20%

Someone who is in the pizza delivery business posted the other day that, with all the pandemic worries, people are eating a lot of pizza, and they want it delivered, and they do not wish to have human-to-human contact with the person who delivers it.

The problem is, that's when they would normally hand over a tip.  But it seems that a lot of people are paying with credit cards online or on the phone, or with any of the 27 electronic means of paying for stuff, and they aren't adding a tip.

And that person who is out there driving your 16" double pepperoni is doing so, not for his or her health as some seem to think, but for below minimum wage.  He or she depends on decent tipping to get by, but they are taking it in the shorts nowadays.

And this leads me to one of the Two Great Truths I have discovered in my lifetime: Most people will look for any reason - any! - to get out of paying a decent tip to service personnel.  Hotel maids, restaurant servers, food delivery people, movers and furniture deliverers, taxi and Uber drivers...all of them have a tip coming (unless they are really really awful.  And please don't stint on a server's tip because the chef put capers in your mostaccioli. That's not their fault, for the love of Pete.)

As everyone who knows me knows, we love to eat at Friendly Farm, where the meals are served family style. This means that the server brings you drinks, appetizers and steaming bowls of veggies - corn, string beans, fries, beets. Those get passed around the table and everyone gets their own entree, which is usually enough for two anyway.  And then, after bringing you drink fillers and extra napkins and hot sauce and I don't know what-all else, the server will bring you a nice bowl of ice cream, and coffee.  This is a lot of work, but my parents knew a guy who ate there all the time but did not tip because "they don't take your order, so they're not like real servers in a restaurant."

This cheap chiseler owned his own business and lived well, but didn't part with a few dollars, on the grounds that he gave his entree order when he walked in and paid.

By the way, that business he owned employed hard working people who were happy to accept tips.

Every now and again, the objection is raised that the restaurants and other businesses should "pay a living wage" to their employees. Trust me, you'd be paying a whole lot more for your Moo Goo Gai Pan if the restaurants eliminated tips.  Plus, a hard-working server or maid or driver or whatever deserves more than the schlub who does a 1/2 fast job.

So, we agree, right? Pay the tip, enjoy your pizza, wear your mask, thank you.

Animal Healing

In your life, you will see a lot of medical professionals and people to help you with your health concerns. Certified nursing assistants, registered nurses, physical therapists, dozens of others are there for you, including doctors and dogtors.

Dogtor?

Meet Dogtor Loki.  She's a Rottweiler, two years old, a therapy dog whose human is Caroline Benzel. The two of them do therapy sessions at the University of Maryland Medical Center three times a week, going around making people happy with some canine happiness.

Ms Benzel is a medical student of U of M, and what she and Loki are doing is good for the patients and for the two of them!

But, with changes, according to the current national circumstances. Ms Benzel said, "We were doing therapy for the entire hospital system. Whether it be custodians, first responders, nurses, doctors, patients, or even family members in the waiting room.”

But of course, with everything shut down due to COVID-19, there are no more in-person visits to cheer people up. Now they do FaceTime visits.

The staff and the patients now can see Dogtor Loki with video conferences.

“We started contacting people and just checking in and making sure they were doing okay. Then we started doing the FaceTime visits,” the future doctor said.

It's hard to think that this pandemic has turned the world upside down since the first of the year, and it's not even May yet. 

Ms Benzel noticed that the doctors are suffering skin irritation from wearing the protective gear for extended periods.

“You can kind of see that wearing PPE for prolonged periods does start rubbing your skin and can start irritating it,” she said. “For me, wearing these masks for short periods of time, it starts to irritate my skin. So, I can only imagine for people wearing it for eight to 10 to 12 plus hours, what kind of damage it can do.”

Her solution was to put together “Hero Healing Kits.” She packs skin moisturizers, lotions, lip balm, medicated powder, teas, and other items in a pocket-sized kit.  The kit has a picture of Loki to spread even more happiness and healing.

She's put together, and given out, 4,200 kits in Maryland and Philadelphia.

Loki even puts on scrubs when she goes along to hand out the bags.

What's your vector, Victor?

I don't understand exactly where the atmosphere ends and the stratosphere begins and then along comes the exosphere.  It's all way out there in outer space, but I'm sure there are definite boundaries, just as there are zip codes so you can tell at a glance where your mail is supposed to go.

I bring this up because there are astronauts flying around in the International Space Station right now, even farther away than we can imagine as we sit on earth, hoping the cable won't go out. I was reading a thing on the CNN page about these people out there rocketing around, and how "the crews have a little companion that can take the edge off all that exospheric social distancing."

I don't think they have to stay six feet away from each other up on the ISS, and it wouldn't matter in the case of this special companion anyhow, because that companion just happens to be a little robot named CIMON.

In the time-honored manner of NASA having humorous names and acronyms for things, CIMON stands for "Crew Interactive MObile companioN" and, unlike human assistants who need sleep or days off or get a little miffed when there are no more honey-dipt donuts left at break time, CIMON is ready to go at all times. This is what they call artificial intelligence, and let's just say you wouldn't want to play Uno with him. He's very smart.

CIMON is similar to those Siri or Alexa people you may already have in your house, but the tasks he is given are a tad tougher than "Play Yanni for me" or "Add catsup to the grocery list."  When an astronaut tells CIMON what to do, the little machine communicates with Watson, IBM's processor that is eerily close to many humans we know.  In fact, you take your average smart guy, and Watson, and neither of them can learn to dance very well.

CIMON is there to help the flyguys and flywomen deal with everyday tasks aboard the space station. And I think movie fans will notice a great resemblance to another flying robot from the past, whose name was Otto.

Flight 2-0-9'er, you are cleared for take-off. You ever been in a cockpit before?   Joey, do you like movies about gladiators?

The Youngest Medal Recipient

When I was 12, it was a big deal that my parents would drop me off at the bus stop by the old courthouse in Towson on a Friday or Saturday night, and my buddy Bob and I would go to the Civic Center to see a hockey game, get a Giant, shake and fries afterwards at Gino's across the street, and come back to bucolic Towson around midnight.

And now, as evening lays its shawl across the shoulders of my life, as Johnny Cash once sang, I don't know if I would take a bus downtown again. For one thing, the city is not as safe as it used to be, and for another, we tend to be more intrepid at 12 than at whatever I am now.  Which is 68.

And even at my 12, I don't know that I could have done what Calvin Leon Graham did at his 12.

Calvin was 11, actually, when Pearl Harbor was attacked and the U.S. was plunged into World War II. His father was dead, and his mother had married a man who did not have time for or interest in young Calvin, so with a forged letter of permission, a faked notary stamp, and some time spent learning to make his voice sound deeper, Calvin dressed up in his older brother's clothes and joined the US Navy in August, 1942, after turning 12.

Following boot camp, he was assigned to a seaman's berth on the USS South Dakota as it  sailed from Pearl Harbor that October 16.  Ten days later, Graham found himself in the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands as a loader for a 40 mm anti-aircraft gun. In November the South Dakota was in the Battle of Guadalcanal. Graham was hit by shell fragments but still continued to help rescue others aboard the ship, which was hit by at least 42 missiles from 3 enemy ships.

The South Dakota and her crew were awarded two Navy Unit Commendations for their heroism, and young Graham was given the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart.

Severely damaged, the South Dakota returned to the East Coast under the name "Battleship X," which she was given to lead the enemy to think she was lost in battle. While in port, Graham got word that his grandmother had died, and he jumped ship to go to Texas for her funeral, was caught, and put in the brig for desertion, serving three months before his sister threatened to tell the story of his status to the newspapers.

He was stripped of his medals and dishonorably discharged in May, 1943.

The rest of his life was spent unhappily, it would seem. He joined the Marines (at age 17) but fell off a pier and broke his back, and had to fight for years to get VA medical benefits and a clean service record. Not until 1978 was he given an honorable discharge, and all his medals were restored to him save the Purple Heart by President Carter. In later years, he was given medical benefits, and his wife was given the Purple Heart in his memory two years after he died in 1992 from heart failure.

Graham later said that his biggest mistake was in admitting to the South Dakota's legal officer that he was, in fact, 12 years of age, a fact that hastened his dismissal from the service.

That officer was none other than R. Sargent Shriver, vice-presidential candidate in 1972, father of Maria Shriver, chairman of the board of Special Olympics, and the recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom himself.

I try to imagine any 12-year-old passing ammo in the middle of a naval battle, and I can't. I think Calvin Graham deserved better than fate brought him.

Sunday Rerun: Color Me Surprised

In a mountain greenery,
Where God paints the scenery
Just two crazy people together. 

- Mountain Greenery (Rodgers & Hart)

Well, the wait is over, and for those who thought the election results would never be final, relax...the Color Of The Year has been chosen.

The other colors are all green with envy, because this year,  the good people at Pantone - "the authority on color, provider of color systems and leading technology for accurate communication of color" - have decided that Greenery is the color of the year.

It's a yellowish green, to be sure, "refreshing and revitalizing" in the words of Pantone, and "symbolic of new beginnings."

I've had plenty of new beginnings, and none of them reminded me of this color. What's more, we say someone is "green" when they are inexperienced, callow. 

Rougned Odor (r) finally had
his fill of Bautista as well.

As a lover of all things Autumn and Winter, I'm more of a brown and orange kind of guy. Spring does not thrill me because it inevitably leads to the horror we call summer, with its heat, humidity, broiling sunshine, mosquitoes and Jose Bautista.

Some years ago, a celery-colored color called Celadon was briefly popular.  This was just after all doctors were required to outfit their waiting rooms in mauve and gray shades, but before all rooms were decorated in the color known as "stainless steel."  I liked celadon.  I like celery, the negative-calorie food (you burn more calories grinding on it than you take in.  It's sort of a reverse milkshake in that.)  Celery adds the green to shrimp salad and the crunch to a tossed salad, too.

They're trying to make this greenery look like mint, but mint is the one crop that grows well here at the Lazy 'C', and it's much darker than this "greenery."  Home gardeners, and lovers of iced beverages, I recommend that you visit your local greenhouse in spring, buy some potted mint, and plant it down by the shed or near the spigot.  You'll snip leaves of tasty greenery-goodness forever, and be delighted as they add that certain zest to your iced tea.


And I hereby nominate "iced tea" to be color of the year for 2017.

The Saturday Picture Show, April 25, 2020

Some genius got to thinking that maybe his money had the corona cooties all over it, so what he did was, he put it in the microwave and hit the "sanitize my money" button.  Here is the result of his folly.

Maryland Gov. and Mrs Larry and Yumi Hogan showing how to get tests for the citizenry.

Why pay top dollar for a professionally-made Skee-Ball game, when you can just as easily make your own for a lot less?

The steps have long outlasted whatever they once led to, leaving us to wonder what was there. Metaphors abound.

Next up in our series of Cute Tiny Animals, say hi to the Bald Guinea Pig!

I would think it's worth a trip to Alexandria, Egypt, just to go to the library and see this bench!

The people who run the sunflower farm in Jarrettsville, MD, that popular fall attraction, have already announced they aren't planting a crop there this year. Save this picture from Japan and look at it when the time comes!

From the sky, this tulip plantation in the Netherlands looks like packages of colored paper.

Pee Wee's old playhouse

I'm not about to grumble about it at a time when the entire world is suffering a pandemic, but I do miss baseball a lot. Even Donald "Yogi" Trump, who claims to have been quite the high school baseball star whom no one ever heard of, says he's tired of watching 14-year-old baseball games.

Here's my answer: I watch really old ball games on YouTube. As I sit and peck at the keys right now, I'm enjoying game 7 of the 1952 World Series between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Yankees.

All sorts of people were there! Billy Martin, Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra were playing for the Yankees, with Casey Stengel managing, and the Dodgers had Pee Wee Reese, Roy Campanella, and Jackie Robinson on their side.  You can watch it here and let me know how it feels to see the great stars of the 50s in their baggy flannel uniforms.

It's still the same old ball game, and yet there are differences, such as no one was wearing a batting helmet; they just went up to hit wearing a baseball cap and that was it. Before the game, we saw the starting pitchers for both teams warming up, but not in their respective bullpens.  They threw from the fungo circles, an area near the first or third baseline, to a catcher squatting near the on-deck circle!

And in the first inning, the biggest difference took me back to the old days. An errant throw from Yankee third baseman Gil McDougald sailed past his first baseman and hit Dodger first base coach Jake Pitler on the leg.  And the announcer, Red Barber, said it was the first time he had seen that happen in his 23 years of calling games.

But there was no instant replay, so those who were staring into a mug of Old Frothingslosh beer in some tavern or looking down at their newspaper or slicing a salami sandwich in half missed it, and you know what they say about a picture being a thousand of Red's words...if you missed it the first time then, you were SOL (short on luck).

Remember, this was 1952. Television was just a baby then, and the production techniques were rudimentary at best: have a couple of cameras aimed at the game and hand the announcer a microphone. Nothing fancy.

For instant replay to even be available, there had to be a system of immediate recording, which came along in 1956 when Ampex developed a system to record on video tape, but without slow motion, instant replay or picture freeze, all features that the phone in your pocket has today.

In 1962, ABC TV had a Friday night show called the Fight Of The Week, and on March 24, they showed a bout between Benny Paret and Emile Griffith, with commentator Don Dunphy describing video of the fight just after it ended. This was the first use of replay in sports.  It should also be mentioned that Paret died ten days after the fight. He suffered a massive brain injury. There were calls for investigations, and boxing lost a great deal of its popularity on television afterwards.

If you were watching the Army-Navy football game on December 7, 1963 (I was!) you saw the first instant replay on live tv. It was awkward and cumbersome, but CBS made it work and showed Army quarterback Rollie Stichweh scoring a touchdown.

Then, the announcer, Lindsey Nelson, had to say over and over, "Ladies and gentlemen, Army DID NOT score again!"  He had to explain six ways to Sunday that they had shown the play right after the play was played.

Now, on every thing from a touchdown run to a great hit in baseball, we are treated to instant replay, slo-motion replay, replay from six different angles, and all sorts of other electronic wizardry.

Those who go to see ballgames in person and then stay home to watch one might now feel that the experiences are quite different. At the event in person, you see what you see, and unless you look at the giant JumboTron scoreboard out there, that's all you see, just like in the old days of TV, before they made it "better."

By the way, one thing hasn't changed. Players returning to the dugout after home runs or whatever are still assaulted by the others on the bench, with fanny smacks (then) and fist bumps (now).  We will have to see how social distancing figures into all this.

Another story that begins with "Florida Man..."

It wasn't long after I saw a story about Andie McDowell and her daughters sneaking under the fence to get into a closed park because, well, because they are Andie McDowell and her progeny, and laws mean nothing to them, along comes the story of prettyboy quarterback Tom Brady, who is new to Tampa Bay, the home of a perennially bad football team.

Apparently unaware of the pandemic gripping the nation, or being of the mind that his workout meant more than any old "rules," Brady was caught playing in a park and given the bum's rush like the bum he is.

But that's not even the point today, because if I wrote about it every time Tom Brady made himself the south end of a northbound horse, this blog would be called "The Daily Brady," and it isn't.

That point is made. Everyone knows, stay home, social distancing, yada yada, Brady doesn't follow rules.

But the result of that is another example of imprecise language causing confusion.  The mayor of Tampa, Jane Castor and St. Petersburg mayor Rick Kriseman were chatting on Facebook Live, because that's how we handle municipal affairs in 2020. And she said...

“I got to tell you this story, too. I always tell people, ‘Now I’m not one to gossip so you didn’t hear this from me.'”

“But you know our parks are closed down and so a lot of our parks staff, they patrol around just to make sure people aren’t doing contact sports and things and saw an individual working out in one of our downtown parks. And she went over to tell him that it was closed and it was Tom Brady.”

“Oh my goodness," Kriseman replied.

"He has been cited," Castor added.

So her statement that Brady was "cited" for working out in the park was picked up by local sports reporter Eduardo A. Encina, late of the Baltimore SUN.

Brady is renting a house from Derek Jeter, a former baseball player with a team called the "Yankees." It would seem there is not enough room there for Brady to heave the old pigskin around, as they say on the sports pages, so he went to the park and was seen there by a Rec & Parks staffer, who, with complete justification, gave him the gate.

But herhonor the mayor said Brady was cited, as in given a ticket as a notice of violating a law.  Until this update...

4 PM PT -- A rep for the City of Tampa says Tom was not formally "cited" -- but rather "sighted" ... meaning, he was not ticketed.
He was ordered to leave the park -- but he will NOT have to pay a fine.

And after that, the city turned the whole thing into a PSA, tweeting

"Sorry Tom Brady Our @tampaparksrec team can’t wait to welcome you and our entire community back with even bigger smiles -- until then, stay safe and stay home as much as you can to help flatten the curve."

Cite vs sight. The other funny homophone of the week was painted on the side of a pick 'em up truck at one of those "Reopen everything or I'm gonna hold my breath til I turn red" rallies was this ungrammatical trifecta: "NO YOU'RE RIGHT'S"

Sometimes people can't write right.

But they can't get rid of that Mayhem guy...

I have known Mia for many years.  I used to pick her up and stamp a price on her side and put her on a shelf in the dairy department, all without knowing her name!

Really! Did you know that the Native American woman on the Land O'Lakes packages even had a name? I didn't, until I read last week that the dairy company, which sold $14 Billion-With-a-B worth of butters, cheese and I don't know what-all else last year has decided that Mia's image will no longer be on their packages.

The Garvey "Supreme"
 price
stamper

Note to our younger readers: I worked at a grocery store. Back in the day, before bar code scanners, someone actually had to stamp prices on merchandise or people would have been all day in the checkout lines.


She had been there since the late 1920s, but now she is gone, joining the Geico Caveman, the Ty-D-Bowl man and the Noid pizza guy in commercial oblivion.

New L O' L (lol) packages will still show a lake and trees, that whole Garrison Keillor-Lake-Wobegon Minnesota image, but without the culturally inappropriate kneeling woman.

“We’ve recognized we need packaging that reflects the foundation and heart of our company culture — and nothing does that better than our farmer-owners whose milk is used to produce Land O’Lakes’ dairy products,” said Beth Ford, President and CEO of Land O’Lakes.

The first image of Mia came along in 1928, designed by illustrator Arthur C. Hanson for the advertising firm Brown and Bigelow. And it's interesting to note, as Vin Scully used to say, that the man who drew the updated image of her in the 50s was himself Native American. His name was Patrick DesJarlait, and he was of the Ojibwe tribe. He created the new look to foster “a sense of Indian pride,” according to the Minnesota Reformer news site.

Mr DesJarlait is not longer with us, but his son, Robert DesJarlait, told the Reformer that the "butter maiden" became a “paradox” for Native Americans over the years.

"Back in the ’50s, nobody even thought about stereotypical imagery. Today it’s a stereotype, but it’s also a source of cultural pride,” DesJarlait said.

Land O' Lakes is a cooperative, owned by the farmers whose herds produce the milk for the butter, etc. Beth Ford said their products needed packaging that reflects "the foundation and heart of the company's culture."

You can be sure that for every person cheering this as long overdue, there will be someone crying about how political correctness is ruining the country. But what some call political correctness is an effort to stop humiliating and hurting other people, so put me down on their side.

And pass the butter!

Conway Twitty

"People should know the facts." That is a sentence said by White House Advisor To The Star Kellyanne Conway on some show called "Fox and Friends last week.

Just before that, she said, "Some of the scientists and doctors say there could be other strains later on, this could come back in the fall in a limited way. This is COVID-19, not COVID-1, folks. And so you would think that people charged with the World Health Organization facts and figures would be on top of that."

She must listen to radio comedian Rush Limbaugh, who said this on March 12: "Why do you think this is COVID-19? This is the 19th coronavirus. They’re not uncommon.”

And then there was the meme I saw being shoved around on Facebook. That little bit of wisdom poked fun at those who "didn't know" that COVID-19 actually stands for "Chinese-Originated Very Infectious Disease number 19."

As anyone else knows, COVID-19 stands for Covfefe   COronaVIrus Disease. The 19 refers to its origination, 2019.

At first, the inclination is to feel a little sorry for those so benighted, but after all, Ms Conway has an important job, imparting advice to the president, and so one would want her to have all the facts before speaking.

Among those facts is this one: the word "coronavirus" has been around since the late 1960s. It refers  to "any of various RNA-containing spherical viruses of the family Coronaviridae, including several that cause acute respiratory illnesses."  That's according to dictionary.com.

The term came from the coronalike array of spikes projecting from the capsid of the virus. The capsid is the little body of the virus itself, that thing they keep showing on the news that looks like the Christmas decoration made by sticking cloves all over a Styrofoam ball.

Note to Ms Conway: when you see Lamar Jackson playing for the Ravens this fall, you will see JACKSON 8 on his back. Do not assume that there are 7 others like him, or that three players ago, he was part of the Jackson 5ive.

Loco logos

In 1975, the marketing geniuses at NBC-TV decided that they needed a new logo to replace the old logo that featured a peacock spreading its feathers.  The idea behind that logo was not because NBC carried a lot of shows about nature and avian plumage, but to promote the fact that they had brought color TV to America in the 1950s.

Younger readers might find this hard to believe, but in those days, people fortunate enough to purcha$e a color television would place them as close to the living room window as possible so that passersby could look in and see the miracle of Bonanza, in living color, far from the Ponderosa.

Anyway, by the 1970s, we were all used to seeing all sorts of spectaculars on color TV - the World Series, the Super Bowl, "Laugh-In," and one presidential resignation. NBC told the peacock to fly away and brought out a fancy new logo, just a giant "N".

Well, hot'a-mighty, didn't that look a lot like the logo of the Nebraska Educational TV network, which had been designed by the art department out there, at much less cost than the one million beans that NBC spent for their new design.

The  trademark infringement lawsuit was such a slam that NBC settled out of court, giving the Nebraskans some new broadcasting equipment and a mobile color unit to the tune of more than $800,000. They also had to come up with $55,000 to pay for a new logo for NETV.

And if I know my Nebraskans (and I don't), they had the art department come up with something and pocketed the 55G.

We logophiles were reminded of this the other day when the Indianapolis Irsays of the National Football League, who used to be the Baltimore Colts, unveiled their new uniforms for the 2020 season, which may or may not happen. The big deal was the introduction of a giant "C" with the outline of the state of Indiana dropped onto it, like a big tomato atop a cheeseburger.

But eagle-eyed onlookers were able to spot something that reminded them of the logo for Cathedral High School out there in Indianapolis:

The logo for the Catholic high school was developed by Jere Kubuske, a former coach there who has decamped for the warmer climate of Green Bay. He was howling mad on Twitter about five minutes after the Irsays unveiled their new duds:


"Good to know that even though I'm in WI now, I can still contribute to life in Indy. Thank you Colts for ripping off my logo for [Cathedral Football]," he wrote.

The Irsays, for their part, puffed up about their design, and said that THEIR "C" has seven holes in it, just as their classic uniforms from when they played in Baltimore, where they still belong, did. That's supposed to represent the nail holes in a horseshoe, although any farrier will tell you, a horseshoe has six holes, sometimes eight.

Steve Campbell, a representative for the Irsays (a team once owned by Bob Irsay, whose own mother described him as "a devil from Hell"), backpedaled thus:

We have great respect for our friends at Cathedral, and we would never purposefully take an idea from them to use as our own. That’s just not how the Colts do business. The new Colts Indiana logo was an independent creation that was designed by the NFL, as are most team marks and logos, and was not designed locally. The Colts and the league were unaware of the other logo, and we wouldn’t have moved forward otherwise. But we will look into the matter. Nonetheless, both the Colts and Coach Kubuske had the same goals at heart – promoting athletics and paying tribute to our home state.

One rule I have lived by is this: any explanation that contains the word "but" and "nonetheless" is what we call a whitewash to cover up nonsense and hoo-haw.

Sunday Rerun: Donkey Kong

Sometimes we fake it until we make it, and buy that knockoff "Rolex" watch from a guy on the street to impress one and all with our expensive tastes.

And some people, desperate to overcome their stubby-fingeredness and vulgar roots, claim to have a Renoir, knowing all along that it's a copy.

We feel sorry for these people, and now we have more people to shake our heads about.

Claims are being made that a zoo in Egypt is showing off a fake donkey.

I mean, is there any end to this chicanery?

It all started when 18-year-old student Mahmoud Sarhan, a student, was visiting the International Garden in Nasr City, Cairo. He saw what the zoo purported to be a zebra, but Mahmoud knows a donkey when he sees one, and in a hugely ironic role reversal, became the one to throw a penalty flag at someone in a striped outfit.


Sarhan got a selfie with the bogus zebra. The picture clearly shows black smudges on the face of the poor beast.

He told Sky News: "From the first sight I knew that it was a donkey, not a zebra, as I'm an artist. I know the shape of a donkey and I know the shape of zebras, so it was easy to know."

The photo below shows what a real self-respecting zebra looks like. He has clear-cut stripes and a darker mouth and snout than the imitation.

As soon as Mr Sarhan shared his picture on social media, the race was on to find out what was up. The zoo's director, Mohamed Sultan, told radio station Nogoumfm.net that his zebra was for real and not a sham.

Meanwhile, a local veterinarian who only wishes to be identified as "Dr N" told Egyptian news site Extranews.tv that this animal lacked the black nose and mouth common to zebras.



You can look at the two pictures and compare for yourself. As of now, the whole matter is he said-he said, and who knows where it will go.

I can only hope that no charges are brought, so no one will have to wear the stripes of shame.

The Saturday Picture Show, April 18, 2020

If you can name a more courageous person than Jackie Robinson, I'd love to hear about him or her. This week, baseball would normally have honored the anniversary of his breaking the MLB color barrier on April 15, 1947, but nothing is normal this week, or month, or year. This old baseball trading card shows Jackie stealing home, which he did 20 times over his career. Always one of the most exciting plays that you rarely see anymore.

OK, this one is the hands down, or paws down if you will, winner of the coolest mask of the year.

Two edifices, both reaching for the sky and bringing knowledge from it.

You have to hand it to the people who built this...cake holder. It withstood a tornado this week.

Paul, John, and George in 1959.  They had big plans and big dreams.  They all worked out fine!

They really do things differently in Canada, that's for sure. The man you see in the turban is waiting social-distant style to get into a store in Canada. Nothing special about that, except for the fact his name is Harjit Sajjan...and he is Canada's Minister of National Defence. If you have a picture of his American counterpart Mike Esper doing the same, I'd love to see it.

I am crazy about things that are a) turquoise and b) multi-functional. This cool getaway camp trailer has a roof that is also a boat, so you can take your dinghy with you, and that's nice.

I'm not about to make a corny joke out of this...it's a painting from the Dutch Golden Age, called Cob With Pearl Earring, by Johannes Vermeer, who was also known as The Jolly Green Giant.

I don't understand

Sometimes I think I get all caught up in watching old "Barney Miller" reruns and working online jigsaw puzzles to notice that everyone in the world but I has a new expression, and so I will try to catch up.

I saw someone offer a friend a "chef's kiss" on Facebook in thanks for a kind word. I said, wait a minute! Who's a chef? (This was back in the good old days when we could actually go to restaurants and have professionally-made dinners.)

Then I looked it up! Chef's kiss is defined as "a gesture and expression meant to show something is perfect or excellent. The gesture is made by pinching the fingers and thumb of one hand together (often in an OK sign), kissing them, and then tossing them dramatically away from the lips."

Didn't that seem like something from a movie or tv show, where the chef concocts a perfect Lasagna Tommy LaSorda and puts it on a plate to applause and acclaim and makes that gesture like this?

I could also picture Italian chef Hector Boiardi making this gesture. He was the guy who invented canned spaghetti and sold it under the trade name "Chef Boyardee." For the record, no canned pasta product will ever earn a chef's kiss from me, any more than canned Chateaubriand would.

Someone else said that the Italian term "al bacio"  - literally "as good as a kiss," can be conveyed with that hand gesture that also means "delicious."

Good food is like a kiss. Understandable.

But then someone said they were at a party and pulled an "Irish goodbye," and once again, just like the time Peggy took me to the art museum and I had no idea what everyone else appreciated, I had to look it up. On the surface, I guess that the Irish goodbye was to walk away singing "Molly Malone" or "Danny Boy," but I found out that it means "leaving a party without saying goodbye."

I hope someone among my Irish friends can explain why someone would slip away from a soirée without a proper leave-taking. I know some people say goodbye without leaving and some leave without saying goodbye but I never know why.

At least we learned something

We can't seem to escape one thing: every horrible event, such as this current pandemic, adds to our vocabulary.

It's not a new word; certainly it was known to doctors and other medical professionals, but we all know now that the technical term for "losing the sense of smell" is "anosmia."  We used to just call it "can't smell nothin' " but now we know better.  It's pronounced uhNAHZmeea, not uhNOSEmia, by the way.  I checked!

Holly Bourne is a woman from London who says anosmia is "one of the most upsetting things (she's) ever gone through. I woke up and couldn't taste or smell anything. It was the most acute thing I've ever experienced."

She did not have the cough or high fever, but when she was cooking one day with her back to the stove and failed to notice the scent of a plastic margarine tub on the stovetop until her boyfriend alerted her, she noticed she couldn't smell a thing, and called her doctor, who said he was able to diagnose her "straight off the bat" with Covid-19 over the phone.

This novel coronavirus is all new  - hence the "novel" characterization - and so there have been no studies yet on the link between coronavirus and sense of smell or taste, but the reports of it among people with the COVID-19 are so numerous as to make it seem unlikely to be coincidental.

And there's also a condition known as hyposmia, or partial loss of the sense of smell. I was planning to call it Anosmia, Jr or Anosmia Lite, but hyposmia it shall be.

But how long will it last?  That's unknown, according to Professor Steven Munger, Director of the University of Florida's Center for Smell and Taste.


"What we've known for a long time is one of the major causes of smell loss are upper respiratory tract infections due to viruses -- a common cold, influenza -- a subset of people lose their sense of smell, most of them temporarily, but a small subset lose that smell permanently," Munger told CNN.

Munger adds that there is "a real emotional component to smell, a connectedness that comes with it" and that gets into how our social connections are involved with food or drink. Even beyond the angle of safety - not noticing the smell of fire or that of spoiled food - that social aspect is important, especially as we look forward to getting together with friends and family after the pandemic is over.

There's every reason to believe that senses of taste and smell will return as soon as the malls reopen.  That's either a good or bad thing, depending.

Through the years and the tears

Someone had a great idea lately. I'm sure it came from all this free time so many people have had lately, with no school or work or money to fret over.

The idea was to have everyone post their senior picture on Facebook so we could show solidarity with the class of 2020, high school and college, who will not have graduation exercises and ceremonies, proms, senior trips to the beach, spring sports schedules, and yearbooks.

This present pandemic has had consequences we need not discuss here. The loss of lives, the illness, the emotional toll, all have been devastating, and add to that the economic hardships befalling millions upon millions and I said I wasn't going to get into that, so enough.

I do like the idea of posting graduation pictures. If it helps the class of 2020, I'm all for it.

 There for a while, she was in every other movie. Now she's home counting her money and planning a comeback, I hope.

 You say you're a dork? You aren't the only dork in the world. A lot of them get better hairdids and find success!

 Not every famous person has two names, but this is both Channing Tatum and Tanning Chatum.

It wasn't bad enough that this man wore a tan suit to work one day, but here he is with that Goober open collar look.

This picture of Carrie Underwood could have been taken last week for all we know. She always looks the same, which is to say, great.

America has a rich tradition of people who say they were awkward nerdy needy dorks in high school, and then they show you their picture and there's no nerd.

And then, you have high school athlete Lance Armstrong. If he told you he was annoying then, you could easily say, "And you still are!" But he'd never say that.

Cognitive Skills Testing For Old People Such as I

If you're reading from the relative calm of being too young for Medicare, have fun! I know you're busy running around buying home goods from Crate & Barrel, adopting hypoallergenic animals, wrapping your iliac crest in Spandex, planning your financial future, listening to Luke Bryan and believing that is real country music, riding around in Ubers, Lyfts, and electric scooters, eating almost all your meals from trucks, and dating from Tinder.

We old timers are going in for our annual physicals, and every year now we face a Cognitive Skills Test.  The doctor's staff gives us a pencil and paper and we have to draw a clock face on it and then show what the hands what would look like at some certain time like twenty past six.

Then they read a little vignette and ask questions about the story. Then they will ask you to name six animals. Then they ask how much change you can expect from a $20 bill when you've spent $13.45 at the Try 'N' Save. Then they list three words (e.g. village, kitchen, baby) and five minutes later, ask you what those words were.

These questions and tests were developed by brilliant, educated people, and should serve to help doctors screen those patients who are a) sharp as a Ginsu, b) a wee bit dotty and c) Toys In The Attic.

But I want to suggest some other skill drills that might help the doctors. How about these...

...hand the patient his cell phone and have him go to his weather app. Then, ten seconds later, ask him the current temperature and is it going to rain tonight...

...tell her there's a recipe for corn fritters that calls for 1 3/4 cups of corn meal and 5/8 cup of flour, and say that since Thelma and Tony are coming over for breakfast, she'll need twice as many fritters, so how much corn meal and how much flour will she need?

...the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration require current valid registration stickers on rear license tags. The month of expiration goes on the upper left, and the year on the upper right. Please explain this tag.

...please explain which control on the right controls which burner on the left

... A cowboy rode into town on Friday. He stayed in town for three days and rode out on Friday. How is that possible?

Friday was the name of his horse.

...Drawing test:

   a - draw a circle

   b - draw a triangle

   c - draw $500 out of the bank and bring it to me

Highway 61 Unvisited

In 1962, some municipal workers in Centralia, Pennsylvania, tried to burn trash at a garbage dump above a coal mine.  That trash fire ignited a coal seam that started a fire that burns underground yet today, and has caused the formerly thriving town of Centralia to become a ghost town (even before the rest of the country followed suit this year).

By 1993, with mining operations a distant memory, the state was forced to close that buckled one-mile section of State Road 61 that sat above the mine some 60 miles northeast of Harrisburg, up in the mountains.

So they closed the road. Roads get closed all the time, you say. But this road took on a whole new life, becoming known as "Graffiti Highway," as over the years, funseekers from all over showed up with spray paint in hand to decorate the old macadam.

Over the years, it became a popular tourist attraction, with all that goes with tourism: mainly, crowds of tourists, and there you have a problem during our pandemic times.

With schools and workplaces closed, there was a big spike in the crowds at the old roadway, and of course, that meant people were not following social distance guidelines.

Admit it: we didn't even know that term two months ago!

And with all the crowding, of course, came a rise in calls for police, fire, and EMS at the scene, and this is not the time in our history to call those people away from more important chores.

“It’s ridiculous,”  Tom Hynoski, Centralia's secretary, fire chief and emergency management agency director, told the Daily Item newspaper. “Oh my God, it’s crazy. They're supposed to be staying home due to the COVID-19, but they're coming from New York and New Jersey to be here."

Pagnotti Enterprises bought the old highway from the state Dept. of Transportation two years ago, and now they have had to hire a company to cover the road - and all that elaborate artwork - with 400 dumptruck loads of dirt. That will take three of four days of trucking.

Vincent Guarna, the president of Pagnotti Enterprises, said, "I think a few weeks ago, there was a fire there, people just starting fires," on WNEP-TV. "They're doing a lot of damage to the community there, and it's time that ends right now."

He went on to say that in the future, they will plant trees and grass where the old road was.

Let's check back in 25 years or so, after those trees have grown around the lush grassy area, and see if people still cluster there for picnics.