James Dean, not Jimmy Dean

It was on this day in 1955 that the first real teenage idol, actor James Dean, died at age 24 in a car wreck in Cholame, California. He had bought a new Porsche 550 Spyder (for $7,000, which was a fortune in those days!)  and was on his way to take part in the Salinas Road Races.

As you might have heard, the star of "Rebel Without A Cause" died at the intersection of California highways 466 and 41, about a mile east of Cholame. Dean's passenger was his mechanic, Rolf Wuthering. 

Wuthering had been a German Luftwaffe glider pilot, paratrooper, and aircraft mechanic.

The two were intending to stop in a diner at Paso Robles for dinner, but at 5:45 PM Dean's car T-boned a Ford driven by 23-year-old Donald Turnupseed, a Navy veteran student at Cal Poly.

Estimates of the Dean car speed range from 85 to well over 100 miles per hour. In the setting sun, Turnupseed likely did not even see the small low-slung silver car approaching as he pulled onto Highway 41.

Just a few weeks prior to the accident, Dean had filmed a public service announcement asking that people drive safely on the highways.

Dean had the nickname "Little Bastard" painted on the car as a middle finger to his boss, Jack Warner, of THE Warner Brothers.  Jimmy had been squatting on a studio lot in what was supposed to be his temporary trailer while filming "East Of Eden." He incurred the wrath of Warner by refusing to vacate the trailer, so Warner called him a "little bastard." 

Dean was pronounced dead while in an ambulance on the way to a hospital, and  Wutherich was transported to a hospital with broken bones and rather serious internal injuries.

Wutherich died at 53 in 1981 after crashing his Honda Civic into a house.

Turnupseed was slightly injured. There was an official investigation into the wreck, and some weight was given to the possibility of charging him with negligent driving, but that went no further. From that day until his death in 1995, he spoke not one word about it all.

He built the electric service company he inherited from his father into a million-dollar business.

Oh, and after the accident, the police wouldn't even give him a ride home, telling him to hitchhike to his family home in Tulare.

People Helping Animals

Before you run off to call the Icelandic version of the ASPCA...this is normal, they do it every year, and it's not nearly as weird as it sounds to say that the people of the Westman Islands in Iceland toss thousands of baby puffins off a cliff.

Whoa. It's actually an important thing, and it saves bird lives. It's called "puffling season."

You see, Atlantic puffins have their chicks ("pufflings") on high cliffs overlooking the sea. And when the young birds are ready to fly away ('fledge") they leave the bird colony and go off to see for a few years, and return back to the land for breeding.

But the problem is, city lights are confusing to the little pufflings. A woman named Kyana Sue Powers tells NPR that it was moonlight that used to guide the young ones to the ocean, but now the lights have them mixed up, so pufflings are set free during daylight because they would fly back into town if they left at night.

Powers says she was at Vestmannaeyjar, on Iceland's South Coast, last summer, when she saw a curious thing: children and adults running around carrying boxes and flashlights.

That's called "Puffling Patrol." In August and September, the people of Vestmannaeyjar round up stray puffers who crash land in town, having confused town lights for the light of the moon. 

The next day, these kind people take the birds to the cliffs and set them free to fly off.

This is necessary for the survival of the species, explains Rodrigo A. Martínez Catalán of Náttúrustofa Suðurlands [South Iceland Nature Research Center]. He says that puffins mate for life, incubate only one egg per season, and do not lay eggs every year.

"If you have one failed generation after another after another after another," Catalán said, "the population is through, pretty much."

In other words, without these puffling-tossers, no more puffins! People to the rescue. And Powers says it's a communal thing, people out on the streets having a great time doing something great.

Puffin patrol begins around 9 PM and goes on until as late at 3 in the morning. They go where the lights are to find the lost ones: golf courses, hospitals, schools, construction sites. Sometimes people get in their boats and cruise the harbors, looking for birds there in the water.

Catalán says one should wear gloves when picking up the little peepers. That protects people from avian flu and the birds from chemicals and oil on human hands. They keep the bird overnight in a cardboard box with some grass inside, and then it's off to the cliffs the next day.

"It's a great feeling because you just rescued this little guy. And when you bring him to the cliff – it's the first time in his life he's seeing the ocean, and he's gonna live there for the next few years," Powers told NPR. "I'm always like, 'Bye buddy, have a great life, I can't wait to see you again.'"

What's The Buzz?

And the headline read:

 THE QUEEN'S BEES HAVE BEEN INFORMED OF HER DEATH

And in all the sadness of the mournful rituals attending Her Majesty's passing, we decided this was the most English thing ever.

And I'm guess a lot of us thought at first it was some sort of gag, leading into a Monty Python or even a Benny Hill routine.

But no, 'twas all true to form. The Royal Housekeeper, 79 years of age, told the news, “It is traditional when someone dies that you go to the hives and say a little prayer and put a black ribbon on the hive... You knock on each hive and say, ‘The mistress is dead, but don't you go. Your master will be a good master to you.’ "

According to the New York Times, the tradition goes back many centuries.

“It’s a very old and well-established tradition, but not something that’s very well-known,” said Mark Norman, a folklorist and the author of “Telling the Bees and Other Customs: The Folklore of Rural Crafts.”..

The Royal Beekeeper

18th and 19th-Century English men and women thought that if the bees were not notified of a death at the top of the family, all sort of trouble would result, up to and including the death or "sudden departure" of the person who failed to make the notifications to the buzzers.

Or they would stop making honey, just for spite.

Today's beekeepers don't necessarily buy the bad luck/ no honey doom predictions, but then again, they aren't about to discontinue the tradition, out of "a mark of respect,” Mr. Norman said.

It's an interesting tradition, and like a lot of customs from the long-ago era, it indicates honor for nature, which is not a bad thing at all.

A matter of taste

We're all heard about the guy who tells his friend they're going to drive across the state line to visit this ice cream shop he knows where they have every flavor known to man, and how they pile into the guy's Pontiac and begin the journey, up the highway, across the line, onto two-lane highways and then single lane country roads, up and down, through the hills and dales, all the while with their minds racing across the flavor spectrum, thinking about all the tastes they'll soon explore.

And when they park and go inside, the passenger says to The Guy, "It's on me...go ahead and order!"

And The Guy says, "Make mine vanilla."

It's on old joke but no less funny, once you dust it off, because a lot of us just happen to like vanilla ice cream. I would prefer it any day over Tutti Frutti Banana Custard Surprise or whatever someone is scooping up.

Meanwhile, out in sun-baked Arizona there's an ice cream shop making room on their wall to post their newly-minted Guinness World Record certificate, proof that they not only offer 266 milkshake flavors, but can blend them all up in just over an hour.

The shop is called Snow Cap, and they are located in Seligman (I haven't, either). They showed how fast they can shake those things recently while Mobil 1, the synthetic motor oil company, was showing off their wares alongside other local attractions as  part of its Keep Route 66 tour.

The Delgadillo family owns Snow Cap, and they got the job done, making every milkshake they mention on their menu in an hour and a quarter as the Guinness adjudicator was on hand as the shop's owners, the Delgadillo family, made every milkshake on the menu in about 1 hour and 15 minutes.

And, believe it or not, they not only have the standard vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry options, but they'd be tickled to set you up with peanut butter and onion ring milkshakes, banana and chili, and orange and fish burger.

Can I say it again? Make mine vanilla!

I guess I'm The Guy.

My weakness

We don't keep secrets, do we? I've always admitted my many shortcomings (impatience), faults (I'm quite the philistine, turning my nose up at ballet, Albee plays, and modern art), and unwillingness to try new things (no pineapple pizza, and I mean it!)

So please don't be shocked when I mention my addiction. Everyone has one, and if there's a twelve-step program for getting over being hooked on "Chesapeake Shores" on the Hallmark Channel, I haven't heard about it.

It's one of those shows that comes on for about ten episodes a year. It's one of those shows that's about a family and the people they love and don't love anymore, and maybe marry, maybe not.

There was no reason ever to start watching the show when it premiered on the Hallmark Channel back on August 14, 2016, opening a horn of plenty that brought Jesse Metcalfe, Meghan Ory, Barbara Niven, Laci J. Mailey, Emilie Ullerup, Brendan Penny, Andrew Francis, Diane Ladd and Treat Williams into our home. But we watched it, and it's like trying to eat one corn nut. You can say what you will about these actors, but you cannot deny that each and every one of them is a prime example of what it looks like when you're a good-looking person. 

I mean, really.

Besides how unlikely it is that everyone in a family looks like TV stars, the show is supposed to be about the goings-on of a family on Maryland's Shore - on the banks of the Chesapeake Bay. And they throw in Baltimore references, and talk about the Orioles, and someone's office being "up in Baltimore." But no one has even a trace of a local accent, they never mention National Beer, Berger's Cookies, or crabs (they go to a lobster feast!) and they wear sweaters to sit around outside in July when we're panting like dogs in tank tops.

I mean, we're sweating like humans in tank tops. You can't get a dog to put on a tank top around here in July.

A few years ago, another network put on a show about Point Pleasant, New Jersey. But they filmed it on the west coast, and we were sitting here back east, wondering how they got the sun to set over the ocean in New Jersey. These little things should matter, but the show was filmed on Qualicum Beach in Vancouver, Canada, and the neighboring town of Parksville, British Columbia.

Anomalies abound. This show revolves around the O'Brien family. One of the O'Brien sons comes home from the Army and becomes a firefighter in Chesapeake Shores. He falls for a local woman who is also hired as a firefighter but soon decamps for the Philadelphia Fire Dept. She says she "transferred to Philadelphia." One might be transferred to another fire station, but never to another city's fire department. But she came back and they got married.

One of the daughters is a lawyer, one runs an inn with her husband, one writes books. The lawyer daughter had a thing going with a local boy who had become a big country singer but chose his music over his woman. The innkeeper's father-in-law is in trouble, running from American authorities over his embezzlement of millions of dollars, so he is now seen wearing a pith helmet in a phone booth in what must be a tropical location because there are giant plants and a ceiling fan. The son who isn't a firefighter is a lawyer but he had a heart attack from getting himself all worked up over his cases and now he is about to marry the paralegal who came to work with him and just passed the bar exam. The daughter who writes books was just offered a deal to turn her book into a movie and the family was nattering on about who would play whom in the film, since the book was a thinly-veiled look at a real American family...theirs!

The parents are divorced but it looks like they'll be getting back together, although the mom just went to Los Angeles to work for the Getty Art Museum. The father is a builder and entrepreneur who flew his own plane until he crashed it and now, after a short period of physical therapy, he is a pill freak, strung out on painkillers and reluctantly attending NA meetings.

The grandmother is nowhere to be seen this season, but when she was around, she would break into an Irish accent for no reason at all and spout bromides about life that only occur to people who have lived 70+ years.

And yet, every Sunday, I'm ready for another new episode and I will be sorry to see "Chesapeake Shores" end after this season. I gave up on "The Young And The Restless" in 1993. Maybe I can go back and pick up the story line and have a new addiction.

Are Victor and Nikki married again?

 

 

Sunday Rerun: Heave Ho, Me Hearties!

 I find the most interesting things on this internet thing. Like this, that I found the other day on the site called Gastro Obscura, which has bits about food from all over.  And often, when I eat at a barbecue, I have bits of food all over me, so it all fits.

The island known as Hispaniola, which is where Haiti and the Dominican Republic are found, was where Christopher Columbus landed on December 5, 1492. He called it La Isla Española ("The Spanish Island"), which was soon Anglicized to Hispaniola.  We can thank the Hispanics for many wonderful parts of our lives, and here is one of them: 

By the 17th century, Hispaniola had feral animals running around everywhere. Pigs, boars, cattle, you name it. Hunters came to take what they could, and many Spanish ships, docked in the harbor, had hungry Spanish sailors to feed. The answer for both the hunters and the sailors was to gather, and cook, the bounteous offerings of the island.

Mr Weber had not invented the Bar-B-Q grill by then and what they used was a frame made of wood called a "boucan." The Tupi people of Brazil invented the grill, you might say.  And all that they had to work with was wood, which meant you had to replace your grill often.

Explorers roaming South America and the West Indies brought the boucans to Hispaniola, and the French hunters on the island really took to it, and soon were being called "boucaniers."

They really went for it, and I guess this was before "French cuisine" meant tiny portions with sauce all over it. They boucanned pork, and another favorite was turtle in the shell, which would be popular at University of Maryland Terrapin Club events, if you think about it. The French called this boucan de tortue.

Boucaniers came up with the idea to add marinating the main course prior to throwing it on the grill. A book called "The Sea Rover’s Practice: Pirate Tactics and Techniques, 1630-1730" survives, and from it we learn that these guys were adding salt, pepper, lime juice and crushed pimento to the meat. Salting helped preserve the meat, and that was good because sailors would cook lunch well in advance long before sailing off.  By boucanning the meat, it could be packed away in the days before Frigidaires, and in those days before RadaRanges, they would reconstitute the meat by soaking it in warm water.

BUT! Everything good always comes to an end, just like when they shut down the Old Country Buffet near us. The Spanish officials wanted the French hunters to hit the road, or, more properly, the sea, so they undertook a rather violent campaign to make them leave Hispaniola. The boucaniers, miffed, sailed off, no longer hunters. Some became farmers elsewhere, and many boucaniers took to the seas as pirates, so soon enough, boucaniers became pirates, and "boucanier" became "buccaneer."

But they still had to eat, so as they landed on islands such as as Martinique, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago. Jamaicans added the boucan to their "jerking" cooking method, which is why we can get jerk chicken at TGIFriday's if we want.

Backyard grillmasters owe a lot to these long-pirates, who taught us to smoke and season meat and cook it on a grill.

I hope this helps out all of us who, until just now, thought "buccaneer" was a high price to pay for corn.

The Saturday Picture Show, September 24, 2022

 

Of all the people to dress like, I had to choose Sheldon Cooper and Brick Heck. The short Tee over the long Tee works anytime!

Brick and I are both into fonts, and he would tell you this old wooden type has been placed in here backasswards, unless the goal was to spell "Evol."

I guess most of the wheat harvest is over, but somewhere in one of these huge bales is your new bowl of Shredded Wheat.

Here's a rule to remember if you find yourself in a new barber shop: if you have a choice between two or three barbers, choose the guy with the worst haircut...because the worst barber cut his! 

This sign has been around for a while. Nothing looks as cool as aged wood.

A cool look at an old house in a puddle on a cobblestone street. It's probably England, right?

Checkers With Crudités is bound to be the very next big thing. When you reach your opponent's back row, you get to holler "Cucumber me!"

This is why cashews are so expensive! Every one of them comes from  a tropical evergreen tree that produces the seed, which is what we eat, and the cashew apple "accessory fruit," which I had never heard of until right now. 

This week's free wallpaper is a salute to fall and the lovely colors and aromas it brings!

For those chilly days in formation at West Point, the US Military Academy will allow cadets to swap their traditional dress cap for a burro mascot head. The military is noted for their willingness to adapt to new fashion trends. 

New Words, part 2

Continuing from yesterday, the list of 30 new words approved for use in English by the good people at Merriam-Webster.

16. Meatspace: “The physical world and environment especially as contrasted with the virtual world of cyberspace.”

What, now?

17. Metaverse: In computing, “a persistent virtual ... environment that allows access to and interoperability of multiple individual virtual realities,” as well as “any of the individual virtual environments that make up a metaverse.” In cosmology, “the hypothetical combination of all co-existing or sequentially existing universes.”

Again, what, now?

18. Oat Milk: “A liquid made from ground oats and water that is usually fortified (as with calcium and vitamins) and used as a milk substitute.”

Can you imagine how tiny the stool is that you sit on to milk an oat?

19. Omakase: As a noun, “a series of small servings or courses (as of sushi) offered at a fixed price and whose selection is left to the chef's discretion.” As an adverb or adjective, “according to the chef’s choice.”

Before I heard of the word "omakase", I knew this as "dinner would be whatever was left in the Kelvinator the night before Mom went to the Food Fair."

20. Pumpkin Spice: “A mixture of usually cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cloves, and often allspice that is commonly used in pumpkin pie.”

But the Pumpkin Spicers among us are not making pies; they're slurping coffee and lattes and espressos that purport to make us feel better by bringing back the aromas of childhood.

21. Ras El Hanout: “A mixture of ground spices that is used in northern African cooking and includes coriander, ginger, turmeric, peppercorns, cumin, cinnamon, cardamom, cayenne pepper, and other spices.”

I have to get a jar of this, just so the next time we have company for supper, I can say, "Someone please pass me the Ras El Hanout." I'll probably wind up getting a bottle of catsup handed to me.

22. Shrinkflation: “The practice of reducing a product’s amount or volume per unit while continuing to offer it at the same price.”

This is why the giant-sized package of Froot Loops now holds about 4 ounces of loops.

23. Side Hustle: “Work performed for income supplementary to one's primary job.”

The trick here is to have two part-time jobs and convince the boss at each that your other job is full-time. Respect the system.

24. Space Force: “The military organization of a nation for space warfare.”

This all got started because someone with no military background or experience thought we needed one, and so we spend 40 million dollars a week on it for the same reason the Army has ships and the Navy has helicopters. What did we say about staying in one's own lane?

You decide. 

25. Sponcon: “Content ... posted usually by an influencer on social media that looks like a typical post but for which the poster has been paid to advertise a product or service.”

You see this nonsense on Facebook all the time and you wonder why. And then you wonder who gets fooled by it.

26. Subvariant: “One of two or more distinctive forms or types of the same variant.”

You see, you can have a cheesesteak sub, or you can have a pizza steak sub. Or you can have the COVID if you don't take precautions.

27. Supply Chain: “The chain of processes, businesses, etc. by which a commodity is produced and distributed: the companies, materials, and systems involved in manufacturing and delivering goods.”

AKA: why it's so hard to find toilet paper or peanut butter. Companies love to say, "Oh, my. It rained in the forest where we get the trees to make TP, so we'll send some in six months." See also: "How to create a shortage and lengthen your profits."

28. Sus: Slang for “suspicious” or “suspect.”

Don't confuse this with the British word "suss," meaning "figure it out."  For example: "The disgraced, twice-impeached politician sussed that he is a sus in several felony cases."

29. Virtue Signaling: “The act or practice of conspicuously displaying one's awareness of and attentiveness to political issues, matters of social and racial justice, etc., especially instead of taking effective action.”

I first saw this one bubbling up a couple of years ago when people realized that they could get credit for doing constructive things just by saying they were going to do constructive things.

30. Yeet: As an interjection, “used to express surprise, approval, or excited enthusiasm.” As a verb, “to throw especially with force and without regard for the thing being thrown.”

Again, don't be confused between this word and "jeat," the long-time Baltimore term in the sentence "Jeat yet?" meaning, "Have your had your supper today?" 

More words next year, we hope!

New 2022 words, part 1

OK, all you logophiles! 

I don't care what your religion is; I'm speaking to my fellow word lovers. Our early holiday is here! Merriam-Webster has published their list of the 30 new words they have crammed into their dictionary.

They don't let us know what words they have removed from their glossary, but I suspect that, among the words no longer deemed to be in use in the United States, we will find old favorites like "Spelling", "Grammar", and "Diction." But that's just I.

The words, and the definitions supplied: 

1. Adorkable: “Socially awkward or quirky in a way that is endearing.”

I believe this word was coined to describe Zooey Deschanel in her days on the "New Girl" situation comedy. I guess that in his day, Urkel fit the bill, and maybe Lisa Kudrow.

2. Altcoin: “Any of various cryptocurrencies that are regarded as alternatives to established cryptocurrencies and especially to Bitcoin.”

The same people who used to tell me they had foolproof betting systems for the racehorses are now telling me to try bitcoin. Still no.

3. Baller: “Excellent, exciting, or extraordinary, especially in a way that is suggestive of a lavish lifestyle.”

I thought it was someone who played ball or dressed as if they were going to. No one I know is lavish

4. Banh Mi: “A usually spicy sandwich in Vietnamese cuisine consisting of a split baguette filled typically with meat (such as pork or chicken) and pickled vegetables (such as carrot and daikon) and garnished with cilantro and often cucumbers.”

I'm disinclined to try this sandwich, as long as I live in a world where WaWa Italian hoagies and Pizza Sauce cheesesteaks are readily available. And I might live the rest of my life without daikon, whatever that is.

5. Cringe: “So embarrassing, awkward, etc. as to cause one to cringe: cringeworthy.”

This is another sad example of verbing weirding nouns. A perfectly good verb should stay in its lane. 

6. Dawn Chorus: “The singing of wild birds that closely precedes and follows sunrise especially in spring and summer.”

I'm up at 0515 every morning, but I know people who, for whatever reason, like to sleep later, and they do not appreciate the dawn chorus. Maybe once they learn that it has a name they will like it more. I doubt it.

7. FWIW: "Abbreviation for 'for what it’s worth.'"

OIC.

8. Galentine's Day: “A holiday observed on February 13th as a time to celebrate friendships especially among women.”

This is similar to February 15, also known as the Day Of Shame, when men who forgot the 14th desperately search for late gifts. It's never pretty.

9. Greenwashing: “The act or practice of making a product, policy, activity, etc. appear to be more environmentally friendly or less environmentally damaging than it really is.”

You can spot this on any advertisement that uses green ink for no good reason.

10. ICYMI: Abbreviation for “in case you missed it.”

I'm glad you didn't miss it; that would have been a real SNAFU.

11. Janky: “Of very poor quality: junky; also: not functioning properly or adequately: faulty.”

I've never heard this one, but I suppose it comes from the same process of word alteration that turned "stinky" into "stanky."

12. LARP “A live-action role-playing game in which a group of people enacts a fictional scenario (such as a fantasy adventure) in real time typically under the guidance of a facilitator or organizer.”

Hmmm. My entire life has been a live-action role-playing game and I didn't know there was a name for it.

13. Lewk: “A fashion look ... that is distinctive to the wearer and that is noticeable and memorable to others.”

Careful here. You're just one typo away from making "lewk" look "lewd."

14. MacGyver: “To make, form, or repair (something) with what is conveniently on hand.”

We used to say "jury-rigged," before MacGyver was a TV show.

15. Magnet Fishing: “The sport or hobby of using a strong magnet attached to the end of a rope to find metal objects in bodies of water.”

This was one of the ads in comic books back in the day, along with Charles Atlas body-building courses and lessons in ventriloquism. They sold you a "very powerful super magnet" and told you to take a boat out on a lake, drop the magnet in via a rope, and prepare to haul up used cars, guns, and Spanish doubloons. Ventriloquism, by the way, does not mean "throw your voice." It means "throw your money away."

More tomorrow!

Make mine Mexican

Some of the funniest tweets these days are being twittered by fast food chains, eager to hop on each other for shortages and problems, such as how they all pick on McDonald's because their soft ice cream machines always seem to be broken, or how hard it was for people to find that elusive chicken sandwich at Popeye's.

That sandwich, by the way, set off a frenzy of people who had to have chicken sandwiches day and night. Now even Wawa, home of the best cold cut subs, is offering one. I'll stick with their Italian Hoagie, please. No onions.

But when two chains start picking on each other, sometimes there's something funny behind it. 

Take this ad that Pizza Hut is running. 

"Pizza Hut Announces 'Italian Taco' to Rival Taco Bell's Mexican Pizza"

Everyone loves the Mexican Pizza at Taco Bell, although it's not something I've tried. Too cross-cultural for me, like Lox Chow Mein would be. And the jury is out on whether it's really a pizza at all, or just a confused tostada.

It seems that Taco Bell was so swamped with orders for the Mexican Pizza, they took it off the menu for awhile, but now it's back to stay.  And Pizza Hut is trumpeting the claim that you can always get a Mexican Pizza of sorts at their stores, by taking a slice of pizza and folding it lengthwise.

So that's where we stand as of now. Pizza Hut is saying they will sell you an Italian Taco.

 

"Feast your eyes and mouths on a hand-tossed taco shell stuffed with a classic marinara sauce, mouthwatering melted mozzarella cheese and whichever fillings you choose from pepperoni to jalapenos," Pizza Hut's press people are saying, just before admitting that what they're talking about is just "a slice of pizza folded like a taco."

And then they jab that they will never run out of Italian Tacos because "This nearly unbelievable innovation will never run out. The Italian Taco has been here and will be here forever. No one out pizzas the hut."

But when you get right on down to the crust of all this, it turns out that Taco Bell and Pizza Hut are both part of the same parent company: Yum! Brands.

And they're not about to care which chain you buy from, since the money all goes into the same huge pile.

Mangia!

 

I get to use the word "galore" !

When I was a kid (which includes the time period from my birth until maybe six weeks ago) I had the dream to buy a school. 

Not to operate it as a school, for crying out loud, and not a big place. An elementary school would do.

In fact, I pictured myself taking ownership of Hampton Elementary School in Baltimore County, my olde alma mater. It had all I looked for in a domicile: plenty of storage space (all those lockers!), room for my books (an entire library), a gym where I could HORSE around all day, a cafeteria with industrial cooking equipment, outdoor playgrounds galore, enough classrooms for me to invite friends over and take turns talking about the causes of the Civil War, and long division, and the Oxford Comma, and a public address system over which I could speak to my family and whatever visitors we had staying over.

I offered $200, to be raised over a summer of mowing lawns at five dollars a clip (!), which at the time seemed like all the money in the world, and the county refused my offer. In fact, the school is still open, and they added on to the building a few years ago, as if to taunt me.

All this is why the story of Rowdy The Cat caught my eye. This stuff is like, well, catnip to me.

A couple of months ago, Rowdy landed at Boston's sprawling Logan Airport. In fact, I think that's the official name of that plane place: Sprawling Logan Airport.

Rowdy, four years old and pitch black, landed via Lufthansa, and immediately jumped out of her cage to chase some birds around.

It was three weeks before she was to see the inside of her cage again. Her family even sent the airport people her favorite treats to try to lure her in, and they recorded voice messages, all to no avail.

She was coming back to the US with her family after their deployment to Germany. Hey! Maybe if they had hollered,"Hör auf Kitteh!" she would have heeded the command.

While the cat literally ran circles around them, the staff even called on animal experts, who no doubt told the flyaway brass that the first rule of cats is, they do WHAT they want WHEN they want to and that's that.

For three weeks, the cat and mouse game went on, until...

"Whether out of fatigue or hunger we'll never know, but this morning (July 22) she finally let herself be caught," an airport spokeswoman told the press.

After a health check, Rowdy was back in the arms of her human companions, Patty and Rich Sahli. Patty said, "I'm kind of in disbelief. I thought, what are the odds we're actually going to get her back?"

"But I got a call this morning and I am just so shocked. It was such a community effort. We're just so grateful to everyone who helped look for her."

Things usually turn out for the best where cats are concerned, but again, it's totally their decision as to when.

 

Alone

Now and then we hear of someone going off the grid - unhooking their tech, turning YouTube into NotMeTube, taking their Face out of the Book and moving on. I think the only way to appreciate giving up that lifestyle would be to have experienced it first. How else would you know how much you miss videos of cats playing the piano or people sliding down their icy driveways if you had never seen them?

That brings me to the story of a man so far off the beaten path that he did not even have a name that anyone knew. He is referred to as the last member of an uncontacted tribe in Brazil.

The only name by which anyone else knew him was "The man in the hole." 

For more that twenty years, he lived alone, isolated, as the last of an Indigenous tribe whose other members were most likely killed off by invading ranches who wanted their untouched rainforest land.

The "man in the hole" sobriquet comes from the deep pits he dug where he could hide out from well-intended folks who sought to bring him into our world of car crashes and Kardashians, fad diets and Dad fiats, streaming videos and steaming vegetables.

If he knew of the Amazon at all, he knew it was a river 688 miles and one ocean away, not a place that could send him ointments overnight.

He lived what plants he could grow and what animals he could catch. And when people from our world tried to enter his, he jumped into one of his holes to make it clear he was not in the least interested.  

The hut where he lived to the end.

Officials of the Tanaru Indigenous Territory, over in the Brazilian state of Rondônia, patrol the area, and last month, the patrol, seeing no sign of activity, approached his hut and found him in his hammock, dead of apparently natural causes.

Flávia Milhorance and André Spigariol of the New York Times made the point that, as sad as the passing of anyone is, this also means the first total disappearance of any uncontacted Brazilian. The fear is that more tribes will be gone soon, as well.

Survival International, a human rights group, studied the man's life, as well as possible, although they never found out his name, his ethnic background, or how he communicated with the others in his tribe when they lived. The Brazilian agency which tracks Indigenous people is called Funai. They determined, over a course of 26 years, that the man built 53 huts for himself. 

Little was known about the man—not his name, his ethnicity or the language he spoke to his fellow tribe members when they were still alive. Funai, Brazil’s federal agency for Indigenous affairs, says in a statement that it had tracked 53 huts the man made over the past 26 years. Near his residences, they found his crops: corn, cassava, papaya and bananas, as well as the sharp spearheads he used for hunting game.

There was a video shot in 2018, showing the man chopping down a tree, but he did not want people around to talk about his days, and he responded aggressively when approached.

“We can only imagine what horrors he had witnessed in his life, and the loneliness of his existence after the rest of his tribe were killed, but he determinedly resisted all attempts at contact, and made clear he just wanted to be left alone,” says Fiona Watson, Survival International’s research and advocacy director.

Experts figure the man lived to be about 60 years of age. There were no signs of violence or struggle around his corpse, but he was covered in feathers.

Marcelo dos Santos, an Indigenous expert, told the Times: “Was he waiting for his death? Who knows? There was never communication, not even with another ethnic group, to know more about him. So we can’t be sure of the reason.”

One of the hiding holes.

All that we know for sure about the man is that we know nothing for sure. Perhaps he was content living alone, perhaps not. But he was a member of the human race, and deserved respect for making it on his own. 

Not only did he not wish to have an Instagram account, he did not wish to be seen on any of ours, either, while he lived. And with his death closing the history of his tribe, that's all we will know about him: not much.

  

Sunday Rerun (from 2011): Twist and Shout

  My Review of Books I Bought For A Dollar at the Dollar Tree

First in a series:  "A Twist Of Lemmon" by Chris Lemmon

Q - What could be worse than being the son of a famous man, especially one who dumped your mother when you were still a tot and then married a woman who did not especially care for you?  

A - Being the son of Jack Lemmon, which brought his son Chris all of the painful moments above, along with being the son of an egomaniacal actor to boot. 


Chris does make a good point in this book: If your father is in show business, and you try to do the same, everyone hollers "Nepotism!"   But, if your father is a butcher, baker or attorney, and you go into his line of work, everyone says, "Hey! That's great! A chip off the old block!"  


Well, no one was about to chip anything off of Jack Lemmon, whom I always considered to be not nearly as funny as he seemed to think he was.  Whatever.  His many awards and hit movies would tend to show that my opinion was not in line with the vast majority, who, to this day, roar with laughter over his acting in "Some Like It Hot" and countless other snoozefests. 
But Chris went into acting, and if you read the book, you'd think he was up there along with his father in fame and fortune.  He mentions all the movies he was in, but fails to add that they were mainly bit parts  - a cop, a guy in an office - that he was given because of his last name.  


And that's fine, really.  If you can find enough roles where you play the cop who's parked in the driveway in a Goldie Hawn movie, you can have a nice career, make a decent dollar and get to play golf with Clint Eastwood.  I feel a little sorry for Chris. He mentions how he hardly had any relationship with his father, and recounts being pushed aside by autograph hounds who spotted his father.  Of course, Jack being Jack, as soon as that happened, he turned on the charm and played to the crowd with that bum-bum-bumbling Everyman goofiness of his, leaving his son adrift in a sea of knees and elbows.  Chris then realized that being a good family man meant more than being a famous man, and he lives in Connecticut with his wife and three kids, happy to be home with them.  Almost every page in this book contains an anecdote that paints Jack as a foul-mouthed drunkard who was rarely home. 


My takeaway from the book is that Chris, although not nearly as famous as his pop, is a much better man.  It really seems that great fame and fortune make it very tough to be a good family man, because making that fortune and fame means not being home in the first place.  


But I'd rather be famous in my own home, and I'm fortunate that way.  Reading "A Twist Of Lemmon" reminded me of that.  


I rate this book $$$$$. Three dollar signs out of five. 

The Saturday Picture Show, September 17, 2022

 

Just what we needed... a mug with instructions!

Nine years ago this week, this young man fell asleep at a White House event. The coolest president ever knew what to do.

Always on the lookout for something to read, I've puzzled over labels for years. I've seen mustard labeled as "fancy" mustard (as opposed to sloppy) and "salad" mustard (as in who puts mustard on a salad?) So now we are faced with "heavy duty" mayonnaise, and what are we to make of it? 

Readers of a certain age will remember the line in Tommy James's song "Draggin' The Line": "My dog Sam eats purple flowers; ain't got much but what we got's ours." In the sandhills of North Carolina, I don't know where the bees are going for pollen, but they make purple honey.

The annual debate about whether to rake the lawn in autumn will start up soon, pitting teenagers on the "no" side versus their parents standing there with rakes in their hands. 

Before Jack Frost starts nipping at your nose, these chestnuts will be ready for roasting on an open fire.

The latest in my series of barns that need just a little handyman touch to get them all spruced up again.

I am always flabbergasted when someone tells me they don't like coconut, but there are a lot of people who really can't stand it. One of my favorite snack treats is a spoonful of shredded coconut and some almonds...no need for chocolate for my Almond Joys.

When you get that bag of walnuts, remember, this is what they look like when they're fresh off the tree. They remind me of brains.

This whimsical rain gutter system is really impressive. I'd love to see it in action during a real downpour.

Two balls, no strikes

A couple of baseball stories to round out the week...

Albert Pujols of the St. Louis Cardinals has been hitting baseballs for a living since Woodrow Wilson was president, or so it would seem. He is trying to hit his 700th home run, and this week, he clobbered #697, passing Alex Rodriguez for 4th place on the all-time home run hitters list. 

A young fan who caught the ball was willing to give it to the Dominican Republic-born slugger, and most players cherish these souvenirs -  but the fan told him that she lost her father on the same day one year ago, and Pujols told her to keep the ball and gave her two more signed balls, saying that homer ball would mean more to her than to him.

That's the sort of kindness that will inspire karma to help him hit three more "circuit clouts" to reach his goal. I love stories like that, and like this next one, which starts out foul but ends up in the seats...

On September 1, a young girl was at the Washington Nats game with her Shenandoah Rec League softball all-star team. Out in the bleachers, she - all of 10 - was spotted by Joey Meneses, a new star outfielder for Washington, and that oddest of rookies: a 30-year-old.

Meneses tossed a ball to the girl and some horse's patootie of an "adult" cut in front of her and snagged the ball. The video is all over the virals, but it makes me sick to see it.

The girl was heartbroken, naturally, and her mom wrote to the Washington team to see if somehow she could get a ball to mend her feelings.

On Tuesday, she had a signed ball and a nice note from right fielder Meneses, who did the right thing. She got what she deserved.

And I hope the man who stole the ball from a child gets what's coming to him, too.

 

 

Traffic Jam

A couple of decades ago, Peggy and I took a fabulous cruise across the Delaware Bay on the Cape May (NJ) - Lewes (DE) Ferry. This is a 17-mile crossing on one of three very large ferry boats. The thought of the ferry sinking never crossed my mind, until a man drove a huge tractor-trailer aboard, carrying a mammoth load of cantaloupes bound for the New Jersey side. I mean, there must have been enough 'loupes on that trailer for every man, woman, and Snooki in the Garden State to have a nice fresh one for breakfast every day that summer. I had never seen, let alone dreamed of, that many cantaloupes in one place, and of course I had Titanic visions of the mighty vessel going down in the Bay as ten million cantaloupes bobbed on the surface. 

I did think that little kids might have been saved by using cantaloupes as flotation devices. 

It just seemed to make sense that a giant heavy truck would be too much for the ferry to carry, but I thought better of my idea to discuss my concerns with the ship's captain, and when we docked ninety minutes later, I remember wondering why I was worried.

Now I have something new to worry about, and it's the chance that I might be behind a truckload of tomatoes that overturns. That's just what happened the other day near Vacaville, CA.

The load of fruit (remember, tomatoes are fruits, the same as plums and melons) spilled across several lanes of Highway 80 in Northern California. It took over six hours to get the mess off the road, according to the California Highway Patrol.

This stretch of road where the truck hit the center divider is between San Francisco and Sacramento. 

 

Because I was raised in a bucolic setting, my grandmother made her own pickles and mayonnaise and root beer and catsup, and she told me many times of going to the produce market downtown to get bushels of tomatoes. She recalled that there would be giant vats and tubs full of ugly tomatoes: not rotten, but squishy and unfit for the pretty produce section at the supermarket. Grandma told me in a hushed aside that the big catsup companies bought the bad tomatoes, pointedly reminding me that the homemade version was better. 

Now, I'm not saying that the tomato companies were on the scene there, helping with the big cleanup. But I will be on the lookout for tiny bits of gravel or asphalt on my burger for the next few years.

And I still don't eat cantaloupe.

 

Is progress progressive?

Maybe it started with the pandemic, but it probably goes farther back than that. As soon as some people got computers in their houses, the next thing you know, they were working from home, or possibly "working" from "home." If you get the point.

I'm sure that for administrative types and insurance offices and lots of sales jobs, working from home is just as good as working from an office, and the ability to pad around the house in your big fuzzy slippers while working is always a plus. And with pandemic restrictions easing, a lot of companies are telling people to get on back to their office or their cubicle now, and some are saying "Nah" to that. This in turn has sparked the "quiet quitting" movement, in which people are just not showing up to work, so take that, Mr or Ms Bigboss!

At the same time, computers and technology are not only teaming up to allow us to time shift, they are also letting us do things from far, far away. The Baltimore SUN newspaper is a good example. They have far fewer people on the staff now, and far fewer pages in the paper, less locally-originated reporting, not as many ads. It's a shame.

But to make ends meet, the paper, which used to be printed right on Calvert St, and then in Port Covington when the paper moved down there, is now printed in Delaware, which, as any schoolkid with a basic knowledge of East Coast Geography knows, is a whole 'nother state up the road from here. The paper, which used to be delivered to our front walkway by 6 AM, is now supposed to be here by 7, but rarely is. I can't blame the delivery people; they have to wait until the paper is trucked down here from another state, coming down I-95 with all the cigarette smugglers and narcotics dealers. Usually the paper is here around 8:30 or so, by which time I've watched the three network morning shows and my My Three Sons rerun. And of course since they need extra time to get the paper here, the baseball scores from the night before are never there, as they used to be.

Also, they say that the switching - the technical part of TV where they add the commercials and play the non-network shows, such as local news and infomercials, where people with British accents tell us how to get stains out of our clothes - for one of the local TV stations is being done out of town, in Indianapolis, for God's sweet sake. This would account for the dead air on that station, the gaps where nothing is heard and nothing is seen for 20 seconds or so.

People in Baltimore don't like Indianapolis. They stole our football team one dark night in 1984. Fortunately, in those days, the paper arrived on time, so I knew about it before the sun came up!

Bear with us

I know it's well-intended, but the practice of leaving items at memorial sites and gravesites is a little puzzling to me. For one thing, if you want a person to have flowers, send them today or tomorrow at the latest. They will do more good while the person is still on this level.

As far as covering sad sites with stuffed animals and commemorative material, how about taking that stuff to an orphanage or a police station (some police keep a comforting toy in the trunk of their squad car, to be given to a child involved in an accident or other traumatic situation)? At any rate, it would only take a phone call or two to find some place where your largesse would do a lot of good.

This all comes to mind because of this headline news from Great Britain: 

Mourners Have Been Asked To Stop Leaving Paddington Bears And Marmalade Sandwiches For The Queen

Reading on, it turns out that the mournful public has been dropping off Paddington toys, stuffed animals and the like, along with jars of marmalade and sandwiches for the love of Pete. Now officials are saying enough is enough is enough.

You'll recall that Her Majesty co-starred with Paddington in a television sketch that had the two having tea at the Palace. The gag was that the Queen, who was famous for toting her purse every where she went, pulled a marmalade sandwich out of her purse to feed the bear.

So now people want to commemorate her passing by leaving sandwiches sitting around.

In the sketch, Paddington said to the Queen, "Thank you, Ma'am, for everything." This week, the Paddington Twitter account has the bear saying that again. 

Green Park in London is the more-or-less official site for floral tributes to the queen, and the toys and the jars of orange marmalade and the ready-made sandwiches are piling up all over the place. And now, officials have issued guidelines for all this.

They're asking that any and all flowers left in tribute have the plastic wrapping removed, which will make it easier for the flowers to become compost a week after the funeral. 

And in the polite British manner, they also said, "We would prefer visitors not to bring non-floral objects/artefacts such as teddy bears or balloons."

BBC news presenter Sally Nugent told viewers, "They are suggesting that there are enough Paddingtons and marmalade sandwiches in the parks at the moment, so please feel free to bring flowers but maybe don't bring any more Paddingtons or marmalade sandwiches for now."

I have a feeling that the homeless and underresourced people of London and all over the British Isles would appreciate money or outright gifts of bread and marmalade (or gift cards to buy them). I'll bet the Queen would approve.

Give in her honor. Don't leave edible food out in public, please.