Ouch. Driving here is hard. The main two-way roads are just a little less than two-cars wide. It feels like you are always driving into oncoming traffic. I blew a tire out swerving left several hundred times. Opened the trunk to find no spare. Lovely woman helped us call for help and a great tire guy fixed the wheel and put a new tire on. I did quite a number on it and will likely do so again before we’re through.
Cliffs were pretty.
What a lovely land!
View from our room in Galway.
Off to the Cliffs now.
See you later!
“Knot without a struggle” was a cute clue today for CLIP-ON TIE. I don’t think I’ve ever used one, though I don’t often wear ties these days. We sent our crack photographer Phil to find a pretty girl wearing a tie, and here’s whom he came up with. Can’t blame her for eyeing him a bit suspiciously. Who knows what he was up to? Phil!! No funny stuff!!
If you do not enjoy opera, you will like the clue/answer at 16A: “Where there is ‘too much singing,’ per Debussy.” Answer: OPERA.
Joe Dipinto noted that “Debussy himself did compose an opera, Pelléas et Mélisande, which has, y’know, quite a bit of singing in it. I remember reading this succinct plot synopsis of it somewhere: ‘Nothing happens, then Mélisande dies.’”
Another good clue was “How a sailor achieves a good work-life balance?” and the answer was SEALEGS. “Work-life” here means “life while at work,” not balance between work and life.
The theme was revealed by “prevails eventually,” which was ENDS UP ON TOP, and for the theme answers the ends of the words shifted to the front to form a new word or phrase. Here they are:
Here’s the cartoon for this week’s New Yorker cartoon caption contest.
I’m voting for “How’d you get yours off?”
Are you a Stevie Nicks fan? If so, you might try to pick up one of the new Barbie dolls that Mattel brought out recently that captures her likeness wearing the outfit from Rumours. They are selling for $55. Don’t dawdle, though — pre-orders sold out fast.
Even though the album came out in 1977 (ouch!), Stevie still had the outfit. She sent it over to Mattel and they used it to model the doll along with the Pasquale Di Fabrizio black platform boots, which Stevie called “gorgeous.”
Mattel has been producing celebrity dolls since the 1960’s. The Tina Turner doll’s hair must have been a challenge. Tina, aleha hashalom, was very much involved with the doll’s design.
The dolls are not limited to females. There are two David Bowie dolls. The one on the right, below, doesn’t look much like him, but Mattel explained it was designed to be Barbie herself with a David Bowie look. The one on the left really nailed it, IMHO.
You may not have heard of Celia Cruz (I hadn’t), but you (and I) should have. Not only is she the Queen of Salsa, but the U.S. Mint is planning to put her on a quarter next year as part of its American Women Quarters program. No sh*t! She’ll be jangling around in your pocket before you know it.
Well, Mattel is not about to let itself be scooped by the U.S. Mint. So they recently revealed their Cruz Barbie. Mazel Tov Celia!
Getting back to Stevie. Did she see the Barbie movie? The answer is yes, and she loved it. She said: “I had to come right home and tell my Stevie doll all about it.”
BTW, the other four women to be honored by the U.S. Mint with quarters next year will be Reverend Dr. Pauli Murray, the Honorable Patsy Takemoto Mink, Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, and Zitkala-Ša.
Patsy Mink was the first woman of color and the first Asian-American woman elected to Congress, and is known for her work on legislation advancing women’s rights and education. In 2002 Congress renamed the Title IX Amendment of the Higher Education Act, which Mink had co-authored, as the “Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act.”
“Pauli” Murray was an American civil rights activist, advocate, legal scholar and theorist, author and – later in life – an Episcopal priest. Murray’s work influenced the civil rights movement and expanded legal protection for gender equality. She went to college at, get this — Hunter College! Go Hawks!
Zitkala-Ša wrote the libretto and songs for the first American-Indian opera, The Sun Dance Opera, and was an agitator for Native American rights.
Dr. Mary Edwards Walker was an American abolitionist, prohibitionist, prisoner of war, and surgeon. She is the only woman to receive the Medal of Honor, the US Armed Forces’ highest military decoration awarded to recognize American soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen, etc. who have distinguished themselves by acts of valor.
This beautiful art-space, above, is the Long Island City Artists Art Space in The Factory building in Long Island City (Queens), NY. We sent Phil over to take this shot of it because we have some wonderful news: An esteemed, if not steamed, member of Owl Chatter’s Art Department, Bob Lobe, just informed us that two of his paintings will be in the group exhibit “Abstract Abstraction” which opens there next week!
If you’re up for a pleasant distraction, catch the action at Abstract Abstraction.
There is an opening reception on Thursday, October 12th from 5 to 8pm. The exhibit is on view from October 12 to November 22. Gallery hours for the Art Space are Wednesday to Saturday, 10am to 6pm.
(Don’t all go at once, Owl Chatter fans — organize yourselves.)
The address is The Factory, 30-30 47th Avenue, Suite 105a, Long Island City. The Factory building is located very close to LaGuardia Community College. By subway, it is a 5 minute walk from the 33rd Street – Rawson Street station on the #7 train.
Hope you can make it over there — we’re going to try to catch it. If you go, let us know what you think.
Hey! Wow! That’s Bob, below, way on the right!
Good night everybody! Tomorrow night we fly off to Ireland. Yikes!
This poem is from The Writer’s Almanac. It’s by Sally Van Doren and is called “Defiance.”
We were drawn that way at a young age on the main line
west from St. Louis to the Columbia spur north to Moberly
where our grandparents picked us up at the station
and showed us the quarry behind their house on Gilman Road,
warning us not to try to jump off the edge of the cliff
with an umbrella the way Uncle Robert had.
Our mother had traced our blood to Squire Boone, Daniel’s brother.
It coursed through our father’s veins when, as a sixteen-year-old
with a summer job on the railroad, he fought to get the cinder
out of the tracks that blocked the switch as the 12:05 bore down on him.
Sixty years later his grandsons spin the wheels of their three speeds
on the gravel path above the wide brown river, sweating
as their knees pump on pedals their feet have out-grown.
We stay at a bed and breakfast on the bluff, walking down
to Dutzow for the Friday night fish fry. Back on our bikes
on the Katy Trail the next morning, stopping along the way
to swing on the vines and poke our heads in the caves,
we race the last mile to the marker in front of the Boone Homestead.
Republican Congressman Kevin McCarthy of California died yesterday at his house in Washington, DC, at the age of 58. The cause of death was not available, but it is widely known he was suffering from assholism for many years. McCarthy is survived by his wife, Judy, and their two children. Here they are during happier times.
In 2015, McCarthy was accused of having an affair with Representative Renee Ellmers of North Carolina. It may have caused him to drop out of the Speaker’s race at that time. In his defense, McCarthy said “Ellmers is very pretty and used to be a nurse. I’m only human, fellas.” [Alright, he never said that.] McCarthy and Ellmers denied the allegation.
McCarthy’s mom was a homemaker, and his dad was an assistant city fire chief. His maternal grandfather was an Italian immigrant, and his paternal grandfather was Irish. Following in his dad’s footsteps a bit, he worked as a seasonal firefighter while he was in college.
McCarthy was the first Republican in his immediate family: his parents were Democrats. He was on his HS football team. When he was 19, he ran his first business: selling sandwiches out of the back of his uncle’s yogurt shop in Bakersfield.
Here’s a nice story about him:
In a September 29, 2015, interview with Sean Hannity, McCarthy was asked what Republicans had accomplished in Congress. He replied by talking about the special panel investigation into the 2012 Benghazi attack (in which Islamic militants attacked the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya). Republicans said the purpose of the committee was to investigate the deaths of four Americans. But McCarthy said, “Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she’s untrustable (sic). But no one would have known any of that happened had we not fought.” The comment was an admission that the investigation was a partisan political undertaking rather than a substantive inquiry. His remark was described as a classic “Kinsley gaffe” (defined as when a politician accidentally tells the truth). Several days later, McCarthy apologized for the remarks and said the Benghazi panel was not a political initiative.
Thanks for clearing that up, Kev.
Rest in peace.
In the puzzle today at 53A, the clue was “fa-la connection,” and the answer was SOL. Some folks thought the answer should just be SO. That’s how it’s pronounced. (“Sew, a needle pulling thread.”) Here’s the story:
It’s a music education system called solfege (from sol and fa).
In eleventh-century Italy, the Guido of Arezzo invented a notational system that named the six notes of the hexachord after the first syllable of each line of the Latin hymn “Ut queant laxis,” the “Hymn to St. John the Baptist,” yielding ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la. Each successive line of this hymn begins on the next scale degree, so each note’s name was the syllable sung at that pitch in this hymn.
Ut queant laxīs resonāre fibrīs
Mīra gestōrum famulī tuōrum,
Solve pollūtī labiī reātum,
Sancte Iohannēs
The words were written by Paulus Diaconus in the 8th century. They translate as:
So that your servants may, with loosened voices,
Resound the wonders of your deeds,
Clean the guilt from our stained lips,
O St. John.
“Ut” was changed in the 1600s in Italy to the open syllable Do, at the suggestion of Giovanni Battista Doni (based on the first syllable of his surname), and Si (from the initials for “Sancte Iohannes”) was added to complete the diatonic scale. In Anglophone countries, “si” was changed to “ti” by Sarah Glover in the nineteenth century so that every syllable might begin with a different letter.
Questions?
Ready to go back to 1965 now?
Thanks for popping by! See you tomorrow.
Could there have been more pressure? Zach Wilson was the Jets’ super high draft pick three years ago, anointed the team’s savior. He stunk it up pretty badly for two seasons (when he wasn’t injured), and lost the respect of his teammates due to stupid remarks in an interview, but held on enough to be tapped as backup to Aaron Rodgers for the year. AR went down on the fourth play of the season so here was Wilson again, stinking it up. Jets Nation had had enough of him. Jets’ God, Joe Namath, remarked in disgust: “I’ve seen enough of Zach Wilson.” His next poorly thrown pass or INT could, literally, have ended his career. It was hanging by that thin a thread.
So here he was last night — playing against the Super Bowl Champs in front of a testy home crowd and a national TV audience, boosted by Taylor Swift in the VIP box, so zillions of Swifties had tuned in, along with the entire football world.
So I ask you again — could there have been more pressure? I don’t see how.
So what does Wilson do? — he turns in a brilliant performance. Effective drives, grace under pressure, good decisions sharply executed. The Jets came back from a 17-0 deficit to lose by just 23-20, and, actually, almost win. A terrible penalty call went against them and a field goal attempt clanged off the goal post. Neither was Wilson’s fault and he completed 23 of 31 passes for 216 yards, 2 TD’s, no interceptions — clearly outplaying Mahomes, who was way off his game.
So is all forgiven? I wouldn’t go that far, but it was pretty impressive. Here’s the kid, followed by You-Know-Whom, who is dating tight end Travis Kelce of the Chiefs. Owl Chatter wishes the love birds (both of whom are 33) nothing but happiness. Kelce seems like a mensch, and we know he has great hands. Take good care of her, Travis.
My favorite puzzle of the week is Monday’s in The New Yorker. It’s their most challenging and it’s just hard enough to give a me a good workout but usually not impossible. They have a team of excellent constructors, including the beloved Robyn Weintraub, who usually does the easier ones, and Puzzle God Patrick Berry. Today’s was by Natan Last, who scares me, and, sure enough, I couldn’t finish it.
“Author of ‘them’” was JCO. Who knew that stands for Joyce Carol Oates? I also didn’t know “Hush-hush” was ON THE DL. DL = down low. I could only think of QT. And “Splay Anthem poet” is NATHANIAL MACKEY? Gimme a break.
But if you ever thought (or still think) that “for all intents and purposes” is “for all intensive purposes,” you will want to know that the term for such a misbelief is EGGCORN. Other good ones are rebel rouser for rabble rouser, and free reign for free rein.
Today’s NYT puzzle was about FINAL IZE, clued with “Wrap up … or a phonetic description of five long answers.” And the five answers each ended with “IZE” spelled a different way: SAMURAIS, DAILY HIGHS, BEHIND BLUE EYES, AS THE CROW FLIES, and IN DISGUISE. (“Behind Blue Eyes” is a song by The Who.)
A Rex commenter noted that the plural of samurai is samurai — not samurais. And Merriam-Webster agrees. The NYT editors just blew it!
Excuse me — how far is it to the nearest garage?
About a mile and a half as the crow flies.
How far is it if the crow has to walk and lug a flat tire?
I posted:
BEHIND BLUE EYES calls to mind the Lee Marvin line from Cat Ballou. He fell asleep drunk on his horse.
Guy: Look at your eyes.
LM: What’s wrong with my eyes?
Guy: They’re red, bloodshot.
LM: You oughta see ’em from my side.
Tim Wakefield, Red Sox pitcher, died yesterday from brain cancer. He was only 57. Only two pitchers in Red Sox history won more games for them than Wakefield: Cy Young and Roger Clemens, each of whom won 192 to Wakefield’s 186. Nobody pitched more innings (3,006) or started more games (430) for Boston than he did. Clemens was second in both categories, 230 behind in innings, and 48 behind in starts.
Wakefield was also the all-time Boston leader in losses (168), batters faced (12,971), walks (1095), hits (2,931), home runs (401), earned runs (1,480), wild pitches (125), and hit batters (176).
He pitched for Boston for 17 years, after two with the Pirates, and won exactly 200 games. He was a knuckleball pitcher. It puts less strain on the arm than other pitches, so knuckleball pitchers who have success with it can last longer. On April 27, 1993, he threw 172 pitches over 10+ innings for the Pirates against the Braves. He also threw a fastball that could reach speeds as high as (a laughable) 75 MPH. He was 45 when he retired.
Wakefield is prominent in Yankee history as well. During the 2003 ALCS, he surrendered the series-ending home run to Yankee Aaron Boone in the 11th inning. In our opinion, Boone would not be the current manager of the Yankees if not for that home run. But what do we know?
In June of 1995, Wakefield took a no-hitter against the Oakland A’s into the eighth inning, but a single by Stan Javier with one out spoiled it. He nonetheless won, 4-1, using his knuckler for all but four of his 114 pitches.
In 2010, Wakefield won Baseball’s Roberto Clemente Award. It’s a big deal. Each team nominates one player who has done the most for his community and charitable causes. Then, from the 30 nominees, one winner is selected. Wakefield was nominated eight times before winning. Much of his charitable work revolved around children.
Tim is survived by his wife Stacy and their two kids, Trevor and Brianna, none of whom could come close to hitting a knuckler.
Rest in peace, Wake.
It’s a heavy baseball day. Joey Votto has played 17 seasons in the majors, all with Cincy. He’s had a very good career — .294 lifetime average, 356 homers, and good power numbers all around. Hall of Fame? Maybe.
It’s not official that he’s retiring this year, but his contract is up and his numbers were way off. So a lot of folks think this season was his last. He gave an emotional/funny speech last week at Cincy’s last home game of the season and the fans ate it up. And yesterday in St. Louis, the Reds were playing their last game of the season: conceivably, Joey’s last game ever. Emotional, right? Meaningful and profound in a way, no?
Except he got thrown out of the game by the umpire for arguing a strike call after his first at bat!! D’oh! Oh, man — say it ain’t so, Joe. What a way to go out. In case the ump might be targeted in some way by angry fans, and because it was true, he took full blame for the ejection — said he just blew it with his behavior, and the ump was right to throw him out. Classy.
Best of luck to you, Joey Votto. May your future be bright.
Good night everybody. Thanks for dropping by.
Well, not all the idiots in Congress are Republicans. Democrat Jamaal Bowman of NY pulled a fire alarm in the Capitol yesterday, seeking to delay a vote. It caused the building to be evacuated while officers could investigate. Bowman apologized for causing the mess. Of course, the reasonable and measured response of the Republicans included Kevin McCarthy equating it to the Jan. 6 riot, and fellow NY Rep. Nicole Malliotakis said she’ll introduce a resolution to expel Bowman from the House. No mention of the death penalty as of this writing.
The Onion paid tribute to the late Senator Dianne Feinstein with a retrospective of articles they published about her in recent years. These included:
Jimmy Carter Makes Pact With Dianne Feinstein That If Both Single In 50 Years They’ll Marry Each Other
Dianne Feinstein Recovering After Hospital Gurney Plunges Down Stairs And Launches Her Into Wall
Sheet Placed Over Dianne Feinstein Between Votes
Sen. Feinstein Grants Power of Attorney To Broom Resembling Daughter
Biden Speeds Away In Truck After Dropping Dianne Feinstein Off In Empty Field
Of course, Owl Chatter is aghast at how tasteless and disrespectful they all are, especially that last one (which is our favorite).
The NYT gave her a far more deserved sendoff today. Maureen Dowd noted that DiFi, as she was called, entered the Senate in 1992 when DC was much more male-dominated than it is today. She ignored the sexism and bulled her way ahead. E.g., as chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, she led the fight in 2014 to release the classified report on U.S. torture in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo. She went up against Obama and his C.I.A. chief John Brennan. Bush’s C.I.A. director Michael Hayden said dismissively that Feinstein couldn’t be objective because she was motivated by “deep emotional feeling.”
“Nonsense,” she snapped back. The senator simply wanted America to face the ugly truth so we would never betray our values in such a grotesque way again.
Feinstein was reelected five times. In the 2012 election, she received 7.86 million votes, the most popular votes received by any U.S. Senate candidate in history.
A story by Heather Knight focused on her ties to SF, where she was born the same year construction was started on the Golden Gate Bridge. She was mayor after the Harvey Milk shooting. She kept a firefighter’s coat and helmet in her car so she could show up at every major fire in the city. She saved the cable car system when it was on the verge of collapse and steered the city through serial killers, the Jonestown massacre, the Patty Hearst business, and the Milk and Mayor Moscone killings. Current Mayor Breed said Feinstein often called her about things like uneven sidewalks and potholes. “Dianne never stopped being mayor,” Breed said.
She was traveling in a car several years ago past a downtown parking structure, and was frustrated to see a ratty mattress propped up against a fire hydrant.
“Ed!” she hollered over the phone to Ed Lee, who was mayor at the time. “There’s a mattress!”
Days later, she returned to the neighborhood, and the mattress was gone. She was very pleased with herself.
Feinstein was married three times and is survived by her daughter Katherine, who looks nothing like a broom.
Rest in peace, DiFi.
Yesterday was the birthday of American poet and essayist, W.S. Merwin who died in 2019 at the age of 91. When he was a junior at Princeton, Merwin decided he would be nothing but a poet for the rest of his life, and would never get a job that didn’t have something to do with poetry. [That’s pretty much how I feel about being a tax professor.] So after college he went to Europe, where he worked as a babysitter for writer Robert Graves in Majorca and wrote poems in his spare time.
He was an ardent anti-Vietnam-War activist. When he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1970 for The Carrier of Ladders, he refused the award out of shame for being an American. He asked that that the money go instead to a painter who was blinded by police in California while watching a protest.
In 1976, he moved to Hawaii and bought 20 acres of land by a dormant volcano that had been an ill-run pineapple plantation. Merwin and his wife turned it into a palm forest, hacking down dead growth with machetes and planting palms one by one. It now holds more than 700 species of trees and plants, along with geckos and mynah birds. He didn’t use a cell phone or email and wrote every morning in longhand.
He won a second Pulitzer Prize in 2009 for The Shadow of Sirius. In 2010, the Library of Congress named him the 17th U.S. Poet Laureate.
He continued to plant a tree every day during the rainy season for as long as he was able to.
He wrote:
On the last day of the world
I would want to plant a tree.
Here are some palms:
This poem is called “History Lesson” and is by Jeff Coomer.
My grandfather left school at fourteen
to work odd jobs until he was old enough
to join his Lithuanian kin chipping
anthracite out of the Pennsylvania hills.
Nine hours a day with five hundred feet
of rock over his head, then an hour’s
ride home on the company bus
to a dinner of boiled cabbage and chicken.
When the second big war broke
he headed “sout,” as he pronounced it,
for better work in the blast furnaces
churning out steel along the shores
of the Chesapeake. Thirty-two years
and half an index finger later he retired
to a brick rancher he built with his own hands
just outside the Baltimore city line.
The spring he got cancer and I got a BA
from a private college we stood under
a tree in his backyard while he copped
a smoke out of my grandmother’s sight.
“Tell me, Pop,” I said, wanting to strike up
a conversation, “how did you like
working in the mills all those years?”
He studied my neatly pressed white shirt,
took a long drag on his cigarette and spit a fleck
of tobacco near my shoes. “Like,” he said,
“didn’t have a thing to do with it.”
Ted Kennedy was campaigning outside of a factory, shaking hands with the workers as they were coming to work. One guy stopped and said, “Tell me, Kennedy, did you ever work at a place like this even one day in your life?”
Kennedy replied, “No, I can’t say that I have.”
The worker said, “You haven’t missed a fucking thing.”
Oy, we can’t end on such a gloomy note. Any special guest stars in the puzzle today who might light up the joint? Oooh, Rachel Brosnahan popped in at 43D from The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Even though the character Mrs. M is Jewish, Rachel isn’t, but she says she was immersed in Jewishness growing up in Highland Park, IL. [BTW, Grace Slick is from Highland Park too. She’s not Jewish, but get this — Jorma Kaukonen is (via his mom).] Rachel is married to actor Jason Ralph, who got all dressed up for us. Awww, sweet. No kids.
We’ll let Rachel’s pretty eyes send us off tonight. See you tomorrow!
Abe: Rabbi, I have a strong desire to live forever. What should I do?
Rabbi: Get married.
Abe: And I’ll live forever?
Rabbi: No, but the desire will disappear.
[Sorry, darling — it’s just a joke!]
My cousin Barry sent me those two items. It may depress you to learn they were the best out of around ten. Aside from that, he’s a wonderful man who raised 8 (or 6) children. [He knows whether it’s 8 or 6. It’s just that between him and his brother Jay, I don’t recall which is the 8 and which the 6.]
There’s an update on whether Lennon and McCartney sang backup on The Stones’ song Dandelion. Here’s the comment that was posted late yesterday:
“Despite what Wikipedia says, there doesn’t seem to be absolute certainty that John and Paul sang on “Dandelion.” 0ne account has Mick and Keith saying they didn’t. They did sing on the flip side, “We Love You”, which was the A-side in Britain. “Dandelion” had been recorded much earlier but was apparently finished up at the “We Love You” recording session, whatever that entailed.
“The background vocal is Beatle-esque in style, but I’m not sure it really sounds like them singing it. So who knows?”
The clue at 51A yesterday was “Protagonist in a long-running Phyllis Reynolds Naylor book series.” Now that’s a Friday-level clue: for ALICE. Monday it would be something like “Mrs. Kramden,” or maybe “Wonderland drop-in.”
A comment on Rex’s blog brought up this verse from an old song by Little Feat, called “Willin’.” It’s about a trucker driving through Texas thinking about his girlfriend.
I was out on the road, late at night,
I seen my pretty Alice in every headlight:
Alice, Dallas Alice
But you wanna hear Linda sing it, believe me.
Yesterday’s puzzle was by Malaika Handa, a young lady who guest blogs for Rex once a month on a Wednesday (Mlaika MWednesday, she calls it). And she’s very relaxed and personable. If you don’t believe me, take a look at this shayna punim.
It was her fourth puzzle in the Times and showed off her crisp intelligence. E.g., at 41D, “Having rhythm:” CADENT. (Wow.)
And how about: “_____ B. Parker, Democratic candidate for president in 1904.” Answer ALTON. (Who?)
Her clue for MAE WEST was: “Who said ‘Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before.’”
13D triggered a lot of commentary: “Feeling of dread before the start of the workweek, in slang.” Answer: SUNDAY SCARIES. Rex hated the baby-talkiness of it.
At 20A “Brand of ranch dressing?” was STETSON. Get it? It’s the name (brand) of a hat that is worn on a ranch.
Today’s puzzle was a bear, as is appropriate for a Saturday. I couldn’t establish a beachhead, but slowly got little pockets to fill. E.g., at 10D “Find _____ (Nintendo minigame)” was MII. See what I mean?
At 39A, “Rock band with the 2023 album ‘This Stupid World’” was YO LA TENGO. I had barely heard of them. Get this —
Yo La Tengo, Spanish for “I have it,” came from a baseball anecdote that occurred during the 1962 season, when Mets center fielder Richie Ashburn and shortstop Elio Chacón found themselves colliding in the outfield. When Ashburn went for a catch, he would scream, “I got it! I got it!” only to run into Chacón, a Venezuelan who spoke only Spanish. Ashburn learned to yell, “Yo la tengo! Yo la tengo!” instead. In a later game, Ashburn happily saw Chacón backing off. He relaxed, positioned himself to catch the ball, and was instead run over by left fielder Frank Thomas, who understood no Spanish. After getting up, Thomas asked Ashburn, “What the hell is a yellow tango?”
I’m old enough to have gone to some of those early Mets games in the Polo Grounds with Casey Stengel managing. In one, the Mets were up by about six runs going into the ninth, but the opposing team started blasting away. Stengel was calling in every arm he had but they all got slammed. Finally, with the lead down to one and the tying run at third, he called in another pitcher. The first pitch was drilled to deep center, but Rod Kanehl (I think) flew after it and made a great leaping catch. Game over. Mets win. As Stengel passed the pitcher coming off the mound he said “Good pitch, kid.”
Since 1900, no team has lost more games in a season than those 1962 Mets (120). But Ashburn hit .306 that year and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1995.
At 44D, “Honeydew producer” was APHID. What? Shouldn’t it be “farmer” or something like that? Aphid? Rex explains:
In addition to being the name of a melon, honeydew is also “a sweet, sticky substance excreted by aphids and often deposited on leaves and stems.” Just what the crossword needs—excrement!
But these honeydew chunks look good.
20A today was “Contemporary artist Carrie _____ Weems,” and the answer was MAE. Weems was born in Portland OR in 1953 and works in many art forms but is best known for photography. Here is a shot from her Kitchen Table Series.
Her work provides social commentary on the experiences of people of color, especially Black women in America. She lives in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, and Syracuse, with her husband. Among her numerous honors was a MacArthur Fellowship Genius Award in 2013, and induction into the International Photography Hall of Fame in 2020.
I hadn’t heard of that Hall of Fame, but its inductees include the few names I have heard of: Ansel Adams, George Eastman, Alfred Stieglitz, Richard Avedon, and Annie Leibovitz (over 70 in total). Perusing the list, the name Graham Nash caught my eye. Yes, the Crosby, Stills et al Graham Nash. He is not only a rock star, but is well respected within the field of photography too.
9D was “Bit of fish food:” PELLET. It led a commenter to share this Danny Kaye scene with us. I was enjoying its ridiculousness mildly, and then, towards the end, found myself laughing pretty hard. Give it a look:
This sexy Batwoman is from a 1968 Mexican movie that is having a revival of sorts, according to the Times. The actress is the Italian-born Maura Monti, who is 81 now, and has had a wonderful life in journalism, art, and teaching, after her film career ended..
She fights a “fish-man” named Pisces in the film. He’s eventually caught breaking into a tartar sauce factory. D’oh!
Owl Chatter photographer Phil maintains that the test of a beautiful woman is how she looks digging something out of her teeth. We see your point, Philly. Maura certainly passes. Nice shot, Buddy.
Oy. That’s enough nonsense for today. See you tomorrow!
This song is from a funny and wonderful British show called “The Detectorists.” It (the show) was recommended to Owl Chatter by Astoria Bob, who’s in the OC Art Department and we loved it.
I felt the touch of the kings and the breath of the wind
I knew the call of all the song birds
They sang all the wrong words
I’m waiting for you
I’m with the ghosts of the men who can never sing again
There’s a place: follow me
Where a love lost at sea
Is waiting for you
The puzzles today and yesterday were aimed at two areas foreign to me, but were fun and I was able to complete them. Yesterday’s was a linguistics lesson and an homage to Noam Chomsky, who is still living and is 94. Today involved reading music (which I can’t).
Back in 1957, Chomsky devised a famous sentence which he used to note that a sentence could be fine syntactically but have no meaning. The sentence was: COLORLESS GREEN IDEAS SLEEP FURIOUSLY. So the puzzle included those words along with NOAM CHOMSKY himself, and the word NONSENSICAL. Curmudgeon Rex grumbled: There is absolutely nothing happening here. It’s basically a quotation. There’s no wordplay, no cleverness, nothing. Just “here is this guy who said this thing that is famous in his field” that’s it.
Ouch.
He liked today’s puzzle much better. It was pretty clever. At four locations it gave you a clue for a word along with a (musical) key signature. You had to solve the clue, and add the musical point to come up with a different (unclued) word. What? For example, at 45A the clue was
for the answer PALEST. The key is E, so it was “IN E.” So putting them together got you PALESTINE.
“Some energy drinks” was MONSTERS, and they were “IN C,” so you got MONSTERS, INC as the full answer.
“Court athlete, slang” was BALLER. It was “IN A,” so you end up with BALLERINA.
Last, and best (IMO) was “Leaf-raking time,” which is FALL and it’s IN G FLAT, so you get FALLING FLAT.
A clever clue/answer unrelated to the theme was “Made a semi circle, say?” The answer was STEERED. You steer to make a semi (truck) drive in a circle.
Jersey girl Meryl STREEP was in the grid too. The clue was “Holder of a record 21 Oscar nominations for acting.” Yikes, that’s a big number. She won three times. Not only is she from NJ, she’s from Summit, NJ, which is walking distance from Owl Chatter headquarters, maybe half an hour walk. She went to Vassar for her BA and Yale for her MFA. Here’s how she looked in those days.
She’s been married to sculptor Don Gummer since 1978. They have four kids: their son Henry is a musician, and their daughters Mamie, Grace, and Louisa, are actresses.
Jeez Louise! — “Weed in some medicinal wine” is DANDELION? Gimme a break!
Good song, though. It was first released by the Stones way back in 1967 (ouch), and, hey! — is that John Lennon and Paul McCartney singing the backing vocals? Neat! The Stones have never performed it live.
Jeanette Wyneken, a professor at Florida Atlantic University, has studied nesting sea turtles for over 30 years. She says we can’t be entirely joyful about the record number of sea turtle nests that popped up in 2023. Restrictions on beachfront development and careful monitoring of nests have helped get hatchlings safely to the water, and a gill net ban in 1995 sharply reduced the number of young turtles killed by fishing gear. A 13-mile stretch of beach in Florida in the Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge set aside in 1991, had about 1,000 green sea turtle nests in 1994, almost 12,000 in 2013, and more than 23,000 this year. Woohoo!
But a portion of those nests are not bearing hatchlings. The eggs are most likely being killed by extreme heat and dryness, and Prof. Wyneken was quoted in the Times as saying, a bit unprofessionally: “it worries the crap out of me.”
The fear is the vast number of nests will send the message that environmental protections can be reduced. But the sea turtles are far from out of the woods (or out of wherever they should be out of). We’ll have to keep an eye on them, for sure. Thanks, Doc.
Here’s a six-pack of hatchlings.
We’ll let those little fellas (or gals) send us off tonight. Thanks for popping by!
What would you use as the clue if the answer is MAP? At 46A yesterday the clue was “Mercator projection, e.g.” Pretty heady for a Tuesday. If you have any idea of what that is, that makes one of us. But I looked it up — it’s the traditional world map we use today.
The Mercator projection is a cylindrical map projection presented by cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569. It became the standard map projection for navigation because it is unique in representing north as up and south as down everywhere while preserving local directions and shapes. As a side effect, the Mercator projection inflates the size of objects away from the equator. This inflation is very small near the equator but accelerates with increasing latitude to become infinite at the poles. As a result, landmasses such as Greenland, Antarctica, Canada and Russia appear far larger than they actually are relative to landmasses near the equator, such as Central Africa.
Some folks think this has had sociological effects and prefer an alternative: The Gall-Peters projection that “undistorts” the area sizes. It’s catching on a little. Maps based on this projection are promoted by UNESCO, and they are also widely used by British schools. The State of Massachusetts and Boston Public Schools began phasing in these maps in March 2017, becoming the first public school district and state in the U.S. to adopt Gall–Peters maps as their standard.
This scene from The West Wing tells the story pretty well (and it’s fun). It also shows you the various maps — very helpful.
It was the 17th anniversary of Rex’s blog on the NYTXW a few days ago and he received many nice notes of congratulations. Then, yesterday, this beautiful post appeared at 6:49am, by “anonymous.” (OFL stands for “our fearless leader,” i.e., Rex.)
“I wonder if OFL has any idea of what this blog means to some of us. I have a large supportive family. I have life-long supportive friends. Yet while I’m sitting here in Sloane-Kettering, the one thing that can completely distract me is this blog. I know, it makes no sense at all. But often times life does not. So to OFL, and the regular folks who take the time and energy to contribute , thank you. Life is good.”
Rex rarely responds to a note. Maybe once a month. But he responded to this one with:
I have some idea 😊 but thank you for saying so, and all my warmest wishes ~RP
I am including today’s poem from The Writer’s Almanac for two reasons. It’s nice, and there’s one word in it that is new to me and I’d like to share it. The poem is called “Flamingo Watching,” and it’s by Kay Ryan.
Wherever the flamingo goes,
she brings a city’s worth
of furbelows. She seems
unnatural by nature—
too vivid and peculiar
a structure to be pretty,
and flexible to the point
of oddity. Perched on
those legs, anything she does
seems like an act. Descending
on her egg or draping her head
along her back, she’s
too exact and sinuous
to convince an audience
she’s serious. The natural elect,
they think, would be less pink,
less able to relax their necks,
less flamboyant in general.
They privately expect that it’s some
poorly jointed bland grey animal
with mitts for hands
whom God protects.
A “furbelow” is a gathered strip or pleated border of a skirt or petticoat. Here’s a close-up of a flamingo showing hers (or his) off.
And here’s one of my tax students wearing a dress festooned with a furbelow, and then a twosome going a little nuts with them.
Most cruciverbalists, I would say, have some black holes in their universes — areas of weakness. I’m usually thrown by rap stars and current pop singers, except for Adele, who is very often the answer. Unlike some who shrink in terror at Simpsons references, I’m pretty strong in that area. But there was one today that threw me, to my great shame.
The clue was “Steamed ___,” classic “Simpsons” sketch, and the answer was HAMS. It turns out it’s a scene that has gone beyond viral. It’s been recast into many different variations. Rex was kind enough to share the original with us:
If you search “steamed hams” on Youtube you will find, literally, dozens of variations, including one with Nazis, and one that uses only consonants. [Where else but in Owl Chatter will you find out vital information like this?]
Last weekend, the Pirates were in Cincy to play the Reds for whom the game was crucial because Cincy is in a very tight race for the last NL playoff spot. It was a meaningless game for the Pirates; they had long ago abandoned their playoff hopes.
Things were looking good for the home team, as the Reds jumped off to a 9-0 lead by the third inning. In their 137-year history, Pittsburgh had never come back from such a deficit. You want details? Their record was 0-819 when trailing by nine or more runs. You can probably see where this is heading: Final score: Pitt 13, Cincy 12. Ouch.
Brooks Robinson, the brilliant Hall of Fame third-baseman whose defensive prowess earned him the nickname “The Human Vacuum Cleaner,” died yesterday at the age of 86. He played his entire career with the Orioles, The cause of death was choking on a big clump of hair and dirt. [No it wasn’t.]
He was an All-Star 18 times and he won 16 Gold Glove awards. His 2,870 games played at third base exceeded the closest player by nearly 700 games when he retired, and remain the most games by any player in major league history at a single position. His 23 seasons spent with a single team set a major league record since matched only by Carl Yastrzemski. He won the World Series twice and was the WS MVP in 1970. In 1964 he was the AL MVP.
Harold ‘Pie’ Traynor, the Pittsburgh Pirates’ Hall-of-Fame third baseman said, “I once thought of giving him some tips, but dropped the idea. He’s just the best there is.” At a lunch meeting during the ’70 World Series, Sparky Anderson, the (losing) Reds’ manager said, “I’m beginning to see Brooks in my sleep. If I dropped this plate, he’d pick it up on one hop and throw me out at first.”
Robinson was very particular about his glove. He would try the gloves of different players and trade two of his own for theirs if he really wanted it. Once he found one he liked, he would take a year to prepare it. When he felt it was ready for game action, he would use it exclusively during games, using others for batting practice and infield workouts.
He met his wife Connie on an Orioles team flight where she was working as a flight attendant for United Airlines. He was so smitten with her that he kept ordering iced teas. After drinking his third glass, he returned it to her in the galley and said: “I want to tell you something. If any of these guys, the Baltimore Orioles, ask you for a date, tell ’em you don’t date married men. Understand? I’m the only single guy on the team.” Actually, nearly half of the Orioles were single. Before the plane landed in Boston the two had made a date to go out. They got married a little over a year later in Windsor, Ontario, Connie’s hometown.
Robinson is survived by Connie, their three sons and one daughter, none of whom had to help with the vacuuming.
Rest in peace Brooks.
Thanks for dropping in! See you tomorrow.
Today’s poem from The Writer’s Almanac is by Jim Harrison, who holds a special place in Owl Chatter. OC poet laurate Ted Kooser wrote his Winter Morning Walks poems on postcards and sent them to Jim Harrison, his close friend. This one of Harrison’s is called “Peonies.”
The peonies, too heavy with their beauty,
slump to the ground. I had hoped
they would live forever but ever so slowly
day by day they’re becoming the soil of their birth
with a faint tang of deliquescence around them.
Next June they’ll somehow remember to come alive again,
a little trick we have or have not learned.
My thoughts upon reading that poem were (1) I loved “too heavy with their beauty,” and (2) if I ever had to read it aloud I would, without question, trip over “deliquescence” and say delicatessen instead. And now I’m thinking of corned beef. All great poems get you thinking of corned beef, I’ve noticed.
Can you handle two today? This one is from the Poetry Foundation. It’s called “Real Estate” and is by Richard Siken. It doesn’t make me think of corned beef, but I liked it.
My mother married a man who divorced her for money. Phyllis, he would say, If you don’t stop buying jewelry, I will have to divorce you to keep us out of the poorhouse. When he said this, she would stub out a cigarette, mutter something under her breath. Eventually, he was forced to divorce her. Then, he died. Then she did. The man was not my father. My father was buried down the road, in a box his other son selected, the ashes of his third wife in a brass urn that he will hold in the crook of his arm forever. At the reception, after his funeral, I got mean on four cups of Lime Sherbet Punch. When the man who was not my father divorced my mother, I stopped being related to him. These things are complicated, says the Talmud. When he died, I couldn’t prove it. I couldn’t get a death certificate. These things are complicated, says the Health Department. Their names remain on the deed to the house. It isn’t haunted, it’s owned by ghosts. When I die, I will come in fast and low. I will stick the landing. There will be no confusion. The dead will make room for me.
Speaking of the dead, Linda and I met with a lawyer we really liked and had our wills drawn up. I told Sam about it and he asked if he was the executioner. I told him the term was executor.
General Mark Milley is the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, our highest ranking military officer. He has served in the military with great distinction for 44 years. He holds a degree in political science from Princeton, a master’s in international relations from Columbia, and a master’s from the U.S. Naval War College in national security and strategic studies. He’s retiring.
You know, these days, if you surf the internet you can find so much hateful bullshit it’s ridiculous. For example, this letter popped up referring to Milley as “the homosexual-promoting-BLM-activist Chairman of the military joint chiefs,” a “deviant” who “was coordinating with Nancy Pelosi to hurt President Trump, and treasonously working behind Trump’s back. In a better society,” he wrote, “quislings like the strange sodomy-promoting General Milley would be hung. He had one boss: President Trump, and instead he was secretly meeting with Pelosi and coordinating with her to hurt Trump.”
But, of course, if you read historian Heather Cox Richardson’s newsletter, you know that this was not the product of some random internet troll. It was a letter you and I paid for that was sent out by Republican Congressman Paul Gosar of Arizona to his constituents. (His newsletter is taxpayer-funded.)
Trump weighed in on Milley too, calling him a “woke train wreck” who should be executed for treason. Milley has told friends that if Trump is re-elected, “he’ll start throwing people in jail, and I’d be on the top of the list.” But Milley is confident Trump will not be re-elected because he has faith in the American people. From your mouth to God’s ears, General. Amen and kinahora.
Jango Edwards passed away last month. He was a wonderful, groundbreaking clown, who was born in Detroit but trained and mostly worked in Europe after selling his share in his father’s landscaping business to his brother. He liked to say he got rich selling grass. We are inducting him into the Owl Chatter Hall of Fame, posthumously, today, for reasons that will be obvious, below.
In 1981, the NYT wrote: “For sheer theatrical energy, for schmutz as well as chutzpah, he makes John Belushi look like Charlie Brown.” He was always in character: When leaving the restaurant after the Times interview, he kissed a restaurant patron, bonked another on the head, and flipped the “open” sign on the front door to “closed.”
In one of his bits he played a goggle-eyed magician doing a card trick but instead of cards he used a “deck” of about eight uncooked hot dogs. He picked a gorgeous woman from the audience to assist him. He asked her if she was married and when she said no, he grabbed her and kissed her. (This was many years ago.) He “shuffled” the hot dogs and had the woman pick one. Meanwhile, of course, he’d be doing all sorts of lewd stuff with the hot dogs as the audience convulsed with laughter. He had her place “her” hot dog back in the “deck” and gave them all to her to “shuffle.” As she was shuffling them, he said, “I can see why you’re not married.” Then he grabbed them all back from her (“Gimme those!”), picked one out and asked her, “Is this your hot dog?” (OMG — too funny!)
His given name was Stanley, but he took the name Jango when some children in Morocco said he looked like Django, a character in a spaghetti western film. He dropped the D.
In 1975, he co-founded the International Festival of Fools, a street fair in Amsterdam, which became the centerpiece of the movement called Nouveau Clown. They took as their central tenet a quotation from Erasmus, in his 1509 essay “In Praise of Folly”: “They’re the only ones who speak frankly and tell the truth, and what is more praiseworthy than the truth?”
His fan base in Europe was broad and included the Rolling Stones and Federico Fellini. He performed relentlessly — multiple 90-minute shows six nights a week. He semi-retired in 2017 and worked on a memoir/training guide “The Clown Bible,” which he completed a few days before his death.
He is survived by his wife, Christi Garbo, also a clown, three children, his brother, and three grandchildren, all of whom appreciate to their core the importance of laughter in our lives.
The first photo, below, is of Jango in his early years. In the second one, he’s in the center, flanked by his two sons.
Rest in peace Jango.
In the puzzle today (Dirty Old Man Dept.) the answer at 43A is SAG, and the answer at 51A is BRA. Commenter egs noted: “You’ve gotta love that BRA is positioned to be holding up SAG.” (And they are both right above GOAL SETTING.”)
The clue at 70A was Boy band with the hits “Bye Bye Bye” and “It’s Gonna Be Me,” and the answer was NSYNC. egs noted: The Pope is rumored to be working on a letter to all Bishops concerning Justin Timberlake’s former band. It’ll be an NSYNClical.
Ba da boom.
See you tomorrow! (Unless I’m too tired from my classes to crank out the usual nonsense.)
The Wellington Files 