This Way Out

I need to do a little background for those outside of Baltimore, but all of us here have heard this story a lot, and that's as it should be, because it reflects a consciousness that dates back to the days of Mr Jim Crow and His Traveling Stupid Racist Show.

A Black woman and her son wanted to have Sunday dinner at Baltimore’s Ouzo Bay. That is one of 15 properties in our town owned by the Atlas Restaurant Group. They were denied admission by a self-important manager. You can tell he's young, because he started his sentences with "So."  As in, "So, we have a dress code..."

So guess what he doesn't have anymore? A job! He and another manager got the can tied to them, because while they were busy telling this lady that her son Dallas's Air Jordan T shirt and shorts violated their dress code, a Caucasian kid around the same age, dressed approximately the same, was busy getting up from dinner.

I don't know the Greek word for double standard, but it doesn't matter anymore, because all of a sudden, with a firestorm of public sentiment against them, and picketers calling them out, the Atlas Group announced that it will no longer enforce a dress code at its properties at the Four Seasons Hotel in Harbor East.

The company, which owns 15 eateries in the city as well as others in Texas and Florida, “continues to assess the policy at each of its venues,” according to a statement.

That's the deal, and the whole chain looks like a group of four-flushers over it. Truth to tell, you won't find me dead in a dump like that, but I feel bad for the lady who tried to take her son to a nice place, only to get the stiff-arm from Ned Neanderthal.

Alex Smith is head cheese at this group, and this week he told the SUN paper,  “We should have accommodated those guests. I’ll never know what it feels like to be Dallas in that moment. But I want the opportunity to meet him. I want the opportunity to be a mentor to him. I want the opportunity to apologize to him and Marcia.” He said he’s made more than a dozen attempts to reach the family, to no avail.

Smith goes on to tell the reporter of the inviolability of their vaunted dress code, claiming that one time, contumacious English chef Gordon Ramsay showed up at one of his joints, and was given the bum's rush for wearing sneakers.

That's not the only reason I would not let Gordon Ramsay dine among the refined. Who wants to spoon their salad with his belligerent barking going on?

But did you notice the "I want the opportunity to be a mentor to him" line? How smug, how bumptious, how condescending, how patronizing, how orgulous.

Having that "Come learn from me how to run a business that makes people feel unworthy" attitude is no way to go through life, mister.

Sputtering and Spewing

Folks, do you find yourself watching the news these days, or listening to the radio, or reading the newspaper, and asking, "What's it going to take for people to learn?"

An African-American lady takes her son to one of those swanky downtown restaurants, but the joint won't seat them, because the youngster is wearing an Air Jordan Tee and gym shorts.  He's a kid. You want him to wear a little suit to go to dinner? He's not Donald Trump, Jr., for the love of Pete!

The restaurant manager is seen on video condescendingly telling the woman that her son is dressed in violation of their vaunted dress code, and even though she points out a Caucasian youngster in the dump restaurant dressed almost identically to her son, the manager is unyielding.

That was his last shift! Fired the next day. I hope he dresses correctly to go file for unemployment. Can't have the shabby clogging up the rolls.

And then, here's the case of a future Admiral Halsey, interrupted. A young man just graduated from a high school in Montgomery County, MD, had been appointed to the Naval Academy and was on his way to commanding the fleet someday. He was to be inducted this summer as a member of the class of 2024, and now he's out on his assessment. After an investigation into things he said when he should have kept his fool mouth shut, the academy cut him adrift.

Their Character Review Committee recommended pulling the student's appointment after they checking into “racist and inappropriate remarks," said Bruce Latta, the academy's dean of admissions.

“The Naval Academy does not condone racism or bigotry of any kind within the U.S. Naval Academy family, as it completely violates our Navy’s core values, and does not support the U.S. Naval Academy mission,” Latta said in a statement.

The USNA will not identify the student, nor will they elaborate on what the guy said. But the the Capital Gazette newspaper said the fool sent chat messages in 2018 that included threats of sexual violence, a transphobic statement, a racist epithet and threats of gun violence in school.

And it's not just High School Harry making an Rear Admiral of himself. A couple of weeks ago, a member of the Academy's Board of Trustees was on Facebook Live and he and his wife were sputtering racist comments and spewing racial slurs about the Black Lives Matter movement.

And they wonder why we call them deplorable.

Sunday Rerun: "I love that Dirty Water" - The Standells, 1966

I like to wake up in the morning and watch the morning news shows while I gobble breakfast. I shouldn't pay such close attention, because sometimes I shake my head so vigorously that the turkey bacon slides off my English muffin when I see news stories such as the mention of a new "health" "craze": the consumption of raw water.


That's raw, as in untreated, as in water right out of some stanky pond where the deer and the antelope pee. Untreated water is becoming popular among certain folks because they have convinced themselves that evil folks down at the water treatment plant are purifying the water they are about to put in the Keurig, and that's just not safe. 

The people who are so disdainful of non-chunky tap water are paying $60 a gallon for it, because it would be foolish to pay $40.

They should become familiar with the names Cryptosporidium, Shigella, norovirus, and Giardia infection, because those are just a few of the cooties that might get into your gizzard by drinking water that has not seen the benefits of being made potable.

Here it is, 2018, and people are still running around telling themselves that the government adds fluoride to the water to turn us all into Godless commies. These people look forward to autumn every year, because that's the time when they drag out their cherished belief that the government puts something in flu shots that allows them to track our whereabouts and make us vote in certain ways.

Then they go to a rodent-themed amusement park, allow themselves to be fingerprinted at the entry, and wear a radio wristband that allows Big Walt to follow their every move and expenditure.

The Saturday Picture Show, June 27, 2020

At least you can't say this is one of those cookie-cutter apartment/condo buildings. You can say that it looks like the builder had materials left over from a dozen construction projects around town.

An old pallet can be used to build things or support things or build conscience and support kindness.

 0045 ("12:45 AM") in Iceland at the time of the summer solstice.  All night sun! And Iceland is not a part of Russia, just like Finland.

Hi! I hear you needed cheering up, so here's a big bouquet of kittens.

It's not every year that has its own logo, but this one deserves the honor.

You remember Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani activist for female education who was shot for trying to become educated. She became the youngest Nobel Prize laureate, and last week she was given the traditional cake covering after completing degrees in Philosophy, Politics and Economics degree at Oxford. That'll show 'em who's boss.

I present to you the oldest pair of pants ever found on earth. These well-broken-in trousers are 3,000 years old,  and are part of the costumery of Steven Tyler.

Photographer Joshua Cripps caught this shot of a camel farmer and one of his caravan in the United Arab Emirates.

Counting on you

I was just thinking the other day about December. Oh, how I love December, the month when it starts to get chilly and there are no mosquitoes and humidity and crazy birds howling outside at 0445 but there are all those "Year In Review" news specials on television every night.

And I thought, if they're going to do a "2020 In Review" wrapup special, they'd better start the night after Thanksgiving and make it a four-hour thing every night.

And even then, by the time they discuss the coronavirus and the unrest in the streets and the presidential campaign, there won't be much time to discuss sports.

And since it's starting to look like there won't be any baseball played this year, the only bats we'll talk about are the ones that New Hampshire will be counting.

That's right. It's not just humans who are having their census taken this year.
Fish and Game Department officials in the Granite State want to round up  volunteers to go around counting bats.

If you're into it, they will have you count the bats on your property and around your town. They want to get a head count on bats.

Hint: good places to look include barns and church steeples.

There is a disease - biologists call it "white-nose syndrome" -  that is dropping the bat population faster than the popularity of Mike Myers.  As a result, the bat census in the Northeast US is expected to be way down, and science wants to keep an eye on their maternity colonies.

I see you right now, reading this and saying you don't care about bats. When pressed, most people give "they're ooogy" as the reason behind their disdain.  And even though bats are important to the world's biosystems because they help pollinate plants, and swallow insects that won't ever get the chance to bite me, we still don't like them.

So please, if you have spare time this summer because that trip abroad just ain't happening, think about going to bat for the two bat species in New Hampshire: the little brown bat and the big brown bat.

A Big Brown Bat

A Little Brown Bat

Show of hands: who else is surprised to see how big their teeth are?

We've got a jumper

Ever notice that sometimes, just the right word is just the right word? 

Every day on the noon news, the same commercial for the company that puts a covering on rain gutters comes on after the weather and before the medical report.  If you miss the news any weekday, here you go: the weather will be partly cloudy with a chance of rain, you can protect other people (and they can protect you) from the coronavirus by wearing a mask, and those gutter covers don't work. I spent plenty of time on a ladder at my parents' house, hose in hand, clearing the gutters of 47 tons of leaves.

But the way this pitchman sells those gutters is really remarkable.  He's got one of those smooooooooooooooth old FM voices and a delivery that features one great trick...he never comes up forairbetweenwords. Everything is smushed together, and do you know why?  To hypnotize the viewer, and then get them to call to spend a small fortune giving this company a large fortune.

The mesmerizing announcer is a guy who calls himself Ron Sherman; he's out of West Little Rock, Arkansas.  He holds the world record for doing tv ads.

You can even go to guinessworldrecords.com, and read the citation:

"The most TV commercials produced by an individual is 3,503 by Steve Jumper, aka Ron Sherman, in Little Rock, Ark., USA, on 25 February 2016. Sherman specializes in home improvement commercials, and over the course of his 30-year career he has acted as an on-camera presenter in many of them."

Sherman figures he's done more like 70,000 spots over the years. His secret is that he has developed a neutral accent and such a bland personality that he could be anyone from anywhere.

I don't know. I have nothing against the man personally, and you can't argue with his success as he oozes out his words with his $350 haircut, but hot a'mighty if he doesn't remind me of the used car salesman whose pitch is all about saying, "What's it gonna take for me to put you in this Olds Toronado?"

Here's the word that comes to mind: Unctuous

unc·tu·ous
/ˈəNG(k)(t)SH(o͞o)əs/

adjective

(of a person) excessively or ingratiatingly flattering; oily.
"he seemed anxious to please but not in an unctuous way"

Teach me to fish

Low-culture maven that I am, I think that one of the great forms of humor in our lives is the American television situation comedy. From "Leave It To Beaver" as a child to "The Big Bang Theory" as whatever I am now, I measure my life in coffee spoonfuls of laughter.

Not everyone is like this, but once something in a situation comedy makes me laugh, I don't mind seeing it another hundred times or so, like when the slop bucket intended to be dumped on Kelso winds up all over Red on "That 70s Show," or when Dietrich helps Barney solve the crossword puzzle clue "- - - - - - Google" on "Barney Miller," or when Deacon has to let Doug's tuxedo pants out a little on "King Of Queens." I can watch this stuff all day (and often do, to be honest.)

The man who played Deacon is Victor Williams. He's on Instagram as bigvicwilliams, and for Father's Day he told a great story about his dad, who was a college professor. Young Victor sat in on one of his classes as a high-school kid and saw his Dad ask a college student to point out Massachusetts on a map of the colonies. 

To the embarrassment of all in the room, she was unable to locate The Bay State on the map.  Victor said he knew that his father would not have spoken to him for days had he been the student so ill-schooled in geography, but he said his dad calmly looked at the student and then the entire class, and said,

"It's alright if you don't know. It's not alright if you don't find out."

I think we've all stumbled over this...not knowing how to drive a manual transmission car, spell "Peloponnesian," cook a tasty chicken parmesan dinner, sharpen a knife, repair a light switch, renew a driver's license, program the DVR to record obscure old sitcoms...there are literally billions of things to learn. I think it's best to learn them when we're prompted by life.  That was great advice from Professor Williams.

Life gives us hints sometimes, if we're paying attention. Being around someone who is giving a hotshot to a car with booster cables is a great time to say, "Show me how to do that, please..."

There's nothing more sure than saying that some day, you will need to know how to do a hotshot.  You'll get a charge out of knowing how to.

And more important, so will your car.

Stuck on Bandaids

My childhood was a time of wonder.

People wondered what the hell was wrong with me.

And I wondered why they called them "grapefruits" when they had nothing to do with grapes, I puzzled over why Heckle and Jeckle (left) had English accents, I wondered what good Algebra was ever going to do for me, and I wondered why people whose skin was not the same pasty pallid Caucasian hue as mine were supposed to do in case of a finger nick or knee laceration.

And I wondered if I could call myself "Nick Finger, Private Eye," and go around solving thefts, homicides, and kidnappings that had baffled the local gendarmerie for months. My gimmick would be that instead of wearing a mask, as the Lone Ranger did, I would have a Band-Aid on a different finger for every case. In this way, I would avoid leaving a complete set of fingerprints at the scene of local puzzlers.

But back to Band-Aids. It never seemed fair to have a Black person wear a "flesh" colored bandage.  The whole point of equality is not having any one person or group stand out like a sore thumb. 

Literally!

So Band-Aid is coming out with a line of various colors of bandages.

"We hear you. We see you. We’re listening to you," Band-Aid said on Instagram.
"We stand in solidarity with our Black colleagues, collaborators and community in the fight against racism, violence and injustice. We are committed to taking actions to create tangible change for the Black community."

Beside the Basic Pasty Caucasian, the range of colors includes "light, medium and deep shares of Brown and Black skin tone that embrace the beauty of diverse skin."

"We are dedicated to inclusivity and providing the best healing solutions, better representing you," Band-Aid says. "We promise that this is just the first among many steps together in the fight against systemic racism. We can, we must, and we will do better."

Before 1921, when you cut yourself shaving or got burned by a hot coal or got a blister from playing "Alabama Jubilee" on the guitar like Jerry Reed, only more slowly, you had to run around and find gauze and some sort of ointment and adhesive tape, which could take hours. A lot of people just "Let it bleed, I don't care."  But that's when Band-Aid came to be, and the good folks who brought those sticky little thangs to our medicine chest only made one mistake, and that was the extremely limited color selection.

And it only took 99 years.

A day at the bleach

We seem to be living in that bizarro world where nothing makes a bit of sense, so let's just go ahead and say it: bleach is fine for cleaning your toilet and certain laundry applications.

No matter who tells you otherwise, don't eat or drink bleach. That Clorox bottle contains a dilute solution of sodium hypochlorite, and that's even less appetizing than it sounds.

Now, you're saying to me, "Who would do such a nutty thing?" And I have to tell you that according to survey results just published in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) (look for it on newsstands everywhere!) 39% of the Americans surveyed have done foolish things with cleaning products to keep that old  Covid-19 coronavirus away.

Look on the bright side. That means there are still 61% of us with at least two functioning brain cells to rub together. But still...

4% of the people surveyed owned up to drinking or gargling diluted bleach solutions, sudsy water or other unsavory solutions.  18% of them say they use things other than soap to clean their hands or hair. A perplexing 10% say they mist their bodes with household cleaning and disinfectant products.

But wait! There's more!

6% of these folks have inhaled the vapors of these products.

19% of the people surveyed said, sure, they put bleach on their food so as not to get the 'Rona.

Statistically, this means that if you look at any group of one hundred people on your friends list, 19 of them spray Clorox on their tomatoes before tossing their salad.

Enough. According to Forbes magazine, here are some things you CAN do to stave off the COVID:

1. Wipe down food packaging. That means wipe down what the food COMES in, not the food. If you're so inclined, clean off the bag or can or cello container of whatever, but not the whatever inside.

2. Keep kitchen surfaces clean and sanitized. The FDA says, if you can't find your favorite cleaner at the BuySumMor, you can make your own with "a DIY sanitizing solution with 5 tablespoons (1/3rd cup) unscented liquid chlorine bleach to 1 gallon of water or 4 teaspoons of bleach per quart of water.”

3. Wash your hands thoroughly before and after handling food. This will stop the spread of cooties from your hands to your face or your sandwich. Lather up and scrub while singing (out loud or to yourself) for 20 seconds a song of your choosing.  Go with something by Queen. Even 20 seconds of Michael Bublé can seem to take an eternity.

4. Thoroughly cook what can and should be cooked. This means to avoid raw meat, but you don't have to cook apples. You should, though.  They're better that way. Raw food is risky.

5. Use clean water to rinse fresh fruits and vegetables. Really, it's plenty. No soapsuds can be good for raspberries.


6. Carry and store food safely. Keep it in a baggy if it will be around people who might breathe or sneeze or pant on it. You never know. Keep it cold, or warm, as appropriate.

This might be a good time to suggest that we all use common sense in dealing with cleanliness and food storage and preparation.  If it doesn't sound like something Miss Landers or Mrs Cleaver would recommend, I recommend against it.

Sunday Rerun: Let It Go

One of the things that everyone seems to get out of ninth-grade Biology is the old maxim that "You are never closer to death than when you sneeze."  Apparently, you stop breathing, and your heart stops beating, and your duodenum stops doing what it oughta do, during the moments when it's sneezin' season.

I don't know if that's true; I shall ask Dr Deloskey the next time I see him, although I do tend to spend most of my time in the exam room discussing what I want to die from (either rickets or scurvy; I'm not picky. I will be very old when it happens, or at least, as old as I'll ever get.)

But I have to pass this along, and that is what I read about how bad it can be for you to try to stifle a sneeze. 

First off, there is a lot of energy behind your sneezes. Stuff (mucus and air) comes flying out of your nose and mouth at about 100 miles per hour, which exceeds the national Cootie Speed Limit, according to the Cleveland Clinic. And whether or not you hold in a squeeze, that horsepower is generated, and holding it in just creates big problems. 

Dr. Rachel Szekely is an immunologist at Cleveland Clinic, and she says, "Occasionally, people will cause some damage to their eardrums or their sinuses if they stifle a very violent sneeze," in an post on the clinic’s website, a post that urges sneezers to let 'em fly.

It's a long way from Cleveland to Great Britain, so that's why a certain 34-year-old man living in Jolly Olde wound up in the "hospital," as hospitals are called over there.  He tried to stifle a sneeze and wound up tearing some of the soft tissue in his throat. 

He said it actually sounded like "Snap, crackle and pop" and he is trying to tell us all not to pinch our noses while clamping a hand over our mouths when Mean Mr Sneeze comes walking down our lane. 

"This 34-year-old chap said he was always trying to hold his sneeze because he thinks it is very unhygienic to sneeze into the atmosphere or into someone’s face. That means he’s been holding his sneezes for the last 30 years or so, but this time it was different," Wanding Yang, who wrote the report for the British Medical Journal, says.

That chap felt a "popping" sensation in his neck, and then his neck began to swell, causing his voice to change.

This X-ray shows streaks of air
in the neck’s soft tissue,
 caused by a stifled sneeze.
 (British Medical Journal)

So he went to see a doctor, and was asked if he had "eaten anything sharp." No.

So into X-ray with him, and here's the nitty: that pressure, that sneezulated air, has got to exit the body somehow, and if it's not allowed to fly out of your nose and mouth, it will take a detour through the lungs and punch its way out. 

The whole thing about sneezing is, it's your body's way of expelling harmful irritants in the nose, throat or lungs. In other words, it's healthy, even though it happens on the very day you're not exactly feeling aces. 

TIME magazine had a piece on this very thing three years ago, and it said that doctors have seen "patients with a ruptured eardrum or pulled back muscles, and ... cracked ribs..."  

And the Cleveland Clinic points out that if you don't send the irritant cooties flying out, they stay in your body, and you can get a whole new infection from that!

In other words, Doc says you will be Grumpy and not really Happy if you curtail being Sneezy. So don't be Dopey or Bashful about it. 

The Saturday Picture Show, June 20, 2020

 Ladies, save this picture for when people ask you why there are more old women than there are old men.

 A true artist can make magic anywhere. These townhouses in Baltimore became a great palette.

 CBS recently showed the Sing-Along version of "Grease," and of course I watched and sang along. Did not dance along, but what I wouldn't give to dance like Travolta.

 Now that we can have fresh fruit like this all year long, it's always a treat, but the local ones will be here soon and that's the best!
 The problem was that people in a senior living environment would take the elevator and go where they did not need to be. The solution was to paint the elevator doors.

 Double rainbow, double the treasure.

Whoever invented the inflatable tube dude was having a very good day!

Thank God he didn't have bone spurs

Maybe I should have been a history teacher! I keep finding stories that I feel like sharing.

We talked about Richard Nixon the other day, a US Navy lawyer during World War II. He served as vice president under Dwight Eisenhower, the man who led the D-Day invasion that turned the tide of the war. After serving as president of Columbia University, "Ike" became the president of the US. Little is known of Nixon following his two terms as vice president. Rumor has it that he served a term and a half as president, but it's hard to find verification on that.

Lt. John F. Kennedy

Eisenhower was a true war hero, and I'm sure Nixon's service as a lawyer was appreciated. Fifteen years after the war ended, Nixon ran for president (for the first time) against John F. Kennedy, a war hero on a much smaller scale, but a hero nonetheless, so much so that he was elected president and was the subject of a hit record by sausage king Jimmy Dean.

The record, "P.T. 109" documented Kennedy's valiant service about a patrol torpedo boat in the South Pacific war. The "109" was rammed and split in half by a Japanese destroyer off the Solomon Islands in August 1943. Kennedy, the skipper of the boat, was 25 years of age, and went to heroic measures to save his crew. There was a sailor who was badly injured, and Kennedy had him hold onto a rope, then towed the man three-and-a-half miles through dark ocean waters, to the safety of an island while holding his end of the rope IN HIS TEETH! Kennedy was injured in that battle, and for the rest of his life dealt with back problems. He became famous for using a rocking chair at his desk in the White House to ease the strain.

The "109" is lost forever, but remains of the vessel Kennedy commanded next have recently been found! JFK next served aboard the "PT 59," and in that capacity, torpedoed Japanese barges and rescued ten stranded Marines.

PT-59 during World War II

After the war, the Navy sold the "59." It was used as a fishing vessel/charter boat, eventually falling into the hands of Redmond Burke, who bought it for $1,000 and used it as a houseboat. Realizing the significance of the boat, he attempted to sell it to Kennedy memorializers, but, finding no takers, he let it sink to the bottom of the Harlem River in the 1970s.
Now, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA)  of New York is trying to prevent a recurrence of the flooding they experienced from Superstorm Sandy in 2012, so they are building a seawall along the riverfront near the 207th Street train yard. They have recovered a hatch door frame, a rudder and a  generator from the "59," and the MTA is working with museums, such as the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston, and the Battleship Cove maritime museum in Fall River, Massachusetts, to see about displaying the relics.

It's wonderful when history comes back to us. Mr Kennedy, rest in peace, sir.

We will always love her

If you're having one of those days where things are dull and you can't seem to get a conversation going, just ask people how they feel about the monuments to the failed Confederacy that dot the nation like papules.  You'll get a conversation that might go on until way past dinner.

Down in Tennessee, there's a new petition calling for those statues to be replaced by the truly statuesque Dolly Parton. A man named Alex Parsons has a movement on Change.org petition. It says, "Tennessee is littered with statues memorializing confederate officers. History should not be forgotten, but we need not glamorize those who do not deserve our praise. Instead, let us honor a true Tennessee hero, Dolly Parton."

With great justification, there is a debate nationwide about race and racism and bigotry since the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police.

Dolly is more than a singer, songwriter, and amusement park operator. As Parsons says, "While the idea of replacing all of those monuments with Dolly Parton may seem funny, the history of those monuments is anything but. The vast majority of these monuments to the confederacy were constructed in direct opposition to the reconstruction and civil rights movements of the early 20th century and the 60's and 70's."

He continues,  "Memorials to the Confederacy were intended, in part, to obscure the terrorism required to overthrow Reconstruction, and to intimidate African Americans politically and isolate them from the mainstream of public life."

The news reports I read from Tennessee all identify Parsons as "a fan," and that's good to hear. It means he's not out to make a buck. He says he wants to honor Dolly because her "philanthropic heart has unquestionably changed the world for the better. From the Dollywood foundation that has provided books and scholarships to millions of American children, to the millions of dollars she has donated to dozens of organizations such as the Red Cross and COVID-19 research centers, Dolly Parton has given more to this country and this state than those confederate officers could ever have hoped to take away," is how  the petition reads.

Parton's philanthropy includes the Imagination Library, which gives Tennessee kids a book for free every month from birth til they start in school,  the Dollywood Foundation, which grants money to kids from her home county when they are graduated from high school, the telethon she organized that raised $13 million for victims of a catastrophic arson wildfire, the My People Fund, The My People Fund, which gave $5,000 to victims of that fire for long-term recovery (a total of $8.9 million to those who needed it most) and her benefaction of the LeConte Medical Center in Sevierville, Tenn. It features the  30,000-square-foot Dolly Parton Center for Women's Services.

It would stand to reason that Ms Parton deserves more recognition in our world today than a suboptimal person such as Nathan Bedford Forrest. Let's hope it happens!

The Branch Office

Disclaimer: My father worked for Baltimore Gas and Electric from 1929 - 1977, with three years off to fight in World War II, after which he returned to work right where he left off. He retired with a generous pension and was able to enjoy the last 20 years of his life happily, so I am a loyal customer of Baltimore Gas and Electric. Wouldn't think of purchasing electricity or gas anywhere else.

Dad worked in the department where they decided how many generators needed to be running at how much capacity at any given moment to keep our lights and air conditioners running. Crank up too much, and it's wasted (you can't save electricity for later, no matter what size Ziploc bag you use). Crank  up too little, and the lights are dimmer than when Lepke got the chair.

Now, after the power is generated and distributed, it needs to get to your house, or you'll have to watch your Real Housewives show in the dark. What causes the power to go out?  Often, it's trees falling, as in from a storm, taking the lines down with them.

To forestall this, the electric company tries to keep ahead of the matter by trimming trees around power lines. And don't you know, the same people who would be hollering to high heaven when the power goes out are out there singing, "Woodman, woodman, spare that tree, touch not a single bough!"

It's necessary to keep the trees trimmed in order to keep the power running. But besides reducing the risk, there's another benefit to this.

The creatures at the Maryland Zoo are enjoying big old salad bar lunches these days, because BGE donates the branches and leaves to them. It's fresh and it's just like what the gorillas and giraffes and some others like to eat!

The electric company has to maintain more than 10,000 miles of overhead lines, so that's a lot of leafy greens headed to the Zoo. They drop it off twice a week, May through October, and that saves the Zoo $2,000 a week.

It's a win-win, says Geoffrey!

Twisted

I love etymology - the story of how words come to be words. For example, take the word "history," which is of course the combination of the two words "Hist" and "ory," neither of which mean anything because I'm just fooling.

We fast all night, from dinner time to gettin'-up time, so when it's time to get something in our tummy, we say it's time to BREAK our FAST, and then someone points out that we had a bag of pretzels around midnight, so the fast wasn't all that long, was it now?

Another interesting word: pretzel. (From here on, everything is factual. Even I have my limit on folly.) For years, wordsmiths have been saying that a monk invented some rolled up twisted dough and baked it as a little reward for kids who had said their prayers. The word "pretiola" is Latin for a little reward. And from that, we got "pretzel."

But some said pretzel came from the Latin "preces," meaning prayers.

But now comes a school of thought saying that we don't really associate pretzels with monks, but with Germans, whose word for pretzel is "bretzel." And scholars now say that "bretzel" came from "brezitella," which in turn came from the Larin "brachilatellum," the diminutive version of "brachiatum," a bread baked in the form of crossed arms.

Just like a pretzel!

As we begin a summer where no one knows anything about what's going to happen with schools, shopping, sports, food, politics, the economy, public safety and really, nothing at all, it's kind of nice to sit and have a beer and a pretzel or two and realize there are people whose mission in life is to figure out why we call them pretzels.

Now I want a pretzel.

Finally over

Let's begin the last week of home schooling (pause for laughter) to announce the End of the American Civil War, known down South as the War of Northern Aggression and Southern Losing.

But I digress. The war is over at long last. The first "end" - the fighting - came at the Appomattox Courthouse in April, 1865, but then came Reconstruction and the cost of reparations and benefits for veterans and survivors, the last of whom has now passed on. 

It reminds me of the story about John Tyler's grandchildren still being alive, long after his presidency ended (1844). But, this is the story of Irene Triplett, who died at a long-term-care facility in Wilkesboro, N.C., at 90, just a couple of Sundays ago.

Irene Triplett

Irene received a check every month from the VA. $73.13 per month, totaling an annual stipend of $877.56, because her father was a Civil War veteran.

Irene was born in 1930. Her father, Mose Triplett, fought for, first, the Confederacy and then, when things looked bad for Robert E. Lee and his cohorts, switched to the Union side, which probably accounts for why he was able to live until 1938. Had he remained a Rebel, his longevity would likely have been significantly reduced, because 734 of the 800 men in the regiment he quit wound up dying at Gettysburg.

Old Mose headed for North Carolina when the war ended, took a wife named Mary, became a farmer, and applied for his pension in 1885. His and Mary's union was childless, but after Mary died in the 1920s, he remarried, to one Elida Hall.

Elida was 27. Mose was 78.

Mose's epitaph - "He was a Civil War soldier"

Put away your calculator - I did the ciphering. That's a difference of 51 years, but those two crazy kids got right down to the business of multiplying. After they lost several children, Irene came along in 1930 and was with us until just recently. Mose died in 1938 and it was just Irene  and her mother living in a rodent-infested poorhouse for many years until they were moved into a nursing home.

Elida died in 1967 and Irene was cared for in nursing homes for the rest of her life, enjoying hobbies such as watching the news and sharing the scoop with other residents, and chewing Star brand tobacco.

SO there ends the line linking us back to the Civil War. From our nation's next war, the VA is still paying benefits to 33 surviving spouses and 18 children receiving pension benefits related to the 1898 Spanish-American War.

Sunday Rerun: Name Game! Shirley!

People just keep on having babies, which is great, because we need more people all the time! And every few years, someone with a very large broom comes along and sweeps up the overused names and replaces them a couple dozen fresher selections, just like they get rid of the rotisserie chicken over at the deli of the BuySumMor after it's been there a few days.

And so, as a public service to all those planning on blessed events later this year, here are what the good people over at babycenter.com figure are going to wind up as the most popular new kid in town names for 2018:




GIRLS                          BOYS

1 Emma                       Liam

2 Olivia                       Noah

3 Ava                          Oliver

4 Isabella                     Logan

5 Sophia                      Mason

6 Mia                          Lucas

7 Amelia                     Elijah

8 Harper                    Ethan

9 Charlotte                 Carter

10 Mila                        James

11 Aria                       Aiden

12 Avery                    Alexander

13 Ella                         Sebastian

14 Abigail                    Jacob

15 Layla                      Michael

16 Riley                      William

17 Scarlett                   Jackson

18 Evelyn                     Jayden

19 Penelope                 Julian

20 Chloe                     Benjamin

21 Zoey                      Grayson

22 Luna                       Gabriel

23 Emily                      Daniel

24 Sofia                       Matthew

25 Elizabeth                 Jack

Some of these names were popular when your grandfather's father was running around in his Stutz-Bearcat and are on the way back up. "Emma" was the name of my high school vice principal in charge of attendance, so I'm already pretty much Emma'ed out. The last two Laylas that I asked if they were named for the song looked at me quizzically and asked,"What song??" so I guessed not. 

And watch for Chloe to be in the top 10 next year, what with Chloe Kim doing so well at the Olympics.

As for the boys...I see that Noah is on an arc, landing right behind Liam, a name reserved for kids who have are a very particular set of skills, skills they will have acquired over a very long career.

A certain resident of Pennsylvania Av in Washington DC is insisting that "Donald" is the most popular name of all time, and that you have never seen a more popular name, believe him, but in fact, "Donald" checks in at #932 for 2018, having skidded down 145 places since 2017.

But don't get all insecure, POTUS.  "Oprah," a name I have expected to grow in popularity for decades now, is mired in 11,435th place.  Just ahead of "Olive Garden."

The Saturday Picture Show, June 13, 2020

All I know about architecture is that I don't know the first thing about building anything bigger than a shed. I look at this building and I wonder if the side windows were randomly placed or if they were trying to get them plumb. Then I wonder why I wonder.

Two great guys grabbing a brew and a pupu platter.

I see that Charlie Sheen, once on top of the world, is now down to doing bit parts in his father's Medicare insurance commercials. It happens to all the best of show business folks. Toward the end of his career and life, Sammy Davis, Jr. was doing these Alka-Seltzer spots and doing a country music album in Nashville. Nothing could ever diminish his talent, though.

Back in the Pleistocene Era, when I attended the now-destroyed Towsontown Junior High School, boys took shop class (wood shop, metal shop, mechanical drawing) and girls took Home Economics (sewing and cooking). There was absolutely no thought that a guy might want to learn to bake a cake or a girl might want to build a footstool. I think it's best that they've changed since. Let everyone learn everything they wish.

This is in Italy, probably in a building where Columbus did some last-minute gift shopping before he set sail. In the years since, they've been meaning to clean out the second floor, but it reached a point of saying, hey, what the heck, let it grow.

There is art in many things, even a frog on a fogged-up sliding glass door.

One of my hobbies is collecting old copies of LIFE magazine and then poring the stories, pictures and advertisements like a medical student reading Grey's Anatomy. Pick up this issue, for example, and be taken back to the days when the Cuban Revolution was just ending, Nelson Rockefeller was worried about old age  (irony alert!) and the Kingston Trio was leading America down the road to a big ole Hootenanny.

If you're not from Baltimore, you might not know this delightful dinner. Take a steamed hard crab, pry off the upper shell, stuff it with crabcake, dip it in batter, deep-fry it, and call it a fried hard crab. I'll take two, and a couple of Bohs!