Believe Me

We talked the other day about low bridge overhangs and how trucks that are too tall will slam into them.  A longtime friend of mine replied and told me he hauls a camper trailer...and that I would be surprised at how many people try to drive something too big into an area too small. 

Perhaps it's my rapidly advancing age, but I'm sad to say it's been a long time since anything surprised me. When a good ole boy  Southern lawyer says in an open court in the United States of America that he doesn't want any black preachers in the courtroom, I was not surprised.  He even said it without winking or laughing.

When an elderly lady who volunteers in her church in the city was killed in that church the other day, I was not surprised.

When a recently fired Baltimore county police officer abducted his children and went on the run with another officer, and all 4 of them wound up dead at his hands, I was not surprised.

Was I surprised when a man who has been arrested 19 times since 1999 drove into a crowd at a Christmas parade and committed mass mayhem with complete insouciance? Did hearing that he had just bailed out a few days before this, after running over his wife with that same vehicle, surprise me? It did not. No bail this time.

Does it surprise me that people would park their car in the driveway of a firehouse so that they can go to the Safeway across the street to pick up their turkey, the day before Thanksgiving? It does not. Selfishness is as American as turkey for Thanksgiving these days. These engines and the medic unit will just have to drive around me! I have to get this turkey home and be at my Zumba club by 2.

Was I surprised to see people who lack any sort of training, education, or credentials to make scientific assessment refuse a vaccine that could very well save their lives because they "don't know what's in it"? I was not. I didn't even ask them if they know what is in their hyper-caffeinated energy drink, their imitation pumpkin flavored lattes, their bologna, their marinara, their marihuana. 

On the other hand: I see people participating in marathon races to raise money for childhood illnesses, shelters for people experiencing homelessness, abandoned animals any number of worthy causes.

I see young people with a spirit strong enough to push back on the negativity they face. In fact, what I really love is seeing that they just don't give a good dam* about what's bad. They have the instinct to ignore racism, classism, xenophobia, and ignorance, which is a sweet accomplishment.

I have to tell you, there is not a whole lot that's great about getting old, unless you think that having knees that sound like a bowl of Rice Krispies going up stairs is a plus. But when I think of those who would love to get up the stairs at all, or even be here at all, I don't complain.

And I think about the apocryphal legend attributed to hundreds of football coaches over the years. "Act like you've been there before!" when you reach the end zone. Being on the upper rungs of the ladder enables one to look down and remember the climb, and that adds perspective.

Those of us who were running around here in 1968 remember the doomsayers saying doomy things about how the world was coming to an end. Dr King assassinated. Bobby Kennedy the same, just two months later. Soviet tanks rolling into Czechoslovakia, and the fear that they would take America next. The police riot at the Democratic convention. The USS "Pueblo" captured by North Korean forces. The Tet offensive leading to the US losing the Viet Nam war.

All of these low points had some people planning for the worst. And that was 53 years ago, and we have seen 53,000 highs and lows in those years.

So cheer up! The holidays are here and we can hear Alvin sing about his harmonica and read good books and watch entertaining, uplifting movies, all in the comfort of our homes.

I believe I'll stay home with my loving wife and cats and enjoy my life and not worry about what I can't fix. That's what I believe. 

* A good dam, as opposed to a bad dam, many of which will be repaired under the infrastructure bill. 

"I mean, big surprise: People love you and tell you lies. Bricks can fall out of clear blue skies." - Sondheim

The world will miss the genius of Stephen Sondheim, because not many (pronounced "zero") people have had his talent for writing words and music that make people sing and dance and shell out money for tickets to see others sing and dance.

As you heard over the weekend, Sondheim died Friday, aged 91. He was a New Yorker from birth and over the course of his life, he won all the awards in his field, from the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2015) on down the line. 

Before Sondheim, musicals ran the course of so many shows, the old "boy-meets-girl, girl dumps boy but later finds the love of her life was back home all along so they get together again for good and all is well" sort of thing.

In works such as “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum”, “Company”, “Gypsy”, “Sunday in the Park with George”, and “West Side Story, " he took the audience to more realistic places, changing the course of Broadway and movies and making it possible for modern shows such as "A Chorus Line", "Hadestown", "Hamilton" and so forth. Before Sondheim stretched the genre, a rap musical about America's first Secretary of the Treasury would not have been on anyone's mind.

 He wrote his first musical at age 15, an age where the most creative writing most of us are doing is fake sick notes for school. After college, he got his feet wet in show business by writing scripts for "Topper," a barely-remembered TV sitcom about a guy who lives in a house haunted by the ghosts of a young couple and a St. Bernard dog who were swept away in an avalanche. The high point of the show is that the invisible dog drank visible martinis.

Everyone has to start somewhere, you know.

Guided into more tony endeavors by family friend Oscar Hammerstein, Sondheim wrote the lyrics for Leonard Bernstein’s "West Side Story," which opened in 1957, and next he wrote the lyrics for Jule Styne's music for "Gypsy."

Given the chance to do both the lyrics and the music for a show, he turned out "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum," which was based on Roman comedies from long long ago. It won the Tony Award for Best Musical. That play ran for 964 performances on Broadway, and it looked like Sondheim had the magic touch.

His next effort was called "Anyone Can Whistle," and no one can whistle a song from it because it closed after nine performances.

But did he quit? He did not. He hit again with "Company", "Follies", "A Little Night Music", "Sweeney Todd", "Sunday In The Park With George", "Passion" and many revues featuring new presentations of his songs.

And for those who think that such a creative life was nurtured in the loving bosom of a fond mother, remember this: Sondheim's father left his mother for another woman, and his mother took out her wrath on young Stephen, first packing him off to military school and a Quaker boarding school. Later in his life, he received a letter from his mother in which she wrote that the one regret she had in her life was giving birth to him.

She died in 1992. He did not attend the funeral. 

Sunday Rerun: I was goated into writing this

 

Not baaaaad.

We were talking about goats the other day and I decided to spend some time learning more about the domestic goat (Capra aegagrus hircus), which is a subspecies of goat descended from the wild goat of southwest Asia and Eastern Europe.

When you retire, you'll have time to do this stuff, I promise you.

Fred (left) and Doris Ziffel

Even if all you know about goats is that we call the style of beard worn by Fred Ziffel on Green Acres is a goatee, that's a good start!  But also, consider these:

I got to thinking about why we call children "kids," and it's because it's what we call the offspring of adult goats: Female goats are referred to as "does" or "nannies", males as "bucks", "billies", or "rams."

If your indoor pool or hot tub smells kind of rank, it might be because bromine is being used to kill algae that might grow there. Bromine, the only liquid nonmetallic element (I'm sure we all knew that, so why even mention it?) is used in compound form for water treatments and to control algae and bacterial growth. The very word bromine is from the Greek: βρῶμος, brómos, meaning "strong-smelling" or "stench of goats."

Naval Academy goat

The current worldwide goat population is thought to be around 924 million.  America has almost three million of them.  Those who do not find work as college football team mascots wind up making milk or cheese or some other food that requires even more involvement, such as goat-b-que.

According to country music legend, Tex-Mex singer Johnny Rodriguez was heard singing while he was in jail for stealing and barbecuing a goat, and a kindly Texas Ranger got word of his talent to Tom T. Hall and Bobby Bare, although this story is now cast in the shadows of doubt, as there are no Texas Rangers known to be kindly.

Just kidding.

The cornucopia, from which all good Thanksgiving chow pours forth, is based on goat horns, which are considered a symbol of plenty and wellbeing.

In Norse mythology, Thor, the god of thunder, rides around in a chariot pulled by two goats (unless they're too Thor.)

Guitars that don't have steel strings have nylon, or what they used to call "catgut," which was actually goat intestine, which is also used to make surgical stitches.

A baseball player who strikes out with the game on the line, a football kicker who blows a potential game-winning field goal and anyone else whose bad play causes a loss is said to be getting fitted for goat horns...the same horns that are supposed to signify plenty and well-being.   Mixed metaphors!

The Washington POST ran this chart, showing the USA's goat population.  Helluva lotta goats in Texas, pardner.

The goat is an animal in the twelve-year cycle which appears in the Chinese zodiac calendar. Certain personality traits are linked to every one of the animals; those born in a year of the goat (1919, 1931, 1943, 1955, 1967, 1979, 1991, 2003, 2015, 2027) are predicted to be shy, introverted, creative, and perfectionist.

Final fun fact: those born in 2027 have not been born yet at all, or even dreamed of, in most cases.

The Saturday Picture Show, November 27, 2021

 

One of the best scenes in The Godfather taught us a lot about Don Corleone. He prized loyalty above all, and he never made his reactions disproportionate to what provoked the reaction. In this scene, Bonasera The Undertaker has asked that he avenge the sexual assault of his daughter by having the punks who did it murdered. He replies, "That is not justice; your daughter is still alive" but still arranges for them to have their comeuppances. And soon enough, Bonasera is in a position to repay the favor. Fun fact: that cat was not in the plans for the scene, but he was hanging around the set, Marlon Brando took a liking to him, and gave him a cameo role in one of the greatest movies ever.

For those who enjoy tramping through old jails and mental hospitals, here's a field trip in your future! It's in Illinois.

Men can launder just as well as women, and trust me, guys, once you figure out the buttons and how much suds to add, it's a lot of fun!

I guess this will be the last of the fall pictures for this - all the winds this week denuded the trees for the most part. But as always, it was a beautiful autumn!

Fire dispatchers know not to use the term "bonfire" in case it would be mistaken for the much more serious "barn fire." Similarly, in Taiwan, the local Mandarin dialect for "four" sounds a lot like "death," so hospitals skip the fourth floor just like American skyscrapers used to avoid having a thirteenth floor.

Every rainbow comes to an end.

It's been two weeks, and these people are still waiting in Dallas every day for John F. Kennedy, Jr to return from his watery grave and claim his position as vice president. Well, of COURSE they are! He'll be there, day after tomorrow. 

We had these and I'll be a lot of you did too...gobbler salt and pepper shakers for Thanksgiving!

The old "Nancy" comic had Nancy's little pal Sluggo, who apparently lived on his own in a house with cracked plaster, springs coming out of the sofa, and candles stuck in old wine bottles for lamps. No one thought to call Child Protective Services on him.

Making science easy: start with the notion that there are only so many hydrogen and oxygen cells on earth, so the water that rains today just might contain molecules that once watered the fields and vineyards of Biblical times. And the water from your ponds and pools evaporates during summer heat and comes right back down when the clouds burst. 

What to do with all this TURKEY?

 So Wednesday, we talked about chess pies on the day before Thanksgiving, which is the biggest pizza delivery day of the year as people stuff the pizza as they stuff the turkey. 

Today, let's talk about using up yesterday's leftovers in something pizza-ish, because no one wants leftover turkey for three days! And I promise you, this will be the last recipe in this blog for quite some time. Enough already. Who am I, Martha Stewart?

======================================================

Round up everything that Uncle Abner didn't shove down his neck and make  leftover calzones! Like so:

Get an unbaked ball of pizza dough and let it come to room temperature. Split into 4 chunks.

shred about 2 cups leftover poultry and combine it with some cranberries, stuffing, and cheese if you like

Heat the oven to 475°

Cover a cookie sheet with aluminum foil and spray with Pam

Knead each doughball and flatten it. Cover with plastic wrap and roll flat into an 8" circle.

Place circles on floured cutting board. Place mixed filling in the center, leaving enough room to fold it over with an inch border.

Crimp the edges, place on cookie sheet, slice two steam vents in the top and brush with olive oil (or spray with Pam. What's the difference?)

Bake until golden brown 18-22 minutes. Cool on wire rack and serve before Uncle Abner staggers in. 

=========================================================

It should look like this, especially if you add a green salad:

Thanksgiving 2021

However you celebrate - wherever you celebrate and with whom you celebrate, may today be a day of true gratefulness.

The checkered history of chess pie

I saw this the other day on a Reddit post..."I made six chess pies for Thanksgiving and I'll be leaving Wednesday..."

It dawned on me that there are those who have never heard of chess pie and I hasten to assure one and all that it has nothing to do with a board game.  And in the time it takes some people to make one move in a game of chess, you can whip up a chess pie, and pay tribute to Martha Washington, who made a lot of them because her husband had wooden teeth and did not like pecan pie sticking to his walnut incisors.

It's a Southern pie. The filling is easy: just eggs, sugar, butter, and a little flour. As with anything from Dixie, some recipes involve cornmeal and/or vinegar, and some add vanilla or lemon or chocolate. 

Where did this pie, which some bakers call a "cheeseless cheesecake," get its name?  You may pick your answer. Some say that chess pie is very close to the English lemon curd pie, and some people pronounce "cheese" like "chess."

I go with the story that says someone was asked what kind of dessert she was whompin' up, and the answer "It's just pie!" was drawled into "jess pie" and then "chess pie."

It's not too late to surprise your family with one for tomorrow! Why not get your recipe from the wife of the father of our country? Karen Hess transcribed "Martha Washington’s Booke of Cookery" just for you!

To make very good cheesecakes without cheese curd

Take a quart of cream, & when it boyles take 14 eggs; If they be very yallow take out 2 or 3 of the youlks; put them into [the] cream when it boyles & keep it with continuall stirring till it be thick like curd. [Then] put into it sugar & currans, of each halfe a pound; ye currans must first be plumpt in faire water; then take a pound of butter & put into the curd a quarter of [that] butter; [then] take a quart of fine flowre, & put [the] resto of [the] butter to it in little bits, with 4 or 5 spoonsfulls of faire water, make [the] paste of it & when it is well mingled beat it on a table & soe roule it out.. Then put [the] curd into [the] paste, first putting therein 2 nutmeggs slyced, a little salt, & a little rosewater; [the] eggs must be well beaten before you put them in; & for [your] paste you may make them up into what fashion you please…”

Much as we love Mrs Washington, we also love Mrs Smith, Sara Lee, and Marie Callender!

Dead Men Tell No Tales

Some people just have that gift of being able to be more than one person at a time.

Many of them are called "actors."

And the rest are called "felons," because they are perpetrating frauds. 

Take this case - a man appeared in District Court in Las Vegas to plead guilty to felony fraud. He lived 32 years under another name after claiming to be dead these 32 years.

He was born Arthur Gerald Jones and he took it on the lam from Chicago, trying to get away from his mobster friends (and enemies) and a ton of gambling debt. 

Not to mention his wife and three children.

25 years later, he was declared legally dead in Illinois, but by then, he was 25 years into a new life as Joseph Richard Sandelli. He was working at Ramparts sports gambling book, but when he went to get a driver's license, an eagle-eyed civil servant at the Nevada DMV noticed that the Social Security number he gave belonged to one Clifton Goodenough of Arizona.

"Sandelli"

  

All this raises a lot of questions, namely, who is Sandelli for real? And are there two people running around named Clifton Goodenough?

I once gained admission to a ticket-only trade show at Baltimore's fabulous Convention Center by borrowing a name tag from a co-worker named Earl. My ability to assume a different identity is nonexistent.  All day long, people called me "Earl," and I stared blankly ahead.

Of course, as a kid, I always kept a fake name in my mind in case I was ever grabbed by some adult demanding to know just who I thought I was. I kept the name "Pete Larsen" ready to use, but never had to.

And a lot of people I know have their own real names, and the names that the Starucks barista writes on their cup.

But all this makes me wonder, if I should suddenly decide to abscond for parts unknown and begin life anew (as if!), what would be a name I could use? I always wanted to be named "Leon" or "Tito." 

However, my bland, unprepossessing European countenance is hard to look upon as anything but "nondescript" and "English," so I have to rule out the surnames "Javier," "Di Martini," and "Ying Cheung." Again, I can't fake a thing.

But it does occur to me that if I were to set out on a life of crime, I could update my junior high school name and go as "Pete Larceny."  

 

 

 

Thanks a Bunch

Porter Wagoner used to sing about a fictitious Carroll County, where the "biggest thing that happens is the county fair."

Post Office, Needmore PA,17238

That's probably an apt description of Fulton County, Pennsylvania. There are but three counties with fewer people, in a state with 67 counties, and you may be sure that there won't be a big rush among Pennsylvanians to move to Fulton to find housing in the county seat, McConnellsburg. The county took its name from Robert Fulton, inventor of the steamboat, but he was from Lancaster County, so it's a case of borrowed glory. In fact, on a list of the most famous people from each of Pennsylvania's counties, "Steamboat Bob" Fulton is listed under Fulton County, although he wasn't even from there.  The county needs notoriety, but with only 14,585 people dwelling in its 438 square miles, they'll have to keep looking for someone to achieve greatness. Until then, they are dubiously famous for having a town called "Needmore." 

One person who seems unlikely to bring honor to the county is Randy Bunch. Randy H. Bunch, as he is known, is vice-chair of the county commissioners, and he got his bib overalls all in a twist recently because the county library allowed a  proposed new support group for Fulton County’s LGBTQ-plus community to use its public meeting room to hold biweekly meetings.

Mr Bunch took the reasonable step, faced with the audacity of citizens so audacious as to hold their audacious meetings in a room built with public money for the use of citizens, of calling the LGBTQ community a hate group.

Then he blocked extra funding for the county library.

His Honor, Randy

 

The library used to run 4% of their budget on a small county subsidy of $15,000/yr.  The county fathers slashed that in half during the recession, and this year the library folks asked for an additional $3,000 to get them back to pre-crash levels.

According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Handy Randy says the LGBTQ community is a hate group. In his wisdom, he elaborated:

“If we support them, we have to support Proud Boys and Black Lives Matter.”

The other Republican commissioner, Stuart Ulsh, fell into lockstep with Bunch, and added this bit of sagacity:

“Do we want Muslims moving into our county?”

Ulsh went on to detail a conspiracy theory that says a Muslim man had been arrested on U.S. soil with a 30-year blueprint for taking over America.

(At this point, for the benefit of readers who might not know, it is perfectly legal to be a Muslim in the United States! And as for "taking over America," anyone who wants to take over America can just start with taking Messrs. Bunch and Ulsh over the nearest embankment.)

So these two fine men deny the library $3,000 that might have gone to educate people so unfortunate as to live in their county. After the meeting, Bunch told a reporter,  “I don’t hate anybody. I’m just saying that LGBTQ and any of those organizations make people upset. I personally think none of them need any part in Fulton County. I don’t dislike anybody; I just don’t want something that’s going to create friction between people.”

I have now lived long enough in these United States to state without equivocation that anyone who starts a sentence with "I don't hate anybody" is going to fill out that sentence with a listing of just a few of the people he hates.

But I have also dwelled on these shores long enough to know that people like Bunch and Ulsh generally wind up walking on a figurative rake that they left on their lawn, which smacks them in the face in a most enjoyable manner.

A local woman named Emily Best, who had fond memories of her son enjoying the library as a child, started a GoFundMe page with a goal of getting $12,000 — 4 times what the county turned down! - under the motto  “Don’t let the hateful ideas coming from leadership be the only voices heard in Fulton County!”

By last week, the GoFundMe solicitation had pulled in $14,495, while a companion Facebook request garnered over $9,000.

Library directors plan to use the money to more internet “hot spots,” acquire 3-D printers and sewing machines for public use, and bolster their selection of e-books.

Just think! If Bunch and Ulsh actually read some of the new materials available in Fulton County, they might learn that it's ok to be whatever religion or sexual orientation one wishes to be, but it's not ok to be a censorious, opprobrious rear end.

Boing!!!!

Sunday Rerun: Fly Me To The Moon

 

Neil Page, Del Griffith

"Trains, Planes and Automobiles" must be on one of the movie channels next week; it's a federal law.

All this talk about travel, right before next Wednesday, which is, as we all know, The Busiest Travel Day Of The Year.


Then comes Thanksgiving, and that's followed by The Busiest Shopping Day Of The Year.

I'll tell you who might not be shopping, and that would be the people who travel by air.  Everyone's all worked up about the Federal Air Transport Armed Security Service and their new policy: either you submit to an x-ray, which you know will be passed from agent to agent and goofed on at countless holiday parties, or you step up and let them have at you with The Pat-Down Supreme. With cheese.

Members of your same sex will be touching your junk.

And so once again I choose not to travel by air.

"What do you mean, 'Tuesday' ?"

But I'm having a hard time understanding people.  We do want the airplanes to be full of people that we are totally 100% sure are not carrying guns, bombs, flamethrowers, incendiary devices, knives, anything sharp, anything flammable, or anything bearing scary images of a Kardashian sister that might be used to stun a pilot and divert his attention.  We want safety in the sky and we want everyone checked thoroughly.  That guy over there, for instance.  He looks rather sketchy.

But we don't want to have any inconvenience or delay while traveling!  So unless you know a way to have it two ways, the best way to get to grandmother's house is to pile the kids in the Biscayne and hit the interstate.  Exits with diners, gas and lodging are clearly marked, as are the signs that say that the NorthSide Chowder and Marching Society has adopted this stretch of the road.  And you'll skip those nasty waiting lines in stanky airports, where masses of humanity snake about in serpentine lines, waiting for flight 1492 to Plymouth Rock.  While they're in line or graciously being interviewed by CBS for a report on tonight's Evening News, you're sailing down I-95 without a care in the world.

Uh, better frisk the older kids before starting off; you can't be too safe these days.

The Sunday Picture Show, November 20, 2021

 

Wherever you were, I'm fairly certain your mall had a Hickory Farms. Cheese in many shapes! Summer sausage! Nut logs! Tiny jars of mustard! I was sure to slip in there every time we went to Golden Ring Mall to hit the sample tray. I found out later that the real name for summer sausage is "Thuringer," which also sounds like the name of that guy who transferred to your class in 8th grade and was never heard from again.

The downtown Baltimore sports scene features 71,008 seats at the Ravens stadium. At the bottom right you can see the old railroad warehouse that forms the backbone of Oriole Park at Camden Yards. That old brick structure is the longest building on the east coast, so we have that going for us.

This is Park Avenue in New York City in all its winter best. Those of you who live in far-off warm places have never known the thrill of being in an automobile as it slides down a snowy, icy, hilly street. This is known as "hitting the skids."

Go ahead and look at this for a minute and then I'll tell you what it is. (It's the wire that wraps around a champagne cork, bent to look like a horse, sitting on a mirrored surface).

Leaving a woody trail road and getting on the main road to town!

Dedicated Simpsons fans will remember "Homer's Triple Bypass," episode 11 of season 4 (December 17, 1992) in which Homer can't see spending $40,000 for bypass surgery with his regular physician (Dr Hibbert) and chooses to go with discount doctor Nick Riviera, M.D. Dr Nick will perform any operation for $129.95, but he needs assistance from Lisa shouting instructions from the gallery on this one. I am offering this free cheat sheet to anyone seeking medical help from the local version of Nick.

If you stare at this for ten minutes and then look at a white wall, your eyes will fool you and show you the unmistakable image of Bob Uecker! I don't know how it works, but try it and see! 

I have stared at this picture for a week and I still can't explain it, unless this is some sort of gag at the elevator factory.

It's the perfect time of year to grab some of your favorite books, an apple, and a thermos of tea, and head for the picnic area by the lake for some solo reading time!

It's also the time of year when the little tiny puddles on the parking lot form tiny ice rinks that reflect the goodness of winter coming on!

Watch Out!

 Let's say you are driving a big truck, and let's say you know, or you should know, that the height of your truck is more than 11 feet 8 inches. (That's 140 inches, or 3.555 meters for our international friends). 

The long and short of it, shall we say, is that you should not try to drive a 12' truck into an 11' 8" opening, any more than you can put 10 lbs of sugar in a 5-lb bag.

But, down in Durham, North Carolina, there is, along the roadway, a railroad crossover officially known as the Norfolk Southern–Gregson Street Overpass. Aggrieved truck drivers and local wags call it “The Can Opener” for all the truck lids it has removed, like so many cans of tuna.

 The Gregson Street Guillotine, as others call it, was designed in the 1920s and finally constructed in 1940, back in the days before cars were "12 yards long, 2 lanes wide, 65 tons of American Pride!". Since your great grandpa came to take g-grandma to the football game in a Stutz Bearcat, cars have become a great deal longer, wider, and taller. And, heaven knows, louder.  

But the bridge has a job, a passage for passenger and freight trains into downtown Durham. And you would think that the men and women piloting those land barges through North Carolina would read the sign and heed the warnings, but the proof that this does not happen is available for home viewing.

A man named Jürgen Henn, who works in an office near the scene, put cameras up to record the collisions. As of last month, there have been 173, and you can go to his YouTube to see them or show them to your friends attending truck driving school. 

So even when NetFlix and Hulu and WhatHaveYou have no new videos or movies to show you, you can always see an array of roof-rippers and stack-strippers from the comfort of your phone. 

Your order, please?

When I told a coworker about a restaurant called Beefsteak Charlie's, he was agog for days until he got a chance to go try the chow at a place where you got the usual steak-salad-baked potato AND all the cold shrimp you could peel from a huge tub of ice at the salad bar. (You didn't peel them from the tub, you peeled them at your table, and you could go back as often as you wanted for more).

And that's what my buddy found so delightful. To him, free shrimp with dinner was like letting a nine-year-old loose in the Lego warehouse and telling him or her "Take all you want!" He put a dent in the Beefsteak Charlie profits many a night as he shoved so much shrimp down his neck that his wife had to hose him off in the driveway to get the Old Bay and cocktail sauce off his shirt.

But now I have read about his equal. 

Whales the size of jumbo jetliners feed a lot, and it's not like they eat the next-smaller fish down the chain. What a whale eats for dinner (and late-night snacks) is the tiny stuff of the sea: zooplankton and krill (tiny crustaceans that survive in the oceans until a whale gets hungry).

Just as we say rice is the perfect side when you don't know what you want for dinner, but you know you want thousands of something, those big old whales gulp Buick-sized mouthfuls of ocean water, and with it, millions of krill.

The scholarly journal Nature put out a report letting us know that some whales eat up to a third of their body weight every day.

And, they didn't have to be so specific, but you know the rules: more food = more poop.  We don't think about this, but that becomes the fertilizer that helps grow marine plant life.  

 

A humpback whale feeds on sand lance in the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary. (Elliott Hazen, Smithsonian Magazine)

Let's talk about the  North Pacific blue whale, for example. They won't mind us saying that they eat some 16 tons of krill per day.

16 tons is, to put it in perspective, the weight of a city bus. Pass the Tums!

And it's a valid segment of the food chain. More food in, more poop, so more phytoplankton (the microscopic food found in the seas that make up a snack bar for lots of marine creatures).

So it's all good down by Davy Jones's locker! Just remember to take about 65 tuna sandwiches per person when you go sailing to amuse the whales below.

Quiet Down

Everyone's travel bucket list is their own. Lots of people want to go to Paris, Hong Kong, Baluchistan, or Nome. For sure, there are those who dream of Buffalo in January. It's the fun part of living, like buying a lottery ticket. For a dollar, you get to dream about winning, and it's the same way with our travel dreams.

Mine is way up there in Redmond, Washington State, at Microsoft Headquarters, where they have built an "anechoic" chamber, a room where there is no echo at all because there is no outside sound whatsoever! 

Imagine being in a room where you can hear your own heartbeat! The snap-crackle-pop of my right knee would sound like an artillery barrage! They even say that if you're there long enough, you will lose your balance, because there is no reverberation of sound, which causes you to lose spatial awareness.

This is the world of the absolute zero of sound, the world's quietest place.

Hundraj Gopal is the man who designed the room, and he says, "As soon as one enters the room, one immediately feels a strange and unique sensation which is hard to describe. Most people find the absence of sound deafening, feel a sense of fullness in the ears, or some ringing. Very faint sounds become clearly audible because the ambient noise is exceptionally low. When you turn your head, you can hear that motion. You can hear yourself breathing and it sounds somewhat loud."

Out here where we have to hear an unending symphony of din, there is always pressure on the ear drums as a result, But in the anechoic room there is no air pressure is gone, since there are no sound reflections from the surrounding walls, and, "This is a novel experience," Gopal says.

You can have such a room in your house if you want.  Just find a contractor who can build you a room built like an onion with six layers of concrete and steel, sitting on top of many vibration-stopping springs, fiberglass wedges, and ceilings and wall to baffle any sound that wants to come inside.

Oh, and when you call the contractor, it will help if you have Bill Gates-level money.

The door to the land of no more racket

Mr Gopal says, "The noise level measured inside is -20.3dBA. This means that the ambient noise in the chamber is 20.3dB below the threshold of human hearing."

By comparison, one of the quietest sounds that can be heard in a quiet room, calm breathing, clocks in at 10dB.

That's quiet. But if that's what it takes to make sure I never have to hear Adele sing again, expense is no object!

My Report on the Pineapple

Here's the answer to something that has probably kept you up at night, wondering why, in a world where we can find pineapple jam and preserves and any number of spreads for toast, there is no such thing as pineapple jelly?

Ask your chemistry-major friends and they will tell you, pineapple is loaded with an enzyme called bromelain. Bromelain's job in our food chain is to break down protein chains. No, not Jersey Mike's or Burger King, not that kind of chain, but what the people in white jackets call polypeptide chains, which are bonded amino acids that make excellent marinades.

You take some pineapple and you can turn any old tough piece of beef into something fit for dinner because it just shreds the toughness. But that quality is what makes pineapple refuse to gel, so, no jelly.

If we all lived in Hawaii, we would know people who work in the field of pineapple processing. They have to wear special protective gloves, because the same chemicals - that bromelain -  in pineapple that make a rump roast tender enough for Sunday dinner would play hell with your naked hands. 

The people at Jergens did some work in the field of producing a combination barbecue sauce and hand lotion, but they never did come up with the right formula. 

The benefits of eating pineapple are many. It's packed with nutrients, antioxidants and stuff that fights inflammation and disease. Many believe it aids in our digestion, boosts our immunity, and helps us recover from surgery, which is why they served me peach Jell-O in the hospital.

Of course, there are those who feel it belongs on a pizza, so there's that...

Now, why do we call it "pineapple" when it is not an apple and does not fall off a pine tree? Maybe not, but pine cones do, and a long time ago (the 14th Century) people started calling pine cones pineapples because, in medieval times, people called anything that grew on a tree an "apple" if they didn't know what the heck it was.

What's more, if you look at a pineapple for a good long while, it might start vaguely to resemble a pinecone, so they just transferred the name and let us sort it out later.

One of the few McFlops in the McDonalds experience was the Hulaburger.  Founder Ray Kroc took a liking to a grilled pineapple slice topped with American cheese on a burger roll. No one else did.

This concludes my report on the humble pineapple, and as I go, remember, you can't make pineapple jelly, but you can make apple jelly and Kentucky jelly.  You see it sold under the brand name "KY" jelly. 

About His Honor

Last week, you probably saw stories about Vito Perillo, who was recently reelected as mayor of Tinton Falls, New Jersey. He racked up 2,209 votes in Tuesday’s election, easing past runner-up Ellen Goldberg, a retired schoolteacher who has 1,898 votes.

Vito is retired, as well. In fact, he's been retired since 1980. The man is 97 years of age! He served in World War II in the Navy and worked 38 years as an electrical engineer for the Department of Defense.

He said thanks to his town this way on Facebook:  “I stopped to think about why people might vote for me. Maybe it’s because I’m a WWII veteran, or an ‘old guy’ (hopefully not), or maybe it’s because you read my flyer highlighting our accomplishments over the last 4 years. My hope, however, is that it’s because you see that I care about our town and the people who live in it above anything else.”

What I like about this is, Tinton Falls (40 miles south of Newark) runs non-partisan mayoralty elections. I have no idea if His Honor is a Rep or Dem or a Whig. He only got off his sofa to run for office the first time four years ago because he didn't like the road he saw his town going down. He didn't like his property taxes, the way the town was spending those tax dollars, and scandals in the police department.

 “I felt drastic improvements could be made to our great town,” Perillo said. So he wore out two pairs of shoes, taking his campaign to the streets, and won the election. In the town of 18,000, he probably shook every hand in town along the way.

 In that first term, he cut property taxes and re-did the contract with the police. He got more than 10.6 miles of sidewalks and roads paved, got a new traffic light put up at a dangerous intersection, and had a new park built “where residents are enjoying pickle ball and family time.” 

And he keeps the town ticking like a clock:  “In the four years I’ve been here, we haven’t missed one garbage pickup.” 

The mayor is a widower, still close to his two daughters and grandchildren, who live close by. 

He still plays golf and works out at the Y often, still puts on a suit and drives himself to work every day.

But my favorite thing about the man is, he doesn't make a deal of his age. When the term for which he was just reelected is up, he will be 101, but he didn't ask for votes because he's 97. He saw a need to get his hometown back on a good course and he's doing it, and that's what I think matters. 

Maybe I'll go up there and have him teach me to play pickleball.

 

 

 

 

 

Sunday Rerun: It's Chili Inside

 

Shavie Nicks

It was Saturday.  It was chilly and cloudy and intermittently raining in sideways slants that felt like a million little shaving nicks.  You needed a hat to keep the rain off your melon, but you also had to hold th

Shavie Nicks

e hat on your melon, or the wind would blow it away into a puddle.

Stevie Nicks

In other words, just my kind of day!

Norton!

But we were at the big store buying cat supplies (there's a teaser for you!) and whatnot, and Peggy had mentioned feeling like it was a good day to have chili for dinner.  Chili con carne, as they say in sunny Mexico, not to be confused with Art Carney.


Chili sounded good, as I edged toward the food department of the BA store.  But it had to be fresh, homemade chili.  Canned chili? Just look at the ingredients!

I didn't know what exactly I needed to make a couple of great bowls o' chili, but Google knows everything, and I asked Ms Google for the best chili recipe.  I was directed at once to the gimmesomeoven.com website and their recipe for five-ingredient easy chili.

When they say "five ingredients" and "easy," they ain't kiddin,' boy! A pound of ground beef (or a "lb" of ground beef), 3 cans of Ro*tel tomatoes with diced green chilies (buy the store*brand), 2 cans of kidney beans (again with the store brand), two tablespoons of chili powder, and a cut-up onion.

You round up those ingredients and you go home and find that big stockpot that came with the 147-piece home cookware set that Aunt Fritzi gave you, heat it up with a little olive oil, toss in the beef, brown it, toss in the diced onion and the chili powder and the canned tomatoes/chilies and beans, bring it all to a boil and then let it simmer for fifteen minutes or so, which gives you time to round up some grated cheddar and plain yogurt to dollop on the top of the best chili ever!

Sure, there are Texans who will tell you that if you want chili this Saturday, you should have started cooking last week.  We don't have time for that.  Counting the time you have to wait in line behind the family buying cookies and snack cakes for next week's school lunches, and the ride home, you can have great chili in just about an hour if you start right now.

Go ahead!  We'll be right here when you get back!

The Saturday Picture Show, November 13, 2021

 

It's such a temptation to fill this page every autumn Saturday with ten pictures of beautiful fall leaves, but I try to stick with just one. This one is from southern Michigan. I love the yellows and golds. 

This was from my New Yorker calendar just the other day, drawn by their great cartoonist Liza Donnelly.  Any cat lover will get it at once.

We've seen the results of this 159 times. That's how many black-and-white episodes of the Andy Griffith Show featured Andy and Opie walking down to the ol' fishin' hole for the opener of the show. Interesting perspective!

How beautiful, the front porch of this grand old mansion with chaise longues (or lounges, as you prefer) all set up...but no. This is the inside of a Steinway grand piano. 

This is not a photoshop frame...this is a picture of a crossbuck out west that just happens to frame four beautiful pictures naturally.

Young people will be fascinated, or at least confused, to see that in the 50s and 60s, it was quite the thing-to-do to have Sis pose with her prom date in front of the 17" General Electric cabinet TV. 

"Animal House" was set in the fall of 1962, and the action peaked at the same time that the real world was on the edges of their seats, worried about Kennedy and Khrushchev that November, with the Cuban Missile Crisis. From the real crisis, we got the word "Brinksmanship," as the two world leaders engaged in a game of nuclear chicken (Kennedy didn't flinch). From the movie, we got the term "double secret probation." And we've all been there.

Tell me you can think of a cooler vehicle than an old fire engine. This one is from out there in Sequim, Washington. I can't tell you the make and model but I have a feeling that some eagle-eyed fire buff can!

On the other hand, a classic we don't care to keep around is the now-standard Abandoned American Mall. Look at this one, and no matter where you live, you can say it looks just like the one where you used to go for jeans and shoes and Yankee Candles and Hickory Farms and I don't know what-all else. Malls used to be the future, now they're the past, and it's not really a shame.

My admiration for Isaac Hayes is boundless. There are days when I spend the entire afternoon listening to his music.  A lot of people think his greatest song was "Theme from Shaft"-  the one where he says "You see this cat Shaft is a bad mother" but there was so much more, like the Sam And Dave records he produced and the other Stax Records he and his songwriting partner David Porter came up with. Someday when you're noodling around YouTube, check out his version of "By The Time I Get To Phoenix" or his take on the Jerry Butler song "I Stand Accused." But also, give yourself a treat and look for the movie "It Could Happen To You" in which Isaac plays Angel Dupree, a small but pivotal role in that story.