"It says here..."

I thought it was sort of odd that a number of websites were posting the news of Joe Paterno's death last night.  Odd, in that it hasn't happened.  I guess we can expect it soon; an 84-year-old with lung cancer, dispirited from recent events, probably does not have a long time ahead.  But how does it happen that someone decides to post information that is not 100% accurate?  If a reporter hears secondhand that a nurse came out of the coach's hospital room claiming that Paterno had passed, is that enough to go on and put out a bulletin?

Obviously not.

And the other day I got one of those web essays that are always going around.  This one was called "Bill Cosby Is Tired" and it listed some of things that purportedly are vexatious to the comic.  When you read it, it seems perfectly real, and written in that Cosby manner - slightly preachy, slightly funny - but when you go to Cosby's website, you see his denial of the whole thing.  You can't blame people for passing it along, but you have to wonder.  Deep at the heart of all this, someone is sitting somewhere at a keyboard, and they say, "Hmmm.  OK.  Let's see..we did Bill Gates's 'Advice To The Graduates' and George Carlin's '10 Ways that Soccer and Lacrosse Are Different' and Andy Rooney's 'Did You Ever Notice That Everything Tastes Better With Gravy On It?' " So what can I make up today?

I'm guessing there's an element of sadness in the creation of something falsely attributed to someone more famous...or an element of envy.  To the persons who create this fiction, I say, why not put it out under your own name and let it stand on its own merits?

Saturday rerun: I Still Have my Nametag

Everyone drove Mustangs to the A & P

In the spring of my senior year, just before my graduation from the exclusive Towson High School (admission by zip code only!) I went to work for The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, also known as the "A & P," and that's pronounced "Ann P" around these parts.  I had hoped to start out as District Manager or Vice-President of Sales, Grocery Division, but it seemed that the only openings they had were for "clerk," so I took that, figuring on biding my time for the inevitable promotions that never came.

Rat Fink t-shirt decal

Some interesting facts about that job: we had to wear a white shirt and tie and pants that could be any color but could not be jeans of any fabric.  We got around the shirt thing by wearing t-shirts underneath with various slogans and depictions of cartoon characters.

My starting salary was a whopping $2.15 per hour, not bad when my classmates worked at Gino's or McDonald's for fifty cents.  In fact, top pay on the clerk scale was $3, and there were full time guys there, working 40 hours, grossing $120/wk, and raising families and buying houses, cars and cheap beer on that pay. We wore red aprons and name tags. The store sold all the national brands, of course, but we had our own - in fact, the tea bags were called "Our Own" tea bags - brands, such as Jane Parker baked goods and Ann Page canned foods.  I used to wonder about the people who worked in the packaging end.  Working the early shift, I would be stocking the bread aisle and found it endlessly humorous that Jane Parker's Old-Fashioned Home-Style Bread carried the description "A hearty, firm-type loaf."  And one of my best buddies on the crew, Charlie (known as "Cholly" in BalMoreEse) had a younger brother whose detestation of cole slaw was so thickly ingrained in his diet that he carried the sobriquet "Slaws-A-Balls."

Please don't try to understand that nickname unless you are 18 and male.  That's the only way it's funny.

Tool of the trade

We would set this to 2/69¢!

I didn't usually work a cash register, so it was not to be my fate to have experiences like John Updike wrote about in his short story "A&P," but I would never have acted like the guy in that story anyway.  We had our share of pretty girls parading through the store in various states of deshabille and decolletage, and there was lots of ogling going on in the time-honored manner of adolescent males.  I spent a lot of time unloading freight trucks and placing items on the shelves for sale, so I always had one of those box-cutter knives and a Garvey price kerchunker ready for business.

Sometimes in the evenings, taking the trash out, or having a smoke break, we would see two cars pull up and park, and then a woman would get into a car driven by a man, and they would drive away, casting furtive looks as they left.  Of course, as major-league suburban sophisticates, we knew something was up.  We just didn't know what, to tell you the truth.  And in the apartments behind the store - now torn down and replaced with apartments - I don't know why either - there lived a woman who was quite uninhibited in her manner of dressing, which is to say that she paraded around naked and stood in the bathroom window, providing endless amusement for the easily amused.  We don't know where she got her groceries, because she did not come into our store.  We did know that she got her clothes at the same place The Emperor did!

So that part of my career lasted through my college days and then I took a cut in pay to go into radio, but I am writing today because the A&P chain is done in Baltimore as of today.  All the stores are closed; some will reopen as Shoppers' Food Warehouses, and some as Shop-Rites, and some will remain empty, corpses of a company that shot itself in the foot time and again changing its name from A&P to WEO ("Where Economy Originates" - snappy, huh?) and then SuperFresh, where they tried to be all things to all people.  Gourmet foods? Sure! Cheapie no-name brands?  Aisle 5, I think! Sit awhile and have some pizza and a soda?  Steam that shrimp for you?  Power tools, aisle 16!

Back in the day, we addressed customers as 'Sir' and 'Ma'am' and we thanked them for shopping with us and the acceptable answer to any question about where an item was shelved was never, "Gee, I don't know!"   But I heard that a lot lately in SuperFresh, and while I am sad to see them go, I can tell you this about Baltimore:  we like to eat food,  and you have to be pretty lousy at running a food store to drive people away like this chain did.

Shame, too.  They did have tasty cheese rolls.

Science Project

Well, my new hero is young Samantha Garvey, who was all over the papers, blogs and tv shows last week.  She's the Long Island high school senior whose work in marine biology over the past several years has made her a finalist in the Intel Science Talent Search.  She has done a thorough study of what happens to ribbed mussels in the presence of predators.

Her project is titled, "The Effects of Physical Environment and Predators on Phenotypic Plasticity in Geukensia demissa." As that clearly states, it's all about  how ribbed mussels -- which is what non-scientists call Geukensia demissa -- adjust their characteristics, or phenotypes, when predators and the whole world at large come crashing all around them.

When I was her age, the only study I did concerning the field of marine biology took place along the banks of Loch Raven Reservoir, where my scientific colleagues Joe, Mike and Steve investigated what would happen when four minors drank Boone's Farm and fished for trout. The predators in our study were the game wardens, and the mosquitoes. It's my recollection that none of us changed our phenotypes, but I might be wrong.  We were more than happy to change our jeans, I do remember that.


Here is what makes young Samantha so special:  when the news of her hard work came along, she and her family were living in a homeless shelter - and not for the first time.  Her parents have had their troubles, and now some help has come along and a rent-subsidized home has been found.  


Samantha is the president of her local National Honor Society.  I'm proud to say that I, too, knew people who were in the National Honor Society, although I was a stranger to their selection committee.  She has a 3.9 GPA, and I did about 3.9 % of my homework.  She, unlike me, wants to attend Brown or Yale, because as you'll see in the video, she wants better for herself and her family in the future, and she realizes that if she works for it, she can achieve it.


I love the way she is such a good young lady, hard-working and doing her best while being respectful to her family and to others.  I feel that she is one of those people who will beat the odds and find success.  I wish her well.


Now where did I leave my fishing rod...

What I Learned in Grade Three

Because I don't really care for most of the comics in the newspaper today - I refuse to start my day thinking about something called "Zits" -  I get classic comics delivered to my email every day. 

Oh, that Marmaduke.


But it was actually the "Peanuts" cartoon from the other day that led me to a memory...

I've mentioned before how lucky I feel to have been with the same core group of other kids from first grade through twelfth.  Sure, people came and went, but there were dozens of guys 'n' gals decked out in maroon and white on graduation night that I could remember in those early days at Hampton Elementary (which began in the Lutherville school building for the 1st 1/2 of 1st grade).

Our teacher in third grade, one Margaret van Breeman, was not typical, as third-grade teachers go.  For one thing, she was not softhearted and kind. For another, she taught us all sort of ridiculous notions ("people from down South talk like that because it's so hot down there and they are tired all the time") and even had us singing songs that today are not permitted within ten miles of an eight-year-old ("Mammy's little baby loves short-nin' bread"). I can see her in that classroom, explaining why certain words were to be sung in certain ways, as in "Put on da skillet, put on da lead" being the way to say "put on the skillet, put on the lid" when one was really tired from the heat.

All right, I suppose that a lot of odd, eccentric, racist notions were expounded upon in a lot of 1950s classrooms.  That's just the most memorable part of Miss Van Breeman.

The other thing I can't forget about her was her temper!  Man, did she have a temper!  Hardly a day went by that she didn't start SCREAMING about something.  Even a simple request to use the lavatory could result in a tirade that rivalled some of the best set-tos between Reggie Jackson and Billy Martin.

And these contretemps were not only about things that happened in her classroom.  We were down on the lower floor of that lovely school on Charmuth Road, and woe betide any kids from any other classes who dared to make noise in that hallway.  She was out there hollering in a jiffy, bellowing about their hooliganism.

This was in our quiet, little Dulaney Valley town, and there was not a lot of hollering to be heard on our winding streets and byways. But Lord, how she jarred that quiet. Every day, something else to shriek of.

All I can remember about her is that she said she came from a farm in Upper Marlboro, MD, and that she recognized the patriotic deeds of Reuben, who was a custodian at the school who had been a paratrooper in the Army.  Beyond that, we knew nothing that I can recall.

In fourth grade, our teacher was Mrs Rennie, who was more the grandmotherly type.  Strict, but fair, and encouraging to those of us who had a little trouble with our timeses and guzinthas. 

One day, she made an English composition exercise out of writing letters to Miss Van Breeman, who was conspicuously absent from the faculty that next year.  We thought it was a nice idea and we wrote the letters, which Mrs Rennie said she would have mailed to our former teacher.

It wasn't until many years later that a couple of us started to wonder just what happened to Miss VB, and if she had been...you know...fired? hospitalized? promoted to chief of disciplinary services? 

We shall never know, on this earth.  But one day I fully expect to be walking through those fabled pearly gates and hear, "Mark!  Get back there and pick up that cafeteria tray!  This isn't the Plaza Hotel, you know!" being barked out in a familiar Southern MD accent.  Then I'll know I'm right where I need to be.

Haley's Comet

When the outgoing governor of Mississippi, the honorable Republican Haley Barbour, was leaving the office the other day, he apparently packed up all personal belongings, all that stuff that collects in a desk over the years, and failed to check the new calendar on the wall.

He just totally LOOKS like the governor of Mississippi!

In the apparent belief that this is the year 1812, Mr Barbour let loose upon this land some 200 of the finest that his famed penitentiaries have to offer.  Murderers, thieves, probably a rapist or two, who knows?  "But nobody on death row!" he proudly proclaimed. 

Here's the part that makes me wonder what year it is in Mississippi:

"The pardons were intended to allow them to find gainful employment or acquire professional licenses as well as hunt and vote," Barbour said.

So, setting aside our wondering about what sort of "professional" organizations will grant licenses to convicted felons, are we just to understand that food is so hard to come by in the greater Hattiesburg area that, rather than just send them to the Buy-So-Lo, we give rifles to murderers in hopes they will come back with the pickup full of venison?

Among those getting early outs from the Walled Off Astoria was the brother of former Packer/Falcon/Jet/Viking quarterback and Southern Miss college star Brett Favre. Earnest Scott Favre had his record cleared in the 1996 death of his best friend, Mark Haverty. Favre had driven in front of a train in Pass Christian while drunk, pleaded guilty in 1997, and was sentenced to a year of house arrest followed by two years' probation.  All this happened 15 years ago, and he was still in the Big House?  Just for spelling his first name wrong?

Karen Irby also packed up her troubles in her old kit bag and headed home, presumably to Jackson, where she was a socialite before a DUI crash killed two doctors. 

In 1996, South African Azikiwe Kambule was sent up as a teen in the carjacking and murder of a Jackson woman.  Today, it's like that never even happened.  He's headed home.


I did mention Mr Barbour's party affiliation, did I not?  Lest anyone think he's one of those liberals, soft on crime,  and willing to spring forth a veritable phalanx of Willie Hortons on an unprotected populace...

Come Fry With Me

In my ongoing effort to provide up-to-the-minute cultural information for today's with-it generation, all of whom I outrank in seniority by several scores, I now bring to your attention what some are calling the "vocal fry." I call it the "spoken sizzle," and it's that way some people have of letting the end of their sentence trail off in a guttural sound like this.

I think it was the late 90s when the uptalk phenomenon swept the country, much like the current fascination for following the lunatic pronouncements of Newton Leroy Gingrich (who said, "A mere 40 years ago, beach volleyball was just beginning. No bureaucrat would have invented it, and that's what freedom is all about” in 1996) and all those crazy rumors about Fonzie being killed in a car wreck.  People started talking like THIS.  The end of every sentence ended on an UP NOTE.  And simple declarative sentences sounded like QUESTIONS?  I'm sure you REMEMBER!

And then there was that trend, mercifully relegated to the past now, of people who dealt with children talking in a sing-song even when they weren't talking to children.  I can understand that, in order to cajole little Eggington to stop sticking the tines of his fork into the electric socket, it was effective to say, "Now, EGGY, you know that UPSETS Mommy when you BLOW OUT all the CIRCUITS in the house with your FORK so please knock it the hell OFF already."  But then that person would stop at the deli on her way home and say, "I need a QUARTER pound of HORMEL spiced ham sliced THIN please and a LARGE tub o' SLAW."  That sort of SPEECH cadence can be absolutely RIVETING, can it not?

But.  The sizzle, the fry.  A lot of singers trail off with it (remember Britney Spears, the way she growled "Oh Babbbbbbbbbby Babbbbbbbbbbby"?), and of course it's a staple when you hear the likes of Paris Hilton soliloquizing. It's almost as if Paris and her friends, when you hear them chattering in a cluster, run out of energy as each sentence trails off.  That's why their conversations sound like this:

"I like wanted to get that dress in like five different colors because I don't know what color boutonniere Chad will be WEARinggggggggggggggggggggg"

"Like Oh my Godddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd"

So please be on the lookout for this trend in your home, and do you all can to nip it in the buddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd.  See you tomorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrow.

Picture Show

You'd have had to know my grandfather, that's all I can say.  The man was amazing in his interests and abilities.  When I make a movie about my life, his part will be played by Edward G Robinson, see?  

He was always coming up with some sort of gag gift or other, and one time he gave me a hat that said "Don't Go Away Mad - Just Go Away" and I wish I still had that hat.  Not that I feel that way about most people, but it cracks me up, and every time I hear that Mötley Crüe song of the same name, it makes me smile to think of my grandfather and Tommy Lee << in the same context.


I think about that hat and the hundreds of other little gifts I got from my grandfather, many of which came in the form of jokes I still use (Pep Boys matches, Land O'Lakes butter cartons) when I think about my childhood, which took place during the years in which Dwight "Ike" Eisenhower wore baggy pants to play golf with Dick "Dick" Nixon.  I often wish that I were a kid again and know what I know now, but then again, who hasn't made that wish?  

Ike 'n' Dick

During my 911 days, I was fortunate enough to make friends with a nice co-worker named Hazel, who had a little baby named Ashlee.  Ashlee had a baby four months ago, a wonderful little angel named Cole, and yesterday in the mail, here came an envelope addressed to me and Peggy bearing a card that said "Love" and a picture of the baby inside. 


Just a photo of a lovely little baby boy, sweet and pure, and it brings so much joy to Peggy and me to see him smiling and happy in that picture, which took a place of honor on our refrigerator near the Ring Lardner quote ("They gave each other a smile with a future in it") and photos of other people we love.  I wish him sunny days and happy nights and lots of love and laughs.  When he gets to be my age (the year will be 2061!) he will know that you need to have plenty of both,  and I have a feeling he does.


Thank you Ashlee.  We love the picture, and we love all of you!

Sunday rerun: Bad to the Bone

Quite humerus

Some nights, when I go to type my blog entry, I can hardly wait to sit down at the old keyboard. I have something on my mind to write about and it's just a matter of how quickly I can type. And then there are times like this, when there is no specific topic on my mind, nothing that really strikes my fancy. And where is my fancy, by the way? I imagine it is located somewhere near the funny bone. That's what we say when something amuses us, right? It "tickled my funny bone." I decided to look into this, since nothing else was on my mind. I called the medical examiner's office and the anatomy department at the School of Medicine, but both places said that recent budget cuts had left them short-handed. In other words, they were working with a skeleton crew.

Well, look at old skinny  here, and there is the old soupbone, the upper part of the arm. It's really called the "humerus," so it would appear that some wag lost in the history of anatomy was the first to call it the funny bone, since it was so humorous.

So what would happen if the anatomy texts taught tomorrow's doctors to use the common colloquial terms that we use for body parts? If you were being treated for a scalp laceration, wouldn't you feel better about a doctor who said, "Let's have a look at the old melon here..."? The podiatrist would tell you, "No matter your dogs are barking so loudly!" and the optometrist would really say, "Jeepers creepers! Where'd you get those peepers?"

I enjoy skeletons, and plan to do so, right up until the day I become one myself. I'm here to tell you, I'm bad to the bone.

D-I-S-R-E-S-P-E-C-T

I can understand the feeling that this fellow Morris out in Arizona gets, having lost his wife, because there would be no "me" without my beloved Peggy.

But Morris lost his wife in the Gabby Giffords slaughter down there in the Cactus State and, as much as I sympathize and empathize with his losing a wife, I am repulsed by the stupid things he is saying.  You can click on the link and read them right out of the Arizona Republic; I won't give them the light of day.


A few facts: This nation was built upon the free exchange of ideas.  Former Marine Morris and his wife had every right to go to that Safeway that Saturday and meet their congresswoman, whose love of public service led her to schedule the open forum for all.  (As opposed to the congressman in the next district over from us, who schedules his "open meetings" by sending texts to his loyal supporters just before the meeting, thereby keeping pesky reporters and Democrats at bay.) Yes, they went to the meeting, and of course, this maniac Loughner killed and injured people who were only trying to exchange ideas.  Which is why Morris was there.  He wanted to tell Rep. Giffords that she is too liberal for his tastes, but he didn't get the chance to say this before the bullets ruined so much.


We are responsible for our actions, which is why Loughner now awaits both sanity and a trial. Morris is blaming Rep. Giffords's husband for not providing security for her, although he fails to point the same finger at himself for not doing the same for his spouse.   Perhaps he feels guilt because he survived and his wife did not.  That is understandable, but why express it with such venom toward another victim?


Morris refused a visit from the president when Mr Obama flew down to AZ to meet the survivors and mourn the lost.  That's called disrespect to the commander in chief, which is something that no good Marine would ever display.  He shows disrespect again by calling Gifford's's husband, Mark Kelly, "our dear captain astronaut."  The whole Marine ethos is built on unflinching, automatic adherence to rules and policies.  There's no room in their rulebook for someone who expresses his negative regard toward persons of higher rank. Feel it all you want!  Think it, let it settle in the old brainpan and stay for good, but keep it to yourself! 


Morris says that his wife worried that he would offend people with his talk of liberal politicians leading the country down the tubes when all along, a man who really cares about his wife's feelings would not embarrass her in social situations with his rants about how the liberals are taking the country down the tubes.   There are ways to disagree politely, ways to let your feelings be known without getting the askance looks from your neighbors, but Mr Morris does not seem to be a man who would seek that middle ground.

Writing on a blog called Jezebel, Margaret Hartmann says this whole thing is just  "tremendously sad." Morris is "challenging anyone who says the lesson from the attack is that there needs to be more civility in politics," she writes. "Either he's focusing his anger over his wife's murder on Giffords or he's truly so partisan that he can't look past the fact that he disagrees with her politically—or perhaps it's a mix of both."

It's a sad day in America when people can't meet in civil congress, as it were, on a shopping center parking lot in Arizona to discuss our various approaches to what's best for America.  What really annoys me about this man - and again, I ascribe most of his uncalled-for remarks to the awful tragedy he survived - is that he is of that generation and social stripe - retired, conservative, ex-military - that would normally eschew such behavior.  Morris calls himself an ultraconservative.  Tell me, what is so conservative about being so obstreperously disrespectful to high government officials?  If a left-leaning liberal were in his shoes, and a guy like Bush were back in the White House, the O'Limbaughs would be in barely-controlled snits of rage.  "How DARE he ignore the POTUS?  And a former Marine, to boot!  What is this world coming to, that he would display such contempt?"


What is this world coming to, indeed.

Wherefore Art thou, Art?

Was it not the great legal scholar Oliver Wendell Douglas who sagely advised that your right to swing your arm ends where my nose begins?  I think so.  

What's the first rule we learn when we commence attending school, or dating?  Keep your hands to yourself!

Learning to respect the rights of others seems a quaint, old-fashioned notion in these hurly-burly times, when people are dashing around faster than Mrs Gingrich at a buy -one-get one FREE hairspray sale.

Now, I'm all for artistic expression!  Heaven knows, I'm the first to salute anyone who hangs a velvet Elvis or wide-eyed kid painting in their family room.  Under my sobriquet "Phil S. Styne," I donate such art to the needy families of Newport, Rhode Island, Malibu, California, and Palm Beach, Florida. 


But help me to understand why people are defending kids who go around with their spray paint and their b.a. Sharpies and leave their graffiti on cars, houses, buildings and slow-moving pedestrians.  


Here's what I'm talking about, specifically.  According to the Perry Hall PATCH, one of our local Vincent vandal Goghs was caught at 0250 hours the other morning spray-painting the building at Pete's Cycle shop on Belair Rd.  We assume that this redecoration was not done under the auspices, supervision or permission of the proprietors of Pete's, but the post-pubescent Picasso, while under interrogation down at the station house, gave it up, naming two other places that had come under his decorative touch.  


OK, let's stop right there.  You got a kid, 18, caught vandalizing the property of another person.  There's hardly a need for a trial, since he was caught in the act in the middle of the night.  So does he:


a) admit his act, say he was "just foolin' around and all," and await his chance to do useful Community Service hours, removing the handiwork of others?


b) clam up, tell the cops, "You ain't got nothing on me, see, copper?" and refuse to talk anymore "without my mouthpiece, see?"


c) claim that this is his "way of expressing (his) artistic side"?


You've taken quizzes like this before, so you know we stack the right answer on the bottom.  Yes, the youth said that.  His "tag" is "Toe" or "Toenail," so we know there is trouble afoot when he kneels and says, "Let us spray."


So, we know he needs some more education, which we can hope will be meted out to him by a wise and wonderful judge.


But as usual, that's not the worst part of the story.  

The article in the PATCH engendered a lively debate, and when you read down to the bottom of the page, you are treated to the views of fellow adults who say things such as,"No, he did not commit a "white collar crime", (which are usually worse by the way...) but somebody giving away their art for free."

 

I'm not even going to comment on the syntactic struggles of that sentence.  This is a woman, trying to tell us that spray-painted graffiti on SOMEONE ELSE'S PROPERTY should not be considered a crime, but a gift of art. And she goes on with a whole new theory: "...the pre-frontal cortex (risk assessment, decision making) is not developed until around 25yo. He can go to war, but not drink... so, not totally an adult in terms of the law."

Attention attorneys everywhere!  A brand-new defense has just been offered by a woman who goes on to say "maybe I've been involved in education too long."  In her view, no one under the age of 25 really knows how to assess risk or make a good decision, so we can't hold their actions against them.

To you 18-year-olds who work full or part time, go to school, have a car and a social life and no time for damaging the property of others at ten minutes til three in the morning, I am sorry, but this woman feels that your brain stems have not borne ripe fruit just yet, and so she discounts everything you say, do, touch or feel.  

She has no respect for your accomplishments, though they are many and varied, as she is too busy defending the misguided actions of a guy who is most assuredly representative of but a tiny fraction of your number.

And now you know the worst part of the story.

Dated comments

I'm a bit of a dumpster diver, I'll admit it.  And I'm always on the lookout for boxes to use for recycling, so I snag 'em from the recycling area at work to take home and fill up with used newspapers and beer cans.  

So today I was over there in Papertown and I saw a 2001 calendar that someone had gotten rid of.  It was striking, to see that.  It reminded me of when you see a rusted, junky hulk of an old car on the side of the road, steam spewing out of its snout like a Gingrich tantrum, and you think of the day some happy family got that Delta 88 when it was brand new, and how they all piled into that Oldsmobile for a ride over to Cousin Al's and then a stop at Scoops, the ice cream parlor.  For the first few weeks, until Dad spilled egg foo young all over the front seat, no one was allowed to eat in the car.  Ah, the memories!

When this calendar was printed up in late 2000, the world had been through its Y2K crisis and everything seemed to be OK, but a few hanging chads later, things changed.   Still, there was nothing about Tuesday, September 11, 2001 that seemed to augur anything evil.  Just by looking at the calendar, it was going to be another Tuesday, that was all.


I have framed in our garage a work schedule that my father made up for the last three months of 1941.  I keep it around because it is an early example of the perfect calligraphy that he used every time he wrote anything.  From a formally done wedding commemoration, to the face on the grandfather clock he made us, to a note to an adolescent me reminding me to change the oil in the Plymouth, cut the grass and sweep out the workshop, everything he wrote was a work of art.  So I figure it was during the summer of 1941 that he laid out the calendar for the final quarter, and you can look at this chart and see who was working at the Baltimore Gas and Electric Company in his department on that Sunday morning, December 7, "a day which will live in infamy."



They're all just dates on a calendar, 365 per year, except this year when we will have 366.  Until something happens that makes a day of memorable happiness or one of memorable enormity, we never know. 

2012: The Year in Weird

So here we are in the year 2012 and that means it's an election year (you might have heard some commotion in Iowa and New Hampshire of late) and it's time for another Olympics.  This is the one for which Baltimore actually put in a rather strong bid a few years ago, and had we been awarded the Summer Games, you may be sure that I would have spent my Summer some other place.  Like I need tourists clogging up the roadway early in the morning, trying to get to the water polo venue when I need to get motorvatin' over the hill.  Plus, it would have been a financial pleasure to rent out the house to a family of Latvians, in town for the Games. 

That'll be $20,000 there, Ludvigs.  Thank you.  Enjoy the games. 

I've never been much for the Olympics anyway.  Track and field events leave me shaking my head.  I mean, if you dig the broad jump and the pole vault and the discus throw and that crazy stuff where you ride a bike 50 miles, swim 50 miles, and shoot a mechanical duck, go for it!  Just leave me to baseball and football, and I'm fine.

It goes without saying that you can't have an Olympics without a really weird mascot.  Baseball has the Oriole Bird, the San Diego Chicken, the Phillie Phanatic, and Yogi Berra - all wholesome and fun symbols of the great game.  The Olympics seem bent on causing nightmares in children and impressionable adults with Wenlock and Mandeville here:

 

I mean, you decide if these monocular puzzle pieces are anything you want your children to dress as this Halloween.

It's never too late to persuade them to go as the King!

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!

Wonderful weekend

It was a good weekend!  Friday like a dolt I forgot something at the office, so Peggy went back with me and we ran into a friend who was leaving for the day.

Not only that, but she was also leaving for good.  She transferred in to our office a couple of years ago, and she was very professional and kind at all times.  I mean, here it was, the last day of her time on our job, and it's almost 6 pm and she was still there, packing her stuff and moving along.  Very conscientious, very dedicated to the job.

How many people would do that?  She was the only person in the building, as far as I could tell.   No one was there, yet the way this person is, she was there, and that's all that mattered.  I know that she knows how true it is, that old expression "Character is doing the right thing even when no one is watching."

Then on Saturday I did the grocery shopping and had yet another occasion to be in the store aisle when a smallish lady needed help.  Pickled beets are just the sort of thing that always winds up on the back of the top shelf.  There I was, making my way down the veggie aisle intent on picking up a bag of Bob's Red Mill Organic Corn Grits Also Known As Polenta, as the complicated bag likes to say. Anyhow, 1/2way down the aisle, I saw that shy smile that all of us tall men have come to know.  "Excuse me, sir, I need your height..." she smiled.

Now, if you know me, and even if you don't, you know that I tend to ham it up. (Really!)  So forgive me for sweeping that jar of beets off the back of that shelf and plopping it into her cart the way that Cal Jr used to pick up a grounder and feed it to the second baseman to start off a double play.  Went home with the eats, put 'em away and then it was time for a treat!  We had a wonderful dinner at the diner, and came home in time to watch the end of a playoff game and watch some old Dragnet shows I bought at WalMart (22 episodes, 5 bucks.)

Sunday we did some chores around the house and settled down to some serious football watching. Dinner turned out fine and we just enjoyed the day.  This Tim Tebow story with the Broncos is really something to see, and we were happy to see him win the game in heroic fashion, 11 seconds into overtime.

By Sunday evening, Peggy was watching her Masterpiece Classics on PBS, and I of course got on the computer looking for pictures of Ben Roethlisberger with that look on his face.  There are thousands of them.

We don't jet to France for the weekends, and to be quite frank about it, I am sorry for those who do.  A couple of days off with the person you love, dinner at the diner, and the American spectacle of football and pork roasts are things I couldn't live without.

In Heaven there is no beer bread

Not so long ago I got involved in one of those modern versions of a chain letter: an email recipe exchange.  So far, I have gotten quite a few recipes back, and one was for something I used to make all the time, but haven't of late, and I pass it on to you today.

It's that rarest of recipes that does two things well: first, it makes a delicious loaf of bread, and second, you can forget about lighting all those Yankee Candles® on the day you make this recipe.  Your entire house will have that yeasty smell so common in bakeries.

It's Beer Bread.  And it's about as simple to make as it can be. Three simple ingredients:
 
3 cups self rising flour
3/4 cup  of sugar
1 can or bottle of beer - it can't be light beer and it needs to be at room temperature
 
Mix in loaf pan (spray sides and bottom with Pam)  and let sit 1/2 hr
Bake 40 mins @ 350


And there you have it. Let that loaf cool a while, slather with olive oil or butter or some cheddar spread and go to town, all the while enjoying the sweet smell of Kwik 'n' E-Z home baking!

Happy Sunday!
 

I'll Flip You For It

from NPR -this story about how the government is about to save $50 million:

The federal government will stop minting unwanted $1 coins, the White House said Tuesday. The move will save an estimated $50 million a year.

The Baltimore Bins/ NPR photo

Earlier this year, we reported on the mountain of $1 coins sitting unused in government vaults. The pile-up — an estimated 1.4 billion coins — was caused by a 2005 law that ordered the minting of coins honoring each U.S. president.

We calculated that the unwanted coins had cost taxpayers some $300 million dollars to make. There were so many coins piling up that the Federal Reserve was redesigning a vault in Texas to help hold them all.

 

We got to see a vault in Baltimore. It was the size of a soccer field, filled with bags of dollar coins.

You can see the presidents' faces on the coins. Andrew Jackson, John Adams, James Buchanan. The mint is only about half way through the presidents.

And the pile of coins has been growing. The mint makes enough of each new coin to meet initial demand. But about 40% of those coins get returned to the Fed, where they sit unused.

"As will shock you all, the call for Chester A. Arthur coins is not there," Vice President Biden joked on Tuesday, as he announced the new policy. "I don't mean to comment on his presidency, but it just is not very high."

The mint will continue to make a small number of the presidential coins, for collectors.

The Treasury department estimates it will take about 10 years for the economy to absorb the 1.4 billion $1 coins now in storage.

Now, here is my question.  

Exactly where in Baltimore is this soccer-field sized warehouse full of Chester Arthur dollars? I really really really want to see it. 

Festivus Maximus

There's a happy kind of feeling in the air around Bmore these days.  The Baltimore Ravens of the National Football League once again - for the fourth year in a row, and they are the only team who can make that claim! - are in the playoffs, which is sort of like the Iowa Caucuses, only without the Gingriches and the Santorums and the hilarious Bachmanns. 

All around the town, people are wearing purple, buying bumperstickers and swizzle sticks with the Ravens logo, and wearing their Ravens jerseys to work.  These days, you can get a mani/pedi from a nail tech wearing a #20 Ed Reed jersey, an oil change from a Jiffy Lube guy wearing a #52 Ray Lewis, or an indictment from a judge with a #27 Ray Rice jersey under his robes. 

The lawn in front of Federal Hill, where a Union encampment kept watch on our fair city during the Civil War to ensure that the locals didn't go Rebel, and the lawn in front of City Hall are being painted up with the official Ravens logo.  You need a huge stencil to do this, although a couple of kids with Krylon spray paint and huge Sharpies could probably spruce up your front lawn for you if you asked nicely.  Tell them you want it to look like this:

 And that is the cannon that the Union army kept pointed at the downtown area all during the War Between The States, following the Baltimore Riot of 1861, which is re-enacted almost every week by young volunteer history buffs.

Next to the cannon are three heavily-guarded Ravens cheerleaders.

But there is a certain feeling in the air that is only being felt in twelve towns around our nation - towns ranging in size from Green Bay WI to New York NY.  The playoffs are here.  Happy Festivus!

What's next?

When "they" ask how it is that Peggy and I have stayed married for all these 38 years, with no end in sight, we usually chorus back with the same answer"

"I just don't know what it's gonna be next with him/her"


We rarely agree on a thing.  There you go.  I am a lifelong liberal loonbug yellow-dog Democrat who wouldn't pull a Republican lever in a voting booth for anyone.  Never have, and never will, because you can't come to me and tell me you're from the Cheney party and ask for my vote.

Peggy generally votes for the right party, although she did say, "Well, Reagan hasn't done all THAT bad a job" in 1984 and I still agitate her on that one. 

Peggy likes Oprah.  Enough said there.

And now she likes watching "The Talk" more than I do because they replaced the wonderful Leah Remini with Cheryl Underwood, and Aisha Tyler is keeping Holly Robinson Peete's chair warm.  Aisha's ok, she adds to a conversation, but Cheryl seems to come in every day with a page full of gags and zany responses that she adds whenever she can...even if it's not germane to the issue.  

It's like this:  They'll be talking about, say,  how old a teenager should be before he or she goes on car dates, and everyone will make some good points and Sarah Gilbert will pipe up with statistics about how many people get killed in car wrecks every single day and it will all be meaningful.  And then! Cheryl will mug for the audience and say "I can't find anyone of any age to take me out in a car!"

And there will be peals of laughter, both in the audience and in my house, as Peggy dabs her eyes from the overwhelming mirthiness of it all and Julie Chen bows her head in embarrassment.  I tell you this:  the average Talk viewer thinks that Cheryl Underwood is funnier than a dozen joke books. 

And I just sit there, feeling mystified, and a little left out.  I don't get what's so funny.  

Mr Osbourne

And then there are those who find wisdom and sagacity in the words of Sharon Osbourne.  First of all, you have to listen hard to figure out just what she's saying in the first place.  Most of her sentences begin with the word "Ozzy," so there's your clue.  As in:


"Awzay 'n' Aye wet out to ditah lohst noight 'n' 'e wuz so tie-uhd, 'e pahssed oat in 'is seeoop"  which means "Ozzy and I went out to dinner last night, and he was so tired, he passed out in his soup."  


Someday I will figure out why someone would seek, let alone listen to, advice doled out by a woman who would marry John Michael "Ozzy" Osbourne, the apparently addled performer/lyricist of such lovely ballads as "Crazy Train" ("Mental wounds still screaming   Driving me insane   I'm going off the rails on a crazy train").  Peggy thinks he's great, loves his music, finds his reminiscences enchanting, and I'm sitting there going "Huh?"

Mr Nelson

However, there is an Ozzie song that I really like.  Click here to hear Ozzie Nelson and his Band do "Gee, But It's Great To Meet a Friend."  

Now, that's something to Talk about!

 

Mad man

Oh man, I was peeved.  Vexed.  Miffed. And most certainly irked.  Without going into details, let's just say that someone from somewhere called me, said that they had done something that we aren't supposed to do, and told me what I was going to do to make things whole again.

You say what, now?

Oh yes, and I was going to do it by some deadline, too.  And there was to be no dithering, and my suggestions for 127 different ways to handle the situation were just scraps of crepe paper, tossed to the wind of the other person's demands.

Well, I went and told someone, because I didn't want any of us getting splashed with beach when the ship hit the sand, and he said, "Why did ____ get this way?"

I said, "I don't know; ____ just got all whoopsy on me!"

He didn't know what "whoopsy" meant, and to be frank, until I said it, I didn't either, because the word did not exist in English, as far as I know, before I coined it just then.

And I'm not saying it's a brilliant word (such as 'sesquipedalian') or particularly euphonious ('symphony'), or even so self-evident that you know what it means without running to the Funk & Wagnalls ('rainbow-colored') but 'whoopsy,' which can also be spelled 'oopsie' for all the people I work with care, came to be defined by the brilliant thinker and wordsmith Stephen Roblin, who said it means

"Indignant without just cause"

And I say bravo to that.  When someone goes to court hollering that they were ONLY going 45 in a 30-mph zone and "lots of other people were going even faster,"  they are being whoopsy.  When someone gets a free dessert in a restaurant because their reservation got messed up and they had to sit for a few minutes out by the wicker baskets with the duck sauce packets, fortune cookies and chopsticks for the carryout trade, and then complain that if they're getting a free dessert, they'd prefer tira misu, that's whoopsy.

And certainly, in that old story when a grandmom takes her grandson to the beach and he is bobbing around in the surf on his inflatable serpent and the tide suddenly rips and carries him out to sea and the brave lifeguard swims against the current, brings him back to the beach and performs CPR to bring him back to life, and the grandmom says to the lifeguard (as dozens cheer his heroism), "Well, he HAD a hat!" that is major league whoopsy.

The word spilled out and I'm waiting for it take hold in the local vernacular.  But then again, I'm waiting for "vernacular" to take its place in the vernacular, so anyway...

Movie review, 70 years later

We watched a movie the other night  - it was "For Me and My Gal," starring Judy Garland, Gene Kelly and George Murphy.  1942, the nation at war, and here came a movie about World War I.  

Spoiler Alert: I'm going to tell you every detail about the plot, so if you haven't seen this musical but figure you might want to catch it on TCM, you might want to switch to this blog for a while and come back here later.

I wish I had been around in those great days of vaudeville, when, for one small admission price, one was treated to an evening of song and dance and comedy and skits and more songs and more dances.  That was entertainment in the early part of the 20th Century.  There was no tv, no radio, no cable reality series, so people had to make their own reality, and entertainers entertained them with entertainment that was entertaining, not "Teen Mom" or "Prom Mom" or "Pawn Stars."  We must not have enough trouble of our own these days, to have to spend time importing the miserable lives of others into our own, via cable that we pay for.


The movie intertwines the vaudeville act along with showing the striving and reaching for the top that always accompanies professional pursuits.  In the picture, Judy Garland is a really great singer/dancer, you see, and she is teamed up with George Murphy, who is....not so great.  But he's a really nice guy!  So she gets a chance to work with Gene Kelly, and they are on their way to the top, and then he gets a chance to be part of an act with a female singer who is all mysterious and sexy (we know that right away because she speaks with a European accent) so he dumps old Judy right off the bill.  Then her brother is lost in World War I, a brother who held such promise as a budding doctor, and old Gene here is so avid about getting to the top of show business that he self-inflicts a hand injury so he won't get drafted.  But it all works out in the end, because he becomes an ambulance driver and saves the battalion by driving a car through a hail of gunfire to warn an oncoming convoy that there's a hail of gunfire just ahead.

And of course, the big finale...he shows up at her solo concert - she's a BIG Star now - and she spots him in the audience and all of a sudden she runs to him and they duet off to the big rousing finale.

In real life, Judy Garland suffered through emotional and physical pain that was to end her life way too early. Gene Kelly was a man of many contradictions.  On the one hand, he was a lifelong Democrat and supported progressive thinking.  On the other hand, he was a Steelers fan. He made "Singin' In The Rain" and other great musicals, and he was in the the first movie that ever put me to sleep in a theater - the abysmal "Xanadu."  George Murphy retired from the movies and became a Republican senator from California, setting into motion the tendency of that state to elect washed-up show biz figures to high office, because something seems to make the residents of the Golden State think that Arnold Schwarzenegger could do good things for them when he's not busy impregnating the help.   Other notable Californians who have made great contributions to our national weal include Sonny Bono, Helen Gahagan Douglas and the "great" Ronald Reagan.   He must have been great; everyone says so!


George Murphy, as a Republican senator and leader of the Nixon re-election campaign, was quoted as saying that because people of Mexican descent are "built low to the ground" they are "perfect for doing farm labor."  


He seemed like such a nice guy...in the movie.  What a great actor he was!

Rock Starr

When people talk of their favorite Beatle, and these conversations take place every day, most say they toss it up between John Lennon and Paul McCartney.  

But I go right for the biggest Starr of them all: Ringo Starr, the lovable happy drummer born Richard Starkey.  All the experts said he was not a great drummer, not a great singer, not a great-looking man:  the same unfair criticisms that poor old Ron Paul has to bear on the campaign trail, except that no one can knock Ron's drumming.  He manages to drum up support, against all reasoning.

But back to Ringo: I always liked the guy.  He never seems to take himself too seriously, which is always nice to see in a multi-millionaire, and he liked American country music and rockabilly well enough to record Buck Owens and Carl Perkins.  In fact, look at this list of Beatle songs:

1. "Boys"  
2. "I Wanna Be Your Man" 
3. "Matchbox" 
4. "Honey Don't" 
5. "Act Naturally"
6. "What Goes On" 
7. "Yellow Submarine" 
8. "With a Little Help From My Friends" 
9. "Don't Pass Me By" and "Good Night"
10. "Octopus' Garden"

and what do they have in common, beside being mainly up-tempo happy kinds of songs?  The lead singer on each is Mr. Starr!

He's the oldest of the Beatles, born in July, 1940 (which makes him 71, for crying out loud!) He played around his native Liverpool in bands such as Rory Storm and the Hurricanes before getting the chance to replace Pete Best with the Beatles in 1962.  No, he wasn't the prolific songwriter that Lennon and McCartney were, or even George Harrison, but Ringo's sense of humor lent a lot to the charm of the Beatles.  It was his turns of phrase, like "It's been a hard day's night" and "Tomorrow never knows" that found their way into songs written by the others, and remember how the "plot" of their first movie "A Hard Day's Night" revolved around getting their wandering drummer back to the studio for a live tv show?  Who better to play the Beatle gone missing?

It's a shame that Ringo is the only Beatle not to be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for his solo work, but perhaps someday, the people who vote on such things will hear his curious adenoidal voice sing "In the town where I was born, lived a man who sailed to sea..." and give him his due.  

A poem for New Year's Day, by Robert W. Service

The Passing of the Year - Robert W. Service

My glass is filled, my pipe is lit,
     My den is all a cosy glow;
And snug before the fire I sit,
     And wait to feel the old year go.
I dedicate to solemn thought
     Amid my too-unthinking days,
This sober moment, sadly fraught
     With much of blame, with little praise.

Old Year! upon the Stage of Time
     You stand to bow your last adieu;
A moment, and the prompter's chime
     Will ring the curtain down on you.
Your mien is sad, your step is slow;
     You falter as a Sage in pain;
Yet turn, Old Year, before you go,
     And face your audience again.

That sphinx-like face, remote, austere,
     Let us all read, whate'er the cost:
O Maiden! why that bitter tear?
     Is it for dear one you have lost?
Is it for fond illusion gone?
     For trusted lover proved untrue?
O sweet girl-face, so sad, so wan
     What hath the Old Year meant to you?

And you, O neighbour on my right
     So sleek, so prosperously clad!
What see you in that aged wight
     That makes your smile so gay and glad?
What opportunity unmissed?
     What golden gain, what pride of place?
What splendid hope?  O Optimist!
     What read you in that withered face?

And You, deep shrinking in the gloom,
     What find you in that filmy gaze?
What menace of a tragic doom?
     What dark, condemning yesterdays?
What urge to crime, what evil done?
     What cold, confronting shape of fear?
O haggard, haunted, hidden One
     What see you in the dying year?

And so from face to face I flit,
     The countless eyes that stare and stare;
Some are with approbation lit,
     And some are shadowed with despair.
Some show a smile and some a frown;
     Some joy and hope, some pain and woe:
Enough!  Oh, ring the curtain down!
     Old weary year! it's time to go.

My pipe is out, my glass is dry;
     My fire is almost ashes too;
But once again, before you go,
     And I prepare to meet the New:
Old Year! a parting word that's true,
     For we've been comrades, you and I --
I thank God for each day of you;
     There! bless you now!  Old Year, good-bye!