The Wellington Files

  • Helga Estby

    It’s a big day in my law class: the midterm exam. It’s worth 50% of the grade, so it’s bigger than the final, which is not cumulative and is only worth 40%. (The other 10% comes from a quiz.) I’ll let you know how the kids do.

    On much more important matters (i.e., our usual nonsense), comments on Burns’s poem “To a Mouse” got ugly today. It came up because the puzzle focused on poets and Burns (Robert, not George, Gracie’s husband) was one of them.

    Commenter Aerulus started it off with:

    Especially liked seeing Robert Burns’s “To a Mouse,” written in November 1785 when Burns felt a kinship with a mouse for ruined “best laid schemes of mice and men” after his plow (that is, plough) scattered her comfy nest and left her homeless, and in winter!

    Here’s the stanza and its translation:

    But Mousie, thou art no thy-lane,
    In proving foresight may be vain:
    The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men
    Gang aft agley,
    An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
    For promis’d joy!

    But little Mouse, you are not alone,
    In proving foresight may be vain:
    The best laid schemes of mice and men
    Go often awry,
    And leave us nothing but grief and pain,
    For promised joy!

    [OK, fine, right? Not by a mile, says commenter Nancy:]

    Aerulus,

    When I see a clunky translation like the one you cite for one of BURNS’s “To a Mouse” stanzas, I shudder. If one is translating a poet blessed with one of the greatest poetic “ears” ever, you don’t take a sledgehammer to his gorgeous meter. You reproduce that meter perfectly: it’s part of your bleeping job. And if the task proves beyond you, then give the task to someone else.

    Here’s a beautiful translation of that particular stanza:

    But little mouse, you’re not alone,
    In proving foresight may be vain:
    The best laid plans of mice and men
    Go oft awry,
    And leave us only grief and pain,
    For promised joy!

    [And, I would add — hrrrumph!]

    The puzzle was pretty clever, IMHO. The central answer was POET’S CORNER, clued with “Westminster Abbey section hinted at by this puzzle’s architecture.” And each corner of the grid featured two poets meeting at the corner, so there were 8 in total in the four corners. And each of the 8 poets had a name that was also a plain word, that the clue aimed at, along with giving an example of the poet’s work. So, e.g., the clue at 51D was “Incinerates (‘To a Mouse’)” for BURNS. Get it? And the S from BURNS was also the S in STEIN (Gertrude), clued with “Drinking vessel that may have a lid (‘Sacred Emily’).” If I lost you there, to hell with it — it’s just a puzzle.

    Poet’s Corner, of course, is the section of Westminster Abbey where poets are buried as a great honor. So, get this, — according to Aerulus — Thomas HARDY is buried there. Or, according to interestingliterature.com, at least most of him. The website says Hardy wished to be buried in Dorset, his birthplace, but those in charge said someone so important to the literature of the land must be in Westminster Abbey. The compromise: His heart was buried in his local parish church in Dorset and the rest of him received “full honours” in the Poets’ Corner.

    Just a tad gruesome, amirite? When Lenny Bruce got a tattoo on his arm when he was in the Navy, his parents were very upset. It violated Jewish law and they were concerned it would prevent his being buried in a Jewish cemetery. He suggested that when the time comes they just lop the arm off, bury it with the gentiles, and the rest can go with the Jews. It seems reasonable.

    The puzzle beat me up good today. Couldn’t finish a Wednesday — oh, the shame of it! Here’s what did me in:

    30D: “Ikea founder Ingvar _____” was KAMPRAD.

    34A: “_____ Estby, Norwegian-born U.S. suffragist,” was HELGA

    62D: “Customizable Nintendo avatar” was MII

    66A: “SNL alum Pedrad,” was NASIM.

    Ridiculous, right?

    Helga Estby’s story is something. I hadn’t heard of her before doing this puzzle. Desperate to save her family from financial ruin after the Panic of 1893, she entered into a bet that she could walk across the country from Washington State in 6 months. She’d get $10,000 (in 1896 dollars). She set off with her 17-year old daughter Clara, and was offered shelter and aid along the way by kind strangers, but missed the deadline by a few weeks, so she didn’t get a penny and lost the family home. When she got back to Washington, she learned that two of her children died from diphtheria in her absence. And she was shunned by her (Norwegian) community for abandoning her family.

    Don’t you hate when that happens? Her husband started a construction business and Helga became a suffragist. She died in 1942. Here she is with her daughter Clara.

    My favorite comment today was by egsforbreakfast. It was on 64A. The clue was “Prokaryotic model organism,” and the answer was ECOLI. Egs wrote: “I don’t consider ECOLI to be a ‘model organism’ whether Prokaryotic or not. Gigi Hadid is a model organism.”

    In case you forgot (hard to imagine), here’s the lovely Ms. Hadid again.

    Thanks for popping by. See you tomorrow.

  • The Spill of Years

    In the You-Can’t-Make-This-Stuff-Up Department, Federal District Court Judge Lewis A. Kaplan denied Trump’s request for a one-month delay in his rape trial. Trump based his request on “a deluge of prejudicial media coverage.” But the judge noted the news coverage was largely “invited or provoked by Mr. Trump’s own actions.”

    “Oh yeah, there’s that,” Trump’s lawyers said.

    According to the story in the NYT (I’m not kidding), Trump says he could not have raped the accuser because she was “not his type.”

    I can see that. When I go out to rape someone, I’m pretty choosy too. It’s the “choosy” defense. That should sit well with the women on the jury, no?

    There was a cartoon in The New Yorker years ago in which the lawyer is pointing to his client and saying to the jury, “Ladies and Gentlemen. Does this look like the face of an embezzler?” And the client is covering up his face with his hands.

    Speaking of cartoons, Owl Chatter’s art-friend Bob shared these thoughts about Ed Koren:

    I remember that Ed Koren was always very friendly and engaged with the Brown Art Department office staff and they clearly enjoyed bantering with him. I was fortunate to be at a small dinner party hosted by several Brown grad students that he attended. He came down from New York and stayed in Providence the days he was teaching. I recall that at the dinner party a delicious paella was served – my first experience of that very special dish! It’s nice to recall this memorable evening from 50 years ago.

    Here’s another sample of his work:

    [In case you can’t read the caption, it says “A wonderful cat is coming into your life.”]

    Here’s a poem from today’s Writer’s Almanac by Catherine Abbey Hodges from her collection Instead of Sadness. The poem’s title is “Dark and Late.” I’m sharing it because I like the phrase “the spill of years.”

    This dark porch
    has brimmed
    with light
    like a bowl with water
    like a throat with laughter

    afternoons of light
    years of afternoons
    scintillating dawns
    flagrant noons
    underwater-green dusks

    and nights
    dark and late
    lit by candles, hands,
    eyes with the leap
    that’s the life
    we’ve come for,
    what we carry
    nonchalant
    white-knuckled
    down the spill of years,
    what carries us, what
    meets us in the end
    and on the way
    in each other.

    It’s the birthday of “Beat” poet Bob Kaufman today. He was born in New Orleans in 1925, the tenth of thirteen children. He died at age 60 in 1986. His mom was Black and his dad was Jewish. Herb Caen, columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, said he had Kaufman in mind when he coined the term “beatnik.” Kaufman’s circle included Allen Ginsberg, Kerouac, Ferlinghetti, et al.

    In an interview in 2000, Ken Kesey recounted:

    “I can remember driving down to North Beach with my folks and seeing Bob Kaufman out there on the street. I didn’t know he was Bob Kaufman at the time. He had little pieces of Band-Aid tape all over his face, about two inches wide, and little smaller ones like two inches long — and all of them made into crosses. He came up to the cars, and he was babbling poetry into these cars. He came up to the car I was riding in, and my folks, and started jabbering this stuff into the car. I knew that this was exceptional use of the human voice and the human mind.”

    Kaufman spent 20 years in the Merchant Marines, but also spent time at Riker’s Island. In 1961, he was nominated for England’s Guinness Poetry Award, but lost out to T. S. Eliot. When JFK was shot, Kaufman took a vow of silence and didn’t speak for over ten years. Then he walked into a coffee shop and recited his poem, “All Those Ships that Never Sailed.” He said:

    All those ships that never sailed
    The ones with their seacocks open
    That were scuttled in their stalls
    Today I bring them back
    Huge and transitory
    And let them sail
    Forever.

    He had a daughter, Antionette Victoria Marie, with his first wife, and a son, Parker, named after Charlie Parker, with his second wife. The daughter passed away in 2008 at age 63. Here he is, a bit scraggly.

    In the puzzle today, the clue at 1A was “The earth before God separated light from darkness, according to the Bible,” and the answer was CHAOS. But several folks said the word “chaos” does not appear in the Bible and thought “void” would be a better answer. I shared the following:

    “In the beginning there was a void. Then there was another void. And one void led to the next.”

    If I’m lucky, there won’t be any responses.

    At 28D, “Artist Albrecht of the German Renaissance” was DURER. Check out the curls — here’s what he looked like in a self-portrait at age 28.

    Durer ran with all the big dogs of his day, as the saying goes. He was in contact with Raphael and Leonardo da V, among others.

    Here’s his portrait of Hieronymus Holzschuher (1526), which, you’ll have to admit, is a spitting image of the fellow, no?

    Öèôðîâàÿ ðåïðîäóêöèÿ íàõîäèòñÿ â èíòåðíåò-ìóçåå Gallerix.ru

    Durer’s marriage to Agnes Frey was not a happy one. It was arranged for him, and he often referred to her disparagingly, i.e., calling her an “old crow.” He and the old crow did not have any children, and the Durer name died out.

    KRAMER VS KRAMER was in the puzzle. I remembered Dustin Hoffman played Kramer, but forgot that Kramer was played by Jersey Girl Meryl Streep. Remember her in Sophie’s Choice? Devastating.

    The clue at 48D was “Singer Perry” (4 letters), and the answer was KATY. Several old timers confessed they filled in COMO first. I’m not that far gone, thankfully. Or maybe I just forgot him. In any event, here are the two Perrys — Katy and Como. He was quite the heart throb back in my mom’s day. Pat Boone too.

    We’re going to let the young Cat Stevens play us off tonight, continuing a small theme. Last night it was “Catch the Wind.” Tonight, “The Wind.”

    I listen to the wind, to the wind of my soul. . . .

    Good night, folks. See you tomorrow.

  • Coagula

    Today’s poem in The Writer’s Almanac is by Louis Simpson and is called “Tall Girl Running.” No doubt it’s a nod to the Boston Marathon that is being run today.

    The poem starts with a quote by Richard Dawkins: “There is no gene which single-handedly builds a leg, long or short. Building a leg is a multi-gene cooperative enterprise.“

    She went running by.
    I never saw a girl

    with such long legs.
    She ran by again.

    I shouted to her,
    “You run like an angel.”

    She smiled and said,
    “Thank you.”

    She did some knee bends.
    I said, “Where did you

    get those legs?”
    “My father,” she said,

    and went her way smiling.

    As I noted earlier, Rex solves the Monday puzzles using the down clues only because they are otherwise too easy. This has led to some very funny comments on other ways to increase the challenge. Michael Joseph wrote this today:

    My Monday blindfold is at the dry cleaners, so I tried solving this in a pitch black closet and found it to be extremely challenging. Not only did I have trouble knowing what the clues were. I also ended up with a DNF [did not finish] because I didn’t realize that my pen had run out of ink.

    With SAP in the puzzle today at 10A, LMS confessed: I prefer the crappy chemical-laden fake maple syrup to the real stuff from real maple sap. I’m thinking I like all the added sodium, I dunno. Waffles with the “good” syrup eat too sweet and one-notedly.

    [Owl Chatter could not disagree more.]

    It elicited this response from Wanderlust:

    LMS, I don’t agree with you on syrup, but I’m not a snob, I swear. I’d actually like to do a blind taste test to see if my purism will hold. I remember when Cook’s Illustrated magazine did a blind taste test with serious foodies on real vanilla extract vs. artificial, and artificial won. It rocked the cooking world. I think they did it again, and this time the real stuff won, and everyone settled down. My sibs and I grew up eating Little Debbies Swiss Rolls in our lunch boxes, while our cousins had Ho-Hos. Each of us insisted our product was superior, so we did a blind taste test with the chocolate logs cut into slices so we wouldn’t know the size (Ho-Hos are bigger). We sheepishly had to admit Ho-Hos were better. Oh, and I should say that we did this taste test as adults in our 50’s. OK, have I proven I am not a snob yet?

    Meir Shalev, an Israeli writer known for his sense of humor, died last Tuesday at his home in the village of Alonei Abba in northern Israel’s Jezreel Valley. He was only 74. He wrote mostly about the years before Israel became a state.

    On the Bible, he observed:

    The Tenth Commandment, unlike the other nine, is a prohibition against coveting — that is, against feeling, not action.

    “Everyone covets,” he wrote. “Everyone fails the last commandment. Thus, the biblical lawgiver made sure that no Jew would ever get a perfect 10 in the test of the commandments. Nine is the highest score on the Jewish report card.”

    Rachel Pollack also died recently at her home in Rhinebeck at the age of only 77. She was a transgender activist and writer who created the first trans super-heroine for DC Comics.

    Pollack said she came out as transgender and lesbian in 1971 and underwent transition surgery in 1976. She noted a difference between when she underwent her transition 47 years ago and today. “The big thing that’s changed, an astonishing change, is that transgender people are now visible,” she said. “Society recognizes that this is something people can be. Obviously, there is a strong reactionary element fighting change, as always, but the difference is remarkable.”

    She developed a fascination for tarot cards in her youth, and used them in her writing. Her guide “Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom,” established her as an authority.

    The trans superhero she developed for DC Comics was Kate Godwin, aka Coagula. She had an unusual superpower — she could dissolve objects with one hand, and solidify them with the other.

    Tired. See you tomorrow.

  • Dime Novels

    At 101D today, the clue was “Manatee,” and the answer was SEA COW. The always sunny Lewis noted: For Manatee I threw in “dugong” immediately, which, of course didn’t work. But it got me wondering about dugongs, and during a quick investigation, I learned that they are related to manatees, with the main difference being the tail. The dugong’s is forked (bifurcated), while the manatee’s is paddle-like. Amazingly, dugongs and manatees are more related to elephants than they are to other marine mammals!

    Here’s a manatee with its paddle-like tail:

    And here’s a dugong:

    Does the name Buddy Sorrell ring a bell? Dig down — it was Morey Amsterdam’s character’s name on The Dick Van Dyke Show. He visited the puzzle today! Remember the classic theme song at the opening of the show with DVD falling over the ottoman (or, later, skirting it)? Check it out:

    In an interview on NPR in 2010, Van Dyke revealed that Amsterdam wrote lyrics for the tune which were never used. He sang them. Here they are:

    So you think that you’ve got trouble?
    Well, trouble’s a bubble
    So tell old Mr. Trouble to get lost!

    Why not hold your head up high and
    Stop cryin’, start tryin’
    And don’t forget to keep your fingers crossed.

    When you find the joy of livin’
    Is lovin’ and givin’
    You’ll be there when the winning dice are tossed.

    A smile is just a frown that’s turned upside down
    So smile, and that frown will defrost.

    And don’t forget to keep your fingers crossed

    Amsterdam was his real last name. His first name was Moritz. He was so quick at churning out jokes that he became known as the “human joke machine.” He sometimes performed with a mock machine on his chest, hanging by a strap. He turned a crank and paper rolled out; he would then pretend to read the machine’s joke, although actually the paper was blank. He was also an accomplished cellist, and very knowledgeable on the Bible.

    He was born in Chicago on 12/14/1908, and died in LA at age 87 on 10/28/1996. He said his neighborhood in Beverly Hills was so exclusive that even the police had an unlisted number. He was married for twelve years (’33 – ’45) to actress Mabel Todd, and was married to Kay Patrick from 1949 until his death did them part. He had two kids with Kay, a son Gregory and a daughter Cathy.

    His character on the DVD show was one of the few openly Jewish TV characters of the era. One episode centered on his adult Bar-Mitzvah. I remember it and it was wonderful. Carl Reiner, who created the show, said Amsterdam’s character was based on Mel Brooks.

    Here’s one of his lines: According to statistics, a man eats a prune every twenty seconds. I don’t know who this fellow is, but I know where to find him.

    This is the first time I recall him appearing in a puzzle. Please pop by again soon, Buddy — We love you!

    If you’re at all like me, you leaped out of your seat while watching the horrific events of Jan. 6 and shouted, “OMG, I think that’s Logan James Barnhart, 41, of Holt, Michigan, participating in the mayhem (or, more accurately, the januaryhem)!”

    Barnhart, of course, is the male model who has been on the cover of numerous romance novels, including Owl Chatter fave: Stepbrother UnSEALed: A Bad Boy Military Romance. Barnhart was sentenced to 36 months in prison after pleading guilty to assaulting law enforcement officers with a dangerous weapon.

    Et tu, Barnhart?  

    “The way I was acting seems so foreign to me,” Barnhart told the U.S. district judge, Rudolph Contreras, in what seems like a pretty dopey exculpatory statement. But the feeling here is that Barnhart was not put on this planet for his brains.

    And, speaking of a lack of brains, the NYT reported today that thieves broke into a truck parked at a Walmart in Philadelphia and made off with $200,000 in cash. The only problem is it was made up entirely of dimes. The truck was transporting the dimes from the U.S. Mint in Philly to Florida. There were ten thieves, and they made off with roughly two million dimes, weighing five tons.

    Officer Miguel Torres, a spokescop for the Philly police wondered how the robbers would be able to spend the money. That’s a damn good question Torres. You’ve got a bright future ahead of you.

    Aaron J. Chalfin, a professor of criminology at U. Penn, intent on revealing himself to be an idiot, said: “Millions of dimes is a lot of money, so it doesn’t seem so silly.” It doesn’t? What the f**k planet are you living on?

    Cops arriving on the scene found thousands of dimes scattered on the parking lot ground. Owl Chatter photographers, of course, were on the spot as well. Here’s a close-up shot they managed to capture before the cops sealed off the area.

    The article in today’s NYT ended with (and I’m not kidding):

    As the department continues its investigation, Officer Torres offered some advice to those possibly harboring stuffed piggy banks. “If for some reason you have a lot of dimes at home,” he said, “this is probably not the time to cash them in.”

    Yup. Right on target again, Torres.

    Looking back: Did you ever catch the wind? Not everyone does. You have to be very lucky. Very very lucky. And if you manage it — don’t let go.

    When sundown pales the sky
    I want to hide a while behind your smile
    And everywhere I’d look, your eyes I’d find.

    Here’s Donovan’s song. It’s held up over the years, for sure. The owls are sending it out tonight to friends Hank and Judy, who are in our thoughts, and who got very very lucky, many years ago, and held on.

    See you tomorrow.

  • Jeez Louise

    If you have moments of doubt about the value you’ve contributed to the world, take comfort in the fact that Leonardo da Vinci once wrote “I have offended God and mankind because my work didn’t reach the quality it should have.”

    It’s his birthday today. He was born out of wedlock in Tuscany to a peasant woman in 1452. His dad was a notary. Here’s something I didn’t know about him — he wrote in mirror-image script, i.e., backwards. This may have been easier because he was a lefty, but still. . . He never married and had few close relationships with women. He was very close with several of his male students and was likely gay. Whatever. Happy Birthday Leo!

    It’s also the birthday of Henry James, born in NYC in 1843. I’ve read some of his stuff, but I must say I found it a little stiff. I’m not alone. Oscar Wilde was so bored by James’s writing, he said that James “wrote fiction as if it were a painful duty.” T.S. Eliot quipped, “James has a mind so fine that no idea could violate it.” And Ginny Wolff once wrote to a friend,  “Please tell me what you find in Henry James. We have his works here, and I read, and I can’t find anything but faintly tinged rose water, urbane and sleek, but vulgar and pale. Is there really any sense in it?”

    A professor of mine once told a story in which a reader complained to James that he could spend a whole paragraph on a woman touching a handkerchief to her forehead. And James replied, “My good woman — a woman touching a handkerchief to her forehead is an entire novel.”

    Nevertheless, Happy Birthday HJ!

    Rather than dig up a photo of the stodgy old fellow, here’s Cybill Shepherd, who played James’s Daisy Miller in the film version.

    And speaking of the droolingly beautiful, LMS treated us to a discussion of the difference between drool and slobber. It came about because the clue at 3D today was “[I am so-o-o hungry]” and the answer was DROOL. Here’s LMS:

    “Then I sat, yet again, pondering the difference between DROOL and slobber. Slobber feels much more active and exuberant, like the slobberer is fully engaged and aware. But DROOL feels quieter and sneakier. Like maybe the DROOLer isn’t even aware of their offense. Also, DROOL is a naptime event. If I happen upon a napper who is slobbering, I’ma back myself out of the room on tippy toe and rethink my relationship with this person.”

    On the answer GOING RATES, she noted:  “reminded me of all the pay toilets in Europe.”

    In my eyes, though, for laughs, nothing can top her comments on “Mom.” Here’s today’s, triggered by the answer THEME, which was clued by “Word with party or park.”

    Mom and I have a THEME party coming up – a Derby Day at the clubhouse of our little community. She was so excited about it, about having me participate with her, that I didn’t have the heart to say no. There will be food! And games! And we have to dress up and wear hats! And this year no one will be admitted without a ticket, so we have to get ours fast! (Apparently last year, there were sneakers-in who crashed the event, so the food ran out pretty quickly. People are still talking about it.) Look. I’m no spring chicken, but I can tell you that an afternoon spent being charming to Mom’s friends, pretending to enjoy the cloying punch (ladled out from the actual punch bowl into the matching little punch glasses), nibbling on the nuts and after-dinner mints. . . jeez Louise as I type this, I hate myself for being such a jerk. But now I’m caught up in finding the perfect white hat to go with my outfit. And I’m borrowing some white gloves from my sister. Mom got her hat from a nearby Goodwill-type store for only $3. I’m looking on Amazon for mine. Go big, or go home.

    Ed Koren died yesterday in Brookfield, VT, at age 87. Starting in May of 1962, thousands of his cartoons appeared in The New Yorker, many with his large, cheerful, furry animal characters, or, below, not so cheerful. (Note the crossed arms and legs.)

    In case you can’t read the caption, it says: Rufus here is the center of our life.

    Koren was on the art faculty at Brown until 1977, which, happily, overlapped with our friend Bob’s time up there. I sent Bob the sad news and he replied saying Koren was an amazing guy.

    One of my favorites of his graced the cover of one of his collections. A little girl is standing with a look of utter despair on her face. She is holding a cone out of which fell the scoop of ice cream it previously contained. The splat of ice cream is on the ground at her feet. Her mom is bending over her sympathetically and says: “Do you want to talk about it?”

    Many years ago, I had an idea for a Koren cartoon. There’s a car with a bumper sticker on it that says, “We Brake for Animals.” It’s stopped on the road, and in front of it is a giant furry Koren creature, smiling down on it benevolently. I sent the suggestion to Koren, care of The New Yorker. He wrote back that they are not permitted to take suggestions, but then he drew it, wonderfully, on the paper I wrote my letter on. I still have it somewhere in the house — if I can find it, I’ll show it to you.

    “I’m the kind of American middle-class folk I like to draw,” Koren said in 1982. He found subjects everywhere. Walking in the woods, he was passed by a jogger, who called out: “Working on my quads!”

    “There’s a cartoon,” he said.

    The NYT obit included these:

    A bearded snob on his grand portico greets a grimy plumber: “Ah, Hopkins! Finalmente!”

    A bathroom mirror speaks a dreaded morning message: “Time has not been kind to you.”

    As two bearlike creatures look hungrily up a tree trunk at a hiking couple cowering in the branches, the man says to his wife, “Tell them how hard we’ve worked to protect their habitat.

    He moved to Vermont in 1982. He joined the volunteer fire department and was its captain for 30 years. He never retired from drawing. For The New Yorker’s April 17 issue, he drew Moses on a mount overlooking his people and holding up a stone tablet of the Ten Commandments while proclaiming, “Time for an update!”

    He is survived by his wife, three children, two grandchildren, and this guy:

    Rest in peace, Koren.

    In today’s puzzle, some were flummoxed by the clue “Many a unicorn,” the answer for which was TECH STARTUP. So Rocketman explained:

    “A unicorn is a start-up/private company that has a valuation of more than one billion dollars. A NYT article today about the rising trend of criminal prosecutions of start-up executives (The End of Faking It in Silicon Valley) noted that there are currently around 1200 such companies. I worked for one of the ones mentioned in the article and my former boss reports for prison on April 27th. I have a nice bottle of champagne reserved for the occasion.”

    And then there was “Papal topper,” the answer for which was TIARA. Really? He wears a tiara? Get outta here! Sailor explained:

    “The Papal TIARA (a three-tiered crown, actually) was retired by Paul VI in a gesture of support for the spirit of the Second Vatican Council. No pope has worn it since 1963. So a bishop’s mitre has been the actual “Papal topper” for the last 60 years.”

    And here’s Southside Johnny on the matter: I’ll admit to being confused by the clue for TIARA. I know that the Catholic Church has been struggling with the whole gender-bending and age of consent quagmire for like centuries now, but still the thought of the Pope in a Miss Universe contest still seemed like a stretch to me. Then I saw that a TIARA is also a diadem “worn by a Pope” – so today I learned that diadem is a synonym for a funny hat.

    27A was “Smoking,” and the answer was RED HOT. Here’s Billy Lee Riley letting you know that his gal is RED HOT and your gal ain’t doodley-squat. Hrrrrumph!

    Dinner at Bell’s Tavern tonight in Lambertville with Dan and Mary. Happy Birthday (yesterday) Mary! I ordered their “Signature Burger,” but had to send it back — there was ink all over it!

    Ba da boom!

    See you tomorrow. Thanks for stopping by.

  • Bouillabaisse

    Do you ever do something “bad” while driving, like run a red light, and then start making up a story in your head to try to weasel out of a ticket in case the cops stop you? Me neither. The story makes perfect sense to you, but a little guy in the back of your brain knows you wouldn’t have a chance. Anyway, there was a GEO METRO in yesterday’s puzzle, and I love this story posted by whatsername:

    A former coworker got stopped for “attempted speeding” in a GEO METRO. This guy commuted 125 miles each way, much of which was through the mountainous areas of northern Arkansas where he was pulled over. He explained to the patrolman that he had to go as fast as he possibly could on the way down the mountain; otherwise he wouldn’t have enough speed to make it back up the next one. The cop stepped back, looked at the vehicle, shook his head, and sent him on his way without so much as a warning.

    The clue for OTTER yesterday was: “Animal that might make a waterslide to play on.” Otters are notoriously playful. They may construct a slide to get from point A to point B, but if it’s fun, they will keep going down it over and over again before continuing on. The writeup on otters in Britannica notes in the very first sentence that otters are known for their playful manner. Adorable. I don’t know what our photographer Phil did to get this one to wave to us. You’re incredible, Philly! We don’t pay you enough.

    Mary Quant died in her home in Surrey, England yesterday. She was 93. The headline in the Times obit called her a British fashion revolutionary. We live in the world of our vision; who knows how profound the changes she brought to our world really are?

    Quant opened a boutique called Bazaar on King’s Road in London in 1955, and started selling the outfits that she and her bohemian friends were wearing, “a bouillabaisse of clothes and accessories,” — short flared skirts and pinafores, knee socks and tights, funky jewelry and berets in all colors. She made some of the clothing herself, and the store became a hangout like a coffee bar.

    A decade later, Mary Quant was a global brand, with licenses all over the world — she was named an officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1966 for her contribution to British exports — and sales that would soon reach $20 million. When she toured the U.S. with a new collection, she was greeted like a fifth Beatle; at one point she required police protection.  In 2009, she was honored by the Royal Mail with her own postage stamp, featuring a model wearing a black Mary Quant flared mini. In 2015, Ms. Quant was made a dame.

    It’s not clear who actually “invented” the miniskirt, but Quant as much as anyone brought about its explosion, and she has been called the “mother” of the miniskirt. Here’s a young Mary herself, and then one of my tax students modeling a mini.

    OBOE is a common answer in Crossworld; it shares three letters with our favorite snack treat OREO. But the clue for it today was new to me: “Heckelphone relative.” Any of you hear of a heckelphone before? It was developed by Wilhelm Heckel at the suggestion of Richard Wagner. It’s larger than an oboe and is an octave lower.

    The first annual meeting of the North American Heckelphone Society took place on August 6, 2001, at the Riverside Church in New York City, with six heckelphonists in attendance. Later meetings have included as many as 14 instruments.

    Good night readers! Sweet dreams!

  • More Kiviaq Anyone?

    I’ll spare you a photo on this, but not the discussion. If you’ve been to Greenland, have you tasted (or heard of) kiviaq? It’s a staple at celebrations among the Inughuit, a distinct Inuit culture indigenous to Greenland. The ingredient list includes one seal carcass (hollowed out, of course), and 300 to 500 dovekies. These are small birds, also called little auks.

    You take your 300 to 500 whole dovekies (beaks, feathers, and all) and cram them into the seal carcass. You then sew up the opening and seal it with seal fat. One nice thing (perhaps the only one) is that seal fat repels flies. On the other hand, you may wonder about a “delicacy” that even flies don’t want any part of.

    Hopefully, you’re not too hungry at this point in time because the next step is to bury the whole mess under rocks for a few months to ferment. When it’s dug up, and opened up, you skin the little birds and eat them one at a time. Yum.

    Our friend Pam has made recipes that have appeared in Owl Chatter before. Let us know how the kiviaq turns out!! Maybe you can bring a few dovekies on the Fourth. You should have enough time for the fermenting, no?

    Alicia “Lisa” Shepard died on April 1; she was only 69. (Anyone dying within five years of my age in either direction gets an “only.”)

    She was at the center of some controversy when she was the ombudsman at NPR, a post she held for nearly 4 years. It was back when the Bush administration (W’s) was using waterboarding to elicit information from detainees (or to force them to finish their kiviaq). NPR was using language such as “enhanced interrogation tactics” instead of labeling them torture, and it was accused of serving as a right-wing apologist. Bush would not refer to waterboarding as torture, but Obama did.

    Shepard personally believed it was torture, but felt an obligation for NPR to be neutral. So her position was to have the practice described and let the listener decide. E.g., to report that “the U.S. military poured water down a detainee’s mouth and nostrils for 40 seconds.” But she and NPR were accused by some of misleading its listeners and adopting “Orwellian government euphemisms.”

    She also wrote a book on Woodward and Bernstein, “Life in the Shadow of Watergate.” She revealed in it that Woodward and Bernstein greatly angered Barry Sussman, an editor at WAPO with whom they worked very closely on the Watergate story. Sussman felt he should have been listed as a third author on “All the President’s Men.” He told Shepard: “I don’t have anything good to say about either one of them.” Ouch.

    The cause of death was lung cancer. She is survived by her husband, their son, and a grandson. When asked how it was raising her son through his teen years, she just shook her head. “It was torture,” she said.

    The puzzle today was by Robin Yu. Yeah, Yu. It had several phrases that did something weird until you found the “revealer.” E.g., for the clue “Dangerously near,” the answer should have been TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT. But the answer seemed to start with CLOSE and the entire phrase wouldn’t fit in the spaces allotted to it. The same thing happened later with TOO HOT TO HANDLE — the answer started with HOT and couldn’t fit.

    Cleverly, the revealer turned out to be TOO LITTLE TOO LATE, and what you had to do was shift the TOO to the end of the answer (“too late”) and squoosh it into one square (“too little”). Neat.

    It earned a rare nod of approval from Rex on his blog — he is famously critical. And among the comments was this from Constructor Yu:

    “Wow, I got a rave review from Rex! I’ve been reading your blog for years and this absolutely made my day. Thank you!”

    There were some bruisers in it. 27D: “Romantic music genre originating in the Dominican Republic.” WTF? Turns out to be BACHATA. Gimme a break! And there was a cross that defeated me: 71A was “Some compound gases,” which was MONOXIDES, and I couldn’t get the I from the crosses because 58D was “Singer Zayn,” with the answer MALIK. Never heard of him. He’s a good-looking kid. Thirty-years old and British. His mom’s British/Irish and his dad’s Pakistani.

    He has a daughter with model Gigi Hadid, but they broke up in 2021. There was some abuse/violence involved, sorry to say. He especially had problems with Hadid’s mom.

    Here’s the lovely Ms. Hadid. Is that a wrist watch down there?

    Last, do you know the difference between comfits and confits? The clue today was “Candied fruits or nuts,” and that’s COMFITS. As for confits, Barbara S. kindly explained:

    Confit is any type of food that is cooked slowly over a long period as a method of preservation. Confit, as a cooking term, describes when food is cooked in grease, oil, or sugar water, at a lower temperature, as opposed to deep frying.

    Both differ quite a bit from the fermentation of dovekies sealed up in a hollowed-out seal carcass buried under rocks for a couple of months. But you already know about that.

    See you tomorrow.

  • All That Glisters

    Hobie Landrith was missing. Well, he died last week, but I mean he was missing from my autograph collection. He was a good example of the type of player I would not care about having in the collection — a back-up catcher for a variety of teams over a respectable but unspectacular 14-year career. But his obit today made him a “must get” in my eyes: He was the first ever Met!

    When the Mets (along with the Houston Colt 45’s) were formed in 1962, an expansion draft was held. Each Major League team could protect most of its roster, but the new teams could draft unprotected players. Houston went first and grabbed shortstop Eddie Bressoud from the Giants. Then the Mets made Landrith their first choice. When Manager Casey Stengel was asked why they chose Landrith, he said you gotta have a catcher, or else you’re gonna have a lot of passed balls. Landrith was the catcher and batted eighth in the Mets first regular season game. He went 0 for 4, made an error, and allowed three runners to steal. Oh, well. It’s baseball — not a fairy tale.

    On May 12, 1962, Landrith came up to pinch hit in the bottom of the ninth with the Mets down 2-1. Rod Kanehl was on base, having pinch run for Gil Hodges. Before Landrith stepped into the box, Stengel called time and whispered something in his ear. The great Warren Spahn was pitching for the Braves. Landrith sent the first pitch over the fence for a game-winning home run. When Stengel was asked later what it was he whispered, he said “I told him to hit a home run.”

    It was almost negated. Kanehl failed to touch third base. Luckily, third base coach Solly Hemus noticed and stopped Kanehl in his tracks and had him go back and touch third before Landrith did. Had Landrith touched the base first, Kanehl would have been called out and the Braves would have won the game on a walk-off home run by the opposing team.

    [Side note: I rode the subway home from a Mets game once along with Solly Hemus. That’s how I got his autograph. He was very friendly.]

    One of the other teams Landrith played for was Cincinnati. According to Wikipedia, it was during the height of anti-Communist sentiment in the U.S., and the Reds officially changed their name to the Cincinnati Redlegs to remove any potential “confusion” between the baseball team and Communists.

    Let’s just tip-toe away from that. Comments could only diminish its luster.

    When I noticed that Landrith was missing from my collection, I went on eBay and picked up a nice signed card by him for under $10. It’s pictured below. The lack of monetary value is more than made up for by the story, the historic value.

    Landrith is survived by his wife, six children, his brother, 11 grandchildren, and 11 great-grandchildren. He was 93. He’ll be settling in behind the plate once he gets through those pearly gates. Even Heaven can always use a solid back-up catcher.

    “Weezie” had a perceptive and heartfelt comment on today’s puzzle, IMHO. The puzzle included Toni Morrison, Nat King Cole, Langston Hughes, stuff from India (tandoori oven and atta flour), and Ravi Shankar. Also Michaela COEL, British actress and screenwriter.

    Weezie noted: I really appreciated how non Eurocentric/white-centric this puzzle was. It is a great example of how much more inclusive crosswords can be while still being accessible. Another fabulous example in another dimension of inclusion was cluing STEER as “Use a wheelchair’s push rims, for instance.” Seeing that casual inclusion of disabled people’s experiences – not in any kind of exceptionalizing, pitying, or “inspiration porn” way – feels like it normalized disability, much like it normalized decentering whiteness.

    Wow — a lot of attention on Tennessee lately. Last month, during deliberation on a bill to allow the use of firing squads as an execution method, GOP State Representative Paul Sherrell suggested adding an amendment that would allow lynching as well: “hanging by a tree.”

    In response, Democrat Justin J. Pearson attempted to read out the names of lynching victims in Shelby County, where the majority of the lynchings in Tennessee took place, but was cut off by House Speaker Cameron Sexton, who stated he was “out of line,” the “he” being Pearson, of course, not Sherrell. Sherrell apologized for the remarks two days later. Members of the Tennessee Black Caucus criticized his apology for being “insincere.” Sherrell was removed from the Criminal Justice Committee. Yup — that probably wasn’t the best committee for the guy.

    The theme for Sunday’s puzzle was aphorisms where only the first half is given and the remainder can be omitted because it’s understood. A BIRD IN THE HAND is all you need to say, right? Similarly, WHEN IN ROME, or IF YOU CANT STAND THE HEAT. Some took issue with the inclusion of SPEAK OF THE DEVIL, claiming that it has no second part. But the consensus was that it does – something like Speak of the devil “and he appears,” or the more lurid “and you see his horns.”

    Each of these is an example of an “anapodoton.” That’s what they are called. Another example from the puzzle was ALL THAT GLITTERS, and one person corrected that, claiming it should be “all that glisters.” WTF?? Can’t be! But it sort of is. The saying predates Shakespeare by several hundred years, but his version of it (in The Merchant of Venice), was “all that glisters is not gold.” It changed to glitters by the time Dryden used it in 1687, and that’s the current common usage. Both words mean the same thing.

    Three cheers for Ronnie Gajownik, first female manager of a High-A level minor league ballclub, The Hillsboro Hops, in the Diamondback farm system. Hillsboro is in Oregon, in the Portland area.

    She’s gay too! Here’s a sweet shot from her wedding. Owl Chatter will be pulling for the Hops bigtime this season! So far, so good — they are 3-1.

    Let’s close on that nice note — see you tomorrow!

  • A Chicken Giraffe

    Hi everybody! We haven’t been chattering as much as usual of late because we’ve been out visiting our boy, Worthington, in Michigan. That’s him in the middle, with Wilma on the left, and (me) Welly, on the right. We just got home so we’ll be starting up again soon!

    In today’s puzzle, 3D was Misunderstood song lyric like “‘Scuse me while I kiss this guy.” The answer was MONDEGREEN. I hope you’re familiar with the term — it’s when you mis-hear a song lyric with amusing results. In the puzzle clue, of course, the actual lyric was “kiss the sky.”

    The commentariat was rife with examples. From Silent Night: Round John Virgin.

    From Bad Moon Risin’: There’s a bathroom on the right.

    From Pabloinnh: Stand beside her, and guide her, through the night with the light from a bulb.

    Lewis chimed in with: The mondegreen of my early early youth was in the song “Runaway” by Del Shannon, where what I heard was, “I’m a walkin’ in the rain / Through the groin I feel a pain”.

    From Barbara S.: Petula Clark: “Listen to the rhythm of the crackers in the city” or sometimes when I really heard the F-sound “Listen to the rhythm of the catfish in the city.”

    From JonB3: “Now that you’ve gone, all that’s left is a xylophone”

    From Carola: Heard in church as a child: In “Onward, Christian Soldiers,” “Christ the royal master leans against the phone” (= leads against the foe). Obviously from the olden days of wall phones. [very olden]

    “Hold me closer, Tony Danza.”

    From egsforbreakfast: My favorite Mondegreen came from a neighbor kid who thought that “She’s got a ticket to ride” was “She’s got a chicken giraffe” (and she don’t care!).

    Burtonkd had a good one: “The girl with colitis goes by.” (kaleidoscope eyes)

    Personally, I like the line from Dylan’s Jack of Hearts: “Rosemary combed her hair and took a cabbage into town.”

    Taylor Slow explained where the term comes from: The word originates with journalist Sylvia Wright, who wrote a column in the 1950s in which she recounted hearing the Scottish folksong The Bonny Earl of Morray. Wright misheard the lyric “Oh, they have slain the Earl o’ Morray and laid him on the green” and thought it was “Oh, they have slain the Earl o’ Morray and Lady Mondegreen.”

    Did you know the difference between a mondegreen and an eggcorn? A mondegreen is a misconception based on a song lyric. An eggcorn is when it derives from anything else.

    Did someone say Del Shannon? Remember this look?

    See you tomorrow!

  • Not Tonight, Dear. I Have A Headache.

    It’s the birthday today of Eadweard Muybridge. He was born in 1830 in Surrey, England, moved to California in the 1850’s, and became one of the first internationally known photographers. From 1883 to 1886 he was based at the U. of Pennsylvania and produced over 100,000 photos of animals and humans in motion.

    He designed a camera that could take a picture in one-thousandth of a second. He set up 24 of them along a racetrack with trip wires to pull the shutters. The resultant series of pictures of a horse galloping proved for the first time that all four of a horse’s hooves will sometimes be off the ground at the same time.

    He died at the age of 74, never having completed his centipede project.

    Do you ever “misread” an event and show up “underdressed?” On this day in 1865, General Robert E. Lee surrendered his 28,000 troops to General Ulysses S. Grant, thus ending the Civil War. The night before, Grant was having a rough time of it. He knew the Union army had Lee’s troops fucked, but Lee wasn’t giving up the fight.

    Grant went to bed dirty, tired, and miserable with a bad migraine. He spent the night “bathing my feet in hot water and mustard, and putting mustard plasters on my wrists and the back part of my neck, hoping to be cured by morning.” It didn’t work. When morning came, Grant pulled on his clothes from the day before, and rode out to the head of his column with his head throbbing.

    An escort from Lee met up with Grant and handed him a note. It essentially said, We’ve had it — it’s over. “When the officer reached me I was still suffering with the sick headache,” Grant recalled, “but the instant I saw the contents of the note I was cured.”

    Grant allowed Lee to choose the location for the surrender, and Lee’s troops found the homestead of Wilmer McLean. When McLean showed them to a run-down unfurnished house on his property, they said What the fuck McLean — don’t you know what’s going down here today, you idiot? So he let them use the main house.

    Lee showed up in a new uniform, silk-stitched boots, a felt hat, and a jewel-studded sword. Grant arrived in a mud-splattered uniform and boots, with tarnished shoulder straps. “Shit, Lee,” Grant said, “Would it have killed you to let me know I was supposed to dress up for this? Look at me. And the goddamn Owl Chatter photographers are here.” [See photo below.]

    Instead of taking Lee’s troops into custody, Grant allowed them to return to their homes with their weapons and horses, and with their pride. Lee had told Grant that his men were starving. Without hesitation, Grant told Lee he could have all the provisions he wanted. For the rest of his life, Lee never allowed an unkindly word to be said about Grant in his presence.

    Our lunch at the Gandy Dancer in Annie Arbor did not disappoint. Sam and Sarah ordered different treatments of salmon, Linda went with the scallops, and I had the snapper — all excellent. The calamari appetizer was even better. Here are some shots. Can you find Sam and Linda dining?

    After our meal we took a long walk around Ann Arbor. We found this poem posted in a cafe window. It’s by Ellen Stone, and it’s called If You Don’t Think You Do Anything Right — for John Prine.

    Make beer w/one can of cheap lager.
    Consider becoming more flavored yourself.
    Eat more bone marrow. Reduce cruciferous
    vegetables especially cabbage. Soak your feet
    in well water centered with rind of blood orange.

    Remember clubs of cheery types of people who
    gather in groups like knitters, coin collectors
    and those who like old dolls. Do more meditation
    when recycling & garbage has finally been collected.
    Sing at sunrise or when the dew comes off the grass.

    Embrace your household of living beings —
    mice, squirrels or your offspring. Find
    a handful of fountain pens, freaks & curlers
    or the right side of the bed. Ask everyone
    one song that makes them cry every day.

    Thanks for dropping in. See you tomorrow, if we can get onto the internet in Greensburg, PA.