The Wellington Files

  • Flaco the Owl

    The wells from which I draw (steal) poems for Owl Chatter have been dry lately, but The Writer’s Almanac has wonderful material on Carl Sagan today, who was born on this date back in 1934, a Brooklyn boy. He died in 1996.

    Sagan received a lot of mail and he kept a file labeled F/C for the crazier stuff. It stood for “fissured ceramics,” aka crackpots. LSD guru Timothy Leary wrote to him. Leary was interested in building a “space ark” and asked Sagan what star they should aim for. Seems like a reasonable question. You don’t want to be wandering around aimlessly out there. When Sagan wrote back that the technology to accomplish that goal did not yet exist, Leary replied: “I am not impressed with your conclusions in these areas.”

    Hrrrumph.

    This passage is from Sagan’s book Pale Blue Dot: “That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you have ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives […] [E]very king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every revered teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”

     He didn’t believe in life after death, and once told his daughter, Sasha, that it was dangerous to believe in something just because you want very badly for it to be true. But he also told her, “We are star stuff,” and made her feel the wonder of being alive.

    Happy Birthday, Carl!

    You like cake?

    Poet Anne Sexton expressed the same idea, sorta, but more acerbically.  “Live or die. Make up your mind. If you’re going to hang around don’t ruin everything. Don’t poison the world.”

    It’s her birthday today too. She was born in 1928, up in Newton, MA (Hi Don and Jelly!). Her bestie was poet Maxine Kumin. They spoke on the phone so much they had a second (secret) phone line installed so they wouldn’t annoy their husbands. She died by suicide in 1974. She wrapped herself in her mother’s old fur coat and climbed into her car and left it running.

    Along the same lines, Frank Bruni included this passage in his “For the Love of Sentences” feature this week. It’s by essayist Maria Popova: “We were never promised any of it — this world of cottonwoods and clouds — when the Big Bang set the possible in motion. And yet here we are, atoms with consciousness, each of us a living improbability forged of chaos and dead stars. Children of chance, we have made ourselves into what we are — creatures who can see a universe of beauty in the feather of a bird and can turn a blind eye to each other’s suffering, creatures capable of the Benedictus and the bomb.”

    Switching gears, with a loud grinding noise. This headline is from The Borowitz Report, about Ivanka’s testifying in Trump’s fraud case in NY: “Ivanka Unable to Remember Name of Her Father.”

    The giant pandas are gone from the National Zoo — back to China. Tian Tian, Mei Xiang and their youngest cub, Xiao Qi Ji. They’ll probably be happy over there. They will join 150 other pandas in a lush nature preserve in the misty mountains of Sichuan Province. Xiao Qi Ji was born after his mom got too old to have kids, it was thought. Hence his name which means “Little Miracle.”

    Remember the old kids’ joke: How do you fit six elephants into a car? Three in the front, three in the back. Well, how do you ship three Pandas back to China. Fedex, of course. The Fedex aircraft, loaded with 220 pounds of bamboo, a veterinarian and two zookeepers, took off for the 19-hour flight from DC to China yesterday.

    Time to go, little fella! Boo hoo.

    If you prefer your friends to be out of captivity, you’ll be happy to learn that Flaco, the owl who escaped from the Central Park Zoo nine months ago, was sighted in the East Village this week and seems fine. He was ordering some Indian food.

    When Flaco first escaped it was feared that 13 years in captivity might have weakened his survival skills, but he’s been doing fine, living off rats which the city has in abundance. Yum! He had settled in Central Park, but fireworks for Sunday’s NYC marathon may have scared him off. After the recent sighting in the East Village, he took off again, heading to who-knows-where.

    There was some concern for Flaco’s safety when he left Central Park. But a photographer who has been following him, David Lei, told our Phil: “Part of celebrating his freedom and pursuit of happiness is understanding that he is writing his own story now.”

    This shot was taken of our owl friend last Monday. Yup, looks good.

    Try not to make eye contact with a Cyclops. That’s my advice. But the clue today at 33D was not about the fellow’s eye issue. The clue was “Huge,” and the answer CYCLOPEAN. I like it, but (voo den?) Rex was not impressed:
    “I’m a middle-aged man who has been teaching Cyclops-containing literature for decades and I’ve never heard or seen the term CYCLOPEAN. They are indeed big, the Cyclopes, but if I were to make an adjective out of their name, I would think the iconic trait would be one-eyed-ness. Lots of things are big. Gargantua was big, and they made an adjective out of his name, and it made sense.” 

    So there. [Note: Voo den is Yiddish for “what then?” meaning “what else would you expect?”]

    But poster sailor noted:

    “For most of recorded history, the Cyclopes were known primarily for their huge size and strength, enabling them (for example) to lift the huge stones to build the ancient Mycenaean walls. So the word has been in continuous use, with the meaning as clued today, for (literally) centuries.” OK, fine.

    The puzzle had me up against the ropes — until it didn’t. The theme is hard to explain, but here’s how it worked: The clue at 39A was “Not that shrink!” And answer was crawling with parentheses: PSYCH(O(THE)R)APIST. You were supposed to read the innermost word first (THE), then the next inner one (OTHER), and then the entire word, to come up with: THE OTHER PSYCHOTHERAPIST. Wow! Good wordplay.

    And that happened three other times, but not as cleanly. See if you can discern how this one worked:

    Clue: “Result of dropping a tray of coffee drinks?” Answer: S(P(LATTE)R)ED. [LATTE PLATTER SPLATTERED]

    Since this was a pretty wacky use of parentheticals, I posted a comment that said “This puzzle is in loco parenthesis.” (Get it?) It’s gotten no responses, thank goodness.

    At 5D, would you have known that “Iconic feature of the Who’s ‘My Generation’” is BASS SOLO? I didn’t — I needed the crosses to get it. Let’s check it out.

    One Rex poster opined that a better iconic feature of “My Generation” would be “stuttering.” Ag-ag-ag agreed.

    Getting back to the psychotherapist for a moment, poster Andrew reminded us of an unfortunate portmanteau combining “analyst” and “therapist.” Take a look:

    A study released by The Onion concludes: People who are obsessed with celebrities may be less intelligent. A Hungarian study has found “a direct association between celebrity worship and poorer performance on cognitive tests,” with data showing high scores on the Celebrity Attitude Scale correlating with lower performance on two cognitive ability tests.

    D’oh! That can’t include Taylor Swift, though. Right?

    See you tomorrow!

  • The Dry Beer

    Apparently, if you openly show that you hate children and won’t hesitate to harm them, it doesn’t disqualify you from being a high school principal in Texas. The child in question is Max Hightower, a senior at Sherman High. Last month Max learned that he snared the leading male role in the school’s production of Oklahoma. He was sky high. But Max identifies as a transgender male, so the hateful shmuck of a principal (Scott Johnston) quickly instituted a gender policy that denied Max the role. Just what the world needs more of now — virulent discriminatory hatred.

    Max’s older brother Noah, a sailor in the US Navy, said he was “ashamed I associate my education” with the school.

    Max’s sister Gracie said female students who were assigned the part of “cowboys” in the musical also had their roles taken away and were no longer allowed to participate. “Many opportunities were ripped away from kids not for bad grades, not for bad behavior, not for attendance, but for something that has absolutely nothing to do with the production,” she said. She also noted Max had been elated to be awarded the role and was devastated by the decision to strip him of it.

    Max’s dad Phillip says the family is fighting the decision. “I’m not going to quit advocating for my son — ever. Max has shown me what real strength is,” he said. He also said he’s been stunned by the outpouring of love and support for Max.

    Amen to that, Hightower. Owl Chatter is with you 100%.

    Here’s Max, strutting his stuff. He’s the one with the face.

    Boy, some days it just doesn’t pay to get out of bed. Republican David Worrall was running for one of the two open at-large seats on the Clarksville, Indiana, town council yesterday, and came in third. D’oh! But that was the least of it for the poor guy. While greeting voters, he collapsed, and then died on the way to the hospital. Ouch! He took the last train to Clarksville. Rest in peace, Dave.

    As a follow-up to our recent chat about the passing of famed lunatic basketball coach Bobby Knight, here’s a newly issued bobblehead doll honoring his chair-throwing accomplishments. It’s selling for $40.

    While we’re shopping, these Taylor Swift baseball caps are going for just $35, and either (or both!) would make a perfect Veterans’ Day gift for that special Swiftie someone in your life.

    Everyone who grew up in NY around the time that I did can sing along to these lyrics, amirite? My beer is Rheingold, the dry beer. Think of Rheingold whenever you buy beer.

    Robbin Bain died two weeks ago, at age 87. She was voted “Miss Rheingold” in 1959, an honor that came with $50,000 (around $500,000 in today’s dollars). Before that, as a model, she appeared in ads for Helena Rubinstein and Revlon. She was also one of four women, called “Portrettes,” who introduced Jackie Gleason on his television variety show.

    The Rheingold fame gave her enough pop to garner an appearance on the panel of the TV show To Tell the Truth, where she was able to pick the inventor of the cocktail from a group of three. She also joined the Today Show, where she handled light features of interest to women, a role Barbara Walters and Florence Henderson held before their careers took off.

    Robbin is survived by her husband, two daughters, a stepson, and six grandchildren, all of whom enjoy a cold one from time to time, preferably extra dry.

    Another obit in The Times today is of the brilliant Soviet Olympic figure skater Oleg Protopopov, who died at age 91. (“Protopopov Pops Off” was the headline.) His skating partner and wife was Ludmilla Belousova, who died in 2017 at the age of 81. Here they are still at it in 2007, when he was 75 and she was 71. They defected to the West in 1979.

    Last, kudos to Ohio for defending abortion rights, and for Kentucky for re-electing their good governor. And for Virginia, also for protecting abortion rights by flipping their House in the right direction. I’m celebrating with some fine Virginia ale, below — from the Devil’s Backbone Brewing Company, Lexington VA. Almost as good as Rheingold.

    Burp!

    See you tomorrow!

  • The Ex

    With Taylor and Travis working out how to keep in touch with her tour starting up again and the football season moving into its second half, we asked Taylor about Joe Alwyn, whom she dated for six years and, by all reports, could very well have married. Happily, she told Owl Chatter he was a mensch. She has nothing bad to say about Joe. They worked together on ten of her songs. But, ultimately, they were not close enough a fit to make a go of it: for one thing, he shied away from the limelight, and she is, uh, she is the limelight. Phil got this nice shot of them for us. After that, please enjoy one of their songs: Evermore.

    Today’s poem from The Writer’s Almanac is by Richard Allen Taylor and is called “The Next Generation of Mourning.”

    I have begun, like my mother before me,
    to cross out names. She lived to read the obituaries
    of all her friends. In my generation, the first girl
    I ever kissed is dead, complications of pneumonia.

    I saw the email on the way from something
    important to something suddenly not, and felt
    nothing, as if a high-powered bullet had passed
    through me without hitting heart or head or bone.

    Later: the ache as I remembered
    when we were 16, in a state
    of mutual crush, and rode to the lake—
    that parent-approved, church-sponsored
    alternative to a real beach trip
    with tiki bars and carnal temptations—
    and made out in the back seat of a red ’64
    Chevy Impala with Ray driving and Mable
    looking back now and then to wink and grin.

    Soon the romance was over and we moved on,
    but never forgot that date, and when
    I saw her forty years later we still joked
    and smiled about that ride and wondered
    whatever happened to Ray and Mable.

    It’s Harold Ross’s birthday today, co-founder of The New Yorker. He was born in Aspen, Colorado, in 1892, and died in Boston in 1951. He got interested in the newspaper business when he found out that journalists got to go on police patrols and ride fire engines. The first issue hit the stands on 2/21/1925 and it proceeded to lose $8,000 a week. But when E.B. White and James Thurber came aboard, it took off.

    Ross himself never fit in with The New Yorker’s audience. He was gap-toothed, his hair was always a mess, and he spoke with a Western twang. He wore ill-fitting dark suits, and James Thurber said, “[He looked like a] carelessly carried umbrella.” He was always full of energy that he didn’t know what to do with. He once had his office soundproofed because he couldn’t stand distractions, but then he was distracted by the silence. He hired most of his staff himself, but whenever someone had to be fired, he either left the building or hid in a coat closet.

    He believed in accuracy above all else, and pioneered the use of fact checkers for everything, including fiction and cartoons. He never let a cartoonist draw a lamp without showing the cord plugged into a socket.

    “If you can’t be funny, be interesting,” he said. Happy Birthday, Ross.

    The Yanks had a disappointing season in 2023 and so did their rookie shortstop Anthony Volpe — at the plate — but not in the field. Yesterday, he became the youngest player ever to win the Gold Glove award at shortstop. He’s the first Yankee rookie ever to win a Gold Glove, and only the second Yankee ever to win it at shortstop, the other being Jeter, who won it five times.

    Kudos Volpe!

    Owl Chatter fave Adolis Garcia of the World Champion Texas Rangers snared the Gold Glove for his outfield position too. We’ll be keeping an eye on Adolis. He’s electric.

    Today’s puzzle was very clever, IMO. 56A was the “revealer” and it was: “Where your eyes might stay during a suspenseful scene … or the only place you’ll find the ‘eyes’ in this puzzle.” The answer was GLUED TO THE TV. Then each long theme answer had a “TV” in it with a letter “I” “glued” to each side. E.g., TRANSIT VISAS. There were no other I’s in the grid.

    The answer at 32A was NOEM, clued by “South Dakota governor Kristi ___.” It raised Rex’s hackles because she is an ardent right-winger. So I suggested two alternate clues that would have been less emetic:

    1. Chomsky typo.

    2. How a triskaidekaphobe would alter the English alphabet.

    The second one garnered a few nice comments. Jberg noted, though, that if you removed the M, the N would just replace it as the 13th letter. I replied asking him to please stop being so reasonable.

    Good night — see you tomorrow.

  • The Queen of Naboo

    Today’s Tiny Love Story in the NYT by CATE WNEK, which looks like a radio station, is called “My Last Chance to Tell Him.”

    My father became ill with advanced heart failure three weeks after I realized I was lesbian. At 49, I was in uncharted water. The truth kept hitting like a rough wave. On my first two visits, I shied away from telling him. His strength waned. “Is this going to be my last meal?” my father asked, half-laughing at the hospital food. While other family fulfilled his request for steak, potato, asparagus, merlot, I sat by his side — on a precipice. My choice would be absolute. I leaped. My father caught me, saying, “My whole heart is with you.” 

    Rex Parker, the self-anointed King of Crossworld, hit a new level of fame last week. Maybe? Someone dressed up as him for Halloween. Here’s how he described it, followed by a pic.

    “Somebody dressed up as me for Halloween. I repeat: Somebody. Dressed up. As me. For Halloween. Also, importantly: ‘No one got the reference.’ I have somehow peaked and nadired simultaneously. Life is long, and very weird (thanks, Julia, for sending me the picture, and tell your fiancé I’m … well, startled, but also honored):”

    The title of the puzzle today was “Double Talk” and it tipped me off to the “trick.” The theme clues had to be read as homophones before getting the answers. E.g., “We won!” was KINDERGARTENER. “We won” had to be read as “Wee one.” Cute, right? The others included:

    “To peace!” — STRING BIKINI (two-piece)

    “See in” — BEACH HOTEL (sea inn)

    and my favorite:

    “But wait!” — JUNK IN THE TRUNK (butt weight)

    MARGE Simpson popped by today too — Hey Marge! — big fan! Sorry Phil burst in on you like that — he’s incorrigible. (Great shot, though.)

    Marge isn’t the only fictional character in the grid today. “Star Wars queen” AMIDALA dropped in too, a pretty important part of the story. Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about her:

    Padmé Amidala (née Naberrie) appears in the prequel trilogy portrayed by Natalie Portman. First indirectly mentioned in Return of the Jedi, she is introduced in The Phantom Menace as the teenage Queen of Naboo, and after her reign, becomes a senator and an anti-war activist in the Galactic Senate. She secretly marries Anakin Skywalker, a Jedi Knight, then later dies while giving birth to twins Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa. Anakin’s fear of losing Padmé serves as the catalyst in driving him to the dark side of the Force and becoming Darth Vader.

    Yikes!

    Bad Joke Dept. So the wife is stepping out of the shower and the husband is stepping into the shower when they hear the doorbell ring. “See who that is, darling,” the husband says, so the wife wraps a big towel around herself and goes down to open the door. It’s their neighbor, Tom. He takes one look at her and says “I’ll give you $300 if you let go of that towel.” She thinks about it for a moment and then, Zowie! He hands her the money, she picks the towel up and goes back into the house.

    The husband shouts down, “Who was it?” The wife yells back, “Tom, from next door.” The husband asks, “Did he say anything about the $300 he owes me?”

    At 26D, the clue was “Commit a holiday etiquette no-no.” And the answer was RE-GIFT.

    This cartoon, one of my favorites, is a take-off on the classic children’s book, The Giving Tree, which many of you are very familiar with.

    81D was “Blue Ribbon beer,” which, of course, is PABST. Remember this scene from David Lynch’s Blue Velvet?

    There’s excellent news on what had seemed like an intractable war in Ukraine. Trump says he can end it in one day, and today, on Meet the Press, Zelensky invited him to come over. The only hold-up may be Trump’s bail restrictions.

    In other news on Ukraine, a report surfaced that Olena Zelensky, the first lady, spent over $1 million at Cartier’s while she and the Prez were in NYC recently. How unseemly! Plus she got a sales clerk fired in a snit for no good reason! Da Noive! A copy of the receipt was attached to the story.

    But Mrs. Z was in Canada when this was supposed to have happened, so it’s all a pile of Boole-sh*t. Pay no attention to those trolls, Olena. Owl Chatter has your back.

    Oy, that’s enough nonsense for today. See you tomorrow!

  • Sexy Sadie

    Some inhabitants of Crossworld despise Will Shortz (who, BTW, wears Shortz shorts in the summer). I don’t have feelings about him either way, but one change he (or his staff) made to Robyn Weintraub’s puzzle yesterday was definitely bad IMO. The answer was ROBE, and the clue in the puzzle as it appeared was the boring “After-swim wear.” Robyn’s clue as submitted was “Burger or Frankfurter topping.” (Think Supreme Court.) So much better, amirite?

    Here’s the non-feline Felix. As you can see, his topping is a robe.

    I wasn’t going to chatter about Bobby Knight in Owl Chatter since most everyone knows all the stories already. (He died last Wednesday at age 83.) But the (front-page) obit in the NYT by Bruce Weber had so many delicious little treats that, well, here we are.

    He was unquestionably a lunatic. His biographer John Feinstein wrote: “If I had a dollar for every time someone told me a story about encountering Knight and finding him gracious and charming and funny, I would never have to work another day in my life. If I also had a dollar for every time I’ve been told a story about Knight being a bully or being rude and obnoxious, I’d be Bill Gates.”

    On Knight’s use of colorful language, Feinstein wrote: “When Knight read Chapter 1 [of the biography], in which I described the locker-room scene in which he completely went off on Daryl Thomas, he couldn’t believe how much profanity there was in his rant. What he didn’t know was that I had removed about 80 percent of the f——— in the speech and had completely removed his repeated use of a word that rhymes with bunt.”

    He was abusive towards refs, and one of his most famous scenes was when he threw a chair across the court. (It hit several fans on the other side, but no one was injured.) Part of this reflected his frustration with refs who didn’t know the game well enough to do their job.

    “I don’t think there’s an official in the country who knows as much about basketball as I do,” Knight said in a Playboy interview in 1984 about his rough treatment of the referees. “Not even close. Or as much as any other coach knows. And when I’ve got a complaint, I want it listened to. I’ve seen an official not watch for traveling. I’ve seen him watch the flight of the ball instead of the shooter’s hand afterward — whether or not he gets hit. I think that basketball officiating is tough, but I don’t think there are very many officials who know how to watch logically from one to two to three to four to five in a given position on the floor. And when I see somebody violate the logical progression of what he should be looking for, then I’m going to let him know about it.”

    Before attaining fame and numerous national championships as the head coach at Indiana for 29 years, he was head coach at West Point for six years. Mike Krzyzewski played for him there as a guard. (It’s pronounced sha-shef-ski, for reasons I never understood. What happens to all those letters before -ski? A “K” can be silent without an “n?”)

    To his credit, Knight had a high regard for education and made generous donations to the schools he was a part of, particularly libraries. He was a voracious reader, especially of military history. At Indiana, Knight endowed two chairs, one in history and one in law. He also raised nearly $5 million for the Indiana library system by championing a library fund to support the library’s activities. The fund was ultimately named in his honor. He was well known for stressing the importance of academic achievement to his players, telling them to “focus on the book, not the ball.”

    Ultimately, of course, his hot-headedness got the best of him.

    Knight was married to his first wife, Nancy, for over 20 years. They had two sons, and were divorced in 1985. He then married Karen Vieth Edgar in 1988. Here she is smiling at the camera as she tries to choke him. Phil: Back away slowly. They are both very dangerous.

    I’m guessing there’s not much chance of it, but, — try to rest in peace, Knight.

    In today’s puzzle, the clue at 41A was “Paradise of the Beat Generation,” and the answer was SAL. (The character Sal Paradise.) Turns out Rex (who is a literature prof) hates Kerouac, and he quoted Truman Capote who said “On the Road isn’t writing at all — it’s typing.” Ouch!

    And tea73 noted: Eons ago we used to listen to books on CDs on long road trips and for one of them we thought “On the Road” would be good to listen to. We put in the first CD and listened to over half of it before we discovered that we had inadvertently put it on shuffle. Oops.

    Oh, no! At 49A the puzzle answer was EVIL EYE. The clue was “It’s a bad look.” Yikes! That’s all we need. Kinahora! (For those of you unfamiliar with the Yiddish term kinahora, it’s a reference to the “evil eye,” designed to neutralize it. It’s often accompanied by spitting, or at least spitting sounds (ptoo, ptoo, ptoo). For me, the kinahora is enough.

    Serious fans of The West Wing may recall a scene in which the president insanely says something like “The polls are looking good,” which would clearly tempt the Evil Eye to cause them to plummet immediately. So Toby and Josh forced him to conduct a serious kinehora ceremony right outside the Oval Office, complete with the spitting. Whew. Good catch, guys.

    At 48A, the clue was “Strip” and the answer: DENUDE. egsforbreakfast asked: Shouldn’t DENUDE mean to put on clothes? Hmmmmmm.

    Close to DENUDE in the grid was that EVIL EYE and ASSESS.

    At 28D, “Title woman in a Beatles song,” was SADIE, from, of course, Sexy Sadie. Do you know the story behind that song? The Beatles were departing from their visit to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in India, and John heard that the Maharishi had made a sexual advance on Mia Farrow (who was studying with MMY at the time). He was very disillusioned and wrote the song dissing the Maharishi. It is considered one of the earliest examples of a “diss track.” “What have you done? You made a fool of everyone.” It was originally to be called “Maharishi,” but George convinced John to change the name.

    George, Paul, and John’s wife at the time, Cynthia, did not believe the story. In 1992, Harrison gave a benefit concert for the Maharishi-associated Natural Law Party, and later apologized for the way the Maharishi had been treated by saying, “We were very young” and “It’s probably in the history books that Maharishi ‘tried to attack Mia Farrow’ – but it’s bullshit, total bullshit.” Cynthia Lennon wrote in 2006 that she “hated leaving on a note of discord and mistrust, when we had enjoyed so much kindness from the Maharishi.” Asked if he forgave the Beatles, the Maharishi replied, “I could never be upset with angels.” McCartney took his daughter, Stella, to visit the Maharishi in the Netherlands in 2007, which renewed their friendship.

    Anyway, bottom line, since “Sexy Sadie” is the Maharishi, the puzzle clue “Title woman in a Beatles song” is wrong! Sadie is a man!

    Now, I ask you, where else but in Owl Chatter can you get three full paragraphs of utter nonsense like that? Blathering on about nothing. I can’t get enough of it.

    [That’s what I told the dentist once. He put some latex covering over my mouth and chin to isolate a tooth he was working on, and he asked me if I was okay with latex. I guess some people are allergic to it. “I can’t get enough of it!” I told him.]

    Can you make a yo-yo go up and down a few times before it gets all bollixed up with the string? I think I can. Maybe. The clue at 31A was “Yo-yos in a way,” and the answer was WALKS THE DOG. Take a look at this fellow, as I let myself out. See you tomorrow!

  • Who Wears Short Shorts?

    My favorite radio show was Steve Post’s, weekday mornings, on WNYC. It called Morning Music: Post played classical music and jabbered away. Even his take on the weather was great. Patchy fog became patchy frogs. When it went off the air (Steve was ill with cancer and then passed away), I kept my radio tuned to the station. Post was replaced by a talk-interview show. It was background noise for when I worked at home.

    One morning, a professor from England was being interviewed. He had written a book on teenage sex and was getting grief about it. He was accused of being in favor of it, or of making it seem like a good thing, and thereby exacerbating the problem. (Exacerbating is not a dirty word — look it up.) He was defending himself by pointing out that he was only describing trends in a factual manner. I dismissed it all as the usual nonsense and turned my attention to my work.

    About a half hour later I turned an ear back to the radio and was amazed to find out that that crap was still going on. The poor professor was still being pilloried. Clearly, they had all gone mad and drifted off the planet. First of all, they were worried that the book would increase teenage sex. When, in the entire history of mankind, has a teenager ever read a book? — let alone a book by a professor? And they accused him of making sex seem like fun? Hello? I think the horse is out of the barn on that one. I’m pretty sure the word had slipped out already. Sheesh.

    Everyone loves today’s constructor, Robyn Weintraub. So there were many clever clues/answers. Who else would clue BLT with: “‘Giant ___,’ soft sculpture of a sandwich at the Whitney Museum.” It turns out there is a pretty famous giant BLT sandwich by Claes Oldenburg at the Whitney.

    At 6D, “Cheeky attire?” was SHORT SHORTS. Rex shared this ad for Nair with us which I have no memory of seeing from way back when. It always seemed like a weird product to me. You rub this cream all over yourself and what does it do? — burn the hair off chemically?

    Alright. I looked it up. Nair works by breaking the disulfide bonds of the keratin molecules in hair. This reduces the tensile strength of the keratin so greatly that the hair can be wiped away. Calcium hydroxide is an active ingredient that chemically breaks down the hair for removal. Some formulations also contain potassium thioglycolate, which breaks down the disulfide bonds in the hair’s keratin. The Nair products often include softening agents, such as mineral oil, to help offset the harsh active ingredients.

    I think that’s how the Werewolf was captured. The FBI traced an order for a 50-gallon drum of Nair to a house in Colorado.

    At 14A the clue was “Show that featured the first lesbian kiss on prime-time TV (1991).” Five letters. Hands up if you thought it was ELLEN. Many folks did. But it was LA LAW.

    At 1A “Bill for expensive clothing?” was BLASS. Blass was born on June 22, 1922 and died a bit before his 80th birthday. His Wikipedia entry says:

    In 1943, Blass enlisted in the Army. Due to his intelligence and talent, he was assigned to the 603rd Camouflage Battalion. For three weeks no one could find him. (Just kidding.) Its mission was to deceive the German Army into believing the Allies were positioned in fake locations, for example by using dummy tanks. He served in this unit at several major operations including the Battle of the Bulge, and the Rhine River crossing. After the war, Blass returned to New York, and was promptly hired as Anne Klein’s assistant. However, he was soon fired; allegedly, Anne told him that while he had good manners, he had no talent.

    Good manners are important, no? These outfits are his.

    How about this one at 55A? The clue: “Subject of a first-person narrative.” The answer ADAM. Good one Robyn!

    In the hall of mirrors in which the GOP now operates, their attempt to cut the deficit by $14.3 billion by tying a cut in funding for the IRS to the foreign aid bill, will actually increase the deficit by over $28 billion. That’s what the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has determined. Historian Heather Cox Richardson notes:

    “New House speaker Mike Johnson tried to spin this information in a way that can only be described as dishonest: ‘Only in Washington when you cut spending do they call it an increase in the deficit,’ he said.”

    It reminded me of the joke about OJ Simpson’s daughter cracking his car up against a telephone pole. The cop comes over and she says: “When my dad finds out about this he’ll kill me.” The cop sees who she is and says: “You’re right. He’ll get away with it too.”

    Just like Johnson will. If not this time, next time.

    Thanks for popping in. See you tomorrow.

  • Boola Boola

    Margaret Renkl looks like her brother, Billy Renkl. But they are not twins, having been born 18 months apart. She has longer hair and wears glasses. Her new book is called “The Comfort of Crows,” and it was reviewed in yesterday’s NYT by Dina Gachman. Her brother created the cover art for it, as well as 52 original full-color collages that appear within it, one per essay.

    Renkl sees things in the natural world that most of us don’t, and is able to express what she sees in words. Her line about water buckets, below, is what drew me to chat about it in Owl Chatter. Here are two paragraphs from Gachman’s review:

    All 52 essays are meditations on the changing seasons of the natural world. She writes about growing older, watching her sons move away and coming to terms with the fact that she may have more life behind her than ahead. Paying attention to the living things in her backyard helps her cope with climate change, political strife and cultural upheaval — and she hopes it will help the reader, too.

    “The world is burning, and there is no time to put down the water buckets,” Renkl writes in a chapter called “Wild Joy.” “For just an hour, put down the water buckets anyway.”

    Here’s what she (and her brother) look like:

    Ellin Johnson of Portland OR, wrote this letter (to the NYT) that appeared yesterday:

    As a child, Matthew Perry was a strong Canadian junior tennis player. In the early 2000s, he enlisted the help of my son, a teaching pro, to be a hitting partner.

    In late 2001 my son died unexpectedly. We had a service for him and invited Matthew to be a reader. Not only did he come and do a lovely job as a reader along with a few others, but after I returned to Portland, he sent a large check “to defray expenses” incurred, a lovely and thoughtful gift.

    When Matthew’s sad book recounting his drug and alcohol addictions came out, I wrote him of my concerns for him but praise for his candor.

    Our family has never forgotten both the happy connection my son had with Matthew as well as his graciousness in our time of sorrow.

    *********

    Perry never married. He was engaged to literary manager Molly Hurwitz in 2020, but it ended in 2021.

    He also dated actress/model Yasmine Bleeth for a time. That’s her real name: not a typo. What in the world did he see in her?

    He went out with Julia Roberts after Yasmine.

    His Wikipedia site notes: Perry had a perfectionist and obsessive personality, e.g., spending many hours perfecting his answering machine message.

    Beep!

    This poem by C.K. Williams from today’s Writer’s Almanac is called “Peace.” The warring couple in it breaks the rule that says, “Never go to bed mad.” But it works out.

    We fight for hours, through dinner, through the endless evening, who
    even knows now what about,
    what could be so dire to have to suffer so for, stuck in one another’s craws
    like fishbones,
    the cadavers of our argument dissected, flayed, but we go on with it, to
    bed, and through the night,
    feigning sleep, dreaming sleep, hardly sleeping, so precisely never touch-
    ing, back to back,
    the blanket bridged across us for the wintry air to tunnel down, to keep
    us lifting, turning,
    through the angry dark that holds us in its cup of pain, the aching dark,
    the weary dark,
    then, toward dawn, I can’t help it, though justice won’t I know be served,
    I pull her to me,
    and with such accurate, graceful deftness she rolls to me that we arrive
    embracing our entire lengths.

    There’s a new sheriff in town. Well, actually, it’s a new coffeemaker that’s in town. Sam (who is obsessed with coffeemakers) sent it to us as a gift. So far, I’ve taken it out of the box. It’s a little daunting. But I hope to have it up and running by the weekend.

    ??

    Frank Bruni shared two football quotes in his “For the love of sentences” feature this week:

    In WAPO, Rick Reilly put Mike McDaniel, the sunny head coach of the Miami Dolphins, and Bill Belichick, the gloomy head coach of the New England Patriots, side by side: “One is as open as a new Safeway, and the other is as closed up as an old submarine. One will tell you anything you want; the other will hand out information on a need-to-go-screw-yourself basis. One looks like a nerd who got lost on a stadium tour and wound up as head coach. The other looks like an Easter Island statue nursing a grudge.”

    And in The Athletic, Jason Lloyd described how Kevin Stefanski, the head coach of the Cleveland Browns, almost — but not quite — continued that pro football team’s magic streak of improbable victories in a game last weekend against the Seattle Seahawks: “He nearly had the lady sawed in half when he hit an artery.”

    And, speaking of hitting arteries, — on the medical research front, The Onion reports: Study Finds Drinking Children’s Blood No More Effective Than Regular Blood At Achieving Eternal Life.

    If you’ve heard of “Boolean” algebra but have no idea what it means or that it was named for some guy named Boole, welcome to the club. But, then again, I’m the guy who doesn’t know what a logarithm is.

    Today is the birthday of George Boole (1815, Lincoln, Lincolnshire, England), the mathematician responsible for Boolean algebra, whose three basic operations of AND, OR and NOT, became the basis of comparing sets of things mathematically. He also composed all-important algebraic identities like: (X or Y) = (Y or X); not (not X) = X; not (X and Y) = (not X) or (not Y), which became the stuff of nightmares for many teenagers. I had no idea the word “not” could be indecipherable.

    He also came up with the expression: “That’s Boole-shit!” for ideas with which he strongly disagreed. [No he didn’t.]

    Boole was self-taught; the son of a shoe-maker. He was the first math professor at Queens College, in Cork, Ireland. He met Mary Everest there, whom he married. [Editor’s note: Several dreadful jokes on “climbing Everest” have been removed, for obvious reasons. Don’t ask.] They had five daughters. The oldest, Mary Ellen, had four sons, the youngest of whom, Sebastian, invented the jungle gym. The fourth daughter, Lucy, was the first female chemistry professor in England.

    Boole was only 49 when he died in Cork, Ireland, falling off a jungle gym.

    Special thanks to our incredible photographer Phil and the entire Owl Chatter staff, who work tirelessly, wait — make that tiredly — to crank out this nonsense. This is our 350th post! Kinahora!

    See you tomorrow.

  • Granddaddy’s Money

    Today’s poem by Gayle Brandeis from The Writer’s Almanac is called “Feeling East.”

    I used to think East
    was wherever I pointed my right
    hand. I was six, my body
    the center of space, the axis
    on which directions turned.
    When I learned directions
    are fixed, that our bodies
    move through space
    like fish, East became
    the sunrise, but, even more so,
    the lake. Around Chicago, Lake
    Michigan is what is East,
    and my body could always feel
    its presence. Riding home
    from the city, dozing
    in the back seat, I always knew
    where we were.

    Living out West now, I find
    directions hazy as smog. My right
    hand points to mountains, to palms,
    but their presence looms light
    in my body. When I get lost,
    and I do, I close my eyes
    and try to feel East,
    tracing sharp shores of memory,
    the pull of the lake in my blood,
    following the three right turns home.

    Sunrise over Lake Michigan

    It’s not enough to lose the game? Seriously. During Saturday’s 28-16 loss to UCLA at the Rose Bowl, multiple Colorado players and program staff had jewelry and money stolen from the locker room. Pasadena police are investigating.

    Colorado coach Deion Sanders said people online arguing that players shouldn’t have valuables in the locker room bothered him. “So they shouldn’t be blessed? They shouldn’t be blessed? That’s crazy. That’s like if you have a car in your driveway and somebody come and steal your car. ‘Well, you shouldn’t have a car.’ That’s how stupid that sounds. These are young men that worked their butts off or were blessed and gifted by family members whatever was stolen.”

    “All that stuff should be replaced. This is the Rose Bowl. They say the Granddaddy of them all, right? I’m sure Granddaddy has some money,” Sanders said Tuesday. “Grandpa should have some money to give these kids.”

    You tell ’em Prime Time!

    In today’s puzzle “Six Flags ride named for a powerful animal,” was EL TORO. When they just had E–OR-, someone said they thought it was EEYORE. Ha!

    Several posters said what their costumes were for Halloween. Wanderlust said: We had an alien-themed Halloween party and I went wrapped up in dying vines and gourds and other autumnal detritus, playing a denizen of a planet that plants seeds on their bodies so they always have food at hand. My people live for only a year, and I told everyone I was nearing my death and invited them to eat anything they wanted from my body. Some did pick Brussels sprouts off a stalk hanging from my neck.

    At 34A, “Little shots?” was HYPOS. Malaika, who subbed for Rex today, asked for someone to explain it to her — she didn’t know what a hypo is. So many explained it was short for hypodermic (needle). Then I posted: “That’s odd, I thought HYPO was what you get when you hit the wrong key on your hypewriter.” (Weak tea, I know, but someone has to do it.)

    Remember Theda Bara? I barely heard of her. She was part of a theme answer today. The theme was three five-letter words that are anagrams of each other. So for the clue “Silent film star Bara didn’t want to leave us,” the answer was THEDA HATED DEATH.

    One poster noted Theda Bara’s name was arrived at as an anagram of “arab death,” and Wanderlust added: I looked it up on Wikipedia, which says the origin of her stage name is disputed, but publicists for her 1917 film Cleopatra noticed the anagram to Arab Death and claimed she was “the daughter of an Arab sheikh and a Frenchwoman, born in the Sahara.” She was actually the daughter of a Jewish businessman, born in Cincinnati.

    But dgd sort of ended the fun:

    “Origins like you claimed for Theda Bara are usually fake and so it is with this one. Her first and middle names at birth were from the daughter of Aaron Burr, Theodosia Burr, and it was made shorter and more exotic for her screen name. Arab Death was invented after the fact as is common to create the false origin. Her sister also took the screen last name of Bara.”

    Any way you slice it, she was pretty hot for her day: One of cinema’s first sex symbols. She never appeared in a film with sound. She married film director Charles Brabin, who survived her. They never had children. She died in 1955 at the age of 69.

    The eyes of all gay ice hockey fans were on Travis Dermott of the Arizona Coyotes last Friday night. The NHL banned the use of “pride tape” on hockey sticks, but Dermott defied the ban a week earlier. Friday was Pride Night for the Coyotes and gay fans were hoping to see Dermott defy the ban again. Unfortunately, he couldn’t play due to illness, and none of the other Coyotes took up the cause. Boo. But it was Pride Night, and signs of support for the LGBTQ+ community were highly visible elsewhere inside the arena. Sean Durzi and Liam O’Brien of the Coyotes walked into the arena before the game wearing the Coyotes’ Pride-themed jerseys. And Matthew Spang-Marshall — who is the president of the Arizona Legacy Pride Hockey Association — dropped the ceremonial puck prior to the game.

    Lyndsey Fry (below), the Coyotes’ radio analyst, is the only openly gay member of an NHL broadcast team. She says Pride Nights are important steps forward. “There are cities where I don’t feel comfortable holding my wife’s hand. We have a long way to go, so that’s what these nights are for.” Back in 2000, two women were kicked out of Dodger Stadium for kissing each other to celebrate a home run. [Jeez Louise!] The Dodgers started hosting a Pride Night in 2013. 

    One hour before puck drop on Friday evening, fans walked into the Arena with a welcome message on the main scoreboard that read, “Pride Night,” with logos of the Coyotes and Kings against a colorful, rainbow-themed backdrop.

    The national anthem was performed a cappella by four members of the Phoenix Gay Men’s Chorus.

    Howler, the Coyotes mascot, wore a rainbow headband as he tossed T-shirts into the crowd.

    And the league has since reversed itself and removed the ban on pride-taped hockey sticks. They look pretty cool.

    See you tomorrow!

  • The Salsa Dip Controversy

    As an addendum to yesterday’s discussion of Greg Bukata’s helicopter heroism, dad Chris tells me: “The incredible thing was they were the only helicopter in Houston for at least 24 hours and they rescued those 108 people on the first day.”

    We know what to get him for his next birthday: a good hair dryer and some towels.

    On the World Series, this is the first time two states are competing: Texas and Arizona. It has always included at least one city. [Where else but in Owl Chatter can you get searing analysis like that?]

    Without the major markets like NY, LA, Chicago, or Boston involved, national interest in it may be low, but Arizona and Texas both distinguished themselves so nicely in the playoffs, the series has a nice feel to it.

    I was too tired to last beyond the third inning last night (as was Max Scherzer, apparently), but I did catch the three Texas runs and one crucial defensive play. (Texas won 3-1.) In the bottom of the second, Chris Walker led off for ‘Zona with a double, and Tommy Pham singled to right. Adolis Garcia, who has so distinguished himself at the plate, fielded the ball on the run and made a perfect throw on one hop to the catcher (Jonah Heim) who tagged Walker out easily. Instead of ‘Zona having men on first and third with no outs, there was one out and only one runner on base. Max got the next two batters out; no runs scored. The play altered the trajectory of the game.

    Did Walker run through a red light? That is, was the third base coach (Tony Perezchica) signalling for him to stop at third? Well, yes and no. The replay showed Perezchica was waving him in at first, but then changed his mind and held up a clear stop signal. Walker explained that he got a “bad read” on the ball. That is, he couldn’t tell at first whether it was a hit or would be caught so he hesitated briefly. When he finally started to run, he saw Perezchica’s initial signal waving him home and put his head down “to make up time” and focus on getting a good turn at third. He missed the stop sign. Walker took the blame, but not enough credit was given to Garcia’s brilliant throw. Walker missed the stop sign, for sure, but he would’ve been safe had it not been for that throw.

    Here’s the play from a few different angles.

    At 16A today “Less cooked” was RAWER, and at 7D “Washing machine setting” was PRE-SOAK.

    Seemingly innocent words. But I like Anoa Bob’s take on them:

    “PRESOAK reminded me of George Carlin’s PRE- send up. Would that not simply be SOAK? How can you PRESOAK anything? And 16A RAWER clued as ‘Less cooked?’ I can hear George saying ‘If RAW is uncooked, how can you get more uncooked?’”

    I miss George Carlin. I went to see him live once, in New Brunswick, I think. Pennsylvania Nancy — was it with you? He wanted the audience to stay in touch afterwards and was going to assign “row monitors” to be in charge of the effort.

    He died fairly recently (2014) at the age of 71. I often think of him when I’m in an elevator, which is all the time at Hunter. He had this bit about how you have to share elevator space, and rearrange it when someone gets off.

    Phil got this wonderful shot of him right after he must have inadvertently said one of those seven dirty words.

    On Monday, 4D had Crossworld all aflutter. The clue was “Accompaniment for a tortilla chip,” and the answer was SALSA DIP. Rex started it with: “I continue to not believe that SALSA DIP is a thing. It’s just called SALSA. Yes, you can ‘dip’ your chip in it. Still, just SALSA.”

    Anoa Bob “chipped in” with: Hereabouts in Tex-Mex Land, SALSA is something you spoon onto your taco or enchilada while a SALSA DIP would be SALSA in a bowl with tortilla chips nearby for DIPping. SALSA DIP is usually thicker than SALSA to make it easier to get a nice big dollop of it to remain on your tortilla chip. 

    Jon P made a similar point and even shared a recipe:

    “Salsa is a condiment that can itself be a dip.

    “Salsa, the condiment, can also be an ingredient in a Salsa Dip. (Betty Crocker has a recipe: https://www.bettycrocker.com/recipes/so-simple-salsa-dip/fdacd856-8640-40aa-be97-c51a219229a1)

    “The closest analog I can think of is ranch dressing. It’s a thing. You can put it on salads or even dip your vegetables in it. But you can also make a ranch dip out of it.”

    Then Bruce R said: “There is no defense of SALSA DIP. It’s redundant and cringeworthy. Anyway, on a completely different note, I believe that for lunch today I will have a hamburger sandwich.”

    And Bob Mills chimed in with:

    “Is the phrase ‘hamburger sandwich’ redundant? It depends on whether a serving of chopped beef on a plate is called a hamburger. If it is a hamburger, then ‘hamburger sandwich’ is OK…because you’ve added two sides of bread or a roll. Now, I think I’ll open a bottle of carbonated soda.

    [At this point my brain started to hurt so I set it all aside.]

    See you tomorrow! Thanks for popping in.

  • Where’s the Fork?

    If you like malapropisms (and who doesn’t), then you should celebrate the birthday of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, who was born on this date in Dublin back in 1751. His play The Rivals was not well-received when it opened — a member of the audience even threw an apple at the main actor. But after he shut it down and rewrote the script it was a huge hit — George Washington said it was his favorite play. One of the characters was Mrs. Malaprop. She used malapropisms, and thus the term was coined. For example, she referred to someone as “the very pineapple of politeness.” He also wrote The School for Scandal.

    Get this — Sheridan went into politics and entered Parliament in 1780. He sided with Charles James Fox, who supported the American Revolution and tried to persuade King George not to go to war over it. He was giving a speech once and Edmund Burke, to dramatize a point, threw a knife onto the Parliament floor. Sheridan looked at it and asked “Where’s the fork?” [Ha!]

    Later in his life, the U.S. Congress offered Sheridan £20,000 in gratitude for his efforts to avoid the Revolutionary War, but he refused the money. He is buried in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey along with Chaucer, Spenser, and other pathetic ne’er-do-wells.

    Happy Birthday, Sheridan.

    OMG — I’m full of pride when Sam successfully gets his oil changed — how in the world did Chris and Ann stand it when son Greg got inducted into the U.S. Coast Guard’s Hall of Heroes, for acts of extraordinary bravery. Here’s how the Coast Guard tells it:

    When Hurricane Harvey made landfall in late August 2017 it arrived as a devastating Category 4 hurricane that caused catastrophic flooding and more than 100 deaths.

    One of the costliest natural disasters in U.S. history, Harvey caused a staggering $125 billion in damage throughout Southeast Texas and the Houston metro area.

    On August 26, as part of the initial Coast Guard response to the hurricane Lieutenant Gregory Bukata ‘11, an MH-65D Aircraft Commander, and his crew conducted some of the first rescues that night, in 80-knot winds and torrential rain.

    As the response continued, during one notable mission Bukata worked to place a Coast Guard rescue swimmer between tall trees and high voltage power lines to reach a critically-ill pregnant woman who was trapped by rising waters in the attic of her home.

    An award citation describing the arduous mission reads, “Due to massive amounts of water intrusion, the crew endured multiple aircraft emergencies during the rescue of additional family members. The loss of critical avionics, internal communication, and aircraft stabilization systems coupled with the violent motion of the aircraft from 60-knot gusts made just hovering an arduous act and hoisting a true aeronautical feat. Following a hoist failure on the subsequent rescue, the crew was forced to leave the swimmer on scene. As the only available resource at this early stage of the response, the crew returned with a new aircraft to complete the rescue.”

    During the seven days Bukata was part of the response, he and his crew were instrumental in the rescue of 108 people and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for extraordinary achievement in aerial flight.

    ******

    Greg went to school with our Sam and they were good buddies. Greg loved it when I teased him for laughs, pretending to confuse him with his sister Claire. He always had a gleam in his eye, part mischief, part joy. Still has it.

    In the puzzle today, “Seeing Eye dog, e.g.,” was GUIDE ANIMAL. And it set Rex off, to wit,

    Wait, is “Seeing Eye dog” a brand name? Why is “Eye” capitalized? I would’ve written it without a capital “E,” and possibly with a hyphen. Wow, yes, it’s trademarked. Well, you learn something new every day. Or maybe not every day, but occasionally, anyway. I didn’t have any problem with the capitalization, but I do have a problem with the answer, GUIDE ANIMAL, which … are there Seeing Eye warthogs? The only GUIDE ANIMAL I’ve ever seen or heard of is a Seeing Eye dog. I guess the dogs that don’t learn the trademark method can’t be called that, is that the deal? Anyway, GUIDE ANIMAL feels … off. The internet is telling me that a “miniature horse” might also serve as a GUIDE ANIMAL, but I resolutely refuse to believe this. Thumbs down to GUIDE ANIMAL.

    But an anony-mouse poster shared the following:

    I actually worked with a woman who had a guide horse: a miniature horse that worked like a guide dog for the blind. You can Google it. She had previously used a dog to help her navigate, but dogs have relatively shorter working lifespans, and a lot of it is spent training them. I haven’t worked with her for ages, but I used to see her and her horse out and about in town and even at the mall, and think, “Yup, that horse is still at it!”

    From the Borowitz Report today: Mike Pence Returns Four Dollars to Donors.

    Good night everybody! See you tomorrow (if I’m not too tired from my classes).