Doggie Degree

I think it's safe to say that our animal friends do more for us than we do for them, and they don't even have good cable or WiFi service in most cases.

So when we have the chance to pat a furry friend on the back, we should take it! 

We take you now to South Orange, New Jersey, just 14 miles from New York City, where a young lady named Grace Mariani was graduated the other from Seton Hall University, and as he has been all along, her service dog, Justin, was there at her side.

School President President Joseph Nyre, handing out the sheepskins, awarded Ms Mariani her B.S. in education, magna cum laude.

And then! The crowd came alive when Nyre handed a diploma right to Justin's maw. The doggie diploma was in a white cylinder and Justin happily glanced at Ms Mariani as he clamped on it (but not too hard.)

He wagged his tail and his human smiled really widely as they left the stage together. The crowd cheered, and some of them were said to have barked.

Justin is 6 years old, a mix of yellow Lab and golden retriever, and unlike most of the other graduates of Seton Hall, he did not skip a single class for the entire four years.

Ms Mariani is from Mahwah, NJ, and will work in elementary and special education.

I know who's going to be right there in the classroom with her! Good boy!

Walk a mile in her shoes

Among the cultural references I never got until someone put me wise was this "Horse of a different color" piece from the "Wizard Of Oz" movie. I didn't pay much attention to the film when I was a kid because it made no sense to me that a girl could be knocked unconscious and then start dreaming in color. In a world where there are countless billions of facts worth learning, I never saw fiction as a good use of filling my three available brain cells. 

I knew that lions and tigers and bears could not coexist, though.

So now I read that an "elderly" (76) (!!!!) man has been charged with stealing one of the four pairs of red sequined shoes that Judy Garland wore in the picture.

In Grand Rapids, Minnesota (not to be confused with Grand Rapids, Michigan) there is a Judy Garland Museum. It costs $12 to go through the place and see the memorabilia, but if you click your heels together really fast they will let you in for 1/2 price. 

Up until 2005, the museum was able to boast of displaying one of those four pairs of slippers, but they were ripped off that year.

And in spite of many people claiming that the shoes just up and walked away down some yellow brick road, they were taken by a human, and the US Justice Department is charging one Terry Martin with being that human.

In one of those stings that the FBI is so famous for, they recovered the shoes in 2018, and it took until now to nab the guy they say is the crook. The charge against Martin is one count of theft of major artwork.

The Justice Department offered no further details about this Martin, and they are not saying how he came to be suspected of shattering a glass case in which the shoes were displayed. It was the Minneapolis Star-Tribune newspaper that reported that Martin lives 12 miles from the Garland museum, and that he offered the following quote when they called him: "Gotta go on trial. I don’t want to talk to you."

The Justice Department certainly has many shortcomings, but they are all over these red shoes, which they describe as being "widely viewed as among the most recognizable memorabilia in American film history."

Grand Rapids Police Chief Scott Johnson, no average gumshoe, helped bring the heel to justice. He said of these magic shoes, "They're more than just a pair of shoes. They're an enduring symbol of the power of belief."

I guess I believe him.

Memorial Day 2023

 

Please remember, the purpose of this holiday is to honor those who died in combat. 

Sunday Rerun: Ask Anything

 Hey Mom.....?

Mom, what's this?


Mom, are you there? I wonder what would happen if I put cheese in the microwave for 10 minutes...?


A British survey has shown something that every mother in the world knows. Mothers are THE most quizzed people, and on a veritable panoply of topics.

Mothers of three-year-old girls will be chilled to learn that girls aged four ask an amazing 390 questions per day. That's one question for every 1 minute and 56 seconds they're awake.

82% of kids go to dear old Mom first with a question, although only 24% of them will admit to the obvious reason: their fathers would just say, "Go ask your mother."

Four of the leading questions in England, and probably here, as well, are:

• "Why is water wet?"
• "What are shadows made of?"
• "Why do we have to go to school?"
• "Why are you so old?"

Assuming the kids don't ask any of these four again, they will still find a way to say 105,120 sentences that end in question marks per year.

And, if four-year-old girls ask the most questions, nine-year-old boys ask the fewest. 

As someone who once was a nine-year-old boy, the reason for that is simple.  They already know everything.

The survey showed that 82 % of moms admit they can't answer everything, and 90% admit to Googling the answers, leaving 8% of mothers standing in the kitchen with a PB&J on a plate and a perplexed look on their face.

And as far as this "why is water wet" question, I wanted to help the young moms in my life, so I asked the good people at the Univ of Southern California, Santa Barbara.  Their learned scientists were good enough to hop off their surfboards for a minute and say this:

"Being a liquid, water is not itself wet, but can make other solid materials wet."

Water is not wet. I'm sorry I asked.

The Saturday Picture Show, May 27, 2023

 

You don't expect to see the chairperson of Ford driving around in a Camaro. Pepsi drivers can be fired if they are seen drinking Coke. So why is the floor at the robot vacuum store being cleaned with a Swiffer?

I'll bet this snow leopard doesn't enjoy dental work any more than we do, but he got his tail in that chair, don't you know!

For your climbing pleasure: Jacob’s Ladder in St. Helena is 699 steps. This is the most English sentence I will ever write: This is a main route to Kinder Scout in the Derbyshire Peak District; it's on the Pennine Way just beyond the small hamlet of Upper Booth, close to Edale. 

Today's Free Wallpaper looks out on a hydrated world.

Lots of weeds are prettier than lots of flowers.

These new pictures of the Titanic are really...titanic.

Pal's Diner in downtown Baltimore offered a decent meal for a fair price in 1930.

I am certain that the people on the Sign Squad at the Homeowners' Association have no idea why you and I are laughing right now.

My library card expires in 2105. I will not be around to get it renewed, but whoever does can eat this energy bar, or save it for another 930 years.

Hellmann's Mayonnaise (pronounced MAY-o-nnaise, not "Manaise") is now available in the convenient lifetime supply tub at all leading groceries.

Don't Overdue It

Funny. We were just talking about overdue library books here the other day, and now comes this story from Northern California about a really REALLY overdue book finally coming home.

Chris Kreiden, the director of the Saint Helena library, says, "I’m afraid to touch it, but I can show it to you. Let’s see. Oops, it's falling apart so it doesn't have a spine anymore.” 

Of course it's falling apart! You will be too, when you reach 141 years of age. 

This tome is entitled “A History of the United States,” by Benson Lossing, and it was published in 1892, and found a safe home at the Saint Helena Library until...

"All of us are just, you know, wondering where the book could have been for so long, you know, from being checked out in 1927,” Kreiden said. “And actually, none of us have seen a library book that was checked out in 1892 or anything else. And to have it be from this library from that far back is really incredible."

A history book from the 1800s, checked out in the 1900s, returned in the 2000s! Now that's history, doggone it, or whatever they said in 1927.

A mysterious man (isn't it always?) sidled into the library the other day, and returned the book "with little explanation," according to the staff.

I mean, if someone asked you what you had been doing during the Great Depression, World War II, the Korean and Viet Nam wars, and man's exploration of space, what would you say?

That man's explanation is also overdue.

 

Soggy

Someday, you'll recognize the name "Joseph Dituri" as being that of the researcher who broke the world record for...living underwater.

Dituri has been down at the bottom of a 30-ft deep lagoon in Key Largo, Florida, in a lodge that does not use depressurisation.

He plans to remain there for at least 100 days. The count right now is 80-some days.

"The curiosity for discovery has led me here," he says. "My goal from day one has been to inspire generations to come, interview scientists who study life undersea and learn how the human body functions in extreme environments," he went on.

Two professors hung out in the same undersea "lodge" for 73 days in 2014, but Dituri is looking at 73 in the rearview mirror, if there is one.

This "lodge" - named the Verne Lodge, after Jules Verne, author of science-fiction classic "20,000 Leagues Under The Sea" -  does not adjust for the increased underwater pressure.This does not help us understand why someone would want to be down there, but whatever.

Professor Dituri,55, is running a study called Project Neptune 100 to find out how a human's body reacts to that sort of underwater extreme pressure. When he finally surfaces and towels off, medical doctors will evaluate his physical state and the psychological of being isolated and confined for a long time.

But it's not like he's down there watching "The Blue Lagoon" on cable or anything...he is still teaching his biomedical engineering classes online for the University of South Florida.

And it's not like he is being deprived of earthly pleasures! He gets out of bed at 0500 and exercises, and loads up on proteins (eggs, salmon, etc) that he prepares in a microwave oven.

And he knows what he misses about Life On Earth: The Sun. "The thing that I miss the most about being on the surface is literally the sun," he told the Associated Press.

He should really slather on the SPF when he gets to the beach. After all this time, he's probably a little pasty.

 

Hey Mister!

I don't read The Wall Street Journal and I don't think I would wrap fish in it, either, but I have to give them this credit: Their editor-in-chief, Emma Tucker, is changing the way they write about people. Ms Tucker said the bible of capitalism is "dropping the routine use of honorifics, or courtesy titles.” 

That means they will no longer preface someone's name with titles such as Mr. or Ms. in news stories. After the first time they name someone who just embezzled 35 million dollars from a widow-and-orphans trust fund, just their surname will do.

Tucker (notice, I stopped calling her "Ms") says, “The Journal has been one of the few news organizations to continue to use the titles, under our long-held belief that Mr., Ms. and so forth help us maintain a polite tone. However, the trend among almost all newspapers and magazines has been to go without, as editors have concluded that the titles in news articles are becoming a vestige of a more-formal past, and that the flood of Mr., Ms., Mx. or Mrs. in sentences can slow down readers’ enjoyment of our writing.”

And what's more, "Dropping courtesy titles is more in line with the way people communicate their identities. It puts everyone on a more-equal footing.”

Here's Tucker, headed to work with cellphone, lunch, topcoat, and coffee.

Most newspapers and news organizations in general, such as The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today and The Associated Press, do not use those titles.

The New York Times will continue to use Mr Ms Mrs Mx for news stories, but not for sports stories, which will make it possible to read on page C-1 that a certain wide receiver named "O'Hoolahan" caught four touchdown passes on Sunday, and then on the front page that "Mr. O'Hoolahan" was charged with four counts of handgun possession and aggravated battery that same Sunday. 

Thank you, Ms Tucker.  I mean, Emma.

 

Shoe fly

I like to read the "Asking Amy" advice column in the paper. Anyone who can get people writing to them to ask what to do when their son-in-law borrowed $3700 and now claims it was a gift, or how to handle the sticky situation of guests who will talk the legs off all your chairs and won't go home has my total respect!

The other day in her blog, she mentioned the great "Shoes on or shoes off" debate. 

Amy is a "shoes on" woman. She says she is not all that fastidious about cooties in the house ("I have middling standards when it comes to cleanliness") and she grew up in farm country, where she would pull a carrot out of the ground or pluck an apple off the tree, and eat them without more than a quick wipe on her jeans.

Plus, she lives way way up in New York State, where it's often cold, and shoes are good for keeping the feet warm.

She said to Mo Rocca on CBS Sunday Morning, “If Erin Brokovich (sic) comes to my house and says I have dioxin on my shoes, I’ll take them off — otherwise … I’m good.”

On the other foot, I was raised in a house where the woman in charge waged a relentless battle against grit and grime and dust and dirt. The wooden floors were polished to a gleam like that of a fresh Baldwin apple; the carpets were shampooed with clocklike regularity. Shoes were taken off wherever one entered that house, and woe betide he who tried to slip back into his bedroom for a forgotten textbook (laughter) or pack of Kools and left a mark anywhere.

Maybe that's why they named me Mark!

So, all these decades later, I kick off my kicks in the garage and I could no more wear shoes in the house than I could walk down Belair Road without any pants on.

I was going to say "walk through the mall," but there is no one in the mall to see me pantsless, so what's the diff? 

 

Sherlock's New Part

However cool I thought Jonny Lee Miller was for being so great as Sherlock in "Elementary," that just went up at least a billion times with the news last week that the British-born actor is now doing the most American thing ever:

He's a volunteer firefighter! And when you are one, you are one forever!

From his Instagram:

Today I qualified as a Firefighter 1 after a 5 month course at Suffolk County Fire Academy. Huge thank you to all the instructors, but especially Chief Sicilian, who took great care of class 2, and never got mad at us (externally). Can’t wait to serve the community I love on Fire Island NY.

Miller, 50, also starred in "The Crown" and "Trainspotting," and no one is saying he is giving up acting, but he will respond to calls with the Ocean Bay Park Fire District on Fire Island, Suffolk County, New York.

 

He's in the picture somewhere!

Jonny started the training program five months ago and now he has qualified to serve. He announced this last winter when he posted this picture of his gear, all ready to go, the night before his first class session.

The Suffolk County Fire Academy instructs teaches volunteer firefighters, career firefighters and emergency responders.

Miller graduated from Firefighter 1 training, described as an "initial entry program for firefighting personnel, introducing concepts, practices and techniques necessary for success within the fire service."

He had to complete hands-on performance evaluations covering emergencies, tools, search, victim and firefighter removal, ladders, hose handling, fire behavior and vehicle operations, with a practical exam and written test.

I mention all this to say that this isn't one of those Hollywood deals where an actor is handed a crisp new uniform, poses for some "action" photos, and that's the end of that.

Having passed all those steps, Miller is now taking his role in the noble avocation of volunteering to help in fire and emergency medical operations. I wish him success and the proud, happy feeling one gets from such pursuits.

Sunday Rerun: I don't like dreamin'

Sunday morning at 2:38 AM (but who's counting?) I was awakened from a hitherto wonderful sleep by a nightmare.  

Forces beyond my control force-fed to my thumpin' and mumpin'  brain images of deer, wolves and other wild four-leggers, injured, wounded and charging at me with hooves flying and manes tossing and growling and howling going on.  The scene of this nightmare was my grandparents' house, not too far from where I work now, but a house I have not visited for over thirty years, what with my grandparents both being gone.  Somehow I drove a car into their back yard, having been sent there to check on the animals, and this dreadful scene unreeled before my sleeping eyes. 

Now, I'm not much of a dreamer, and hardly a night has ever gone by that found me involved in a nightmare, unless you'd apply the term to that dream in which Sarah Palin shoots me with a deer rifle, drags me to her shed and spreads an unpleasant ointment on my forearms. I guess I dream, like everyone else, but I don't seem to remember any of them when I wake up, and as I have told Peggy a thousand times, nothing I say between 11 PM and 5 AM is to be taken as anything but the ramblings of a sleepyhead. 

I used to follow a blog called Pepperoni Dreams but it disappeared, and now that name has been taken over by a guy who chronicles his hegira across Charlotte, NC, looking for that town's best slice o' pizza.  The old blog by that name was written by a group of people who would deliberately gulp down spicy pizza right before bed or nap and then wake up to write about the disturbing images that danced across their somnolent brainpan.  Some PRETTY weird stuff went on there, I tell you.  

And by the way, the dinner before the crazy animal dream was stuffed shrimp and salmon, and the only spice on that was lemon, so who knows?  And I had eaten seven hours before hitting the old sackaroo.

Peggy is fond of dream interpretation.  I think that ranks up there with horoscopes as an example of science gone horribly awry.  My problem with astrology centers around my sharing a birthday with boxer Mike Tyson, jazz bassist Stanley Clarke, tv hostess Nancy Dussault and swimmer Michael Phelps.  How can my fate be tied to any of theirs just because we share a birthday?  And we are all Cancer the Crabs - moonchildren - supposedly crusty outside and warm and soft inside.  Uh, yeah.

Peggy has dozens of books and pamphlets that interpret dreams while you wait.  So she'll come down and say, "I dreamed I was driving a Pontiac" and look it up in the book, to be told that "driving" means you want to go somewhere and "Pontiac" means you are so desperate to go that you will drive a Pontiac to get there. 

I don't understand.

Maybe I should look that up!

The Saturday Picture Show, May 20, 2023

This is sure to engender a discussion. These polite people with the British spelling of "neighbor" are actually asking their carnivorous neighbors to save them from the fragrance of steaks on the grill. I appreciate their right to be vegan and I appreciate the "neighbour's" right to slap a tenderloin on the fire. The old Solomonic wisdom of "your right to swing your arm ends where my nose begins" might not perfectly apply here, because the delicious aroma of a burger doesn't stop at the tip of the nose, but enters the olfactory factory and remains for a moment. If I were the complainant here, I would try placing a small fan, blowing out, at the window. 

 Here is a 1000 year old chicken egg found in Israel in a cesspit in the ancient city of Yavneh. How you gonna like it? Poached, over easy, scrambled...?

There used to be hundreds of them before they were subsumed by the behemoth Dunkin' machine. This is the last surviving Mister Donut. It's in Godfrey, Illinois. Once upon a time, in 1955, two brothers-in-law, Harry Winouker and Bill Rosenberg, quit being donut partners, each man going off on his own. Harry founded Mister Donut and Bill founded Dunkin Donuts. Their Thanksgivings must be fun.

All week, we have been hearing the meteorologists on TV saying that the haze in the air is from the wildfires in Northwest Canada, which belies my assumption that a Phish concert was taking place nearby. 

Why can't we all be as wise as the little kid who painted this!

A man spent $5,000 to build a she-shed for his wife, whose name would be Sheila if there were any sense of humor in the world.

As a kid, some of the best moments in my life where when the "S" burned out on the big "SHELL" sign on the building overlooking Towson Plaza, where there was a Kresge's store where I bought horehound cough drops. It's the little things.

This is an old Silver Owl Tetradrachm, minted between 440 and 404 BC in the Greek City State of Athens. I Googled "tetradrachm" and found out that one of them was equivalent to four drachmae, which will enable me to ask any Greek person if they can give me four drachmae for my tetradrachm.

"Sunrise, shine down a little love on the world today." - Eric Carmen

Hello to the oldest pair of jeans anyone can find! These Levi's are from 1879, and are just about broken in just right...

Today, the eyes of the sporting world will be on Baltimore's "Old Hilltop," the Pimlico Racetrack, where the hosses run and the alcohol flows. Post time! 
 

The government will help

One of the elements of the Inflation Reduction Act was that the Internal Revenue Service got $15 million to set up a direct filing program, and they are making moves toward just that!

By next January, a small group of taxpayers could take advantage of the fledgling system, which would allow American taxpayers to file their returns digitally and for free. The government is setting up software to save many people the hassle of sitting at their kitchen table with a pocket calculator, punching in their 1040 numbers, or going to "Taxes 'R' Us" and drinking lukewarm coffee in a plastic cup while a second-year accounting student whips up their return.

As we all know, the only thing better than having one federal agency work out a solution is having two agencies put their heads together for a solution. This program is being developed by the IRS and the U.S. Digital Service, the "White House’s technology consulting agency" of which I had never heard.

“There’s something very important about the fact that even beyond making it easy and beyond making it free, this is something you could do directly with your government,” said Gabriel Zucker, associate policy director for tax benefits at the advocacy group Code for America, which has constructed its own tax filing prototype.

There is already a group of companies that provide free e-filing for taxpayers below a certain income. It's called IRS Free File. 70% of us qualify for it; fewer than 3% of us use it.

 It's a taxing situation.

How Do You Like Them Onions?

I believe we all have that certain thing that we see very clearly, more than others. Some people can look at a color and tell you that it's a blend of orange and blue, with a touch of green thrown in. 

Some people can look at a shrub or a tree or a flower and identify it and tell you how to plant it or prune it or trim it. 

And some people can sip wine and tell you what sort of grapes got stomped on to make it, and what sort of "notes" it has.

My particular odd skill is that spelling or punctuation errors just leap off a printed page and make me yelp.

It does take all kinds. 

Take Ernst de Witte. He is a chef and a visual artist who went to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam last year to look at some of Vincent's works. He spied something wrong in an 1887 still life that Van G called "Red Cabbages and Onions."

Mr deWitte knew those were not onions in the painting! Without so much as a sniff test, he was able to say that those objects in the foreground were not onions at all, but, rather, garlic.

And as head chef of Restaurant Feu in Utrecht, Netherlands, he knows his onions! So he sent a message to the museum to tell them how wrong VVG was.

And the museum took it seriously!

De Witte also knew that in 1889, Van Gogh painted another masterpiece called "Still Life With a Plate Of Onions." The museum brought in a biologist and confirmed that "Red Cabbages and Onions" has been misnamed since it was first exhibited in 1928.

“It was a euphoric feeling, and also confirmation that I have a chef/painter’s view of things,” says de Witte. “There is a big cross pollination for me … The painting side of me helps me a lot with my color use and the composition of my dishes.”

The museum has officially changed the name of the painting, and de Witte whomped up a dish inspired by it, featuring "poached red cabbage and a smoked garlic creme with a vinaigrette of lemon balm, tarragon and absinthe."

I'll take mine to go, please. Hold the cabbage, garlic creme, vinaigrette, tarragon, and absinthe, though. Just make it a cheeseburger with fried onions.

Rockin' all night

Things are looking up in Hopewell Township, New Jersey. 

Or, more accurately stated, people should be looking up in Hopewell Township, because that's where a small black rock hit a house, and experts are leaning toward calling it a meteorite.

Crash bang, came the rock through the roof and through the ceiling, and it landed on a bedroom floor, denting the hardwood. No one was hurt, but wow!

“It appears whatever came from the sky fell through the roof of the top window, that’s my dad’s bedroom,” resident Suzy Kop says. She first checked out the damage to her house and then went to pick up the 4 inch-by 6-inch oblong rock, and it was warm.

Meteorites are rocks the belong in space but occasionally run free and fall to earth. Most of them come from asteroids (pause for laughter) and science says that around 500 of these dudes come to Earth every year, but less than 50 are recovered in an average year (most of them "land" on water, so to speak, or in remote places.) 

Derrick Pitts is an astronomer at the Franklin Institute science museum in Philadelphia, and he says it's ultra-rare to have a meteorite strike a house.

Referring to the recent Jersey case, “Here’s an instance where a sizable object has not only fallen in a populated region, it also hit a house and it was immediately collected by the occupants,” Pitts said.  “The instance of that happening, you can count on one hand over the last 1,000 years, maybe.”

The Township is asking residents to keep an eye out for other possible meteorites or evidence of falling rocks on the ground, while still keeping a wary eye on the sky. 

And walking at the same time.

 

Brilliant scheme

It's not my usual practice to advise others on the ways and means of mariticide (killing one's husband) but I think the sad example of this Kouri Richins bears examination.

She's what you might call a self-made widow, accused of killing her husband, and then becoming the ten-millionth person to write a children's book, purportedly to explain to her three sons why Daddy isn't around any more.

Things are strange out there in Utah, but in her grief after her husband Eric died, she threw a big party at her brand-new $2 million house the day after he died.

Police are saying she slipped Eric a lethal dose of fentanyl and then celebrated closing on a 22,000-square foot house. She planned to flip the property, but when Eric objected to that plan, she flipped him instead. 

It's unclear whether she knew that he had recently changed the beneficiaries on his life insurance to be his parents. He duked her out of the loot because he suspected she was unfaithful.

In happier times.

Police say that she fixed him a nice Moscow Mule on the last night of his life, and laced it with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl.

And they say that she said she slept in one of the kids' rooms and woke the next morning to find him dead!

This all took place in March of last year. This year, she must have thought that the perfect smoke screen would be to write one of those lugubrious kiddie books that claim to help bereaved kids cope. 

This did not fool the police at all, but maybe she can take a few cases with her to the Greybar Hilton and peddle them to her soon-to-be fellow inmates.

Righting the wrong

If you remember hearing about an Army base known as Fort Hood down in Killeen, Texas, it's time to hit the "rename" button in your memory. It's been re-christened Fort Cavazos, in honor of Gen. Richard Edward Cavazos, America's first Hispanic American four-star general. 

At long last, the Pentagon is renaming their properties that used to honor Confederate leaders, and they will now honor people who did NOT fight against America. Seems only right.

But who was Cavazos? Back to the Korean War we go. 1st Lt. Richard Cavazos was a company commander who led his unit back to safety and away from enemy shelling in June, 1953. 

After the war, Cavazos was assigned to Fort Hood, continuing a career that saw the son of a Mexican-American cattle rancher become our first Hispanic four-star general.

The League of United Latin American Citizens, an advocacy group, nominated him to have his name enshrined in the fort previously named for John Bell Hood, a Confederate general who quit the U.S. Army to fight against it.

These Army bases in former Confederate states will have new honorable names: 

• Fort Lee in Virginia (now renamed for Lt. Gen. Arthur J. Gregg and Lt. Col. Charity Adams, two Black military pioneers.)
• Fort Pickett, Virginia (now renamed for Col. Van T. Barfoot, a World War II Medal of Honor recipient.)
• Fort Rucker in Alabama (renamed for Michael J. Novosel Sr., a Vietnam Medal of Honor awardee.)

In Korea, Cavazos took over a regiment that had been shamed for running away from battle in an earlier engagement and turned them into a well-trained group. On June 14, 1953, they were sent to attack an entrenched Chinese position.

With the objective captured, and vital enemy equipment and personnel eliminated, Cavazos's troops were withdrawing, but he remained behind to search for missing men, and even though he was exposed to hostile fire, he persisted until he located five wounded men and got them to safety.

For this, Cavazos was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross and Navy Cross — the Navy’s equivalent award, and won another Distinguished Cross as a battalion commander in Viet Nam.  

Cavazos died in 2017, and was remembered as a "soldier's soldier" by Gen. Gordon Sullivan, ex-Army chief of staff.  “He was courageous, and they knew it, and they knew he couldn’t ask them to do anything that he wouldn’t do with them.”

That's the sort of man we should be honoring!

Sunday Rerun: A restaurant chain is only as strong...

 By now, you've heard about or read about the story of US Army veteran Ernest Walker, 47, who went to a Chili's in the Cedar Hill section of Dallas, Texas to receive a free meal as part of that restaurant chain's Veterans' Day promotion.

Walker and his service dog entered the dump restaurant and sat down, ordered a burger, and then it started.  An old white man wearing a t-shirt endorsing the candidacy of a man who pledges to make America great again came over and told Walker, who is black, that he could not have been a real US soldier because the old man was in Germany and saw no black soldiers.

Uh huh.

The old man doddered off as a server came up to pack Walker's leftovers in one of those styrofoam clamshells.  All of a sudden, a manager showed up and told Walker that he couldn't have been a real soldier because he was wearing his hat indoors.

By the way, whatever happened to Texas's plan to secede from the United States? Just askin' for a friend.

Walker showed the man a military ID and his DD-214 (separation papers).  So that was enough, and the man and his dog went on their way peacefully, right?

Sorry, Pecos Pete.

"The guest also said your dog is not a service dog," Walker says the manager told him.

The dog was wearing an official red service vest and his tags stating that he was a service dog. Seeing things go sideways in a hurry, Walker turned on his cell camera and recorded a colloquy with a blustery callow youth whom Chili's trusted to run one of their vomitoria.

The face of the crummy chili industry

They bicker back and forth as the manager says he did not see the army papers and the dog's ID, and then the manager grabs the go-box and takes the leftovers away from the man.

In the time-honored tradition of passive-aggressives everywhere, he sneers, "You have a great day," and struts away.

And then the rest of this plays out like you've seen 100,000 times. Walker went on Facebook, the TV news picked up the story, and the big cheeses at Chili's had to stop and put down their martinis on Sunday when the calls started coming in for a corporate reply.

Ernest Walker.  Could he LOOK more like a veteran?

Channel 5 in Dallas says the manager has been "put on leave," and Chili's has "reached out to" Walker via phone on Monday.

In much the same fashion that I used to keep a collection of mafia nicknames ("Bobby Ha-ha" and "Richie The Boot") I should really start a clipping file of corporate apologies, all of which are cut from the same dough with the same cookie cutter.  Chili's says:

"On a day where we served more than 200,000 free meals as a small gesture of our appreciation for our veterans and active military for their service, we fell short." 

Well, I know I feel better for reading those words.

They also "fell short" of human decency and good sense.

The mayor of Cedar Hill, Rob Franke, said that the incident at Chili's "is not what we are about. My concern for the veteran is paramount, but we must also consider the manager and how he can become a better person and perhaps do better the next time he is put in a difficult situation," Franke said. "People do best and learn the most from experience. To learn requires patience and grace, neither of which can occur in the heat of emotion, demonstration, and anger."

In other words, a multi-million dollar corporation puts a burger-flipper in charge of one of their outlets, and this is what they get.

Chili's, get smart. You can't do much about your lousy chow, and your image is besmirched, but you could begin the unsmirching by spending your money on something.

Instead of giving veterans some fried ground beef on a soggy roll once a year in November, why not take the lead on something worthwhile by leading the way for other corporations (you go first!) to begin a decent job training/counseling/placement service for veterans in need of more than just an annual handout?

Oh sure, it doesn't sound as magnanimous as handing out beef, but it just might be what a lot of veterans need.  Who knows? There are jobs out there that need trained people...like your restaurant in Cedar Hill, Texas. 

The Saturday Picture Show, May 13, 2023

 

"I know our stuff is under that blue-and-white umbrella!"

Part of many of our childhood summers...at the first clap of thunder, we had to think, is there laundry on the line? 

My first pick-'em-up truck was a Nissan about like this one, but it was sand-colored, and I had no idea how many household appliances it could have toted around. 

So, this is where they all went!! The British call them "phone boxes" and they're resting in a phone box graveyard in Merstham, Surrey.

This path just seems to scream "Let's take a hike!"

Here's the type of art collage you can't take your...eyes... off.

In places where there's no public library or bookmobiles, resourceful people make their own.

This is the stately mansion on Pimlico Rd in Baltimore where once dwelled Chicago gangster Al Capone, between his residencies in Union Memorial Hospital and federal prison.

And why should they? 

This is a rare atmospheric phenomenon known to meteorologists as a "parhelia," and to residents of Key West as a “sun dog.”