The Wellington Files

  • Emu War

    If you like spoonerisms, today’s puzzle is for you. What’s a spoonerism? Fair question. It’s when the initial sounds or letters of two or more words are transposed. “The Lord is a shoving leopard,” is not a bad example. (“Loving shepherd,” would be the correct form.) The term has nothing to do with spoons. It’s derived from an Oxford don, William Archibald Spooner, who fell into them naturally.

    There were four in the puzzle today:

    “Pamphlets on how to use marinara?” was SAUCING FLYERS, a spoonerism with “flying saucers.” (See how it works?)

    “Grocery store worker on the days leading up to Thanksgiving?” was STUFFING STOCKER, for “stocking stuffer.”

    “Bookie?” was BETTING GETTER, for “getting better.”

    “Devices that help dentists monitor anaesthesia?” was NUMBING TRACKERS, for “tracking numbers.”

    A spoonerism is also known as a marrowsky or morowski after an 18th century Polish count, who was also prone to them. (Not really, though — I’ve never heard that used.)

    On an episode of The Jack Benny Program in 1950, Jack mentions that he ran into his butler Rochester while in his car that was on a grease rack. Mary Livingston was supposed to say “How could you run into him on a grease rack?” but flubbed her line with “How could you run into him on a grass reek?” The audience broke up into so much laughter Jack was unable to reply as the show ran out of time.

    Here’s a nice sports spoonerism someone noted: Paul Blair (Ball Player). Blair was a brilliant center fielder, one of the best ever to play the position. He hit an inside-the-park home run one game, and a reporter chided him afterwards, saying the fielder should have caught it. Blair’s perfect response was: “There’s only one man could’ve caught that ball — and he was running the bases.”

    “Kniferism” and “forkerism” refer to changing, respectively, the vowels or the final consonants of two syllables, giving them a new meaning, e.g., the “Duck and Doochess of Windsor.”

    Here’s Reverend Spooner, carefully running down some wordplay.

    The oddest clue/answer today was at 51A: “Winners of a 1932 Australian “war.” Ans: EMUS. Here’s from Wikipedia:

    The Emu War, also known as the Great Emu War, was a nuisance wildlife management military operation undertaken in Australia over the later part of 1932 to address public concern over the number of emus said to be running amok and destroying crops in the Campion district in the Wheatbelt of Western Australia. The unsuccessful attempts to curb the population of emus, a large flightless bird indigenous to Australia, employed Royal Australian Artillery soldiers armed with Lewis guns—leading the media to adopt the name “Emu War” for the operation. While some of the birds were killed, the emu population persisted and continued to cause crop destruction.

    Needless to say, Welly and Wilma, and all of the owls behind owl chatter were quite happy to learn of the war’s outcome.

    Here are some battlefield photos. Warning: not for the faint of heart.

    From the ridiculous to the sublime. 63A “En pointe,” — ON TOE. It’s from ballet, of course, and is a very difficult stance to maintain without doing damage to the toe or foot. Special shoes are used to provide support (pointe shoes). I once mentioned to Carl that I was going to the ballet, and he exclaimed: “Bolshoi!”

    GLEN Campbell popped by today, even though he died in August 2017 at the age of 81. He was born in Delight, Arkansas. Campbell was married four times and had nine children. He also had a fling with Tanya Tucker in between wives #3 and #4. They recorded the single “Dream Lover” together, and sang the national anthem at the 1980 GOP convention. My favorite of his hits was “By the Time I Get to Phoenix,” which was written by Jimmy Webb. Frank Sinatra called it “the greatest torch song ever written.” Here it is, in 2:52. Try not to wonder, as I did, if his head is made out of silly putty. It must be the makeup.

    When Campbell starts singing, above, the fans applaud when they recognize the song. It reminded me of what Tom Rush (who will be 82 next month, and majored in English Lit at Harvard) does when that happens. He starts a song, the fans applaud, and he stops and says: “I haven’t sung it yet.” Then he pauses, puzzled, and asks “Have I?” And then he goes, “Aw, what the hell, I’ll sing it again.” (Now I wish I had shared Tom Rush singing “Urge for Going” with you instead of Campbell. But Glen was in the puzzle. We’ll save Tom Rush for another day. Maybe he’ll make the grid — it’s certainly a puzzle-friendly name.)

    How are we doing on the midterm?

    See you tomorrow!

  • Owl Chatter Midterm Exam

    Below you will find the Owl Chatter Midterm Exam. There are 25 multiple choice questions. It’s an open book test. A prize will be awarded to the highest score. In the event of a tie, the winner will be chosen at random while I’m drunk.

    Please submit your answers via email to: aliveson@aol.com. Deadline: 11:59pm, Sunday, January 15, 2023. Answers are based on the material presented in Owl Chatter through the Jan 8, 2023 post. (If the chatter conflicts with reality, the chatter wins.)

    Have fun class! Results will not be posted, except for announcing the winner. So any morons out there shouldn’t worry about being embarrassed by low scores. You might as well try — there’s a good chance nobody else will.

    Owl Chatter Midterm Exam

    1. The NYT crossword puzzle grid of Sunday 12/22/22 was controversial because its design appeared to show:

    a. A Christian Cross
    b. A symbol disrespectful to Muslims
    c. A swastika
    d. A Jewish Star of David

    1. The word “sockdolager” played a role in:

    a. Washington’s crossing the Delaware
    b. Jefferson’s drafting the Declaration of Independence
    c. Lincoln’s assassination
    d. The moon landing

    1. Complete this phrase: Happy as a clam ———-

    a. in high water
    b. in cold water
    c. on the beach
    d. in the sun

    1. Who is a patron saint of Owl Chatter?

    a. Ana de Armas
    b. Arthur Sullivan
    c. Joe DiMaggio
    d. Taylor Swift

    1. Which song did Taylor Swift write in response to a bad review?

    a. Red
    b. Mean
    c. Shake It Off
    d. Sticks and Stones

    1. What type of institution was named to honor Portia, the Shakespearean character in The Merchant of Venice?

    a. a nursing school
    b. a business school
    c. a medical school
    d. a law school

    1. A “smew” is a:

    a. bird
    b. rodent
    c. cactus
    d. fish

    1. A lawyer named Sue Yoo is an example of a(n)

    a. metonym
    b. homonym
    c. holonym
    d. aptronym

    1. Who was born on Pi Day (March 14th)?

    a. Groucho Marx
    b. Albert Einstein
    c. Isaac Newton
    d. Marie Antionette

    1. Marathon runner Lonah Chemtai Salpeter runs as a citizen of what country?

    a. Kenya
    b. The U.S.
    c. Israel
    d. Ghana

    1. Ai Weiwei created an artwork out of 100 million what?

    a. pebbles
    b. sunflower seeds
    c. shoelaces
    d. dried leaves

    1. Where would you find a “second line””

    a. Chicago.
    b. Disneyland
    c. Los Angelas
    d. New Orleans

    1. Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia means:

    a. fear of long words
    b. fear of large mammals
    c. fear of loud noises
    d. None of the above

    1. “I’m not really a waitress” is:

    a. a line in a movie
    b. a line in a song
    c. a shade of nail polish
    d. the name of a book

    1. “Nugatory” is a word used by whom in Owl Chatter lore?

    a. William F. Buckley
    b. Pat Moynihan
    c. Rodney Dangerfield
    d. Lisa Simpson

    1. Vuvuzela is:

    a. A country in South America
    b. A skin blemish caused by the sun
    c. A popular Peruvian casserole
    d. A horn that produces one note when blown into

    1. Hall of Famer Rod Carew was born:

    a. in a taxi
    b. in a hospital room
    c. on a train
    d. in a baseball stadium

    1. Cellist Charlotte Moorman won fame for playing the cello:

    a. With her feet
    b. In Hanoi during the Vietnam War
    c. On top of the Washington Monument
    d. Topless

    1. What part of Mary in The Pieta had to be replaced by using a block from her back after vandalism?

    a. Fingers
    b. Nose
    c. Elbow
    d. Foot

    1. Melville’s “Moby Dick” was based on an actual whale whose name was:

    a. Whitey
    b. Big Whitey
    c. Mocha Dick
    d. Larchmont

    1. What color is the Esperanto flag?

    a. Green
    b. Red
    c. Taupe
    d. There is no flag

    1. In the 2012 Olympics, gymnast Aly Raisman used what music for her gold-medal-winning “floor final?”

    a. Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off”
    b. The Norwegian National Anthem.
    c. The Beatles’ Let It Be
    d. Hava Nagila

    1. The late Don Christopher of Gilroy, CA, was known as “The [what] King?”

    a. Garlic
    b. Turnip
    c. Pumpkin
    d. Avocado

    1. What was Cincinnati Reds pitcher Tom Browning wearing when he pitched his perfect game?

    a. Two wedding rings from two marriages
    b. A Jewish “Chai” pendant
    c. Red underwear
    d. No underwear

    1. What opera did Puccini die before completing?

    a. Tommy, the Rock Opera
    b. Turandot
    c. La Boheme
    d. Madama Butterfly

  • Love Like You’ve Never Been Hurt

    Boy, things must really be bad out in California: Zelensky just sent them a planeload of stuff to help out — mops, hair dryers, buckets, rocket launchers — Oops — how’d those get in there!!?? Iryna! — not the launchers!!

    Let’s hit the ground drooling today — 29D: “Beauty pageant founded in 1959 as a mail-in photo contest.” It’s the same one the dressing room for which Trump bragged about barging into while the contestants were dressing: MISS TEEN USA. (I think that sentence holds together — if not, feel free to rearrange the parts.) Rex’s comment was “Ew, very high creep factor.”

    No one from NJ has ever won. Da noive!! Who are these judges? My Zoey turns seven on Friday — she’ll knock ’em dead when she gets there. (And don’t start me on Lianna!) Here’s Zo Zo:

    And here are two former contestants: One in the “girl-next-door” category, and one in the “cover girl” camp. Teens! Could you plotz?

    Back on earth, there was an extraordinary obit in the NYT today for Adolfo Kaminsky who died in Paris on Monday at age 97. He forged documents as part of an underground cell in France working against the Nazis that saved 10,000 lives, mostly children. His work as a clothes dyer and dry cleaner made him an expert in removing ink. At one point he was asked to produce 900 documents in three days to save 300 children. He stayed awake for two straight days and finished, telling himself: “In one hour I can make 30 blank documents. If I sleep for an hour 30 people will die.” Later in life, he used his skills to help Americans evade the draft in the Vietnam era, an effort close to owl chatter’s draft-dodging heart. In 2016, he told the Times “I saved lives because I can’t deal with unnecessary deaths — I just can’t.”

    He came close to being caught once, on the Paris Metro. A policeman asked to inspect his bag, which contained forging tools. Thinking fast, Kaminsky said: “It contains sandwiches — do you want one?” The cop moved on.

    In 2010, his daughter Sarah told a story. She had received a bad grade in school and needed her mother to sign it. She faked her mom’s signature. Her mother found out and was angry, but Adolfo laughed and said she should have done a better job: “Can’t you see it’s too small?”

    Here’s a shot of some docs he worked on, and then one of Kaminsky with his daughter. A righteous man – may he rest in peace.

    I won a teaching award in 2013 and it came with a small stipend. So I blew $200 of it on an autograph of Satchel Paige I had been coveting. It’s gorgeous. He’s in the puzzle today at 33D.

    Paige started pitching pro ball in the Negro Leagues with the Chattanooga Black Lookouts in 1926. His brilliance was legendary. Sometimes, he would ask his fielders to sit down and then strike out the sides. He was only able to pitch in the Major Leagues starting at age 42 in 1948 for Cleveland. It is still the oldest debut in MLB history. He pitched his last game at age 59, again the MLB record. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1971.

    Paige’s year of birth ranged anywhere from 1900 to 1908, to hear him tell it. He said: “I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it a hundred times: I’m 44 years old.” But in 1948 Bill Veeck, Indians’ owner, went to Mobile, Alabama, with Paige’s family, to see the actual birth certificate. It said his DOB was July 7, 1906. Veeck later also traveled to Kenya for Obama’s.

    Joe DiMaggio said Paige was the best pitcher he ever faced. He threw nothing but fastballs. He was ranked 19th best ballplayer ever, by the Sporting News. A statue of Paige was unveiled in Cooperstown, NY, in 2006. He had seven children with his wife Lahoma.

    Many wonderful quotes have been attributed to him, the most famous being: “Don’t look back — something may be gaining on you.”

    “Just take the ball and throw it where you want to. Throw strikes. Home plate don’t move.”

    “Work like you don’t need the money. Love like you’ve never been hurt. Dance like nobody’s watching.”

    Here’s what LMS said about SLOG, clued as “difficult, unfun chore.” “My sloggiest of SLOGs is emptying the dishwasher. I don’t like changing sheets, either, but the payoff is much greater. Spending a few hours in pristine, unwrinkled, clean sheets at the end of the day is so much more enjoyable than spending them in an empty dishwasher.”

    There was some grumbling about the use of the word ADULT as a verb! The clue was: “Fulfill mundane but necessary responsibilities, in modern lingo.” LMS confessed to liking it, however:

    Rex, I can’t share your hatred of the verb “to ADULT.” Indeed, I think it’s a terrific lexical repurposing that in one simple word encompasses those rites of passage like getting your oil changed, paying for car insurance, changing the ac filter in the ceiling, watching your cholesterol, blah blah. Sure, it implies that being grown up is hard, but being a grown-up *is* hard. If Matt Damon can “science the sh%$ out of this” up on Mars, then my kids can ADULT the sh%$ out of their lives. Which they’re doing beautifully I’m proud to report.”

    Let’s close today with an ANSEL Adams photo. He was in the puzzle too.

    That’s it for today, folks. I’ll be posting the midterm tomorrow! Try to get a good night’s sleep.

  • Frosted Flakes

    The puzzle’s theme today was HELLO KITTY, clued as “Fictional feline from Japan, or how one might greet [the four long answers],” which were PINK PANTHER, TONY THE TIGER, COWARDLY LION, and CHESIRE CAT.

    Commenter Burghman says that Hello Kitty is not a cat!! What? Well, he’s sort of right. (Her full name, BTW, is Kitty White.) She is an “anthropomorphized” Japanese Bobtail cat — i.e., a cat to which is attributed human form or personality. She has no visible mouth and wears a red bow. She lives in a London suburb with her family and is very close with her sister Mimmy, who wears a yellow bow. She was created in 1974 by Yuko Shimuzo, and her first item was a coin purse introduced in 1975.

    As of 2014, there were 50,000 Hello Kitty market lines, including a wine collection. Her value is estimated at $8 billion a year. And now she has a NYT puzzle honoring her. Meow!

    Proving the contention that there is pretty much nothing in the world that cannot stir controversy, commenter John H said: “Pet Peeve: The word that Tony the Tiger stretches out is “theeeeeir” then the emphatic GREAT! Not the other way around.” But if you listen to this actual ad, you’ll see what’s what:

    Aside from all those cats, there was an ANTEATER in the grid today. An anteater can stick its tongue out up to 24 inches, and flick it in and out of an anthill up to 150 times a minute. It may consume up to 30,000 ants/termites a day. An aardvark, which has a much funnier name, only goes half as far with its tongue, but it manages fine with the ant eating. Here’s a cute anteater, followed by a ‘vark.

    Christine LAHTI is the grid today, right next to DECAF, someone noted. So you can ask your barista for a decaf Lahti. She’s a “Michigan girl,” born to a nurse mom and surgeon dad and she received her BA in Drama at UMich — Go Blue! She played Dr. Kathryn Austin on Chicago Hope from 1995-1999 for which she received a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a TV Series Drama, and a bunch of nominations. She is 72, and will be celebrating her 40th anniversary with hubby-director Tom Schlamme in September. They have 3 kids.

    And Pam from The Office came by — the great comic actress Jenna Fischer! What a treat! Until looking through some of her pix, I hadn’t realized how much she looks like my beautiful daughter Caitlin in some shots. And here are two Pam quotes: “I hate the idea that someone out there hates me. I even hate thinking that al-Qaeda hates me. I think if they got to know me, they wouldn’t hate me.” And in a separate context: “I don’t care what they say about me: I just want to eat.”

    I hadn’t planned on poems or poetry today — there’s nothing poetic in the puzzle — but they kept hitting me over the head, everywhere I turned. Two major obits in the Times, and then The Writer’s Almanac told me it’s Philip Levine’s birthday — he was Poet Laureate of the U.S. in 2011-2012. He was from Detroit, thus the cap (below), and was known as a “working class” poet. He passed away in 2015 at age 87.

    He said: “You have to follow where the poem leads. And it will surprise you. It will say things you didn’t expect to say. And you look at the poem and you realize, ‘That is truly what I felt.’ That is truly what I saw.”

    Next is Naomi Replansky, who was born in The Bronx, and died on Saturday at 104. She attended Hunter College! Here’s her poem “An Inheritance.”

    Five dollars, four dollars, three dollars, two,
    One, and none, and what do we do?”
    This is the worry that never got said
    But ran so often in my mother’s head.
    And showed so plain in my father’s frown
    That to us kids it drifted down.
    It drifted down like soot, like snow,
    In the dream-tossed Bronx, in the long ago.
    I shook it off with a shake of the head.
    I bounced my ball, I ate warm bread.
    I skated down the steepest hill.
    But I must have listened, against my will:
    When the wind blows wrong, I can hear it today.
    Then my mother’s worry stops all play
    And, as if in its rightful place,
    My father’s frown divides my face.

    And last is Charles Simic, Poet Laureate of the U.S. in 2007-2008, who died yesterday at 84. The idea of old age and death did not faze him, according to the Times. A spring day made him so happy, he said, that even if he had to face a firing squad he would “Smile like a hairdresser/Giving Cameron Diaz a shampoo.”

    That’s a nice thought to end on. See you tomorrow!

  • Trying To Put Chaos In Order

    If you enjoy picking nits, Crossworld is for you. Today’s clue at 33D was “San Pellegrino offering,” and the answer was LEMON SODA. Innocent enough? Hardly. It was taken to task on two grounds: Sanpellegrino is one word (OMG, it is!), and their product is “Limonata, a sparkling lemon beverage,” not “soda.”

    If you go to the company website, it does confirm the “one word” gripe. The mineral water is S. Pellegrino, but the company is consistently listed as Sanpellegrino. They don’t use the word “soda” themselves, preferring “sparkling beverage,” or various other terms, but defenders note that since it contains sugar and is carbonated, it meets the definition of soda. Sheesh.

    “Music Mann?,” at 41A was AIMEE. She was born in Richmond, VA, and is 62 years old — yikes! She’s six feet tall, with long arms to reach all the way down to lace up her boots. Oh, hi Aimee — didn’t mean to interrupt. Owl chatter here.

    Aimee Mann’s newest album, Mental Illness, is out now

    When she was three, her mother had an affair and became pregnant and her parents divorced. Aimee was kidnapped by her mother and her new boyfriend and taken to Europe. Her father, a marketing executive, hired a private detective, who brought her back from England a year later to a new stepmother and two stepbrothers. Aimee said her father was like a stranger when they were reunited, and she did not see her mother again until she was 14. It scarred her.

    In addition to her prodigious musical successes, she was in The Big Lebowski, and, on TV, in The West Wing. Mann said songwriting is “an exercise in order… To attempt to describe something — to make connections, to put pieces together, to try to sum up complicated ideas in a three-and-a-half minute song — that’s trying to put chaos in order for me.” She names Leonard Cohen and Elton John among her influences.

    For puzzles, it’s important to remember that it’s SACHA Baron Cohen, not “Sasha.” He’s a pretty serious guy, when not in the role of a lunatic like Borat. He says things like: “I remember, when I was in university I studied history, and there was this one major historian of the Third Reich, Ian Kershaw. And his quote was, ‘The path to Auschwitz was paved with indifference.’ I know it’s not very funny being a comedian talking about the Holocaust, but I think it’s an interesting idea that not everyone in Germany had to be a raving anti-Semite. They just had to be apathetic.”

    Cohen is not a religious Jew, but tries to keep kosher and goes to services about twice a year. He married actress Isla Fisher after she converted to Judaism and they have three kids. In 2015, they donated $500,000 to Save the Children to help vaccinate children in northern Syria against measles; they donated the same amount to the International Rescue Committee, also aimed at helping Syrian refugees.

    After Borat, the government of Kazakhstan threatened Cohen with legal action. The NYT reported that Cohen (in character as Borat) replied: “I’d like to state that I have no connection with Mr. Cohen and fully support my government decision to sue this Jew.”

    He was, however, defended by Dariga Nazarbayeva, the daughter of Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who stated, “We should not be afraid of humor and we shouldn’t try to control everything.” The deputy foreign minister invited Cohen to visit the country, stating that he could learn that “women drive cars, wine is made of grapes, and Jews are free to go to synagogues.” After the success of the Borat film, the Kazakh government, including the President, altered their stance on Cohen’s parody, recognizing the invaluable press coverage the controversy created for their country. And the number of men who are married to goats has dropped substantially.

    Cohen played Abbie Hoffman in the Trial of the Chicago 7 film in 2020, and guest starred in a Simpsons episode as a quick-tempered Israeli tour guide.

    NON EXCLUSIVE PICTURE: MATRIXPICTURES.CO.UK PLEASE CREDIT ALL USES WORLD RIGHTS EXCEPT AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, USA, CANADA, FRANCE, SPAIN, ITALY, PORTUGAL AND GERMANY Scottish-Australian actress Isla Fisher and her husband, English comedian and actor Sacha Baron Cohen, spend some quality family time together in Sydney, Australia with their two children Olive & Elula by taking a walk and a boat ride. OCTOBER 13th 2011 REF: OMG 111836

    Did someone mention Abbie? — former Sandwich Man in the dorms at Brandeis? Here’s a quote: “Women’s rights? I can’t support women’s rights. The next thing you know, men will want rights too!”

    At 39A, the clue was “‘A guy walks into a bar’ may start one,” and the answer was JOKE. Here’s Norrie’s favorite (Hi Nor!) — A skeleton walks into a bar. The bartender says “What’ll it be?,” and the skeleton says: “A beer and a mop, please.”

    At 44A, the clue was “Cocktail named for two iconic beverage brands,” and the answer was JACK AND COKE. The JACK is Jack Daniels, of course. Remember Pacino in Scent of a Woman asking Charlie for a “John Daniels?” Charlie says, “Isn’t it Jack?” and Pacino replies: “Well, when you’ve known him as long as I have . . . “

    I don’t know why I find this poem by Ted Kooser so moving. It can’t be that I’m getting soft, because I’ve always been soft. Anyway, it’s called “Splitting an Order.” Thanks for stopping by. I’ll see you tomorrow.

    I like to watch an old man cutting a sandwich in half,
    maybe an ordinary cold roast beef on whole wheat bread,
    no pickles or onion, keeping his shaky hands steady
    by placing his forearms firm on the edge of the table
    and using both hands, the left to hold the sandwich in place,
    and the right to cut it surely, corner to corner,
    observing his progress through glasses that moments before
    he wiped with his napkin, then to see him lift half
    onto the extra plate that he asked the server to bring,
    and then to wait, offering the plate to his wife
    while she slowly unrolls her napkin and places her spoon,
    her knife, and her fork in their proper places,
    then smooths the starched white napkin over her knees
    and meets his eyes and holds out both hands to him.

  • Flat Wrong About Iowa

    The Jets season has mercifully come to a close. Faced with a chance to make the playoffs for the first time in who-remembers, they lost their last six games, failing to score a single touchdown in the last three. It’s a good thing I’m not the sort of fan who gets bitter (much). Here’s their poor coach. He had a full head of hair when the season started.

    Have you heard of the word “supervocalic?” Rex used it today. It describes a word that contains all 5 vowels (excluding y). Supervocalic itself is supervocalic, btw. In today’s puzzle, the clue for 14D was “Ambidextrous features?” and the answer was AEIOU, because “ambidextrous” is supervocalic.

    That’s the sort of thing, incidentally, that may be on the test. Have I not mentioned the test? — I’ll be posting your owl chatter midterm exam probably sometime next week. It will be all multiple choice questions — no essays. It will cover all owl chatter posts up to today’s: January 8. That’s a ton of material, so don’t leave your studying for the last minute (and don’t spend all your review time drooling over Taylor Swift or Ana de Armas, fellas.)

    The highest test score will win a prize. In the event of duplicate results, ties will be awarded. No, that last sentence was a joke — in the event of duplicate high scores, a winner will be selected at random by my granddaughter Zoey’s cat Emily, whom you can see napping, below.

    It’s Elvis’s birthday today, born in Tupelo, Mississippi in 1935. When he was eleven, he asked his parents for a bike, but they couldn’t afford one and got him a guitar instead — for $12.95 at Tupelo Hardware. His family moved to Memphis two years later. When he was 18 and working as a truck driver, he spent $4 to record two songs as a gift for his mom. The recording studio also housed Sun Records, owned by Sam Phillips. Phillips heard Elvis singing and asked if he knew any more songs. Ka Boom!

    You know what Elvis looked like. Here’s Sam Phillips.

    Nice to see Hall of Famer Rod CAREW in the grid today at 78A, clued by reference to his seven A.L. batting titles. Only Ty Cobb won more (12 – yikes!). Even though I was expecting a lot, his Wikipedia writeup blew me away. E.g., he appeared in 18 straight All-Star games. Chai! He hit .388 in 1977 and was the A.L. MVP. Get this — the A.L. batting title — the award itself — was named after him in 2016. So if you win the A.L. batting title now, you are the “Rod Carew American League Batting Champion.” (The N.L. crown is named after Tony Gwynn.) Carew stole home 7 times in 1969. How do you do that, even once?

    Carew is a “Zonian,” i.e. born in the Panama Canal Zone, which was a political entity at the time (it was since absorbed into Panama). He was actually born on a train that was in the Zone. His mother was Panamanian. The train was racially segregated; white passengers were given the better forward cars, while non-whites, like Carew’s mother, were forced to ride in the rearward cars. Traveling on the train was Dr. Rodney Cline, who delivered the baby. In appreciation, Mrs. Carew named the boy Rodney Cline Carew. [My grandson Leon was named after one of Caity’s doctors. The circumstances were markedly different: Caity just liked the doctor’s name: Leon.]

    Carew never converted to Judaism, although he wore a chai necklace during his playing days. His first wife, Marilynn Levy, is Jewish, and he was a member of Temple Beth Shalom in Santa Ana, California. Their three daughters, Charryse, Stephanie, and Michelle, were raised Jewish and had their bat mitzvahs there. When Michelle died of leukemia at age 18, services were held at Beth Shalom, and she was buried in the family plot at a Jewish cemetery in Richfield, Minnesota. Carew has always identified as Episcopalian. (It sounds like he was “Jew-ish.”) Carew and Marilyn divorced in 2000, after 30 years of marriage.

    In September, 2015, Carew suffered a major heart attack, and he received a heart transplant on December 15, 2016. Carew’s heart was donated by former Baltimore Ravens tight end Konrad Reuland who had attended middle school with Carew’s children. Carew participated in the 2018 Rose Parade aboard the Donate Life float, in honor of Reuland.

    Here’s an autographed card of Rod Carew from my collection.

    Speak of the devil — or, in this case, angel. The lovely ANA de Armas made the grid again today at 120A. Hi Ana! You are always welcome at owl chatter.

    I was today old when I learned from the puzzle that an ATOLL is an island formed by a coral reef that forms around an underwater volcano. There are about 440 in the world, most of them in the Pacific Ocean. Over time the volcanic island subsides leaving a lagoon surrounded by the reef.

    Department of Corrections. How fitting that IOWAN is the answer at 39A today, clued by “Like Captain James T. Kirk, by birth.” Iowan Pam tells us Bill Lee is wrong about Iowa being flat, as noted yesterday. But it’s more likely it is I who am wrong in remembering his quote. It may have been a different state, if not the state of confusion. [Don: you read Lee’s book — can you help?] Here’s Pam’s note. (Maybe it was Kansas.)

    “Iowa is not flat, but rather a state of rolling hills. Growing up I had a big one to climb to get home by bike or by foot. If you want flat, drive across Kansas!
    Here is a link to a picture of the beautiful fields of dreams and please note the undulations!”

    Please accept sincere owl chatter apologies for dissing your home state, Ms. Smith.

    I’d like to end by sharing a picture of Rex Parker, whose daily blog on the NYT crossword was a small part of the inspiration for owl chatter. It’s a silly picture of him with his cat, Olive, who died last year.

    And here is what he wrote about her in summing up his 2022:

    “I love the photo both because you can tell how goofy she is, and how goofy she made me. Her loss hurt for the obvious reasons, but also because she was so much a part of my daily routine, my daily rhythms and rituals. She was everyday. Quotidian. Just . . . on me, near me, being a weirdo, especially in the (very) early mornings when I was writing the blog. She took me out of myself. She also made me aware of how much the quotidian matters, how daily rituals break up and organize the day, mark time, ground you. They’re easy to trivialize, these rituals, precisely because they aren’t special. Feed the cats again, make the coffee again, solve the crossword again, etc. But losing Olive made me reevaluate the daily, the quotidian, the apparently trivial. In a fundamental way, those small daily things are life. No one day is so important, or so different from the others, but cumulatively, they add up, and through the days upon days you develop a practice—a practice of love, care, and attention given to the things that matter.”

    Happy puzzling, everybody! See you tomorrow!

  • Charlotte and Zora

    After yesterday’s segment on Yo Yo Ma, dare we discuss another cellist: Charlotte Moorman? Oh, we have to. There’s always room for cello.

    Moorman was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, on Nov. 18, 1933 and died in NYC ten days short of her 58th birthday. She was a cellist but better known as an advocate for, and performer of, avant garde music. She was the founder of the NY Avant Garde Festival. Upon graduating from Julliard, she began a traditional career but was pushed towards the avant garde by her friend and roommate Yoko Ono. Moorman said that one day she grew tired of a Kabalevsky cello piece she was playing, and someone suggested that she play John Cage’s “26 Minutes, 1.1499 Seconds for a String Player,” which, among other things, requires the performer to prepare and eat mushrooms. Once you color outside the lines, all hell breaks loose.

    For the sixth Festival she performed a piece called Sky Kiss while suspended in the air from helium-filled weather balloons.

    On February 9, 1967, Moorman performed Nam June Paik’s Opera Sextronique. During the first movement, Moorman played Elegy by Jules Massenet in the dark while wearing a bikini that had blinking lights. For the second movement, she played International Lullaby by Max Mathews while topless, and was arrested mid-performance. She was not able to return to perform the last two movements. She was charged with indecent exposure, though her penalty was later suspended, and she gained nationwide fame as the “topless cellist.” She was fired from the American Symphony Orchestra. (Fuck them!) Following Moorman’s death, Paik made a film entitled Topless Cellist (1995) about her life and avant-garde performances.

    Here are some pix.

    In the September 12, 2016 issue of The New Yorker, Hilton Als reviews an exhibition on Moorman in an art gallery. He states: “One sees Moorman as she left us: electrified and alive to the ideas that she put forth as true performer-revolutionaries do, by making an example with her body, right there, naked and playful and truthful, in real time.”

    It’s Zora Neale Hurston’s birthday today (Saturday). She was born in Notasulga, Alabama, in 1891 and grew up in Eatonville, Florida, the first incorporated African-American community in the U.S., with a population of about 125. Hurston loved it there. She is best known for the novel “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” which I’m glad I read. She studied anthropology at Barnard College on a scholarship. She was the only Black student at Barnard. She founded the Harlem Renaissance and was honored with a U. S. postage stamp, but died in poverty in 1960 and was buried in an unmarked grave.

    The clue for 32D today was “Bill Clinton played one on ‘The Arsenio Hall Show’ in 1992,” and the answer was TENORSAX. It prompted egs to chime in with:

    Was it the soprano’s gun that killed him?
    No, the TENORSAX.

    I like seeing Yiddish in the puzzle. The clue at 38A was “He’s a mensch.” ANS: STAND UP GUY.

    MEEPLE was new to me: “Human-shaped board game piece.”

    Everyone’s fave today was 33A: “Eco-centric college class,” and the answer was ITALIAN LIT. Get it? “Eco” is the writer Umberto Eco.

    Heard of Eero Aarnio? Me neither. It’s a clue puzzlers refer to as a WOE —What on earth? He’s a Finnish interior designer, 90 years old now, who designed the bubble chair and other items that formed part of pop culture in the 60s. The bubble chair was suspended from the ceiling.

    Ken JENNINGS of Jeopardy fame hit the grid at 15D. As many of you know, he won Jeopardy 74 times in a row, netting over $2.5 million while doing so. He was beaten by Nancy Zerg on his 75th appearance. The Final Jeopardy category was Business & Industry, and the clue was “Most of this firm’s 70,000 seasonal white-collar employees work only four months a year.” Zerg knew it (H&R Block), but KJ blanked and guessed Fedex. Alex Trebek called Zerg a “giant killer.” (She came in third in the next show.)

    Jennings is an active Twitter user, and some of his tweets have been controversial (which is a euphemism for assholey). In 2014, he angered disability rights groups by tweeting, “Nothing sadder than a hot person in a wheelchair.” He may not be a mensch.

    Here’s Nancy Zerg.

    For some reason, the commentariat got into bad (punny) jokes about the 50 states today. They were really bad, e.g., “You don’t like my Maryland joke — stop being so crabby.” There is a point at which jokes are so bad that they become funny for being so bad. These didn’t get there — they were unredeemingly bad.

    But they reminded me of a line I liked about Iowa by Bill Lee, the wonderful pitcher for the Red Sox many years ago. He said Iowa was so flat, you could stand on a chair and watch your dog leave you for three days.

    We schlepped into the city to see a production of Gilbert & Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore at Hunter College by the NY G&S Players today. The cast was terrific — every song was done well. And the silliness was relentless. As the lights went down, we were asked to silence our devices and locate the emergency exits and lifeboats. When the Captain stepped on board the ship, he assured the crew he had just tested negative for Covid.

    I hereby appoint both of them (W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan) the Patron Saints of Owl Chatter. Here’s a quote from it:

    “I am poor in the essence of happiness, lady — rich only in never-ending unrest. In me there meet a combination of antithetical elements which are at eternal war with one another. Driven hither by objective influences — thither by subjective emotions — wafted one moment into blazing day, by mocking hope — plunged the next into the Cimmerian darkness of tangible despair, I am but a living ganglion of irreconcilable antagonisms. I hope I make myself clear, lady?”

    Thanks for stopping by!

  • Difficult Music

    How do you know when the violist is playing out of tune?

    ANS: The bow is moving.

    But it was not a violist’s bow in the puzzle this morning, it was a CELLO BOW, and not just any cello bow — the bow of the great Yo Yo Ma.

    Ma was quite a child prodigy. At age 3, he was playing the violin and piano. He settled on the cello at the ripe old age of 4. By 7 he was brilliant enough to perform for Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy.

    Even more remarkable, in the womb, on the morning of his birth, he strummed “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight,” on his mother’s umbilical cord.

    In addition to his many musical accomplishments, it was interesting to learn that in 1999 he collaborated with landscape architects to design a Bach-inspired garden. It interprets Bach’s Suite No. 1 in G Major for unaccompanied cello, with the garden’s sections designed to correspond with the suite’s dance movements. It was built in Toronto’s Harbourfront neighborhood.

    Here’s a shot of the garden, followed by one of Ma himself, upon learning that he’d be featured in owl chatter today.

    Both of Yo Yo Ma’s children, Emily and Nicholas, studied at Julliard and are accomplished cellists in their own right. Here’s dad with Emily.

    One of our favorite actors, John TURTURRO, popped into the grid at 24D: “John of ‘The Big Lebowski.’” He was born in Brooklyn and still lives there, in Park Slope. He’ll be 66 at the end of next month.

    His first role was non-speaking, as an extra in Scorsese’s “Raging Bull.” Spike Lee is such a big Turturro fan that he’s used him in nine of his films, more than any other actor. If you were a fan of the TV show “Monk,” you may recall his portrayal of Monk’s reclusive brother, Ambrose, for which he won an Emmy. Ambrose made Monk seem normal. In all, JT has appeared in over 60 films. An owl-chatter favorite was “A Box Of Moonlight,” with Sam Rockwell (1996).

    He is married to Katherine Borowitz, a former actress, now a social worker. They have two kids. Here he is as Jesus in Lebowski.

    And here is he, with the missus.

    Anybody hear of JUDITH HEUMANN? She wheeled herself right across the center of the puzzle today at 35A with the clue: “Leading disability rights activist in the 2020 documentary ‘Crip Camp.’” She spearheaded the rights movement for the disabled. It’s a terrific movie.

    Heumann turned 75 last month. She lives in Washington DC with her husband, Jorge Pineda. She contracted polio when she was 18 months old and has been wheelchair bound since. It hasn’t slowed her down.

    In 1977, Heumann took on HEW Sec’y Joseph Califano who was refusing to implement laws protecting the rights of the disabled. She staged a sit-in with 125 disabled folks in the HEW federal building in Washington DC. Califano ordered no food or medicine be brought into the building, but the protesters found ways to circumvent the order, including the receipt of help from the Black Panthers who had a disabled member in her group. The protest lasted 28 days and ended with Califano capitulating. It remains the longest protest ever to take place in a federal building.

    Heumann has held positions in the World Bank, the State Department, the Clinton Administration, and the Ford Foundation. In her younger years, she fought discrimination that she faced personally by filing lawsuits. For example, in 1970, Heumann was denied her NYS teaching license because the Board did not believe she could get herself or her students out of the building in case of a fire, so she sued. With FDR in mind, a local newspaper ran the headline “You Can Be President, Not Teacher, with Polio.” The case settled without a trial, and Heumann became the first wheelchair user to teach in New York City.

    Thank goodness for Judith today. Otherwise it would be all men. CONAN O’Brien popped in too. Here are some of his quotes:

    “When all else fails, there’s always delusion.” (Amen to that, CO.)

    “Starbucks says they are going to start putting religious quotes on cups. The first one will say, ‘Jesus! This cup is expensive!’”

    “My favorite comedy is comedy where nothing is achieved and there is no point.” [Me too.]

    Here’s a poem by Kooser that is not from Winter Morning Walks. It’s from Delights & Shadows and is in his collection Kindest Regards. I am so glad I was able to track it down because it’s especially appropriate for today:

    A Rainy Morning

    A young woman in a wheelchair,
    wearing a black nylon poncho spattered with rain,
    is pushing herself through the morning.
    You have seen how pianists
    sometimes bend forward to strike the keys,
    then lift their hands, draw back to rest,
    then lean again to strike just as the chord fades.
    Such is the way this woman
    strikes at the wheels, then lifts her long white fingers,
    letting them float, then bends again to strike
    just as the chair slows, as if into a silence.
    So expertly she plays the chords
    of this difficult music she has mastered,
    her wet face beautiful in its concentration,
    while the wind turns the pages of rain.

  • Soil As Soft As Summer

    Anne Clarke, of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, had had enough. More than enough, truth be told. So she filed for divorce from her shitbag husband Dennis, an adulterer who abandoned her and their two children. Dennis conceded his shitbaggedness, and the divorce was granted. Court records show: “She is garunted to bee divorced.” And thus we have the first legal divorce recorded in the American colonies, on this very date, in 1643.

    Many years ago, I had to reserve a campsite for the July 4th weekend, so I called Andre at Privacy Campground in Hancock MA. He told me the cost would be $17 a night for two people plus a dollar extra for each additional camper. I told him there would be four of us, so it would be $19 a night.

    We needed the site for two nights, but he said it was a holiday weekend so there was a three-night minimum. That was fine with me, but it seemed silly to be paying the extra $2 for the night we weren’t going to be there. So I said, “Okay. But that third night – the night we’re not going to be there? Only two of us won’t be there.” It didn’t work. He pretended to not understand what I was saying, so I just let it go. Here’s a photo of all four of us, not there:

    I see in the NYT today that Romeo and Juliet are suing!! They claim they were sexually abused as minors. It’s no idle owl chatter: it’s a real lawsuit. California opened up a three-year window in its statute of limitations to allow for minors to file civil suits for sexual abuse they suffered long ago. (It closed last Saturday.) So Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting (Romeo and Juliet) are suing Paramount Pics over nude footage of them in Zeffirelli’s 1968 film. J was 16 at the time, and R was 17. They claim they were assured there would be no nudity, but were duped! “Images of plaintiffs’ nude bodies were secretly and unlawfully obtained during the performance,” the suit asserts. Zeffirelli himself bears much of the blame for the deception, but he died in 2019. The suit states the studio “knew or should have known” about it.

    Hussey said she was told she’d be able to wear a flesh-colored body suit for the scene in question, but when it was shot Zef told her she’d have to be nude for it to work. It was filmed on a closed set with only essential crew present, but she recalled one incident in which a “dirty old man” on the crew had to be removed. Hey! Dirty old men have rights too!! Hrummmmmph!

    I can see why R fell for her.

    Speaking of nudes, the NYTXW continues tossing tuchases at us. We’ve had one on three out of the five days of 2023 so far. Today’s was “Biblical mount,” at 30D: ASS. It was appropriately placed in the grid on the other side of, and below, ABS, at 20A (“Pilates target”).

    The clue for 21D was a great word: “Lachrymose,” and the answer was TEARY. So my question for you is: after you’ve had a good cry, are you lachrymoist?

    The clue for 52A was “Recover from a bender,” with the answer SOBER UP. LMS noted she misread the clue at first as “Recover from a blender.” And then she just said “Gruesome.”

    “Good name for a marine biologist” at 4D was RAE. And I was thinking a good name for the Whirlpool salesman (who sold me my new microwave oven today), would be Eddie.

    In yesterday’s New Yorker puzzle by brilliant constructor Patrick Berry, one of the answers was “Alan Smithee.” Here’s the story:

    During the filming of Death of a Gunfighter, released in 1969, actor Richard Widmark was at odds with the director, Robert Totten, and used his influence to have him replaced by Don Siegel. Siegel did not want the credit as the director because he worked on only ten days of shooting, plus he claimed Widmark was really in control. But Totten didn’t want the credit either since he was bitter about being replaced. In the end, a pseudonym was used: Alan Smithee. The film got good reviews. The NY Times said it was “sharply directed by Alan Smithee who has an adroit facility for scanning faces and extracting sharp background detail.” Roger Ebert wrote, “Director Alan Smithee, a name I’m not familiar with, allows his story to unfold naturally.”

    “Alan Smithee” was then used retroactively for the director’s credit for the film Fade In. The director, Jud Taylor, wanted to make a statement that he was overly interfered with on the film. Since then, the name has been used for the director in over two dozen films, where, for one reason or another, the actual director did not want the credit. An urban legend arose saying the name “Alan Smithee” was being used because it is an anagram of “the alias men,” but there is no evidence for this assertion.

    Listen to this! — In 1997, the film An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn was released, in which a man named Alan Smithee (played by Eric Idle) wishes to disavow a film he directed, but is unable to do so because the only pseudonym he is permitted to use is his own name. The film was directed by Arthur Hiller, who complained that producer Joe Eszterhas had interfered with his creative control, and successfully removed his own name from the film, so Alan Smithee was credited instead! The film was a commercial and critical flop scoring only an 8 rating (out of 100) on Rotten Tomatoes. It won a “worst picture” award. The name Alan Smithee gained so much attention from this film that it was retired from use as a pseudonym.

    Michelangelo’s PIETA graced the grid today at 62A, the only piece Michelangelo ever signed. It’s had a tough life since its creation in 1498-1499. Mary lost four fingers on her left hand during a move. WTF!! They should have used the Seven Santini Brothers!

    More seriously, on May 21, 1972, a mentally disturbed geologist, Laszlo Toth, attacked the sculpture with a geologist’s hammer while shouting, “I am Jesus Christ; I have risen from the dead!” With 15 blows he removed Mary’s arm at the elbow, knocked off a chunk of her nose, and chipped one of her eyelids. Bob Cassilly, an American sculptor and artist from St. Louis, Missouri, was one of the first people to remove Toth from the Pietà. “I leaped up and grabbed the guy by the beard. We both fell into the crowd of screaming Italians. It was something of a scene.” Onlookers took many of the pieces of marble that flew off. Later, some were returned, but Mary’s nose wasn’t, and it had to be reconstructed from a block cut out of her back. (The same thing happened to a cousin of mine: now, whenever you slap him on the back, he sneezes.)

    I told our Vermont friend Lizzie that she had climbed into Leonard Cohen’s song “Sisters of Mercy,” in caring so relentlessly for our ailing friend Susan. I defied her to come up with a lyric more beautiful than “If your life is a leaf that the seasons tear off and condemn, they will bind you with love that is graceful and green as a stem.”

    In response, she shared one of her favorites with me: A Paul Simon song I was not familiar with, “Further to Fly.” Here’s the second chorus:

    There may come a time when I will lose you
    Lose you as I lose my light
    Days falling backward into velvet night
    The open palm of desire wants everything, it wants everything
    It wants soil as soft as summer
    And the strength to push like spring

    Thanks for stopping by. See you tomorrow.

  • Mo Says:

    Owl-chatter will resume tomorrow, after I fly home with Mom and Dad.

    Morris

    Good night!