The Wellington Files

Today’s poem of the day in The Writer’s Almanac is called “A Color of the Sky” and is by Tony Hoagland. It rewards re-readings. But that’s up to you: As the saying goes, You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t look him in the mouth. (Not to imply that any Owl Chatter readers are horses.) 

A Color of the Sky

Windy today and I feel less than brilliant,
driving over the hills from work.
There are the dark parts on the road
    when you pass through clumps of wood
and the bright spots where you have a view of the ocean,
but that doesn’t make the road an allegory.

I should call Marie and apologize
for being so boring at dinner last night,
but can I really promise not to be that way again?
And anyway, I’d rather watch the trees, tossing
in what certainly looks like sexual arousal.

Otherwise it’s spring, and everything looks frail;
the sky is baby blue, and the just-unfurling leaves
are full of infant chlorophyll,
the very tint of inexperience.

Last summer’s song is making a comeback on the radio,
and on the highway overpass,
the only metaphysical vandal in America has written
MEMORY LOVES TIME
in big black spraypaint letters,

which makes us wonder if Time loves Memory back.

Last night I dreamed of X again.
She’s like a stain on my subconscious sheets.
Years ago she penetrated me
but though I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed,
I never got her out,
but now I’m glad.

What I thought was an end turned out to be a middle.
What I thought was a brick wall turned out to be a tunnel.
What I thought was an injustice
turned out to be a color of the sky.

Outside the youth center, between the liquor store
and the police station,
a little dogwood tree is losing its mind;

overflowing with blossomfoam,
like a sudsy mug of beer;
like a bride ripping off her clothes,

dropping snow white petals to the ground in clouds,

so Nature’s wastefulness seems quietly obscene.
It’s been doing that all week:
making beauty,
and throwing it away,
and making more.

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Here’s Hoagland. He was born in NC and passed away in 2018, a month before turning 65. Rest in peace, Tony.

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Nothing could stop our Pistons from garnering win number 4 (of the season) last night, stomping all over the Washington Wizards 129-117. Alex Burks came off the bench, played 28 minutes, and scored 34 points. Wow! He played college ball at Colorado. And, get this — we were playing without two of our best players, Cade Cunningham and Bojan Bogdanovic. Pistons are 4-36 on the season now.

After beating Toronto on Dec. 30 to end their record-setting 28-game losing streak, they lost seven more in a row before last night. Seven in a row is nothing, right fellas? Good game!

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Today’s puzzle seems pretty amazing to me. I was bumbling my way along, not noticing anything special until I got way down to the last across clue: 62A, “First-year law student … or what every answer in this puzzle has exactly.” Answer: ONE L. Wait, what? Every answer (across and down) has exactly one L in it? OMG, it does. BLOG, ALTAR, LIPO, NEALE, SLEW, and so on. Pretty neat. BILGE and BULGE was a nice combo.

At 13D the clue was “Fuse, as metal,” and the answer was WELD. And today is Tuesday. Do you see the connection? I didn’t, but commenter Lewis noted the shoutout to actress Tuesday Weld, from the old Dobie Gillis show. She was the pretty girlfriend. Marybeth Whitehead, the biological mom in the famous Baby M surrogacy case had a daughter she named Tuesday. Here’s Weld sucking up to some random bus driver. Eyes on the road, Kramden!

Weld’s name at birth was Susan. Her cousin couldn’t pronounce it when she was little and it came out Tu-Tu. That’s where the Tuesday came from. She changed her name legally to Tuesday when she was 16. She is 80 years old now and lives in Manhattan. She is of the Weld family — high society in Massachusetts. Tuesday is a fourth cousin of Bill Weld who was governor of Massachusetts in the 90s.

She was married three times, the last one was Pinchas Zuckerman. Her second was actor Dudley Moore. She had a daughter with first hubby, screenwriter Claude Harz, and a son with Moore.

This paragraph comes straight out of Wikipedia:

Between marriages, Weld dated Al Pacino, David Steinberg, Mikhail Baryshnikov (whose previous girlfriend, Jessica Lange, had been Weld’s best friend), Omar Sharif, Rabbi Henry Sharpstein of Congregation Ohev Shalom in Great Neck, NY, Richard Gere, and Ryan O’Neal. (Okay, I made up Sharpstein, but the others are real.)

Omar f*cking Sharif made the cut! — good old Doc Zhivago. She must have left him because of the Siberian winters. Good rule of thumb — when your moustache gets caked with ice, it’s time to call for an Uber.

Here’s what all those men found alluring. I can see it.

 

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OK folks — I must still be tired from the trip. It’s only 6:30 but I’m beat.

See you tomorrow – thanks for stopping in.

When we staggered off of the plane at 7 am yesterday and into the terminal, these giant letters left no doubt as to our being back home. 

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A few days ago the puzzle asked us what Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary and Where’s Waldo? have in common, and I was surprised to learn they had both been banned. Can you see why Waldo was banned, below?

Look closer:

Right. When that kid touched his ice cream cone to the sunbathing woman’s back, causing her to jerk upward, it gave readers a side view of her left boob with enough detail to trigger the idiots. You can see her bikini top below her. You’re out Waldo! In fact, Where’s Waldo was one of the Top 100 most challenged books in the 90s. It was reissued with the bikini top covering the offending body part. Whew. We’re safe now.

Rex Commenter DrBB noted how carefully you had to search to come up with the offending image. He added:

Reminds me of the old joke about the lady who calls the cops because her neighbor is walking around naked in front of the windows of his house.

“But madam, the nearest house is almost a mile away.”

“Here, use my binoculars.”

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I checked my phone for the outdoor temperature yesterday before heading out to an NJ Symphony concert. The phone said it was 36 degrees, but then, in little letters, it whispered to me “but it really feels like 27 degrees.” What’s that about?? Is it 36 or 27? JUST TELL ME THE GODDAMN TEMPERATURE SO I CAN PICK A JACKET TO WEAR! Feels like to whom? This New Yorker cartoon got to the bottom of it.

  “Thirty-two? Feels more like 29 to me. Yeah, let’s go with 29.”

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Alright, so it’s not really that guy. The “feels like” temp takes into account wind chill and humidity. BTW, if it’s 33 but “feels like” 31, does water freeze? No it does not! Freezing occurs based on the actual temperature. That is your Owl Chatter science fact for the day. For the year, actually. It will be on the test.

Except here’s another one. It is believed by many, counter-intuitively, that hot water freezes faster than cold water. A young man in Tanzania is reputed to have discovered this when making ice cream. It was even given a name: ”the Mpemba effect.”

But the good folks at MIT don’t buy it. Prakash Govindan, a postdoctoral associate in MIT’s ME department, says it takes more time and/or energy to freeze hot water because it must be brought down further in temperature until it reaches the freezing point. Try it yourself by jumping into a vat of boiling water. No! Try it by taking both hot and cold water and placing them in your freezer. Then keep checking on them until one freezes or you get bored. (I got bored before I finished typing this paragraph.) Last, since you must have been wondering: Prakash Govindan is an anagram of “having soap drank.” 

Boy, this water froze quickly.

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The Onion recently conducted an exercise in which they gave you quotes, and you had to decide whether they were by Hitler or Trump. Oy.

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It was the birthday of John Singer Sargent last week. He was born in 1856. In 1884 he shocked the art world with his erotic portrait of “Madame X.” In the original version, the strap on her right shoulder was slipping. Not very racy by Where’s Waldo? standards, but pretty hot for its day. He later raised the strap. Boo!

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This poem called “Poe’s Anvil” is by David Ray. It appeared in The Writer’s Almanac on Jan. 6.

At the drive-in theater where they sell junk
on Sundays we saw a man and his wife standing
by a pick-up truck trying to sell his anvil.
It sat up in the truck’s bed — it was black,
heavy, and elegant like a mammoth’s tusk.
And his name was written on it like a signature,
in iron that once ran like ink. His name was Poe.
I talked with him and he recalled briefly
days when his anvil stood outside a shed,
a workshop like a harbor set in a sea
of green tomato fields, and inside
he had a coal fire and a bellows and he watched
the tractor replace mules and the car
replace wagons. He tired of horse-shoes,
wagon wheels and plows, of hitches, harrows,
and lugs, of axles, crankcases and flywheels,
and he sat somewhat amused (and dying, his wife
told us), presiding over the sale of his own
monument, which he wanted someone to go on
hammering on, and in the midday city sun
the theater’s white screen was blank
like a faded quilt or Moby Dick’s stretched skin.

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Our concert yesterday with the NJ Symphony featured Augustin Hadelich, an amazing violinist performing Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. He was dressed in black, and his face, up close, shows the effects of his having been injured seriously in a fire on his family’s farm in Italy in 1999 when he was fifteen. He was airlifted to Germany for treatment . He’s the fire bearer now — the audience melted when he played. You could do worse with your next 4:36 than listen to a piece of the Beethoven concerto. Towards the end the violin and the bassoon have a brief conversation. 

His wife’s cute. SuXiao Yang. She’s a professional photographer, so she and Phil had a lot to talk about, although Phil kept keeling over. She is also a violist and has developed a passion for knitting and crocheting, as this photo illustrates. 

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The following comment by Lewis is a great example of how stuff in a puzzle can open little doors to wonderful things, ideally utter nonsense that finds its way to Owl Chatter. The 7th row in today’s puzzle happened to be the three answers: ON A, TOGA, AURORA. Per Lewis:

“Every time I look at row seven — ONA TOGA AURORA — all my brain hears, because the rhythm is identical, is In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.

“By the way, a bit of background on that song (recorded by Iron Butterfly), per Wikipedia:

“According to drummer Ron Bushy, organist-vocalist Doug Ingle wrote the song one evening while drinking an entire gallon of Red Mountain wine. When the inebriated Ingle then played the song for Bushy, who wrote down the lyrics for him, he was slurring his words so badly that what was supposed to be ‘in the Garden of Eden’ was interpreted by Bushy as ‘In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.’”

Here’s the short (single) version. Turn it up.

The Simpsons were way ahead of us on this:

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You may recall my snowman joke from a few days ago: What does a snowman eat for breakfast? Answer: Frosted flakes.

Well, Granddaughter #1 (Lianna) came up with what he has for lunch: Chilly dogs.

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Dot Sharp, who is 84 years old, knows how to hold a job, that’s for sure. She retired from the McDonalds in Gibsonia, PA, last Friday after working there for 45 years. Quite a McCareer. When she started, McNuggets weren’t even a gleam in someone’s eye. Her last customer was her granddaughter. 

“Her role as cashier involved greeting customers, taking orders and accepting payments but it doesn’t capture the essence of who Dot is,” a McDonald’s spokesperson said. 

Ya think? Let’s hope so.

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We’re going to let Dot’s sweet smile send us off tonight. See you tomorrow!

Putting the Michigan win aside in a class of its own, Friday night in Corvallis may well have been the best night of the trip. 

Taco Vina was spectacularly delish. I’m drooling as I type this. But the the Oregon State vs ‘Zona women’s basketball game took the cake.

First, Maire gave us earplugs because our seats were near the band. How big a band? Well, there were nine tubas for starters. Here’s about 40% of it.

It’s a gorgeous place to play ball: the Ralph Miller Court in the Gill Arena. We arrived early to soak it in and watch the warmups.

The Beavs (OSU) got off to good start but ‘Zona is good and took a 5-point lead into the halftime break. Then it was back and forth until ‘Zona pulled ahead again by 5 and suddenly the clock bled down to 52 seconds. Yikes! We got two, and the ball back with 13 seconds left. Long shot missed, rebound, miss, rebound again, and this time we drilled a trey. Game tied. Overtime. Whew.

OT was tight and we managed to tie it again, but with 21 seconds left they had the ball. Their best player killed the clock and drove for the winner as time expired. But missed! On to a second overtime.

By this time, everyone was exhausted, especially me. But the Beavers refused to lose, and battled to the end. And won. Great game.

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Our flight home boards in an hour. It was a good trip, but I miss the owls, and the g’kids and Caity and Danny. And the regular Owl Chatter. Thanks to Norrie for picking up the mail! And to you for stopping by. Tomorrow I’ll be sharing a new joke.

See you then!

We bid farewell to the Ashland Springs Hotel, which had been our home for three days, and pointed our rented Camry north.

The drive from Ashland to Philomath, which is about 20 minutes from Corvallis, went well. We had tuna salad sandwiches and a cold beer when we arrived. Here is the view from the living room window (taken some time ago by sister-in-law Maire on a clear day). It’s Mary’s Peak. Wow, right?

We took a walk around Philomath. Not much of a town. This building houses a museum (free admission) that had an exhibit about water and a one-person art show.

It was formerly a women’s teachers college and was slated to be razed for something commercial but the townsfolk rose up and saved it.

Let’s all raise a can of water and toast them for their good efforts.

They had a stuffed otter and an old-timey bathing suit.

They posted the words to Jack and Jill. Did you know things got pretty ugly for Jill: Mother, vex’d, did whip her next, for causing Jack’s disaster. What? Where’d that whip come from? Ouch!

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The artist was Greg Pfarr. We liked his work.

Later we toured Corvallis, Annie Arbor’s equivalent for Oregon State. A large sign outside the baseball stadium said they were National Champs in 2007, 2008, and 2018. Very impressive. OSU players who had MLB careers include Jacoby Ellsbury, Michael Conforto, and Adley Rutschman.

OSU pitcher Glenn Elliott went on to the pros and yielded Jackie Robinson’s first MLB hit, a bunt single. Elliott received death threats because of it.

Here’s a small sign in a store window, with which Owl Chatter heartily agrees.

We picked up a 4-pack of Deep Seek ale by the local Block 15 Brewery. It’s very good. (Burp!) They are known for their Sticky Hands ale, but its high alcohol content scared me away. We cracked open a can of Deep Seek to have with the excellent salad and burgers our hosts Maire and Denise prepared for us for dinner, to cap our wonderful day.

We’ll be back in town tomorrow for dinner at Taco Vina and the OSU-‘Zona women’s basketball game. Go Beavs!

Elite travelers like us enjoy a classy breakfast on the balcony overlooking the lobby at the Ashland Springs. Linda had doubles!

If I were to pick a nit it would be over their elevator policy. 

We lost a lot of time waiting for three other people to arrive. It makes no sense to me, but rules are rules.

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When is an inch a foot? When it’s ajar! No, hold on — when it’s snow! We heard an inch of rain would be falling on Owl Chatter headquarters in Jersey and learned that if it were snow the equivalent would be 13 inches! Yikes!

Joke I just made up: What does a snowman have for breakfast? Answer: Frosted flakes! (I asked Caity, and she got it right away.)

And there’s the horrifying story of the Donner snowmen who got lost and in desperation ate each other’s noses!

We drove by a storage facility called “As You Store It.” (Ashland is known for its Summer Shakespeare festival.)

We shot up to Medford (10 mi) and hung out in the library a bit reading the NYT. Then we saw The Boy and the Heron, which totally confused us. I was lost from the word go but it was beautiful, visually. How it earned 97% from Rotten Tomatoes and won a Golden Globe is a mystery. Severe grade inflation.

For dinner, the pub we heard about from our nieces was closed: The Black Sheep, but excellent pizza with a local beer was a great stand-in. (Burp!)

Here are samples of the art that adorns The Ashland Springs Hotel. First our bathroom, then the elevator.

Gotta leave for Corvallis soon. Will miss this place. Yikes, it’s snowy out! Hope we make it, kinahora.

I’ll let you know.

In a game that was much more tense than the score implies, our heroic Wolverines plowed their way to their first National Championship since 1997. Hail to the victors valiant!

We watched from our room at the historic Ashland Springs Hotel in Ashland, Oregon. With its nine stories, it’s the tallest building in town. 

Because of the 3-hour time difference, we knew the result of the game before it even began back East. But we were careful not to spoil it for Umich alums son Sam and his bride Sarah. (Wait, what?)

We spent the hours leading up to the game visiting Southern Oregon U, home of the Raiders and its red-tailed hawk mascot. 

Then we very much enjoyed The Boys in the Boat, rooting for the Huskies to win in the water if not on land. 

We have a day to relax tomorrow before driving up to Corvallis to wrap up our tour. We’ll be taking in the Oregon State womens basketball game vs ‘Zona on Friday. Can’t wait!

Thanks for dropping in! See you next time.

Our outing yesterday was to visit the little town of Windsor, CA. It was the home of Charles Schultz, of Peanuts fame. Hi Snoopy!

Charlie Brown’s head is a globe here, so those brown splotches are continents. And he has a green thumb, so he is helping the planet. I’m glad my head’s not a globe.

We visited an amazing candy store too. They sold 5 lb gummy bears ($60). Look at this place!

Here’s that gummy bear. Linda is holding it. It’s heavy!

Next we visited the library. Here is a drawing they had of Maya Angelou with a quote: “I always feel if I can get to a library I’ll be okay.” We do too, Maya.

Ooooh, it’s time to pick up the Indian food! We had it for lunch back at the farm.

Tamar’s husband Don is very sensitive to noise. And he’s an acupucturist. So he was needling her about her snoring. When we asked him if he slept well, he told us how long he slept and how long he was up listening to Tamar snoring. He said he recorded her on his phone, and then he played it for us. Very funny.

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I’ve been getting my puzzlework in. Yesterday there was a clue: “Those aren’t the best plans, in Southern slang,” and the answer was THAT DOG DON’T HUNT. There was a big flap over whether it should be “won’t” instead of don’t. I don’t have a dog in that hunt.

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We hope to get an early start for the 6-hour drive to Ashland. 

See you later!

Woke up to the sound of frogs outside. Good start to the day.

Beautiful walk through a Redwood forest. 

This old timer is well-respected.

Burger and ale at the Russian River Brewery. Hit the spot. It’s known for its ales Pliny the Elder and Pliny the Younger. The latter is brewed for only two weeks in the Spring and people line up for it at 6 a.m. to buy limited amounts. I tried the Blind Pig IPA. It was excellent. (Oink.) (Burp!)

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One more day at the farm, then on to Ashland, OR. Weather may turn against us. Oh no! 😥

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See you tomorrow!

Touched down safely at SFO! Lunch at Niece Deborah’s in Berkeley.

Then 55-mile drive to Niece Tamar’s fruit farm in Windsor. Wow! 

First time tasting pineapple guava. Love it!

Seeing some Redwoods soon. Temp in 60s. 

Puzzle was a bear today, but it fell to my relentless attack around 3 a.m.

Rex rated it medium. Argggh.

Later.

In late-breaking news, Owl Chatter has learned that Claudine Gay has resigned as president of Harvard. Apparently, Phil’s report on Gay’s pole dancing played a significant role. Several Board members complained that it was a completely inappropriate activity for an officer of the university; others complained that her pole technique was unimaginative and derivative. Ouch!

In sports news, The College of Biblical Studies womens basketball team forgot the eleventh commandment — Thou Shalt Work On Thy Foul Shots.  They probably forgot a few others too and lost to the Grambling State Lady Tigers 159 to 18.  That is not a typo.  It was 82-10 at halftime.

A loss like that leaves scars.  The headline in the school paper the next day was “Holy Shit!”  And point guard Lindsay Belmont said after the game “That’s the last time I put my faith in Jesus.  F*ck!”

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Hey everybody. We’re celebrating post #400 today! They all went by so fast. If I really focused and tried hard, I might remember about 3 of them. Maybe. I remember some of the ebb and flow. How we lost our dear friend and caterer, Yev Pregozhin. But we gained George Santos! Georgie — grab a seat — we’re just chillin’ today. Phil should be by soon, and Ana said she’ll try to drop in if traffic on the GWB isn’t too bad.

In sports, we made a lemonade of a baseball season out of the Gnats last-place finish (the lemons), and endured another Jets crash. Hopes are riding high on the UMich ‘Rines. They’re putting it all on the line versus the Washington Huskies on Monday. Go Blue!

Hey — here they are! – Georgie, let them in — it’s Ana and Phil. Hey guys, we were just reminiscing a little. What can we get you Ana? George keeps the fridge filled with diet soda. We’ll pick up some Jersey Mike’s later. Phil, help yourself to those IPAs. Just save me one.

So, Ana, any chance you’ll spill the beans on that third tattoo? We have the crescent moon on your wrist, above. And the famous tiny heart above your left ankle.

But the third one has everyone buzzing — a date in Roman numerals: Dec. 28, 2020. What’s that about? C’mon, you can tell us. 

OK, we’ll just consider it your dark secret, Madame de Armas.

So I’m going to dig into the past and pick out one oldie to reprise. That may be fun, no? Let’s see. Here’s an item from about a year ago — 12/28/2022. (OMG, there’s that date again! Eerie.)

The clue at 62A [on 12/28/2022] was “Size option at Starbucks,” for VENTI. Here’s LMS on it:

No place can make me feel like an outsider like Starbucks can. I feel like such an imposter that I can’t bring myself to say VENTI. I have to practically whisper medium black coffee, please and even then my face burns with embarrassment that I’m not spouting off VENTI iced skinny hazelnut macchiato, two pump, sugar-free syrup, extra shot, light ice, no whip.

T Trimble chimed in:

I feel not so much an impostor in a Starbucks (hi @Loren) as I do like Larry David in Curb Your Enthusiasm, who refuses to deal with the stupid lingo. “I’ll have a vanilla……….. one of the vanilla bullshit things, you know, you, whatever you want, some vanilla bullshit latte cappu thing, you know, whatever you got, I don’t care.” Barista guy: “You got it.”

Jackie Mason has some material on the topic too. Those high stools you have to sit on at some Starbucks. “You can’t get down — elderly Jews are sitting up there and they can’t get down. They have to ask for help from the Gentiles, ‘Please, mister, can you help me down from here, I could break a hip.’”

And Bill Maher noted: The longer the Starbucks order, the bigger the a**hole.

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We’re not the only ones looking back today. Lewis the commenter and puzzle analyst on Rex’s blog “published” his top clues/answers from 2023 today and I’ll share them with you, because they’re brilliant. You may have to invest a good bit of brainpower to “get” them, even after you’re given the answer. But it’s a good investment to make. (The answers are below, with the names of the constructors in parens.)

Clues

1. Only human, briefly (4)
2. It’s a mouthful, frankly (3)(3)(3)
3. One who’s out and about (11)[*my favorite]
4. ( and ) (4)
5. Illegal product that’s still made? (9)
6. Ones doing some heavy lifting before retirement? (5)
7. Acute … or the opposite of acute (5)
8. Walk in place? (5)(8)
9. Telenovela profession (2)(3)

Answers

ADAM (Alex Rosen) (Get it? He was “briefly” the only human)
HOT DOG BUN (Ada Nicolle)
SLEEPWALKER (Robyn Weintraub)
ARCS (Erik Agard)
MOONSHINE (Malaika Handa)
JACKS (John Nagamichi Cho)
GRAVE (David P. Williams)
FRONT ENRANCE (Tracy Bennett) (The “place” at which you walk in)
TE AMO (Brooke Husic and Brendan Emmet Quigley) (“Professing”    (your love) in Spanish)

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Ok everybody — we’re closing shop early today, so we can have a little staff celebration – Phil! — go upstairs and get the owls! Ana — what toppings do you like on your sub? Plasticware okay?

We’ll see you next time from California! Take care, everybody. Thanks for popping by for #400!