Seven Simple Steps to Happiness

"Happiness depends upon ourselves." —Aristotle

Greek philosopher Aristotle (c. 384 B.C. to 322 B.C.) searched for many things in his day: wisdom, philosophy, logic, criticism, rhetoric, physics, biology, psychology. He found everything except for the one quest that eluded him in the end: a last name.

But he was wise enough to tell us that we have to make our own kind of music and find happiness where we can. It's true that very few of us have known the pleasure that comes from some stranger knocking on the front door, offering to bring happiness to our hearth and home if we will just let him or her inside to share the latest copy of  The New American magazine, the semi-monthly magazine of the John Birch Society.

Just don't answer the doorbell.

But there is something I found to share from author Minda Zetlin, and she wants to share these 7 Small Joys You Should Make Sure to Add to Your Daily Routine.

Let's take a look at the list!

1. Savor your favorite morning beverage.

So many of us guzzle that morning cup o' Joe like it's the only way to jumpstart our heart.  A lot of us also take some fruit juice, maybe some water too, but the advice here is to taste it! As I sip my morning tea, I like to think about the people in Asia bringing in the crop of Camellia sinensis to fill my Lipton teabag, and send thoughtful appreciation to whoever works the stapler that keeps all the tealeaves inside of the bag. And by the time I'm finished that reverie, here it is, almost 10 AM!

2. Get outdoors.

As a dedicated indoorsman, I realize that until I find a way to get the trash collectors and letter carriers and UPS men and women to back up their trucks to my garage, I will need to go outside from time to time, and that's the least I can do in the spirit of getting outdoors.

3. Talk with someone you care about.

It's true that being alone will drive you out of your noodle, especially if you have two-way conversations with your mirror while shaving, or brushing your teeth, or shaving your toothbrush. Even if you live alone, you need to talk to someone you like, who likes you back, to bring joy to your world. The very fact that you like them is proof that they add something to your life...and don't forget that they like you too! So they get a boot out of talking to you, too, as soon as you finish shaving and brushing your choppers.

4. Take a nap.

Now we're in my sweet spot! I like to go to bed late and get up early, so a little midday nod sweetens the day a good bit. And no one says you need to make like a log for 4 hours, but as Ms Zetlin says, a little catnap "can improve your mental function, memory, and problem-solving ability, as well as improve your mood."

President John F. Kennedy was said to be a fan of a fifteen-minute power nap in the middle of his busy Camelot days. At least, that's what everyone thought he was doing.

5. Read a good book.

Everyone knows that "Reading maketh a full man," as Francis Bacon said, and he certainly would have said "a full PERSON" if he thought about it.

Now all I can think about is bacon.

But books are full of fun and information and challenges to the mind, and there is reason to believe that the habit of reading good books will bring joy.  And the good news is, the libraries are open again, so you can borrow books from there and it won't cost you a daggone cent.

I will admit that as a younger man, I thought that once I started reading a book, I had to finish it, no matter how turgid the writing. But now, in addition to the pleasure I get from reading a great book (I heartily recommend The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society) I also get immense joy from not reading anything by John Grisham!

6. Laugh.

Mark Twain was fond of saying, "The human race has only one effective weapon, and that is laughter.” Sure, Twain overlooked a well-placed punch in the nose, but he wasn't wrong about laughter being good for the soul and the spirit. 

But just be sure that your jokes are funny before you unleash them (unless you are a teacher or doctor or boss, in which cases everything you say is a laugh riot) because, as Norm MacDonald said, "Comedy is surprises, so if you're intending to make somebody laugh and they don’t laugh, that’s funny."

Google "Norm MacDonald moth joke" to see something funny.

7. Spend a little time doing nothing.

Take this simple test: ask your browser for other words that mean "brain surgeon" or "petroleum engineer" or "rocket designer," and you'll find maybe two or three synonyms at most for these hi-class professions. But Google "do nothing" and the words will come spilling onto your screen like when you hit the slot machine that time.  

It's because of what Abe Lincoln said that one time when he said "I just want to sit home tonight and play with the cat. I don't feel like going to the theater."

Don't make the same mistake! Goof off now before there's no time to! 

 

Sunday rerun: It all comes back

 Many years ago, as Peggy and I strolled along the beach in scenic Ocean City, Maryland, one of the flip-flops I was wearing was rudely yanked off my left foot by a surging tide that seemed not to care what it churned up as it rolled majestically landward. (Sorry for the dramatics; I gave Peggy a book of Truman Capote's short stories and I guess I was paying him tribute there.) (Yes, he did just roll over in his grave.) Anyway, to get back to the story, I figured that would be the last I would see of that flip-flop. We continued walking, Peggy with her usual grace, and me in the sort of ducky gait that only a man wearing one flip-flop can manage, and at length we turned back. It was dark - really dark - and for once I was carrying no flashlight. When we got back up to where we had started walking, I almost tripped over something on the beach. It was my flip-flop, recently returned from Davy Jones's locker (too big for the diminutive Monkee.) The Saturday before last, when I had to report to work for the snow emergency, I, as usual, packed just a little less than Hannibal did when preparing for his alpine journey - and I had no elephant to carry my gear! I put extras of this and that into a huge bag and off I went. When I came home, I was putting the equipment - hats, gloves, flashlight, cans of soup, the usual emergency gear - away, and I came up short by one glove. Then for the next 10 days, I had to deal with the issue of the remaining glove. Having searched the truck and other places it might have been, I was about to toss out the odd glove. Then on Monday, coming home from work, I found the glove frozen on the tundra that is currently our front yard, right where a huge pile of snow had been. I reckon I dropped it getting out of the truck when I came home that day, and it was covered by snow for all this time, and now that the snow piles are gone, here's that frozen leather glove. Which reminds me of the Blizzard of '03, when I crazily put out a blue bag of recycling - bottles, cans, plastics. That bag was covered in February by a snowpile the approximate size of Brattleboro, Vermont, and when I next saw it, it was just around Opening Day for baseball. I felt like the archeologists who found that frozen guy Ötzi in a glacier. Except that Ötzi left behind no empty National Bohemian cans or Skippy jars. Most scholars agree that he was in fact on a B double E double R UN. And here's the strangest one of them all, and yet it totally lacks veracity. Not long after we were married, Peggy and I went fishing at Loch Raven, and somehow the diamond came out of her ring and fell into the water. Well, we fished (!) around as much as could, looking for the precious stone, only to give up as both nightfall and the game warden descended. For weeks and weeks, Peggy was disconsolate, and finally, to cheer her up, I said, "Let's go out for a nice dinner." We went to a local beanery and Peggy ordered fish, and when she cut into that fish, what do you think was inside of it? Bones!

The Saturday Picture Show, February 26, 2022

 

I love walkways between buildings; they save countless pedestrians from getting run over and soaked. Oldtimers in Baltimore County will remember the plans to build a new County Office Building at Chesapeake Av & Bosley Av with a plan for a skywalk from there to the Courts Building. It was all the talk in 1991 and that's as far as it got.

These "horror" movies always seemed to have a woman clad in just a sheet and some hapless male being strangled by a tentacle. They always drew the woman to look like Janet Leigh. And your pistols are worthless against the faceless demon!

I'm not going to spoil the movie for you if you haven't seen it, but the faces on the warden and the head guard and Red were priceless!

Snow on the roof! Maybe we'll have some too soon. 

I was always a big fan of the pointing finger used in old advertisements. Also I am a fan of the smell of Bay Rum. No fan of irritated surfaces am I, though.

There are people whose lives are made complete by having a car with an elegant interior and "impressive looks." Others are thrilled to have Positive Valve Rotators for peak rocket V-8 action that lasts and lasts. I have always been satisfied with a vehicle that starts and stops where I wish it to while playing the music I want to hear and hauling around what I want to have hauled. The heck with elegance and valve rotators.

They call it beach glass because it washes up on the sand of salty waters, former cold cream and soda and liquor jars and bottles broken, weathered and smoothed by the sea. 

It takes so little to make a little squirrel happy!

Here's an interesting effect: icicles formed during sustained high winds, resulting in angled formations. Never saw this anywhere before! This is a picture from Armenia.

The Colonial Capital building in Williamsburg, Virginia. As pretty as it looks during the day as throngs mill around, it's even prettier at night! But take a mini flashlight along...those cobblestone streets make for a trippy walk. 

Donut Make My Brown Eyes Blue

There is a term in the mean world of politics: "Yellow-Dog Democat," meaning that the person to whom this adjective is directed will, without fail, vote for the Democrat in any election, no matter who the opponent is, even if the candidate proffered by the Democrats happens to be a yellow dog.

In response, some moderate-to-illiberal Democrats began labeling themselves "Blue-Dog Democrats," meaning that they would be willing to stand in the middle of the spectrum.

Meanwhile, in Russia, there is an actual pack of actually blue dogs roaming around, and while residents of Dzerzhinsk at first feared some bizarre gene coding gone berserk, turning brown dogs blue and other extreme changes of nature, there is a simple explanation, so don't panic.

These poochie dogs were hanging around the old Dzerzhinskoye Orgsteklo cluster of chemical factories. That business went kaputsky in 2015, but no one bothered to clear out what was left behind.

The poor hounds had rolled around in copper sulfate, which, mixed with water, turns things blue. 

“Dogs are running around the area,” said Andrey Mislivets, the bankruptcy manager of Dzerzhinskoye Plexiglas. “Perhaps, in one of the buildings, they found some kind of chemical residue — copper sulfate, for example, and rolled in it.”

I wish all dogs had happy homes to play in instead of abandoned chemical factories.

By the way, the world of music recently lost the great pianist Hargus "Pig" Robbins, who played piano on hundreds of records you've heard over the years, including Crystal Gayle's "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue."

Robbins got that nickname as a child growing up in the Tennessee School For The Blind, where a supervisor knew where to look for him when he was not around: out on a fire escape, "getting dirty as a pig."  He was universally known by that sobriquet by all but Bob Dylan, who found it too disrespectful.

Dylan called on "Mr Robbins" to play on his "Blonde On Blonde" album to get that "Salvation Army band" sound on songs like "Rainy Day Women # 12 and 35."

It's not every day that we can tie Russian dogs to Nashville session piano players, but that's the world we made. Don't be blue about it.

 

He went thataway!

In Baltimore City, the police commissioner is asking citizens to tell the police just who is committing all this mayhem down there- the armed robberies, the shootings, the murders, and everything else  - because the usual sources of information are not forthcoming so much anymore.

There is a "Stop The Snitch" ethos in the city; people find it unsafe to tell the law who did what because they fear retribution. You can hardly blame someone for not naming the name of a vicious criminal, if they feel there's a chance that the viciousness might be visited upon them one day soon, especially given the unlikelihood that the bad guy(s) will be in prison for a long time. It's a difficult choice, understood.

But here's a story from Pflugerville,  Texas, where police tracked down the driver they think is responsible for a hit-and-run crash with some help from local Girl Scouts. The wreck occurred on East Pflugerville Parkway, where, I guess, maybe someone was driving a bit too pfast or something. Or maybe not; let's be pfair about it.

All I know is, 911 sent officers to the scene, and they were told on arrival that two cars were involved, but one vehicle took off toward a nearby Walgreens, leaving an 82-year old man at the scene complaining of a chest injury.

They couldn't find a suspect in the parking lot, but a gaggle of girls selling cookies in front of the store said they saw the guy go into the store.

And that's where he was found, in there buying some items. Upon questioning, he admitted that he was James Crawford, the guy driving the car involved. His story was that he was talking to a frontseat passenger when the car in front of him stopped suddenly and then  Boom!, as the late John Madden would have said. 

 

He took a nice booking photo.

Crawford, 41, told the cops that he stopped to check that the other driver was all right, but ran off because "he was nervous and wanted to use the phone." He also told the police he didn't think he needed to hang around the scene of the crash because he "didn't have any information to exchange with the other driver."

The other driver was checked out by a hospital and is ok, except for the part where his car is smashed up in the rear by a man who has no information. Crawford faces charges of failure to stop, causing bodily injury, and causing damage to a vehicle exceeding $200.

If Girl Scouts can still earn merit badges, these fine young ladies should be first in line!

Thin ice

That's why they play the games, or skate the skates, as it were. We never know how things are going to turn out, no matter what all the indications are.

It's certain that none of us has the slightest sure knowledge of what goes on with Kamila Valieva, the great young Russian figure skater.

She was in first place, chasing the gold in the Olympics, and the the other night she had a disastrous turn on the ice, falling repeatedly and dropping out of medal contention with a fourth-place finish.

In the space of a week, she was the face of a doping scandal as worldwide outcries cried out to do something about the rules. She tested positive for a heart medication on Christmas Day, and it was blamed on a mixup with her grandfather's medications.

I will add that the only medication my grandfather ever shared with me was Crystal Hot Sauce. He always kept his in the refrigerator, because of the prevailing wisdom of the day, which said, right on the label, "To keep it hot, keep it cold," a paradox that amused me then and now.

But that was just me and my grandpa. Our interaction did not have the attention of the entire world, and that is why it was tough to see what happened to Ms Valieva the other night, not that I was watching. 

To get an idea of how silly I think it is to have a "sport" where the outcome hinges on the opinions of onlookers, imagine if, after 60 minutes of football or nine innings of baseball, a panel of observers held up cards to indicate who they think the winner is.

And think of yourself at age 15. I was a hot-sauce eating, lawn-mowing, Weejun-wearing, Max Shulman-reading mess, good at English and history, horrible at Math and Science (still am) and no part of that should have been on a worldwide stage. I was fortunate enough to be allowed to grow up out of the spotlight. 

2014 Olympian Ashley Wagner said this on Twitter: "This is a moment where you genuinely have to say – that poor kid. She should not have ever been put in this position."

Possibly because she was unnerved by all the publicity of the week, or possibility because she is still young, or possibly because, no matter her age, she is still just a human and all of us have bad days,  Valieva made mistakes on her first four jumps and then hit the ice as she attempted a quad toe loop.

I have performed many quad toe leaps in my sloping driveway, just going out to get the newspaper on an icy morning. But again, no one but maybe an amused neighbor or two saw me.  Valieva finished fifth in the long program, as two of her teammates and training partners, Anna Shcherbakova and Alexandra Trusova, won the gold and the silver, respectively.

Valieva was seen crying as her dance music, "Bolero" by Maurice Ravel, stopped playing. 

That song was used with much happier results in the movie "10", starring Bo Derek and Dudley Moore. 

As sad as it was to see Valieva in tears, the part that angered many was seeing her  coach, Eteri Tutberidze, pouncing on her as camera caught the whole horrible one-sided conversation.

 "Why did you let it go?" Tutberidze said, according to Russian tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda. "Why did you stop fighting? Explain it to me, why? You let it go after that axel. Why?"

What was worse, I ask: coming face to face with her own shortcomings, or coming literally face to face with this awful man screeching at her like that?

Valieva was considered the world's best figure skater even before her remarkable performance a week ago that gave the Russians a gold medal in the team competition. And the very next day, she learned that she had tested positive for  trimetazidine, a heart medication that is banned because it can improve endurance and blood flow.

And the supervisors and the coaches and, you may be sure, the lawyers got into it and who knows how it will all play out. Of course we will never know if she intentionally took the drug, or if someone intentionally slipped it to her to enhance her performance, or if the whole thing was a merry mixup.

But we do know that she is 15, and maybe it would be best for the Olympics to set an age limit above that and allow tweens to stay home and do what 15-year-olds do so well, which is being 15.

"Hey, Boss..."

It's good to stop and realize that people are pretty much the same and always have been. We are often surprised to hear that our parents cut classes, drove fast, and dropped f-bombs with alacrity, but people didn't just start doing shady things when TV came along.

That's the point of a recent article on the Open Culture website: all the things we see from antiquity, all the marvels produced by men and women, were just that: things made by the work of humans.

They discuss the pyramids of ancient Egypt. They were made by men working together in great numbers to produce miracles, and yet...for everyone on that work crew on any certain day, there had to be a strong core group of folks getting things done, and someone who had a doctor's appointment and someone who showed up late because he had to take the cat to the vet and someone who was sick and did not show up for work.

Yes, people will need to use their sick time now and again, and today's modern office keeps tally of your hours on a computer. Back in the day, though, they used a laptop!

Well, actually, it was written on a real laptop.  And a tablet.

“Ancient Egyptian employers kept track of employee days off in registers written on tablets,” writes Madeleine Muzdakis at My Modern Met. Pictured above, we see a stone tablet that is on view at the British Museum. It dates back to 1250 BCE and is what Ms Muzdakis calls "an incredible window into ancient work-life balance.” 

The Egyptian word for these tablets formed from limestone flakes was ostracon (plural ostraca). Using a stylus, with the stone sitting on their laps as they etched their entries, people used them like notepads to keep lists and notes like laundry lists, expense sheets, private letters, and cartoons where a gimlet-eyed cat bickers with a screaming blond woman. 

Tomb builders had a village called Deir el-Medina, and the ostracon above was found among thousands of others there. They show us a lot about the everyday lives of working men and their families. For instance this one covers 280 days worth of work attendance records, replete with excuses for missing time at the job such as "I was brewing beer" and "My wife's Aunt Flo was visiting."

Well, you know what I mean.

Ms Muzdakis points out that beer “was a daily fortifying drink in Egypt and was even associated with gods such as Hathor. As such, brewing beer was a very important activity.” It was so important, we can deduce, that it was ok to use personal leave time to sit home and whomp up a batch.

And she also says that while one's wife having her period might not fly with the 2022 workplace, in those days men actually picked up more child-and-home duties when women were unavailable due to their monthly visitor:  “Clearly men were needed on the home front to pick up some slack during this time. While one’s wife menstruating is not an excuse one hears nowadays, certainly the ancients seem to have had a similar work-life juggling act to perform.” 

I guess someone somewhere in modern times has called out sick due to a scorpion bite, and such absences are recorded on this notepad - as well as "having a feast day," "making an offering to a god," and "embalming my brother."

Let me know if they work for you.

Dolphins Help Rescue Swimmer

They say that humans are almost as smart as most dolphins, and that's a sign that we are moving on up the ladder!

No fooling, those big fish are smart, and compassionate. For instance, take this pod (group) of Irish dolphins.  

Last summer, they were out doing what dolphins do, swimming around, practicing jumping through imaginary hoops, making barky noises. But on this one certain day, they came up a swimmer who had been missing for 12 hours, and that meant twelve hours of bobbing and floating and hoping.

The dolphins did the best thing they could - they protectively surrounded him and attracted the attention of people with what the man needed most - a boat!

Ireland has the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), operated by volunteers. They came upon the man treading water because they saw the dolphins dancing around.

“At 20:30, the volunteer lifeboat crew with Fenit RNLI spotted a pod of dolphins and a head above the water about two-and-a-half miles of Castlegregory beach,” the RNLI said. “The casualty was conscious and immediately recovered onto the lifeboat and brought to Fenit Harbour to be taken to hospital.”

The man was not identified by name; the media was told only that was from  County Londonderry and is in his 30s. Quite naturally, he was suffering from both hypothermia and exhaustion after bobbing around in frigid waters all that time. He was trying to swim to Mucklaghmore Rock, which is more than five miles from the beach he was enjoying.

Another fellow beachgoer noticed the clothing he left behind and notified authorities, who went right into action. Fenit RNLI’s Gerard O’Donnell said he and his group had been “scanning the water for any sign of movement and were worried with light fading that they would not find anyone.”

Call it a miracle, call it animals helping mankind, whatever you term it, the man was saved because some bottlenose dolphins took it upon themselves to call attention to a swimmer needing help.

Be nice if some of us could return the favor, huh?

It's a holiday!

The Castles Made of Sand offices are closed today in observance of Presidents Day. 

We'll be back tomorrow at the same crazy time. I like to think about my family connection to the presidency, which is that Warren G. Harding patted my father on the top of his 7-year-old head during a 1920 campaign parade in Baltimore.

Sunday Rerun: Like sands through the hourglass

 We were just talking the other day about how some people beat the reaper or cheat the hangman, or whatever the expression is, and live a long long time. Talking like that leads to all sorts of thoughts, such as the perennial question about how you would feel if someone could whisper in your ear and tell you the exact date and time and way in which you will be departing this world for the next.

Not for me, thanks. I'll take my chances and keep on appreciating every day in which I can wake up and find my socks. Knowing that it all comes to end before I get to see how Season 3 of "Billions" works out would not be so great.

But if you happen to hear for sure that I am going to live to be 117, I would appreciate it if you would let me know, because I will need to buy more socks.

Ms Tajima

The lady pictured here, Nabi Tajima, was the world’s oldest person, until passing away recently in the southern Japan town of Kikia. She was 117 and had been in the hospital since January.

She was born on August 4, 1900, and her death closes the books on "People Born In The 19th Century."  Quite an accomplishment, quite a life.

Ms Tajima raised seven sons and two daughters and had more than 160 descendants, some of whom are great-great-great grandchildren.

Just imagine paying for all those birthday cards and stamps!

Her tenure as the world's oldest person began last September upon the death of Violet Brown of Jamaica, also at the age of 117. Another  Japanese woman, Chiyo Miyako, of Kanagawa prefecture, south of Tokyo, has succeeded her as the senior senior.  She turned 117 on May 2.

112-year-old Masazo Nonaka of northern Japan, known to Miyako as "The Kid," is now the world’s oldest man.

Remember the words of the great Hank Williams, dead at 29, who wrote, "No matter how I struggle and strive, I'll never get out of this world alive."  Enjoy every day you are given, be my advice. If you live to be 117, that's 42,705 days to enjoy!

Make today one of the best of them all.

The Saturday Picture Show, February 19, 2022

 

We earthlings insist on building our abodes in defiance of nature, and nature patiently awaits the last word. Here's a retaining wall out in California that will soon be a thing of the past.

They aren't strictly lovebirds, but Scarlet Macaws, mated for life and dressed to the nines!

Wonderful things can happen in a supermarket when the meat department comes up with an idea and the produce department goes along with it. Beef roses! "If music be the food of love, play on!" - Shakespeare

If you've followed the works of Dr. Robert Underdunk "Bob" Terwilliger Jr., PhD, also known as "Sideshow Bob" on The Simpsons, you probably said what I said when you saw this: "Hello, Bart!" 

There will always be a Texas.

In the early 60s when the US played nuclear brinksmanship with the Russians, fallout shelters were set up in school basements and former storage rooms in post offices and other government buildings, the plan being that we would all spend the last few moments of Armageddon huddled with the people from up the street, listlessly spooning canned fruit salad down our necks. No, thanks.

On the other hand, during World War II, when London was actually blitzed by German bombs, people took shelter in underground tunnels and were quite glad to have a place to go. I'm pretty sure none of them whinged about mandates.

This sad fellow probably spent many years and many thousands of dollars restoring his 1956 Chevrolet, but the immutable laws of physics are such that when two objects collide, a 1956 sedan will crumple just like a 2022. 

Someone will have to explain why someone would put a plastic Hair-Hill atop their head. I don't get the point of teasing one's hair. It will just get mad!

I wonder if she has "gherkins" on her shopping list this week.

Lost In Space

Do you know the difference between NASA and that guy down the street with the broken-down Subaru Outback sitting immobile down the street for six months now?

The guy down the street doesn't get to dunk the Outback in the Pacific Ocean once he gives up trying to get it running!

That's one difference. The other is, the guy down the street doesn't have an annual budget of $23.3 billion, like NASA does. So Mr Shade Tree Mechanic has to pay someone to drag his beater to an auto graveyard...

...and NASA is just going to crash the International Space Station into the Pacific Ocean in 2031.

And it won't be the only piece of used-up space junk down in Davy Jones's locker.

All the other rusty spacecrafts will have to move over one spot on the seafloor at Point Nemo, the farthest point from land in the Pacific.

We shot the International Space Station (ISS) up in the air more than 20 years ago, where it has served as a temporary home for more than 200 astronauts, and been the site of dozens of scientific discoveries. New and better ways to make grilled cheese sandwiches, diet Tang, and how many wedgies can be performed in a brand-new pair of tighty whities before the elastic gets all stretched out of shape are just of the benefits to mankind that billions of tax dollars have brought about. 

But like a leased Buick, the aging spacecraft is due for replacement, so in 2031, NASA will dunk it into the Pacific in a controlled "landing."

"While the ISS will not last forever, NASA expects to be able to operate it safely through 2030," the air and space agency states.

The space station orbits 261 miles above earth as a flying science lab.  As is usual with something of this size, it was assembled in pieces. The Russians sent up the first piece in 1998. The first astronauts moved in in November of 2000 and were surprised to find a welcome basket on the kitchen counter, with fresh bagels from Pluto and coupons good for an ice cream cake at Saturn 31 Flavors.

The spacecraft has five bedrooms, two bathrooms, a gym, and huge solar panels to turn solar power into electricity, what with earth being farther away than any extension cord can reach.

And NASA plans to make the most of these next nine years until The Big Splashdown; they'll be doing more research, promoting international cooperation, and "helping the private spaceflight industry gain more momentum," according to Scientific American’s Mike Wall.

"The International Space Station is entering its third and most productive decade as a groundbreaking scientific platform in microgravity," says Robyn Gatens, director of the ISS at NASA Headquarters, in a statement. "We look forward to maximizing these returns from the space station through 2030 while planning for transition to commercial space destinations that will follow."

Along with free COVID test kits and N-95 masks, every American citizen is entitled to a free T-shirt bearing the slogan "My Tax Money Went To Space And All I Got Was This Crummy T-shirt.

Bored silly

As long as there are jobs, there will be people doing those jobs, and that's where the trouble begins. There was an ad for an automated radio robot gizmo that replaced live disc jockeys with a computerized machine, and the sales pitch to station owners was that the machine never needed a day off, never called out sick, never got caught with some other guy's girlfriend in flagrante delicto in the back room of the radio station where they stored the teletype paper, sodas for the Coke machine, and thousands of Conway Twitty albums.

Oh, the stories I could tell. 

But it turns out that when a job needs to be done, humans make the best people for the job, and that means employers run into trouble now and then, as in this case:

Over in chilly Russia, a security guard is in trouble. He was supposed to be keeping an eye on the art at a museum. He vandalized a painting on his first day of work. 

You have to like the way he got right to the task at hand, rather than put it off until the second week or something.

They say he doodled two sets of eyes on artist Anna Leporskaya's 'Three Figures' (1932–1934) painting while he was on the night shift.

The next day, a pair of eagle-eyed art lovers at the Yeltsin Center came to the exhibition titled "The World as Non-Objectivity. The Birth of a New Art" and reported seeing spots.

But they weren't the type of spots that require the attention of an ophthalmologist, no sir. They were the spots that the rookie guard drew on the previously naked eyes in the painting. 

The defaced painting (I think it looks better this way!) was on loan from the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. Officials determined the guard did it, and he told them it was because he was "bored" on his first day.

The man in question is 60 years of age. He has been fired, and could face criminal charges.

I hope they put his trial on Court TV!

Repairing the painting will cost $3,000, and the security company will have to eat that. They are assured that the painting can be totally repaired, with no damage.

I really hope the guard applies for another job, so that in his interview, when they ask what happened at his last place of employment, he can start with, "Well, what had happened was..."

Gibson Hummingbird

Rolling Stones fans, which of their hundreds of songs have they performed the most over the years?

The answer (I don't like suspense) is "Jumpin' Jack Flash," the great single from 1968 (it wasn't on an album until it was included on various compilation discs later) that marked the band's return to good old blues-based rock after they wasted a couple of years making silly records like "Between The Buttons" and "Their Satanic Majesties Request" in 1967. Brian Jones, the lead guitarist before his death in 1969, described "Jumpin' Jack Flash" this way: "getting back to...the funky, essential essence" after the psychedelic sound "Their Satanic Majesties Request."

If you weren't there for the 60's, you really missed a lot! It was fun. Just the word "psychedelic" connotes so much.

You can listen to the song here if you're of a mind to.

All I know about playing the guitar is that I cannot, but Keith Richards, who co-wrote the song with Mick Jagger, will give you verse and chapter about what guitar he did what with, and he explains "Jack" this way: "I used a Gibson Hummingbird acoustic tuned to open D, six string. Open D or open E, which is the same thing – same intervals – but it would be slackened down some for D. Then there was a capo on it, to get that really tight sound. And there was another guitar over the top of that, but tuned to Nashville tuning. I learned that from somebody in George Jones's band in San Antonio in 1964."

So there is a country connection between one of the best country singers of all time and one of the best rock bands of all time.

And the maracas on the record were played by the late Kwasi "Rocky" Dzidzornu 1935 – 1993) who was also known as Rocky Dijon. Now that's a name with some mustard on it!

So who is this Jack and what are they talking about?

“‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’ comes from this guy, Jack Dyer, who was my gardener – an old English yokel,” Keith said. “Mick and I were in my house down in the south of England. We’d been up all night; the sky was just beginning to go grey. It was pissing down raining if I remember rightly.”

And then Mick was startled by the heavy sound of the gardener's muck boots.  “Mick and I were sitting there, and suddenly Mick starts up,” Richards recalled. “He hears these great footsteps, these great rubber boots – slosh, slosh, slosh – going by the window. He said ‘What’s that?’ And I said, ‘Oh, that’s Jack. That’s jumpin’ Jack.’”

So, as great artists will, Richards took that nugget and turned it into gold. 

“We had my guitar in open tuning, and I started to fool around with that.  ‘Jumpin’ Jack…’ and Mick says, ‘Flash.’ He’d just woken up. And suddenly we had this wonderful alliterative phrase. So he woke up and we knocked it together.”

1968.  What a year!

The song opens with the line "I was born in a crossfire hurricane", Richards's homage to his birth in Dartford, England, in 1943, as German bombs rained down and air raid sirens wailed.

I wasn't there for the 40s and I feel like I missed a lot. Just the word "air raid sirens" says so much.

    

LGBTQuties

At the Rosamond Gifford Zoo in Syracuse, New York, a couple of penguins - more precisely, a penguin couple - got an extra gift, becoming the zoo's first same-sex foster parents to successfully hatch an egg.

They are recognized as a couple because birds mate for life. Kardashians, etc, ought to look into that practice.

Elmer and Lima, two adult male Humboldt penguins, hatched a chick on New Year's Day. 

E & L are Gifford Zoo homeys, both being born there (Elmer in 2016 and Lima in 2019) and they got together in fall 2021 during the current breeding season.

"The penguins are free to choose who they want to spend time with (pair with) and in their case, they chose each other," zoo director Ted Fox said. He went on:  "The welfare and wellbeing of every animal that lives at the zoo is very important to us and we support and encourage each animal to make its own choices when choosing their mates."

Elmer is named Elmer because the egg from which he hatched was accidentally broken by his parents. The Animal Care Team at the zoo repaired his shell with...say it with me...Elmer's Glue!

No word on where Lima got his name, and he can't answer questions because he is not a human bean.

But the zoo says cracked shells, unintentional though they be, are no yolk, so they sometimes transfer an egg to foster parents, who care for it while the real parents incubate a dummy egg.

Mr Fox reports, "At our first health check when the chick was five days old, it weighed 226 grams (8 ounces). It continues to be brooded and cared for by both Elmer and Lima, who are doing a great job."

The chick is an as-yet unnamed male. They are scrambling around searching for a name, apparently ignoring my suggestion ("Leon") out of hand.

Mr Fox said the penguin couples are good at splitting up parent chores such as incubating, brooding, and feeding the chick. Usually, when one is out feeding or swimming, the other stays with the chick to provide warmth and protection. Then the other one comes home to hear, "What a day I had! I could use some help around here, you know?" and they switch off for a few hours. At bedtime, everyone curls up in a big ball of penguinity.

And while not all penguin parents are good at the skill of hatching eggs, Mr Fox said they could see that "Elmer and Lima were exemplary in every aspect of egg care." He's sure their story would "help people of all ages and backgrounds relate to animals."

 

 So there you have today's look Inside The Animal Kingdom. Tomorrow, we'll discuss the futility of reasoning with an anteater.

Jeff and De Hef

I like Jeff Bezos because he has people who will bring cat litter to me for less money than I pay to buy it and schlep it home myself.

And his money is keeping the Washington Post alive. We can never thank them enough for their coverage of Nixon.

But doggone it. I think Jeff's money is starting to go to his head. 

Remember the new kid in the neighborhood who got a hefty allowance and set about making friends by buying everyone snoballs and TastyKakes? Imagine that kid is now Jeff, and he wants to go sailing, so he is building (or having built) a 417-foot three-masted ship so he can take everyone out on Middle River for crabs.

The PT (patrol torpedo) boat that John Kennedy skippered in World War II, PT 109, was 80 feet long, by comparison.

At 5' 7" tall, Jeff towers over no man, and yet, he towers over us all.

It's Jeff's money; he earned it selling me cat litter and English Leather after-shave and AA batteries and Lightfoot's Classic Pure Pine English shave soap and Dockers Socks and my White Noise machine, which offers a variety of 31 sounds to lull me to sleep and I only use one of them (Factory Fan).

He can certainly afford to buy this boat. 

But is this too much? Rotterdam*, in the Netherlands, Europe's largest seaport, is going to spend weeks and tons of money to take down a historic bridge so that Mr Bezos’s B.A. boat can sail to the open seas.

You see, when the boat (my suggested name:  "Rich Little") is finished being built at a Dutch shipyard, it will be too tall to pass under the famous Koningshaven Bridge, which allows but a 130 foot clearance.

I recall the Navy construction battalion in World War II had a motto: "Don't raise the bridge, lower the water," but that won't work here.

The answer is to temporarily dismantle the landmark bridge. Jeff promised to pay the city back for expenses, and God knows he's good for it.

The bridge is known locally as "De Hef." Taking the bridge apart and putting it back together should take more than two weeks. Rotterdam officials call this a  revenue generator.

“From an economic perspective and maintaining employment, the municipality considers this a very important project,” municipal project leader Marcel Walravens reportedly said. “In addition, Rotterdam has also been declared the maritime capital of Europe. Shipbuilding and activity within that sector are therefore an important pillar of the municipality.”

Rotterdam was bombed in World War II and the bridge (originally built in 1878) was significantly damaged and then rebuilt. It is now a national monument and was just refurbished in 2017, at which time the city pledged not to take it apart again.

And then along came Jeff and his Y721 superyacht.

“Employment is important, but there are limits to what you can and may do to our heritage,” Ton Wesselink of the Rotterdam Historical Society said.

Another local leader who loves metaphors calls this "a bridge too far."

 

“This man has earned his money by structurally cutting staff, evading taxes, avoiding regulations and now we have to tear down our beautiful national monument?” Rotterdam politician Stephan Leewis Thundertwittered.

All the while, local officials point out that shipbuilding is an "important pillar of the municipality." Many ultra-rich folks spend many dollars having custom-made ego boosters  ships made there.

 

The trains don't run on this bridge anymore; it was made obsolete by a tunnel built in 1993, but the locals wanted to keep it as a monument.

Listen, this boat of his is so tall that it will be a hazard to helicopter traffic, so Bezos is hiring a support yacht with a helipad to follow it around for whirlybirds to land upon.

And later, he's buying everyone a soda and a Baby Ruth, so don't complain, see?

(*favorite joke in 4th grade: "My sister ate all the candy and I hope it'll Rotterdam teeth out!")

  

Love Happy!

Well, Happy Valentine's Day to you, and may this day be filled with love and joy and all that you desire! 

Many of you will be dining out tonight at swanky restaurants and bistros. Some of you will enjoy the convenience of prix fixe menus, where everything from soup to nuts is chosen for you.

But many of you will have many menu options, so here's my Super Bowl recap to get your choosing hand warmed up:

And how about that Super Bowl, huh? I knew all along that the (Bengals, Rams) would win in a (last-minute, blowout) game like that. It's wonderful to see quarterback (Stafford, Burrow) guide his team to victory after being in the league for (13, 2) years.

As always, interceptions and fumbles (were, were not) a huge part in determining the outcome.

And as Baltimore football fans, we all look forward to (2023, God knows when) when the Ravens will win it all again!
 

Sunday Rerun: My review of last year's Super Bowl

 I remember so many boring Super Bowls where two dull teams slog it out to an exciting 35-18 finish, and the halftime entertainment was KISS and I'm falling asleep by the middle of the third quarter.

Football has changed a lot in the past few years. The day of the pocket quarterback who stood like a cigar store Indian and either passed or ran for his life are all over, and those immobile guys have been replaced by people like Lamar Jackson of the Ravens and this Patrick Mahomes of the new champion Chiefs, who can run as well as, if not better than they can throw, and we at home don't know what they're going to do.  It's entertainment, and more often than not, the games come down to the final few minutes, or even seconds, and you can't doze off or pick up PARADE magazine and chuckle at the Lockhorns comic.

The halftime show this year featured two magnificent women, Jennifer Lopez and Shakira, singing and dancing their way into my heart and then right on past it, since I couldn't understand the lyrics (and I'm fairly proficient in Spanish.) That style of music is not for me, but I see on social media that a lot of people were thrilled with the show, so good. That's not why I tuned in to begin with!

The commercials were good, the ones where I knew what they were talking about. Faute de mieux, the people who make commercials go for a frame of reference far outside of mine - usually science fiction movies and reality TV. But, the Jeep commercial with Bill Murray was brilliant, and how appropriate that it ran on Groundhog Day, allowing the setup of a parody of Bill's own classic movie. But, on the morning news yesterday morning, as they previewed the ads, the weatherman was talking about the movie to the anchor, who had never seen the movie, so I guess that spot went right over her head.

As did the other really great commercial, a string of references to Rock and rocky things, which wound up with a guy wearing a Rocky Balboa boxing robe at the 72 stone steps before the entrance of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.  And then the guy turns around and it turns out to be CHRIS Rock. And then Balboa himself, Sylvester Stallone, lurches into view and "You were expecting...me?" or words to that effect, and I wonder how many people in their 20s know anything about any of the many Rocky movies that entertained us in our day.

It's hard to think of something that EVERYONE knows or cares about. I see the #1 album this week on the Billboard charts is "Music To Be Murdered By" by Eminem. Perhaps it's best I don't know any more than that, but I have to imagine what it'll be like 46 years from now, when young couples look back and remember that as their favorite song from courtship.

Whereas, Peggy and I had for "our song" the tender ballad "Bongo Rock" by the Incredible Bongo Band from the album "The Thing With Two Heads."

See the difference? No one ever got murdered by a bongo drum.

The Saturday Picture Show, February 12, 2022

 

Just ahead of March madness comes February gladness, especially if the Bengals win tomorrow! Then let basketball have its day and by the time the sun sets on that, baseball will be in full swing!

People think two-dollar bills are a rare thing, but really, they are readily available at your bank, where the teller will probably be glad to get them out of their till! A two used to be handy to have for tipping purposes, but not so much anymore.

If you wood like to know how a tree gets sliced up, don't get board! Just lumber on over here and I'll show you how to log on.

This is a European idea which I believe would travel well to the US. Light the light and light the pole!

Chief Energy Water steps up to the counter.

I don't know about you, but if I see one of these, I just need to find a cup of some sort and pour myself a cold one.

I remember this from long ago: "It's better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt."

A photographer was taking pictures of the divine Audrey Hepburn when a white dove just happened to land on her shoulder and hang around for a minute, which was not enough time for the photog to run off and get some color film. Pity.

The sunflower room at the traveling Van Gogh alive art exhibition.

Rutabagas, turnips, carrots, peas, carrots, spinach, kale, okra, Swiss chard: whatever the vegetable, they're all potatoes at heart.