Memorial Day, 2021

 In memory of those who gave their lives for us.

Sunday Rerun (from October, 2018) Deeeeeelightful!

 I wrapped up my radio days doing the overnight show at WPOC in Baltimore, and this was in 1983, when country music still had at least a tiny tinge of country left. Sure, there was the evil Dave and Sugar influence, but George Jones and John Anderson and Hank Williams, Jr, and Ronnie Milsap were still making hits in those days, and I actually enjoyed listening to those songs all night long, waiting for sunrise over Hampden.

One of the bigger hits that spring was by a band called Alabama.Those guys were a money machine for RCA Records back in those days, cranking out hit after hit after hit. Their tune "Dixieland Delight" was outside the norm for country songs. Sure, it was all about going out "On a Tennessee Saturday night
Couldn't feel better
I'm together with my dixieland delight
Spend my dollar
Parked in a holler 'neath the mountain moonlight
Holdin' her up tight
Make a little lovin'
A little turtle dovin' on a Mason Dixon night
It's my life
Oh so right
My dixieland delight..."

But there was a fiddle finale and a change in tempo at the end of the record, which was not the norm then.

Well, now, even though the lyrics mention going out in the mountain moonlight on a Tennessee Saturday night, the song became a fourth-quarter favorite at the Bryant-Denny Stadium in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where the U of Alabama Crimson Tide entertains their fans, 101,821 at a time. The stadium sound system would play the song, and every would sing the lyrics exactly as performed by the band on the record, and all was well.  Good night!

Well, no.

It got to where the fans sang along, and added war cries about the opponents, things along the lines of "The heck with Auburn!" and "We don't care for Clemson any which way."  And then it got even saltier, so much so that they haven't even played the record since the Auburn game of 2014, in which Alabama was able to eke out a 55-44 win. They stopped playing "Dixieland Delight" because profanity was raining down from the stands on an Alabama Saturday afternoon!

But Alabama's Athletic Director, Greg Byrd, told the kids that they would play the song again, and if you were watching Saturday night, you heard the stands rocking to the song as the Tide rolled over Missouri, 39-12.  It took appeals from Byrd, running back Damien Harris, Coach Nick Saban’s wife, Terry Saban, and the student body president to get promises from fans just to sing the the “Dixieland Delight Done Right” lyrics: “ROLL TIDE” and “BEAT AUBURN, AND LSU, AND TENNESSEE TOO.”

Big Al, the mascot, lives in Alabama, where the Tuscaloosa.

From all I've heard, there were no major outbreaks of scurrility or obscene language among the faithful, and that would mean that a precious tradition has been restored.

And for other colleges seeking to engender a little enthusiasm in the stands, Alabama (the band) had dozens of other hits for you to play. If the score of your game is a bit too tight for comfort, how about "The Closer You Get"?  or if your team makes a big comeback, you could salute them with "Can't Keep A Good Man Down"!

Meanwhile, Roll Tide, I say! 

The Saturday Picture Show, May 29, 2021

 

We open today with something for the many librarians I know and cherish. Our libraries are just reopening for a quick browseroo for now, but I hope they will be back to full service soon. And I hope too that we go back to the old days with total silence observed. Call me old-school, but I think there should be a certain level of quiet in the cathedral of knowledge. I hear more loud chatter in a modern library than I do in a hamburger stand. Perhaps this signal would help.

This used to be a beautiful theater. Do you know what ruined it? Too many people talking during the movie!

Sonny and Cher, circa 1965. Someone should make a movie about them and tell the fascinating tale of Salvatore Bono, a man who sold meat door to door and became a hustler in the record business, learning the ins and outs as he worked as factotum for the great Phil Spector. At 28, he met 16-year-old Cherilynn Sarkisian and soon they were wed, at least unofficially. She became a backup singer for Spector's great Philles Records by the Ronettes, Righteous Brothers, and Darlene Love. Sonny got them a record deal, and soon they were world-famous for "I Got You Babe" and other pop hits, which led to a weekly tv show in which Cher played the glamorous model for extravagant gowns and Sonny played the fool for huge paydays. They broke up, she went on to solo shows and records, and Sonny became a mayor and, as God is my witness, a US Congressman. Only in America.

I'm going to go ahead and guess that the owner of this car wash has had his troubles finding and keeping good workers.

There were great tunes on this 1970 album by the Grateful Dead, which somehow gets left out when we talk about early versions of country music by rock and rollers. And officially the record was named "American Beauty," but look closely...you could just as soon see "American Reality" on the cover.

The little town of Groningen, Netherlands looks like a nice place to live!

Hello, weather buffs! If you called this one a west Texas mature supercell thunderstorm, you advance to the head of the class! Looks like it was a bad one.

It was quite prescient of this cartoonist to foresee all the "advantages" of having a pocket telephone. It's even more amazing when you consider this was in an English newspaper in January 1923!

I'll drink tea for the rest of my days and be happy about it! If only coffee tasted as great as it smells!

Our cats are Piscean. Like all cats, they don't give a rat's asterisk about what we think that means.

Roger and Out

It's summertime as of this weekend! And for many Marylanders, Delawarites, Pennsylvanians, Virginians and whatever you call people from other states, it's time to visit the Jolly Roger Amusement Park in Ocean City, MD. That is the gigantic seaside spot for bumper cars, go-cart tracks, Splash Mountain/Aqua Loop, a Wild Mouse, Jungle Golf, and a billion ways to spend your fun money. 

And sure, we know that the very term Jolly Roger connotes fun. Who doesn't like being jolly, and who doesn't like people named Roger?

But hold on. The black flag with a leering skull and crossbones that we call a Jolly Roger and associate with pirates is actually not a real Jolly Roger. There were, back in the glory days of high seas piracy, as many pirates plying their trade as there are varieties of Cheerios on the shelf, and that's a lot. This logo to the left developed over the years as a pirate flag, as many buccaneers used variations of it on their ships, but it was not the true Jolly Roger.

(Stop and think - why would a pirate fly a flag that says "I am here to pillage and plunder"? It's like a house burglar in the suburbs driving a white Chevy van with "J. Carson Bagswell - Residential Property Removal Specialist" painted on the side along with his phone number and, of course, his website ("Bagswellbagsyourstuff.com"). 

But I digress. The real Jolly Roger came from the pirate from Pembrokeshire, England, born Bartholomew Roberts, but better known as Black Bart. He originally had a flag showing a whole skeleton on a black background. and he started the trend. But he wore a red coat  Other pirates liked the design and copied it. Black Bart wore a red coat, so French sailors took to calling him "Le Joli Rouge" ("Pretty Red" in English). The pirate to the left is known as "Bartbeard."

British and American sailors then couldn't wait to turn a perfectly lovely phrase like that into a corrupted Franco-American one, so "Jolly Roger" came to mean the flag that Bart flew. It's here >> as it can be seen in the National Museum of the Royal Navy (NMRN) at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard.

The red background meant that no lives would be spared if Bart captured your ship.

Jolly well right! Tell the ticket taker at Splash Mountain about it.

Pointing fingers

Early one morning in June, 2015, a man named Kevin Jones, employed as a security guard at Pimlico Racetrack, was shot to death.  There is no doubt about that.

Who killed him is an issue that's bounced from courtroom to courtroom, and now to the downtown Baltimore waterfront bar called Sandlot.

Baltimore State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby and her office say that the murderer is one Keith Davis, Jr.  The first time they took him to trial, the result was a hung jury. Second time out, he was convicted by a jury, but his attorneys got that conviction overturned. Third time, another hung jury. 

Then in 2019, his fourth trial brought a conviction by jury of second-degree murder.  The judge sentenced him to 50 years.

And then...last week, Circuit Judge Sylvester Cox granted Davis, 29, a new trial, after the state's highest court said that Davis's defense lawyers had not been allowed to quiz prospective jurors about their feelings about a defendant's right not to testify.  

Davis, his legal team, and his wife still say he did not kill Jones, but that the police pinned the murder on him, chased him for no reason, and shot and wounded him, leaving a planted gun behind to bolster their case.  

So that's where things stand. One of these statements is true: Davis killed Jones, or he did not. Predictably, the case has jumped from the courthouse to the court of popular opinion, which is where people who don't know what happened that morning in June any more than you or I do nonetheless weigh in with their thoughts. It's how we do things, sad to say.

A certain percentage of citizens believe Davis to be innocent, the victim of police and prosecutorial misconduct. One such individual is Sean Gearhart, 32, who has played his bagpipes during at least one "Free Keith Davis, Jr" rally. 

Fate has ways of bringing people together. Last week, Mosby and some work colleagues were enjoying an evening out at this Sandbar when, all of a sudden, here came Gearhart, with his phone video cranking out a mini movie of him hollering at Mosby, and Mosby replying with hand gestures. 

At first she gave him the thumb, and then gave him the finger, so they say. 

“She flipped me off. That’s all that really happened. The whole ordeal lasted 10 seconds,” Gearhart said later. The photo below is a still from that video.

The first statement from Mosby's office, in reply to media questions, said, “This is clearly a thumb guys — enough already. Let’s move on.”

When more questions were raised about exactly which digit the State's Attorney proffered, Mosby said that Gearhart's actions were threatening.

“Last night while I was out with work colleagues, a male stranger aggressively biked towards me and two female friends and shouted into my unmasked face,” she said in a statement. “As he biked off, I responded the way any normal woman would to a threatening strange man. No woman — elected or otherwise — should be expected to put up with that type of behavior from a man.”

“I’ve been following the Keith Davis Jr. case since it happened,” Gearhart told the Baltimore SUN. “It’s clear that this is personal at this point.”

Zy Richardson, spokeswoman for Mosby, said that Davis supporters have been protesting outside the Mosby family residence, putting flyers on cars in her neighborhood, shouted her down at community forums, and shown up at her daughter's school.

Davis's supporters say they did no such thing at the school.

So that's where we are, and no matter how this next trial comes out, you can already see what the losing side will say - all this commotion has muddied the waters, making it impossible for the truth to be seen.

If you thought I wasn't going to have anything else to say, I'm sorry to let you down. 

First, I think it's time for the Baltimore State's Attorney's office to turn this prosecution over to a visiting prosecutor from another jurisdiction, someone uninvolved and uninterested in the case.

And...there was a time that judges and lawyers and the law were held in respect, but now, we have people riding on bikes in sandy waterfront bars hollering at the state's attorney, and the SA, for her part, making a hand gesture that might be seen as an umpire calling someone out at the plate, or suggesting that he go off and find satisfaction elsewhere. 

At any rate, the founding fathers are shaking their heads.

Has the name "Stormy" been on the list yet?

 

Look out! Here come The Hurricanes!

No, not Rory Storm And The Hurricanes, the bullpen band that Ringo Starr warmed up with before he got with The Beatles. No, the official list of storm names is out, and the fun will be seeing if any of the boys and girls from work and school will have their names buffeted about this summer. 

As always, the weather service predictors are calling for an “above-average" season. They say they can see where we might see as many as 20 named storms forming. And of those 20, maybe 10 will end up becoming hurricanes. (An average season has 14 named storms, of which 7 are hurricanes.) 

This will be on the test: a tropical storm takes one of these names when it features sustained winds of 39 mph. If/when those winds crank up to 74 mph; it's a hurricane.

Swiss people are noted for being neutral in all things. They are not hoping for storms, so don't blame them if we get a bunch this summer. The group that selects the names is the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), out of Geneva, and the names are chosen several years in advance, so just because someone named "Alvin" does something noteworthy one spring, it would have to be a coincidence to have that name on the list.

Same with "Simon" and "Theodore."

If you see your name on the list below, and if "your" storm turns out to be a really destructive or deadly one, the name is retired and you won't have to be tormented about it any more. Right, Katrina?

Hurricane Names 2021:

Ana

Bill

Claudette

Danny

Elsa

Fred

Grace

Henri

Ida

Julian

Kate

Larry

Mindy

Nicholas

Odette

Peter

Rose

Sam

Teresa

Victor

Wanda

"I'm a Neanderthal man..."

There are two key phrases in the world of journalism: "Who what when where why and how" cover the basic instructions to any brand new reporter off to cover a courthouse scandal, or deluxe scented candle, or an assault with an ax handle. The answers to those six questions will tell you all you need to know.

And the other shibboleth, or old custom, required a change in spelling. The concept is "Don't bury the lead," and they meant the "Lead me on" pronunciation, not the "led astray" pronunciation. But so that people wouldn't say "led" me on, they came up with a whole new word - lede - as in "Don't bury the lede."

An example of burying the lede would be "Laura Keene gave an outstanding performance as Florence Trenchard in 'Our American Cousin' at Ford's Theatre last night. A capacity crowd was moved to tears, laughter, and applause during the production, which continues to set box office records in the nation's capitol.

One disappointing aspect of the evening was that Abraham Lincoln, 16th US President, was shot and killed during the second act."

So no, don't bury the lede. Big news goes right up at the top of the story, which is why I found this amusing, during my daily perusal of the latest stories from the world or archeology.

It seems the people digging in Italy found the fossilized remains of nine Neanderthals at a prehistoric cave site south of Rome recently.  They came up with skulls, skull fragments, two teeth and some other bone pieces.

One of the skeleton crew is from between 90,000 and 100,000 years ago, and the other eight probably danced their last rhumbas 50,000 to 68,000 years ago.

All of this turned up at the Guattari Cave in San Felice Circeo, where a Neanderthal skull was discovered in 1939. Local officials say this makes Guattari Cave "as one of the most significant places in the world for the history of Neanderthals."

AND THEN! Here, all the way down at the bottom of the doggone article, they dig a ditch, throw the lede in, and bury it for all time, hidden away from all but the most gimlet-y of eyes: 

Neanderthals died out roughly 40,000 years ago, but small traces of their DNA still exist in modern humans.

So there it is, right from the Associated Press. Neanderthal blood and DNA still course through the veins of the guy who cut you off in traffic the other day, the person who didn't bother to bring their tv along when they moved here from Panama because it only got shows in Spanish, and certainly the person who thought that doubling a cookie recipe to make a double batch meant turning the oven up to 800°. The Neanderthals are still here, and every time we go on social media we see evidence that they are extant yet today.

I'll stop here, because there is a third rule: Don't overstate the obvious.

 

 

 

The Needle And The Contest Won

I'm thinking there should be a new malady associated with the pandemic. Let's call it "Covidnesia," for the tendency of some people to be slightly forgetful when it comes to the details of the pandemic that, might I remind you, has killed 590,000 Americans - so far.

Why I worry about people's memories is that they seem to forget that when the first vaccines came out around Christmas time, people were fairly clamoring to get theirs. Oh, how they hollered, and lined up, and called their cousin's ex-girlfriend's mother-in-law who used to be the Chief Admitting Nurse at Rick Springfield General Hospital to try to get in line. People were even willing to lie about their eligibility, just to get their pfix of Pfizer or their jolt of Johnson and Johnson.

Well, that was then, this is wow. Because from January, there has been a great diminution of demand for COVID vaccine. Not only that, but also, demand has gone way down!

And for all the public yakety-yak about how we'll be fine when we reach herd immunity (also known as "heard" immunity in some quarters), that takes having 70% of the public take the needles. Maryland isn't there yet, and do we think people will still come and get in line?

We do not, which is why affable Maryland governor Lawrence "Hulk" Hogan announced a new gimmick for Maryland residents - it's a chance to snag some serious moolah just for getting the free vaccine that might save your life.

So for this, people need to be paid?

The Maryland Department of Health and the Maryland Lottery have teamed up to create a new sub-lottery.

Beginning tomorrow, May 25, there will be a daily drawing with a prize of $40,000. The excitement doesn't abate until it reaches a crescendo on July 4, when the big winner will walk away with the grand prize of $400,000.

“Entry is very simple — all you have to do is get vaccinated here in Maryland, be a Maryland resident and be 18 or older,” Hogan said.

If you've already had the vax, you're entered, don't worry.  And the Director of Maryland Lottery and Gaming, Gordon Medenica, says it's all being  handled anonymously, so don't sweat about your personal info being used inappropriately. They are setting up a number string on a spreadsheet with name and contact info for each person who got the needle(s).

Hogan, always the master sloganeer, says, “Remember Marylanders: Get your shot for a shot to win. That’s a good line.”

The best news of all is that the prize loot is not coming from the Lottery prize bank, but, rather, from their promotional budget, which will mean fewer corny lottery ads on TV!

And that makes us all winners already!

Philadelphia freedom, I looove you, Yes I do!

Series television shows really got fancy in the 80's with some very clever writing and stories. There was the ending of "St Elsewhere," the medical show in which it turned out that the whole show was actually all in the mind of a young man who lived with autism, and saw a snow globe with a miniature version of the hospital.

There was "Newhart," which technically ended in the 90s, but the final scene was all about Bob Newhart dreaming that this show was all a dream. He woke up to tell his wife from the first show all about the nutty cast of the second.

And who can forget when "Dallas" had slipped in the ratings because Bobby Ewing died, so they had him come back, and the whole thing where he died was just a bad dream, since his wife found him taking a shower one morning a year later.

And the classic "L.A. Law" way of getting rid of an unlikeable character by having her descend in an elevator. Or not.

Which reminds me of a story from Philadelphia the other day. Philadelphia, you might have heard, is a large city in Pennsylvania, a state founded by pacifist Quakers, and Philly is a city where football fans once booed Santa Claus.

So, in a high rise building, three guys get into a fight, presumably over the longtime Phila controversy about whether Cheez Whiz or provolone is the better coagulation of milk casein to apply on a steak sub.

Whatever the reason, the brawl raged on, as brawls will, and it was all fun until they all fell at least eight stories down the elevator shaft.

I guess the eighth floor of the 251 DeKalb Apartments residence was not the best choice for a mêlée. One guy was atop the elevator car when it landed on the second floor and he was able to say, "Well, at least I didn't fall all the way to the first floor!" like the other two did. 

"The steel elevator door, when you push the button the door opens, they broke through that door and there was no elevator there so they just fell eight floors to the bottom,” said Upper Merion Police Lt. Al Elverson, a master of breaking things down for easy understanding.

Tenant Derrell Washington told the local news, “That’s not an elephant that flew into the elevator. It’s three humans. I’m pretty sure it was faulty equipment.”

“Elevators are supposed to have a bunch of fail-safes so I don’t know why it would’ve had trouble,” fellow resident Jared Day added.

All three combatants were transported to local hospitals and given huge salty pretzels*.  Meanwhile, back at the apartments, Nicole Coello was saying,"I saw a lady earlier today and she was taking her dog and her dog was scared but she was like I’m not taking the elevator right now and she was pushing it downstairs."

And that's all I know about it.

* another local favorite 

Sunday Rerun: This Will Bug You

 The Top 20 Countdown is in, and my town is #15 with a bullet! Or a stinger.

The list we speak of is the list of the most mosquito-ridden towns in America, to wit:

1. Atlanta
2. New York 
3. Washington, D.C. 
4. Chicago 
5. Houston
6. Dallas-Ft. Worth, Texas 
7. Detroit 
8. Philadelphia 
9. Charlotte, N.C.
10. Raleigh-Durham, N.C.
11. Phoenix 
12. Los Angeles 
13. Boston 
14. Miami 
15. Baltimore 
16. Richmond, Va.
17. Nashville 
18. Tampa 
19. Indianapolis 
20. St. Louis 

Actual Jersey Mosquito

By listing Philadelphia at #8, the good people at Orkin, who produced this list to remind you to use their services, must be including the South New Jersey area as well, because, as fierce as Baltimore 'skeeters are, the ones in New Jersey are the only ones I have ever seen with their own hangars.

Now and then, someone will say, "What a wonderful world it would be if there were no mosquitoes!"  Come on now, George Bailey, there is room for all of God's critters here on earth.  But mosquito larvae are very important for the ecology of aquatic life, because others bugs and little fish eat them, and then become food for bigger feeders.

So, then. Mosquitoes are here to stay, and there are ways to at least keep them away from your place.

1. Dump out any standing water near your home. Mosquitoes will date, mate, and reproduce in 14 days (faster than Harry and Meghan!) if there is still water in any old container around the yard. So if you have a pond, have a waterfall or fountain put in to keep the water moving around.

2. Keep them outside. Use screens on the windows.

3. Use a mosquito repellent. You pick the brand, but make sure to slather it on your ankles, feet, lower legs and wrists. That's where your skin is thinnest, making you easy pickin's.

4. Wear light-colored clothing outdoors. Colors such as black, navy blue and red stand out to a bug, according to bug eye doctors (as opposed to bugeyed doctors). Also, wear clothing outdoors. You know why.

5. Stay indoors at dusk and dawn. That's when the little anklebiters are hungry for breakfast or dinner. You're safe at lunch; that's when they all go to the buffet.

6. Make yourself less of a target. Don't drink beer or fail to shower - they love the odor you put out when you're belting back the Buds and haven't used your Irish Spring yet. BUT slather on a little Victoria’s Secret Bombshell perfume or Avon’s Skin So Soft Bath Oil, and the bugs will leave you alone for someone who had one beer and zero showers. — a popular mom’s remedy.




Feel free to print this out, and mount it on stiff cardboard, which you can use to swat mosquitoes.

The Saturday Picture Show, May 22, 2021

 

Oh, I'm sure there are other ways...

As a fan of ventriloquism, I am fortunate enough to have been the right age to see Shari Lewis and Lamb Chop in her first show ("The Shari Lewis Show," NBC, 1960 - 1963) and her second ("Lamb Chop's Play-Along," PBS, 1992 - 1997). It's good to see the old wool puppet still get some play time! 

No humans will be injured by Bucket Hat Boy here, but dozens will be fooled!

"Hey Mom! What's for dinner?"

An abandoned house in midtown Detroit. Think of what this used to be, how many happy memories were made there, and how many more could be made after someone puts some rehab money into it!

If this is not called "Monster Rock," someone is missing out on a sure tourist opportunity!

Great idea - a view with a room! 

The competition ends right here. You can't find better camouflage than this, from the Turkish Army. We wanted to give the designer a prize, but we couldn't find him.

The city government of Paris, France, thought they were doing a good thing to buy a fleet of electric cars for their officials to scoot down the Champs-Élysées on their way to La Tour Eiffel and the colorful Sous-vêtement. But, you know what they say about good intentions. Replacement batteries are currently prohibitively expensive, and the city had already passed environmental laws making it illegal to dispose of used electric car batteries. So here sit these defunct vehicles in a giant cimetière automatique. C'est dommage.

This has the look of an old painting, but it's a new (2019) painting of old books. It is entitled "Old Books," and it was done by Elena Nikolaeva. I love the texture and even the musty smell of old books!

Workin' 9 to 5

We turn now to a topic that I have avoided like poison.

Overwork.

Don't you love how a group of experts will do a long detailed study to come up with a totally obvious conclusion? 

• Gargling with gasoline can be dangerous!
• People who drive while drunk tend to be involved in car accidents!
• Ham and cheese together on a kaiser roll makes a tasty sandwich!
• Working long hours poses an occupational health risk that kills hundreds of thousands of people each year, according to the World Health Organization!

You really didn't have to do much to convince me, but the WHO says "People working 55 or more hours each week face an estimated 35% higher risk of a stroke and a 17% higher risk of dying from heart disease, compared to people following the widely accepted standard of working 35 to 40 hours in a week."

This came out in a WHO study published this week in the journal Environment International.

"No job is worth the risk of stroke or heart disease," WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. He wants governments, businesses and workers to find ways to protect workers' health.

The study dates back to 2016, when 488 million people suffered the hazard of working long hours. And more than 745,000 people of them died that year from overwork that resulted in stroke and heart disease.

Of course, the statistics don't even touch this past year, when COVID-19 threw a giant wrench into the works all over the world. But one trend that developed, and seems likely to stay around, is telework, and all indications are that people whose home becomes their office or workplace tend to put in more hours on their tasks, because the home/work borders melt away.

"Teleworking has become the norm in many industries, often blurring the boundaries between home and work," Ghebreyesus said. "In addition, many businesses have been forced to scale back or shut down operations to save money, and people who are still on the payroll end up working longer hours."

One of the saddest things I have ever heard is when people packing for vacation also pack up their office laptop, and plan to keep up with office emails, and the vicissitudes of the O'Callahan account, and that Brown & Serve merger on the west coast. It seems to me that it's insecurity, more than ambition, that drives this "gotta work 24-7" mentality. People worry that that new man or woman is angling to take their job away.

If you're good at your job, do it and go home. There is a life out there for you. People who stick around the office til 9 PM (and you know who they are; they always say something like "I heard a noise from your office last night about 8:30. I hope everything was ok, but you weren't there...") are just saying they aren't capable of getting their job done on time.

And I'll be even more blunt. If you disappear tomorrow, sure, the gang will miss you. They'll send flowers, they'll clean out your desk, they'll mention your name for a week, tops. Then someone else will slide right on in there, and life will go on, trust me.

As Casey Stengel said, "The parks are full of statues of people whom everyone used to think were indispensable." 

Son of a Bee

In some places, the very sight of a bee causes panic, screaming, running away from them, and even the introduction of a can of insect killer into the situation.

And while it is true that I once had an unfortunate (for both of us) encounter with a bee who happened to be on my lawn one morning when I stepped out barefoot to retrieve the newspaper, I don't fear bees; I respect them and I enjoy their contributions to our wellbeing.

In the South American nation of Colombia, the world's second-most biodiverse country, there are at least 550 varieties of bees. That's the count from the environment ministry, and even they say there might be as many as 1,445 bee species down there.

So it's not surprising that bees in Colombia get pampered like nowhere else. As a matter of fact, in the town of Barbosa, the Aburra Valley Metropolitan Authority is building tiny hotels to give unswarmed solitary bees a place to rest up and charge up after a busy day spent pollinating.

These little teeny Holiday Inns are wooden hexagonal constructions, and have plastic roofs to keep sleepy bees dry in the rain. Inside under the roof, a bee will find bamboo canes to allow for a night of undisturbed sleep.

"It's like a hotel because here they're going to have a quiet moment in their room  before setting off again," said Hector Ivan Valencia, an assistant for the local authority's risk management unit. There's no mention of air conditioning or cable tv.

After checkout time, Valencia and his colleagues take small paint brushes and clean out the "hotel rooms."

"If this were a regular hotel, I'd be one of the people cleaning the rooms," Valencia said.

(Hector, better make sure that everyone has checked out before you start sweeping!)

Bees play a vital part in agriculture, of course. They fertilize plants, and for all their trouble, they are threatened by what humans do. Pesticides, fertilizers, and climate change are challenges to bee survival.

The authorities in the Aburra Valley are doing what they can to help the bees, and their ten municipalities (including Barbosa and Colombia's second city, Medellin) are putting up the hotels to help the buzzers.

"Globally (bees) are being negatively impacted and they are losing more spaces every day," says Juan David Palacio, director of the metropolitan area's environmental and transportation authority, by way of explaining why they want to help.

Valencia points out that most people are aware that honey bees are in danger, but the solitary, pollinating, bees, need some love too. 

"These little bees are supremely sensitive to poisons and since they don't produce honey no one speaks up for them, so we're coming to the rescue," he said.

It doesn't take much to help the world be better. Be Best, as they say!

The Champ of all Half-wits

You can say what you want about Rick Schroder - a one-time fairly well-known actor who was in the remake of "The Champ" as a little kid, wound up on "Silver Spoons" and "NYPD Blue," and was last seen playing Dolly Parton's father in two TV movies about Dolly's childhood - but you can't claim that he is still famous. Most people wouldn't know who in the hall he is.

At 51, Schroder has become one of "those people" who decide to lambast people who work at stores and restaurants over things those harried employees do not control. Over the weekend, he was able to find time in his busy schedule of not being an actor any more to make a trip to Costco in Los Angeles.

Now, the California law still requires people who work and shop there to wear masks, so even though the CDC said last week that it’s safe for fully vaccinated people to skip face-coverings inside, that law still supersedes what the CDC says. If you watch the video, you will see an extraordinarily patient front-end manager named Jason explaining to the washed-up thespian why he needs to cover the face that no one recognizes anymore anyway.

That's not good enough for this Schroder, who was last in the headlines for ponying up $150,000 to bail out Kyle Rittenhouse, the irritating child from Illinois who got his mommy to drive him to Wisconsin so he could shoot protesters. 

When his complaints about how the government has ruined his life fall on deaf ears, Schroder demands a refund on his membership dues, which gives him maybe $50 to work with when he goes to stock up on Alka-Seltzer, peanut butter, and books that will be turned into movies that won't have Rick Schroder in the cast.

He then urges all of California to renounce their Costco memberships, as people continue to mill past him to shop, grateful to be freed of the sound of his voice.

Rick, left, and the poor man who had to endure his stupidity on the right.

I urge everyone to take a look around at themselves - "take stock," as my parents used to exhort me to do. If you find that you are the sort of person who takes time to argue with people who are manning the front door at a warehouse store, if you're the guy who demands free stuff and extra service and imported soy milk instead of half-and-half, if you're "that guy" who won't let a cashier scan your food so that laser beams don't befoul your yogurt, if you pull up at Jittery Joe's Java Hut and ask for a "hot iced coffee," maybe it's time to change before you become a tool the size of Rick Schroder.

A buoy named Suez

You remember Driver's Ed, right? Poor Mr Adkins, at Towson High, had the uncool job of sitting in the passenger seat of a BA Chevy Biscayne while young drivers careered through the streets of Towson and surrounding communities. Driver's Ed wasn't mandatory then, but if you passed it, you saved on insurance, so, yeah. Nerves of steel, that man had. Oh, and he had a brake pedal on his side of the car, but no steering wheel.

You also will recall earlier this year when the Ever Given cargo ship got wedged in the Suez Canal waterway in Egypt. The BA ship was turned sideways by high winds and a sandstorm, and anyone who remembers trying to parallel park that Biscayne between two stanchions surely remembers the feeling of being wedged in.

There is a sort of Driver's Ed program in Port Revel, France, and the hope is that cargo captains can learn to avoid the fate of the Edmund Fitzgerald Ever Given by taking the course, which uses replica boats in the middle of a French forest and is supposed to teach those captains and pilots how to navigate the Canal.

It's a scale model -  one twenty-fifth the size of a passage in the real Suez.  The philosophy is, if you can learn to get a ship through in this tiny likeness, you'll have no problem with the real thing.

"It's a bit hard to recreate sandstorms," said  Francois Mayor, the managing director of the Port Revel training facility. "But we have gusts of wind which will push our ship to one side or another."

Instructors know what to expect on the real waterway, so they create fake steering problems and engine outages to see how trainees handle themselves.

"You have little space to maneuver. You have to be particularly focused," said Mayor.

And just to keep it really real, they also have a mini-San Francisco Bay, and an ersatz Port Arthur, Texas, to teach docking and maneuvering cruise ships and tankers through those crowded ports. Turbines beneath the surface create currents and waves.

Mayor expects to see lots of trainees soon, as shipping firms try to avoid another massive snafu like the Ever Given incident, which blocked a vital shipping canal for six days and cut global trade off.

"After each accident... we see new clients coming," said Mayor. "The cost of training at Port Revel is nothing like the cost of having a vessel like that stuck for a day."

Attention, Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration! This could be a great idea for some of our less-than-adroit motorists. Send them to France!

Not for training. Just send them to France.

Subterranean Homesick Blues

We've been talking about it since 2004, and here they are again - the once-every-17 year hatch of periodic cicadas is busting out of their long subterranean dormancy all across the eastern United States. And they are gonna be LOUD. And ugly.

In years past (2004, 1987 and 1970, in my memory) they were here by early May, but just like you and me, they didn't want to get out of bed while we enjoyed a chilly early May this year. The cicada nymphs that have been getting their nutrition from tree roots all the years are coming out of the ground, shedding their exoskeletons, and looking for mates. 

First, they ought to stop off at the dry cleaners and pick up their good outfits, and maybe get some decent shoes to go a-courtin'!

Dr. Jessica Ware, an associate curator of invertebrate zoology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, has been looking forward to this month since May, 2004, a month memorable for Massachusetts becoming the first U.S. state to legalize same-sex marriage, the Arizona Diamondbacks' Randy Johnson throwing a perfect game (2-0 vs Atlanta), the final episodes of "Friends" and "Frazier" airing on TV, the entire town of Hallam, Nebraska, being wiped out by a powerful 2.5 mile wide F4 tornado, with but one fatality, and a horse with the cool name of "Smarty Jones" winning the Kentucky Derby. 

"May is going to be a loud month, for sure, for cicadas," said Ware, a bit too happily, if you ask me. "It's kind of exciting to think about Brood X emerging because the last time these individuals were above ground was in 2004.  And so when you think about it - a lot's happened in the last 17 years," said Ware.

In much the same way that 17-year-old American males seek to attract mates by playing Luke Bryan too loudly, showing off giant belt buckles and turned-around ball caps, and hollering, "Duuuuuuuude! Watch this!," 17-year-old male cicadas emit a mating chirp by vibrating a plate called a tymbal located on their abdomens.

If American teenaged males had a tymbal, so would they.

"It's this kind of dance; males are showing that they can call as loud and as long as possible, which means they're probably a good mate. Females are listening. Are they calling loud? Are they calling long?... it's kind of a complicated acoustic dance that they're doing," Ware says. 

It must be similar to dancing the "Renegade" on TikTok, but cicadas are not online.

Ware wants us to remember that cicadas are harmless, and they become part of the food chain, supplying snackage for food for birds, animals and other insects.

This all takes place in the mid- Eastern United States, from down in East Tennessee to southern parts of New York.

Sorry, Kansas, Utah, California, Texas. You can join me in feeling sorry for the cicadas that can't get dates and then wind up as a squirrel's lunch.

Sunday Rerun (from July 2020): Life's Path

 It's 1983, December, and Deirdre Taylor is 4 years old, living in a loft apartment in the SoHo section of New York with her mother. When a fire broke out in the apartment, a man on the street hollered to a firefighter who was doing one of the side duties the Fire Dept handles - checking water pipes in buildings for adequate pressure.

That firefighter ran up to the apartment and found Taylor's young mom, who was screaming for help to save her baby. He was Vincent Pugliese, who served the city of New York for decades before retiring 24 years ago. He remembers that day vividly, naturally.

Deirdre today

He ran up to the sixth-floor apartment and rescued Deirdre's mom, who gasped that her daughter was still inside the smoke-filled apartment.

"She kept screaming, 'My baby!' so I went back in and found a young girl who was unconscious," says Pugliese, recounting that he gave the child rescue breathing until she came back to consciousness.

Deirdre told CNN recently, "I always knew I came close to losing my life that day. Without him, I wouldn't be here. I had a second chance at life, thanks to him."

Fast-forward to 2020. Remember how, when New York City was hit so hard by COVID cases this spring, nurses and doctors from all over the nation came to help them out?  Deirdre Taylor is an emergency room nurse in Alexandria, Virginia now, and she was one of those volunteers.  Before she left to fly to NYC, she took along a tattered old newspaper about a firefighter who saved a little girl there a long time ago.

Along life's path, Deirdre met her husband, and they have two kids. She always wondered about that brave fireman who save her life, but found nothing about Vincent Pugliese online.

Vincent today

She spent two months doing valiant service at BYU Langone Hospital in Brooklyn, and found out a secret, which is that firefighters either know everybody who ever was in the fire department, or they know someone who knows someone who does. She asked a firefighter whom she met in the hospital, and he called the captain of FDNY Ladder 20 in Manhattan, and that led her directly to her hero.

She called him and was glad to make the connection! "I wondered about him on 9/11 and hoped I would get the chance to thank him, and I finally did," said Taylor.

Pugliese is 75 years of age now, and says she was "on cloud nine" when he got that call from Taylor.

Vincent has had that same newspaper article, framed, hanging on the wall of his home in Spring Lake, NJ, for all these years as well. "The two of us just sat there crying on the phone," he told CNN. "She turned out to be a remarkable woman with a magnificent life."

Taylor was just a tot when Pugliese saved her, so of course her memories are sketchy, but he says, "I didn't see her ever again after that, but I always wondered about her."

He was awarded the Walter Scott Medal for Valor for his rescue of Taylor, who joined the Army on her 17th birthday and became a National Guard helicopter pilot before she started her family.  Military service is something else the two share; he was a Marine in Vietnam before joining the FDNY.

"On top of that, we're both die-hard Yankees fans!" said Taylor, proving that no one, no matter how heroic, is perfect.

They haven't met up, but they do chat on the phone, and have made plans to go see a Yankee game with her family. This year, that might just take another miracle, but we'll see.

The Saturday Picture Show, May 15, 2021

 

Let's start today with a sunset view of Cairo, Egypt. Not every city has a view of the ancient pyramids.

This ad probably appeared in the late 1950s and here we are, STILL waiting for plug-in electric flying carpets. Hurry up, already!

Homeowners' Corner: Why go to Lowe's and purchase high-priced shower heads when Dollar Tree sells just what you need, but in the garden aisle?

There was a time when the simple process of finding out what time it is involved pulling out a pocket watch, which was carried on a chain attached to something called a fob. I notice fewer and fewer people using watches, on the wrist or in pockets, anymore. A lot of people will tell you, they rely on their cell phones to tell them the time. Even more will tell you they just don't care what time it is!

This week in 1972 saw the release of the Rolling Stones' "Exile On Main Street," featuring great tunes like "Tumbling Dice" and Keith Richards's "Happy." It hardly seems like it's been 49 years.

Someone drew this with markers. If you stare at it for 49 years, you will hear "Tumbling Dice" in your mind.

Some really cool mom put a handmade cartoon in her kid's lunchbox every Monday just to get the week off to a good start. And the kid saved them! What a treasure!

When squirrels build their nest up against your window...

We never thought we would see Fonzie go fishing. Ayyyyyyyyyyyy!

Starting today, I am going to make sure all my desserts are labeled, so as to avoid confusion.