The Wellington Files

  • Hank

    Owl Chatter, and all of us, lost a dear friend yesterday, Hank. We go way back to the first days at Brandeis in the Fall of 1967. Welly and I were roomies with Hank sophomore year. He and Judy were family to us, in the best sense of the word. He took extraordinary pride and joy in his children and grandchildren. I have often quoted him in saying “Having grandchildren is one thing that is not overrated.” Of course, the best thing he ever did was marry Judy — don’t start me about her. It would never end.

    I’m not going to chatter about anything else tonight, though I’m sure Hank would want us to keep churning out the usual nonsense. We can return to that soon enough. I’m just going to share one of my favorite poems by Kooser, from Winter Morning Walks:

    I saw the season’s first bluebird
    this morning, one month ahead
    of its scheduled arrival. Lucky I am
    to go off to my cancer appointment
    having been given a bluebird, and,
    for a lifetime, having been given
    this world.

  • Safe!

    Six years ago, Keiko Kawano felt her smile was beginning to fade when she stopped doing certain voice exercises. She found it a struggle to lift the corners of her mouth. So she started learning about the facial muscles that play a role in smiling. After reviving her own smile, she set about helping others. Her motto is “more smile, more happiness.”

    She started offering one-hour sessions in a gym and then began “teaching smiling” at nursing homes and for corporations. She had individual clients who wanted to develop a winning smile to land a job or get laid. Oops, I mean “improve marriage prospects.” IBM Japan engaged her for a session for their employees and their families. It was well-received. She’s a smile coach.

    Her business took a dive when people hid their smiles behind masks (although she adjusted her focus to work on eyes), but when the pandemic passed and people unmasked, business boomed. Many people realized their smile muscles had atrophied behind masks. They needed Keiko’s help to get their smile back. And a nice smile can make you feel happy — it doesn’t have to be the other way around, i.e., the happy doesn’t have to come first. Psychologist Masami Yamaguchi, who has studied how babies look at their moms’ facial expressions, said: “Intentional muscle moves will send signals to your brain and generate positive feelings, even if you are not feeling happy.”

    Here’s Keiko. She does have a pretty smile.

    Yesterday’s Owl Chatter included some lyrics from Elton John’s Tiny Dancer. They included the line: “Pretty-eyed, pirate smile.” I looked up “pirate smile” today. The Urban Dictionary defines it as “a smile that will make you do anything. You know you’re gonna do it, right, wrong, good, or bad you’re gonna do it anyway.” It’s also defined as “a roguish smile: a dishonest or immoral smile that causes trouble.”

    It’s hard to find examples. This one of Keira Knightly came up in the search. She’s not smiling, but I think it captures the feeling a little, no? Would you do what she asks?

    And then there’s Susan’s smile. Vermont Lizzie sent me this shot this morning. I commented on Susan’s extraordinary smile and noted the coincidence of my writing about smiles today. Liz gave me permission to use it. For those of us lucky enough to have known Susan, it goes right to the heart.

    Hi, S. Miss you.

    The puzzle today played with words that should mean something when you remove a negative prefix, but don’t. E.g., if you change discombobulated to just “combobulated,” it doesn’t mean poised. The general term for words that are broken apart is “unpaired words,” and when the prefix is a negative, they are called orphaned negatives.

    Commenter Lynn shared this:

    At Milwaukee Mitchell Airport, they have a “recombobulation area” just past the TSA checkpoint, where you can collect your stuff, put your shoes back on, and generally recover from being discombobulated after going through security. From what I understand, it is the only airport with such a designation.

    Can you use some recombobulation?

    Did you know that NACHOS are named after their inventor Ignacio Anaya? His nickname was Nacho. He worked in a restaurant in Mexico not far from the U.S. border and a U.S. army base. Some army wives popped in one day when the chef was out. He said, Hold on, I’ll whip something up. He threw some tostadas on a plate, grated Wisconsin cheese on top, put it all under a broiler, and then topped it with jalapenos. The rest is history. Anaya never directly profited from his “invention,” but was promoted to chef and eventually opened a restaurant of his own.

    He met a hot little jalapeno pepper named Marie Antoinette Salinas, and married her. They had nine kids. She let them eat cake. Anaya lived to age 80. He was honored posthumously with a bronze plaque in Piedras Negras. That city also holds a three-day Nacho Fest every year around October 21, the International Day of the Nacho.

    This might look like the original concoction:

    Elisabeth SHUE was in the puzzle, clued as “Actress Elisabeth of Leaving Las Vegas, a bruising film with Nicolas Cage who is determined to drink himself to death in Vegas, literally. She’s a hooker and they meet up. I forget if he actually dies. She received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress for her work, but lost out to Susan Sarandon in Dead Man Walking. Cage won the Best Actor Oscar for his role.

    Shue is 59 today. She was only 32 in the film, and quite alluring. She was born in Wilmington DE, but raised in South Orange NJ — a Jersey girl! — on the Morris-Essex line no less. She attended Wellesley College and then Harvard. She has been married to film director Davis Guggenheim since 1994 and they have 3 kids.

    OK fellas, eyes down here. Let’s finish with a bad call. It was October 26, 1985, Game 6 of the World Series between St. Louis and Kansas City. STL had a 3-2 lead in games and was up 1-0 in Game 6 going into the bottom of the ninth. They just needed three more outs to win the Series.

    KC’s Jorge Orta hit a slow grounder to Jack Clark at first who tossed to the pitcher Todd Worrell covering. Orta was out by a step but Don Denkinger, umping at first base, called him safe. The TV replays confirmed that Orta was out, but this was before replays could be used to reverse calls. So Orta was safe. KC rallied and went on to win the game 2-1. The next day they trounced STL 11-0 in Game 7 for the Series win.

    Denkinger believed he got the call right until he viewed the replay after the game with Commissioner Pete Ueberroth, the Commish with the hardest name to spell in MLB history. I had to check, like, five times. About 30 years later, in a Sports Illustrated interview, Denkinger explained how he blew what came to be known as “The Call.” Worrell, who took the throw at first, was tall and the throw came in high. So Denkinger could not watch Worrell’s glove and foot at the same time. And the crowd noise along with the softly tossed throw prevented him from hearing when the ball hit the glove. (A common umpiring technique at first base is to watch the base while listening for the “thock” of the catch.) It was the perfect storm for a blown call.

    Denkinger received death threats, and his home in Iowa was given police protection. The FBI investigated the most serious notes he received. He eventually made peace with The Call, keeping a framed photo of it in his home, and a painting of it in a restaurant he owned. He autographed photos of it for fans. He even reconciled with Whitey Herzog, the Cards’ manager, and spoke at a dinner for the Whitey Herzog Youth Foundation in 2005.

    He had an excellent 30-year career. He was behind the plate for the 1978 Yankees-Boston tiebreaking game for the A.L. pennant (the Bucky Dent game), and for Game 7 of the 1991 WS, when Minny’s Jack Morris pitched a 10-inning shutout to beat Atlanta, 1-0. He called balls and strikes when Nolan Ryan threw his sixth no-hitter in 1990. Perhaps fittingly, his final game was in Kansas City on June 2, 1998. He retired due to a bum knee.

    Don Denkinger died in Iowa last Friday at age 86. He is survived by his wife Gayle and their three daughters. Unless Saint Peter is a Cardinals’ fan, he should be up there in heaven by now, calling ’em as he sees ’em.

    Good night everybody. See you tomorrow!

  • Grid is Life

    Owl Chatter often refers to “Rex” of “Rex Parker,” whose blog on the daily NYTXW is usually entertaining and illuminating. He posted some family pix today. Here he is with his daughter in Beacon NY yesterday. Note his “Grid is Life” shirt.

    The puzzle had some neat stuff today. It started off with “Bovine animals that are raced in Tibet,” which was YAKS: hard for a Monday. Remember the famous “One small step for man” moon quote? Well, 23A was “Simple ballroom dance,” for ONE STEP, and two lines above it SMALL appeared, and two lines above that SPACE appeared, clued as “Astronaut’s realm.”

    It had MOOD, MAD, and MADD, as well as ARGON and ARSONS. It had “Kind of oil derived from marijuana, for short,” for CBD, right near POT, weirdly clued by “Bonsai tree holder.” It continued the “beer” theme with MICROBREWERY. And it met its tuchas quota nicely with “Get a move on, slangily:” HAUL ASS.

    egsforbreakfast commented: “Before retiring, I transported donkeys for a living. I was damn good at it too. People used to say, “ That egsforbreakfast can really HAUL ASS.” I stuck to donkeys because they’re smart, unlike the YAKS. I never met a brainiac.”

    The puzzle also, at 42A, took a moment to explain why the NBA team in LA is named the LAKERS. The clue was “California basketball team originally located in Minnesota.” [That’s the same reason the team in Utah is the “Jazz.” It moved from New Orleans.]

    But constructor Tomas Spiers wandered into a minefield with 55A: “Big muscle for Popeye after he eats spinach.” ANS: BICEP. A comment: “There is no such thing as a bicep. Biceps means “two heads” and refers to the two anatomic structures that form the muscle. Likewise the triceps and quadriceps muscles with three or four heads. You can’t make it a single noun. Don’t get me started on the item of clothing called a PANT!!!”

    Others were equally irate.

    Here are some solid ‘ceps. Don’t mess with this babe.

    One of the theme answers was TINY DANCER.

    Blue jean baby, L.A. lady
    Seamstress for the band
    Pretty-eyed, pirate smile
    You’ll marry a music man.

    Here’s a duet Elton John sang with Miley Cyrus at the Grammys.

    Do you have a favorite Pope? If so, is it Leo XIII? BTW, if you look at old-time baseball photos you will notice the ballplayers are not wearing uniform numbers. The practice of assigning numbers to players and having them displayed on their uniforms only gained full acceptance in 1937, and was based on the Popes being numbered, although roman numerals were not used on uniforms. This also explains why for several years in the early-to-mid 1900’s the Popes wore vestments that were similar to baseball uniforms with baseball-type caps for certain ceremonial rites.

    [Don’t believe anything in that last paragraph having to do with Popes. Numbered uniforms did start in 1916 in Cleveland. They only became universal in both leagues in 1937.]

    Anyway, I mention Leo XIII because on this day in 1891 he issued an encyclical addressing labor issues that for the first time made social justice part of the Church’s mission. It’s the Rerum Novarum. It calls for laborers to be paid a fair, living wage. It says to employers: “be mindful of this — to exercise pressure upon the indigent and the destitute for the sake of gain, and to gather one’s profit out of the need of another, is condemned by all laws, human and divine.”

    BTW, an encyclical issued on a recurring basis is a cyclical encyclical. The Papal assistant entrusted with distributing these around Vatican City on his bike when ill was said to circulate cyclical encyclicals by bicycle sickly.

    Here’s a photo of Leo XIII, getting ready to officiate at Arnie Gurowitz’s bar mitzvah at Temple Shohei Ohtani in Forest Hills.

    See you tomorrow.

  • Ground Control to Major Tom

    Happy Mother’s Day! Hope yours isn’t a rotten tomato! Mother’s Day was made official by Woodrow Wilson in 1914 after prolonged urging by Anna Jarvis, whose mom was a peace activist who cared for the wounded on both sides in the Civil War. Anna Jarvis lived the last years of her life in a nursing home, nearly blind, and almost penniless. On her wall was a letter with a $1.00 bill sewn to it. The letter read: “I am 6 years old and I love my mother very much. I am sending this to you because you started Mother’s Day.”

    Remember “Octomom?” Natalie Suleman was the first woman to give birth to surviving octuplets back on Jan. 26, 2009. Here’s how they looked in 2020. She has six older kids, for a total of 14 (I’m not kidding). I mention her in my tax class when the topic of the child credit comes up.

    Here’s a piece from today’s Met Diary by Theodore O’Neill to start us off:

    Monroe Street in Brooklyn. The early 1950s. One or two hours of daylight left on a hot summer evening. Dinner was over, and a bunch of us kids were hanging around near the corner of Ralph Avenue, mostly doing nothing.

    Coming our way from Patchen Avenue was a kid on a bike. Nothing special; no one we recognized.

    Suddenly, from a stash in his handlebar basket he began pelting us with seriously overripe tomatoes.

    None of us escaped the onslaught. And none of us could react before he sped off across the trolley tracks on Ralph Avenue and disappeared.

    We never saw him again. But as I stood there covered in rancid tomato slime, I had to admit: “The guy was good.”

    Yesterday was the 4th anniversary of Chris Hadfield’s return to Earth from the International Space Station. Chris is an astronaut from Canada who had spent over a year up there. He was the first Canadian to command the ISS, and had been the first Canadian to walk in space before that.

    Hadfield is a devoted fan of the Toronto Maple Leafs and wore a Maple Leaf jersey under his spacesuit on one of his flights. He sang the Canadian National Anthem at a Leafs-Canadians game on Jan 18, 2014 in Toronto.

    He was born in Sarnia, Ontario, where the city airport is named after him, as are public schools in Milton and Bradford, Ontario, an asteroid, and a species of bee.

    But none of that is his “claim to fame.” That comes from the version of David Bowie’s Space Oddity (“Ground control to Major Tom”), that he produced from the Space Station and released on May 12, 2013. It’s gorgeous and has received over 52 million views on Youtube. Bowie’s record company sought to enforce its copyright, which raised novel legal questions over whether a violation could occur in space. But after Bowie himself saw Hadfield’s video (and loved it), he insisted that the complaint be dropped. Here it is – it’s very much worth a look and listen:

    When Owl Chatter started up, I thought I’d use a poem of Kooser’s in it from time to time, but I didn’t expect many other poems to play a role. I hadn’t run across other poets I could relate to and enjoy like Kooser. But so many have popped up recently in The Writer’s Almanac and other sources that move me, and seem to fit in, so poems have become a bigger part of the Chatter than was intended. My mom and brother wrote poems, so I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised.

    Today’s offering from the Writer’s Almanac is coincidentally “Nurse,” and it’s by Dorianne Laux. The coincidence is that it’s Mother’s Day, and my daughter Caitlin is the big mother in our family, with her five incredible children. And she’s a nurse.

    Nurse

    My mother went to work each day
    in a starched white dress, shoes
    damped to her feet like pale
    mushrooms, two blue hearts pressed
    into the sponge rubber soles.
    When she came back home, her nylons
    streaked with runs, a spatter
    of blood across her bodice,
    she sat at one end of the dinner table
    and let us kids serve the spaghetti, sprinkle
    the parmesan, cut the buttered loaf.
    We poured black wine into the bell
    of her glass as she unfastened
    her burgundy hair, shook her head, and began.
    And over the years we mastered it, how to listen
    to stories of blocked intestines
    while we twirled the pasta, of saws
    teething cranium, drills boring holes in bone
    as we crunched the crust of our sourdough,
    carved the stems off our cauliflower.
    We learned the importance of balance,
    how an operation depends on
    cooperation and a blend of skills,
    the art of passing the salt
    before it is asked for.
    She taught us well, so that when Mary Ellen
    ran the iron over her arm, no one wasted
    a moment: My brother headed straight for the ice
    Our little sister uncapped the salve.
    And I dialed the number under Ambulance,
    my stomach turning to the smell
    of singed skin, already planning the evening
    meal, the raw fish thawing in its wrapper,
    a perfect wedge of flesh.

    The clue at 12D today was “Miniature-cheese-wheel brand,” and the answer was BABYBEL which I thought was pretty easy. Oddly, Rex said he never heard of it. Which led Ted to comment:

    How do you not know what BABYBEL is? Do you just, at the market, run screaming past the cheese section with your eyes closed? The objectively best part of a market? The CHEESES!

    Cheeses, man.

    To which Rich F. replied:

    If you are a cheese enthusiast, the case can be made for running screaming past the BabyBels with your eyes closed. They’re just no Gouda.

    Did you know a “small fox with unusually large ears” is a FENNEC? They are mostly found in North Africa, the Sinai and Arabian peninsulas, and crossword puzzles.

    There was also a BEARCAT, clued as “University of Cincinnati athlete.” But bearcat is only the alternate name for the binturong. It’s long and heavy with short, stout legs, and thick black hair. They are omnivorous. This one looks like he’s enjoying a nap after a big meal. We’ve all been there, but I rarely make it to the high branches.

    Thanks for popping in! See you tomorrow!

  • Sammy the Owl

    When times are dark, heroes rise up. And so we have former NY prosecutor Mark F. Pomerantz, appearing before the House Judiciary Committee yesterday. He said he agreed to appear because he respected the law. He went on:

    “What I do not respect is the use of the committee’s subpoena power to compel me to participate in an act of political theater. We are gathered here because Donald Trump’s supporters would like to use these proceedings to attempt to obstruct and undermine the criminal case pending against him, and to harass, intimidate and discredit anyone who investigates or charges him.”

    Mr. Pomerantz cited NY law protecting the privacy of active investigations. He also noted that his revealing information about grand jury proceedings would be illegal, so he invoked Fifth Amendment privileges. Thus, he managed to avoid answering many of the committee’s queries, noting “I am glad that the law allows me not to cooperate with this performance of political theater.”

    Bravo, Counselor.

    There was a lot of neat stuff in the puzzle today: Do you know what a zythophile is? It’s someone who likes beer. It comes on the heels of yesterday’s beeramid. (Burp!)

    And have you heard the term HEADDESK? The clue for that was: “Expression of frustration stronger than a facepalm.” It’s when you’re so frustrated you slam your head onto your desk. Or in this case, your table.

    Rex’s blog today included this comment by “BK:”

    “I drank beer with my friends.

    We drank beer, my friends and I, boys and girls.

    Sometimes I probably had too many beers. Sometimes other people had too many beers.

    I liked beer. I still like beer.

    I like beer. I don’t know if you do. Do you like beer? Or not? What do you like to drink?

    Hanging out and having beer with friends – which I gladly do and fully embrace.

    Proudly a zythophile since 1982!”

    It led me to post the following material:

    Rex — perhaps you can tell us if BK’s post is the first time a sitting Supreme Court Justice has commented on your blog. (Burp!)

    HEADDESK made me think of “dope slap,” which reminded me of a call made to Tom and Ray on Car Talk years ago. A woman called in and described a problem she was having with her car.

    Caller: My husband thinks this is the problem: [. . . ], but I think he’s wrong and this is the problem [. . . ]. So what is it, guys? — is my husband wrong, or do I deserve one big dope slap?

    Tom and Ray: Brace yourself.

    In a gift to dirty old men everywhere, the puzzle contained a POLE DANCE today at 20A, clued by “Do some spinning at a club?” Apparently it’s become a fitness thing as well as a strip club staple. Since Owl Chatter is nothing if not classy, here’s a nice shot of two young gymnasts.

    “It might be 70 feet long” was the clue for SONNET. What? Yeah, you know — that kind of feet. A “foot” is a unit of meter in poetry. A sonnet has 14 lines. If it’s in iambic pentameter it has five feet per line. Thus, 70 feet.

    Get this! — The clue for RICE was “Texas university whose mascot is Sammy the Owl.” Way back when, Rice used a canvas owl as a sort of mascot for its teams. In 1917, when students from football rival Texas A&M kidnapped the owl, Rice students pooled their resources and hired a private detective to go to College Station, TX to find him. Upon succeeding, the detective sent a coded telegram that read “Sammy is fairly well and would like to see his parents,” giving the mascot a name for the first time. It stuck. The canvas Sammy was replaced by a live owl for a time which flew into the stadium before games. It was eventually replaced by a student in an owl suit.

    Sammy has had quite a history. In 1991, his head was stolen. In 1992, the student wearing the owl suit was fired because his performance of the “Owl Shimmy” was deemed too distracting for female fans. In 1993, the student wearing the suit fainted during halftime at the game vs U of Texas. He was attended to by the refs. In 1995 Sammy was elected homecoming queen. In 2004, he was featured in a Playboy story on college mascots.

    Here’s Sammy in his original canvas form and in his later incarnation. Yikes — I just noticed he’s armed. Well, it is Texas — even the owls have guns.

    The clue at 46D today was: “Titular girl in a 2020 Taylor Swift tune,” and the answer was BETTY. BTW, “titular girl” just means her name’s in the title — get your minds out of the gutter, fellas.

    (Pabloinnh commented: “This Taylor Swift person seems to be pretty famous. Have to find out something about her.”)

    Here’s what TS said about the song: “So, the song ‘Betty’ is about a 17-year-old named James learning to apologize, because James has lost the love of his life basically and doesn’t understand how to get it back. I think we all have these situations in our lives where we learn to really, really give a heartfelt apology for the first time. Everybody makes mistakes. Everybody really messes up sometimes, and this is a song that I wrote from the perspective of a 17-year-old boy. And I always loved that in music you can slip into different identities and sing from other people’s perspectives.”

    Swift’s performance of it, below, was at the Grand Ole Opry House at her first appearance there in seven years for the Academy of Country Music awards. She made a point of wearing pants (sorry guys) because of the overwhelming dominance of male artists in country music. She drops the F-word in it, although it has been cleaned up in some versions, including this one. The song also contains a candidate for the Owl Chatter Awkward-Rhyming Award:

    Standing in your cardigan
    Kissin’ in my car again.

    You’ll never guess who was in the puzzle yesterday, ballfans — SHANE Victorino. Remember him? The Flyin’ Hawaiian! He’s still only 42. He mostly played from 2005 thru 2015, and mostly with the Phillies, although he had a few good years with Boston too, and won the WS with them in 2013. He also won with the Phils in 2008. You may recall him only as a right-handed batter, Don, but he was a switch hitter for most of his career. He limited himself to batting righty starting in 2013 with Boston due to a variety of back, knee, and hamstring problems. Victorino is a fan of Bob Marley and used Marley’s songs “Buffalo Soldier” and “Three Little Birds” as at-bat music when he played for the Phils and Red Sox, respectively. The crowd at Fenway would sing along with the chorus of “Three Little Birds” when Victorino came to bat.

    Shane was an All Star twice and won Gold Gloves three times. He also received the Lou Gehrig award in 2008 for being a mensch. Only he and Jim Thome hold the distinction of hitting two post-season grand-slam home runs. On June 3, 2007, the Phillies celebrated “Shane Victorino Day.” They gave away Victorino hula figurines, and flew his father in from Maui for the game, although he had to pay his own cab fare from the airport. [No he didn’t.] Victorino capped off the day with a walk-off home run! How’s that for a Hollywood ending?

    Shane and his wife Melissa have two kids — one of each flavor.

    Marjorie Saiser is a Nebraskan, like Ted Kooser, who’s a fan of hers. Kooser said of her: “no contemporary poet is better at writing about love.” 

    This beautiful, wrenching poem of hers from today’s Writer’s Almanac is called Bad News Good News.

    I was at a camp in the country,
    you were home in the city,
    and bad news had come to you.

    You texted me as I sat
    with others around a campfire.
    It had been a test you and I

    hadn’t taken seriously,
    hadn’t worried about.
    You texted the bad news word

    cancer. I read it in that circle
    around the fire. There was
    singing and laughter to my right and left

    and there was that word on the screen.
    I tried to text back but,
    as often happened in that county,

    my reply would not send, so I went to higher ground.
    I stood on a hill above the river and sent you
    the most beautiful words I could manage,

    put them together, each following each. Under
    Ursa Major, Polaris, Cassiopeia, a space station flashing,
    I said what had been said

    many times, important times, foolish times:
    those words soft-bodied humans say when the news is bad.
    The I love you we wrap around our

    need and hurl at the cosmos: Take this, you heartless
    nothing and everything, take this.
    I chose words to fling into the dark toward you

    while the gray-robed coyote came out of hiding
    and the badger wandered the unlit hill
    and the lark rested herself in tall grasses;

    I sent the most necessary syllables
    we have, after all this time the ones we want to hear:
    I said Home, I said Love, I said Tomorrow.

  • Slices of Quince

    Let’s say, hypothetically, that your weight has drifted up a smidge, and you decide to cut back on the calories and ramp up your exercise program. Of course, you will need constant positive reinforcement. You adjust your diet to cut out everything bad and increase the vegetables. You drink tons more water. Everything feels good. You suit up in your shorts and your good-luck tee shirt. You climb on your exercise bike for a good first-day workout. And the seat post breaks under your fat tuchas and you fall to the floor in tears. Can the Haagen Dazs be far behind?

    According to today’s NYT, Peloton is recalling over 2 million of its exercise bikes due to numerous reports of breaking seat posts. Ouch! Not only are all the fat tuchases tumbling to the ground — the company’s stock price plunged 9% immediately, and more than 20% over the past month.

    In today’s puzzle, the clue at 55A was “Portmanteau structure built from discarded cans,” and the answer was BEERAMID. Here’s one (burp!).

    Edward Lear was born on this date in 1812 in a suburb of London. He wrote a nonsense book (!), and was considered a master of limericks. Master schmaster — I checked on the limericks and they’re just not funny. He seems not to appreciate that the last line is supposed to be a kicker of some sort. Here’s a typical pair:

    There was an Old Person of Dean,
    Who dined on one pea and one bean;
    For he said, “More than that
    Would make me too fat,”
    That cautious Old Person of Dean.

    There was an Old Person of Dover,
    Who rushed through a field of blue Clover;
    But some very large bees,
    Stung his nose and his knees,
    So he very soon went back to Dover.

    Amirite?

    Alright, so to hell with the limericks. He also wrote The Owl and the Pussycat. Here are lines 27-33. They contain the word “runcible,” which he just made up (he did that a lot), and is now included in many dictionaries.

    They dined on mince and slices of quince,
    Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
    And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand
    They danced by the light of the moon,
    The moon,
    The moon,
    They danced by the light of the moon.

    Lear was so good at drawing animals and birds that he got a job with the London Zoological Society. Here’s one of his works.

    He lived on Lord Stanley’s estate and entertained the children with his silly stories and verses. That’s how his Book of Nonsense came about, which was published in 1846 and sold very well. According to Wikipedia, Lear was known to introduce himself with a long pseudonym: “Mr. Abebika kratoponoko Prizzikalo Kattefello Ablegorabalus Ableborinto phashyph,” or “Chakonoton the Cozovex Dossi Fossi Sini Tomentilla Coronilla Polentilla Battledore & Shuttlecock Derry down Derry Dumps.”

    Lear never married. The closest he came was two marriage proposals he made, both to the same woman, who was 46 years younger than him. Seriously, Lear? Later in life he relied for companionship on his Albanian chef, Giorgis (who he said was a terrible chef), and his (Lear’s) beloved cat Foss. Lear died in Sanremo, Liguria, Italy, in1888 at age 75, when the seat post on his exercise bike broke. [No it didn’t.]

    It is also the birthday of Rosellen Brown today: Happy 84th! Brown attended Brandeis as a Woodrow Wilson fellow after graduating from Barnard in 1960. She met her husband at Brandeis, on the kosher line. [I made up that last part.] They were both strongly motivated by humanitarian concerns and moved down to Mississippi to teach at Tougaloo College near Jackson, a mostly Black school, for a while.

    Much of Brown’s writing concerns race. Her most successful novel, Civil Wars (1984), features an unlikely pair of civil rights activists—wife Jessie, a Jewish New Yorker, and husband Teddy, a renegade liberal Southerner—whose lives are altered when they take in Teddy’s spoiled and bigoted nephew and niece after their parents die when the seat posts on their exercise bikes break. [I can’t seem to let go.]

    Her novel Before and After was made into a movie starring Meryl Streep and Liam Neeson.

    It was a long day. Good night! There will be more nonsense to mine tomorrow, God willing.

  • Mayor Wu

    A couple was caught smuggling 70 pounds of Fruit Roll-Ups into Israel recently, according to Israeli tax authorities, and another airline passenger was caught with over 143 pounds. Overall, Israeli authorities confiscated 661 pounds of Roll-Ups in a recent week. Do the math, folks — since a single Roll-Up weighs only 0.5 of an ounce, that would be over 200,000 individual packets. [If one packet is 0.5 oz., then each pound is 32. 661 x 32 = 219,452.] Bottom line: we’re talking about shitloads of Fruit Roll-Ups.

    How has this come to pass in the Holy Land? Well, a few months ago, a video posted on TikTok showed how to wrap a scoop of ice cream in a Fruit Roll-Up. What happens is the Roll-Up freezes instantly, making it easy to handle and giving it a surprisingly wonderful crunch. It’s become a craze, and the Roll-Up people are happy to roll with it.

    With Roll-Up demand soaring, Israel soon faced an unprecedented Roll-Up crisis. Individual Roll-Ups started selling for $8 each, compared to a box of ten going for around $3 in the U.S. Hence, the smuggling. An individual entering Israel can bring in no more than 11 pounds of any specific food product.

    Last week, Israel’s Health Ministry took a stand and issued a warning against Fruit Roll-Ups. The agency called the frenzy and the smuggling attempts “madness.” It noted that Roll-Ups are full of unhealthy sugar and oils. It offered an alternative: cucumber rolls. (Not kidding.] As of yet, they have failed to catch on. Hard to imagine why.

    Here’s a woman wearing a dress made out of Fruit Roll-Ups. It must be worth a fortune in Tel Aviv. If she dyes her hair, she can give new meaning to “strawberry blonde.” She had to switch flavors because the last time she tried this, she was arrested and charged with grape. OK, I’ll stop.

    Vague word had reached even me under my rock about Boston’s first female, and first minority-group-member (Asian-American), mayor Michelle Wu, but I was only today year’s old when I learned she is an accomplished pianist, and, as a nod to how shallow we are, very pretty.

    She performed as the soloist in the slow movement of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra last Sunday at the free Concert for the City in a packed Symphony Hall.

    According to the NYT, “she captured more of the composer’s characteristic elegance than an amateur might. And she barely missed a note.” She’s been playing the piano since she was four. Music played a large role in her family’s assimilation to America. Brava, Mayor Wu!

    Music plays a role in the poem featured in today’s Writer’s Almanac too. It’s called To the Woman at the Retirement Center, and it’s by Phebe Hanson.

    You tell me when you were eight, newly arrived
    from Czechoslovakia, your teacher made you memorize
    a poem that began “I remember, I remember
    the house where I was born.” Stranger
    to our language you proudly learned all the verses,
    practiced them over and over in front of your mirror,
    but at the program when you stood to recite
    in front of all the parents and other students,
    you got as far as “I remember, I remember,”
    and forgot all the rest and had to sit down shamefaced.

    Now you live in this ten-story retirement center
    where you cried most of the first month, so lonesome
    for your son, transferred to another city, who couldn’t
    take you with him because his new house wasn’t
    big enough. Sometimes, you tell me, you slip away
    from the recreation director who wants to teach you
    how to turn plastic bleach bottles into bird feeders,
    sneak up to your room, turn on the Bohemian radio station,
    dance barefoot all by yourself, as you used to

    years ago in the house where you were born.

    CUNY was in the puzzle yesterday: City University of NY. It prompted Weezie to post the following paean:

    “I’m always happy to see my beloved and beleaguered CUNY – City University of New York -mentioned. My mother dropped out of college at 19 to marry her first husband and follow him back east. The only nice thing I can say about him is that once divorced, he was a good father to my older brothers.

    “Anyway, thanks to the CUNY system which was basically free back then, when my mom wasn’t waiting tables, she was able to go back to school part time, get her BA, and then eventually got her PhD in psychology. The CUNY preschools were a life saver for my mom and dad (husband #2) when my younger brother and I were little. And as adults, my little brother went to Hunter for his BA, I went there for social work school, and my second eldest brother went to Brooklyn College for his masters in mental health counseling, with honorable mention to my eldest brother and his SUNY New Paltz BA. It’s not nearly as financially accessible as it used to be, and it’s woefully underfunded by the state and city, but these schools have such a beautiful history of creating opportunities for moving out of poverty for working class New Yorkers, especially New Yorkers of color. I will always feel tremendous pride in and gratitude for our being a CUNY family. Here’s to public education!”

    The clue today at 18A was “Onetime extravaganzas that included diving displays and water ballets.” AQUACADES. New to me, they were very popular water-based big-time musical shows back in the day. An aquacade was the most successful production at the 1939 NY World’s Fair. Folks like Johnny Weissmuller were in them. If you enjoy the Olympic competitions in synchronized drowning, I mean swimming, you would have enjoyed them. Here’s a short news clip:

    I still have the program from when Linda and I attended:

    See you tomorrow, everybody! Thanks for dropping in.

  • A Hundred Thousand Wishes

    Dear American Owl Chatter Friends,

    I am happy to take a little time off from saving my glorious country of Ukraine from the brutal Russian monsters who commit war crimes against us every day.  Congratulations Owl-Friends Wilma and Welly on your 200th post – a great achievement.  As you know, before I was President, I was a comedian.  So I love the bad jokes!!  The worse they are, the better! 

    The brave fighting men and women of Ukraine read Owl Chatter every day – it lifts our spirits.  Our men especially enjoy the sexy American women – more Taylor Swift please!! 

    Long Live Ukraine!

    Your friend,

    Volodymyr

    Thank you for that beautiful message, VZ! Not a day goes by without you in our thoughts. Long Live Ukraine! And, as you requested — here’s our next surprise guest!

    Hey Owl Chatter! — Wow! 200 posts! It is such an honor to be invited today. With President Zelensky and all the other guests!! It’s humbling. Thank you so much for featuring me and my music as much as you do — always tastefully and respectfully — you guys are the best. I love the photo shoots with Philly — he’s a “hoot!” Too bad he’s married! (He is, right?)

    I brought a special song for you. It’s a break-up song (voo den?). I hope you like it. There’s a line about crossword puzzles in it!

    Best wishes and much love from a big fan,

    Taylor

    Hello Welly and Wilma — So nice to be here for this celebration. It’s just one Taylor after another today. You know, Taylor S. was named after me — right? It’s true. Well congratulations on your 200th post, Owl Chatter! To be honest, you know, I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain, but I never thought I’d see 200 posts devoted to nonsense, bad jokes, crossword puzzles, birthdays, sports, and obits!! Keep it up guys! I’ll circle back for #300, if not sooner.

    James

    Next, what would an Owl Chatter celebration be without the breathtakingly beautiful Ana de Armas? Come on out Ana — we are so happy you could make it today. OMG — spectacular as always!

    I wouldn’t miss this for the world, guys. Thank you so much for all the attention! I’m in the puzzles a lot, as you know — me and my dear friends Bobby Orr and Met Ott. It’s great to be noticed! And, for the record — you’re the real beauty, Wilma — love those sexy purple feet!

    With love,

    Your friend,

    Ana

    Ted! — you made it! Ted Kooser is here, everybody! I can’t tell you how much we enjoy your Winter Morning Walks. We are so glad you could join us for our 200th Post celebration. This has been the best party — have you met Ana? Taylor? Ladies, this is Owl Chatter’s favorite poet, Ted Kooser — he came in all the way from Nebraska.

    I’m very happy to be here — I don’t get around as much as I used to — I just turned 84 you know. I do a lot of looking back now. I’ve been so fortunate.

    Let me share this poem of mine with you, in honor of the occasion. It’s also from Winter Morning Walks.

    I saw a dust devil this morning,
    doing a dance with veils of cornshucks
    in front of an empty farmhouse,
    a magical thing, and I remembered
    walking the beans in hot midsummer,
    how we’d see one swirling toward us
    over the field, a spiral of flying leaves
    forty or fifty feet high, clear as a glass
    of cold water just out of reach,
    and we’d drop our hoes and run to catch it,
    shouting and laughing, hurdling the beans,
    and if one of us was fast enough,
    and lucky, he’d run along inside the funnel,
    where the air was strangely cool and still,
    the soul and center of the thing,
    the genie who swirls out of the bottle,
    eager to grant one wish to each of us.
    I had a hundred thousand wishes then.

    Please, everybody — have some cake. So many candles! Don’t let the owls catch fire. And Zelensky brought some fine Ukrainian vodka. Treat yourselves — life’s too short!

    Thanks for coming to the festivities folks. We’ll see you all tomorrow for Post#201 if the hangover’s not too bad!

  • Boo’d Up

    Owl Chatter was contacted early this afternoon by staff members of former President Trump’s office. They asked us to release the following statement of Mr. Trump’s responding to the verdict against him on sexual assault and defamation.

    And now we return to our usual nonsense.

    Today’s poem in The Writer’s Almanac is by Rosie King and it’s called In Spring. It’s a nice way to start us off.

    I’m out with the wheelbarrow mixing mulch.
    A mockingbird trills in the pine.
    Then, from higher, a buzz, and through patches of blue
    as the fog burns off, a small plane pulls a banner,
    red letters I can’t read—
    but I do see, over the fence,
    a man in a sky-blue shirt walking his dog to the beach.
    He says he missed it, will keep an eye out.
    Four barrows of mulch around the blueberry bushes,
    I’m pulling off gloves, and he’s back, beaming.
    “It says, I LOVE YOU, MARTHA.
    Are you Martha?”

    Rosie was born in Saginaw, MI.

    Today is the birthday of poet Charles Simic, born in Belgrade in 1938. He died at age 84 in Dover, NH. Here is the final stanza from his poem, Autumn Sky:

    Come, lovers of dark corners,
    The sky says,
    And sit in one of my dark corners.
    There are tasty little zeroes
    In the peanut dish tonight.

    He said: “I write to annoy God, to make Death laugh. I write because I can’t get it right. I write because I want every woman in the world to fall in love with me.”

    I have a vague recollection he’s been to Owl Chatter before. Good to see you again, CS.

    Ella Mai was in the puzzle today. Have you heard of her? She’s a British singer/songwriter. Her song Boo’d Up was nominated for two Grammys and Song of the Year. It’s very likable. Joyous.

    The puzzle had some nice combinations: An ALTOID (mint) was placed right next to a CLOVE of garlic. In its snack drawer, POPTART was right next to NACHOS. One portion of the grid was hot to trot – it had: IT’S A GO, OK BY ME, and GAME ON. (Okay, okay, calm down.) And in the SW corner there was FOOT and BEER. So, I ask you, is a foot of beer one-third of a yard of ale?

    Phillipa SOO was in the puzzle too. You may recall her as Eliza Hamilton in Hamilton. She was born in Libertyville, IL, and will be 33 at the end of this month. She is half-Chinese (her dad’s side). She won a Grammy for her work in Hamilton and was nominated for a Tony for Best Actress in a Musical for it as well. Here she is, trying to get up off the floor. Oy, I’ve been there. Philly — help her up!! Put the damn camera down!

    Friends, you have just read Owl Chatter’s 199th post. Welly and Wilma are trying to put together a group of special guests for #200. We’re still waiting to hear back from a few. Hope you can make it tomorrow!

  • The Minnow

    Let’s start with the romance. Vida Rochelle Blue, Jr., who died on Saturday at age 73, married Peggy Shannon, nine years his junior, on the pitcher’s mound at Candlestick Park on Sept. 24, 1989. Orlando Cepeda escorted Peggy to the mound; Willie McCovey was Blue’s best man. The marriage lasted only seven years, but they had twin daughters to whom Vida was a loving father.

    In High School, in Louisiana, Blue’s athletic prowess was so impressive, it prompted the school to establish a baseball team. It didn’t even have a team before him! His teammates complained that he was too good. The catcher’s hand hurt for days after a game, and the outfielders didn’t think they should bother to take their positions — no batter ever hit a ball out to them.

    Blue’s rookie year in the pros was 1971 with Oakland and he exploded. After losing on Opening Day, he won 8 in a row. Out of his first 12 games, five were complete game shutouts. He was on the cover of Sports Illustrated and Time before he turned 22. He was a dynamo — he ran to and from the mound and ended each delivery with a leap. In that rookie year, 1971, he won both the Cy Young award and the AL MVP. He was 24-8 with an ERA of 1.82. The next three seasons, Oakland won the World Series. Pete Rose said Blue was the hardest throwing pitcher he ever faced.

    While 1971 was officially Blue’s rookie year, he was called up to the majors in September of 1970 and made a couple of starts. His first was a one-hitter against KC, and his second a no-hitter against Minny. He was the fourth youngest pitcher ever to pitch a no-hitter.

    Even so, in 1972, Oakland owner Charles Finley f**ked Blue over. Blue was only paid $14,000 in 1971 and he wanted $92,500 in 1972, but Finley wouldn’t agree and Blue sat out for much of the year. President Nixon called Blue “the most underpaid player in baseball.” They finally settled on $63,000 and Blue went only 6-10 for the year. Blue never forgave Finley and it left scars that never healed. “That man soured me on baseball,” Blue told the NYT in 1973. “I’ll never forget that he treated me like a damn colored boy.”

    Other demons began to undermine him. Drugs. In 1983 he was part of baseball’s cocaine scandal, spent 81 days in jail, and was suspended for a season. He finished his career at 209-161, with a 3.27 ERA, and 2,175 strikeouts. It was a fine career, with 6 All-Star appearances, but in the end, it fell short of its initial promise. He was never seriously considered for the Hall of Fame, in his mind due to the drug issue. Rest in peace, Vida Blue.

    Also passing on Saturday was Newton Minow, at age 97, former head of the FCC. In 1961, speaking before 2,000 broadcast executives, he excoriated the industry for the “vast wasteland” of American television they created. The charge hit like a bomb and changed the cozy relationship of the industry with the FCC into an adversarial one. They were pushed to do better, and responded to some degree. But the execs maintained they were only giving the audience what it wanted. Sadly, they were mostly correct.

    Amusingly, the industry took subtle little digs at Minow reflecting the ongoing animosity. For instance (and I’m not kidding), the boat in Gilligan’s Island that was supposed to be on a mere three-hour tour but ran aground was called “The Minnow.”

    After leaving the FCC, Minow joined a Chicago law firm. In 1988, he recruited Barack Obama to work as a summer associate at the firm. It was there that he met Michelle.

    Since today was Monday, several of us cruciverbalists continued our struggle to make the puzzle more of a challenge. Joseph Michael started things off with this comment:

    “This was the hardest puzzle of the year so far. Tried solving it not only blindfolded, as usual on Monday, but also with my hands tied together behind my back. I was not able to get even one answer.”

    I replied with:

    “I admire your spunk, JM! Sorry to hear about your DNF. At the risk of overstepping my bounds, is it possible that, in your effort to increase the Monday challenge, you are ‘overshooting?’ Could you dial it back a smidge? Perhaps instead of the blindfold, an eye patch or sunglasses?

    “I’m having trouble at the other end. For example, today I had a friend translate all the clues into Serbo-Croatian, a language I don’t speak, and rearrange their numbers randomly. But I was still able to finish in 11/16 of a second – not a Monday best for me, but close.”

    He went next:

    “Liveprof, thank you for the advice. I’m not sure that an eye patch would provide enough of a challenge, but two eye patches might do the trick. Maybe I’ll try that the next time my blindfold is at the dry cleaners.

    “Meanwhile I admire your creativity in translating the clues into a foreign language, but I can see how Serbo-Croatian might be too easy to figure out during that 11/16 second. May I suggest that you try a more archaic language, such as Sanskrit or Mycenaean Greek?”

    I had the final word:

    “Two patches — of course! Your suggestion about those languages is excellent — I may have trouble sleeping until next Monday from the excitement. I just have to make sure I don’t accidentally attain fluency in them during the week.”

    Good night, everybody! Thanks for stopping in.