The Wellington Files

  • Joan’s Knives

    You’re always welcome at Owl Chatter, Volodymyr! Don’t wait for an invitation.

    Missing no opportunity to exhibit his moral depravity, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy refused to grant Owl Chatter Hall-Of-Fame inductee Volodymyr Zelensky an opportunity to address the House on his visit to DC. Here’s what McCarthy was quoted in the NYT as saying: “Is Zelensky elected to Congress? Is he our president? I don’t think I have to commit to anything. Where is the accountability on the money we already spent? What is the plan for victory? I think that’s what the American public wants to know.”

    It also wants to know how a jackass like you could rise to such prominence. According to the Times, it was just a few months ago that McCarthy spoke forcefully about his commitment to Ukraine.

    So stop by if you’re in Jersey, VZ — have some borscht with us! Please bring Olena if she’s with you. And, BTW, how did you ever get such a hot babe to fall for a slob like you??!!

    So, you all know Hasan Minhaj, right? The comic?

    He has a bit in which he says that after the government passed the Patriot Act in the wake of 9/11, an undercover F.B.I. informant named Brother Eric infiltrated his childhood mosque and had dinner at his house. Minhaj recalls how he sniffed him out and, in a prank, asked about getting a pilot’s license, which led to a police officer throwing him against a car.

    The New Yorker found that there was such a man working in counterterrorism but that Minhaj never met him. So Minhaj has been getting sh*t for lying about it. He defended his fabrications as fibs in service to “emotional truth.” I think a better defense would be:

    “Hello? I’m a comedian, remember? I’m going for laughs: this isn’t the nightly news.”

    There’s a story in today’s Times by Jason Zinoman about the “muddy relationship between comedy and truth.”

    C’mon, folks — believe me — as someone who tries to get laughs while teaching Federal Income Taxation to accounting students — it ain’t easy. Lying about stuff, making a fool of yourself, insulting people — you grab at anything to get a chuckle. And if you get one, maybe out of ten tries — it makes it all worth it. So let’s give Minhaj a break, shall we?

    To her credit, the story states: “Amid plenty of critics online, Whoopi Goldberg was one of the few major figures who spoke up for Minhaj, saying on ‘The View’ that embellishing in the name of a larger truth is what comics do.” And Jerry Seinfeld has said that all of his comedy is made up — even his opinions. Zinoman writes: “Stand-up comedy was never expected to be factually accurate. Rodney Dangerfield, to be clear, got respect.”

    Today’s poem in The Writer’s Almanac is by Mary Oliver and it’s called “Don’t Hesitate.”

    If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy,
    don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty
    of lives and whole towns destroyed or about
    to be. We are not wise, and not very often
    kind. And much can never be redeemed.
    Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this
    is its way of fighting back, that sometimes
    something happens better than all the riches
    or power in the world. It could be anything,
    but very likely you notice it in the instant
    when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the
    case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid
    of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.

    In the Style section of the Times today, Dilara Findikoglu, a name that you might think was arrived at by randomly pounding on a keyboard, was described as London’s “buzziest young designer.” Margot Robbie wore a pink minidress by Dilara at a Barbie premiere after-party, and Hari Nef wore a nonpink dress of hers at a Barbie premiere (see the latter, below). But the story was all about how Dilara had to cancel out of a major London fashion show due to financial difficulties after months of preparation. Her plight highlights how hard it is to survive as an independent fashion designer in the current climate, even if you’re “buzzy.”

    The dress Nef wore is called the Joan’s Knives dress because it’s inspired by a vision of Joan of Arc returning from the dead for revenge, and because it’s festooned with knives “painstakingly set onto a curve-hugging black sheath.” She said the hardest part was packing it into a bag that fit into the overhead compartment. [No she didn’t.]

    After Nef wore it, Emma Corrin wore it on the cover of ES magazine, with a fork sticking out of her hair. ES Magazine is an iconic brand designed for sophisticated, culturally-aware Londoners published by the Evening Standard, hence the “ES.” What’s the sophisticated part here — the fork?

    Some commenters on Rex’s blog are asked to check off a box stating that he or she is not a robot. Commenter B$$$ asked today how checking off the box proves that you are not a robot. I try to be helpful when I can, so I posted the following response:

    Checking off the box saying you are not a robot proves that you are not a robot because if you were a robot you would not check off the box saying you are not a robot because you are a robot. At least no self-respecting robot would. That leaves open the possibility of a rogue robot. But that’s too dispiriting to contemplate — let’s not go there.

    The puzzle was wonderful today, although Welly and Wilma have bones to pick. The revealer was “Seasonal phenomenon depicted six times in this puzzle,” and the answer was WINTER MIGRATION. Then, at six places, an answer going across suddenly turned downwards (or “south”) and that part of the answer was a type of bird. Everybody’s favorite was “Infamous presidential denial,” which was Nixon’s I AM NOT CROOK. And it turned down after the C to finish up with ROOK. WES CRAVEN turned after the C to finish with RAVEN. DICK CLARK, finished with the LARK. IN ESCROW finished with CROW; MOHAWK with HAWK, and HALF INCH with FINCH. Get it? Those birds were all heading south for the winter.

    Some of the nit pickers noted that not all of those birds are migratory. And it’s a fall migration. But as the saying goes: it’s close enough for crosswords. The more important complaint was Welly’s and Wilma’s — would it have killed them to fit in an owl? So many words end in OWL. Maybe next time, kids.

    It was a rare “two-post” day for me on Rex’s blog. In addition to the robot post, above, one commenter (egsforbreakfast) used the “I don’t want to harp on it” pun. So my second post was:

    egs — you reminded me of a visit I paid to my sister in Boston during which she took me to a harp recital. We were chatting with the harpist afterwards and I told her the one harp joke I know — that harpists spend half their lives tuning their harps, and the other half playing them out of tune.

    She may have heard it before. How else to explain her failing to explode with laughter?

    One clue/answer I didn’t understand until Rex explained it was “Capital of Washington,” and the answer was ONES. Think money for “capital,” and George for “Washington,” not DC — so Washington is on the one-dollar bill, hence ONES.

    “Desert near Sinai” was NEGEV. I knew the answer but I didn’t know (or forgot) that NEGEV means “south.” So it subtly fits in with the puzzle’s theme.

    At 27A, “Rubber overshoe” was GALOSH. Some folks said it looked funny as a singular and they had only seen it as galoshes. But the dictionary has it in singular form. I’m not going to quibble.

    Gotta keep those footsies dry!

    Enough nonsense for today? See you tomorrow!

  • The Infantile and Ignoble Joy

    Are you familiar with the word SESQUIPEDALIAN? It was the answer yesterday at 15A and spanned the entire grid. The clue was “Having many syllables.” So it’s self-descriptive, unlike “monosyllabic.” It was the theme for the puzzle, which also had OBSTREPEROUSLY right below it, clued with “In a noisy and unruly manner.” But the puzzle’s showpiece was a 28-letter word that spanned the grid twice, with the second half right below the first. It was our old friend ANTIDISESTABLISHMENTARIANISM. The clues were (53A) “Opposition to the removal of …” (57A) “… state support from the church.” I was familiar with the word from childhood, but never knew what it meant.

    Getting back to sesquipedalian, the prefix sesqui means one and one half, so, e.g., sesquicentennial means 150 years. Sesquipedalia means a foot and a half long, and Horace, the Roman poet, cautioned young poets against using words a foot and a half long: sesquipedalia verba.

    No doubt you’d like to hear it used in a song lyric. OK.

    One commenter noted: I had always thought that pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis was the longest English word, but after checking Google it seems it was a word made up in 1935 by Everett Smith, the president of the National Puzzlers League. 

    Smalltowndoc chimed in:

    The world of medicine is often accused of creating unnecessarily long words, but I’m pretty sure “pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis” isn’t one of them. We call it “silicosis”.

    But, “pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism”? Yeah, that’s a real thing.

    Another one said: I’m happy Rex didn’t engage in floccinaucinihilipilification of this puzzle because I liked it.

    Today’s puzzle at 10D was “Canine warning” and the answer was ARF. But several folks noted: “Arf” is not a canine warning. It is a canine “hello.” “Grr” is a canine warning.

    I don’t speak Dog, so I don’t know what to believe.

    You never know what will set someone off in Crossworld. Yesterday, at 9D, the clue was “Johnnie Walker or Jim Beam,” so I filled in WHISKEY and moved on. But it spawned much disgruntlement, e.g., this heated comment (Will is Will Shortz, of course, the NYT puzzle editor):

    I call major error on the clue for 9 down: WHISKEY with an E is only used for the American and Irish versions; the Scottish and Canadian versions are spelled WHISKY. And it’s Johnnie Walker whisky, not Johnny Walker whiskey! Dammit Will, Johnnie not Johnny, plus whisky not whiskey, what a bullshit clue: go to your room and stay there! An acceptable clue for the answer would be “Jameson or Jim Beam.”

    Hrummmmph!

    After a good half dozen of those, I posted:

    Another reason to prefer bier (or ail) to whisky — they’re easier to spell.

    Wait, what?

    Laura Cantrell has a very sweet voice. Here’s her song about whisky.

    It was the late Roger Angell’s birthday yesterday, born in 1920. How’s this for a writer’s ancestors: he was the son of Katharine Sergeant Angell White, The New Yorker’s first fiction editor, and the stepson of E. B. White. But he was mostly raised by his dad, Ernest Angell, an attorney who headed the ACLU.

    Angell was married three times and had three children. His daughter Callie, an authority on the films of Andy Warhol, died by suicide in May of 2010, in Manhattan, where she worked as a curator at the Whitney Museum; she was 62. In a 2014 essay, Angell mentioned her death – “the oceanic force and mystery of that event” – and his struggle to comprehend that “a beautiful daughter of mine, my oldest child, had ended her life.”

    He was unquestionably the best writer on baseball who ever lived. I would wait eagerly each November for the New Yorker issue containing his write-up on the season and the World Series. It was in 1975 that his essay “Agincourt and After” appeared, containing the following passages that start with a description of Carlton Fisk’s game-winning home run in Game Six of the Boston/Cincy World Series.

    He circled the bases in triumph, in sudden company with several hundred fans, and jumped on home plate with both feet, and John Kiley, the Fenway Park organist, played Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus,” fortissimo, and then followed with other appropriately exuberant classical selections, and for the second time that evening I suddenly remembered all my old absent and distant Sox-afflicted friends (and all the other Red Sox fans, all over New England), and I thought of them—in Brookline, Mass., and Brooklin, Maine; in Beverly Farms and Mashpee and Presque Isle and North Conway and Damariscotta; in Pomfret, Connecticut, and Pomfret, Vermont; in Wayland and Providence and Revere and Nashua, and in both the Concords and all four Manchesters; and in Raymond, New Hampshire (where Carlton Fisk lives), and Bellows Falls, Vermont (where Carlton Fisk was born), and I saw all of them dancing and shouting and kissing and leaping about like the fans at Fenway—jumping up and down in their bedrooms and kitchens and living rooms, and in bars and trailers, and even in some boats here and there, I suppose, and on backcountry roads (a lone driver getting the news over the radio and blowing his horn over and over, and finally pulling up and getting out and leaping up and down on the cold macadam, yelling into the night), and all of them, for once at least, utterly joyful and believing in that joy—alight with it.

    It should be added, of course, that very much the same sort of celebration probably took place the following night in the midlands towns and vicinities of the Reds’ supporters—in Otterbein and Scioto; in Frankfort, Sardinia, and Summer Shade; in Zanesville and Louisville and Akron and French Lick and Loveland. I am not enough of a social geographer to know if the faith of the Red Sox fan is deeper or hardier than that of a Reds rooter (although I secretly believe that it may be, because of his longer and more bitter disappointments down the years). What I do know is that this belonging and caring is what our games are all about; this is what we come for. It is foolish and childish, on the face of it, to affiliate ourselves with anything so insignificant and patently contrived and commercially exploitative as a professional sports team, and the amused superiority and icy scorn that the non-fan directs at the sports nut (I know this look—I know it by heart) is understandable and almost unanswerable. Almost. What is left out of this calculation, it seems to me, is the business of caring—caring deeply and passionately, really caring—which is a capacity or an emotion that has almost gone out of our lives. And so it seems possible that we have come to a time when it no longer matters so much what the caring is about, how frail or foolish is the object of that concern, as long as the feeling itself can be saved. Naïveté—the infantile and ignoble joy that sends a grown man or woman to dancing and shouting with joy in the middle of the night over the haphazardous flight of a distant ball—seems a small price to pay for such a gift.

    Thanks for dropping in!

  • G.

    The anagramatically great Greta Garbo (born Greta Lovisa Gustafsson), was born on this date in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1905. Her mom worked in a jam factory and her dad was a laborer, and together they produced “the most beautiful woman who ever lived,” according to The Guinness Book of World Records in 1954. Here’s how critic Kenneth Tynan put it: “What when drunk one sees in other women, one sees in Garbo sober.” When she kissed actor John Gilbert with an open mouth in Flesh and the Devil, the movie was banned in some places for “moral turpitude,” but ticket sales soared.

    Her silent films were very popular, with her playing the mysterious femme fatale. Then, in 1930, sixteen minutes into the film Anna Christie, people first heard her husky voice: “Gimme a whiskey, ginger ale on the side, and don’t be stingy, baby,” a line I’ve used myself numerous times, to no effect. The headlines screamed “Garbo Talks!,” and she became an international star. She is still regarded as one of the greatest screen actresses of all time. Director Clarence Brown, who made seven of her pictures, said, “Garbo has something behind the eyes that you couldn’t see until you photographed it in close-up. You could see thought. If she had to look at one person with jealousy, and another with love, she didn’t have to change her expression. You could see it in her eyes as she looked from one to the other. And nobody else has been able to do that on screen.”

    Garbo made 28 films and retired at age 35. She became famously reclusive, was often depressed, and may have been bipolar, although she had many friends, socialized, and traveled. In 1951 she became a U.S. citizen, and in 1953 she bought a seven-room apartment at 450 East 52nd  Street in NYC where she lived for the rest of her life. Her buzzer was identified by a solitary G. She walked eleven miles a day in the city in white clothes and sunglasses, and “Garbo watching” became sort of a sport.

    Remember Gilbert from that hot kiss, above? Well, he was her most serious romance. He proposed to her numerous times and she accepted occasionally but backed out at the last minute. “I was in love with him,” she said. “But I froze. I was afraid he would tell me what to do and boss me.” In later years, Garbo said of Gilbert, “I can’t remember what I ever saw in him.” She never married and had no children. But she had romantic relationships with both men and women, including Leopold Stokowski and Erich Maria Remarque.

    She was a dinner guest at the Kennedy White House, nine days before he was killed. She died herself of renal failure and pneumonia in a NYC hospital on April 15, 1990 at the age of 84. She left her estate of $72 million (in 2002 dollars) to her niece. Garbo was cremated in Manhattan, and her ashes were interred nine years later at Skogskyrkogården Cemetery (pronounced exactly as it’s spelled), just south of her native Stockholm.

    Happy Birthday, G. You came a long way from your mom’s jam factory.

    To hell with the war, let’s party! According to a front-page story in today’s NYT, over 35,000 Hasidim made their annual pilgrimage to Uman in central Ukraine this week, where Rebbe Nachman of Breslove died in 1810, a great-grandson of the man widely considered the founder of Hasidism. It is also the site of terrible Nazi atrocities: 1,000 Jewish children were gunned down there and thrown into a pit.

    The tradition of the pilgrimage goes back 200 years and there’s no way a small matter like a Russian invasion could put a crimp in it. The pilgrimage remains pious, but it is also wild. The Breslovers, as followers are called, are known for exuberant worship. Maybe a little too exuberant: dozens have been arrested in Uman in past years for drug possession, drunkenness and brawling. But Breslovers are also known for being open-minded. Men in black hats and sidelocks prayed next to men in T-shirts and tattoos. Most come from Israel, with the second biggest contingent from the US. With Ukraine’s airspace closed, most made overland trips from Poland, Moldova, Hungary or Romania that were long, exhausting, and expensive.

    President Zelensky didn’t stop by Uman this week but a small contingent of Ukrainian Jews joined the festivities, which have fueled a bustling economy. Entire 10-story buildings are hired out, taxi drivers get dream fares and vendors do a brisk trade in T-shirts, books, amulets and other Breslov merch.

    Sadly, our dear Yevgeny can no longer score any catering gigs in Uman, since he was brutally murdered. His pierogis were to die for (perhaps not the best choice of words). Dig in, everybody!

    An extraordinary oyster farmer, Jules Melancon, died on August 31 at his home in Cut Off, Louisiana, 25 miles south of New Orleans. (English and Cajun French were spoken at home.) He was only 65 and his father and mother both survived him.

    Most of his life he farmed oysters the old-fashioned way, dredging the shallow, brackish waters of the lower Mississippi River Delta, as captain of his own boat, My Melanie, named after his wife. Times were good and he was able to sell 400 bags of oysters a day at $15 a bag. But he just about gave up the business when the oyster population started taking hits from rising sea levels, pollution and erosion, and then from Katrina and the massive Deepwater Horizon oil spill which coated the Louisiana coast with millions of gallons of crude. No question — it all combined to put the Oy in oyster.

    Then Melancon learned from a friend about a new type of oyster farming being tested by Auburn U. researchers. They were growing immature oysters (“spats”) from pinhead-size seeds in drums on land. When they grew to the size of a quarter, they were transferred to cages suspended in shallow water. Instead of taking five years to reach full size, they could be exposed to a rich flow of nutrients and become big, meaty, and delicious in just ten months. Plus the shells looked gorgeous on a raw bar. He was a pioneer in the field, and was back in business, although not as lucratively as before.

    Along with his mom and dad, he is survived by his wife Melanie, four sisters, and 500 pounds of raw oysters, fresh and delicious like you wouldn’t believe. Here he is — Phil tracked him down to a joint in Lafitte, Louisiana. They both ate well that night.

    Rest in peace, Buddy.

    Good night everybody! See you tomorrow.

  • The Corner of Morning

    In Owl Chatter’s college football roundup, let’s applaud this agile Iowa cheerleader, who, . . . . oops, never mind folks — nothing to see here.

    The game we had our eyes on — well, at least until we fell asleep during the first half at around 11pm — saw OC’s beloved Colorado Buffaloes barely eking by State in double overtime, 43-35. Yikes! We were heavy favorites — wha hoppin’, mon?

    It was an ugly game, with two-way star Travis Hunter rushed to the hospital after a late (dirty) hit to his midsection. Deion says he’ll miss a few weeks. Ouch. He also said, resorting to Coachspeak — what matters is we won. State Coach Norvell is taking heat for taking the low road. 17 penalties for 187 yards. Like he cares. Next up for the Prime Timers — a very tough Oregon team up in Eugene.

    Eyes will also be on the Notre Dame/Ohio State game next week. And Michigan plays Rutgers in Ann Arbor, their first game that matters.

    BTW, Portland State who lost last week 81-7 in a game in which one of their players lost an ear, beat North American U (I know — who?), yesterday 91-0.

    Today’s puzzle was amusing, taking pretty famous songs from our youth and putting them into a mythological context. For example: HERE COMES THE SUN, was a “warning to Icarus,” the guy whose wings melted when he got too close to the sun. Cute, right? YOU’RE SO VAIN was a “criticism of Narcissus.” LIGHT MY FIRE, — “request to Prometheus.” OH, PRETTY WOMAN was a “comment to Aphrodite.” I bet you didn’t know that “Oh” was part of the title. DON’T BRING ME DOWN was an “entreaty to Hades,” king of the underworld.

    Commenter Andrew added these twists:

    Birdseye request? – GIVE PEAS A CHANCE
    Varicose diagnosis? YOU’RE SO VEIN
    End of sitting shiva? MOURNING HAS BROKEN
    Pillow preference? DON’T BRING ME DOWN

    (Love the last two.)

    “Oh, Pretty Woman” was written by Roy Orbison. Here he is performing it. A couple of kids are backing him up: Bruce, and Elvis (Costello), inter alia.

    Today’s “Tiny Love Story” is by Joanna Good and is called “Two Sides of the Moon.”

    The tattoo machine buzzes as I remember the night I had my first child at 17. I’d stared out the hospital window at the moon, a luminous crescent in the clear winter sky. The following day, I handed my daughter over to her adoptive parents. The moon comforted me during our years of separation. When my child came out as transgender at 15, his adoptive parents proved too rigid in their beliefs to accept him fully. My mothering arms had grown by then, and I reached out to my son. Now, we proudly compare our matching crescent moon tattoos. 

    *******

    Pete Rose, who is a complete idiot who cares only about winning, money, and women, once remarked on racism something like, “How can anyone be so stupid to care about what color you are? What does that have to do with anything?” He got that one right. In that spirit, how in the world does a parent reject their child, adopted or not, because they are transgender? How can that matter more than their being your child? As Denzel said — Explain that to me like I’m a three-year-old.

    I googled “crescent moon tattoo” for the above story. Meow.

    To conflate the Jewish New Year with the other one, here’s Ted Kooser’s poem from Winter Morning Walks that he dated January 3 — the first one he wrote in that new year.

    All through the night,
    the deeply troubled, sighing furnace
    has tried to console one whimpering floorboard
    that wants to return to its tree.

    Beyond the walls, milky, translucent snow,
    brushed into drifts
    by the long blue fingers of shadow.

    The snow has gathered as much of the light as it can
    from the stars, but that’s not enough warmth
    to kindle the eyes of even one rabbit,
    frozen still as a stone at the corner of morning.

    See you tomorrow!

  • Rowdy Utterances

    Years ago, we were on line at the nurses’ station to have some gifts okayed and we witnessed a very dramatic scene. But, wait, I should back up a little. Caity was in the hospital for a few days (she’s fine now, kinehora) and they gave her the choice of being in a regular room, with some old woman wheezing all night, or on a mildly restricted floor with young women closer to her age. She chose the latter (duh). Since some of the patients on that floor were at risk for harming themselves, there were some restrictions in place, like anyone who brought gifts had to clear them first at the nurses’ station: no sharp objects, e.g.

    We were bringing her a few small items (blow torch, cleaver), so we were waiting on line and were the next ones to be seen. The couple in front of us (husband and wife) were bringing a whole bunch of little toys for their daughter, who must have been pretty young, judging by the nature of the gifts. They were little inexpensive items designed to give a moment or two of amusement.

    But one by one, the nurse was rejecting them for some safety reason or other. You could tell each rejection was a blow to the mom — not for the loss of the toy itself but for what it said about how troubled her daughter must be if it was dangerous for her to play with the little thing.

    After about three rejections, the mom exclaimed “Be nicer!”

    The nurse was totally taken aback. “What do you mean?,” she asked. “I’m being nice.”

    The mom said, “No you’re not — this is very hard for us.”

    And the dad said: “You’re being very cold.”

    The nurse was deeply struck by the charges and just said, “But these rules are important.” She ran through the remaining items quickly and the couple left to see their daughter.

    That’s when Linda and I stepped up to face her. She was devastated; near tears. Nursing is a caring profession, and she was just charged with about as serious a charge as a nurse can get — hardness; not caring.

    She looked up at us, pained to her core, and I said “It’s okay — you don’t have to be nice to us.”

    That’s a true story — every piece of it, including my line, which I will go to my grave proud of. It’s the sort of line you think of too late. But it came to me in time, and I damn well said it. (We also reassured her that she was doing fine and shouldn’t be upset.)

    Now bend over for your shot.

    Lauren Boebert apologized for her behavior in a Denver theater last weekend that included vaping and rowdiness leading to her getting kicked out. She later denied vaping but was caught on tape. By all accounts she was quite obnoxious. Boebert is a Republican Congresswoman from Colorado and a right-wing monster of epic proportions. She has yet to apologize for everything else she has done since birth. I will spare you her photo — Phil refused to waste film on her.

    I don’t usually pay attention to how long it takes me to complete a puzzle, but one feature of the on-line puzzle is you get your time. It took me 41:30 today, but I nailed it! Very satisfying. It’s hard to explain to someone who has no interest in crosswords how they’ve become such a pleasure for me, but this paragraph in commenter Lewis’s note today is apt:

    “I want the Saturday puzzle to shift my brain into first gear and keep it there from start to finish, grinding and doing heavy lifting – a high-intensity workout ending with me in a puddle of happiness and satisfaction, bolstered by the knowledge that I did my brain a solid and that it is happy as well. And this is what I got today.” 

    One of my favorite clues/answers was “Component of a Mr. Clean costume, say,” and the answer was BALD CAP. I commented that I thought it would be funnier if the clue referenced Dr. Phil.

    Another one I liked was “They might make it difficult to compare notes,” and the answer was TIN EARS. (Think musical notes.) My comment was: The tin man must have had tin ears, no? A better clue might have been: “Why a Wizard of Oz character was not musical.”

    The last clue I solved (and only by “running the alphabet” to get the A), was “Credit lines?” The answer was HAT TIPS. It turns out it’s a thing — if you compliment something or someone, you have “tipped your hat,” i.e., given “credit.”

    Did you know that “tittle-tattles” means CHATS. I didn’t. I thought it had something to do with ratting somebody out: tattling. But if you look it up you’ll see it means idle talk or gossip.

    Another toughie was 14A: “What cucumber slices and seaweed can be part of.” If you’re thinking of the last time you had a cucumber salad around 8 years ago, you’ll never get it. You need to think of those slices over a pair of closed eyes. The answer was SPA TREATMENTS. D’oh!

    Two other good clues in this very clever puzzle by Jonathan Kaufman were “Barn locks,” for MANE (think hair for locks), and “Move more” for OUTSELL.

    NINA Hoss from the movie “Tar” visited the grid today. She was born in Stuttgart, West Germany on July 7, 1955, so she’s 48. Hoss received the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2013, and was appointed a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France in 2015. She’s been wasting her time doing crossword puzzles since then. [No she hasn’t.]

    In a review of her 2009 film A Woman in Berlin, The NYT said Hoss, “whose strong frame and graceful bearing suggest both old-style movie-star glamour and Aryan ideals of feminine beauty, is an actress of haunting subtlety, and the film, episodic, ambitious and a few beats too long, is held together by the force of her performance.” She later made her name in Hollywood playing a German agent in three seasons of Homeland (2014–2017).

    Nice shot, Phil. Very Aryan.

    A little three-letter answer opened a door today: ABA. It’s usually clued with lawyers (the American Bar Ass’n) but today it wasn’t. Rex started the discussion:

    Hey, what does the “B” in ABA stand for today (I mean, since it doesn’t stand for its more customary meaning, “Bar”) (21A: “Trade org. of interest to publishers and authors”)? I think it’s “Booksellers” but I’m gonna have to check … Whoa, I just googled “ABA” and apparently in the real, i.e. non-crossword world, everyone thinks ABA = “Applied Behavior Analysis” (whatever that is). My god it is hard to find today’s ABA … searching [ABA books] and [ABA library] is useless … I’m getting American Beverage … American Bankers … ah there we go. I was right: American Booksellers Association. Man, google really Really doesn’t want you to find this particular ABA. The quality of google as a search engine has so horribly degraded in recent years, and somehow the fact that it’s hiding booksellers from me today feels ominously on-brand.

    Later, Ted commented: Applied Behavioral Analysis is an autism therapy thing. It’s a gift not to have to know “whatever that is.”

    And Dr. A added:

    Applied Behavioral Analysis is a very popular “therapy” for people with autism that treats them like trained dogs and makes me more than a little sick. I have a kid with autism and when it was super popular it just didn’t appeal to me and now it’s being berated by the autistic population. It probably has a place for the more severely affected but for anyone who can be reasoned with, it’s pretty insulting. Anyway that’s my rant du jour!! 

    My ears perk up at that topic — Linda taught autistic children for quite a few years. I’m very proud of her for working so hard to bring light and warmth to them.

    Those of us who take great joy in expressing ourselves in speech can only marvel at folks who struggle so hard with stuttering. I sometimes run across one in class and always try to give them the space they need. They seem so brave to me to open up with their difficulties to make a point in class. I appreciate any contributions to the class discussion, and those are a little extra special.

    Here’s a poem called “When I Stutter,” by Elizabeth Meade from the Poetry Foundation today.

    Sometimes, m’s elongate,
    grow long tongues to taste the last bit
    of breath my body has to offer.

    Sometimes, i’s echo
    like the harsh cries of a seagull,
    try to fly far away from the nest of my mouth
    only to circle the ocean of my uncompleted sentence.

    Sometimes, my breath becomes caught
    in the chamber of my throat, my head cocked back
    until the word —at last— launches out of my mouth like a bullet.
    or a punch.

    (Sometimes, my soft, raspy voice
    provides no balm to soothe the ear.)

    Sometimes, I remember Daddy said my voice
    sounds like Mommy’s. I rejoice then, as syllables
    trip over one another like eager children
    rushing toward the playground
    with all the freedom her voice no longer has.

    All that remains is the deep ache in my throat,
    vocal cords like mud stomped flat
    under the feet of my rowdy utterances.

    Okay, everybody — see you tomorrow!

  • Happy New Year! 5784!

    Can tomorrow night’s Colorado-Colorado State game get any more delicious? State’s coach Jay Norvell took a personal swipe at Colorado Coach Deion Sanders: “When I talk to grown-ups, I take my hat off and my glasses off. That’s what my mother taught me.” It was a reference to Deion’s ever-present shades and cap.

    Sanders was not going to let it slide by. His response: “Now he messin’ with my mama.”

    He went on: “I’m a grown man, you telling me what I’m supposed to wear, what I’m not supposed to wear. Please.” (Norvell is 60; Deion is a very youthful 56.)

    “I’m minding my own business, watching some film, trying to get ready, trying to get out here and be the best coach I can be and I look up and I read some bull junk that they done said about us,” Sanders told his players.

    “Once again. Why would you want to talk about us when we don’t talk about nobody? All we do is go out here, work our butts off and do our job on Saturday. But when they give us ammunition, they done messed around and made it what? Personal.”

    May have to drop 50 on them, eh Prime Time?

    Mary Clarissa Agatha Miller was born on this date in 1890. She is better known as Agatha Christie. She worked as a nurse in WWI, which is how she learned a bit about poisons, which came in handy in her writing. Her first book was rejected but the next one featured an extravagantly mustached Belgian detective named Poirot and it took off. Personally, Christie found Poirot “insufferable and an egocentric creep.” When she finally killed him off, the Times ran his obituary on the front page.

    She disliked guns, so her victims were killed by other means, often poisons. In one book, a child dies bobbing for apples; in another, a murderer is subdued by being squirted with soapy water.

    Here’s a pic of Agatha Christie as a young girl, no doubt looking at some fellow and thinking: Let’s lop his head off and take it from there.

    Happy Birthday, AC.

    I had two wisdom teeth removed yesterday — upper and lower on my left side. The doc told me for a few days when I eat anything, I should limit myself to the right side. So I only had the right half of my tuna sandwich at lunch, and only the white part of my black and white cookie.

    14D in the puzzle today was: “Some complainers, in modern lingo,” and the answer was KARENS. Rex noted: I love this, but not everyone will. Some people think this is a slur. Some people think it’s misogynist (feminizing the act of complaining, in the grand tradition of “harpy,” “shrew”). But I know women who use it. Opinions will vary.

    One fellow wrote: KAREN is an unambiguously derogatory term with clear sexist/racist/classist overtones. It has no place in any puzzle.

    And Weezie really got into it:

    “KAREN is one of those terms that emerged out of Black culture with a very specific meaning and setting that some white folks have co-opted and broadened in a way that doesn’t reflect the political analysis that was part of why the word emerged in the first place. A Karen in its original meaning is a white woman, often middle aged or older, usually class privileged, who is so entitled and locked in to her racist assumptions and entitlement that she will attempt to involve authorities when she feels uncomfortable with some normal thing that Black (or BIPOC folks) are doing. The consummate Karen is the woman who called the police on Christian Cooper, a Black birdwatcher in Central Park, and claimed she had been threatened simply because he dared to ask her to leash her dog.

    “Unfortunately (and similarly to ‘woke’), the term got defanged by non-Black folks and is now being used to mean ‘complainers.’ So my nit here is not with the definition, but with the broader culture that has robbed this word of its really robust meaning. It’s about the gendered ways in which some ‘white’ women enact white fragility, but the way I see some (usually white) men use it now it basically seems like a sexist insult for any person who sets a boundary. I saw a trail review recently in which a white guy called a trail steward a Karen for asking them gently to pick up their trash and put out an illegal campfire above 3500’. That’s not being a Karen, that’s doing a literal job that protects an ecosystem and the people who live in it. Anyway, I know that word meanings evolve, but this one’s a personal pet peeve of mine, so you all got an essay.”

    Happy New Year, everybody! Is it 5784 already? Hard to believe. See you tomorrow!

  • Queen of the Pacific

    To my discredit, I didn’t know about Len Chandler, the folksinger and activist who died at his home in LA on August 28th at the age of 88. He sang alongside Dylan, Baez, and Seeger.

    He was a classically trained oboist but fell hard for the folk scene after meeting Dave Van Ronk in Greenwich Village. The folksingers would pass the time playing poker in the back room, waiting to perform at the Gaslight. Dylan wrote “Chandler told me once, ‘You gotta learn how to bluff. You’ll never make it in this game if you don’t. Sometimes you even have to get caught bluffing.’”

    At the March on Washington in 1963, where MLK, Jr. gave his “I have a dream” speech, Chandler sang the traditional song “Keep Your Eyes on the Prize (Hold On)” with some updated lyrics. Baez and Dylan were among the backing singers. He was on the maiden voyage of Pete Seeger’s Clearwater sloop, and was part of a troupe led by Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland that brought an antiwar revue to military towns and bases at the height of the Vietnam War.

    The one song of his that was a hit was “Beans in My Ears” about people not listening to each other. It might have done even better had some medical groups not protested that it would lead to kids putting beans in their ears. I’m not kidding — some stations denied it airplay for that reason. Since Owl Chatter doesn’t give a crap about what you stick in your ears (or anywhere), you can give it a listen:

    Chandler was born on May 27 (Linda’s birthday!), in 1935 in Ohio, and studied music at U. of Akron where he also felt the stirrings of activism. In 1954, after being barred from a Whites-only public pool, he wrote to the Akron Beacon Journal: “When will we, the people of the United States, learn to practice the principles of democracy that we preach?”

    He earned a Masters degree at Columbia. He wrote over 1,000 topical songs for KRLA in Pasadena from ’68 to ’70. In June of ’68, Robert Kennedy was shot, and the song Chandler wrote contained these lyrics:

    Long line of mourners,
    Long lines of the slain,
    Long lines of teletype
    Spelling out the pain.
    Long lines at the ballot box
    Casting votes in vain.
    Long lines line the long, long track
    Of another lonesome train.

    Dylan wrote: “One thing about Chandler was that he was fearless. He didn’t suffer fools, and no one could get in his way. Len was brilliant and full of good will, — one of those guys who believed that all of society could be affected by one solitary life.”

    A mensch.

    He is survived by his wife, Olga Adderley Chandler, who was the widow of the saxophonist Cannonball Adderley, and a son, Michael, neither of whom has beans in their ears.

    Rest in peace Len.

    According to a Letter to The Times today by James A. Steinberg of Rhinebeck, NY, there may be a way around our electoral college mess. By mess I mean how the candidate with fewer votes can become President, and how votes in clearly red or blue states just don’t matter, because the state is going in one direction overwhelmingly.

    Steinberg writes about the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, under which states commit to award their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. If the Compact is adopted by states with a total of 270 electoral votes it will effectively require the winner of the popular vote to become the winner of the electoral college vote.

    And, get this — 16 states and DC have already signed on, covering 205 electoral votes. That means that if five out of the following six states join, the total of 270 is reached: Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Virginia. Other combinations would do it too, but this list makes it seem within the realm of possibility.

    Frank Bruni’s newsletter was unusually sharply written this week. His topic was the utterly unprincipled Kevin McCarthy. This snippet refers to the time McCarthy had to fly down to Florida to kiss Trump’s, er, ring after reaming him out for the insurrection, and his recent meeting with Marjorie:

    “You have eaten so much crow that you’re still coughing up the feathers. You had to make nice with and seek input from Marjorie Taylor Greene, whose counsel doesn’t rise to the level of a Magic 8 Ball’s.”

    His “For the love of sentences” includes this note by Rick Reilly in WAPO on how bad the Colorado football team was last year. He noted they lost to Minnesota by 42 points and said: “Most schools could start the faculty against Minnesota and not lose by 42 points.” [Hey, was I just dissed?]

    In the WSJ, Jason Gay complained about a prize his daughter won at a state fair: “I don’t know how many of you own a six-and-a-half-foot, bright blue stuffed lemur, but it is not exactly the type of item that blends into a home. You do not put it in the living room and say: perfect. It instantly becomes the most useless item in the house, and I own an exercise bike.”

    Speaking of the Colorado Buffaloes, Deion’s team, they are playing Colorado State this Saturday and are 23.5 point favorites. State has an unusually broad recruitment approach that has netted the following players: a Japanese sumo wrestler, two Sudanese tribesmen, an openly gay defensive lineman, a 30-something father of three, and a strongman who can deadlift 800 pounds, whatever that means. Game time is 10pm Saturday, and it’s an Owl Chatter must-see.

    By many diverse standards, Nelia Sancho was a jaw-droppingly extraordinary woman. First, she was a beauty, finishing second in the 1969 Miss Philippines pageant, and first in 1971 in the Queen of the Pacific competition, after which she toured Asia representing her country.

    While touring, an Australian diplomat opened her eyes to the abuses Marcos was inflicting on her people and told her she was being exploited. Over a ten-year period starting in 1971, Marcos imprisoned 70,000, tortured 34,000, and killed over 3,200. Presses were shut down and protests banned. Nelia stopped competing and started protesting. She soon found herself in trouble and went into hiding in a safe house that turned out not to be safe enough. It was raided and she was arrested after witnessing the execution of two of her professors, a sight that would haunt her for the rest of her life.

    After her release, she joined the New Peoples Army and rose to become its CFO. The press called her “guerilla queen” or “rebel queen,” and wondered why she gave up the life of a beauty queen for one of so much danger and struggle. She said it was a choice of conscience, and was easy.

    She was imprisoned for 2.5 years and tortured, but met her husband, the activist Antonio Liao, while participating in a hunger strike. It’s a good way to meet guys, she later said. [No she didn’t.] They had two kids, but split in 1998. After Marcos was ousted from power she remained active in numerous causes but retired to a quiet life in her 50’s, enjoying walks on the beach and her grandchildren.

    Nelia Sancho died on Sept. 1, 2022 at her home outside of Manila. She was 71. Her death was not widely reported outside the Philippines, which may explain this late obit in the NYT. She is survived by her two children, her sister, and five grandchildren, for all of whom the beauty of her youth never lost its glow.

    And with Nelia in mind, we bid you good night — see you tomorrow!

  • Joanne

    Book banning is a time-honored expression of hatred and bigotry. The Nazis banned and burned all books by authors with Jewish lineage. In that spirit, although directed at gays and Blacks, Florida school districts removed approximately 300 books from library shelves last school year, according to a list of “removed or discontinued materials” that was quietly released by the state’s education department late last month.

    Most were LGBT oriented. Other books include Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer-winning novel “Beloved,” Bernard Malamud’s National Book-winning novel “The Fixer” and Margaret Atwood’s Booker Prize-winning novel “The Testaments.”

    In response to an email from NBC News seeking comment on the list and referring to the removed titles as “banned books,” Caily Myers, a spokesperson for the Florida Department of Education, said, “Florida does not ban books.”

    Well that’s good to hear — for a minute there you had us worried.

    Jeez Louise, do you ever pass by someone who’s dressed so tastelessly that you think, “That guy should be arrested?” That’s exactly what’s happening in China. The government is proposing a law that could result in jailtime for “wearing clothing in public that is detrimental to the spirit of the Chinese people and hurts the feelings of Chinese people.” E.g., last year, the police in the eastern city of Suzhou temporarily detained a woman for wearing a kimono. Last month in Beijing, security guards cracking down on expressions of gay pride stopped people dressed in rainbow-themed clothes from entering a concert. Just last week the police in Shenzhen scolded a man who was livestreaming in a miniskirt. “A man wearing a skirt in public, do you think you’re positive energy?!” the police yelled at the man.

    Do you? Answer me!! Oops, I may be getting caught up in it.

    Wait, Phil — this guy’s not Chinese — you’re going to have to go back.

    The song Joanne by Lady Gaga was in the puzzle today. It was new to me. If it’s new to you too, brace yourself — it’s a heartbreaker.

    In the puzzle today, there were four long answers that answered a question by saying “I don’t know” while actually giving the answer. For example, the first question was “What is GOLF in the NATO alphabet?” and the answer was GEE, I DON’T KNOW. (Get it? Golf is G.) Similarly, for the question “Can you say what nyet is Russian for?” the answer was NO, LET ME THINK.

    The third was “Where does oil come from?” with the answer WELL , YOU GOT ME, and the last was “What isle is located between Ireland and Great Britain?” The answer was MAN, THAT’S HARD.

    But the best one was off the grid, suggested by commenter egsforbreakfast:

    “What’s flushed down the Pope’s toilet?” Holy crap, I have no idea.

    He also came up with these two:

    “What does a cook do before boiling corn?” Shucks, I don’t know.

    “Who died for our sins?” Christ, I haven’t a clue.

    The football gods have long considered the Jets their plaything, but this year’s early fiasco is especially cruel. Damn you football gods!

    At 52D, “Kind of earring,” was HOOP.

    Phil — those are way too big — dial it down a notch, what’s wrong with you?

    Much better.

    If you thought Republican Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin might be a reasonable moderate, he wants you to know he can be just as bad as the rest of them when it comes to trampling on innocent transgender kids to score political points with morons. He pardoned a man, Scott Smith, who was convicted of disorderly conduct at a hearing at which he was claiming his daughter was assaulted in a high school restroom by a boy wearing a skirt. At the meeting, Smith was arrested after he clenched his fist and leaned towards a woman during an argument. Deputies had to drag him to the ground. His anti-trans claims made him a darling of the right and Youngkin wanted a ride on that train.

    As it turned out, Smith’s daughter had had a consensual relationship with the boy, and he was not transgender.

    Good night, everybody. See you tomorrow.

  • Still I Rise

    Caity won free tix to yesterday’s Yankee game, so Linda and I agreed to watch the (5!) kids so she and Danny could go. We decided to take them on a short (1.25 mile each way) hike in Jockey Hollow National Park. There are soldiers’ huts from the Revolutionary War there that we thought the kids would get a kick out of. About halfway through the hike, Linda and Isaac (who is three) got separated from the rest of us (Lianna, Zoey, Leon, Raffi, and me, 14, 8, 6, and 4, respectively) because we were going faster. We got to the end and waited for them, but minutes passed and they didn’t show up. I figured Isaac got tired or cranky, or it got too hard to negotiate the trail with the small stroller we brought, so they headed back and we’d meet them at the car. But a small part of me worried that they somehow got lost, even though the trail is simple and straight. So we decided to nix the soldiers’ huts and turn around to find the others.

    We were moving a little faster than before, propelled by that little bit of worry. My phone dinged with a text. It couldn’t be Linda; she didn’t have her phone with her. It was Caity. She sent a pic of her and Danny at the Stadium. It looked like the seats were good and they were having a good time. Yay! She asked me how the kids were doing.

    Hmmmmm. Should I share with her that we “sort of lost” Nanna and Izzy? Nah — she might find some way to kill me, even from the Bronx. (You know, make a few calls.) So I texted back “We’re on a hike! The kids are doing great!” She said “Wow!”

    We picked up our pace. The kids (the ones I hadn’t lost), in fact, were doing amazingly well in terms of not whining or complaining. There was some fighting over whether Leon or Raffi should be right behind Zoey as we walked, but that was pretty tame stuff by their standards of warfare. Zoey kept saying, “What if Nanna are Isaac aren’t there?” And I kept saying, “I’m sure they’re there — where else would they be?” But Zoey kept saying, “but what if they’re not?”

    She had a point, but not one that I wanted to hear. She put her little hand in my big paw as we walked, and my heart melted. Zoey will do that to you. She has Ana de Armas powers.

    We got back to the car to find Nanna and Izzy resting at a nearby picnic table, feasting on the big bag of snacks we brought. What a great day! And we have to go back again soon, because we didn’t get to see those huts!

    The Yanks won, 4-3 — in extra innings!

    In the car on the way to Lianna’s school this morning, I recounted my favorite lines from Cheers. Cliff was explaining that he applied the principles of numerology to the presidents of the U.S. and was able to predict who the next president would be. He said it will be someone named Yelnack McWawa. Then Frazier turned to him and said “Clifford, tell me – what color is the sky in your world?”

    The theme of today’s puzzle was set by 10D: “Classic Maya Angelou poem.” It was Still I Rise. And there was a diagonal running from the bottom left to the top right comprised of fifteen circled letters all of which were “I,” all worked into the crossing words (Get it? The “I” was “rising.”) And there were three starred clues representing things that rise: BREAD DOUGH, BALLOONIST, and UP AND COMER. Beautifully done by constructor Hoang-Kim Vu, IMO. For icing on the cake, commenter Evgeny noted that there were no other I’s in the grid except for the 15 circled ones and the ones in “Still I Rise.” A sweet touch.

    Here’s the Angelou poem. It’s also a popular tattoo.

    You may write me down in history
    With your bitter, twisted lies,
    You may trod me in the very dirt
    But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

    Does my sassiness upset you?
    Why are you beset with gloom?
    ’Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
    Pumping in my living room.

    Just like moons and like suns,
    With the certainty of tides,
    Just like hopes springing high,
    Still I’ll rise.

    Did you want to see me broken?
    Bowed head and lowered eyes?
    Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
    Weakened by my soulful cries?

    Does my haughtiness offend you?
    Don’t you take it awful hard
    ’Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
    Diggin’ in my own backyard.

    You may shoot me with your words,
    You may cut me with your eyes,
    You may kill me with your hatefulness,
    But still, like air, I’ll rise.

    Does my sexiness upset you?
    Does it come as a surprise
    That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
    At the meeting of my thighs?

    Out of the huts of history’s shame
    I rise
    Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
    I rise
    I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
    Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

    Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
    I rise
    Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
    I rise
    Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
    I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
    I rise
    I rise
    I rise.

    I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

    I rise

    I rise

    I rise.

    I have never been as blown away, negatively, by a commenter on Rex’s blog as much as yesterday. First let me note, Rex routinely expresses his disgust when people he does not favor appear in the puzzle: e.g., Elon Musk, JK Rowling, etc. And, of course, Hitler and his ilk would never make it into the grid, even if clued appropriately with something like “Nazi mass murderer.” That’s a NYT policy.

    So, yesterday, the clue at 40A was “Composer Strauss, the brother of Johann,” and the answer was JOSEF. Okay — difficult, but not at all inappropriate. I got it via the crosses.

    And here is the post, in it’s entirety, by someone named Melissa F.:

    “Mengele, nicknamed “Angel of Death” would’ve been a good clue for JOSEF. Unfortunately, thanks to scolds like Rex, who freak out when bad people are crossword clues/answers, we get the younger brother of Johann Strauss II. Oh well, first world problems and all.”

    Seriously? You expect constructor Adam Wagner and/or editor Will Shortz to treat us to Mengele in the puzzle? And they are “scolds” because they don’t? What am I missing here, folks?

    Here’s Strauss — the Josef who made the cut:

    My favorite clue/answer from yesterday’s puzzle was at 25A: “Formidable-but-awesome behavior.” Answer: BADASSERY.

    When I googled “bad ass images,” a lot of movie characters came up. IMO, the baddest ass among them is Javier Bardem’s character Anton Chigurh from No Country For Old Men. Deliciously evil. Even how he spells his name is evil. What’s that H doing in there? — can’t be up to anything good. When Woody Harrelson was asked “Is he dangerous?,” he said, “Compared to what? — the plague?”

    He’s too evil to show an actual photo. How about this?

    The seeds that were planted when Luis Rubiales, head of Spain’s soccer federation, planted his unwanted kiss on the lips of Jennifer Hermoso have borne fruit. He resigned yesterday. I guess it turned out to be a kiss goodbye.

    And Michigan State football coach Mel Tucker was suspended without pay because of sexual harassment charges. The pay he is going without is from his ten-year $95 million contract. Here’s what it says in the NYT:

    “A report in USA Today, published early Sunday morning, detailed allegations that Tucker harassed Brenda Tracy, a prominent advocate who speaks out against sexual abuse, after they teamed up to fight the culture of sexual violence in college sports. Ms. Tracy travels the country counseling college and professional athletes to stand against harassment and abuse, and made several visits to Michigan State in the past two years.

    “Ms. Tracy accused Mr. Tucker of making sexual comments and masturbating during a phone call with her on April 28, 2022, according to USA Today, and she filed a formal Title IX complaint with the university in December.”

    [Here’s a joke I can’t tell in class. Abe goes to the doctor and the doctor says, “Abe, you’re going to have to stop masturbating.” Abe says “Why?” And the doctor says, “So I can examine you.”]

    The same page in the Times reports on a lawsuit by Kylie McKenzie against the US Tennis Association for failing to protect her from a coach who touched her improperly when she was 19 and he was 34. Kylie was once a very promising junior player. She has battled anxiety and depression since the assault and believes it has hampered her progress. Since such acts are rarely one-offs, another woman has come forward to complain about the coach as well.

    Former tennis star Pam Shriver is supporting McKenzie, partly because Shriver was also the victim of abuse. Owl Chatter finds the following note in the Times especially outrageous: Shriver testified that USTA’s top lawyer last year warned her to “be careful” about her public statements on sexual abuse in tennis. Puh-leeze — who is your client — the USTA or the Corleone family? Depositions of Kylie and her mother included questions about Kylie’s sexual partners before the assault and the nature of her discussions with her therapist. Her mother was asked if she was ever advised to take Kylie’s phone away because she had kissed a boy, and if Kylie ever believed she was pregnant.

    Robert Allard, McKenzie’s lawyer and a specialist in representing victims of sexual assault in sports, said the USTA’s questioning showed a strategy of “belittling, embarrassing and intimidating survivors.” Chris Widmaier, chief spokesman for the U.S.T.A., said the organization had “no intention of revictimizing or shaming” McKenzie in any way. Phew, that’s a relief — for a minute there I thought that’s exactly what was going on.

    In any event, I mention these three stories because it has become clear that the only position in which you can still assault women in this country is Republican candidate for President. Maybe that’s why so many guys are candidates. It’s the safe harbor.

    Here’s Kylie McKenzie, well-prepared for whoever comes her way next.

    The poem in The Writer’s Almanac today is called “Nine-Eleven” and it’s by Charlotte Parsons.

    You passed me on the street
    I rode the subway with you
    You lived down the hall from me
    I admired your dog in the park one morning
    We waited in line for a concert
    I ate with you in the cafes
    You stood next to me at the bar
    We huddled under an awning during a downpour
    We dashed across the street to beat the light
    I bumped into you coming round the corner
    You stepped on my foot
    I held the door for you
    You helped me up when I slipped on the ice
    I grabbed the last Sunday Times
    You stole my cab
    We waited forever at the bus stop
    We sweated in steamy August
    We hunched our shoulders against the sleet
    We laughed at the movies
    We groaned after the election
    We sang in church
    Tonight I lit a candle for you
    All of you

    Thanks for stopping by. Hope to see you tomorrow.

  • Captain Video

    Want your son, or grandson, to play college football?

    Portland State coach Bruce Barnum said one of his players had “his ear ripped off” in the Vikings’ 81-7 loss to Oregon.

    “As if the score wasn’t bad enough,” one fan said.

    Sports Illustrated noted: Football is certainly a physical game, but it’s safe to say that players generally expect to leave with their ears still attached.

    “They sewed it back on, and now they say he has a concussion. So he’s out, but I think he’s fine,” said Coach Barnum, who is clearly an idiot. The coach clarified: “Not the whole ear. Partial ear detachment. I think it was from when he got his helmet knocked off, and I think his ear didn’t come out of his helmet.”

    Thanks for clearing that up, Coach! Let’s try to hold ’em under 75 this week.

    Here’s a picture of the injured player:

    Commentators noted he was a shoo-in for this year’s Vincent Van Gogh Trophy which is awarded annually to the player with the fewest ears.

    The puzzle was a bear today — I almost crashed in the southeast. Of course, for Rex it was “easy-medium.” I finished at the cross of “First coed and racially integrated college in the South,” which is BEREA (I know, — WTH?), with “Universal self of Hinduism,” which is ATMAN. (I had ruled out MURRY.) The crosses helped me and then I guessed the A and it was right. Whew.

    The clue at 1A was “Many opera villains, traditionally.” The answer was BASSES, and it reminded one poster of this story:

    The first three movements of Beethoven’s Ninth are strictly instrumental, but the fourth movement is where a choir sings the famous “Ode to Joy.” At a recent performance by the Minnesota Orchestra and Minnesota Chorale, the basses, always the troublemakers in any vocal group, were bored of waiting around for the last movement, so they decided to skip out and go to a pub across the street from the concert hall for a few drinks.

    In a questionable attempt to buy themselves some extra time, one of them tied a string around the score on the last page of the third movement. When they stumbled back in at the last minute, the conductor was fumbling with the string to turn the page to the final movement. He was understandably flustered; after all, it was the bottom of the ninth, the score was tied, and the basses were loaded.

    And Pabloinnh posted: Old joke-What do you call BASSES singing in unison? A tone cluster. This is found funny by tenors, if no one else.

    4D was “Art form accompanied by a theater organ.” Finger paint fit, but it was SILENT MOVIE. It led Shirley Freitas to post:

    Very much liked seeing the SILENT MOVIE reference. My great-grandmother was a silent star for a time, known for her daredevil stunts such as jumping from a racing car or galloping horse onto a speeding locomotive. An episode from her serial “The Hazards of Helen” is titled The Leap from the Water Tower. Hazards of Helen was a feminist and pro-working-class serial and every episode featured her bravery on the job, without the usual romantic subplots. I wrote a brief biography of her for a silent movie festival, then expanded and published it at: https://www.necessarystorms.com/home/the-hazardous-life-of-helen-holmes

    The Helen character (as in many serials, the heroine and star shared a first name) was not a damsel in distress. Helen rescued others more often than being rescued herself. She was quick-thinking, risk-taking, and had a deep sense of justice.

    Here are two pics from the bio. That’s Helen on the magazine cover.

    Gary Wright died on Monday at age 80 in his home in California. He was born and bred in NJ. His mom pushed him into show biz. He made an appearance on the “seminal science fiction TV series” Captain Video and His Video Rangers. He also had the main child role in the 1954 Broadway musical Fanny when he was only 11 years old. But he is best remembered as a singer-songwriter. He was friends with George Harrison and did some work with him and with the Beatles. His biggest hit was “Dream Weaver,” which took the unconventional approach of relying solely on drums and keyboard instruments — no guitars.

    If ever there was a story tailor-made for Owl Chatter with its devotion to nonsense, this item from today’s NYT is it. Officials in New Delhi planning for the G20 summit of world leaders are worried that meetings and residences will be invaded by wild monkeys, mainly rhesus macaques.

    The monkeys are not shy. They steal food and chase pedestrians. They sometimes ride buses and subway trains. They have attacked patients inside hospitals, invaded the Defense Ministry and the prime minister’s office, and romped in the Indian Parliament building. A deputy mayor died in 2007 after falling from his balcony while trying to scare away monkeys by using a stick. No monkeys were charged with any crimes.

    “The monkeys are naughty and they can arrive at your dinner table, in any house in Delhi,” said Abdul Khan. “It doesn’t matter how many security guards you have outside the gate.” The monkeys often evade guards by swinging through tree canopies.

    Wait, folks — that’s not even the ridiculous part.

    Here’s the plan they came up with as a solution. It turns out the monkeys are scared of gray langurs, which are larger monkeys. So 40 people are being trained to imitate guttural grunts and shrieks of gray langurs and will be deployed to scare away monkeys. Abdul Khan, whom I quoted above, is a freelance monkey noise imitator. His uncle once used live monkeys to shoo away smaller ones. You know, so this line of work is in his blood.

    You may be wondering — why use monkey imitators? Why not engage actual gray langurs for the job? Because in 2012 the government of India banned the use of live langurs to scare smaller monkeys on the grounds that it constituted animal cruelty (cruelty to the larger monkeys — no one seems very sympathetic to the smaller ones).

    Complicating the picture is the fact that in Hinduism, India’s dominant religion, monkeys are viewed as representations of a deity. I think we can all agree that the last thing we need is to anger the monkey gods.

    So, the question then arises as to whether it works. Get this —

    Emily Bethell, an expert on primate behavior and social cognition at Liverpool John Moores University in Britain, said that she found no peer-reviewed studies on langur voice mimicry being an effective strategy for containing a macaque population. Still, she said, the practice appears to be based on a sound understanding of macaque behavior.

    “Whether they can mimic those calls so closely that a macaque would interpret them as coming from a langur we cannot know without rigorous scientific testing,” Dr. Bethell said. “However, the macaques may be familiar with humans making these calls and associate them with threat, which could be enough.”

    So, according to the doc, it could be that the monkeys can tell that the imitators are humans and not real langurs, but it freaks them out anyway because humans who would undertake such a ridiculous activity have to be viewed as a threat. Thanks, Doc — makes sense.

    Satish Upadhyay, vice chairman of the New Delhi Municipal Council, declined a request to interview some of the impersonators. [Darnit!] He said their work was part of continuing research by forestry officials to find new ways of scaring off monkeys.

    He expressed confidence in the impersonators’ chances of success at the G20 summit. “Will it be 100 percent effective?” he said. “It doesn’t work that way.”

    Deion’s Colorado Buffaloes had their way with Nebraska today and are 2-0. Shedeur Sanders had another excellent day at QB (31 for 42, for 393 yds). Michigan romped too, but the big games are ahead.

    Good night everybody! Thanks for popping in.