The Wellington Files

  • 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.

  • Mick Won’t Be Angry With You

    Wow. No sooner do we finish watching the first season of HBO’s White Lotus, with Sydney Sweeney playing the rich couple’s daughter, than she shows up as the hot babe in the Rolling Stones’ video of their new song “Angry.” Our Phil was able to call in a few favors and get an advance copy of it for Owl Chatter — check it out! It’s vintage Stones.

    And here’s Syd:

    Mick’s 80, Keith is 79, and Ronnie Wood is the baby at 76, but the only one who has lost a step or two is drummer Charlie Watts, who died in 2021. Watts had recommended the new drummer, Steve Jordan, about whom Keith said it would have been a lot harder moving on without Charlie’s blessing. Charlie is missed “incredibly.” He’s on two of the tracks on the new album, Hackney Diamonds. It’s been 18 years between albums, which Mick explained by noting the band is a bit lazy.

    The story in the NYT today ended with the following observation about their unannounced theater performance promoting the new album:

    “As the huddle to see the band grew, three schoolgirls walking past asked what was happening. Told it was the Rolling Stones, Anya Morrison, 16, said, ‘I’ve heard of them, I think.’ Then she got on a bus home.”

    Let’s not let go of Sydney so fast. It’s her birthday next Tuesday: she’ll be 26. She was born in Spokane to a criminal defense lawyer mom and hospitality professional dad. Makes us wonder if the smarmy Armond in White Lotus has a little of the dad in him. Hope not, though I did love poor Armond.

    Photograph by Mario Perez/HBO Jolene Purdy, Murray Bartlett HBO The White Lotus

    Sydney was raised in northwestern Idaho in the panhandle region along the Washington border at a rural lakeside home that her family has inhabited for five generations. Sweeney says she has a “religious family,” in which case let’s hope they don’t see the Stones’ video.

    She’s not just a pretty face. She studied entrepreneurship at UCLA, which is nearly impossible to spell, let alone study. They couldn’t come up with something less letter-y? And she’s already earned two Emmy nominations (for Euphoria and White Lotus). She was a sports nut in HS, participating in every sport she could, including wakeboarding, which was the subject of a joke in White Lotus, when her dad calls it waterboarding. Roaring, she corrects him: “It’s wakeboarding, Dad — waterboarding is a form of torture.” Oh, yeah. That.

    FYI, wakeboarding is like water skiing except you try to stay in the boat’s wake and perform aerial maneuvers.

    Yeah, she looks athletic. How’d you keep up with her Phil?

    The clue at 13D today was “___ ipsum (placeholder text),” and the answer was LOREM. Lorem ipsum is a truncation of dolorem ipsum which means “pain itself,” not to be confused with dolorem assum which means, well, you can figure it out. It’s Latin writing that’s used when you just need some text to take up space until what really goes there is ready. Thus, “placeholder text.” Here’s how it can be used in a sentence:

    A strong case could be made that Owl Chatter in its entirety is nothing but lorem ipsum.

    Commenter Mary shared this standard Lorem Ipsum passage from lipsum.com, used since the 1500s:

    “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.”

    Thanks Mary!

    Another doozy today was at 62A where the answer was TURING TESTS, which Alan Turing devised (duh). It was also called the imitation game. It’s a test to distinguish between a human and a machine. That is, if you are conferring with a party and you are not sure if it/he/she is a person or a machine, the Turing Test will let you know. It was devised as part of Turing’s investigation into whether machines can think. I don’t think I should take it any deeper than that. Here’s Turing.

    Some cute clues today: 15A “Adam’s apple locale.” You might think neck or throat, but it’s EDEN.

    And 43A was “What often has a heart beat?” and the answer was SPADE. As in playing cards — in some games a spade “beats” a heart.

    The puzzle overall was very funny, IMO. The constructor, Ryan Patrick Smith, was pretending it was written by a computer pretending to be a person. So the clue at 17A was “What this puzzle is definitely not, having been created by me, a real and true human being,” and the answer was AI GENERATED.

    And at 62A the clue for TURING TESTS, discussed above, was “Assessments I would pass with flying colors — if I had anything to prove, which I don’t, since I’m human.” (Get it?)

    My favorite was at 40A. The clue was “Ambitious objective for, um, a total villain, not a human like me! How did this answer even get in here? (Nervous synthetic laugh),” and the answer was WORLD DOMINATION.

    The Gnats snapped their losing streak at 6 games by beating the Mets last night 3-2. In one of the middle innings, the final out by the Gnats was a fly ball caught by Met outfielder Brandon Nimmo. Before heading for the dugout, he took several steps towards the outfield stands and threw the ball into the seats. He seemed to be aiming for, and the camera showed, one girl, about ten, wearing a Mets jersey standing in a small sea of kids wearing Gnats-phernalia. The announcers and we surmised Nimmo was trying to get the ball to her. But a little kid in a Gnats jersey caught it instead. The announcers and the camera followed the drama. The Mets girl pleaded her case to the little boy — he meant to give it to me!, she said. And the little boy gave it to her — she held out her glove and he let it plop into it.

    The announcers were effusive in their praise for the little boy — he did the right thing. He should feel good about it, although sad about losing the ball of course. A nice character study, except it didn’t end there. The camera came back to them the next inning to show the little girl and her dad enjoying the ball, and showing the poor little boy crying. His mom was trying to console him, but, you know, f*ck that. Searing human drama at Gnats Park.

    Happy ending: Word of the drama reached the Gnats higher ups and they came over to the section and thanked the little guy for doing the right thing and they gave him a ball.

    God Bless America.

    Good night, everybody. Thanks for dropping in!

  • Tickbirds and Oxpeckers

    The theme of yesterday’s puzzle was symbiosis and it featured three crossing pairs of answers that are in a symbiotic relationship: clownfish/anemone; tickbird/rhino; and fruit bat/fig tree. It was Lianna’s first day back in school (8th grade) and it feels like we’re back in science class too.

    First, some carping. Jberg wrote: I’m not a biologist, but I don’t think any of those pairs qualify as SYMBIOTES. When I hear the word I think of benign intestinal bacteria, or some other pair much more closely related.

    And Adam12 replied: I’m not a biologist either but these relationships are all generically symbiotic. Meaning they’re associated in life. I think you may be referring to the further distinctions of saprophytic, parasitic and mutualistic. (Thank you, Mr. Rubin, 1979 AP Bio.)

    OK, we’re glad that’s cleared up.  The anemone provides the clownfish with protection and shelter, while the clownfish provides the anemone nutrients in the form of waste while also scaring off potential predator fish. It’s a win-win. BTW, the clownfish got its start on the Tonight Show and was heavily influenced by Codney Dangerfield and Phil Silverfish.

    The tickbird and the rhino share a relationship because the rhino hosts the tickbird, and when the tickbird rides on the rhino’s back, it eats parasites and other insects off of the rhino’s back. The tickbird benefits the rhino because a rhino typically has near-sighted vision, and the tickbird has great vision, so when it sees a predator, it will squawk to alert the rhino.  It will also occasionally say “Watch where you’re going, you fat idiot — you almost walked us off a cliff.”

    Last, a fruit bat will eat half of its weight in figs every night. A fruit bat who is selfish is where the phrase “I don’t give a fig” comes from. [No it doesn’t.] The bat will often take the fig away from the tree to eat it and fig seeds will fall as it’s eating, so the bat benefits the tree by spreading the seeds. It also spreads the seeds by pooping them out.

    Here’s a fruit bat hanging upside down in a fig tree.

    I’m with Rex on this next point — an oxpecker is so much funnier than a tickbird, no? Here’s what he says:

    “Tickbird is slang I’ve never heard, and I don’t really get using it here, given that the name of the specific bird found on rhinos is the oxpecker, and guess how many letters oxpecker has? Yes, the same number as tickbird. There is no universe in which oxpecker doesn’t beat tickbird. There is no universe in which oxpecker doesn’t beat most things. Kindly add oxpecker to your wordlists and disperse it liberally throughout all future grids, as a fruit bat disperses fig seeds (though maybe less messily).” 

    Here are a couple:

    This is the second puzzle in a week with a Z-led northwest (opening) corner. We had ZOMBIE and ZAPS recently, and today it’s ZORBA and ZAGS. ZORBA was factually clued with “1964 title role for Anthony Quinn.” If you saw the black-and-white movie, as I did twice, this tune (and the dance, the sirtaki) will be quite familiar to you. Here are the Rockettes performing it.

    Nikos Kazantzakis wrote the book. These are his words:

    “When an almond tree became covered with blossoms in the heart of winter, all the trees around it began to jeer. ‘What vanity,’ they screamed, ‘what insolence! Just think, it believes it can bring spring in this way!’ The flowers of the almond tree blushed for shame. ‘Forgive me, my sisters,’ said the tree. ‘I swear I did not want to blossom, but suddenly I felt a warm springtime breeze in my heart.”

    *******
    “I said to the almond tree, ‘Friend, speak to me of God,’ and the almond tree blossomed.”

    No Glam Slam. Handsome U.S. tennis star Taylor Fritz made it to the Sweet Sixteen (quarterfinals) but ran into the wall called Djokovic and lost in straight sets, 6-1, 6-4, 6-4. At least Djokovic didn’t throw a BAGEL at him. Did you know a “6-0 set, in tennis lingo” is called a BAGEL? That was 7D in the puzzle today. In baseball it’s a “goose egg,” and any number larger than one is a “crooked number.”

    In an unusual note on the tennis tourney in Queens, according to today’s NYT, Alexander Zverev of Germany, the No. 12 seed, had a spectator thrown out for making Nazi references during his match with Italy’s Jannik Sinner. Zverev complained to the umpire who asked the man to identify himself. When he didn’t, other spectators pointed him out to security personnel, and he was escorted out. Zverev later said the man was singing the Nazi anthem, “Deutschland Uber Alles.” The anthem was banned after the war. It was later reintroduced, but with that phrase and verse deleted. Zverev won the match with Sinner in five grueling sets lasting 4 hours and 41 minutes, the longest match at the Open this year, so far. Poland fell in less time.

    Zverev has been in the news for more than inspiring Nazi anthems. He was accused of abusing former girlfriend Olya Sharypova, but an investigation turned up insufficient evidence to support the claim. Another claim by a former beau met the same fate. Hmmmmmm. Owl Chatter’s view: Never trust a man who looks good in glasses.

    The Gnats lost their sixth straight game to the Mets last night, 11-5. The wheels are coming off the bus.

    As I read today’s poem and decided to share it, I wondered if I’ve been favoring poems with children in them, like this one. I may be nostalgiac for that time — not for when I was a child myself, but for when my Caitlin and Sam were about nine and seven and I was the dad. I’m still the dad, but you know what I mean. This one is called “Nature Walk” and it’s by Gillian Wegener. It’s from today’s Writer’s Almanac.

    The fern fronds glow with a clean, green light,
    and I lift one and point out the spores, curled
    like sleep on the back, the rows so straight,
    so even, that I might be convinced of Providence
    at this moment. My daughter is seven.
    She looks at the spores, at the leaf, at the plant,
    at this wise, wide forest we are in, and sighs
    at my pointing out yet another Nature Fact.
    But look, I say, each one is a baby ready
    to grow. Each one can become its own fern    .
    But she is already moving down the path
    toward the bridge and whatever’s beyond.

    We often took hikes with the kids. Once we tried to take one on an estate called Skyland, but were besieged by bugs. Sam was so miserable he succeeded in getting us to cancel our plans after a short distance of trying to tough it out. As we were heading back to the car, Sam said, in his squeaky little voice: “I know this place is called Skyland, but it should be called Bugland.”

    According to a story in today’s NYT, the general manager of the Quality Inn in Absecon, NJ, complained to Det. Kiamos of the Galloway Township Police that the color of the pool at the inn was being tampered with. “It has to be by a drone,” she told him.

    Instead of dismissing her as a lunatic, he said, “You might be on to something.” A drone was later tracked to a nearby business and Patrick J. Spina, IV, was arrested and charged with criminal mischief and harassment. He was using drones to drop packets of “Sea Dye” into local area pools changing their water color into bright neon shades. It’s a product used by people in need of rescue at sea — it serves the same function as a flare.

    Spina was doing it as a prank and had a lot of fun. He’s in deep sh*t now because his victims had to spend thousands of dollars to have the dye removed. We’re setting up a small area in the idiot’s wing of the Owl Chatter Hall of Fame for him. Step right in, Pat!

    Enough nonsense for today? Enough. See you tomorrow.

  • “I’m About To Get Comfortable In A Minute”

    Opinions may differ — as the commentariat sometime says, YMMV (your mileage may vary), but IMHO this poem from yesterday’s Writer’s Almanac is absolutely perfect. It’s called “The Sound of It” and it’s by Annie Lighthart.

    Just a piano playing plainly, not even for long,
    and yet I suddenly think of fields of timothy
    and how a cow and I once studied each other over a fence
    while the car ticked and cooled behind me.
    When I turned around I was surprised that it had not
    sprouted tall grass from its hood, I had been gone
    so long. Time passes in crooked ways in some tales,
    and though the cow and I were relatively young
    when we started our watching, we looked
    a bit younger when I left. The cow had downed a good
    steady meal and was full of milk for the barn.
    I drove away convinced of nothing I had been
    so sure of before, with arms full of splinters
    from leaning on the fence. There was no music—
    I was not even humming—but just now the piano
    played the exact sound of that drive.

    A special shout out to the head of the Owl Chatter math department, Bala Cynwyd Judy, whom we had dinner with last night on our way back from a jaunt down to DC for the Gnats game. We did better on the trig test she gave us than on the algebra, but enjoyed the visit overall very much.

    The Gnats did gnot do well. In fact, since I raved about them last Tuesday, they’ve dropped five in a row. Ouch! When we were there they fell behind 9-1 by the fourth inning, so there wasn’t much drama. But it was a fun scene, Dominick and Laney popped dingers, and there was a great defensive gem by CJ that was breathtaking. There were 28 hits overall: 18 by Miami. We drowned our sorrows with Ethiopian food when it ended with a final score of 11-5.

    Parking at the ballpark is very difficult, unless you are willing to pay $40 which I am not. So I prepaid ($17) for a spot in a lot about a mile away. When I arrived, I followed the instructions and placed the QR code I printed under the scanner. Nothing. I pressed a button and a female human voice greeted me. I explained the situation and she said she would open the gate for us. I waited about a minute before pressing the button again. “Are you opening it?” I asked. “Didn’t it open?” she said — not a good sign. She tried again with the same result. She said there was nothing more she could do on her end and we should drive around the block to the other entrance to the lot — the one my instructions told me not to use. I scanned the code there and it didn’t open at first, but then it did and I sped through before it could have second thoughts.

    After the game we found our way back to the lot. I had to scan the code again to get out. It didn’t work. I pressed the button and a male voice answered this time. I explained about the code not working and he started saying something, but after three or four words the gate lifted. I burned rubber and didn’t look back.

    Here’s a story from years ago I’ve always loved about Delaware (soon-to-be-Pennsylvania) Nancy’s dad, may he rest in peace. He was exiting a parking lot and there was a long line of cars waiting to pay and get out. When his turn came, the attendant told him owed for 2 hours and ten minutes. He explained he had been waiting on line for fifteen minutes and he wasn’t willing to pay extra for that time. The attendant said, “I’m sorry, but that’s what the machine says you have to pay.” So Nancy’s dad turned off the engine, took the key, left the car right where it was (blocking all the cars in line behind him) and started walking away. The attendant ran after him: “Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay . . . . “

    In yesterday’s puzzle, the clue at 23D was “Hesiod’s ‘Theogony’ and ‘Works and Days’” and the answer was EPICS. It prompted this exchange.

    Rick started with: Pedantic comment: No one who has read Works and Days and Theogony would call them “epics.” Epic has a more specific meaning in ancient literature, and neither of those fits it.

    Then, Mike in Bed Sty countered:

    Pedantic, but incorrect. “Epic” does have a specific meaning, and that specific meaning is a poem in dactylic hexameter, regardless of the narrative content. The meaning of epic to which you are referring is the meaning in modern literature, not ancient literature.

    [Of course!]

    Deion Sanders, no relation to Bernie, is the only athlete ever to play in both the Super Bowl and the World Series. He won the Super Bowl twice, once with SF over San Diego and once with Dallas over Pittsburgh. In four games of the 1992 World Series with Atlanta, Sanders batted .533 with four runs, eight hits, two doubles, and one RBI while playing with a broken bone in his foot. The Braves lost to Toronto. In refusing to give up one of the sports, Deion explained: “Football is my wife, and baseball is my mistress.” You may recall Michael Jordan tried his hand at baseball and couldn’t hack it. Deion was spectacular at football, and not too shabby at all with the mistress. He’s had some health issues of late — several toes from his foot were removed due to blood clots.

    He’s back in the news (his nickname is Prime Time) as a college football head coach with Colorado. He was very successful coaching Jackson State last year and was offered the bigger spot at Colorado. His son Shedeur is the quarterback. Colorado went 1-11 last year and was a 20-point underdog going into yesterday’s game with TCU (Texas Christian U) at TCU. TCU, we painfully recall, put a hurt on Michigan in the playoffs last year — they good.

    Sanders cleaned house at Colorado, encouraging a record number of players to transfer elsewhere, and he brought in his own folks. Travis Hunter plays for them — he was the nation’s #1 recruit and he’s a “two-way player,” i.e., he plays offense and defense. Yesterday he played in 129 plays, catching 11 passes for 119 yards, and intercepting a pass on the goal line. Sanders said they’re going to put a hot tub on the plane for him.

    With 7 minutes to go, TCU took a 42-38 lead. Sanders knew his boys would score again so the issue was could they stop TCU to hold on? There was 4:25 on the clock when Colorado’s Dylan Edwards hauled in a 46-yard TD pass from Shedeur, who finished the day with 510 passing yards, a school record. Deion’s son Shilo is on the team too and led them with ten tackles. The stunning upset was complete when the defense held.

    If you don’t know Sanders — he ain’t shy. Here he is after the win:

    “We’re gonna continuously be questioned because we do things that have never been done. And that makes people uncomfortable. When you see a confident Black man sitting up here and talking his talk, walking his walk, coaching 75 percent African Americans in a locker room, that’s kind of threatening. Oh, they don’t like that.

    “But guess what, we’re gonna consistently do what we do because I’m here, and I ain’t going nowhere. I’m about to get comfortable in a minute. I’m about to get comfortable in a minute.”

    Here’s Deion with ESPN’s Ed Werder, who must have dissed the Buffaloes before the game.

    “What’s up, boss? Do you believe now?”

    Werder continued to ask his question.

    “Hold on. Hold on. Oh, no. Do you believe now? Huh? I read through that bull junk you wrote. I read through all that. I sifted through all that. Oh, no.”

    “Can I ask my question?” Werder asked.

    “Do you believe?”

    “Believe what?” Werder asked.

    “You don’t believe. You just answered it. You don’t believe. Next question.”

    We’ll be keeping an eye on the Coloradans this season, their coach and his kids. For sure.

    Deion has been married and divorced twice and has five children. He is currently engaged to marry, and is living with, Tracey Edmonds, a very successful show biz producer. She was married to Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds with whom she has two children. After that she married Eddie Murphy but they split after twelve days. Guests at the wedding said they could hear the couple shouting. Not a good sign.

    Babyface said he had bad vibes about Murphy but raved about Deion when he (Babyface) was on Oprah. He said Deion reached out to him to set up a lunch meeting. Deion told him Tracey was going to introduce him to the kids and he didn’t want to meet them before getting to know their dad a little. Pretty classy, Prime Time.

    I always liked Deion. He was (and still is) the hottest of hot dogs. But he backs it up. Owl Chatter wishes Tracey and him and the Buffaloes much success.

    The puzzle today had mountains as a theme. So I posted:

    The Old Man of the Mountain, aka Old Stone Face, was a series of five granite cliff ledges in Franconia, New Hampshire, that appeared to be the jagged profile of a human face. It was a symbol of significance for several Indian peoples and became a cultural icon for NH.

    It collapsed on May 3, 2003, prompting folk singer Tom Rush, who is from NH, to comment: You know you’re old when you outlive geological formations.

    Pabloinnh posted this later:

    True dat about The Old Man of the Mountain. If you’re ever in NH on May 3 and wonder why everyone is wearing black or what the “two minutes of silence” are for, that’s it.

    Nah-just made that up. We do have two nice pieces of art depicting The Old Man, and you can look through special telescope type things with inserts at where he used to be to see what he looked like, if that’s your idea of a good time.

    From one old man to another– we miss you Buddy. See you tomorrow folks!

  • Sweet Home Alabama

    When Dobbs was decided, historian Heather Cox Richardson “suggested to a group of people that it was only a question of time until we saw laws designed to make it impossible for women to travel across state lines. They told me there was no way such a thing could happen in the US.”

    Yesterday she noted “Alabama attorney general Steve Marshall claimed in a court filing on Monday that Alabama can prosecute people who help women travel out of the state to obtain an abortion as part of a ‘criminal conspiracy.’” 

    And Caroline Kitchener reported in the Washington Post that at least 51 jurisdictions in Texas have passed ordinances to make it illegal to transport anyone on roads within city or county limits to get an abortion. Their hope is to target interstates and the roads around airports to block off routes out of Texas.  The laws also allow any private citizen to sue any person or organization they think is violating the ordinance.

    Richardson notes: Such barriers are precisely the same as those for people trying to leave authoritarian countries. Someone who is prohibited from leaving a jurisdiction is not a citizen but a subject. Authoritarian countries also urge people to turn on each other, reporting them to the state for punishment.

    This poem by Seamus Heaney was in The Writer’s Almanac yesterday. It’s called “Digging.”

    Between my finger and my thumb
    The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

    Under my window, a clean rasping sound
    When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
    My father, digging. I look down

    Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
    Bends low, comes up twenty years away
    Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
    Where he was digging.

    The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
    Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
    He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
    To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
    Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

    By God, the old man could handle a spade.
    Just like his old man.

    My grandfather cut more turf in a day
    Than any other man on Toner’s bog.
    Once I carried him milk in a bottle
    Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
    To drink it, then fell to right away
    Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
    Over his shoulder, going down and down
    For the good turf. Digging.

    The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
    Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
    Through living roots awaken in my head.
    But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

    Between my finger and my thumb
    The squat pen rests.
    I’ll dig with it.

    Gotta run! Shooting down for a quick trip to catch the Gnats tangling with the pesky Marlins. Pizza on the way in Baltimore (with clams!) at Joe Squared. Already drooling. See you later.

  • Et Tu, Oprah?

    Let’s wallow in glamour today, at least a little bit. Is there a more glamorous couple in the public eye right now than #1 US tennis pro Taylor Fritz and his babe Morgan Riddle? To argue against, you will need to explain why they were splashed across the front page of today’s NYT Style section looking, well, pretty damn glamorous. (I’m not using the pics from the Times because Phil’s are so much better. He gets into their souls. It’s a gift. See below)

    Taylor is ranked ninth in the world and #1 in the U.S. He’s 25 years old and 6′ 5″. He has a son with his ex-wife Raquel Pedraza, who also played pro tennis. “Pedraza” means to pick up a stone and throw it and injure somebody. I can see how that could be annoying.

    Morgan turned 26 last month, was born in Minny, and went to college at Wagner on Staten Island. She’s 5′ 7″. She’s sharp and has her fingers in many pies, if that’s the expression. Tik Tok, fashion, show biz, etc. She grew up in an ice hockey universe, but it’s all tennis now.

    They met through the dating app RAYA in 2020 and are very close, especially in this picture.

    If he’s stupid enough to ever let go, you’ll see she looks like this.

    She’ll be keeping her pretty eyes on Fritz as he competes in the U.S. Open this week, and so will we.

    Owl Chatter is hitting the road in October with a trip to Ireland. My doc said no special vaccines are necessary, and I’m sure no travel warnings would be more serious than “The beer in this pub is flat,” or “The fiddler in that pub will hurt your ears.” But starting last Tuesday, some Canadians are getting a more troubling warning from their government and it’s not about Ireland.

    According to the Times, gay Canadians are being warned by the Canadian government that parts of the U.S. may not be safe to visit. They are being told they may be affected by a series of recently enacted state laws targeting gays. Helen Kennedy, the director of Egale Canada, an LGBTQ rights group, noted that some of the problem states, e.g., Florida, are popular tourist destinations. But gay Canadians are starting to ask, “Is this the best place to spend my money?”

    God Bless America.

    Oil and gas companies, their shills in the GOP, and others opposed to responsible climate action are increasingly turning to crackpot conspiracy theories to make their case, according to today’s NYT. E.g., social media that racked up millions of views blamed the Maui fires on a “directed energy weapon.”

    Not buying that one? Well, let’s blame it on Oprah then. A Youtube video claims she started the fires hoping to seize land from the natives. Its proof was she recently bought a large plot on the island and her properties escaped damage. (The NYT noted she has lived on the island part time for 15 years, and her home was far from the fires.) What clinched the argument was that Oprah was interviewed about the fires and “failed to appear sufficiently sad.” Here she is, insufficiently sad, trying to see if she smells smoke.

    As we discussed yesterday, Crossworld exploded over yesterday’s puzzle, mostly with very negative comments. There were a total of 247 comments on Rex’s blog, the third highest total ever. I joined the minority view — I kinda liked the puzzle.

    Here is a comment from B$ that was posted today, and a reply from Rex.

    “I just wanted to comment on the tenor of the comments from yesterday. There was an overall harshness that was quite, to my mind, unnecessary. I can’t tell if people are just sort of taking their cue from Rex, who had nothing nice to say about the puzzle, or if folks in general just need to vent. To me the puzzle was a very creative attempt that had some obvious flaws to it, but at the end of the day it’s just a puzzle. The string of unrelenting harsh, negative comments (Lewis, NOT YOU!) had a real sour tone. But maybe that’s just where America is in 2023, and this blog is just a sad microcosm of that.”

    Rex replied:

    “I think the ‘sad microcosm’ is the babies who cannot handle any criticism, and who demonize and disparage people simply because they have different opinions. The ‘only say nice things’ tyranny/inanity is exhausting. I am happy that some enjoyed yesterday’s puzzle. But some of y’all really need to learn to live in a world where not everybody likes what you like. I have. People lay into my write-ups Daily. It’s (mostly) … fine?” —RP

    Women’s volleyball is pretty big in Nebraska. The University’s team has been a powerhouse for years under coach John Cook. They routinely sell out their home venue which holds 8,000. But last night’s game against Omaha was something on a different order altogether. It was moved to the football stadium where it was watched by 92,003 fans. Not a typo! It was the largest crowd for a women’s athletic event anywhere, ever. The atmosphere was electric. Nebraska won. Here’s what it looked like at game time.

    And Coach Cook.

    In the learn-something-new-and-worthless-every-day dept., a puzzle I worked on in the New Yorker by Wyna Liu whom I met at the tournament, had a clue that was “punk mentality, e.g.,” and the answer turned out mystifyingly to be DIY, which I know stands for do it yourself, like on home repairs, etc. What does it have to do with, like, punk rockers and their ilk? Well, I undertook serious and extensive research (you know, a couple of minutes online), and I see now how it works:

    In creating your punk “look,” the “mentality” is to put it together yourself and eschew products spewed forth by corporate america. For example, don’t buy pre-ripped jeans, create them yourself. And my beautiful Lianna, who is not punk but who is a “cool person” (almost 14), has shown me how she makes her own artsy buttons/pins, to safety-pin onto her clothes. So I can see how DIY works as an answer for that clue. There is that element in the ethos.

    Hi girls! Take a load off — let me see if I can scare up an ash tray. Care for some borscht? — it’s not vegetarian, if that matters. Glad you could stop by — it’s been a quiet day.

    Glad you could stop by too — see you tomorrow!