Full of himself

 The legend of Morgan Wallen's obstreperous behavior wrote another chapter over the weekend. The moderately talented country singer did his two tunes from the upcoming album he was on Saturday Night Live to promote, and then walked off the set at the show's close.

You've seen the show end for 50 years now. Guest host says "thanks and good night" while the musical act and the other performers form an eddying mob. But on Saturday, the bumptious Wallen just lumbered off as the music played. Later he posted a photo of his private jet, captioned "Get me to God's country," presumably meaning that the Good Lord does not exist in New York City.

As if he knows.

No need exists to go into detail about the rudeness of a man who throws a folding chair off a roof toward a crowded street.  He's not as talented as he is obnoxious or as popular as as he is disrespectful of all others, so maybe his career will be as short-lived as his frequent promises to behave better. 

Oh, this new album he's promoting has a perfectly harmoniously suited name: "I'm The Problem."

Sunday rerun from 2010: Ill-gotten gains

 To those who have only recently moved to Maryland, the news that the county executive in Prince George's County, which is down near DC, was arrested along with his wife and charged with various corrupt activities must have been quite a shock.  People were shocked - shocked! - to hear of frantic phone conversations with the man and his wife as he told her to flush a check down the toilet and put cash in her bra, as feds were pounding on the front door.

Not for nothing did National Lampoon magazine label Maryland as the "Cradle Of Graft" back in the good old days.  And a man named Spiro Agnew took our area to the top of the junk heap of crooks.

Agnew, as a local politician, began shaking down contractors and builders.  You want to do business here, you give me 5% of what you take, was the plan, and so contractors and builders started showing up with envelopes and canvas bags full of money.

Nixon (r) picked Agnew. Agnew (l) picked pockets.

Running on a platform of unbridled ("You've seen one slum, you've seen them all") racism, Agnew became governor of Maryland and after two nonglorious years in that office, was chosen to be vice-president of the United States, for crying out loud, by Richard Nixon.  This was 1968, six years after Nixon lost the California governor's race to Jerry Brown's father, and Nixon promised at that time that he would not run for office ever again anywhere.

So much for that.  He took Agnew along for the ride and won election as president in '68, and thereafter let Agnew be his mouthpiece for spewing out hateful, albeit alliterative, rhetoric.  Agnew referred to those who opposed any Nixonian policy as "pusillanimous pussyfooters", "nattering nabobs of negativism" and "hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history".  This man, who went around taking cash kickbacks as a government official, had the nerve to call opponents "an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals."

Guys like that always hate people with intellect, and intellectual honesty.

It was funny;  you never saw Nixon and Agnew doing anything together.  Even Nixon must have found his company undesirable, I don't know.  And when Nixon's Watergate chickens came home to roost, Agnew would have been next in line to be president, presumably the first president to be receiving foreign dignitaries and heads of state AND men bearing canvas sacks stuffed with loot in the Oval Office on the same day.  Yes, he could have moved into the White House!

Except that back home here, federal prosecutors were going over the books of some of the guys who had bought Agnew off, and they were more than willing to sing like canaries to avoid having to move to the Big House.  They talked, Agnew walked, and lived out his days in infamy as a disgrace to our area.

But whenever crooks gather and talk about the greats of the past, that's when they bring up his name, and his canvas sacks, and his ignominious deeds.  His wife never had to hide cash in her bra!

The Saturday Picture Show, March 29, 2025

I always wondered just what kind of nonsense old Ralph though I was up to. But since he was gone long before I was born, he should be resting assured that I've ne'er surrendered my serenity. 

When your pants are strapped around you just south of your sternum, the only acceptable thing to do is to call them "trousers."

These are balconies on adjoining apartments in Egypt. The advantage is, if you have pizza and want to share a slice with your pal from six or seven apts. away, you can just pass it right on through. 

Ducklings learn to share, and why not? How much can a duck eat?

I don't know that I would feel comfortable sitting on a settee that looks like it might get up and walk away.

A lot of Marylanders have visited this spot. It's a high view of Harper's Ferry, WV, from the Maryland side. The picture was taken for the National Geographic magazine in 1962.

I guzzled more than my share of Coca-Cola in my day. I probably had your share and your sister's too. I liked it, but the sugar and empty calories turned me away. I like full calories, like those found in grits and gravy.

We cat lovers admire their feline courage. Whether it's a fully grown tiger or an even larger man, they do not back down.

146 people, the great majority of them women employed as sweatshop seamstresses, died because their employer put profits above human decency and safety. Because workers stood up for what's always been right, unions forced management to do what's right. Power never concedes without a demand.

Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed there are eleven pictures today, instead of the customary ten. That's a tip of the cap to former student and longtime friend John Gross, who recently passed away far too young. When I started the Saturday Picture Show, I always used four pictures. John, always one to push others just as hard as he did himself, challenged me to do ten every week, which I've done ever since. John was a proud native of Havre de Grace, Maryland, and this extra picture of that town's noted lighthouse is for him to enjoy up beyond the sunset, where health concerns don't roil our souls. Say hi to our mutual friends up there, J.D!

 

Free advice

 As graduation time draws near (I see that the University of Maryland is having Kermit The Frog as their commencement speaker, the reason I bring this up) I have advice for our young people who will be beginning careers that will bring them daily heaps of happiness, financial compensation beyond their wildest dreams, and personal benefits such as contentment and satisfaction. (Pause for applause and shouts of joy).

Invest in a bunch of these notebooks and, every night when you skip home on wings of joy after work, jot down the magic moments you're going to want to look back on in your dotage.

As you sit back happily retired, on the rare days that you don't have to go to a doctor's office or a physical therapy appointment, you will derive pleasure from reminiscing about the time that someone threw a tureen of coleslaw at the holiday party, or the person who did the payroll didn't notice that you took a week of vacation in April, so you wound up with five extra vacation days at the end of the year...

Magic moments! 

Tempus Fugit

Hello and welcome to Opening Day for baseball! The Orioles will begin their 2025 season in Toronto, where they will see old local favorite Anthony Santander togged out in a silly Blue Jay uniform, but life, she do go on, you know?

I am still a baseball fan, have been since I was a barefoot boy with cheek of tan, and it's because of moments like this one from 2014. We will never forget The Legend Of Delmon Young, as the guy said on tv, knocking a three-run double off the old left-field wall at Camden Yards, and another local favorite, J.J. Hardy, chugging around the bases to score the third run from first by a whisker.

The exultant moment

I often reflect on the career of Young, a man with great talent at hitting baseballs, but he seemed to have trouble in his soul. He was in trouble a lot during his stay in the major leagues, and by July of 2015, the year after his legendary hit, the Orioles released him, and no other team bothered with him. He tried playing in Mexico and Australia, but never got back to the big time.

Which is why I preach to the young people who come to me for advice (I'm sure someone will someday!), don't take success for granted. If it takes a lot to get to the top, it takes that much and more to stay there.

Santander was a great player here, much beloved by the faithful. But other, younger guys are ready to trot out to right field and do just as well, if not better, so when his contract expired, the O's didn't exactly back a Brinks truck to his door to get him to stay.  We all wish him well and we all know when it's time to move along. 

Time to play ball! 3:07 today!

When the impossible happened

 

It has been a year now, just today, that we all awoke to the news that the Key Bridge in Baltimore had collapsed after being hit by a humungous freighter ship. I am fortunate enough to have friends all over the world, thanks to the interwebs, and so I was jarred wide awake that morning to find a slew of texts from across many seas, asking if I was all right. "Dude! Tell me you're ok! I heard the bridge fell down in your town!" read one of them, from a friend in Turkey. So there I was, a little past five in the yawning, turning on the morning local news, and seeing an array of attractive, but stunned, faces, telling us the awful news. What once seemed impossible, not just unlikely, had occurred.

So many thoughts racing through so many minds. Most tragically, six men died when they were dropped into the water below along with their work truck. That was six too many deaths, but just think how many there would have been had the ship hit the bridge at the peak of morning rush hour?

Businesses were/are disrupted. People whose commute from the east side of Baltimore County to Anne Arundel County, or vice versa, now have a much longer ride. 

The shipping channel was closed for a time, setting off ripple effects of supply problems across the nation.

But last December, Congress set aside money for disaster relief, including two billion for replacing the bridge.

A design for that replacement has been unveiled; construction is soon to get underway, with assurances that the project will be done by 2028 and will incorporate the latest structural protection technology.

And on the day it opens, I will send pictures to my friends around the world. All stories should have happy endings and new beginnings.

Watch out

By now, you must have seen the story from the Adirondack region in upstate New York where the male coach of a high school girls’ basketball team pulled a player’s ponytail as his team was losing a state championship game on Friday.

The coach's name is Jim Zullo, until recently the whistle-blower for Northville Central. I say it that way, because Sarah Chauncey, the district supervisor, canned him over the weekend. 

As the story goes, Zullo had been upbraiding (pun intentional) a star player from his team because, as he alleges, the athlete cursed at him when he told her to go shake hands with the winners. This caused the televised scene in which he hollers at the young woman, pulls her hair, and has to be separated from from her by one of the players. 

And now, the moment you've waited for:

Two days after the whole sickening incident, Zullo came out with a half-fast apology:

“I deeply regret my behavior following the loss to LaFargeville Friday night in the Class D state championship game. As a coach, under no circumstance is it acceptable to put my hands on a player, and I am truly sorry. I wish I could have those moments back."

My take? It goes without saying that a coach should keep his mitts off of the players, no matter how irksome the provocation. He deserved to have the can tied to him, and getting fired is only one of his problems now. He's headed to court to answer charges of second-degree harassment.

My second take? Is this the same country that, prior to last November 5, was apoplectic over the very notion that females had to live in fear every moment that transsexuals lurked at every turn, ready to commit mayhem, when in fact, it's the all-American good guy, affable heroic coach that they should shun?

Now and Then

Old pictures are fun, especially when you can compare them with brand-new pictures from the same site. We all enjoy seeing pictures from when we were little, out in the front yard posing with Uncle Nutsy in front of the rhododendron. Comparing the old with the now, we see that both the plant and Nutsy both got a lot bigger and much greener as the years went slowly by.

Actually, I think Nutsy got greener and the plant got a little more blushy pink, but I can't deciduous.

So...let's look at the apartment building located at 497 Dean Street in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, New York. 

This photo was taken in March, 1942. It shows local resident Edna Egbert, distraught over her mental health struggles and saddened because her son had been called to active duty in the armed forces, as police respond to her attempt to commit suicide. In the heavy-handed fashion of the day, they were dealing with this crisis by hollering at her, grabbing for her, and stretching a rope net beneath the cornice from which she threatened to jump.

As it turned out, she was coaxed back to safety. 

This picture from Google Maps shows the same building as it looks today. I wonder if the guy sitting on the stoop has any idea what took place there 83 years ago. If those steps could talk, what a story, eh?

Sunday Rerun: Belief

 It's the middle of August, what I call Elvis Week, and once again, our crepe myrtle in the back yard is fully ablaze in pink!

Funny tree, or shrub, or bush, whatever it is. Some people spell it Crepe Myrtle, some go with Crape Myrtle, and now and then you'll see Crepemyrtle.  However you spell or name it, its blooms appear right in the middle of hellish summer heat, long after the forsythias and azaleas have lost their luster and retreated back to stubborn green.

Ms Myrtle waits until all the other bloomers have had their turns, and then she does her thing. And with her blooms at the top of long tall branches, they wave majestically at the people piling into their SUVs to get back-to-school shopping done.

(Kids - ask your folks if they had Trapper Keepers back in the day! They drove teachers nuts, for some reason.)

We planted our CM shortly after we moved in, maybe 2001 or '02. And every year since it took a notion to bloom, it has done so in this very week. Like being able to expect people to say, "The Ravens will never win a Super Bowl with Lamar," it's as dependable as an Accutron watch. 

Except for one year, and I will tell you this with my hand on a Bible if you wish...

D.

In 2014, that sad June, my mother (who bought and brought the little plant to us) died, and in July, our dear Deanna went to be with the Lord. Deanna's funeral was in Phila on July 19 that year, and when we got home that night, we looked out back and the crepe myrtle was gloriously pink and waving greetings from above.

A month early.  And it never happened before then, or since.

I believe in signs and messages. This is one that lives with us every day.

The Saturday Picture Show, March 22, 2025

 

Watch out for those large crows! They'll get crow-doo all over you!

I love living in Baltimore County, where the library thoughtfully provides computer stations for residents to, you know, study, work, apply for jobs, keep things coordinated and whatnot on free PCs...all while keeping a safe place for the infant to do their thing. It's thoughtful.

Mailbox subsumed by ivy. Film at 11.

How convenient! The person who will be sent to investigate your fender cruncher is already there! That's service!

After he finishes his guitar solo, he will be glad to sell you car insurance.

Here comes autumn! This picture is from Australia, where they are wrapping up summer and getting ready for fall. Things are upside down, down under.

When you're really really way up high on the mountain, you get to look down on a rainbow!

So the cardinal says to the woodpecker, he says...

Tulips abloom in Amsterdam. Too bad it's not Rotterdam. I have a joke for "Rotterdam."

"Vacation, all I ever wanted..."

Unthinkable

When I was a kid, one of my great pleasures was going across the street to hang around the firehouse. It was a good place for boys, because all the members of the volunteer fire company, which I later joined at age 16, were good people. Some were high school or college guys, some young married guys just starting out, and a good amount of them, a tad bit older, had fought in World War II, which, you should know, had just ended like 15 years ago. They mentored us in good habits and skills.

It was a good time to grow up, although I have to add that it was to be years before someone realized that women were just as capable of doing things...

Most guys my age had dads who fought in that war. I get the impression that most of the dads were like mine, and didn’t talk at length about their war experiences, if at all. I can remember one thing that bothered my father was TV shows and movies that made the war a source of comedy, because he didn't remember a lot of laughter. 

All of those men would have been irate to hear that three fire companies on Long Island had to settle suits alleging "unlawful discrimination within these public entities served by taxpayer dollars."

They fire companies will "remove all depictions of the Confederate flag from equipment and websites, and to prohibit any displays of symbols of hate."

The Firefighters Association of New York said in a statement, "Fire departments operate best when their membership includes all members of the community they serve ... Everyone in a fire district should feel comfortable and respected."

"This is not wanted or allowed here on Long Island"

I cannot begin to understand the mindset that figured that hanging rebel flags on public fire engines was a good thing. To help clear my mind and yours, here's a picture of a pretty sunrise.

Ghost Story

Up in Hackettstown, New Jersey, the memory of Tillie Smith still looms large in the public heart, and those Hackettstonians who believe in ghosts feel that Tillie still walks among them in spectral form.

It was April, 1886, when Tillie, a member of the kitchen staff at Centenary College who took her room and board in a dorm there, asked fellow employee James J. Titus to let her in the building after an evening at a theatre performance. 

She was found murdered the next morning in a field behind the school. Titus was convicted of murder and rape, and condemned to swing from a gallows for the crime. 

Years later, Titus cheated the hangman by claiming that Tillie had seduced him (a married man, and a father) into an affair. 

The appellate jury bought his story of accidentally strangling her while trying to silence her from revealing their unsanctifed union.

 

With his death sentence commuted, Titus was freed after 19 years, and live in Hackettstown until dying in 1952, aged 95.

But people in Hackettstown believed that Tillie was killed defending her honor, and the statue shown here blesses her memory. What's more, they believe Tillie's ghost walks around the South Hall dorm, moaning, and making the lights flicker.

First things first

They call it March Madness and it hasn't even begun yet and some people are mad already.

Out in West Virginia, the basketball fans are all worked up because their team from West Virginia University was not invited to the "big dance" - the NCAA basketball tournament. 68 teams get the coveted invitation, and the folks in WV are just as mad as all-get-out because they weren't invited, by cracky!

Other interesting towns in WV include Odd, Hoo Hoo, and Jumbo.

This seems to happen every year, every tournament. Someone gets left out, or some team loses the chance to advance in the playoffs because of a "bad call," and people can't get over it.

So what will they do up there, or out there, or down there? They will go to court to make sure that justice is done!

(Actually, Justice is the name of their junior senator - 6'7" Jim Justice, descendant of coal mining people who was once a billionaire but now scrimps by on a net worth of 513 million dollars. Maybe he could sponsor a tournament.)

Anyway, the state says they're starting an investigation, with  Attorney General JB McCuskey asking the NCAA to explain their process for selecting the Great 68.

As you would expect in a story concerning college basketball, someone named Bubba is involved here. The athletic director at the University of North Carolina is one Bubba Cunningham, who is the chairman of the selection committee.

👉North Carolina was chosen to go to the tournament.

👉Cunningham was said to have been recused from any deliberation involving NC. 

"Nearly every single sports fan, pundit and Bracketologist had WVU as a shoo-in for the tournament," Gov. Patrick Morrisey said after the Mountaineers were the first team uninvited. "This was a miscarriage of justice and robbery at the highest levels."

According to an article in the New York TIMES, "West Virginia ranks among the most distressed states in child poverty rates and median incomes, in population loss and in working-age adults out of the labor force."

But sure, worry about basketball. The state is regarded as having the worst healthcare in the entire nation, a rough economy, high opioid addiction, and crushing poverty for many residents, but how about that daggone NCAA?  

The governor and the attorney general took time from their busy schedules to have this funny sign made up for the press conference. 

It's the law!

Regular viewers of TV's Big Bang Theory (and we know who we are!) are familiar with Sheldon's eccentricities, none of which seem all that outlandish to me, if you want to know the truth. Take the simple matter of His Spot - the far right cushion on the sofa (if you're facing it) is the place he staked out when he moved in. 

Always searching for legal standing in such matters, Sheldon says he has placed this seat in "in a state of eternal dibs",  and that would stand up in any court anywhere. Like four balls is a walk and three strikes is an out, the calling of dibs is understood, and not to be questioned.

Similarly, someone who, through carelessness or folly of their own, loses the key top scoop in their Trip-L-Dippr ice cream cone can appeal to the crowd he's hanging with for a replacement scoop, but when the verdict of "tough beans" or "tough noogies" is handed down from the hooting crowd, there is no room for appeal. "Tough beans" is like a Supreme Court decision, without sleepy Clarence Thomas involved.

Holiday Rerun:Happy St. Patrick's Day

 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!

Sunday Rerun: It Takes Brains

 We talked the other day about baseball wit Mickey Rivers, who, upon hearing that Reggie Jackson claimed to have an IQ of 160,  asked,"Out of what? A thousand?"

Lauren Marbe

And then, I surfstumbled across an article about 16-year-old female Lauren Marbe from Essex, England, whose IQ measures 161.  This puts her one point ahead of both Reginald Martinez Jackson and Albert Einstein, who used his noodle to come up with "  E=mc²" and we all understand that completely, don't we?

So here is the article, and as it says, Einstein was never actually given an IQ test, but the geniuses who admire genuises have always figured him for a 160, and a 44 regular in sports jackets.  Being legendary for forgetfulness, Einstein might not have even shown up, had he been scheduled to take an IQ test.

Lauren, daughter of a cab driver, is the possessor of a mighty mind, and she seems like any other 16-year-old.  She likes to dude herself up and go out, and she is wavering in her career path between being an architect and being a singer/actress.  There seems to be no middle ground there, although it would seem that the people behind certain buildings were only acting like they were real architects...
Here is a sample IQ test question:  


 Which number should come next in this series?

25,24,22,19,15

A. 4
B. 5
C. 10
D. 14


If your answer is (c) 10, congratulations!  You and Lauren should spend some time together being smart.  My answer was (b) 5, because a list that has #25, Don Baylor, #24, Rick Dempsey, #22, Jim Palmer, #19, Johnny Unitas, and #15, Davey Johnson, needs a great third baseman:  #5, the one, the only, Brooks Robinson.

The above serves to show how (and if) my noggin works, and why I am a stranger to the people who select the top IQ people.  

Congratulations, Lauren, and good luck in your career. It must be nice to be brainy.

The Saturday Picture Show, March 15, 2025

 

I mean, when I was a young man, I fretted all the time...are my Weejuns just right, is my hair too long/short/blond, do I say the clever things...and then I thought, whom am I trying to impress? 

London Lee had a short career in the 60s as the "rich kid" comic with a nasal whine about how tough he had it growing up swell. But at least he got to see Sammy Davis, Jr. perform, and I wish I could say I did.

Before computers and letra-sets, people such as my father hand-lettered signs for offices and stores. Dad made this one while working for Baltimore Gas & Electric in the building later known as the Power Plant downtown. Like everything he did, it was flawless.

Spring break coming up and time for the kiddies to get busy making spring art! Fork over the money for some paint, and there you go!

A complete waist of time.

Credit Jeremy Black for the this picture of the really truly rare Yellow Cardinal, spotted in Alabaster,  Alabama by Professor Geoffrey Hill of Auburn University, if you'll pardon me for mentioning them. Like all Cardinals, this guy really wants to be Crimson!

Whenever someone says, "Let's go for a walk," I always hope this is what they have in mind. It never is.

I don't know what those diagonal lines mean...maybe "RHOMBUS PARKING ONLY"?

Casting is all set for the new FOXXXXX comedy sensation set to hit your set this fall...it's the all new "Two And A Half Men"! Tune in for hi-jinx, Mondays at 9.

If you enjoy your cup of tea, or whatever is your pleasure, really LOVE it and see if that doesn't add a little lift to your day!

Get the point

As my post-surgical rehab continues, the weather has gotten nice enough to walk outside on our court, which spares me from walking a hole in the carpet in the basement. Nice to be outside during "only hoodie" weather, meaning a hoodie is enough. I hope I'm finished all the rehab by the time it gets to be 112° outside with drippy humidity. Let's all hope for that.

One of the things my physical terrorist therapist kept stressing is the need to look ahead when I walk, not down at the floor. I don't want to disappoint him, but I have to spend 1/2 of my time looking down on the street as I strut around here. I am finding a surprising amount of nail and screws lying in the roadway. Yesterday's haul included one self-tapping screw (which could nicely tap right into your tire) and one roofing nail. (Ditto).

There's a house up at the top of the court that was being rented out and now carpenters and plumbers are in there every day giving the place a total overhaul. Maybe some of the loose hardware is coming from that project; I don't know. Old Eagle Eye here spots them and picks them up to dispose of when I get home. 

I'm sure they wind up here by accident. The tire shops are busy enough; it's not like they ride around tossing nails and screws around to drum up more patch business. But just as icy roads mean big business for body and fender shops, holes in tires mean it will be a Goodyear for someone in that line.

I'm just one man, prowling one court, looking for sharp stuff. If I prevent one puncture, you can say I nailed it. Otherwise, I'm screwed.