprof. I didn’t recognize that you were printing a quote until I got to the end. I was reading and shaking my head and thinking, ‘Man, Liveprof is showing us a new side of him/her/theirself today. That really came OUTOF the blue.’”

    Another theme answer was POCKET DOORS. (Those are those doors that roll into the wall when you slide them open.) So you get “out of pocket” and “out of doors.” One commenter asked “What’s “out of doors?” One reply said: “Outside.” Another explained that it’s where your mom used to send you to play before you had your devices. I wrote: “It’s when you don’t have any doors left.”

    10D was a little shaky, IMO. The clue was “Like high-strung horses,” and the answer was SNORTY. I love the word; have been feeling a bit snorty lately myself. You?

    Great word at 46A: FRECKLE (“skin spot”). Not often in puzzles.

    If you google freckles you get a lot of redheads, some of whom have way too many. They don’t seem to be doing this young lady too much harm, IMO. I’ll spare you the others.

    Today’s puzzle was all about the letter H. Here’s the grid:

    And the long answers are all H pairs, e.g., heavy hand, high horse, hot heat, etc. Hick Hop is a musical genre that was new to me: a cross between country and rap. (It doesn’t fill a need for me, but that’s me.)

    One that wasn’t used was “hobbyhorse.” I was never sure what it means, so I asked our old friend Miriam Webster. It means a topic that one keeps going back to. “I foolishly mentioned the national debt, so, of course, Frank got on his hobbyhorse.” In olden times it had different meanings, including a toy horse head on a stick (for kids to play with), horse costumes, smallish horses, and just hobby.

    One Rex poster brought up Humbert Humbert, the hebephile from Nabokov’s Lolita. In the 1997 movie version, Lo was played by Dominique Swain (Jeremy Irons was HH). You can see why he fell for her.

    In the 1962 version, Lo was played by Sue Lyon, and HH was James Mason.

    Years later, in an interview for Life magazine, Nabokov said:

    “I would say that of all my books Lolita has left me with the most pleasurable afterglow—perhaps because it is the purest of all, the most abstract and carefully contrived. I am probably responsible for the odd fact that people don’t seem to name their daughters Lolita any more. I have heard of young female poodles being given that name since 1956, but of no human beings.”

    At one point, 36D, the puzzle went from H to B. The clue was “Homemaker from Mayberry,” and the answer was BEE TAYLOR — Aunt Bee from the Andy Griffith Show. Several folks noted that her full name is Beatrice and thought it should be BEA and not BEE, but they are completely wrong, and idiots, and they should shut up. It’s spelled BEE everywhere you look (though I don’t know why). The actress was Frances Bavier who was born way back in 1902 in NYC and lived to age 86. Her original plan was to be a teacher after graduating from Columbia. I can see that. She certainly seemed teacher-y with Opie. [My brother went out with a kindergarten teacher for a while. He complained that whenever he tried to kiss her goodnight, she’d say “I said no!“] As for Aunt Bee, she was young before she was old. Can you believe this is she?

    Kinahora, Jim Leyland, the MLB manager just elected to the Hall of Fame, turns 79 next week. He managed 3,499 games, mostly for Detroit and Pittsburgh. In 1997, though, he won the World Series with the Marlins. His winning percentage was only .506, but he often worked with very weak teams. In his eleven years with the Pirates, he won the division three years in a row, but in all but one of his other years there, the team finished under .500. In his eight years with Detroit, he also won the division three years in a row, and in all but one of his other years there, the Tigers finished over .500.

    His election to the HOF was a no-brainer. I saw it coming (pat on back) and picked up his autograph for a song years ago, see below. Perhaps the most telling fact about his 22-year career: he was never fired — unheard of for a manager. The three times he left a team, it was his own choice.

    I read this story about him long ago. He was a heavy smoker (I hope he gave that up), and in ill health for a while. During one tense game, he collapsed in the dugout, and was rushed to the hospital. The EMT in the ambulance, unaware of who he was, was asking him health-related questions. When he got to “Do you have a high-stress job?” Leyland just started laughing.

    He’s been married to his wife Katie since 1987 and they live in a suburb of Pittsburgh. They have a son and a daughter. The son, Patrick, played minor league ball for a while as a catcher/first-baseman. Wonder if he’ll manage someday.

    Mazel Tov, JL. Well-deserved.

    That’s enough nonsense for today. See you tomorrow.

  • Orff and Running

    When Isaac Bashevis Singer was asked if he believed in free will, he said “We must believe in free will — We have no choice.” That’s pretty much the conclusion of a review in The New Yorker of 11/13/23 by Nikhil Krishnan (NK) called “Make Me,” of a book by Robert M. Sapolsky, “Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will.”

    Apparently (did you know this?), science has come down on the side of determinism, i.e., everything is pre-determined, so there is no free will. Sapolsky is so convinced that all the disciplines, including history, negate the presence of free will that he says: “there’s not a single crack of daylight to shoehorn in free will.”

    That means it makes no sense to blame anyone for anything, or to reward anyone for anything either. It’s called “causal determinism.” As NK writes: “If science tells us to be determinists, and determinism is incompatible with freedom, shouldn’t we give up on judging people for doing what they were destined to do?”

    Sapolsky is exasperated that so many “sophisticates” are skeptical about free will skepticism. As NK puts it, “determinism, they tend to hold, is compatible with freedom, and therefore with moral responsibility, and therefore with blame, gratitude, and so on. The term for that happy reconciliation is ‘compatibilism.’ A compatibilist agrees that our actions are determined but denies that this truth casts doubt on anything of significance about human practices.”

    Sapolsky mockingly claims their arguments boil down to three sentences:

    a. Wow, there’ve been all these cool advances in neuroscience, all reinforcing the conclusion that ours is a deterministic world.

    b. Some of those findings challenge our notions of agency, moral responsibility, and deservedness so deeply that one must conclude that there is no free will.

    c. Nah, it still exists.

    The problem is, even Sapolsky himself can’t make peace with his world view: “he admits to being a normal guy with normal guy feelings. ‘It’s been a moral imperative for me to view humans without judgment or the belief that anyone deserves anything special, to live without a capacity for hatred or entitlement,’ he writes. ‘And I just can’t do it.’ He’s in permanent misalignment with his theory of the world.”

    His whole book comes down to what Singer said in one sentence: We have to believe in free will — we have no choice.

    I went to hear Singer speak once. There was a question period at the end, and a woman got up and raved about how wonderful he was — she read all of his books, they were all outstanding and they changed her life, and so on and so on. When she finally came to a stop, Singer had a gleam in his very blue eyes and said: “Madam — you failed to pose a question — but I’ll forgive you.”

    We attended a concert by the New Jersey Symphony in Morristown yesterday. When I checked the program ahead of time, I saw that Joshua Bell was slated to be both performing (Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto), and conducting! How could he do both simultaneously?, I wondered. Phil said he saw it done on an assignment several years ago and it was pretty amazing. I’ll say! Here’s how JB did it yesterday:

    When we took our seats, we noticed an unusual bench sort of thing in the center of the stage, angled downward towards the audience. When Bell came on stage (to very warm applause) he smiled and bowed and then lay down on his back on that contraption, — legs up and head downward. It was then that I noticed he wasn’t wearing shoes or socks!! He nodded at the concertmaster (the first violinist), who then proceeded to place a baton between the big toe and the next toe of Bell’s right foot. Bell then lowered his violin down onto his shoulder and began to play while conducting the orchestra with his feet!!

    It was extraordinary – who wouldn’t be moved by those gorgeous Mendelssohn strains?! The only problem that arose — and it was momentary — was at a particularly lively moment when Bell lost his balance and tumbled off the bench, with his violin shooting off in one direction and the bow in the other. But it either happened in an earlier performance too or they rehearsed for it because he was back on the bench and in position within a second or two — he’s incredibly dexterous. I don’t think the folks in the back of the hall even knew what happened — and the orchestra didn’t miss a beat.

    The ovation at the end was very appreciative, and the audience was buzzing during the whole intermission. Amusingly, we were sitting way up close so I could see off stage that Bell was having trouble finding his shoes. I think some of the cellists may have hidden them as a little good-natured prank; I could hear JB saying: “C’mon fellas — really — it’s cold out here.”

    Photos were not allowed during the performance, but Phil managed to snare this shot of Maestro Bell before it started.

    I neglected to show you how beautifully yesterday’s grid was constructed. Note the elegance of the symmetry. (Puzzles are required to be symmetrical.)

    At 62D the answer was RED CEDAR (“Evergreen tree with fragrant bark”).

    Rex poster Pete shared this with us (from which I learned the words dioecious and monoecious).

    I came to praise the glory of RED CEDARs, or at least Eastern RED CEDARs. There are a lot of them in the park where I frequently walk my dogs, and this fall they were just full of berries, except they’re not berries, but we’ll call them berries because they’re technically juniper berries, just not juniper juniper berries, if you know what I mean. Trees full of green leaves looking more teal than green because the berries are as plentiful as the leaves. About half are that way, because most are dioecious, i.e. there are male and female Eastern RED CEDARS. There are also a small percentage of Eastern RED CEDARS that are monoecious, both male and female, because sex is not binary and is confusing as hell so we should all just keep our mouths shut about it and respect each tree for what it is. The production of seeds also takes three years, year one flowers appear on the ‘female’ trees and are pollinated, year two little bulbs form on the trees, year three they mature to the ripe berries. At the end of year three, they get swarmed by birds, and the seeds get distributed, complete with fertilizer. Such is the circle of life.

    Yesterday, 66D was “Carmina Burana composer,” who is, of course, CARL ORFF. Here’s a good way to use it in a sentence: “Once it was clear that the bank robbers had left New Jersey, the Jersey state troopers decided to Carl Orff the search.”

    So when I found out the dog could talk, I asked him who composed Carmina Burana and he said “Orff, Orff.” Correct!

    Gosh, there must be a million of those — those two just came to me Orff the top of my head. I’ll take a little time Orff and see what I can come up with later.

    (Phil was Orff somewhere, so I got this photo Orff the internet.)

    At 20A today, the clue was “Make history at the Olympics, say,” and the answer was SET A NEW RECORD. It set Orff a bit of a flurry.

    First, pbc noted: SETANEWRECORD is a pet peeve among professional copy editors. It’s not possible to set an old record, so any editor who’s paying attention will delete the ‘new’ and turn the phrase into, ‘set a record.’ The editor will then turn to colleagues and mock the sloppiness of the writer.

    But Joe Dipinto disagreed: SET A NEW RECORD is fine, it acknowledges that there was a previous record quantified for the thing. Especially apropos when a famously long-held record gets broken, such as Hank Aaron’s surpassing Babe Ruth’s home run total.

    And CT2Napa disagreed differently:

    From OED: new. Not previously existing; now made or brought into existence for the first time. So a RECORD that didn’t exist before and is now made or brought into existence for the first time would seem to be a NEW RECORD.

    (But that wouldn’t apply very Orfften.)

    Does this woman, Sheynnis Palacios, look like a revolutionary to you?

    Well, she does to President Ortega of Nicaragua, and it’s probably a good thing that she’s out of the country for the time being. Here’s the deal. First of all, she won the Miss Universe contest this year, a first for Nicaragua. Hard to make a case against her deserving it, amirite?

    Anyway, where were we? Oh, yeah, so photos of her attending anti-government rallies in 2018 surfaced. Ortega, the authoritarian leader, accused the pageant director,  Karen Celebertti,  of conspiring against him by engineering an anti-government Miss U win . She’s been charged with crimes (although she’s in Mexico at the moment), and her husband and son have been detained.

    At protest rallies, which have since been declared illegal, protesters wave blue and white flags, instead of Ortega’s red and black. Some have interpreted Ms. Palacios’s white dress/blue cape combo, below, as referencing the protests. Owl Chatter is with you, ladies. Hoping for the best.

    That’s a pretty smile to go Orff with tonight. See you tomorrow! — thanks for stopping by.

  • Impregnable Brazenness

    Owl Chatter is deliriously happy to welcome the newest member of our staff: Former Congressman George Santos!! What an honor and privilege. With our focus on moronic nonsense and lack of any moral compass whatsoever, it was (literally) a no-brainer to bring GS on board once he was ig-no-minniemouse-ly booted from the House. George tells us he’s already established an excellent rapport with staff photographer Phil. (Phil says he’s never met Santos.)

    Here’s our man in drag. Lookin’ good, Babe!

    Owl Chatter is not alone is appreciating all that GS has to offer.

    House Republican leadership, including Speaker Mike Johnson; Majority Leader Steve Scalise; GOP Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik, and Majority Whip Tom Emmer all voted to keep him in Congress. Similarly, many archconservative Republicans such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, Freedom Caucus Chair Scott Perry, and Tim Burchett of Tennessee voted to keep him in office. (Burchett is still recovering from burn wounds suffered when former-Speaker McCarthy rigged his office door to dump hot coals onto his head.)

    Some constituents gathered at his district office in NY to offer Santos an unfond farewell. One fellow, 60-year-old John Johnson, yelled out of his car window: “Good riddance, you piece of crap.”

    Don’t you listen to those meanies! You’re safe with us, George.

    In other news, Speaker Mike Johnson said he thinks House Republicans have the votes to launch a formal impeachment inquiry into President Biden, insisting that such a move has “become a necessary step.” Absolutely!

    “Elise [Stefanik] and I served on the impeachment defense team of Donald Trump twice, when the Democrats used it for brazen, partisan political purposes. We decried that use of it. This is very different. Remember, we are the rule-of-law team. We have to do it very methodically,” he said.

    I did not make that up — it’s an actual quote. Could you plotz?

    From today’s Met Diary, from Ana Cristina dos Santos Morais:

    My husband and I got married at City Hall in Manhattan on a morning in 2009. A few people had to go to work after the ceremony. The rest of us, feeling hungry, went to a Belgian restaurant on West Broadway that has since closed.

    The place wasn’t really set up for a party of 10, but the staff made do and pushed together a bunch of tables to accommodate us.

    There was only one small table that we didn’t end up using. A man who appeared to be in his 30s was sitting at it working on a laptop.

    We placed our orders and started to take photos of one another. The man working at his laptop asked if we would like a picture of the whole group.

    We thanked him for his offer, and he took a couple of pictures. Then we went back to celebrating, and he turned back to his computer.

    He left at some point after our food arrived, and I can’t remember if we said goodbye.

    When we were finished, and my father asked for the check, the waitress said not to worry. The man with the laptop had already paid the bill.

    Phil wanted us to know that one of his heroes, one of his favorite photographers, died last Wednesday, at his home in Manhattan at age 95: Elliott Erwitt. He lived on the Upper West Side for sixty years.

    Apart from his very-well-respected serious work, Erwitt was known for seeking out silliness. Here’s a self portrait he took himself of himself in 1976. That’s him in the photo, you know, himself.

    This famous photo he took of Nixon fingering Nikki K back in 1959 was used by Nixon in his 1960 Presidential campaign. Erwitt was angry — he hated Nixon, but couldn’t prevent its use by him.

    Last, Philly wants me to include this fave of his. Here’s what the NYT says about it:

    Another memorable photograph of Erwitt’s, from Edward Steichen’s landmark photo exhibition “The Family of Man” (and subsequent book) at the MOMA in New York, was titled “Mother and Child.” Taken in 1953, it shows a woman on a bed looking into her baby’s eyes while a cat coolly surveys the scene. The baby was Mr. Erwitt’s daughter, Ellen, and the woman was his first wife, Lucienne Matthews, who died in 2011.

    Erwitt was married and divorced four times, and is survived by four daughters, two sons, ten grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren, all wallet-sized.

    Jeez Louise, if you can’t get a few good hours of sleep at the opera, what’s the point? Much of Joshua Barone’s review of The Met’s production of Wagner’s “Tannhauser” in the Times today was devoted to climate protesters who effectively stopped the show during Act 2, amid a description by the character Wolfram of love as a miraculous spring. “Wolfram, wake up — the spring is tainted!,” a protester yelled, and unfurled a banner that said: “No Opera on a Dead Planet.” Other voices were raised and other banners unfurled. It was orchestrated by a group going by the name Extinction Rebellion.

    The performers froze (ironic, in light of global warming) and the curtain came down. Some members of the audience left. Others expressed anger at the protesters. Security cleared the protesters, although the police said they made no arrests. After about 20 minutes, the performance continued, albeit with the house lights on so security could keep an eye on the audience.

    Barone said he was unable to engage with the show again, although he gave the production a very favorable review.

    Here’s one of the protesters. [No it isn’t.]

    This poem from today’s Writer’s Almanac is by Robert Hayden and is called “Those Winter Sundays.”

    Sundays too my father got up early
    and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
    then with cracked hands that ached
    from labor in the weekday weather made
    banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

    I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
    When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
    and slowly I would rise and dress,
    fearing the chronic angers of that house,

    Speaking indifferently to him,
    who had driven out the cold
    and polished my good shoes as well.
    What did I know, what did I know
    of love’s austere and lonely offices?

    My dad was a doctor. So he never did any of that stuff. But, yeah, — what he said.

    The puzzle today fell to my relentless attack, but there were some hard, weird words in it. RATINE: “Rough fabric with a loose weave.” MULCTS: “Compulsory payments of old.” RIFFLES: “Leafs,” like to leaf through a book. MASERS: “Acronymic devices in atomic clocks and radio telescopes.” The acronym is from: Microwave Amplification by the Stimulated Emission of Radiation. Of course!

    And did you know there was a pre-cursor to Mickey Mouse? It was Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Boy, you can sure see the resemblance.

    We’re giving the last word today to Michelle Goldberg of the NYT, who wrote this today in her farewell to Owl Chatter’s new staff member, George Santos:

    The MAGA movement is multifaceted, and different politicians represent different strains: There’s the dour, conspiracy-poisoned suburban grievance of Marjorie Taylor Greene, the gun-loving rural evangelicalism of Lauren Boebert, the overt white nationalism of Paul Gosar and the frat boy sleaze of Matt Gaetz. But no one embodies Trump’s fame-obsessed sociopathic emptiness like Santos. He’s heir to Trump’s sybaritic nihilism, high-kitsch absurdity and impregnable brazenness.

    Michigan 26, Iowa 0. Hail to the Victors!

    See you tomorrow!

  • The Indelible Print of a Small Hand

    Yesterday’s puzzle had so many little doors to open and walk through. 42A was “Bringing in, as a sail,” and I thought furling might do it. You know, the opposite of unfurling. Or, once I had a few crossing letters, reeling seemed like it might work. But it turned out to be REEFING, which I had never heard of.

    Anoa Bob contributed this very helpful post:

    “Did a hitch in the Navy in the 60s and bought my first sailboat in the early 70s and have long had a interest in all things nautical, so I definitely perked up when I saw 42A “Bringing in, as a sail”. My first thought was “sheeting” where the angle of a sail to the wind is brought in (or let out). REEFING is a reducing of the amount of sail exposed to the wind, usually by partially hauling it down (and securing it with REEF knots). Furling is folding up and securing a sail after it has been doused or hauled down so it doesn’t blow around uncontrollably in the wind.

    “Aarg, I’ve done me duty, now where’s me grog?”

    This fellow is reefing a mainsail. I can’t tell what he’s saying, but I bet it ends in “You idiot!!”

    At 18A the clue was one word: “Coruscate.” OK, what the hell does that mean? I had heard of it but had no idea. Five letters; turned out to be GLEAM. It’s said of light — to flash or sparkle.

    At 18A, “Freak on a Leash” band was KORN. Word of them had not reached me under my rock. Rex noted Korn is also the name of a painting by Gerhard Richter in the Guggenheim. This one:

    The puzzle also led us to two extraordinary areas of natural beauty: The SLOT CANYONS of Zion National Park, and, well, Taylor Swift.

    We had been to Zion on a family trip several hundred years ago, but I did not know, or forgot, that those things are called slot canyons: 13D, “Narrow landforms prevalent in Zion National Park.” Narrow canyons with steep walls, sort of “slots” in the landscape. I do recall walking through them.

    Taylor Swift popped up in the clue at 34D: “Reality show whose cast appeared in the music video for Taylor Swift’s ‘You Need to Calm Down.’” The answer was QUEER EYE. Take a look/listen:

    Hey, SASHA OBAMA dropped in too! How ya been, girl? Twenty-two now? — No Sh*t! Sit yourself down — how bout a cold Rheingold? That should be okay with your folks, no? Some Sunchips? [BTW, the clue was “Youngest White House resident since John F. Kennedy Jr.”]

    Sasha started college at UMich (yay) but transferred to USC (boo), and graduated last May. [Yikes!! — did you know that in February of 2017, her sister Malia started an internship for Harvey Weinstein at The Weinstein Company film studio in NYC?! Sheesh. She apparently emerged unscathed and graduated from Harvard in 2021.] Here’s Sash on her big day. Knock ’em dead, sister!

    Speaking of daughters, today’s poem from The Writer’s Almanac is by Brendan Galvin and is called “For a Daughter Gone Away.”

    Today there’ve been moments
    the earth falters and almost
    goes off in those trails of smoke
    that resolve to flocks so far
    and small they elude my naming.
    Walking the old Boston & Maine
    roadbed, September, I understand
    why it takes fourteen
    cormorants to hold the bay’s
    rocks down. Have I told you
    anything you ought to know?
    In time you’ll come to learn
    that all clichés are true, that
    a son’s a son till he marries,
    and a daughter’s a daughter
    all her life, but today
    I want to begin Latin One with you
    again, or the multiplication
    tables. For that first phrase of
    unwavering soprano that came
    once from your room, I’d suffer
    a year of heavy metal. Let all
    who believe they’re ready for
    today call this sentimentality,
    but I want the indelible
    print of a small hand
    on the knees of my chinos again,
    now that my head’s full of
    these cinders and clinkers
    that refused fire’s refinements.
    I wish I could split myself
    to deepen and hold on as
    the crossties have, and admit
    goatsbeard and chicory,
    blue curls and blazing star,
    those weeds of your never quite
    coming back. I wish I could stop
    whatever’s driving those flocks
    and drove the B & M freights into air.

    Here are goatsbeard, blue curls, and blazing star, respectively.

    If yesterday was your birthday — are you funny? I ask because it was the birthday of both Richard Pryor and Woody Allen. Allen was born in 1935. Despite his name, Pryor was born subsequently — in 1940. Allen still lives (he’s 88), and Pryor doesn’t (he died shortly after turning 65). This short clip is a bit raw. [In particular, if his use of the N word offends you, skip it.]

    Today’s puzzle did me in. Even Rex rated it Medium-Challenging. I was okay except for one damn square. 14A was “Statement of admiration after someone’s impressive feat,” which I was pretty sure was WHAT A BEAUT. But that U made 8D (“Stuff in microdots”) LUD. Since I have no idea what’s in a microdot, it might as well be LUD, right? Anyway, that’s where I fell. It turned out to be LSD, and WHAT A BEAST. (Boo.)

    At 24D the clue was simply “Likewise,” and the answer was SO DO I. I know I shared this gorgeous song once before, but I’m putting it in again. It’s by Wally Page and is sung by Christy Moore (with Declan Sinnott).

    This is the day the fisherman likes, and so do I.

    I got nothing to top that. See you tomorrow! (Go Blue!)

  • A New Earth

    Margaret Walker died on this date in 1998 in Chicago at age 83. She was born in Birmingham, Alabama, to Sigismund C. Walker, a minister, and Marion (née Dozier) Walker, who taught her philosophy and poetry as a child. She was captivated by the bedtime stories her grandmother told her, which were often tales of slavery. She knew at a young age that she wanted to become a writer so she could write books about people of color that would not make her feel ashamed. She married Firnist Alexander in 1943. They had four kids and remained married until death did them part.

    Her poem, “For My People,” was The Poetry Foundation’s poem of the day today.

    For my people everywhere singing their slave songs
    repeatedly: their dirges and their ditties and their blues
    and jubilees, praying their prayers nightly to an
    unknown god, bending their knees humbly to an
    unseen power;

    For my people lending their strength to the years, to the
    gone years and the now years and the maybe years,
    washing ironing cooking scrubbing sewing mending
    hoeing plowing digging planting pruning patching
    dragging along never gaining never reaping never
    knowing and never understanding;

    For my playmates in the clay and dust and sand of Alabama
    backyards playing baptizing and preaching and doctor
    and jail and soldier and school and mama and cooking
    and playhouse and concert and store and hair and
    Miss Choomby and company;

    For the cramped bewildered years we went to school to learn
    to know the reasons why and the answers to and the
    people who and the places where and the days when, in
    memory of the bitter hours when we discovered we
    were black and poor and small and different and nobody
    cared and nobody wondered and nobody understood;

    For the boys and girls who grew in spite of these things to
    be man and woman, to laugh and dance and sing and
    play and drink their wine and religion and success, to
    marry their playmates and bear children and then die
    of consumption and anemia and lynching;

    For my people thronging 47th Street
    in Chicago and Lenox Avenue in New York and Rampart Street in New
    Orleans, lost disinherited dispossessed and happy
    people filling the cabarets and taverns and other
    people’s pockets and needing bread and shoes and milk and
    land and money and something—something all our own;

    For my people walking blindly spreading joy, losing time
    being lazy, sleeping when hungry, shouting when
    burdened, drinking when hopeless, tied, and shackled
    and tangled among ourselves by the unseen creatures
    who tower over us omnisciently and laugh;

    For my people blundering and groping and floundering in
    the dark of churches and schools and clubs
    and societies, associations and councils and committees and
    conventions, distressed and disturbed and deceived and
    devoured by money-hungry glory-craving leeches,
    preyed on by facile force of state and fad and novelty, by
    false prophet and holy believer;

    For my people standing staring trying to fashion a better way
    from confusion, from hypocrisy and misunderstanding,
    trying to fashion a world that will hold all the people,
    all the faces, all the adams and eves and their countless generations;

    Let a new earth rise. Let another world be born. Let a
    bloody peace be written in the sky. Let a second
    generation full of courage issue forth; let a people
    loving freedom come to growth. Let a beauty full of
    healing and a strength of final clenching be the pulsing
    in our spirits and our blood. Let the martial songs
    be written, let the dirges disappear. Let a race of men now
    rise and take control.

    On a lighter note, this was the poem in The Writer’s Almanac today. It’s by Robert Lax and is called “Therapist.” [It continues the gymnastics theme we introduced recently with Olga Korbut.]

    a man came to me with the
    following problem:

    «my mother-in-law, he said, «despises me;
    my creditors, once friendly, are now all over
    me; my wife threatens to leave me tomorrow
    unless i put the children in a better school;
    my employers criticize the tone of my work
    for what they call a failure of nerve. what do
    you suggest i do?»

    i turned a somersault for him & he felt
    better.

    Winston Churchill and Mark Twain share this date as their birthday, the former born in 1874, and the latter in 1835. They met in 1899 in London at a party. Twain was 63 and Churchill 24. Here’s how it was described to Twain later:

    You [Twain] and Churchill went up to the top floor to have a smoke and a talk, and Harcourt [another guest] wondered what the result would be. He said that whichever of you got the floor first would keep it to the end, without a break; he believed that you, being old and experienced, would get it and that Churchill’s lungs would have a half‑hour’s rest for the first time in five years. When you two came down, by and by, Churchill was asked if he had had a good time, and he answered eagerly, “Yes.” Then you (Twain) were asked if you had a good time. You hesitated, then said without eagerness, “I have had a smoke.”

    They met again two years later in NY. Churchill was on a lecture tour, and Twain introduced him to the audience at the Waldorf. Years later, in his book My Early Life, here’s how Churchill remembered that evening:

    Throughout my journeyings, I received the help of eminent Americans, and… I was thrilled by this famous companion of my youth. [Twain] was now very old and snow‑white, and combined with a noble air a most delightful style of conversation. Of course we argued about the [Boer] war…. I think however I did not displease him; for he was good enough at my request to sign every one of thirty volumes of his works for my benefit; and in the first volume he inscribed the following maxim intended, I daresay, to convey a gentle admonition: “To do good is noble; to teach others to do good is nobler, and no trouble.”

    Article in The Onion:

    25,000 Recalled High Chairs Returned To Manufacturer With Infant Still In Seat

     “To be clear, we really just wanted the high chairs back for safety reasons—we aren’t equipped to take these kids,” said Graco spokesperson Steven Sanders, describing the thousands of 6- and 7-month-olds who had arrived at the company’s loading bay strapped into the company’s defective high chairs, many with their faces still covered in food. “We’re trying to figure out the best path forward. This is an industrial factory environment, and the babies are clearly not happy here.”

    14A today: “Evidence that one is going into labor?” Ans: UNION CARD.

    26A: RAISA Gorbachev. Remember her? She died in 1999. She and hubby Mikhail had one daughter, Irina. On June 1, 1990, Barbara Bush and Raisa addressed the graduating class at Wellesley College on the role of women in modern society.

    Mikhail was a devoted and loving husband. He wept openly at her funeral. “One day we took each other by the hand and went for a walk in the evening. And we walked like that for our whole life,” Gorbachev told Vogue magazine in 2013. He released a CD of seven romantic songs, “Songs for Raisa,” in 2009 on which he sang along with well-known Russian musician and guitarist Andrei Makarevich. He is buried next to her.

    This statue of a beautiful young Raisa watches over their graves in Moscow.

    Sportsfans — you hear of Jesse Luketa? Me neither — he’s a linebacker for the ‘Zona Cardinals. Played his college ball at Penn State and was drafted in the seventh round. He drives a 2019 BMW and the front left tire had been acting up. Usually, adding some air took care of it, but last Sunday it breathed its last breath. As luck would have it (bad), he was on his way to the Stadium for the game against the Rams, and it didn’t look like he could make it in time under the circumstances.

    Thinking fast (as is required of linebackers) Luketa noticed a guy in an old ‘Zona jersey pumping gas into his car. Three kids in the back were all wearing ‘Zona gear too. Bingo! He explained who he was and what happened to his tire. The guy’s wife squeezed into the back with the kids, Luketa settled into the front seat and they raced to the Stadium, arriving with 8 minutes to spare. He talked football to the kids the whole time and they were in heaven. He got them a spot in the players’ lot and met them after the game for photos. He promised them tix for the next home game.

    The dad’s name was J.W. Phillips. He said they didn’t help Luketa because he was a pro football player. He was just a guy with a flat tire who had to get somewhere. Everything else was just a bonus.

    Frances Sternhagen, the Tony-award winning actress, died in her home in New Rochelle on Monday at the age of 93. She went to college at Vassar and was studying history when an adviser suggested she try drama. The rest was history — or, rather, drama. Cheers fans will recognize her as Cliff Clavin’s mom. Cliff may have gotten his habit of explaining odd facts of interest to no one from her because in one scene we come upon her explaining that the Bermuda Triangle was actually a rhombus. The following clip takes place after Cliff tells her he “met someone.”

    See you tomorrow.

  • I’m Just Mad About Saffron, and She’s Just Mad About Me

    There’s a riveting story in The New Yorker of 12/4/23 by Rebecca Mead on the actress Sandra Hüller. I was drawn to it by the photo of Hüller in it, because there is a little bit of our friend Susan in her looks. Amirite, Liz?

    Mead starts by discussing Hüller’s portrayal of Hamlet in a German stage production. In it, the figure of Hamlet’s father’s ghost is not a separate character appearing to Hamlet. Instead, “[the director] Simons and Hüller agreed that it would be potent for the father to rise from within the son—speaking through him. As Simons recently described the conceit, “The father is so deep in your soul that you can’t get away from him—he is always in you.”

    Here’s Mead’s description:

    “When it came time for Hamlet’s encounter with the Ghost, an eerie chord resounded, and Hüller’s soft, breathy voice suddenly dropped an octave. She was no longer Hamlet, or not entirely. ‘Pity me not!’ Hüller said, her eyes hardening and her voice quickening as she channelled the Ghost: ‘I am thy father’s spirit, / Doom’d for a certain term to walk the night, / And for the day confined to fast in fires, / Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature / Are burnt and purged away.’ As Hüller played it, Hamlet wasn’t seeing a ghost; he was being possessed by it. Hüller’s previously gentle demeanor was displaced by lurching motion, and when the Ghost furiously commanded his son’s obedience—’List, list, O, list!’ in Shakespeare’s original—she practically vomited up the words: ‘Hör, hör, o, hör! ‘

    “The scene was as scary to watch as any horror movie, but it also felt profound: the sins of the old were literally infecting the bodies of the young, emphasizing the generational rot at the heart of the play.”

    Mead next addresses Hüller’s role in the movie “Anatomy of a Fall,” in which she plays a wife suspected of killing her husband. Both wife and husband are writers, but the wife is more successful and the husband resents the feeling that he sacrificed his work to support hers. At the trial, an audio recording is played in which the couple is fighting. Here’s Mead again:

    “The fight between the spouses, which is presented in court as the key to whether Hüller’s character is responsible for her husband’s death, in fact addresses a more complex, and more widely applicable, question: whether she is responsible for her husband’s life.”

    Get this – as she played the role, Hüller was never told by the filmmaker, Triet, whether her character was guilty or not. She was instructed to play her as if she were innocent. (The viewer is also left wondering where the truth lies.)

    The photo, above, is from The New Yorker; our Phil captured her very nicely too.

    This poem is by Jim Daniels. It was in The Writer’s Almanac yesterday and is called “Brushing Teeth with My Sister after the Wake.”

    Brushing teeth with my sister after the wake

    at my kitchen sink, the bathroom upstairs
    clogged with family from out of town

    spending the night after the wake
    and the after-wake—cold beverages

    have been consumed and comfort food,
    leftovers bulging both the fridge

    and the minifridge. In our fifties, both
    half-asleep half-awake, we face each

    other. My sister’s smile foams white
    down her chin at the end of a day

    on which no one has smiled. We laugh.
    We may never brush our teeth together again.

    No mirror down here to see our haggard faces.
    We rinse, we spit. As we were taught.

    The theme of yesterday’s puzzle was rhymes with colors, e.g., GRAY DAY, RED HEAD, GREEN SCREEN, and Donovan’s hit song from 1966 MELLOW YELLOW.

    But it was 58A that caused all the ruckus: “Colorful (albeit rare!) rhyme for an item at a hardware store.” The answer was ORANGE DOOR HINGE. It is supposed to rhyme but many pointed out that it’s at best an imperfect rhyme (a “slant” rhyme). Miriam Webster says:  “Of course, the two-word term door hinge does not form a true rhyme with orange, but half of it can be used to create a half rhyme with the name of the citrus fruit.”

    When Tom Lehrer was challenged to come up with a rhyme for orange, he produced:

    Using an orange
    While making love
    Makes for bizarre enj-
    Oyment thereof.

    Some thought ORANGE DOOR HINGE was just horrendous, but others (like me) found it so awful they loved it. Then it turns out it’s a “thing.” First, apparently, it’s known that there is no true rhyme for orange. And when rapper Eminem was on Sixty Minutes he said:  “If you’re taking the word at face value and you just say orange, nothing is going to rhyme with it exactly. If you enunciate it and you make it like more than one syllable, or-ange, you could say like, ‘I put my orange four-inch door hinge in storage and ate porridge with George.’”

    Then, anonymous said: “I’m 67. I would have been single-digits-years old when one of the interstitial bits during the cartoon-forward show we all used to watch (Captain Penny) on our local channel pointed out that no word rhymes with ‘orange.’ Then somehow they worked in a punchline with ‘door hinge.’ I’ve never forgotten it, and all I’m sayin’ is that it’s been around a lot longer than Eminem.”

    It was also noted that Kurt Vonnegut rhymed orange and door hinge in Welcome to the Monkey House, which was published in 1968.

    Now, back to Donovan. BTW, Paul McCartney dropped by during the taping of “Mellow Yellow” and his voice is somewhere on it, among the revelers. And if you’ve been wondering what that “electrical banana” in it is, years later Donovan explained he was leafing through the paper with Lennon one day and found the phrase in a newspaper ad for a “marital aid.” [We’ll just tiptoe away from that one.] He liked the sound of the words; it has nothing to do with drugs.

    Today’s puzzle returned to the old rocker’s theme with YAYAS from the Stones’ live album, Get Your Ya-Ya’s Out! The title is taken from Blind Boy Fuller’s song “Get Your Yas Yas Out.” [Yup. I see the connection: it’s subtle but it’s there.] The lyric in Fuller’s song was “Now you got to leave my house this morning, don’t I’ll throw your yas yas out o’ door.” In the context of Fuller’s original song and its use in other blues music, “yas yas” appears as a folksy euphemism for tuchas.

    The album’s cover photo by David Bailey, featuring drummer Charlie Watts with guitars and bass drums hanging from the neck of a donkey, was inspired by a line in Bob Dylan’s song “Visions of Johanna:” “Jewels and binoculars hang from the head of the mule” (though, as mentioned, the animal in the photo is a donkey, not a mule). The band would later say “we originally wanted an elephant but settled for a donkey.” You can’t always get what you want, right fellas?

    Here’s that cover, followed by a tune.

    Hey, is Mick up there barefoot? Who does he think he is, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., on an airplane?

    It’s the last time the Stones toured as just the Stones, the five of them. They added backing musicians afterwards. It was also guitarist Mick Taylor’s first tour (he replaced Brian Jones shortly before his death).

    Is it me? Or does U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb seem like a moron? She just sentenced a mother-son team who broke into the Capitol on Jan. 6 and helped with the theft of Nancy Pelosi’s laptop to 18 months and 12 months of “home incarceration,” respectively. She described the sentence as “jail but at home.”  That’s one hell of a “but.” That but is carrying one big shitload of weight on its back, if you ask me. The government sought sentences of 4 years for each of them in prison — you know, what you might describe as “home, but in jail.”

    “They were acting very stupidly,” Cobb said. She said she was giving them a “significant break.” Ya think?

    We don’t have photos for you. Phil was too disgusted to take on the assignment.

    Let’s get back on safer ground: Travis and Tay. Turns out that’s what he calls her: Tay. We like it. You may have heard Joy Behar took a pretty big swipe at the fella. She found out about some of his tweets from a long time ago — they make him out to be sexist and pretty dumb, so she’s worried about what Tay may be getting into (Behar’s a Swiftie).

    “Here’s one of his [tweets], ‘Damn, the Clippers girls gotta be the girls that don’t make the Lakers team ’cause they was all ugly,’” Behar read. She then read two more of his old tweets: “Why can’t girls hide they back fat?” and “I feel like if you want to be a cheerleader, you have to pass a beauty test. There’s too many ugly cheerleaders out here.”

    I’m hoping he’s grown up. If he ain’t, that sh*t won’t fly with Swift, Behar’s right. Meanwhile, Owl Chatter is pulling for you, sweetheart. But you knew that.

    Good night everybody. I have to go floss — appointment with Karen the dental hygienist at 8 am tomorrow, and she shows no mercy. Doesn’t know the meaning of the word.

  • The Korbut Flip

    The clue at 17A today is “Any facial feature of the man in the moon, in reality” and the answer for the puzzle was CRATER, but that’s not a good answer! Those blotches you see when you look up there are actually called MARIA (with the first syllable accented), the plural of MARE (pronounced MAR-ay). They got that name because it’s Latin for seas, and the early astronomers mistook them for actual seas. Only ignorant slobs who don’t read Owl Chatter would make such a blunder. Not worth getting into a BAR FIGHT over it (19D: “Pub brawl”), but good to know.

    Remember this sweet punim?

    It’s OLGA Korbut — 4-time Olympic gold-medal-winning gymnast. She was in the grid today even though her heydays were back in 1972 and 1976 for the USSR. She’s from Belarus. She retired in 1977 at age 22 and was the inaugural inductee to the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame in 1988. She’s 68 now.

    Olga married Leonid Bortkevich and they had a son. Fearing the effects of Chernobyl, they emigrated to the U.S. and settled in New Jersey, ironically the only state the toxicity of which rivals that of Chernobyl. She lives in Arizona now and teaches gymnastics.

    Hubby Leonid was a member of the popular Belarusian folk band Pesniary, among whose influences was early Frank Zappa.

    Pesniary was one of the few (and maybe the first) Soviet band to tour the US. This was in 1976 and they toured with the New Christy Minstrels. After joining them for dinner at Wendy’s (and too many drinks back at their home), Phil was able to tease this rare video out of Leonid. It’s the 1972 video from the band’s song “Alicia.” It’s a romance, sort of, with a handsome couple cavorting in the woods. Owl Chatter fans should be warned, however, — it will be the longest 4 minutes of your life.

    Olga’s legacy includes her incredible “Korbut flip,” which entails, in part, her standing on top of the bars. It has since been banned, in part for safety reasons. This video of her performance speaks for itself. Unfortunately, it speaks for itself in German, but it’s still worth a look.

    After our long drive back from Brookville, PA (stopping point on the journey back from MI), I still have exams to grade, so I gotta go. Will return when I can. Thanks for popping in!

  • Wind and the Sound of Wind

    What the hell?!

    Do you believe in hell? I don’t mean the hell you just went through spending the holiday with your creepy relatives. I mean the “real” one, with the fires and demons. It’s a pretty ridiculous notion, isn’t it? That’s what Bishop Carlton D. Pearson realized while watching the news one day back in the 1990s. It was a report on children starving during the Rwandan genocide. Supposedly, they were consigned to hell because they hadn’t accepted Christ as their savior before dying. The idea struck Pearson as abhorrent — it had to be that God loves all mankind so everyone is already saved. And from that day on, he no longer believed in hell.

    He subscribed to the doctrine of universal salvation, which covered Muslims and gays too. He lobbied Congress to pass protections for gays. Well, none of this sat well with the higher ups at his church, which declared him a heretic and said anyone following him “put at risk the eternal destiny of their souls.” Yikes! We don’t need that sh*t!

    His congregation dwindled from thousands to bupkis. He went from being a big macher to small potatoes. He died last Sunday in Tulsa at age 70. His agent often asked him if he regretted taking the positions that cost him so much. “Don’t you think you should have just shut up?” But Pearson never looked back. Bullshit is bullshit.

    He is survived by his mom, five siblings, and a daughter, none of whom is at all worried about going to hell.

    Rest in peace, Bishop.

    I loved 11D in the puzzle today. The clue was “Get ready in a hurry,” and the answer was SCRAMBLE THE JETS. It inspired me to make up these riddles:

    What do eggs and jets have in common?

    A. They can both be scrambled.

    B. They are both NFL teams, except for the eggs.

    What can be scrambled but never with onions?

    Ans: Jets

    The MILLION MOM MARCH was in the puzzle clued as an anti-gun group, but it triggered a rant by egs about different “moms,” Moms for Liberty. You heard of these folks? Who could be against liberty? Here’s what Wikipedia says:

    Moms for Liberty advocates against school curricula that mention LGBT rights, race and ethnicity, critical race theory, and discrimination. They have also campaigned to ban books that address gender and sexuality from school libraries. Founded in January 2021, the group began by campaigning against COVID-19 protections in schools, including mask and vaccine mandates. Moms for Liberty is influential within the Republican Party.

    A newsletter of theirs from an Indiana chapter highlighted a quote by Hitler which they at first tried to “explain” but then apologized for. (Don’t you hate it when you get caught and have to pretend to be decent?) And one of their pastors in the Philly chapter in charge of outreach was revealed to be a registered sex offender. He spent 3 years in prison for sexual abuse of a 14-year-old boy, sort of a special form of outreach. Yeah, let’s put these folks in charge of the library books.

    It has 285 chapters in 45 states and over 115,000 members. God Bless America.

    43A is “Japanese zither,” and the answer is KOTO. Ever hear one?

    Hey, CHER popped by too, at 54D: “Singer whose likeness was the highest-selling doll of 1976, surpassing Barbie.” Anybody remember those dolls? They were only available for a few years and are collectors’ items now. You can snare one of these for about $200.

    This poem from today’s Writer’s Almanac is by Jon Loomis and is called “At the Lake House.”

    Wind and the sound of wind—
    across the bay a chainsaw revs
    and stalls. I’ve come here to write,

    but instead I’ve been thinking
    about my father, who, in his last year,
    after his surgery, told my mother

    he wasn’t sorry—that he’d cried
    when the other woman left him,
    that his time with her

    had made him happier than anything
    he’d ever done. And my mother,
    who cooked and cleaned for him

    all those years, cared for him
    after his heart attack, could not
    understand why he liked the other

    woman more than her,
    but he did. And she told me
    that after he died she never went

    to visit his grave—not once.
    You think you know them,
    these creatures robed

    in your parents’ skins. Well,
    you don’t. Any more than you know
    what the pines want from the wind,

    if the lake’s content with this pale
    smear of sunset, if the loon calls
    for its mate, or for another.

    Michigan 30, Ohio State 24. Hail to the Victors!

    Good night, everybody. Thanks for popping in.

  • Talking Turkey

    Happy Holiday, readers! I’m not sure if we’ll be able to post much of anything later from the road. Phil is off drunk somewhere, for one thing. But here are a few small items.

    As a nod to the day, the puzzle at 1D had “Site of what many regard as the first Thanksgiving,” and the answer was PLYMOUTH. Several folks noted what a dud Plymouth Rock is, as a site to visit. It’s just a rock (duh) not very well maintained. An anonymous poster wrote: “I grew up in MA and Plymouth Rock is literally just a rock. My sister dropped a flip flop down there which was the highlight of my visit.”

    But it did inspire Son Volt to share this tune with us, called “Plymouth,” by Strand of Oaks. “Sometimes I move like shadows. Sometimes I move like wind.”

    This beautiful note was posted on Rex’s site by Lewis:

    Just a silly little diversion, crosswords.

    Or so some say. I for one love silliness, so give me silly in any form. Give me play. Give me inventiveness. Give me riddles to crack. Give me laugh-out-loud moments. Give me a diversion that takes me to a place that I deep down enjoy. Give me the work of people who earnestly strive to entertain, strive to give the brain the opportunity to figure things out and feel exercised and happy.

    Thrust me into a community of those who are like minded, and who pile on more silliness, inventiveness, and edifying insight, and who feel like family – as this place is.

    Have the puzzles be honed and scrubbed by skilled and talented craftspeople who set a high bar.

    And what a gift! What a ball of beauty! What a piece of magic, spark, and brightness to adorn the path we travel. It never had to come about, and yet here it is, this towering gift. I give thanks for it always.

    Amen, Lewis.

    I also received this email from CUNY Chancellor Matos Rodriguez:

    I had the privilege to participate yesterday in Kingsborough Community College’s “Thanks for Giving” festivities, a yearly tradition where administrators, faculty and staff serve students a Thanksgiving meal. From start to finish, I was able to do my part in giving back — in the form of a delicious potato station — to excited students.

    The experience reminded me of what an honor it is to serve the CUNY community. It’s days like this that reaffirm our school’s motto, “the education of free people is the hope of humanity.” Each day, we strive to work together to ensure that all 25 campuses are thriving and that we continue to provide a life-changing education to New Yorkers.

    Our campuses are centers of knowledge and places of acceptance. We understand that our many differences are special qualities to be celebrated and embraced. It’s what gives me hope in good times and bad.

    Last, a big thank you, readers, from Wilma and Welly, the owls behind Owl Chatter, from our crazy photographer Phil, and the entire OC staff. Now dig in!