One Moment

If you were watching the AFC Championship game the other night, you saw how the game wound up, with Kansas City's quarterback Patrick Mahomes scooting out of bounds after making a first down at the Bengals' 42-yard line. 

Had nothing else happened there, they might still be playing, because the 42 is way too far away for a field goal, and there were only 8 seconds left in the game. 

But something did happen, and that was Bengals defender Joseph Ossai committing an obvious penalty, pushing Mahomes to the ground, pushing the ball to the 27-yard line after a 15-yard penalty for unnecessary roughness.

And with the ball in easy field goal range, the Chiefs got that three-pointer and won the game.

Fans were quick to take to social media to discuss the play and its aftermath, which featured CBS cameras getting many shots of the disconsolate Ossai burying his face in his helmet in grief. It was a tough lesson for Ossai, and a shame that the season came to one play, one mistake, one shove that he will forever wish he could undo.

No point talking about it anymore; what's done is done. But I was not shocked to see Cincinnati's head coach, Zac Taylor, reach into his Big Bag of Bromides and say, "We're not going to make it about one play."

Actually, you are, because if not for that one play, you might still be in the hunt for a Super Bowl win.

The sad truth is that many lives, even though they are lived over many decades, turn on one decision, one bad play, one error of omission. And the actions of just one person can affect millions of lives.

As the old anonymous proverb said it, 

 For want of a nail the shoe was lost.

For want of a shoe the horse was lost.

For want of a horse the rider was lost.

For want of a rider the battle was lost.

For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.

And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

Surely I can say, Ossai didn't mean to commit that penalty and he should not bear the blame for the entire loss. But it's worth thinking about, how one mistake can define a person in the public eye. No, it's not fair.

It's life.

Just ask Bill Buckner.

Four > five

How many days a week can you stand working?  

Or sit, whatever. I bring this up to say that what you've been hearing about is true - there is a groundswell of support for cutting that nasty 5-day work week into a sweet 4-dayer.

There's a group called 4 Day Week Global who recently ran a trial involving some 33 companies and 900 employees.  For all of them, the old five-day week turned into four, with no cut in pay.

Surprise, surprise! After a six-month trial, 97% of the employees say they did not want to go back to five, and even more surprising, most employers rated the experiment 9 out of 10.

It would seem that, until the pandemic came along and forced us to try different ways of working, we were just content to go along with the ways of the past, but once we found that changes are not necessarily bad, we became amenable to trying them.

The companies participating were in the fields of administration, IT, and telecom. The  researchers mixed it up, with lots of jobs in lots of fields, but it did learn toward tech and white-collar jobs. 

The workers reported less stress, fatigue, insomnia, and burnout, with corresponding improvements in physical and mental health. And here is a key point: they did not have to work more hours for the same pay. Their 40-hour schedules became 32-hour weeks.

And with the realization that they had to continue producing the results they had under the 40-hour week, most reported no problems getting the same amount of work done.

Look at this way: if you have X amount of tasks to get done in Y amount of time, even if you subtract a few hours from that Y, you will still get X done if you're so motivated. And a perk like only having to work four days a week is plenty of motivation, I would think.

We used to think we couldn't function without everyone physically being at the office. We found out otherwise. During the pandemic, if you called your internet service provider with a problem or a request, you were likely to talk to someone working from their home, fulfilling your request. 

The only way you knew about was when you heard a baby crying or a dog howling. Same with other jobs. When something can be done in four days, why take five?

I say change the workplace and change the future! 

 

Sunday Rerun: What The Shell?

 Ask any stranger you might meet in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, or Auckland, New Zealand, or Albuquerque, New Mexico "what is Baltimore famous for?" and after they mention Johns Hopkins Hospital and University and rampant street crime, they will know us for our crabmeat.

Even in a summer when a dozen steamed crabs will put a $90 dent in your wallet, we throng to crabhouses to crack 'em or enjoy 'em in crabcakes, fried hard crabs, or crab fluffs (remember them?)

So you have to hand it to the PETA people, the people for the ethical treatment of animals, people clad in rubber shoes and hemp belts, eating watercress sandwiches on 37-grain bread for lunch with plant-based mayonnaise.

These are the people who shut down the circus because of the elephants, and got Nabisco to get new paintings for their animal cracker boxes, showing uncaged beasts roaming the earth in search of humans to eat.

Turn about is fair play, right? We eat animals, they eat us, but in the animal kingdom there exists no AETH - Animals for the Ethical Treatment of Humans - movement. Any creature from mosquito to crocodile sees us as lunch, dinner, or a post-prandial snack.

I bring all this up because PETA has now launched a billboard advertising campaign near some of the best crabhouses in town. It's near the Inner Harbor, and it is not getting many thumbs up on social media.


“Just like humans, crabs feel pain and fear, have unique personalities, and value their own lives,” PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman said, without explaining how many crabs have ever told her so. “PETA’s billboard aims to give Charm City residents some food for thought about sparing sensitive marine animals the agony of being boiled alive or crushed to death in fishing nets simply by going vegan.”

A local tv station interviewed Nick Lentis, owner of the Silver Moon II restaurant, and he says the billboard is hurting his business.

“I don’t have nothing to do with this. I sell crab meat,” Lentis said. “I think they have to remove it.”

In September, Baltimore will celebrate their annual seafood festival, and PETA plans to keep the billboard up through that time.

They say crabs are sensitive...Some years ago, on the fishing pier in Ocean City, a crab attached himself to me by grabbing the sole of my Sperry TopSider with his pincer. I found this insensitive of him, and I mentioned this to his cousin that night over dinner, if he could hear me with all that Old Bay on him.

The Saturday Picture Show, January 28, 2023

 

Happy National Blueberry Pancake Day! What better way to start off your morning!

And don't bother ordering blueberry pancakes from this Crackdown Cafe! 

Sometimes, when you find yourself at the end of your rope, just let go!

This is from every school cafeteria and picnic and birthday party! If you think about it for a second, you can still taste the wooden spoon!

It is illegal in the United States to keep an owl as a pet. I'll bet you never wondered!

For whatever reason, we are having truly spectacular sunrises and sunsets around here these days. This one will make a fine wallpaper.

The same view, at the same time, on the same day of every month for one year. 

This is a quilt made by a Mennonite woman in the first half of the 20th Century. The pattern is called "Sawtoothed Bars." It's in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution ("America's Attic").

The little picture of a football next to the Cowboys' score of 9 indicates that they have the ball, not that it did them much good. But many people look at that on their screen and wonder how a team can score negative 9 points. It's Fox, after all.

Nature photography allows us to see inside the animal kingdom. All of these bird faces are telling us they wish they were parakeets, living inside where it's warm and dry.

Up On The Roof

You know how you'll see something every day for months and months, and then, one day, it's gone?  

And you don't notice that it's gone at first? It finally dawned on me that the bank around the corner from our house has gone. I guess they emptied the vault before they split, but the only way I noticed it (finally) was that I was at the stoplight the other day and did not see the armed guard who was always on duty. So, they're gone, and I guess a nail salon will be moving in next. 

And the commercial on TV with the unctuous announcer droning on hypnotically about the product he pitches that will ab-so-lutely guarantee no more leaves, pine cones, and stray tennis balls will find homes in your rain gutter...I haven't seen him since Hector was a pup. There are dozens of those companies, all selling the same type of product, and all claiming to be so vastly superior to the other competing firms that it hardly seems fair for them to try to stay in business.

Gutter Guard. Gutter Guys. Gutter Helmet. Gutters R Us. Mr. Gutter. Harry Helmet. Gutter Brothers. Leaf Guard. Leaf Me Alone. 

OK, I made up that last one, but you see the point - so many companies, and so many claims for keeping debris out of the gutters. Some of the ads show the catastrophic damage you might suffer, should you not get one of these "systems" (it's always a "system," not just some sheet metal) up there by this weekend!

These people sell their "systems" by scaring you into thinking that your abode will crumble like a house of cards, the next big rain that comes through. It's like that deal that the new car dealers used to sell people on undercoating and waxy finishes...you don't want your new Oldsmobile to turn into a Rustmobile, do you now?  Let's get that baby undercoated and let's dull the finish with a hundred layers of polymer resin for just, oh let's say, we'll lock you in for a mere $1100 tonight, before the price increase tomorrow!

Ask you something? If these gutter deals were so important and necessary, don't you think new homebuilders would put them on in the first place?

Fan Club

Years ago, a friend of mine met a girl in one of those revolving doors at the entrance to a department store and they started going around together for a while.

If they had taken a minute to look up, they would have seen the ceiling, where the fans go around to keep us cool in the summer. 

But did you know, there are different fan settings for the summer and the winter?

Orange you glad we can ask the friendly folks over at Home Depot for more info?

They tell us that we should have the fan running CLOCKWISE, with the fan running at the lowest speed. Doing this pulls the cool air up toward the ceiling, which shoves the warm that rises and hangs around the ceiling and sends it down to where we sit and stand.

With the warm air being sent below, it flows toward the walls and the door, and makes the room warmer, so you can cut the thermostat back a little! 

It's important to keep it running at low speed; this prevents a drafty wind chill, nice and steady. Just make sure it's going CLOCKWISE in winter and then reverse it back in summer.

In summer, the COUNTERCLOCKWISE rotation will allow the blades to push cooler air down in a cool column. This cools the room and saves on air conditioning!

One of us should try this now that winter is here. You go first and let me know... 

Listing to the right

There was a time when someone would miss a two-foot putt or a three-point field goal, and they would be labelled "the goat" - the object of those two reactions that have been joined at the hip forever - scorn, and derision.

Then all of a sudden, someone decided that "the goat" should be just the opposite - the object of another long-time couple, veneration, and idolization. People decided that "goat" now stood for "greatest of all time" and slapped that tag on Tom Brady, who is the greatest something of all time, not necessarily the greatest quarterback.

And then Meryl Streep became the goat (of actors) and so did Malala Yousafzai and Simone Biles and Justin Tucker, and, of course, Muhammad Ali put that initialized appellation on himself years ago - and deserved to.

So we say "thanks" to the good people on the faculty of Lake Superior State University in Michigan, a school that publishes an annual list of words we can live without due to "misuse, overuse, and uselessness."

Rodney S. Hanley, the university's president, remarked, "Our nominators insisted, and our Arts and Letters faculty judges concurred, that to decree the Banished Words List 2023 as the GOAT is tantamount to gaslighting. Does that make sense?"  

"Irregardless, moving forward, it is what it is: an absolutely amazing inflection point of purposeless and ineptitude that overtakes so many mouths and fingers," Hanley pointed out, racking up a pretty high score for using the words his faculty abjures and wants used less, if at all.

So here are the ten terms and phrases you shan't hear from me for a long while:

• Goat
• Inflection point  - this is actually a grammar term that was co-opted by the people who use "price point" to mean "price."
• Quiet quitting - we used to call it not doing anything until they fire you
• Gaslighting - dimming the lights and making you wonder if you're getting dim too
• Moving forward - as opposed to just "moving"
• Amazing - just because someone bought a red shirt, is that really amazing?
• Does that make sense?  - this is a sentence-ender meaning "Are you smart enough to understand my brillliant declamation?"
• Irregardless - people think this is an intensified version of "regardless."
• Absolutely - absolutely overused.
• It is what it is - this is the way to seem profound, much as a beginning mathematician might inform everyone at the dinner table that "any number multiplied by one keeps its identity." As a ham sandwich is a ham sandwich.

And of course, I would also suggest a moratorium on the use of "joined at the hip."

Out at home

Listen, I know what you're going to say..."But stealing is ALLOWED in baseball!" Yes, that is true. During the game, a runner on first base is allowed to steal second base.  

But some random fan can't skulk around the park late at night and steal second base.

In Milwaukee, a Brewer fan (!) passed out in the bushes outside American Family Field after a game, and woke up at some wee small hour of the morning to squeeze himself into the team clubhouse, where he ripped off electronic gear, a credit card, and other stuff including uniforms and memorabilia.

The guy has been caught stealing, and charged with felony burglary, leaving him with an 0-1 record for the year.

The criminal complaint alleges that the dude went to the doubleheader the Brewers had with the Giants last Sept. 8 and consumed 10 beers over the course of the two games, which apparently gave him superhuman strength, enough to yank on a stadium door and force it open.

He proceeded to the clubhouse and found a laptop, iPods, headphones, a passport, and  a credit card from a strength coach, and then hit the goldmine when he entered manager Craig Counsell's office, walking off with a jersey, a shaving kit, a game-used hat, an autographed bat, a 45-year anniversary 1982 signed bat, a fake World Series ring, and keys to the team’s Arizona spring training facility.  

Craig Counsell models some of the wardrobe items left behind.

From the coaches' locker room, Lightfingered Louie helped himself to two official jerseys, a bag of baseballs, and pitching equipment.

From there, he called an Uber to take him home, where he arrived with a duffel bag full of his ill-gotten swag, according to his roomate.

I'm no attorney (applause) but I can already envision the defense his barrister will mount: 

"Your honor, my client found himself in impaired condition early on the morning of September 9 past. Only through his quick thinking was he able to assemble a makeshift gift bag of Brewers apparel, to be donated to the Little Sisters Of The Poor for their annual banquet..."

 

Teed Off

I get an email from the US Postal Service around 7:30 every morning, showing me a little image of all the envelopes I will be getting that day.  Very efficient. Of course, the actual mail doesn't get here until 8 or 9 PM, which makes me wonder if it would be possible for the USPS to open my mail and send me a picture of the letters or bills or whatever is coming.  Just a thought.

But not even emails are perfect. Take this fellow Scott Stallings, a pro golfer by trade. He was hanging around his mailbox, looking for his invitation to play in this year's Masters tournament...and he waited, and he waited...

Stallings

And then, along came an email from another guy named Scott Stallings.

"Hi Scott. My name is Scott Stallings as well and I'm from Georgia," it said.

"My wife's name is Jennifer too! I received a FedEx today from the Masters inviting me to play in the Masters Tournament April 6-9, 2023. I'm 100% sure this is NOT for me. I play but wow! Nowhere near your level. It's a very nice package complete with everything needed to attend," he went on to say.

He concluded, "I think we have some confusion because of our names, our wife's names and geographical location."

Then he attached a video showing him dropping the invitation into his mailbox for forwarding to the intended recipient.

For every golfer that I see on Sundays around 6 PM while I wait for the news as these golf tournaments drag on endlessly, there are dozens whom we don't see in the winner's circle, donning the green jacket, shaking hands with a guy in garish pants.

The real golfer Stallings is 37 and is currently ranked as the 54th best golfer in the world, which is respectable for someone who has only won three PGA tournaments, the last of them at the Farmers Insurance Open in 2014.

But here he is, all these years, still teeing it up and going for it, and I have decided that I will root for two things this year: 

 - - for Scott Stallings to win the Masters tournament

 - - and for him to go around the course in record time so that the 6 O'Clock News comes on at 6.

Sunday Rerun: One Toque Over The Line

 Have you tried one of these meal kit deals? They just popped up in the past few years. From what I read (I've never tried 'em, never will) for something like an average of $8.99 a serving, they send you all you need to whip up a semi-gourmet meal right in the privacy of your own home.

The companies have names like Blue Apron, FreshDirect, HelloFresh, Plated, PeachDish, Chef’D, Purple Carrot, Terra's Kitchen and Home Chef. Surely a Prince-themed meal kit called PurpleRain cannot be far behind.


As with any new fad, there will be companies that just don't last until tomorrow's breakfast as they all jockey for that all-important consumer money. You see stories about this all day long on tv - people gleefully opening boxes of food that needs to be cooked, while donning aprons and toques.

A chef's toque

But every night on the news, I seem to see a story about someone who runs around ripping off delivered boxes from front porches, so here's an interesting twist. The new craze among people who like to eat dinner is to have some company in California chop up chutney and shank a lamb and chiffonade some parsley and pomme some frites and put all that in a box.

Along with the ready-to-cook food, they pack ice packs to keep it cold as it sits on loading docks in Kankakee, Keokuk and Topeka. 

And Doug Heffernan drops it on your front porch, where it rests for 28 seconds until being stolen by people who follow the trucks around town. And then, the thieves take your food home and whip up a larcenist lunch or stealer supper.

Here's a humble suggestion: Go to a grocery store, if you want to cook your dinner. Buy some raw, uncooked meat and vegetables and take them home to your spices and bottled sauces and dressings and live it up!  

I'm fairly certain that a hunk of salmon you buy from the BiSoLo was swimming around the salmon ranch yesterday, as opposed to the one that spent the weekend on brown trucks and semis from Oakland.

The Saturday Picture Show, January 21, 2023

 

The problem with living here is, once you think you're done with the outdoor chores, someone points out that the roof needs to be mowed. 

Do you think I will ever stop cracking cornball jokes and puns? No, I'm a frayed knot.

"Mod" styles in the mid-60s included pop art such as paper dresses, and how handy it was to wear your own napkin to lunch!

Credit where credit is due: I saw this terrific photo of the Baltimore Harbor and it was taken by Benjamin Jancewicz. Really nice!

It's always an adventure to reach into the roll bin. No hands, please! Or tongues.

Around the corner from one of our local library branches stands a house where I think the guy who built it ordered too much concrete and brick, but rather than let it go to waste, he turned the front yard into a huge Italianate wall with small moats and flying dolphins. 

We can do this IF we ever get any snow around here this winter! Come on, man!

"Just gotta run into Target for a coupla things, honey; be right home!"

Just about every American grocery store has their "English" section, several shelves at the end of the tuna aisle featuring imported Heinz beans, HP sauce, digestive biscuits, and I don't know what-all else. I wonder if English grocers stock an "American" aisle with Cheez Doodles, Quaker Oats, Bachman Pretzel Stix, and TastyKakes?

"He ain't heavy, he's my brother." Ireland, 1975.

Support for the troops

Since the days of my childhood (1951 - present) one of my favorite Christmas gifts has been an almanac or two.  You can choose among The Farmer's Almanac, The Old Farmer's Almanac, The Hagerstown Almanac and others. They all have pretty much the same content: astrological data so you can plan on what time the sun up will go up and come down every day, crazy weather prognostications written far in advance ("January 16: partly cloudy, chance of rain or snow, highs 30s") (that's the forecast for every winter day in Baltimore!), gardening tips, advice on when to plant the corn and when to fish for the fish, home maintenance tips ("Store your shovel face down in a bucket of soil to keep it from rusting") and the occasional feature article on odd topics, which I devour like Hoss Cartwright on a T-bone.

And so now I can share with you this: Carrier pigeons, or homing pigeons, really did a lot of good getting messages from point A to point B during World War II, which actually was the peak of carrier pigeon use (we have cell phones now to get us our messages). 

Those birds were amazingly reliable at toting messages, medicines, even tiny cameras. More than 95% of their missions had successful outcomes (attention, USPS!) The US trained 56,000 carrier pigeons for World War II.

The way it worked, the birds were carried strapped to the chest of paratroopers, and when the paratroopers landed behind enemy lines, they released the pigeons to fly off on their important messages. The birds were outfitted in special pigeon vests, special protective garments made to protect carrier pigeons as they parachuted through the air strapped to the chest of paratroopers during World War II. Once the paratroopers hit the ground behind enemy lines, they would release the pigeons so they could fly off to deliver important messages.

And here's the kicker: those pigeon vests were made - 28,500 of them - by Maidenform, makers of the famous brassieres.

By 1963, Maidenform was back to selling
their foundation garments, including this
one showing a ill-equipped firefighter.

Maidenform had suspended bra manufacturing to concentrate on making parachutes for the war effort, and that was just another sacrifice made by Americans on the homefront. Some things might have sagged, but not our national spirit! And the pigeons were uplifted on their missions on regulation Maidenform gear.

 

 In all, 32 pigeons were awarded medals for their service in the war effort; one of the most famous among them was a bird named G.I. Joe, who carried a message ordering the cancellation of a bombing mission, which saved the lives of around a thousand Allied troops.

The world is full of fun facts!

 

Buyer's choice

We tend to buy and enjoy the same things over and over, and then one day, when we can no longer buy them, it's sad news. 

F'rinstance, our cats enjoyed doing their royal business on a fresh layer of Yesterday's News, which was recycled newspaper in little pellets. It made the perfect poop-and-pee base, and I'm sure that lots of people saw the delightful irony of cat waste being mixed with last week's New York Times. We used to buy it in huge sacks, which the Amazon guy really seemed not to enjoy lugging up to the porch, and maybe he was the one who talked the manufacturer, Purina, into discontinuing the product.  

But we found a similar product for less money, and Eddie, now that she is an only cat, seems not to notice the change in her toilet ritual. 

Now for another problem: there will be no more Stoned Wheat Thins. It was always the best cracker, and now it's been discontinued, and it's even hard to say whose fault this is. According to SLATE online, "The cracker was produced by Red Oval Farms, which is a brand name of Mondelēz International Inc., which itself is a rebranding of Kraft Foods’ 'global snacking business.' ”

I mean, really. 

I loved STWs in all their forms: regular, low sodium, and mini. All went well with  a nice hunk of cheese or salami, with maybe an olive or an anchovy flying up top like a banner. 

Perhaps the problem with Stoned Wheat Thins was the confusion with the inferior Wheat Thins, the stamp-sized wafers with a curiously salty taste. The real STWs did not bring their own flavor to the party; they relied upon you to slam meat or cheese on them, or plunge them headlong into some dip or pimento cheese spread.

As store shelves grew increasingly bereft of our favorite cracker, some turned to Amazon and found they were asked to pay $25 for two boxes, and who am I to pay for crackers like that? I'm not J. Paul Spaghetti, you know. And Amazon now has placed SWTs on their "currently unavailable" list, which is their way of saying, Go to Trader Joe's and see what he has.

Anything but Wheat Thins or the Nabisco alternate, Wheatsworth, with always seemed like a regular Saltine with a touch of rough flour thrown in.

I don't know, you find something you can count on, and poof! It's gone. I wish I could be as flexible as Eddie about these things.

New beginnings

Maryland will be swearing in a new governor today, a man named Wes Moore, who now becomes Maryland’s first black governor and just the third elected black governor in our nation's history.

Mr. Moore will take the oath, swearing to show "true allegiance to the State of Maryland and uphold its constitution and laws,” while holding a Bible that once belonged to Frederick Douglass. Douglass, born in Maryland into slavery, escaped that wretched existence and became an abolitionist leader.

New Governor Moore says he is a disciple of Douglass and so he prevailed upon the National Park Service to arrange to borrow the Bible for the ceremony. 

“I’m not just an admirer, I’m someone who is a true connoisseur of his life, his teachings and his writings,” Moore said upon finding that his request was granted. “And I was wondering what he would think of that moment, especially his life, his sacrifice, his frustrations.”

The old Bible was given to Douglass in 1889 by the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church of Washington. It is part of the collection at the  Frederick Douglass National Historic Site. The new First Lady of Maryland, Dawn Moore, will hold the bible in a protective case. Only Mr. Moore's hand will touch the sacred book.

The Douglass Bible

Even though he began his life journey as an enslaved person, Douglass never lost his love for Maryland. He escaped and headed north to freedom in 1838, not returning until a new Maryland Constitution finally banned slavery in 1864. 

Frederick Douglass was born in Talbot County on Maryland's Eastern Shore in 1818 and passed away in 1895. 

In the early days of his single term as president of the US, Donald Trump offered proof of the depth of his understanding of the history of the country he swore to serve and protect, saying this at a Black History Month event in 2017:

“I am very proud now that we have a museum on the National Mall where people can learn about Reverend King, so many other things, Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is getting recognized more and more, I notice. Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, and millions more black Americans who made America what it is today. Big impact.”

For the record, Frederick Douglass was not alive at the time, nor had he been for many years. 

On that visit, Trump asked that the National Museum of African American History and Culture be closed to visitors during his time there, but museum staff did not find it appropriate to shut out the public on that day, which happened to be Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Day. “The notion that we could shut out visitors on the first King holiday since the opening of the museum was not something I could accept,” said Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch.

During his visit to the museum, Trump paused in front of a mural depicting the role of Dutch people in the slave trade, remarking, "They love me in the Netherlands."

"Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past." - Isaiah 43:18 

  

Sailing, sailing

Last March 13, the great big container ship we ironically called the "Ever Forward" stopped moving forward, backward or sideways in any direction in our Chesapeake Bay. There were 5,000 shipping containers aboard for a trip from Baltimore to Norfolk when it literally ground to a halt in the Craighill Channel shipping lane. 

This caused many a problem. Other ships had to sidestep the floating wreck, people's shipments were delayed, and the State of Maryland has sent a bill to the vessel's owners, the Taiwanese shipping company Evergreen Marine, asking for $676,200 to pay for restoring oyster bars which were damaged following the grounding of Ever Forward.

(Side note: an oyster bar is not a saloon where people guzzle beer and slurp oysters, but, rather, a bay bottom where watermen bring up the bivalves right out of the water.)

So now comes the U.S. Coast Guard to issue their findings about the whole mess, and they say the Ever Forward got stuck in the bay because its pilot wasn't paying attention.  As you'll recall, it took over a month to dig out the EF and send it back to Annapolis.

In the same government-ese that once changed the term "fireman falling off a moving fire engine" to "involuntary dismount," they label the fact that someone was not paying attention as the behemoth ship cruised down the bay as "inadequate bridge resource management."

The Coast Guard says the pilot of the craft was making phone calls, sending texts, and writing emails on a cell phone instead of noticing that the ship was not where it was supposed to be. He or she was using the marine version of AutoPilot, something called the Portable Pilot Unit (PPU), to navigate the ship. There came a time when the ship was supposed to turn in a certain direction, but ooooops.

The Coast Guard wisely points out that ships "could prevent any similar problems by clearly defining when crew members are allowed to use their cell phones."

Aye aye, Skipper!

 

The Rev. Dr. King

  “With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.” - Dr Martin Luther King, Jr

Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. was a preacher in from Atlanta, serving as minister of a Baptist church in Montgomery, Ala. It's hard to believe, but this occurred in America some sixty years ago: Black citizens were required to ride in the back of the municipal buses (they did pay the same fare as all others), and were not allowed to shop in certain stores, dine at some restaurants, or even use public toilets or water fountains. Or Vote. 

Inspired by the resistance of a hard-working seamstress named Rosa Parks, who refused to give up her bus seat to a white man and move to the back of the bus, Dr King led a boycott of those buses.  It took almost two years, but in the end, the buses in Montgomery were desegregated, open to all.  

Today, we pause from the day-to-day to honor a man who had the courage to lead the nation away from the awful practices of legal racial prejudice and discrimination.

 He went on to lead the fight to allow all citizens to vote.  Again, I am writing this for the benefit of the young, who might find it hard to believe there was a time and place in this country when a man or woman of legal voting age could be denied the right to vote because of the color of their skin.

There was an interesting article in the Washington POST the other day about the Dr King Memorial in Washington.  National Park Service guide John W. McCaskill, stationed there, encounters all sorts of visitors to the monument.  Some are just learning about the fight for civil rights in the US, and some are people who were there on the front lines of the fight - literally.

One day, he met Rev. C.T. Vivian.  In 1965, Rev. Vivian was on the steps of the Birmingham municipal building, trying to register new voters. And a violent sheriff, one Jim Clark, stood in their way and said they could not register.  

Vivian stood firm for the right to vote. Clark hit Vivian so hard that he broke his hand. As blood poured from his nose and mouth, Rev Vivian had the courage to say this to the news cameras recording this horror:  

   "We are willing to be beaten for democracy."

And that courage flowed from the heart of the man whom we honor today. 

Please remember that, the next time that voting seems an inconvenience, or kindness to persons of a different faith or background seems to be too much trouble. 

Sunday Rerun: Wrap It Up!

 People who buy first-aid kits for car and home are often surprised to find a Mylar blanket tucked away along with the bandages, ointments and disposable gloves. As we all know, the real name for Mylar is BoPET (Biaxially-oriented polyethylene terephthalate).

I feel silly for even mentioning that. I mean, we all call BoPET "Mylar," and vice versa. But anyhow, Mylar is a thin polyester film with amazing qualities of heat retention and liquid blocking, and they say that you can keep warm by wrapping yourself in a big ole sheet of it. And it's not very costly, so that's why you find it in that first-aid kit you got from KMart before they closed.

Ever notice that they use something like Mylar in potato chip bags? Same thinness, same heat-reflecting quality. And people who take an interest in protecting people experiencing homelessness have noted that an efficient sleeping bag for those without basic comforts can be fashioned from old chip bags!

Up in Detroit, Michigan, where it gets cold as Hell, Michigan, people have help from an environmental activist named Eradajere Oleita. Eradajere saw a video from England that showed an English woman homemaking sleep sacks: "The process is simple: collect bags, cut them open, iron them and then line with plastic."

25-year-old Ms Oleita took the idea and ran with it. She rounded up as many old snack sacks as she could find, asked online for more, and got to work.

The sleeping bags she makes comprise about 150 chip bags to make, but when they are complete, they last a long while, they're watertight and they weigh next to nothing.

Born in Nigeria,  Ms Oleita moved to Michigan as a high school sophomore. She's been a land and water works ambassador at Americorps the last four years. She seems to be on the those gifted individuals who spots a problem and does something about it.

"I want people to think about these things and for our products to come full circle. I have never been shy of humanitarian work because firstly I am ... a human."

I can only hope all her dreams come true. 

The Saturday Picture Show, January 14, 2023

 

This is the sunset view enjoyed by many in the Canton neighborhood in Baltimore at the waterfront park down there. 

There are two books I read as a teenager that I still re-read annually. One is "Catcher In The Rye" and the other took place largely at the home in Holcomb, Kansas, here pictured. This was the Clutter residence, site of the murders so perfectly written of in Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood," the first true crime story written as if it were fiction. The Clutters were murdered by a pair of worthless drifters in 1959, and the house is still occupied by another family. I re-read "In Cold Blood," not to see how it turns out, but to marvel at Capote's incomparable way with words, and also to wonder how there can be such pure evil in such a beautiful world. 

"A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than he loves himself"

 - Josh Billings

I'm happy to see Red and Kitty Forman from "That 70s Show" coming back to TV in the new "That 90s Show." Red always had a cool way of planning what to do with his foot.

Wooden eye be glad to use this as a wallpaper?

Sometimes I get to thinking about those days, the Camelot era in his 1000 days in the White House, his tragic loss, and how the national gloom of November was lifted in January by The Beatles. If you weren't there, there's no way to describe it fully.

When I worked at the A&P, they made a big deal of grinding coffee beans right in the store. I used to enjoy picking up a stray bean and enjoying it like a caffeinated Life Saver.

It's unbelievable, what happened in Brazil. A band of right wingers refused to accept that their candidate lost the presidential election, so they stormed government offices and laid waste to the property of others in their stupid rage. Thank God that could never happen here, no sir. 

Ice fog on a country road! Enchanting!

Anything can become art, in the right hands.

When You're Smiling

 We're not sure why they call them "Mummers" - those painted up, costumed up paraders who come out in Philadelphia around New Year's every year. Perhaps the name "mummer" comes from the ancient Greeks, who used to have Momus, the god of satire and mockery.

Or there's an Olde English word "mommer," which the Olde English used to talk about mimes wearing masks while frolicking around.

Whatever the derivation, the Mummers are a big thing in the City of Brotherly Love, strutting around playing a particular sort of music I happen to love - the music of the string band. It sounds like this - "Alabama Jubilee" by the Jos. A. Ferko String Band or "When You're Smiling" by the South Philadelphia String Band or the "Four Leaf Clover Medley" by the Quaker City String Band.

A string band is limited to these instruments: saxophones, banjos, accordions, violins, bass violins, and percussion instruments. And notice in the videos I linked, the people listening are happy, the bands are strutting and happy, and good times are in the air. You will not find the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra strutting their way through some lugubrious tunes like Danse Macabre in G Minor or the Peer Gynt Suite No. 1. 

And these musicians come from all parts of Philly and hold all sorts of "real" jobs...so the guy playing the sax next to a banjo player might be the guy who delivers hoagie rolls to WaWa, or he might just be a medical doctor.

In fact, on New Year's Day at the Philadelphia Eagles game, a Mummer all dressed up and painted up in pink and blue swaggered in a parade to the stadium before the game, and was in the stands with his bandmates when a fan suffered a medical emergency, causing him to turn blue in the stands.

Fortunately for the fan in distress, that particular Mummer was Dr Vincent Basile, M.D. who has been on the ER staff at Einstein Medical Center for three years. 

"I didn't really expect this to happen when I was at the Eagles game in a Mummers suit on the first day of the year," the multi-talented physician joked.  

"He's like blue in the face," Dr. Basile said. "He's not moving. He's not really breathing. Thankfully I have some great training, so it kind of kicked in at that point to help out," he added.  

"I'm in full face paint, sunglasses, costume, the whole nine," Dr. Basile said. "I have to convince everyone that I'm a doctor when I get up there because it's a little hard to believe when I'm wearing that suit."

A nurse came from the crowd to back him up doing CPR, and the patient came to after three minutes of CPR ("Color started coming back into his face a little bit," Dr. Basile said. "He starts breathing and he wakes up a little but and he's dazed and confused.") and then the doctor and the nurse went back to their seats and watched the game, later learning that the patient was still recovering in the hospital.

I wish the patient many happy years of being able to tell his friends, "You're not gonna BELIEVE who helped me!"