The Wellington Files

  • Kerry

    Here’s an Irish joke we heard while touring the Ring of Kerry.

    This farmer gets a visit by an agricultural inspector from the Government. He shows him his badge and says he has to have a look around.

    The farmer says, Go ahead, but please don’t enter that one area behind the barn.

    The inspector shows him his badge and says, This badge gives me the authority to inspect the entire farm, and it is not to be limited in any way.

    The farmer says OK, and returns to his chores.

    Forty minutes later he hears a commotion from the area behind the barn. He goes over and sees a big bull chasing the inspector who has dropped his clipboard and lost his hat while fleeing.

    “Show him your badge! Show him your badge!,” the farmer shouts.

    This photo is of a sheepdog trainer.

    That small black dog behind the sheep, Claire, just brought them all in from pretty far up the hill. The sheep farmer uses four commands conveyed by voice or whistle. Those are six sheep to show us how it’s done. Claire can bring down 200 – 300 if needed. Once Claire starts to gather them, the sheep flock together.

    It’s flocking amazing.

    Sorry, I meant to say fucking amazing.

    This shot is from a very pretty little town on the Ring: Sneed. We stopped for coffee which was outstanding.

    The driver mentioned the Killarney Brewery which we’re visiting soon. He said their most popular brew is the Killarney Blonde. He said if we gents have one, we can say we’ve had a Killarney blonde and the wives won’t mind.

    Here’s a beautiful Irish redhead.

    We’ll let her pretty eyes send us off tonight.

    See you tomorrow!

  • Killarney

    The rubber duck knows no frontiers. That’s what it says on the wall of the shop that sells nothing but small rubber ducks, albeit in a seemingly endless variety.

    It’s just up the street from what I thought was an old-time phone booth, but in fact is a defibrillator booth.

    May come in handy.

    Gotta love Killarney.

    The drive down was marked by the tire pressure light coming on again. Depending on the prevailing winds across the Atlantic, you may have heard my screams. But a great old Irish guy in a service station out of the 1950’s fired up his air compressor and got us moving again.

    No more driving till it’s time to return the car. Ring of Kerry via bus tour tomorrow. Walking tours after that.

    Food has been good. There’s a brewery across the street here. Will check it out at some point.

    Thanks for popping in!

  • Don’t Drive Like My Brother!

    Ouch. Driving here is hard. The main two-way roads are just a little less than two-cars wide. It feels like you are always driving into oncoming traffic. I blew a tire out swerving left several hundred times. Opened the trunk to find no spare. Lovely woman helped us call for help and a great tire guy fixed the wheel and put a new tire on. I did quite a number on it and will likely do so again before we’re through.

    Cliffs were pretty.

  • Galway

    What a lovely land!

    View from our room in Galway.

    Off to the Cliffs now.

    See you later!

  • Abstract Abstraction

    “Knot without a struggle” was a cute clue today for CLIP-ON TIE. I don’t think I’ve ever used one, though I don’t often wear ties these days. We sent our crack photographer Phil to find a pretty girl wearing a tie, and here’s whom he came up with. Can’t blame her for eyeing him a bit suspiciously. Who knows what he was up to? Phil!! No funny stuff!!

    If you do not enjoy opera, you will like the clue/answer at 16A: “Where there is ‘too much singing,’ per Debussy.” Answer: OPERA.

    Joe Dipinto noted that “Debussy himself did compose an opera, Pelléas et Mélisande, which has, y’know, quite a bit of singing in it. I remember reading this succinct plot synopsis of it somewhere: ‘Nothing happens, then Mélisande dies.’”

    Another good clue was “How a sailor achieves a good work-life balance?” and the answer was SEALEGS. “Work-life” here means “life while at work,” not balance between work and life.

    The theme was revealed by “prevails eventually,” which was ENDS UP ON TOP, and for the theme answers the ends of the words shifted to the front to form a new word or phrase. Here they are:

    1. Lineage became age line
    2. Barstool became toolbars
    3. Tapered became red tape
    4. Headspin became pinheads
    5. Potshot became hotpots
    6. Tablescraps became craps tables

    Here’s the cartoon for this week’s New Yorker cartoon caption contest.

    I’m voting for “How’d you get yours off?”

    Are you a Stevie Nicks fan? If so, you might try to pick up one of the new Barbie dolls that Mattel brought out recently that captures her likeness wearing the outfit from Rumours. They are selling for $55. Don’t dawdle, though — pre-orders sold out fast.

    Even though the album came out in 1977 (ouch!), Stevie still had the outfit. She sent it over to Mattel and they used it to model the doll along with the Pasquale Di Fabrizio black platform boots, which Stevie called “gorgeous.”

    Mattel has been producing celebrity dolls since the 1960’s. The Tina Turner doll’s hair must have been a challenge. Tina, aleha hashalom, was very much involved with the doll’s design.

    The dolls are not limited to females. There are two David Bowie dolls. The one on the right, below, doesn’t look much like him, but Mattel explained it was designed to be Barbie herself with a David Bowie look. The one on the left really nailed it, IMHO.

    You may not have heard of Celia Cruz (I hadn’t), but you (and I) should have. Not only is she the Queen of Salsa, but the U.S. Mint is planning to put her on a quarter next year as part of its American Women Quarters program. No sh*t! She’ll be jangling around in your pocket before you know it.

    Well, Mattel is not about to let itself be scooped by the U.S. Mint. So they recently revealed their Cruz Barbie. Mazel Tov Celia!

    Getting back to Stevie. Did she see the Barbie movie? The answer is yes, and she loved it. She said: “I had to come right home and tell my Stevie doll all about it.”

    BTW, the other four women to be honored by the U.S. Mint with quarters next year will be Reverend Dr. Pauli Murray, the Honorable Patsy Takemoto Mink, Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, and Zitkala-Ša.

    Patsy Mink was the first woman of color and the first Asian-American woman elected to Congress, and is known for her work on legislation advancing women’s rights and education. In 2002 Congress renamed the Title IX Amendment of the Higher Education Act, which Mink had co-authored, as the “Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act.”

    “Pauli” Murray was an American civil rights activist, advocate, legal scholar and theorist, author and – later in life – an Episcopal priest. Murray’s work influenced the civil rights movement and expanded legal protection for gender equality. She went to college at, get this — Hunter College! Go Hawks!

    Zitkala-Ša wrote the libretto and songs for the first American-Indian opera, The Sun Dance Opera, and was an agitator for Native American rights.

    Dr. Mary Edwards Walker was an American abolitionist, prohibitionist, prisoner of war, and surgeon. She is the only woman to receive the Medal of Honor, the US Armed Forces’ highest military decoration awarded to recognize American soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen, etc. who have distinguished themselves by acts of valor.

    This beautiful art-space, above, is the Long Island City Artists Art Space in The Factory building in Long Island City (Queens), NY. We sent Phil over to take this shot of it because we have some wonderful news: An esteemed, if not steamed, member of Owl Chatter’s Art Department, Bob Lobe, just informed us that two of his paintings will be in the group exhibit “Abstract Abstraction” which opens there next week!

    If you’re up for a pleasant distraction, catch the action at Abstract Abstraction.

    There is an opening reception on Thursday, October 12th from 5 to 8pm. The exhibit is on view from October 12 to November 22. Gallery hours for the Art Space are Wednesday to Saturday, 10am to 6pm.

    (Don’t all go at once, Owl Chatter fans — organize yourselves.)

    The address is The Factory, 30-30 47th Avenue, Suite 105a, Long Island City. The Factory building is located very close to LaGuardia Community College. By subway, it is a 5 minute walk from the 33rd Street – Rawson Street station on the #7 train.

    Hope you can make it over there — we’re going to try to catch it. If you go, let us know what you think.

    Hey! Wow! That’s Bob, below, way on the right!

    Good night everybody! Tomorrow night we fly off to Ireland. Yikes!

  • Solfege

    This poem is from The Writer’s Almanac. It’s by Sally Van Doren and is called “Defiance.”

    We were drawn that way at a young age on the main line
    west from St. Louis to the Columbia spur north to Moberly
    where our grandparents picked us up at the station

    and showed us the quarry behind their house on Gilman Road,
    warning us not to try to jump off the edge of the cliff
    with an umbrella the way Uncle Robert had.

    Our mother had traced our blood to Squire Boone, Daniel’s brother.
    It coursed through our father’s veins when, as a sixteen-year-old
    with a summer job on the railroad, he fought to get the cinder

    out of the tracks that blocked the switch as the 12:05 bore down on him.
    Sixty years later his grandsons spin the wheels of their three speeds
    on the gravel path above the wide brown river, sweating

    as their knees pump on pedals their feet have out-grown.
    We stay at a bed and breakfast on the bluff, walking down
    to Dutzow for the Friday night fish fry. Back on our bikes

    on the Katy Trail the next morning, stopping along the way
    to swing on the vines and poke our heads in the caves,
    we race the last mile to the marker in front of the Boone Homestead.

    Republican Congressman Kevin McCarthy of California died yesterday at his house in Washington, DC, at the age of 58. The cause of death was not available, but it is widely known he was suffering from assholism for many years. McCarthy is survived by his wife, Judy, and their two children. Here they are during happier times.

    In 2015, McCarthy was accused of having an affair with Representative Renee Ellmers of North Carolina. It may have caused him to drop out of the Speaker’s race at that time. In his defense, McCarthy said “Ellmers is very pretty and used to be a nurse. I’m only human, fellas.” [Alright, he never said that.] McCarthy and Ellmers denied the allegation.

    McCarthy’s mom was a homemaker, and his dad was an assistant city fire chief. His maternal grandfather was an Italian immigrant, and his paternal grandfather was Irish. Following in his dad’s footsteps a bit, he worked as a seasonal firefighter while he was in college.

    McCarthy was the first Republican in his immediate family: his parents were Democrats. He was on his HS football team. When he was 19, he ran his first business: selling sandwiches out of the back of his uncle’s yogurt shop in Bakersfield.

    Here’s a nice story about him:

    In a September 29, 2015, interview with Sean Hannity, McCarthy was asked what Republicans had accomplished in Congress. He replied by talking about the special panel investigation into the 2012 Benghazi attack (in which Islamic militants attacked the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya). Republicans said the purpose of the committee was to investigate the deaths of four Americans. But McCarthy said, “Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she’s untrustable (sic). But no one would have known any of that happened had we not fought.” The comment was an admission that the investigation was a partisan political undertaking rather than a substantive inquiry. His remark was described as a classic “Kinsley gaffe” (defined as when a politician accidentally tells the truth). Several days later, McCarthy apologized for the remarks and said the Benghazi panel was not a political initiative.

    Thanks for clearing that up, Kev.

    Rest in peace.

    In the puzzle today at 53A, the clue was “fa-la connection,” and the answer was SOL. Some folks thought the answer should just be SO. That’s how it’s pronounced. (“Sew, a needle pulling thread.”) Here’s the story:

    It’s a music education system called solfege (from sol and fa).

    In eleventh-century Italy, the Guido of Arezzo invented a notational system that named the six notes of the hexachord after the first syllable of each line of the Latin hymn “Ut queant laxis,” the “Hymn to St. John the Baptist,” yielding ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la. Each successive line of this hymn begins on the next scale degree, so each note’s name was the syllable sung at that pitch in this hymn.

    Ut queant laxīs resonāre fibrīs
    Mīra gestōrum famulī tuōrum,
    Solve pollūtī labiī reātum,
    Sancte Iohannēs

    The words were written by Paulus Diaconus in the 8th century. They translate as:

    So that your servants may, with loosened voices,
    Resound the wonders of your deeds,
    Clean the guilt from our stained lips,
    O St. John.

    “Ut” was changed in the 1600s in Italy to the open syllable Do, at the suggestion of Giovanni Battista Doni (based on the first syllable of his surname), and Si (from the initials for “Sancte Iohannes”) was added to complete the diatonic scale. In Anglophone countries, “si” was changed to “ti” by Sarah Glover in the nineteenth century so that every syllable might begin with a different letter.

    Questions?

    Ready to go back to 1965 now?

    Thanks for popping by! See you tomorrow.

  • Wilson, Wakefield, Votto, Kelce, and Swift

    Could there have been more pressure? Zach Wilson was the Jets’ super high draft pick three years ago, anointed the team’s savior. He stunk it up pretty badly for two seasons (when he wasn’t injured), and lost the respect of his teammates due to stupid remarks in an interview, but held on enough to be tapped as backup to Aaron Rodgers for the year. AR went down on the fourth play of the season so here was Wilson again, stinking it up. Jets Nation had had enough of him. Jets’ God, Joe Namath, remarked in disgust: “I’ve seen enough of Zach Wilson.” His next poorly thrown pass or INT could, literally, have ended his career. It was hanging by that thin a thread.

    So here he was last night — playing against the Super Bowl Champs in front of a testy home crowd and a national TV audience, boosted by Taylor Swift in the VIP box, so zillions of Swifties had tuned in, along with the entire football world.

    So I ask you again — could there have been more pressure? I don’t see how.

    So what does Wilson do? — he turns in a brilliant performance. Effective drives, grace under pressure, good decisions sharply executed. The Jets came back from a 17-0 deficit to lose by just 23-20, and, actually, almost win. A terrible penalty call went against them and a field goal attempt clanged off the goal post. Neither was Wilson’s fault and he completed 23 of 31 passes for 216 yards, 2 TD’s, no interceptions — clearly outplaying Mahomes, who was way off his game.

    So is all forgiven? I wouldn’t go that far, but it was pretty impressive. Here’s the kid, followed by You-Know-Whom, who is dating tight end Travis Kelce of the Chiefs. Owl Chatter wishes the love birds (both of whom are 33) nothing but happiness. Kelce seems like a mensch, and we know he has great hands. Take good care of her, Travis.

    My favorite puzzle of the week is Monday’s in The New Yorker. It’s their most challenging and it’s just hard enough to give a me a good workout but usually not impossible. They have a team of excellent constructors, including the beloved Robyn Weintraub, who usually does the easier ones, and Puzzle God Patrick Berry. Today’s was by Natan Last, who scares me, and, sure enough, I couldn’t finish it.

    “Author of ‘them’” was JCO. Who knew that stands for Joyce Carol Oates? I also didn’t know “Hush-hush” was ON THE DL. DL = down low. I could only think of QT. And “Splay Anthem poet” is NATHANIAL MACKEY? Gimme a break.

    But if you ever thought (or still think) that “for all intents and purposes” is “for all intensive purposes,” you will want to know that the term for such a misbelief is EGGCORN. Other good ones are rebel rouser for rabble rouser, and free reign for free rein.

    Today’s NYT puzzle was about FINAL IZE, clued with “Wrap up … or a phonetic description of five long answers.” And the five answers each ended with “IZE” spelled a different way: SAMURAIS, DAILY HIGHS, BEHIND BLUE EYES, AS THE CROW FLIES, and IN DISGUISE. (“Behind Blue Eyes” is a song by The Who.)

    A Rex commenter noted that the plural of samurai is samurai — not samurais. And Merriam-Webster agrees. The NYT editors just blew it!

    Excuse me — how far is it to the nearest garage?

    About a mile and a half as the crow flies.

    How far is it if the crow has to walk and lug a flat tire?

    I posted:

    BEHIND BLUE EYES calls to mind the Lee Marvin line from Cat Ballou. He fell asleep drunk on his horse.

    Guy: Look at your eyes.
    LM: What’s wrong with my eyes?
    Guy: They’re red, bloodshot.
    LM: You oughta see ’em from my side.

    Tim Wakefield, Red Sox pitcher, died yesterday from brain cancer. He was only 57. Only two pitchers in Red Sox history won more games for them than Wakefield: Cy Young and Roger Clemens, each of whom won 192 to Wakefield’s 186. Nobody pitched more innings (3,006) or started more games (430) for Boston than he did. Clemens was second in both categories, 230 behind in innings, and 48 behind in starts.

    Wakefield was also the all-time Boston leader in losses (168), batters faced (12,971), walks (1095), hits (2,931), home runs (401), earned runs (1,480), wild pitches (125), and hit batters (176).

    He pitched for Boston for 17 years, after two with the Pirates, and won exactly 200 games. He was a knuckleball pitcher. It puts less strain on the arm than other pitches, so knuckleball pitchers who have success with it can last longer. On April 27, 1993, he threw 172 pitches over 10+ innings for the Pirates against the Braves. He also threw a fastball that could reach speeds as high as (a laughable) 75 MPH. He was 45 when he retired.

    Wakefield is prominent in Yankee history as well. During the 2003 ALCS, he surrendered the series-ending home run to Yankee Aaron Boone in the 11th inning. In our opinion, Boone would not be the current manager of the Yankees if not for that home run. But what do we know?

    In June of 1995, Wakefield took a no-hitter against the Oakland A’s into the eighth inning, but a single by Stan Javier with one out spoiled it. He nonetheless won, 4-1, using his knuckler for all but four of his 114 pitches.

    In 2010, Wakefield won Baseball’s Roberto Clemente Award. It’s a big deal. Each team nominates one player who has done the most for his community and charitable causes. Then, from the 30 nominees, one winner is selected. Wakefield was nominated eight times before winning. Much of his charitable work revolved around children.

    Tim is survived by his wife Stacy and their two kids, Trevor and Brianna, none of whom could come close to hitting a knuckler.

    Rest in peace, Wake.

    It’s a heavy baseball day. Joey Votto has played 17 seasons in the majors, all with Cincy. He’s had a very good career — .294 lifetime average, 356 homers, and good power numbers all around. Hall of Fame? Maybe.

    It’s not official that he’s retiring this year, but his contract is up and his numbers were way off. So a lot of folks think this season was his last. He gave an emotional/funny speech last week at Cincy’s last home game of the season and the fans ate it up. And yesterday in St. Louis, the Reds were playing their last game of the season: conceivably, Joey’s last game ever. Emotional, right? Meaningful and profound in a way, no?

    Except he got thrown out of the game by the umpire for arguing a strike call after his first at bat!! D’oh! Oh, man — say it ain’t so, Joe. What a way to go out. In case the ump might be targeted in some way by angry fans, and because it was true, he took full blame for the ejection — said he just blew it with his behavior, and the ump was right to throw him out. Classy.

    Best of luck to you, Joey Votto. May your future be bright.

    Good night everybody. Thanks for dropping by.

  • There’s a Mattress!

    Well, not all the idiots in Congress are Republicans. Democrat Jamaal Bowman of NY pulled a fire alarm in the Capitol yesterday, seeking to delay a vote. It caused the building to be evacuated while officers could investigate. Bowman apologized for causing the mess. Of course, the reasonable and measured response of the Republicans included Kevin McCarthy equating it to the Jan. 6 riot, and fellow NY Rep. Nicole Malliotakis said she’ll introduce a resolution to expel Bowman from the House. No mention of the death penalty as of this writing.

    The Onion paid tribute to the late Senator Dianne Feinstein with a retrospective of articles they published about her in recent years. These included:

    Jimmy Carter Makes Pact With Dianne Feinstein That If Both Single In 50 Years They’ll Marry Each Other

    Dianne Feinstein Recovering After Hospital Gurney Plunges Down Stairs And Launches Her Into Wall

    Sheet Placed Over Dianne Feinstein Between Votes

    Sen. Feinstein Grants Power of Attorney To Broom Resembling Daughter

    Biden Speeds Away In Truck After Dropping Dianne Feinstein Off In Empty Field

    Of course, Owl Chatter is aghast at how tasteless and disrespectful they all are, especially that last one (which is our favorite).

    The NYT gave her a far more deserved sendoff today. Maureen Dowd noted that DiFi, as she was called, entered the Senate in 1992 when DC was much more male-dominated than it is today. She ignored the sexism and bulled her way ahead. E.g., as chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, she led the fight in 2014 to release the classified report on U.S. torture in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo.  She went up against Obama and his C.I.A. chief John Brennan. Bush’s C.I.A. director Michael Hayden said dismissively that Feinstein couldn’t be objective because she was motivated by “deep emotional feeling.”

    “Nonsense,” she snapped back. The senator simply wanted America to face the ugly truth so we would never betray our values in such a grotesque way again.

    Feinstein was reelected five times. In the 2012 election, she received 7.86 million votes, the most popular votes received by any U.S. Senate candidate in history.

    A story by Heather Knight focused on her ties to SF, where she was born the same year construction was started on the Golden Gate Bridge. She was mayor after the Harvey Milk shooting. She kept a firefighter’s coat and helmet in her car so she could show up at every major fire in the city. She saved the cable car system when it was on the verge of collapse and steered the city through serial killers, the Jonestown massacre, the Patty Hearst business, and the Milk and Mayor Moscone killings. Current Mayor Breed said Feinstein often called her about things like uneven sidewalks and potholes. “Dianne never stopped being mayor,” Breed said.

    She was traveling in a car several years ago past a downtown parking structure, and was frustrated to see a ratty mattress propped up against a fire hydrant.

    “Ed!” she hollered over the phone to Ed Lee, who was mayor at the time. “There’s a mattress!”

    Days later, she returned to the neighborhood, and the mattress was gone. She was very pleased with herself.

    Feinstein was married three times and is survived by her daughter Katherine, who looks nothing like a broom.

    Rest in peace, DiFi.

     

    Yesterday was the birthday of American poet and essayist, W.S. Merwin who died in 2019 at the age of 91. When he was a junior at Princeton, Merwin decided he would be nothing but a poet for the rest of his life, and would never get a job that didn’t have something to do with poetry. [That’s pretty much how I feel about being a tax professor.] So after college he went to Europe, where he worked as a babysitter for writer Robert Graves in Majorca and wrote poems in his spare time.

    He was an ardent anti-Vietnam-War activist. When he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1970 for The Carrier of Ladders, he refused the award out of shame for being an American. He asked that that the money go instead to a painter who was blinded by police in California while watching a protest.

    In 1976, he moved to Hawaii and bought 20 acres of land by a dormant volcano that had been an ill-run pineapple plantation. Merwin and his wife turned it into a palm forest, hacking down dead growth with machetes and planting palms one by one. It now holds more than 700 species of trees and plants, along with geckos and mynah birds. He didn’t use a cell phone or email and wrote every morning in longhand.

    He won a second Pulitzer Prize in 2009 for The Shadow of Sirius. In 2010, the Library of Congress named him the 17th U.S. Poet Laureate.

    He continued to plant a tree every day during the rainy season for as long as he was able to.

    He wrote:

    On the last day of the world
    I would want to plant a tree.

    Here are some palms:

    This poem is called “History Lesson” and is by Jeff Coomer.

    My grandfather left school at fourteen
    to work odd jobs until he was old enough
    to join his Lithuanian kin chipping
    anthracite out of the Pennsylvania hills.
    Nine hours a day with five hundred feet
    of rock over his head, then an hour’s
    ride home on the company bus
    to a dinner of boiled cabbage and chicken.
    When the second big war broke
    he headed “sout,” as he pronounced it,
    for better work in the blast furnaces
    churning out steel along the shores
    of the Chesapeake. Thirty-two years
    and half an index finger later he retired
    to a brick rancher he built with his own hands
    just outside the Baltimore city line.
    The spring he got cancer and I got a BA
    from a private college we stood under
    a tree in his backyard while he copped
    a smoke out of my grandmother’s sight.
    “Tell me, Pop,” I said, wanting to strike up
    a conversation, “how did you like
    working in the mills all those years?”
    He studied my neatly pressed white shirt,
    took a long drag on his cigarette and spit a fleck
    of tobacco near my shoes. “Like,” he said,
    “didn’t have a thing to do with it.”

    Ted Kennedy was campaigning outside of a factory, shaking hands with the workers as they were coming to work. One guy stopped and said, “Tell me, Kennedy, did you ever work at a place like this even one day in your life?”

    Kennedy replied, “No, I can’t say that I have.”

    The worker said, “You haven’t missed a fucking thing.”

    Oy, we can’t end on such a gloomy note. Any special guest stars in the puzzle today who might light up the joint? Oooh, Rachel Brosnahan popped in at 43D from The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Even though the character Mrs. M is Jewish, Rachel isn’t, but she says she was immersed in Jewishness growing up in Highland Park, IL. [BTW, Grace Slick is from Highland Park too. She’s not Jewish, but get this — Jorma Kaukonen is (via his mom).] Rachel is married to actor Jason Ralph, who got all dressed up for us. Awww, sweet. No kids.

    We’ll let Rachel’s pretty eyes send us off tonight. See you tomorrow!

  • Yo La Tengo! Yo La Tengo!

    Abe: Rabbi, I have a strong desire to live forever. What should I do?

    Rabbi: Get married.

    Abe: And I’ll live forever?

    Rabbi: No, but the desire will disappear.

    [Sorry, darling — it’s just a joke!]

    My cousin Barry sent me those two items. It may depress you to learn they were the best out of around ten. Aside from that, he’s a wonderful man who raised 8 (or 6) children. [He knows whether it’s 8 or 6. It’s just that between him and his brother Jay, I don’t recall which is the 8 and which the 6.]

    There’s an update on whether Lennon and McCartney sang backup on The Stones’ song Dandelion. Here’s the comment that was posted late yesterday:

    “Despite what Wikipedia says, there doesn’t seem to be absolute certainty that John and Paul sang on “Dandelion.” 0ne account has Mick and Keith saying they didn’t. They did sing on the flip side, “We Love You”, which was the A-side in Britain. “Dandelion” had been recorded much earlier but was apparently finished up at the “We Love You” recording session, whatever that entailed.

    “The background vocal is Beatle-esque in style, but I’m not sure it really sounds like them singing it. So who knows?”

    The clue at 51A yesterday was “Protagonist in a long-running Phyllis Reynolds Naylor book series.” Now that’s a Friday-level clue: for ALICE. Monday it would be something like “Mrs. Kramden,” or maybe “Wonderland drop-in.”

    A comment on Rex’s blog brought up this verse from an old song by Little Feat, called “Willin’.” It’s about a trucker driving through Texas thinking about his girlfriend.

    I was out on the road, late at night,
    I seen my pretty Alice in every headlight:
    Alice, Dallas Alice

    But you wanna hear Linda sing it, believe me.

    Yesterday’s puzzle was by Malaika Handa, a young lady who guest blogs for Rex once a month on a Wednesday (Mlaika MWednesday, she calls it). And she’s very relaxed and personable. If you don’t believe me, take a look at this shayna punim.

    It was her fourth puzzle in the Times and showed off her crisp intelligence. E.g., at 41D, “Having rhythm:” CADENT. (Wow.)

    And how about: “_____ B. Parker, Democratic candidate for president in 1904.” Answer ALTON. (Who?)

    Her clue for MAE WEST was: “Who said ‘Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before.’”

    13D triggered a lot of commentary: “Feeling of dread before the start of the workweek, in slang.” Answer: SUNDAY SCARIES. Rex hated the baby-talkiness of it.

    At 20A “Brand of ranch dressing?” was STETSON. Get it? It’s the name (brand) of a hat that is worn on a ranch.

    Today’s puzzle was a bear, as is appropriate for a Saturday. I couldn’t establish a beachhead, but slowly got little pockets to fill. E.g., at 10D “Find _____ (Nintendo minigame)” was MII. See what I mean?

    At 39A, “Rock band with the 2023 album ‘This Stupid World’” was YO LA TENGO. I had barely heard of them. Get this —

    Yo La Tengo, Spanish for “I have it,” came from a baseball anecdote that occurred during the 1962 season, when Mets center fielder Richie Ashburn and shortstop Elio Chacón found themselves colliding in the outfield. When Ashburn went for a catch, he would scream, “I got it! I got it!” only to run into Chacón, a Venezuelan who spoke only Spanish. Ashburn learned to yell, “Yo la tengo! Yo la tengo!” instead. In a later game, Ashburn happily saw Chacón backing off. He relaxed, positioned himself to catch the ball, and was instead run over by left fielder Frank Thomas, who understood no Spanish. After getting up, Thomas asked Ashburn, “What the hell is a yellow tango?”

    I’m old enough to have gone to some of those early Mets games in the Polo Grounds with Casey Stengel managing. In one, the Mets were up by about six runs going into the ninth, but the opposing team started blasting away. Stengel was calling in every arm he had but they all got slammed. Finally, with the lead down to one and the tying run at third, he called in another pitcher. The first pitch was drilled to deep center, but Rod Kanehl (I think) flew after it and made a great leaping catch. Game over. Mets win. As Stengel passed the pitcher coming off the mound he said “Good pitch, kid.”

    Since 1900, no team has lost more games in a season than those 1962 Mets (120). But Ashburn hit .306 that year and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1995.

    At 44D, “Honeydew producer” was APHID. What? Shouldn’t it be “farmer” or something like that? Aphid? Rex explains:

    In addition to being the name of a melon, honeydew is also “a sweet, sticky substance excreted by aphids and often deposited on leaves and stems.” Just what the crossword needs—excrement!

    But these honeydew chunks look good.

    20A today was “Contemporary artist Carrie _____ Weems,” and the answer was MAE. Weems was born in Portland OR in 1953 and works in many art forms but is best known for photography. Here is a shot from her Kitchen Table Series.

    Her work provides social commentary on the experiences of people of color, especially Black women in America. She lives in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, and Syracuse, with her husband. Among her numerous honors was a MacArthur Fellowship Genius Award in 2013, and induction into the International Photography Hall of Fame in 2020.

    I hadn’t heard of that Hall of Fame, but its inductees include the few names I have heard of: Ansel Adams, George Eastman, Alfred Stieglitz, Richard Avedon, and Annie Leibovitz (over 70 in total). Perusing the list, the name Graham Nash caught my eye. Yes, the Crosby, Stills et al Graham Nash. He is not only a rock star, but is well respected within the field of photography too.

    9D was “Bit of fish food:” PELLET. It led a commenter to share this Danny Kaye scene with us. I was enjoying its ridiculousness mildly, and then, towards the end, found myself laughing pretty hard. Give it a look:

    This sexy Batwoman is from a 1968 Mexican movie that is having a revival of sorts, according to the Times. The actress is the Italian-born Maura Monti, who is 81 now, and has had a wonderful life in journalism, art, and teaching, after her film career ended..

    She fights a “fish-man” named Pisces in the film. He’s eventually caught breaking into a tartar sauce factory. D’oh!

    Owl Chatter photographer Phil maintains that the test of a beautiful woman is how she looks digging something out of her teeth. We see your point, Philly. Maura certainly passes. Nice shot, Buddy.

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

  • Dandelion Don’t Tell No Lies

    This song is from a funny and wonderful British show called “The Detectorists.” It (the show) was recommended to Owl Chatter by Astoria Bob, who’s in the OC Art Department and we loved it.

    I felt the touch of the kings and the breath of the wind
    I knew the call of all the song birds
    They sang all the wrong words
    I’m waiting for you

    I’m with the ghosts of the men who can never sing again
    There’s a place: follow me
    Where a love lost at sea
    Is waiting for you

    The puzzles today and yesterday were aimed at two areas foreign to me, but were fun and I was able to complete them. Yesterday’s was a linguistics lesson and an homage to Noam Chomsky, who is still living and is 94. Today involved reading music (which I can’t).

    Back in 1957, Chomsky devised a famous sentence which he used to note that a sentence could be fine syntactically but have no meaning. The sentence was: COLORLESS GREEN IDEAS SLEEP FURIOUSLY. So the puzzle included those words along with NOAM CHOMSKY himself, and the word NONSENSICAL. Curmudgeon Rex grumbled: There is absolutely nothing happening here. It’s basically a quotation. There’s no wordplay, no cleverness, nothing. Just “here is this guy who said this thing that is famous in his field” that’s it.

    Ouch.

    He liked today’s puzzle much better. It was pretty clever. At four locations it gave you a clue for a word along with a (musical) key signature. You had to solve the clue, and add the musical point to come up with a different (unclued) word. What? For example, at 45A the clue was

    Key signature with three sharps, followed by the clue

    for the answer PALEST. The key is E, so it was “IN E.” So putting them together got you PALESTINE.

    “Some energy drinks” was MONSTERS, and they were “IN C,” so you got MONSTERS, INC as the full answer.

    “Court athlete, slang” was BALLER. It was “IN A,” so you end up with BALLERINA.

    Last, and best (IMO) was “Leaf-raking time,” which is FALL and it’s IN G FLAT, so you get FALLING FLAT.

    A clever clue/answer unrelated to the theme was “Made a semi circle, say?” The answer was STEERED. You steer to make a semi (truck) drive in a circle.

    Jersey girl Meryl STREEP was in the grid too. The clue was “Holder of a record 21 Oscar nominations for acting.” Yikes, that’s a big number. She won three times. Not only is she from NJ, she’s from Summit, NJ, which is walking distance from Owl Chatter headquarters, maybe half an hour walk. She went to Vassar for her BA and Yale for her MFA. Here’s how she looked in those days.

    She’s been married to sculptor Don Gummer since 1978. They have four kids: their son Henry is a musician, and their daughters Mamie, Grace, and Louisa, are actresses.

    Jeez Louise! — “Weed in some medicinal wine” is DANDELION? Gimme a break!

    Good song, though. It was first released by the Stones way back in 1967 (ouch), and, hey! — is that John Lennon and Paul McCartney singing the backing vocals? Neat! The Stones have never performed it live.

    Jeanette Wyneken, a professor at Florida Atlantic University, has studied nesting sea turtles for over 30 years. She says we can’t be entirely joyful about the record number of sea turtle nests that popped up in 2023. Restrictions on beachfront development and careful monitoring of nests have helped get hatchlings safely to the water, and a gill net ban in 1995 sharply reduced the number of young turtles killed by fishing gear. A 13-mile stretch of beach in Florida in the Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge set aside in 1991, had about 1,000 green sea turtle nests in 1994, almost 12,000 in 2013, and more than 23,000 this year. Woohoo!

    But a portion of those nests are not bearing hatchlings. The eggs are most likely being killed by extreme heat and dryness, and Prof. Wyneken was quoted in the Times as saying, a bit unprofessionally: “it worries the crap out of me.”

    The fear is the vast number of nests will send the message that environmental protections can be reduced. But the sea turtles are far from out of the woods (or out of wherever they should be out of). We’ll have to keep an eye on them, for sure. Thanks, Doc.

    Here’s a six-pack of hatchlings.

    We’ll let those little fellas (or gals) send us off tonight. Thanks for popping by!