The Wellington Files

  • Germany 3, England 2

    To steal LMS’s phrase, “I was today old” when I learned that Beethoven originally named his Third Symphony to honor Napoleon Bonaparte, who was a hero of his as a “man of the people.” But that image was exploded when Bonaparte declared himself Emperor. When Beethoven found out, he broke into a rage and exclaimed, “So he is no more than a common mortal! Now, too, he will tread under foot all the rights of Man, indulge only his ambition; now he will think himself superior to all men, become a tyrant!” Beethoven seized the top of the title-page, tore it in half and threw it on the floor. The page had to be recopied, and the symphony was renamed The Eroica (heroic) Symphony.

    But he must later have had mixed feelings. A copy of the score that still exists has two handwritten subtitles that included “Bonaparte” scratched out. But three months later he told his publisher the title was really Bonaparte, and it was eventually published with the title “Heroic Symphony — composed to celebrate the memory of a great man.”

    There were eight 15-letter answers in today’s puzzle — 2 each next to each other, and symmetrically placed, in each direction. Quite a feat of construction. And one was BEETHOVEN’S THIRD, thus the above chatter. Another one was ELECTRICAL POWER that was clued “It’s measured in watts,” and may have been a subtle link to another answer: TYRESE Gibson, the singer and actor, who was born and raised with his three older siblings by his single mom in Watts (LA) after his dad left them. Quite a success story. He has sold over 4 million records in the U.S. and is an actor in the “Fast and Furious” films. He got his start when his HS music teacher suggested he audition for a Coke commercial. I guess it went well.

    My favorite of the long answers was ALABAMA SLAMMERS “Southern Comfort cocktails.” I don’t drink them, I just like how they sound. It led LMS to comment:

    “I was at my sister’s last night for a Christmas party, and her husband had an array of bottles in his makeshift bar. Southern Comfort was among them. We were thinking of different cocktails, but ALABAMA SLAMMER didn’t come up. Well, actually, we were trying to invent Christmas-themed cocktails like a ‘Mistletoe Margarita’ and a ‘Santa Sidecar.’ I said, Hey! How ‘bout a Tom Coins?! Crickets. Blank stares. I explained, You know, the noel version!. They still didn’t get it. Sigh. Rodney Dangerfield and all that.”

    It took me longer to figure out Tom Coins than to do the puzzle, but I got it. The “Noel” version of a “Tom Collins” would be a Tom Coins, — after you remove the “Ls.” Get it? Noel!

    Before I saw that I thought it might have come from a Rodney Dangerfield line so I googled “Dangerfield Tom Coins,” but got nothing. She only mentioned Rodney because she “got no respect.” I did get to listen to some of his lines though. Here’s one:

    Boy, my neighborhood is tough – I asked a cop, “How long does it take to get to the subway from here?” He said, “I don’t know — no one’s ever made it.”

    Today’s “Writer’s Almanac” recounted a well-known WWI Christmas Eve story I had heard, but it added (for me) a crucial fact. As you may know, the fighting in the trenches was brutal, but on Christmas Eve 1914 British soldiers heard the Germans singing Silent Night at one point and joined in. Then both sides raised candles and lanterns and a German said, “Tomorrow is Christmas, if you don’t fight, we won’t fight,” and a truce settled in for the one day.

    The Germans sent over beer and the British sent over plum pudding, and they met in between the lines and exchanged handshakes and small gifts. Someone produced a soccer ball and a game ensued. Fighting resumed on the 26th.

    The “new fact” I learned was that the Germans won the soccer match, 3-2. (Britain won the war.)

    In general, during the war, soccer often helped reduce tension among the troops. Here’s a shot of an impromptu game that was played in Greece on Christmas Day, 1915.

    The clue at 3 down was a trick! “Bush growth” didn’t mean “shrub,” it meant something native to the “Bush region” of Australia, i.e., the undeveloped and unsettled region (not as remote as the Outback which is more rugged and arid). And the answer was EUCALYPTUS TREES, most species of which are native to Australia, with only a few present outside the continent.

    Eucalypt wood is commonly used to make didgeridoos, the traditional Aboriginal wind instrument. The trunk of the tree is hollowed out by termites, and then cut down if the bore is of the correct size and shape. This one may be getting a thumbs up? Hard to tell.

    George SEGAL, alav hashalom, was at 22 down, clued as “Actor George of ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’” He was so young in that movie. He played Nick to Sandy Dennis’s Honey, and, of course, Richard Burton and Liz Taylor were George and Martha. All four received Oscar nominations and both women won. Burton lost out for Best Actor to Paul Schofield in “A Man For All Seasons.” Segal lost out for Best Supporting Actor to Walter Matthau in “The Fortune Cookie.” Mike Nichols directed Woolf and was also nominated, but lost out to Fred Zinnemann for “A Man For All Seasons.”

    One of my favorite Segal movies was “The Hot Rock” with Robert Redford. Wonderfully funny. Ron Liebman as the car-obsessed getaway driver was especially good. Sadly, Liebman died in 2019.

    Here’s an exchange Segal had with Jacqueline Bisset, who was playing Natasha (“Nat”) in “Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe?:”

    Segal: Come on, Nat, you don’t consider a roll in the hay with your secretary adultery?

    Bisset: What do you call it, shorthand?

    Here’s George, and then Jackie.

    Happy Happy Merry Merry, everyone! Thanks for stopping by.

  • Bang The Drum Slowly

    Ha! The clue for 42A today is “End of one’s money,” and the answer was BOTTOM DOLLAR. The Joker noted: “Bottom dollars are what one pays for a BBL.”

    The clue for 28D was “Stay out of it!,” and the answer was MYOB (“mind your own business”). Egsforbreakfast crafted this “invitation to a cheap introvert’s party:” BYOB and MYOB.

    The clue for 9D was “High-tech security device,” and the answer was RETINALSCANNER. Egsforbreakfast noted: “If you don’t like canned retinals, don’t get a retinalscanner.”

    At 39A, “Hennery” was the clue for COOP, and LMS chimed in with: “Love the word hennery because -ery is my favorite suffix. A connery could be a prison, amirite? I like that, in addition to denoting a place, -ery can be tacked on to indicate a kind of behavior – jackassery, quackery, etc.”

    [I don’t have a favorite suffix. I need to get out more.]

    At 52D, a “good name for a florist or optometrist” was IRIS. And I was thinking a good name for an optometrist or a proctologist might be “Rod.” (Ouch!)

    Bang the drums for Elayne Jones, who died last Saturday at the age of 94. She was a percussionist, and had quite a tale to tell. How did she choose percussion? “Racism,” said Jones . “Mr. Russ [her high school teacher] handed me a pair of drumsticks and said, ‘We all know that Negroes have rhythm.’ When my family would visit Barbados during my childhood, I loved the music and the dancing and the drummers, but it never entered my mind that I would play drums someday.”

    Her talent took her to the High School of Music and Art in NY, and then to Julliard. Jones graduated from Juilliard in 1949, and that summer, she attended the Tanglewood Music Festival in the Berkhires, performing in the student orchestra. She studied with Roman Szulc, then-timpanist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, as well as other musicians such as Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland. She said the six weeks at Tanglewood were one of the happiest experiences of her life.

    Her career began with the NYC Opera and then the American Symphony Orchestra led by Leopold Stokowski, who was a great supporter of Jones. When she subbed briefly with the NY Philharmonic in 1958, she became the first Black musician to perform with them. She encountered racism and sexism every step of the way. She was instrumental in introducing the concept of the “blind audition,” in which performers audition behind a screen so race is not a factor.

    When an opening arose in the San Francisco Symphony in 1972, she was awarded the position with the support of Seiji Ozawa, the music director, and she quickly wowed the SF music critics. One wrote that her work was “so rounded and suave, I just about fell out of my seat.”

    After two years, however, despite her excellence and the full support of Mr. Ozawa, she was denied tenure by a committee of seven white men, two of whom rated her talent at 1 out of 100. Audience members picketed and organized petition drives and Ozawa resigned, although he stated it was for unrelated reasons. Jones sued the orchestra and the musicians’ union. A judge ordered a second, supervised vote by a new committee, but she was denied tenure again, supposedly based on her intonation. She took a tenured position with the SF Opera and had a superlative career, but her experience with the orchestra remained with her, bitterly. “I think her greatest contribution to percussion was that she paved the way for women and non-white players in the mostly-white world of classical music,” a fellow timpanist said. “Also, her strength as a player and as a survivor. And she was so much fun to watch!“

    [Linda and I have been attending concerts of the NJ Symphony for decades and their timpanist from 1971 until his retirement in 2015, was a much-loved Black musician, Randall Hicks. Sadly, Mr. Hicks passed away in 2019.]

    This photo is the cover of Elayne Jones’s autobiography, published in 2019.

    My g-daughter Lianna is in 7th grade in the Summit NJ school district. So she’ll be in high school in two years, if all goes well, kinehora. So I get emails from the “Boosters,” with news about the high school sports teams. Is it common for a public school to have a women’s ice hockey team? Summit does. (And so does Chatham (I just looked it up.)) It sounds brutal. Here are a few sentences from the write-up of a recent game. No one died, but the language is pretty gruesome — slashing and killing seems to be a routine part of the vernacular:

    “Josie DiFeo scored early after a turnover on the blue line. Later in the period, Anneliese Claus got called for a slash. While on the kill, Elizabeth Puskar got called for a crosscheck. We killed off a 5-3 penalty for 1:06 to keep it at a one-goal deficit. This was a huge kill for the girls.” 

    Here’s the team:

    I’ve wasted enough of your time — Happy Puzzling!

  • Vermont Postscript

    Owl chatter is back in NJ after a wonderful trip with Welly to see our Vermont friends, Susan, Lizzie, Robert, and Greta (woof woof!). I collected the hugs I was promised. Fair is fair. Here’s a shot of the view from their kitchen that doesn’t do it justice:

    A riddle from Lianna: To quit your job, what do you need?

    Give it some thought, and I’ll give you the solution somewhere down below.

    There were two sports deaths this week. Cincy pitcher Tom Browning was only 62. He was very popular with the fans, in part because he was a prankster. On July 7, 1993, when the Reds were playing the Cubs at Wrigley, Browning snuck out of the stadium in his uniform, and joined the fans watching the game from the rooftop of a building across the street. (He was fined $500. Booooooo!)

    Browning was called up from Wichita in September of 1984 and beat Orel Hershiser and the Dodgers in his MLB debut, pitching into the ninth inning and yielding only one run. He won 20 games his rookie year (1985), a feat no rookie had performed since 1954. An auspicious start, but who could have predicted his perfect game? — the only one ever by a Reds pitcher in their history. It was 1-0 over the Dodgers in Cincy on September 16, 1988. It took him 102 pitches — 70 were strikes, and he didn’t go to ball 3 on a single batter. He was wearing red underwear — something he always did on the days he pitched.

    And Football Hall of Famer Franco Harris died, at age 72. His dad was an African-American soldier stationed in Italy in WWII and he married an native Italian woman — a “war bride.” She moved to the U.S. with him when he returned, and Franco was born in Ft. Dix, NJ, on March 7, 1950, just about 50 days after I was born in Brooklyn.

    After excelling at Penn State, Harris had a phenomenal pro career with Pittsburgh — 4 Super Bowl wins and 9 Pro Bowl selections. He was the MVP of Super Bowl IX. His most famous play was dubbed “The Immaculate Reception” by Steeler sportscaster Myron Cope. With Pittsburgh down 7-6 to Oakland with only 22 seconds left in the game, a pass intended for Steeler receiver Frenchy Fuqua was deflected, and Harris scooped it up just before it hit the ground. He ran it in for a touchdown and the win. It was the first ever playoff win for Pittsburgh. Oakland claimed it touched Fuqua first, which would have meant Harris was not eligible to grab it under the rules then in effect. But the replays were inconclusive on the issue, and the league upheld the call.

    OK — back to that riddle: To quit your job, what do you need? A job.

    Now don’t you feel silly? (Thanks, Lianna!)

    If you’ve been decrying the lack of opera chatter, decry no more. It’s the birthday of composer Giacomo Puccini, born in 1858. His full name was Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini. That’s some serious middle name shit. He wrote La Boheme in 1896 and Madama Butterfly in 1904, just to name two, but Puccini died in 1924 before he could finish his last one: Turandot. When Arturo Toscanini conducted the premiere of Turandot in 1926, he stopped the orchestra at Puccini’s final notes, saying, “Here the opera finishes, because at this point the Maestro died.” Later, another composer, Franco Alfano, wrote the last two scenes based on Puccini’s sketches.

    Wanda Sykes was in the puzzle today — very funny lady. Some people can read from the phone book and I’m roaring. Here’s some of her work:

    “I love my family but my family – they’re the type of people that never let you forget anything you ever did… I was in the first grade Christmas play – I’m playing Mary. Now, during the course of the play, I dropped the baby Jesus… They still talk about this. I go to my family reunion, and one of my cousins just had a baby. So I’m like, ‘Oh, that’s a cute little baby. Let me hold the baby…’ And my aunt runs over, ‘Don’t you give her that baby! You know she dropped the baby Jesus!’”

    Also: “Seriously, I don’t need a gun. I’m easily annoyed. I would shoot people in my house that I invited over.”

    Last one: “When my parents send me emails, the first three are blank.”

    Wanda — you are welcome in the grid any day of the week!

    I have to balance my Vermont morning with one from Nebraska, from Ted Kooser’s Winter Morning Walks:

    An anthem of geese on the wing,
    and over the next field
    a thin flag of starlings billows and snaps.

    At dawn, a sudden fire on a hilltop
    four miles east—
    Joe Skala’s Airstream trailer
    reflecting the sun.

    Let’s see how the Jets are doing in their rare Thursday game against Jacksonville. Good night!

  • Mismo Bili Volonteri

    [Owl chatter is broadcasting tonight from a dumpy little motel on the outskirts of Albany, on the way to collect a promised hug from Susan in Vermont. The heat works, and the wifi, and it’s quiet — heaven!]

    Residents of Crossworld know that ORR is either Bruin ice hockey great Bobby or, less frequently, Yossarian’s tent-mate in Catch-22.  That latter ORR had no first name in the novel, but was Ivor ORR in the mini-series.  In any event, as far as I can tell, it’s never been Louis ORR, who played pro basketball for the Knicks from ’82 to ’88, after excelling at Syracuse.  He died last Thursday at age 64.  In my house, he’s best known as head coach at Siena College in upstate NY, where Linda went!  In his one year there, he led the Saints to a 20-11 season and a three-way tie for first place in their conference.  He moved on to coach at Seton Hall and Bowling Green. 

    Orr was 6′ 8″ but weighed only 175 (ridiculous), so he was careful to avoid overly physical play when he was in the NBA.  He scored over 5,500 points in his pro career, including a game-winning three-point shot against the Celtics as time expired on Jan. 20, 1987.  He was inspired to become an evangelical Christian by a sermon of Jimmy Swaggart’s, and saw coaching as a kind of ministry.  He wrote verses on the back of his game plans.  His favorite:  “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

    Amen to that, Coach!

    The Orr in Catch-22 would sometimes stuff crab-apples in his cheeks.  Or horse chestnuts.  He also held rubber balls in his hands and when anyone asked him why he had crab-apples in his cheeks he’d show them the rubber balls and explain that they are not crab-apples, they are rubber balls, and they are not in his cheeks they are in his hands.  He thought that was a good story but was not sure it got across well because it’s hard to speak clearly with crab-apples in your cheeks.  Yossarian once asked him why he had crab apples in his cheeks and he said because they are better than horse chestnuts.  When Yossarian blew up and asked why he had anything in his cheeks, Orr said “I don’t have anything in my cheeks — they are crab-apples.”  

    What perfect nonsense! We can only dream of attaining nonsense that pure.  We miss you Joe.

    I enjoy reading the comments on the day’s NYT puzzle that are posted on Rex Parker’s column. On many days, they are just random notes on how people did with the puzzle. Sometimes there’s a gem or two — some of the folks are very funny. I’ve already stolen material liberally from LMS, a teacher of problem children who’s a brilliant and amazing woman.

    I’ve noted how little things in the puzzle sometimes open neat little doors for me — for example, who would have known about the Brazilian Butt Lift had not the puzzle used BBL in a recent grid? And sometimes people are moved to tell stories.

    Today’s puzzle asked what fruit was used to make slivovitz. It’s PLUM. It opened doors for two stories:

    My cousins in Poznan gave me a bottle of Slivowitz once. They distilled it from plum wine made from the plums in their orchard. The orchard in which their grandfather had buried their valuables when the Germans were coming in 1939. They still dug the occasional hole back there, on a slow day, hoping to luck onto more valuables. They gave my mother one of the valuables once, a scapular which was a sizable piece of thick metal which would have stopped swords and bullets quite well if worn on the breast. They thought it was medieval but an art historian friend said it had phony rivets on it, it was a 19th century tourist trinket. But back to the plum brandy. I used to sip a thimbleful of it every Christmas Eve and think of the Polish relatives, till I had a drunk over for Wigilia one year and he decided based on the taste that it was cheap rotgut and swilled the rest of the bottle in about 3 large gulps.

    Here’s the second one:

    My first experiences with slivovitz/slivovica came back in the mid-90s when I took a year off from college to roam Europe, ending up for several months on a grassroots post-war reconstruction project in Pakrac, Croatia. We worked a lot on the Serbian side of town (the UN peacekeepers had left by then, so there was an understood border between the Croat and Serb sides that the internationals could cross without hassle). One morning, we walked over to Ljuba’s house to chop some wood. Ljuba was in her 70s, and lived not just through this war, but the horror of WWII. Despite her thin, frail appearance, she was still strong physically and mentally. She damned well would have chopped her own wood if we weren’t around. She greets us with shots of slivovica (which we just called “rakia”) and demitasses of Turkish coffee. Mind you, this is 9 a.m., and we’re starting the day with shots of seriously strong coffee and seriously strong spirits before we go out to wield a sharp axe for an hour or two. But this was hospitality.

    I developed a fondness and palette for the drink. Every Wednesday, there would be a morning market near the town center and, among your standard provisions, there would be around six to eight vendors selling their homemade slivovitz. With free samples. Once again, bright and early in the morning. You could wander from stall to stall and get seriously blitzed by noon. But, with the sampling, you quickly learned the nuances of slivovitz and who made it well, and who just made awful rotgut. The flavors ranged from the unsweetened essence of Damson plums to odd off-flavors of soil and leaves. A trick was to dip your finger in the slivovitz, rub it on the back of your wrist, wait a moment, then take a whiff, as if you were testing a perfume. If it smelled of fruit and nothing else, it was good.

    I found one vendor near the graveyard who had the reputation for having the best slivo in the area. On my way back to the UK and then the US, I picked up three two-liter Fanta bottles of the stuff for presents and personal consumption. Customs didn’t seem to care. My uncle (from Zakopane, Poland) loved the stuff so much, I gave him an entire bottle. He swore not only that it didn’t give him a hangover, but that he even felt better the next day after drinking it, as if it were some sort of elixir.

    Three years later, I found myself living in Budapest. One of my fellow volunteers, a Kiwi named Jackson, came through town and stayed at my place for a month. His mother had just passed away, and he was backpacking across Europe to process his loss. In a bit of youthful spontaneity, we decided to rent a car and revisit Pakrac with a couple colleagues of mine. Part of the visit was impelled by the news of the death of Ljuba, whom we wanted to pay our last respects to at the graveyard. Part of it was for Jack. We arrive, find the graveyard and the austere plot, and say a few words. As I left the graveyard, I remembered the slivo, and I hoped I remembered the house. I approach the door, knock, and mumble the best of my half-remembered Serbian to say, “um…[mismo bili volonteri] we were volunteers here three years ago, we think we bought some rakia here, do you have any?” A blank face stared back at me, then a wave of comprehension, and a big smile. “Come in, come in! How much do you want!” We were sat, fed, and, of course, served shots of slivo. We talked about the town, how post-war life was progressing, all in my broken Serbian, and the understanding was though life was tough, things were getting better and people were tired of the tensions.

    When I have a shot of slivo these days and taste the burning plum liquid slide down my throat, all of those feelings and memories fill my spirit.

    He ended by sharing a link to this photo of Ljuba:

    Oooh, it’s almost eleven and I have to make it to Middlebury by 1 tomorrow. And who the hell knows when I’ll grade the damn tax exams. They can wait. Thanks for stopping by!

  • The Maillard Reaction

    Don’t drive if you just had a salad. What? Reports from Australia (in today’s NYT) say baby spinach has caused delirium, hallucinations, and fever in over 100 cases. The Victoria health department surmises it’s “anticholinergic syndrome,” caused by plants in the nightshade, jimson weed, and mandrake root family. These plants deprive the brain of acetylcholine which it needs to function. The loss of this stuff naturally (i.e, without eating spinach) is linked to Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, etc.

    Get this though — there are two types of hallucinations: “formed” and “unformed.” One that is formed is concrete and recognizable — usually involving people, objects, and landscapes. One that is unformed involves shapes, patterns, and colors. Spinach-induced hallucinations are formed, and since they involve memory, they tend to involve people the sufferer knows or recognizes, such as deceased relatives. In more serious cases, you lose the capacity to distinguish the real from the unreal, so you can get sucked into the “story” where something bad is going on and people are trying to harm you in some way. Bottom line: If Uncle Charlie is coming at you with a knife and he’s been dead for a few years, you probably have nothing to worry about.

    Pass the dressing.

    An important follow-up to the BBL/barrel discussion! According to our Vermont friend Susan, the current usage of BBL is for Brazilian Butt Lifts. She adjured me to “think Kardashians.” The medical term is Gluteoplasty and a lengthy discussion can be found in Wikipedia under “Buttocks Augmentation.” The following is just the tip of the, well, let’s leave it at iceberg. [Note: I will replace buttocks with the Yiddish tuchas below because it’s a much funnier word.]

    The corrective procedures for tuchas augmentation and tuchas repair include the surgical emplacement of a gluteal implant (tuchas prosthesis); liposculpture (fat transfer and liposuction); and body contouring (surgery, liposculpture, and Sculptra (Poly-L-lactic acid injections), to resolve the patient’s particular tuchas defect or deformity. Moreover, in the praxis of sexual reassignment surgery, the prosthetic and liposculpture augmentation of the tuchas can be performed on transsexual and transgender women to enhance the tuchas’s anatomic curvature in order to establish the markedly feminine tuchas and hips that project more (to the rear and to the side) than does the masculine tuchas.

    A BBL in particular involves transferring fat from one part of the body, e.g., the hips, to the tuchas. It’s Brazilian because a plastic surgeon from Brazil devised it: Dr. Ivo Pitanguy. Dr. P passed away at the age of 90 in 2016 when an enormous . . . (you can finish that sentence).

    Oh, alright, I’ll finish it . . . when an enormous tuchas he was working on rolled off the examining table and crushed him to death.

    His grieving widow said “I always knew he’d come to an unhappy end.” She added “He was always behind in his work, and always worried about the bottom line. Still, he was a loving husband and helped me rear two children.”

    Here’s a photo of Dr. Pitanguy:

    And there’s another rash (Ouch!) of tuchases in today’s puzzle! Incredible! They are right up top at 8 across: “Dodos,” — ASSES. There is also an ASS from ASSN (“Org.”) crossing SEAT (from BOX SEAT).

    The swastika flap from yesterday’s puzzle made quite a splash well beyond the boundaries of Crossworld. It’s been mentioned (denounced) in and by quite a few media outlets, including The Jerusalem Post and the NY Post. (Post Cereal has not taken a position.) Donald Trump Jr. lambasted The Times over it via Twitter.

    The Times finally responded: “This is a common crossword design: Many open grids in crosswords have a similar spiral pattern because of the rules around rotational symmetry and black squares.”

    23A was “Scorch” and I filled in SEAR first, but the answer was CHAR. And here’s what someone posted on the matter:

    “Cooking snob here: searing is something you do intentionally to create a Maillard reaction on the outside of the meat because browned and crispy (seared!) food tastes good. Charring is something that happens accidentally when you leave it on the flame for too long and it is destroyed.”

    “Maillard reaction?” Huh?

    The Maillard reaction is a chemical reaction between amino acids and reducing sugars that gives browned food its distinctive flavor. Seared steaks, fried dumplings, cookies and other kinds of biscuits, breads, toasted marshmallows, and many other foods undergo this reaction. It is named after French chemist Louis Camille Maillard, who first described it in 1912. Many recipes call for an oven temperature high enough to ensure that a Maillard reaction occurs. At higher temperatures, caramelization (the browning of sugars, a distinct process) and subsequently pyrolysis (final breakdown leading to burning and the development of acrid flavors) become more pronounced.

    So, boy scouts and girl scouts, the next time you’re searing marshmallows be sure to show off about the Maillard reaction. We were visiting Sam in Traverse City once and wanted to use the fire pit in his housing complex to roast some ‘mellows, and make smores. (Lianna was with us.) The problem was the pit was in use by 3 or 4 beer-drinking gentlemen and it didn’t look like they’d be moving on very soon.

    So I approached them and asked if we could slip in briefly and roast up some marshmallows. Absolutely! They were very nice about it. So I said, “You’re welcome to have some.” And this one fellow, who had a very large belly which was flabbing out because he was shirtless, pointed to it and said: “Hey — you don’t get a body like this eating marshmallows!” Very funny!

    I’ll leave you with a quote by Beverly SILLS who was sort of in the puzzle today, clued indirectly with “Prime bird-watching spots for indoor cats.” (Sills) According to commenter T Trimble, a 1971 Times Magazine article on Sills mentioned that she was a crossword fan and said: “Beverly can do a crossword puzzle in 20 minutes, in ink.”

    She is known to have said: “You are never famous until you’ve had your name in a crossword puzzle.”

    Thanks for stopping by! See you next time!

  • Breeches Roles

    What an unusual turn of events. Back on January 3, 1993, the Houston Oilers took a 35-3 lead over Buffalo early in the third quarter. Stick a fork in them, right? What’s more, Buffalo’s starting QB (Jim Kelly) was out and backup Frank Reich was playing. But Reich led the Bills to a 38-35 win in what was then (and until yesterday) the greatest comeback in NFL history.

    Fast-forward to 30 years later: the same Frank Reich began this year as the head coach of the Indianapolis Colts, but he was fired just last month. So yesterday, under new leadership, the Colts pulled out to a 33-0 lead over the Vikings early in the 3rd period. Again — the fork, right? NO! The Vikings rallied for a 39-36 win in overtime, eclipsing the record for the largest comeback by one point. Here’s Frank Reich.

    That’s not all. Matt Ryan was the poor Colts QB who fell victim to the Viking comeback yesterday. He was also the losing QB for the largest Super Bowl comeback, when Tom Brady’s Pats stormed back to beat Ryan’s Atlantans in 2017. The Falcons were up 28-3 late in the 3rd quarter in Super Bowl LI, but lost 34-28. Here’s Ryan, in happier times.

    So, if Reich were linked to another NFL comeback, it would be The Third Reich, right? Which brings us to a very unusual issue that arose on today’s NYT puzzle. Here’s the grid:

    Take a close look at the grid design (squint). Here’s what commenter “egsforbreakfast” wrote. (And he’s generally a sane and interesting voice.)

    “I’m a bit surprised that no one (including Will Shortz, Jeff Chen, Rex and others) has noted that squinting at this grid gives you a giant, unambiguous swastika. I’m not saying that it was intentional, but it’s just so inescapable that it’s hard to think about anything else.”

    Others agreed with the observation, but “Geezer” said: “Egs — You’re funny and I like your posts but I worry about you.”

    “The Joker” added: “When I squint and look at the grid I see people hallucinating.”

    Anonymous said: “When I squinted at this puzzle, I saw the Shroud of Turin…”

    My view? Well, it is a bit suspicious that the constructor’s name is Anoph Ditler. (No — it’s Ryan McCarty.)

    I’m in the “Not a swastika” group. I agree with “Lewis” that’s it’s a “gorgeous swirling hypnotic” grid. He points out that McCarty’s puzzles are known for “stunning” grid designs. My vote is “not guilty.” But it’s right up there for you to see — you decide.

    Wait, wait — hold on a sec! The clue for DORIC at 60 across is “Style of column at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate.” And here’s from Wikipedia: “When the Nazis ascended to power, they used the gate as a party symbol.” Yikes!  Now I don’t know what to think. Can’t I do a goddamn crossword puzzle without having to worry about the Nazis??!!

    By the way, there was some more input on the BBL/barrel issue discussed at nauseating length in yesterday’s owl chatter. Here’s a note: “Long ago, in the early ‘40s, I asked my Vancouver longshoreman dad about this. He told me it was to differentiate between BALE (BL) and BARREL (BBL).” Sounds good to me.

    Nazis aside, there were some neat items in today’s puzzle. At 67A “Joke that goes over the line?” was CRANK CALL. (Get it? — phone line.)

    And “Joint accounts?” at 94A was POLICE REPORTS (joint = jail).

    Nice clue at 70A for MADE PROUD: “Caused to kvell.”

    And I learned that the largest U.S. state capital by population is PHOENIX, AZ. Wow.

    “Volleyball star-turned-model Gabrielle” is REECE (81A). In her book My Foot Is Too Big for the Glass Slipper: A Guide to the Less Than Perfect Life, Reece writes that “to truly be feminine means being soft, receptive, and – look out, here it comes – submissive.”  On The Today Show she said that women being submissive in relationships is a sign of strength – not weakness. Her second book: Another Load of Crap, is due out in the Spring.

    Here she is at the gym.

    At 41D, I learned that the “term for a male opera character played by a woman” is PANTS ROLE. These are more commonly called breeches roles or trousers roles. (Breeches are tight-fitting knee-length pants which were standard male garments when these roles were introduced.)

    Most often the character is of a very young man whose part is to be sung by a mezzo-soprano or contralto, hence the need for a woman. The most frequently performed breeches roles are Cherubino (The Marriage of Figaro), Octavian (Der Rosenkavalier), Hansel (Hansel und Gretel) and Orpheus (Orpheus and Euridice).

    Because stage plays generally have no requirements for vocal range, they do not usually contain breeches roles. But Sarah Bernhardt (below) once played Hamlet as a breeches role.

    Some critics thought these roles were just a trick to allow audiences to see women’s legs on stage. (I wouldn’t put it past us.) Here’s a verse suggesting that regarding the famous breeches actress Susanna Mountfort:

    You’ll hear with patience a dull scene, to see,
    In a contented lazy waggery,
    The female Mountford bare above the knee.

    Here’s Sarah B. (Not a leg shot, though. Sorry fellas.) I couldn’t find Susanna.

    Life in the age of Alzheimers. Here’s a piece from Met Diary today by Patricia Fernandes.

    Dear Diary:

    We were on a trip to New York and got a restaurant recommendation at the hotel where we were staying. Small, we were told, but the food is good.

    When we arrived, we wiggled our way to our table. We were careful not to knock over glasses or bruise our elbows as we settled in after a day of adventures in the city.

    After we finished our meal, our waitress returned to the table. “Sorry,” she said to my husband, “I don’t remember what you ordered for dessert.”

    He looked at her blankly as he often does in such situations.

    “I’m sorry,” he said, “I don’t remember either.”

    A woman at the neighboring table piped up.

    “He ordered apple pie with ice cream,” she said.

  • Roll Out The Bbl, We’ll Have A Bbl Of Fun!

    There’s a less-than-great Steven Wright joke in Saturday’s puzzle: “I spilled spot remover on my dog and now he’s gone. ” (A better line of his is “I’m having amnesia and deja vu at the same time: I think I’ve forgotten this before.”)

    The clue for 10D was “Crude meas.” and the answer was BBL — the abbreviation for “barrel” of crude oil. The question arose among the commentariat as to why the second “B” is part of it. This was posted on the issue first:


    “In the early 1860’s, when oil production began, there was no standard container for oil, so oil and petroleum products were stored and transported in barrels of all different shapes and sizes (beer barrels, fish barrels, molasses barrels, turpentine barrels, etc.). By the early 1870’s, the 42-gallon barrel had been adopted as the standard for oil trade. This was 2 gallons per barrel more than the 40-gallon standard used by many other industries at the time. The extra 2 gallons was to allow for evaporation and leaking during transport (most barrels were made of wood). Standard Oil began manufacturing 42 gallon barrels that were blue to be used for transporting petroleum. The use of a blue barrel, abbreviated ‘bbl’” guaranteed a buyer that this was a 42-gallon barrel.”

    However, serious doubt was cast on this via Wikipedia, with proof:

    “The ‘b’ may have been doubled originally to indicate the plural (1 bl, 2 bbl), or possibly it was doubled to eliminate any confusion with bl as a symbol for the bale. Some sources assert that ‘bbl’ originated as a symbol for “blue barrels” delivered by Standard Oil in its early days. However, while Ida Tarbell’s 1904 Standard Oil Company history acknowledged the ‘holy blue barrel’, the abbreviation ‘bbl’ had been in use well before the 1859 birth of the U.S. petroleum industry.”

    And here are two cites pre-dating 1859:

    Niles Weekly Register, June 15, 1816. Supplement.
    Page 369.

    “23,650 bbls. tar”; “6,015 bbls. flour”; etc

    William Cobbett, Porcupine’s Works, Vol. VIII, May 1801. Page 462

    “The schooner Columbus, Mason, from St. Vincent’s, for Kennebunk, was boarded by a French privateer, which detained her six hours, and took out of her 60 gallons of rum, a bbl. of sugar, &c.”

    So it’s a bit of a mystery, as far as we can tell at the moment. And, of course, who cares anyway?

    The Writer’s Almanac informs us that on this date in 1989 the first episode of The Simpsons aired. Yikes! — Sam, who is a big fan, – had just turned one year old. We spent many happy family hours watching that show together.

    TWA states:

    It has become a point of pride to appear as a guest voice on The Simpsons. The usual pop culture suspects are well represented, but creator Matt Groening often draws from a deep pool of literary glitterati as well. Alumni include David Mamet, James Patterson, Michael Chabon, and Jonathan Franzen. Even the notoriously reclusive Thomas Pynchon has “appeared” twice, but his animated counterpart always wears a paper bag over his head.

    Groening has described the Simpsons characters as “creatures of consumption and envy, laziness and opportunity, stubbornness and redemption. Just like the rest of us. Only exaggerated.”

    Here’s playwright David Mamet:

    There was a funny New Yorker cartoon about a month ago. It was a funeral scene. It was called “Death of a Prankster.” The widow was addressing the people in attendance with her children by her side. She was reading somberly from a card, and saying: In lieu of flowers, please send two dozen anchovy pizzas to Robert Anderson, 19 Foxview Lane . . .

    We had cirrus clouds the other day, and today we had STRATI (“overcast clouds”). These are low-level clouds characterized by horizontal layering with a uniform base. More specifically, the term stratus is used to describe flat, hazy, featureless clouds at low altitudes varying in color from dark gray to nearly white.

    Here’s another poem by Ted Kooser, from Winter Morning Walks.

    All feathered out in clouds,
    the wind’s a mockingbird this morning.
    Out of its mouth
    the piercing whistle of a red-tailed hawk,
    the caw of a crow.
    No hawk or crow to be seen
    from one downy gray side of the sky
    to the other.

    Ted Kooser won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 2005 and served as the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress for several years. He was diagnosed with cancer in 1998 and started taking a two-mile walk from his home in Nebraska each morning during his recovery from surgery and radiation. He had to stay out of the sun due to skin sensitivity, so he took the walks before dawn.

    He grew depressed during the ordeal, and stopped reading and writing. But he started pulling out of it as winter came on and he found himself trying his hand at a poem after one of his walks. He then got into the habit of writing a poem after each walk, pasting it on a postcard, and sending it to a poet-friend Jim Harrison. His book Winter Morning Walks are 100 of those poems.

    Several of the poems were put to music by composer Maria Schneider and performed by Dawn Upshaw with the New Jersey Symphony. That’s how I learned about him — I was at one of the performances. Schneider and Upshaw were also recovering from cancer during the project.

    I lack the capacity to appreciate any poetry more complex than “Roses are red,” but these seem simple enough even for me.

    Thanks for stopping by! Happy Puzzling!

  • Jacks and Jennies

    In connection with the Melvil Dewey discussion in owl-chatter a few days ago, Bob chimed in on his degree in Library Science.

    “The MLS program at Queens College was challenging at first, but got easier as the courses became more interesting. The attitudes of some of my fellow students were sometimes puzzling to me. We had an introductory cataloging course and I found it fascinating to learn from a very erudite and entertaining professor about the history of cataloging, the achievements of Melvil Dewey and others who followed in his footsteps. But so many of my classmates didn’t care to hear about any of that history. They wanted to cut to the relevant stuff – how to actually catalog a book or other type of material. Any history or development of concepts were of zero interest. Where was their curiosity? Didn’t they as librarians have a thirst for any kind of knowledge, let alone the development of the very field they were entering? Really very disappointing. I don’t think I’d want to ask those uncurious types a reference question or ask for guidance on a research paper. “

    To which I would add – F**king kids! And get off my lawn!

    BTW, that’s a line I’ve been enjoying using at every opportunity lately. Whenever you are complaining about a younger generation, you should add “and get off my lawn.” That makes it clear you’re a crotchety old-timer who has no patience for anyone younger than 65.

    That commenter the other day who observed about the tuchases that they are “coming at us in droves” knew what he was talking about! Today’s puzzle had another convocation of ASSES, at 15D. They were nicely clued with “Jacks and jennies.” What the hell is going on at the staid NY Times?

    It made me look up what a group of asses is called. There’s a bit of a story. You will find (as I did) that a group of asses is often referred to in references as a “pace” of asses. But in Lipton’s book on the terms of venery “An Exaltation of Larks,” which is absolutely wonderful, he clearly explains that “pace” is incorrect, and it should be a “pass” of asses (which he describes as “euphonious”).

    But we can do better, no? How about a “rearing” of asses? A “bottom” of asses? A “scratch” of asses? A “pinch” of asses? (That may be my favorite.)

    If we have an “unkindness” of ravens (which is the correct term), we can certainly do better than a pass of asses. Please chime in! (Carl? I need you!)

    I’m going to move on now, before anyone accuses me of bottom feeding.

    Lawyers! Any of you hear about the RED MASS? It’s at 17A: “Annual Roman Catholic service for members of the legal profession. (The red comes from the outfits of the officiants.) A Red Mass is a Mass celebrated annually in the Roman Catholic Church for all members of the legal profession, regardless of religious affiliation: judges, lawyers, law professors, law students, and gov’t officials, marking the opening of the judicial year. The first recorded Red Mass was celebrated in the Cathedral of Paris in 1245. In certain localities of France, the Red Mass was celebrated in honor of Saint Ives, the Patron Saint of Lawyers. I had no idea we law folk had a patron saint.

    One of the better-known Red Masses is celebrated each fall at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in Washington, D.C. on the Sunday before the first Monday in October when the Supreme Court convenes.

    Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg attended the Red Mass early in her tenure on the Court, but stopped due to her objection to the use of images of aborted fetuses during a homily opposing abortion.

    Here’s the interior of St. Mathews Cathedral.

    Don’t put that BAD JUJU on me! Ever hear that expression? The clue at 1A was: “Fallout from a hex, perhaps,” and it means bad luck, negative energy.

    I hope I haven’t told this joke already (too lazy to check). This guy was a real schlemiel — a loser, nothing good ever happened to him — bad juju. But one morning he was having breakfast and he dropped his toast and it landed with the buttered side up! Amazing. He had never had good luck before, so he called the Rabbi and told him what happened and asked: “Does this mean my life is changed now? My bad luck is over?”

    The Rabbi said: “I don’t know, but I’m meeting with the Council of Rabbis this week. I’ll ask them.” The Rabbi comes back a few days later, and calls the guy and says: “You’re still a complete loser. Still a hopeless schlemiel.” And the guy says, “But how do you explain that the toast landed with the buttered side up?”

    “Yes,” the Rabbi said, “I asked that of the Council. They said you buttered the wrong side of the toast.”

    Superman’s mom popped by the puzzle, at 46A: LARA (full name Lara Lor-Van). She was played in “Man of Steel” by Israeli actress Ayelet Zurer. So Superman had a Jewish mother! “So maybe you can take ten minutes off from saving the world and call your mother, Mr. Big Shot – would it kill you?”

    It was a very good puzzle — hard but doable: a perfect Friday. At 55A “Some hair dressings” was POMADES. How often do you hear that word? Here’s what Wikipedia says: Pomade is a greasy, waxy, or water-based substance that is used to style hair. It lasts longer than most hair-care products, and often requires multiple washes for complete removal. The pomades of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries consisted mainly of bear fat or lard. (Yum!) Lanolin, beeswax, and petroleum jelly have been used in modern pomades.

    I’ll let myself out now — don’t get up.

  • Rosabelle

    Mills Lane died last week. I know — right? — you didn’t even know he was sick. Lane was the boxing referee who worked the Tyson-Holyfield fight in which Tyson bit off part of Holyfield’s right ear and spit it to the mat. Tyson was outraged at getting head-butted in the earlier round. Reb Hillel of Minsk noted it was a variation on the biblical “eye for an eye.” Sort of “an ear for a butt.”

    Amazingly (and I am not making this up), Lane did not stop the fight after the ear biting — he only deducted two points from Tyson. And let me repeat — Tyson actually bit off a piece of Holyfield’s right ear. The fight was only stopped later in the round when Tyson bit into Holyfield’s left ear!

    “One bite is bad enough,” Lane said after the fight. “Two bites is not deserved.”

    Ya think?

    Before the fight, a memorabilia collector from Canada offered Lane $200 for the shirt he wore refereeing the fight and he accepted the offer. Once the fight gained its notoriety, Lane thought he could have gotten $4,000 for the shirt, but he honored the agreement.

    Do you give a damn? On this date in 1939 (12/15), Gone With The Wind opened officially in Atlanta after three days of parades, receptions, and a costume ball. Confederate flags and false antebellum façades covered the city. Democratic Governor Eurith D. Rivers declared the day a state holiday, and asked Georgians to dress in period clothing. Jimmy Carter remembered it as the biggest event in the South in his lifetime, even bigger than Purim. The cast attended the premiere, with the notable exception of the African-American performers, who were prevented by Georgia’s Jim Crow laws from sitting next to their white co-stars.

    Today’s puzzle, at 40 across, asked for the first name of Houdini’s wife. It was BESS. Can you imagine being married to that guy? Forget about tying him to the bed, right?

    Bess was first courted by Houdini’s younger brother Theo while she was working in Coney Island in a song and dance act. But she fell in love with Harry, and they married on June 22, 1894.

    They worked together as “The Houdinis” for several years before Harry hit it big. But they continued to perform their signature trick together, “Metamorphosis,” throughout his career. In this trick, one of them would be handcuffed and locked in a trunk, a curtain would descend briefly, and when it was lifted they would have changed places. Linda and I have figured out how it’s done and will be happy to perform it for you the next time you’re over. I just need a little extra time getting out of the trunk if my back is acting up.

    Bess also looked after their menagerie of pets, collected dolls, and made the costumes for Harry’s roadshow. Due to a medical condition of Bess’s, they did not have children. After Harry died, Bess briefly performed a vaudeville act in which she froze a man in ice.

    Bess tried to contact Harry after his death via seances, with a code that only Harry and she knew about, to be sure that the medium was not a fraud.  (Occasionally, instead of a medium, she used a large or an extra-large.) The code included the word “Rosabelle,” the name of the song Bess sang in her act when they first met. “Rosabelle” was also inscribed in Bess’s wedding band. The other words corresponded to a secret code used to pass information between a magician and his assistant during certain acts. It spelled out the word BELIEVE.

    She tried one final seance on Halloween in 1936 on the roof of the Knickerbocker Hotel in Hollywood. When it failed she put out the candle she had kept burning for ten years. She said “ten years is long enough to wait for any man” (especially if he’s dead, we might add).

    Bess died from a heart attack when she was 67. Her family did not let her be buried with Harry in Queens, because she was raised Roman Catholic and Harry was Jewish. She’s up in Hawthorne NY instead. Rest in peace, Bess and Harry.

    A special shout out to Roy who emailed me that when he was a little leaguer he had (if memory serves) a Curt Simmons model baseball mitt. There was some owl-chatter yesterday about CS, on the occasion of his death. I sent Roy a “curt response.”

    “Pouring gravy on, say,” at 42D, turned out to be SAUCING. A little awkward, but good enough to invoke “Sauce” Gardner the excellent first draft pick of the Jets who is having a superb rookie year. That phenomenal nickname was coined by a youth coach of Gardner’s when he was six, based on his play on the field. He called him “A1 Sauce Sweet Feet Gardner,” and “Sauce” stuck. He was born in Detroit but Michigan stupidly failed to scoop him up with a scholarship, and he played his college ball at Cincinnati. How sweet is that sauce? — he signed a four-year rookie contract with the Jets for $38.7 million, guaranteed. He is also in partnership with Buffalo Wild Wings to endorse a new sweet and spicy BBQ sauce called the Sauce sauce.

    Rex Parker’s daily blog on the NYTXW is in the hands of guest bloggers while RP is vacationing in New Zealand with his wife (a native). Today’s guest just issued a profanities-laced rant on how bad the puzzle is. (It’s not nearly that bad, IMHO). The commentariat exploded, with 275 comments, mostly very upset at the rant. More than twice as many comments as usual. But this note was fun:

    From the South Yorkshire Times, 1951:

    “Whenever ‘Mark Twain’ became angry he would utter a torrent of profanity that would cause his horrified wife to flee. For many years she pleaded with him to stop this vicious habit.

    “One morning she decided to teach him a lesson. Twain was shaving, and he cut himself. Immediately the room was filled with foul imprecations. Without pause he went through his entire repertoire.

    “When he finished, his wife repeated his speech, word for word. Twain looked up, mildly surprised, and then said calmly, ‘You have the words, my dear, but you don’t carry the melody.’ “

    Thanks for stopping by!

  • Uskudar

    My beautiful granddaughter Lianna played viola in her 7th grade orchestra’s holiday concert last night and it was absolutely wonderful.  Their final selection was a gorgeous Turkish folk song I had heard before:  Uskudar.  Here are two versions almost as good as Lianna’s:

    The words translate to:

    When we were going to Uskudar it started to rain.
    When we were going to Uskudar it started to rain.
    The clerk is mine and I’m the clerk’s, and no one can interfere.
    My clerk looks so good in a starched collar.

    When I looked for my clerk, I found him at my side.
    My clerk looks so good in a starched collar.

    I checked the program to make sure Lianna was listed (with the proper spelling), and I noticed that almost everyone in the viola section had a beautiful and interesting name, either first or last.  Here they are: 

    Lianna Becerra
    Jennifer Chukwukere
    Doga Demir
    Aiden Frank
    Layla Green
    Bryson James
    Genesis Martinez
    Devi Ray
    Rio Reyes
    Ashley Sutton
    Enzo Tolentino
    Maya Tung 

    And that’s just the violists.  There were cellists named Brighidin Boyen and Haydn Lee (Haydn Sikh would have been better), and violinists named Adrija Adhikary, Xiomara Tepetitla Luna, and Gem Gold.  Gem Gold!

    The puzzle’s theme today was “Lucky Breaks,” and things we associate with good luck were “broken up” into separate word segments.  For example — can you find “horseshoe” in ABHOR, SESH, and OEUF?  

    It triggered this very important flow of data:

    Lucky Charms cereal debuted in 1964 with oat pieces in shapes of bells, fish, arrowheads, X’s, green clovers, pink hearts, orange stars, and yellow moon marshmallows.

    Currently:
    Heart Charm – Gives life to objects
    Star Charm – Power of flight
    Horseshoe Charm – Power of speed
    Clover Charm – Power of luck
    Blue Moon Charm – Power of invisibility
    Rainbow Charm – Power to teleport
    Red Balloon Charm – Power to float
    Unicorn Charm – Brings color to the world

    The inclusion of PANERA in the grid, boringly clued as “Big bakery/cafe chain,” led to a big soup discussion on Rex’s blog.  This was fitting because the constructor was Matthew “Stock.”  The commentariat was invited to list their favorites.  I posted the following:

    Hot and Sour

    Matzoh Ball (fluffy, if possible, and not too salty)

    Split Pea

    The Meyersville (NJ) Grange used to host a monthly soup contest during the winter.  For $7 you could sample dozens of wonderful soups and pasta dishes.  If you brought an entry, you got in for free, and prizes were awarded to the top six vote-getters.  The first time I participated, I entered an escarole and white bean soup.  It was a little bitter from the escarole, and my daughter still roars at the memory of the first guy who tried it.  He turned to the fellow behind him and said “Stay away from that one.”

    Old New Yorker cartoon:  A long table full of somber monks in their cowls hunched over bowls of soup.  A monk at the head of the table is ladling out the soup and he says:  “Forgive me brothers for breaking the sacred vow of silence, but I, for one, am tired of vichyssoise.”

    “What sharing is, per a rhyming expression,” was, of course, CARING.  LMS chimed in with:  “My colleague will share any part of her lunch with any student. I’m always stunned at her generosity. The day after Thanksgiving break, she shared her leftovers with so many students that what was supposed to be her lunch all week was gone in one day. I, on the other hand, will turn off my lights, close my door, and wolf down my lunch in a corner like a little selfish, unsharing pig teacher.”

    There were some tuchas sightings today!  Hurrah! First — a plural! — the clue was “Burros” and the answer:  ASSES.  It caused one fellow to note:  “Now they’re coming at us in droves!”  Ha!  There was also SASS, and TESSA, which is ass-backwards and a semordnilap.  What is a semordnilap, you ask?  Well, it’s “palindromes” backward, but it’s different from a palindrome.  It’s a word that spells a different word backwards.  TESSA — ASSET.  A palindrome spells the same word backwards:  MADAM, or RADAR.

    “Cousin of a cassowary” was EMU.  And I loved this note — “How do cows communicate in the digital age? EMU”

    Curt Simmons, who died Tuesday at age 93, had a very solid career, mostly with the Phils and Cards. He was the last living member of the Whiz Kids, the 1950 Phils who won the pennant. He anchored the staff with Robin Roberts. His lifetime record was 193-183 with an ERA of 3.54. A three-time All-Star, he won the World Series with St. Louis in 1964.

    On June 2, 1947, Phillies owner Bob Carpenter arranged an exhibition game between the Phils and a team of High School All-Stars. Simmons, who was then 18, pitched for the high schoolers in front of 4,500 fans and struck out eleven Phils. The game ended in a 4-4 tie. He was later signed to a contract by Philly with a large bonus. Both Hank Aaron and Stan Musial named Simmons the toughest pitcher they faced in their careers.

    A note on owl-chatter at the two-month mark:  Every day I wake up and have no idea what I will write about.  And almost every day a whole bunch of wonderful nonsense pops up!  If Seinfeld was a show about “nothing,” I think owl-chatter is a blog about nonsense.  I do the puzzle and read Rex Parker’s blog and the wonderful comments it sometimes inspires.  I check to see if anyone died, especially old ballplayers.   Sometimes an item in The Writer’s Almanac tickles me, or other things I peruse.  Sometimes something so beautiful wafts by that it moves me to tears.  And I love looking for pictures.  Thanks for visiting, but honestly, if there were none of you, I’d still crank it out.