More than we know

At first, you see this story and you think it's about a person who should have had better sense, but then you read on, and it's far deeper.

The surface story is, a woman from New York state got her finger caught in one of those beehive holes in a grocery cart, and it took an hour and a 911 response to separate her and the cart.  

But there is more to Ashley Nolan, 38, of Johnson City, than someone who absent-mindedly fiddled with the cart as she browsed the aisles. She can't help the fidgering, because she suffers from anxiety, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

She says she does this sort of thing a lot (think of those fidget-spinners that were so popular a couple of years ago) due to her emotional condition, but this is the first time that she ever needed emergency services to get involved.

“I was shopping, and the next thing I knew, I was stuck,” Nolan, who is a school bus driver, told the news.

She called her friend Sarah, who was elsewhere in the same store, to be with her.

Here is a great reason to leave even the simplest of rescues to trained professionals: when the store employees tried to get her free, they cleverly used a pocketknife and wound up stabbing themselves and Nolan. That led to someone having the best idea, calling 911. 

Police and fire responders took a half an hour to get her freed, and then left with what I think is bad advice.

“We stood and spoke with the authorities, and they suggested my friend spray me with a water bottle to stop me from putting my fingers in holes. I thanked them, and they left,” Nolan said.

That's harsh, and I should think it would not meet with the approval of therapists, who would tell you that  these are common but serious neuropsychiatric disorders, one result of which can be restless feelings and uncontrolled impulsive behaviors.

Nolan says her ADHD and OCD lead her to touching and fidgeting with objects, for example. The goal is to control those urges before they lead to problems such as what happened in the supermarket.

What I take away from this is, nothing is as simple as the surface would lead us to think it is. 

 

Delayed Winning

Here's one of those thoughts that dash across our brainpan for just a fleeting second before being replaced by more important thoughts, like "what's for dinner?" and "what I am doing here?"...

They come on the news now and then and mention an unclaimed lottery prize and your check your pockets before wondering if the real winner will ever come forward.

Well, a man right here in Maryland won $50,004 on a Powerball drawing last November...and didn't know he won for four months!

The man is 74 and lives in Laurel, and he told Maryland Lottery officials that he plunked down a ten-spot for tickets at Modern Liquors in Temple Hills (near Hillcrest Heights!). For whatever reason, he mentioned that he usually buys his tickets next door to Modern Liquors, but did not mention what the usual store is. 

He matched four numbers and the Powerball on one line ($50,000!) and on another he matched one number and the Powerball on another line ($4 more!)

But not until this month - March - did he get around to checking his numbers.

I can't blame him. I have no idea how those lottery games work, and I was once the grand prize winner of $1 on a scratcher, so you'd think I would know. 

This fellow down in Laurel told the lottery people he had no idea what he was going to do with his 50 Gs, but you can share my hunch that it's donuts for everyone at the Senior Center every day this week!

Southbound

There is a fast way to get to Virginia and see Colonial Williamsburg, Busch Gardens, Jamestown, and all the great historic sites in Tidewater Virginia, and that would be taking superslab I-95 from Baltimore on down through DC and into the Commonwealth of VA.

You'll get there fast, but you'll sit through traffic jams at any hour of the day.

The other way is to meander on down Rte 301 through Southern Maryland, breezing through Upper Marlboro, LaPlata, Waldorf,  Delight, and Bel Alton.  All nice towns, and lots of places to stop for a bite to eat, and then you get back on the road and cross a 1.9 mile bridge over the Potomac River and you notice they start calling Rte 301 "James Madison Pkwy" and...you're in Virginia!

Next time you take that ride, you will be riding on a new bridge. Crews are currently dismantling the old Gov. Harry W. Nice Memorial/Sen. Thomas "Mac" Middleton Bridge, but don't worry, they built a new one and it opened last fall, and so far, it's working fine. 

Old bridge on the left, new one on the right

The old bridge, built in 1940, was only two lanes. The new one is four, with a concrete median to prevent head-on smashups. 

AND! the people in charge of these things are using the old bridge parts to create an artificial reef for the fish of the Potomac. It's good all around.

If you go this way, you will notice the two great industries of Virginia that have lured Marylanders south for all these years. Ham, and fireworks. Both are available for sale every five feet down there. And that's where you'll start to hear the delightful sunny Southern accent served up with your lunch.

Go try the new bridge and let me know how you like it! 

 

Barney Rubble

There's a great song by Jerry Lee Lewis called "Hell And Half Of Georgia," but lately it seems you have to go a little farther south to get there.

So here it is! FLORIDA MAN - the chairman of the school board of a charter school, a man named Barney Bishop III, forced the school's principal to resign last week after the parents of her sixth-graders complained that her Renaissance art syllabus was not appropriate for kids of that age.

As we all know, today, the parents - no matter their level of education or sophistication - are the deciding force in school curricula. Which is not to say that parents' voices should not be heard, but any sensible person would know to lend a bit more credence to career educators with experience and education over, say, a maleducated redhatter with little or no education and worldly wisdom.

This principal showed her class Michelangelo's "DAVID." Not surprisingly for a state that close to the equator, one parent called this classic sculpture "pornographic." 

Merriam-Webster defines pornography as "the depiction of acts in a sensational manner so as to arouse a quick intense emotional reaction." Friends, if seeing this statue arouses in you an intense emotional reaction, please consider counseling at once.

Bishop told Slate that that wasn't so much that kids who can go home and see hours of bacchanalian debauchery on their phones before dinner got to see a nekkid man, but that the teacher told the kids it was a nonpornographic picture they were seeing.

Note the wisdom in this statement from Bishop, a man who self-describes as a "serial entrepreneur": 

“Parents choose this school because they want a certain kind of education. We’re not gonna have courses from the College Board. We’re not gonna teach 1619 or CRT crap. I know they do all that up in Virginia. The rights of parents, that trumps the rights of kids. Teachers are the experts? Teachers have all the knowledge? Are you kidding me?”

They simply cannot refrain from saying "trump," even in lower case, and CRT, as if they know what it is. 

Hope Carrasquilla, the now-former principal of Tallahassee Classical School, said that one parent felt “point-blank upset” and that “her child should not be viewing” the 16th-century Renaissance sculpture showing David, the man made famous in the Old Testament’s Book of Samuel for KO-ing Goliath.

This school goes by the “classical education curriculum model” that Floridians seem to think is just great, and here's why they do: it's all about the “centrality of the Western tradition,” or what the Tampa Bay Times calls “a historical focus on white, Western European and Judeo-Christian foundations.”  

These are the kind of people who think their children should not learn to use Arabic numerals.

More from Bishop: 

“Showing the entire statue of David is appropriate at some age. We’re going to figure out when that is. And you don’t have to show the whole statue! Maybe to kindergartners we only show the head. You can appreciate that. You can show the hands, the arms, the muscles, the beautiful work Michelangelo did in marble, without showing the whole thing.”

The "whole thing." Paging Dr. Freud!

 

Finding Nemo and Garza

You have to hand it to some people; they are willing to move mountains to get to where they want to be.

Or dig their way out of prison "Shawshank-style" with a homemade tool made of an old toothbrush and a piece of metal.

And then, after all that work to get out of the IronBar Hilton and on the road to freedom, did they

a) keep high-tailing it until they were far, far away 

or 

b) stop for pancakes?

You know they had to have those flapjacks.  It was a week ago today that John Garza, 37, and Arley Nemo, 43, turned up missing from Newport News Jail Annex in Virginia at the regular 7 PM headcount.

Garza (left) and Nemo

Somehow these geniuses knew that within the prison walls were untied rebars, and that gave them the gap they needed to get out,  scale a high wall, and leave.

But instead of getting away like Andy DuFresne in the movie, our two heroes here stopped at an IHOP early on Tuesday, and other diners who saw the news bulletins about their getaway tipped the server with both a couple of dollars and the info on Garza and Nemo's current whereabouts.

“I’m thankful for the citizens who observed Garza and Nemo at the Ihop and notified law enforcement,” said the Newport News sheriff, Gabe Morgan. “It reinforces what we always say:  ‘See something, say something’.”

Something else we always say:  When you're hopping away from the law, don't IHOP in the same town.

And now that the Sheriff is aware that his retaining walls do not do a very good job of retaining criminals, he and his team are fixing things as fast as they can. "Until all weaknesses are identified and secured, we will not discuss the situation further for security reasons," his office said in a statement.

Garza was a guest of the county on charges including contempt of court, probation violations and failure to appear.

He appeared at IHOP, though!

Nemo was up on a laundry list of charges, including credit card fraud, credit card larceny, forgery, possession of burglary tools, grand larceny, contempt of court and probation violation, the sheriff’s office said. So, now that he's back, maybe he can work in the lockup laundry.

The sheriff will be adding escape charges for both men, as well. Maybe this time, they'll stay around.

Sunday Rerun (from 2018): My New Hero

 Don't get ahead of me here! My new hero is NOT the racist madman lawyer from New York who went off on a foul rant in a restaurant across the street from his Manhattan office, screaming hate because people had the audacity to speak Spanish in his royal presence.

"He heard us speak Spanish and started yelling, 'You mf---ers!' " said Oscar Villanueva, a Honduran immigrant and employee of Fresh Kitchen.

"He said we have to speak English," Villanueva went on. "He started saying a lot of ugly words . . . . We felt really bad, humiliated."

It won't be long before ALL of us have been exposed to this sort of nonsense. I was pushing my cart around the Food Warehouse one day as a young woman talked on her cell. I guess I need to add that she was holding her conversation in Spanish; that's the only way it will make sense when I tell you that a random unhinged harridan ankled up to her and croaked, "Speak English!"

To her everlasting credit, the young woman said, "I am speaking with a friend who does not speak English...if you don't mind..."

I then followed the old hag around the store and placed embarrassing items in her cart when she wasn't looking.

Anyhow, back in New York.  This guy really went bazoo, threatening to call ICE and questioning the citizenship of any and all speaking Spanish. Invoking the threat of deportation, he said the employees are all in "my country."

"My guess is they're not documented," lawyer Aaron Schlossberg bellowed. "So my next call is to ICE to have each one of them kicked out of my country. If they have the balls to come here and live off my money — I pay for their welfare, I pay for their ability to be here — the least they can do is speak English."

He went on to claim that he is better-educated than the employees, although he clearly was not referring to being taught manners or human decency.

Schlossberg is 42, a registered Republican and a donor to the 2016 presidential campaign 2016 donor of Donald J. Trump, another ill-bred New Yorker. 

You saw the rest on the news. The video of his nativistic nonsense "went viral" and exposed him as a loon, and soon he was asked to vacate the office he rented and was last seen being chased down by the relentless Gotham press.

Within a day, there were petitions calling for his disbarment and/or discipline by the state bar ass'n.

And then, because The Internet Is Forever, someone showed up with a video showing a cursing Schlossberg caterwauling at a rally last year protesting a Palestinian speaker in Manhattan.

But really, Schlossberg and people like him, cold sores upon the sweet smiling lips of humanity, can all just go kick rocks barefoot, because from the smoke and and tears of all their ineffable enormity rises a new hero.

Please stand and applaud a man named Mark Goldberg, who started one of those GoGimmeMoney pages and rounded up $800...to hire a mariachi band to play "La Cucaracha" "to cheer up the staff and attorneys at The Law Office of Aaron M. Schlossberg Esq. . . . after a difficult day."

Goldberg for President 2020!

The Saturday Picture Show, March 25, 2023

 

It's hardly fair when the proverbial needle in the haystack is this big...

Yes, by golly, spring is here at last. Make of it what you will, and I will go sweep the dust off my unused snow shovel and wait for next year...

Hummingbirds make their nests to look just like themselves!

Pay no attention to this sign! They even weighed it down with sandbags.

This officer will have to go home and tell his wife he is sick and tired of dealing with these drunken clowns.

Edgar's plan to replace his taillights was going great until Helen needed to put the leftover succotash in the plastic containers she used to have.

Growing up, all families bought mercurochrome ("an organomercuric disodium salt compound used as a topical antiseptic") every time someone fell down and scraped their knee, or cut their finger, or whatever. If it bled, it got painted with mercurochrome, and it was the cool thing to also paint a red skull-and-crossbones "tattoo" above the abrasion. Then we found out the stuff is toxic, so no one is allowed to fall down or get cuts anymore. 

So call me surprised! I had no idea that sharpshooting circus star Annie Oakley was so pretty! Today, she would have her own reality show.

This is the only way to reply when a shipping company asks you to prove that you did not receive something they say they sent!

This is a multi-level Zen sort of statement about doors and door stoppers and packaging in general. It's similar to leaving an IKEA television stand unassembled in the box it came in, and just sitting the TV on top of the box.

I think they meant Formica

As it happens, the very day that I saw the second picture below was the very day I saw someone online refer (unironically) to former White House advisor Hope Hicks as "Hope Picks." 

The New Yorker says she has "smizing eyes" - the conflation of smiling and eyes.

I miss the old days when we didn't know how ill-conceived were most people's ideas of spelling and grammar. I mean, in 1956, if you heard from your friend, it was because they called you on the phone, or they were in the same car as you. Today, people HATE talking on the phone, so they text each other, and expose their maladroit use of The King's English.

That's why if someone gets all worked up about something, they are "ovary acting. " If they get an Italian dish of chicken with tomato sauce and cheese, they are enjoying "chicken permission." If they skipped the sauce and cheese and just had a chicken cooked on a spit that went around in circles, that's "roast history" chicken. Say they want crab or lobster..those are tasty "crushed Asians."

If the meal was good, they might step out and smoke a cigarette, enjoying that lift from the "nickel teen."And if they are kidnapped and then develop feelings for their captors, they are having "Stockholder syndrome." 

And they will tell you, that is "defiantly" a horrible thing, the worst thing ever, until I saw the photo below, the ultimate "Kung Fusion"...

It's About Time

We were down south driving, years ago, at the magical intersection where Georgia becomes Alabama, and the time zone changes from Eastern to Central. Without me telling it to do so, my phone changed its time display, rolling it back an hour and playing Roll Tide Roll as a welcoming song.  This magic, from a phone that can't stop taking calls from UNKNOWN CALLER and texts from deposed Nigerian princes. 

But it's vital to know where you are and what time it is where you are, and even though most of us don't even think about this, the moon needs its own time zone, or what Pietro Giordano of the European Space Agency calls "a common lunar reference time."

This is key for keeping astronauts and their family synched up. Imagine the confusion when someone calls home from the moon and gets no answer because their spouse is out picking up the kids from soccer practice.

So, late last year, so that we can all be on the same page, a meeting was held in the Netherlands so that participating nations could agree about what time it is on the moon.

 “A joint international effort is now being launched towards achieving this,” Giordano said in a statement.

"Launched."  Get it?

As of now, moon missions keep time by what time it is in their home country, but Europeans say that an internationally accepted lunar time zone would make it easy for everyone on Earth to set their watches to moon time.  

And as the International Space Station sails on and on, our NASA had to deal with the time piece and have the space station on Coordinated Universal Time, or UTC. That is a time system based on atomic clocks, which are even more dependable than Maytag washing machines. 

While I am happy that missions to the moon will have a time everyone can understand, I'm curious about this: linguistic sticklers insist on saying "Earth," and not "the Earth." But they say "the Moon," and not "Moon."

I think it's time we settle that.

Feline All Right?

How can you tell if your cat is feeling any pain? Used to be, you would wait to be nipped or snapped at or have its tail lash out at your legs, but now, guess what? There's an app for that!

Up in chilly Calgary, Alberta there is an animal health technology company called Sylvester.ai. Their new "Tably" app uses your cell camera to tell you if a cat is in any pain. 

Cat Scan

The app looks at the cat photo, and from the position of its ears and head, its degree of eye narrowing, muzzle tension, and whisker change, deduces how much distress the cat feels (if any).  And some periodical called Scientific Reports (I'll look for it on the newsstand, if I can find a newsstand) came up with the "Feline Grimace Scale" or FGS, calling in a "valid and reliable tool for acute pain assessment in cats."

Miche Priest of Sylvester.ai says, "It helps human cat owners know if their cat is in pain or not. We were able to train a machine using machine learning and a series of images."

And that sort of advance in science is just what a young veterinarian needs, says Dr. Liz Ruelle of the Wild Rose Cat Clinic in Calgary, whose algorithm developers developed the algorithm.

"I love working with cats, have always grown up with cats," Dr Ruelle says. "For other colleagues, new grads, who maybe have not had quite so much experience, it can be very daunting to know - is your patient painful?"

Sure, checking the cat's face is helpful, but Alice Potter from the RSPCA (the British animal charity similar to our ASPCA) said cat owners should look over Felix's entire body, including the tail.

"Cats that are worried or scared will hold that tail really tight and tense to them. And then aside from that, there's also just thinking about their behavior in terms of are they eating, drinking, toileting, sleeping like they usually do?"

We've only had cat(s) here for nine years, but I can tell you, if you are in tune with Ms Whiskers or Mr Paws, they will tell you what's up. You'll know.

And I have long posited that cats can understand every word that's being said to them. I've never had a cat tell me that was wrong!

What's orange and sounds like a parrot? A carrot.

I'm sure I told you before about my mid-80s lunchtime habit of going for a stroll around Towson, Maryland, my home town. In those days, it was actually possible to walk the streets of Towson without fearing loss of life from random gunfire, but such is not the case these days.

There was a lacrosse bar on the main street (York Rd - it takes you to York, PA!)  that had a caged parrot out by the sidewalk. Day after day, I walked up to the parrot and spent three or four minutes teaching him to denounce the current president, a former actor in bad movies who was badly playing the part of leader of the free world.  At the time, he was denying that the US had traded arms for hostages, only to come out later and admit that we had in fact traded arms for hostages, but people were unwilling to blame him because he came off like an unwitting addled fool when he explained his actions, much like a pixilated second cousin at Thanksgiving dinner.

I taught the parrot to chirp "Reagan lied! Reagan lied!" and the last time I saw him, he would still repeat it for me. 

I bring all this up because long-ago President Andrew Jackson - as coarse a man as ever lived at 1600 Pennsylvania Av until 2017 - had an African Grey parrot that he really loved. If "Old Hickory," a nickname given for his toughness, was away from the White House enjoying his usual pursuits, such as killing people in duels, buying slaves, engaging in barroom brawls, and building himself a mansion called The Hermitage, he would write to his family asking about "poor Poll's health."  Not "how are you doing?" but "how is my parrot?" Lovely man. He did beat a would-be assassin senseless, armed only with his walking stick, at the age of 67. 

Subtle re-creation

Jackson, our seventh president, died on June 8, 1945, and on June 10 his funeral was held, from which Poll had to be removed for cursing and swearing so long and so loudly that it was disturbing the attendees.

According to Reverend William Menefee Norment, who presided at Jackson’s funeral: 

“Before the sermon and while the crowd was gathering, a wicked parrot that was a household pet got excited and commenced swearing so loud and long as to disturb the people and had to be carried from the house.”

Rev. Norment goes on to say the presidential parrot was “excited by the multitude and … let loose perfect gusts of ‘cuss words.’” People were “horrified and awed at the bird’s lack of reverence.”

Sure, James Buchanan had two bald eagles, and Theodore Roosevelt kept a one-legged rooster. But nothing comes close to Poll The Parrot, owned by the man who had twelve spittoons installed in the White House.

That's another record that probably will not be broken.

 

Kitchen Wishin'

Foolish of me to wait until the last day of winter to share this, but it's something I stumbled upon and, I don't know, maybe I'm the last person on earth to realize this, and you've all been waiting for me to get with it, and now you can all say, "Finally!"

But it's winter until this afternoon, and still a bit chilly here in Baltimore, and that means even if you take nice hot food out of the oven or off the stovetop, if you "plate" it (one of those cool terms that people use instead of saying "plopping your steak on the dish") on a plate right out of the cupboard, that plate will be cold, and the food will get cold really quickly.

So what I've been doing is nuking the naked plates for 30 seconds just before I plop the chow on them. If it keeps the sausage and grits snug and warm, and keeps the toast toasty, it's all for the better.

So go ahead, now. If you've been doing this for years since you first got that behemoth Litton microwave in the 1970s (along with the 64-page "Microwave Magic" cookbook), welcome me to the Last-To-Know Club.

Should have used a BAG!

I love the microwave for popping popcorn in a little paper poke, reheating my tea if it cooled off while we worked the Wordle, and removing uncancelled stamps from letters received. Call me cheap, but postage sure isn't! 

Time Is Money

So many stories start off with the words "Florida Man," and that is so unfair to the Sunshine State of DeSantis. Let's be fair and start with something different...

Florida woman is suing the people who make Velveeta Shells & Cheese cups. She wants a big payout because the label says she can plan to ingest "small starch tubes combined with lactate extract of hooved mammals," as the Coneheads used to say when Saturday Night Live was still funny, in 3 1/2 minutes, and that's not happening for her.

Her name is Amanda Ramirez, she's from Hialeah, and she is listed as plaintiff in a $5 million class-action lawsuit filed against Kraft Heinz Foods Company in US District Court for the Southern District of Florida’s Miami Division.

I'll bet it takes longer than any three and a half minutes just to say all that in court!

In the suit, Ramirez and her crack legal team says the claim of taking '3 1/2 minutes' is false and misleading "because the product takes longer than the 3-and-a-half minutes to prepare for consumption.”

Do tell.

The suit details all four steps required to nuke the noodles as per the label instructions, and alleges that the 3 1/2 minutes is merely the length of time to complete one of several steps. In other words, that's how long you microwave it AFTER mixing in other ingredients listed in preceding steps.

Curiously, the suit does not mention how long it takes Ramirez to actually sit down and start sliding macaroni down her neck. 

The suit says this mac 'n' cheese is sold at a premium price - $10.99 for 8 cups - and says this is "higher" than other similar dinners “represented in a non-misleading way.”

Also, the suit says that Ramirez is just a woman looking to “stretch (her) money as far as possible when buying groceries,” and that she  “looks to bold statements of value when quickly selecting groceries.”

So naturally, Your Honor, she “believed and expected” she would be chowing down in a total of 3 1/2 minutes.

Responding to reporters' inquiries, the Kraft Heinz Company said,  “We are aware of this frivolous lawsuit and will strongly defend against the allegations in the complaint.”

As lawyers will say, I will not comment on the merits of this lawsuit. I am sure that $5 million is plenty enough to assuage her hurt feelings.

I will also tell Ms Ramirez that one does not need to buy this Velveeta noodle dish to get that good old home-style m 'n' c.  This link will take her (and you, should you wish) to a site that will show you how to nuke your noodles and cheese in your own mug, thereby saving $5 million over the years.

What's more, you can also save a bundle on microwave popcorn by getting a jar of Jiffy Time kernels and popping them in a folded-over brown paper lunch bag. 

Next week, let's talk about why "colonel" sounds like "kernel."

 

Sunday Rerun: The Youngest Medal Recipient

 When I was 12, it was a big deal that my parents would drop me off at the bus stop by the old courthouse in Towson on a Friday or Saturday night, and my buddy Bob and I would go to the Civic Center to see a hockey game, get a Giant, shake and fries afterwards at Gino's across the street, and come back to bucolic Towson around midnight.

And now, as evening lays its shawl across the shoulders of my life, as Johnny Cash once sang, I don't know if I would take a bus downtown again. For one thing, the city is not as safe as it used to be, and for another, we tend to be more intrepid at 12 than at whatever I am now.  Which is 68.

And even at my 12, I don't know that I could have done what Calvin Leon Graham did at his 12.

Calvin was 11, actually, when Pearl Harbor was attacked and the U.S. was plunged into World War II. His father was dead, and his mother had married a man who did not have time for or interest in young Calvin, so with a forged letter of permission, a faked notary stamp, and some time spent learning to make his voice sound deeper, Calvin dressed up in his older brother's clothes and joined the US Navy in August, 1942, after turning 12.

Following boot camp, he was assigned to a seaman's berth on the USS South Dakota as it  sailed from Pearl Harbor that October 16.  Ten days later, Graham found himself in the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands as a loader for a 40 mm anti-aircraft gun. In November the South Dakota was in the Battle of Guadalcanal. Graham was hit by shell fragments but still continued to help rescue others aboard the ship, which was hit by at least 42 missiles from 3 enemy ships.

The South Dakota and her crew were awarded two Navy Unit Commendations for their heroism, and young Graham was given the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart.

Severely damaged, the South Dakota returned to the East Coast under the name "Battleship X," which she was given to lead the enemy to think she was lost in battle. While in port, Graham got word that his grandmother had died, and he jumped ship to go to Texas for her funeral, was caught, and put in the brig for desertion, serving three months before his sister threatened to tell the story of his status to the newspapers.

He was stripped of his medals and dishonorably discharged in May, 1943.

The rest of his life was spent unhappily, it would seem. He joined the Marines (at age 17) but fell off a pier and broke his back, and had to fight for years to get VA medical benefits and a clean service record. Not until 1978 was he given an honorable discharge, and all his medals were restored to him save the Purple Heart by President Carter. In later years, he was given medical benefits, and his wife was given the Purple Heart in his memory two years after he died in 1992 from heart failure.

Graham later said that his biggest mistake was in admitting to the South Dakota's legal officer that he was, in fact, 12 years of age, a fact that hastened his dismissal from the service.

That officer was none other than R. Sargent Shriver, vice-presidential candidate in 1972, father of Maria Shriver, chairman of the board of Special Olympics, and the recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom himself.

I try to imagine any 12-year-old passing ammo in the middle of a naval battle, and I can't. I think Calvin Graham deserved better than fate brought him.

The Saturday Picture Show, March 18, 2023

 

So, how come Jack Nicholson was so skillful in swinging an axe in "The Shining"? Easy - we was trained as a firefighter in the Air Force!  He did weekend drills and two-week camp at the Fire unit based at the Van Nuys Airport. The prop people had made a door for this scene that was easily broken, but Jack made it look too simple. They had to bring in a regular door for the final scene. 

As Crack The Sky put it in "Long Nights", "You know this happens every day...people come and people go away..." Fate has a script all written for us. All we have to do is show up every day and play our part. 

 

I'm one of those who remembers the quieter people passing notes in class. I tended, then as now, to make my communications audible. But what's with this school Nancy and Sluggo attended? Looks like there were several hundred kids in the class.

It's not only the reactionary governor of Florida that makes me shy away from that state. More than DeSantis, it's the thought of living with creatures like this that keep me up north.

Were you expecting me to make a joke like saying this would be a great cover page for a high school yearbook called The Sands Of Time? I would!

The look on this mom's face - two screaming little peeps to feed, and this nest is a MESS!

Let's go, Brendan!

I once looked up from the rack of reduced books I was sifting through at Borders to find myself sharing space with Baltimore's own Sultan of Sleaze, The Baron of Bad Taste, the Lutherville Libertine, the great John Waters. No one represents Baltimore better, hon!

The Baltimore Kite Festival is next Saturday the 25th at Patterson Park, noon til 4 PM. Come on down, no strings attached. Hey. I mean...

It's either that Justin is deliberately fooling us, or he is not aware of the irony here. I'm going with "A" but it could be either. Now, here are The Vogues, with "Turn Around, Look At Me."

Happy St Patrick's Day (rerun from 2016)

Well, here we are again, March 17, St Patrick's Day.  Since I don't care for green beer or corned beef and cabbage, and I look like a lawn in green clothing, I thought I would spend the morning finding out just who Patrick was, and what he did.

Patrick (c. AD 385–461) is the foremost patron saint of Ireland.
Saint Patrick's Day has been an official religious holiday since the early 17th Century. By the way, I used to work with a woman from Ireland, and every March she recoiled in horror at the dissolute way in which Americans guzzle and gobble their way through what is, in Ireland, a very sacred religious holiday.

But that's none of my beeswax. The original point of celebrating Patrick's day was to commemorate the arrival of Christianity in Ireland and shed a light on Irish culture and the goodness of their people.  There are parades in many cities, and people wear green clothing and shamrock decorations. 

Patrick was born in Britain, in the days of the Roman occupation, and became a missionary in Ireland after being kidnapped as a teenager and taken in slavery to Gaelic Ireland.  He was a shepherd there for six years and had a dream in which God told him to flee to the coast, where he would find a ship to take him home.

He did get home and went a seminary, becoming a priest.  Later he returned to Ireland and, in his missionary work, led thousands of pagan druids to Christianity.

Remember hearing that "St Patrick drove all the snakes out of Ireland"?  Well, guess what?  Ireland never has had native snakes!

The legend was spun that he was in the middle of a 40-day fast and some snakes attacked him, so he chased them into the sea. What he chased away was the paganism, after all.

This legend was likely made up and spread by people who know nothing about snakes, because those of us familiar with slithering reptiles know doggone well they don't respond to being chased or even to being hollered at (no ears).

Scientists figure that it was the most recent Ice Age that froze the snakes out of Ireland.

But Patrick died on this day, March 17, 461, and is recognized for what he did do - bringing modern Christianity to a pagan land - as much as for what he didn't do - driving snakes away.  

Enjoy your day, have a good time, and be safe!

The Dentist Of The Year gets a little plaque

Lord help me, I know times have changed, and I'm not about to talk like someone from the Depression era about how when we had no food we ate old overcoats and we were GLAD to have them...but the quarter I used to get from the Tooth Fairy seems somewhat paltry now, when I look at what the kids are getting for a used bicuspid now. $7 dollars! What a nice bag of candy THAT would buy!

And, as they say, follow the money. Since 1998, Delta Dental has been running the Original Tooth Fairy Poll® as a way to see how much change the fairy has been doling out. And it turns out, if you follow the ebb and flow of parental generosity as regards lost choppers, you are also tracking the US economy, because for 17 of the past 21 years, the movement of the tooth money has followed the trend of the S&P 500.

(The 500 are the stock prices of 500 large firms that serve as a barometer of the US economy. S&P means Standard and Poor. I am certainly not Standard but I am certainly Poor.)

They make no claim that the tooth money and the stock prices are in any way connected, but it's interesting to see them track as they do:

  

One question the poll result does not answer is, why would anyone tell some stranger how much they shell out every time their kid sheds a Chiclet? Unless the kid in question had buck teeth, in which case it would be obvious: one dollar each!

 

Slice of Life

And now to add a thing to the list I call Things I Didn't Even Know Were Things...beetroot cake.

As we can surmise, beetroot is the taproot of beets, that portion  of beets that is in the ground, where it should stay. Beets are the vegetable known in North America as table beets, garden beets, red beets, or golden beets.

What they have to do with cake, I don't know. Cooks say that if you grate the root, it's quite sweet, and makes a nice cake.

Well, Betty Crocker is quite sweet, and she also makes a nice cake, and none of them looks like beets, the vegetable in the bowl that I pass by ten times out of ten.

But I came across this depressing fact about a boring vegetable being a cake ingredient while reading an article on Reuters that claims that Susan Jebb, head of Britain's Food Standards Agency (FSA), says that the practice of bringing cakes to an office to celebrate birthdays or workgroup accomplishments or the imminent departure of some unliked coworker (I have seen these!) is comparable to passive smoking.

But in the words of on English office worker, "I just don't think there's a real equivalence there. With cakes, it's up to you whether you eat it."

The belief is that having everyone in the office have a hunk o' cake is an American tradition, too. In many offices, maintaining the stash of plastic forks, paper plates, and plastic tablecovers is a sacred task, given only to the unofficial social supervisor.

Part of the debate in Jolly Olde England is, what's so wrong about a tiny piece of beetroot cake? It's a healthy choice! 

But Ms Jebb is quick to slice things another way, saying that office cake are "an example of a society that is promoting unhealthy food choices."

“If nobody brought in cakes into the office, I would not eat cakes in the day," Jebb told The Times newspaper. "But because people do bring cakes in, I eat them. Now, OK, I have made a choice, but people were making a choice to go into a smoky pub.”

So, let's sum up: if there is no cake to be had, she would not eat cake. 

In other news, if she had 98 more legs, she could be The Rockettes!

Ms Jebb went on to quote a report that said 25.9% of adults in England were obese and a further 37.9% were overweight, based on  a 2021 survey.

But surveys show that 100% of people facing their own imminent mortality would agree that another slice or two of cake is not such a big deal in the overall scheme of things.

"It helps build friendships. It creates a really lovely atmosphere," said British advertising strategist Bish Morgan. "As long as people are sensible and strike the right balance then yeah, I still think it's a lovely thing to do in the office."

If you're at work today and someone offers you a little slice of cake, go ahead and live it up. Milton would!

The Kids ARE Alright

I for one am tired of hearing people put high school and college-age people down. For my money, young people are just fine, and it's the adults of the world who are disappointments, like "pro-life" governors who also are big fans of child labor.

Owing to the fact that I am well into my dotage and still act like a member of a student government association or an exchange student from Mars, I look for stories that show young people in a good light, and I don't usually have to look far.

Take these three high school kids in Callisburg, Texas. They stepped up big to help out a struggling custodian.

Mr James, as he is known, retired from Callisburg High, and found himself unable to make his monthly bills, so he un-retired, and went back to work with the broom and mop in January.

The man is 80 years of age, and does not deserve to be scrubbing and waxing. So these three - two girls and a guy - set up a GoFundMe page on Feb. 15, to help the man out. 

“At first, the goal was $10,000 — and we know that $10,000 really isn’t anything these days — but we’re hoping that whatever we can get can give him a little bit more cushion,” senior Marti Yousko told local news station KTEN.

Mr James had confided in Principal Jason Hooper that his monthly rent had gone up almost $400, and he just couldn't afford it without going back to work.

 

The kids were sad to see that Mr James had had to come back to work, so soon after he had retired at the end of the last school year. In that situation, adults would have formed study groups and done surveys to find out how Mr James could stretch his money by shopping at ALDI and trying the day-old baked goods at ShopSumMor.

Kids, on the other hand, took a direct approach and said, let's do something for the man.

“When I saw him in the hall, it broke my heart,” senior Greyson Thurman said. “Nobody at that age should be working; they should be living the rest of their life, you know?”

Thurman posted a TikTok video of Mr. James on the job while he should have been home on the recliner. He labeled the video "Let's help Mr. James out!" adding, "My classmates and I hate seeing Mr. James here, no one his age should have to be cleaning our messes up to continue to live."

In one week, the GFM page brought in $279,905, and Thurman said, "He is VERY appreciative of everyone willing to give up their time to help him out and change his life. You all have shown what can happen when everyone gets together to help others!!! I think God did this to show that no matter how much evil there is good will always show it’s self! Mr. James thanks you all!! God bless yall!" 

And the adults would have been planning a bake sale and car wash for late in July.

Oscar Buzz

I have no interest in motion picture awards, but I see there was a bit of chatter online last night because a photographer took a tumble as Lady Gaga breezed past him on the "champagne carpet" (I guess they didn't want any more red, after last year's fisticuffs) at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.

So the guy falls, for whatever reason, and the next thing you know, Gaga scoots over to help him get up.

As only "Entertainment Weekly" could write the story, she did so, "shimmying past others in her elegant Versace gown."

It's a sad day in our life, when one person helps another human being get up off the floor.  That is basic human decency. If I ever took a nosedive in the produce aisle, I would only hope that someone would lend a hand, getting an old man upright again.

Someone shared this video of what happened; you can hear some onlooker correctly saying that it was very nice of her to help. Then Lady G kept right on walking into the ceremony.

She is no stranger to the Oscar stage, having won in 2019 for co-writing "Shallow," from the A Star Is Born soundtrack. She was headed to the show last night to sing "Hold My Hand," her nominated song from Top Gun: Maverick. 

It seems like only yesterday, but it was in 2010 at the MTV Awards show that the singer, born Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, wore a dress made of beef.

In all seriousness, it's really great that she is so humble and down-to-earth as to help a person out. The sad thing is that most people, let alone most rich and famous entertainers, would not have. 

Let's give the Lady a hand!