No time like the present

I must have written these thoughts a million times, or wanted to. But here for the one millionth time, I beg us all not to count on being able to say nice things or take nice walks or eat a damned hot dog or call an old friend or patch up an old sore spot or stay up to see a sunrise or go to bed to dream of any of the above tomorrow.

You have to do it today.

I love people, you know.  And I tend to meet a lot of them, which is why Facebook is so perfect for people like me.  I understand if it's not your cup o' tea.  It takes every kind of people.  

Not long ago, I "met" a fascinating woman named Holly from New Jersey on line.  I had been yakking about an old teacher of mine, and Holly had come across the estate of someone who may or may not have been the same person.  What matters is that a new friendship was born, and through that person I met a friend of hers, a lady of great wit and charm who had written a children's book and was raising a son as a single mom.  Probably because my inner 8-year old refuses all offers to suppress himself, I found a lot to talk about with these two wonderful women, and we commented on each other's statuses, and shared photos and news clips that we found amusing.  We'll call this second new friend "T."

Monday morning began as usual here. I got up, fried an egg and ate my homemade muesli, and walked down Facebook Avenue while the morning news chattered away.  Looking at Facebook, I saw that other friends of "T" were posting a lot of pictures of her and her son, and I thought that maybe birthday greetings were in order, so I went to her page...

Went to her page to find, not birthday messages, but eulogies.  My merciful God, what happened?  And I read on, to find that my friend and her son had been taken in a house fire some eight hours earlier.  I messaged Holly and we spoke comforting thoughts and I sit here now, typing, bereft, because once again a fundamental lesson is right in front of us and at the risk of sounding like Jacob Marley or something, I beseech us all to hug the people we love, and love the people you hug.  It's really that simple, and I'm not better than the next person at remembering it. Two weeks from new, two centuries from now, it's not going to matter whether or not your lawn looked perfect or you lost those last three lbs. or your hair came out looking just so.  What will matter is whether or not you made someone feel good.  Or, frankly, whether you made yourself feel good. Yup, we're responsible for that, too.

And what a nice touch.  After I talked with my friend and she had so many words of consolation, I went back to main FB, and these were the first two images I saw:

 Look up to the sky.  Look up and live!

Carpe Diem.  Seize the day.  You won't be sorry.

I Keep Right On A-Learnin'

We never know when we are going to have a lesson imparted to us.  For that matter, sometimes we have a lesson imparted and we don't even realize it at first.  This happens to those of us who are a little slow on the uptake, a group of which I am a charter member.  But maybe years later, you come to realize that someone showed a way of doing that impressed you and molded your future.

Ernest Ashworth, his suit,
and his toupee

Johnny Tillotson

The name "Johnny Tillotson" came up the other day.  Johnny was a pop singer whose success came in the early 60s with three big hit records: "Poetry In Motion," "It Keeps Right On A-Hurtin'," and the pop version of "Talk Back Trembling Lips" (Ernest Ashworth had the country hit on that one - the only major hit of his career, and doggone if he didn't go get himself a Nudie suit with big ruby red lips all over it and show up every Saturday night at the Grand Ole Opry and belt out his big hit as the crowd went wild!)

Enough about Ernest.  Johnny was a good boy, a handsome fella, and he did have his hits going for him until The Beatles landed in America and dashed the plans of a lot of Johnnies and Jimmies and Frankies and Fabians.  Johnny T, being a Southern fellow, tried the country route which had worked for Conway Twitty and a few others, and made some records with the country sound in the early 70s, all of which are unknown titles today, but those records are what brought his path into confluence with mine for half an hour.

I was working as a midday DJ, doing the Housewives' Hit Parade for Baltimore's #1 Country Station, soon to become Baltimore's #2 Country Station in a town that only needs one country station.  But we had no competition and were riding pretty high in the radio ratings when Johnny Tillotson showed up with his manager.

Johnny was appearing that night at a bar down the road a piece and he would really appreciate a little bump, a word or two to get the people to come on out and see him.  Sure, my boss said, just come on in, Mark will interview you, maybe take a couple of calls,  and good luck.

And that's what he did.  We talked on the air about his hits, and the memories that people would have connected with hearing "It Keeps Right On A-Hurtin' " performed live at the fabulous Club Whoozit down on Rte 3, just past the split with the interstate.  I guess he took a couple of calls ("Johnny, this is Agnes!  Do you remember meeting me when you sang at the Sand Bar that time" sort -of - thing) and he was off, probably to grab some bacon and eggs and a nap before the show.

Now, here's what I took away, although I don't think I realized it.  Johnny Tillotson had been a big deal ten years before that, with appearances on Ed Sullivan and American Bandstand and the like, and now here he was with me in a radio studio. I probably had to move my lunch box and a stack of records and tapes so I could see him while we talked.  AND YET he showed not a trace of any of these:  ego, disappointment, superiority, big-headed show-bizzy-ness or phony humility.  Just a nice guy, trying to make his living singing his songs, coming to grips with the commercial end of not being nearly as famous as he had been.

I think that a person who can be as decent, as kind and friendly, at the valley of his or her success as they had been while riding the wave of renown, is a worthwhile person with the right stuff for values.  I see that Johnny is still kicking around the music scene down in Florida, and I have a feeling that he is still the same humble, straight-ahead kind of guy.

Sunday rerun: You Could Look It Up

This is from 2011...
___________________________________________________
I'm not sure where the word "almanac" comes from, just as I'm not sure where Rick Perry is coming from, although I know where he will be on Inauguration Day 2013.

And by this time next year, shortly after the election, I'll be able to tell what the moon will look like on Inauguration Day night, that moon at which Messrs Perry, Gingrich, Cain, Romney, Huntsman and Madame Bachmann will be baying.  That's because I am a big fan of almanacs of all sorts.

As a kid, before there was an internet, I would wile away many happy hours sitting in my hollow tree, reading the World Book, the dictionary, and various almanacs.  Almanacs come out in the fall of every year, and they are little soft-bound volumes containing information on the phases of the moon, tide tables, planting dates for farmers and gardeners, and fascinating little articles with tips on how to clean any stain with baking soda and vinegar.  I always make sure to ask Santa to bring me the Hagerstown Almanac and the Old Farmers' Almanac, and then there is the one I get free for nothing from the Johnson Funeral Home on Loch Raven Boulevard.  They call that one the Farmers' Almanac, so I guess one can be of any age to enjoy it.

A lot of us old timers used to keep the Almanacs hanging on twine near the phone, in case we suddenly needed to find out if there would be a full moon right after St Swithin's Day, but now, with more people using a cordless phone, or just a cell, I guess we need to find a web-based version.  I don't know if it would be as cool to thumb through a tiny Android almanac, though. 


There are also the big jumbo almanacs - the Information Please Almanac, the World Almanac, the New York Times publishes one.  These are walloping  hearty meatloaf-sized books, full of information.  Suppose the dinnertime conversation over at your house turns to the which countries are the greatest importers of Retsyn®, the golden chemical which cures stankbreath.  Or, say, someone is interested in knowing what is the state flower of Alabama (the camellia), the real name of Red Buttons (Aaron Chwatt) or what the flag of Moldova looks like, this is the place to turn.  

Even in the faraway Retsyn fields of Moldova, the world is a better-informed place because of almanacs. Here we see some happy Moldovan farmers, preparing for the annual Harvest Festival.  The guy in the middle - what's he holding? Why, an almanac, what else!

The Saturday Picture Show, April 12, 2014

There was a line in "The King of Queens" when someone tells Doug Heffernan that it is possible in this life to have one's own woodburning pizza oven right outside in the back yard.  The look of pure bliss that comes over him at the very THOUGHT of such a wondrous event is unforgettable.  I like to imagine this being in my yard, along with a big glass to catch beer as it rains down from a bountiful Heaven.

Just for comparison's sake...here's what it would look like if the United States was on the moon.  Listening to AM talk radio sometimes, I'm not so sure it isn't.

 And they try to tell children that clowns aren't creepy!  Look at this bozo, shoving a gram of sugar down his neck.  And just what does the red on his nose represent?  This is just weird.

 This is a colorized version of a photo of Abraham Lincoln camping with a guy who was a Civil War re-enactor, which makes almost as much sense, or less, than actually fighting in the Civil War.  If the pose seems to leave a coppery taste in your mouth, well, this is the photo that they used to create the Lincoln penny.

Globetrotting travelers will recognize this as the Hotel Grotta Palazzese in Polignano, Italy.  At first, I thought it was a really cool new dining area for a new Wegman's somewhere.  I wonder if the seafood is fresh here?

There's a line in the song "You're From Texas" that goes, "I bet my kale that you hail from Texas."  But this is not a field of kale, no sir.  There's another line in the song that says, "You've got a smile like an acre of sunflowers, and your eyes are a bluebonnet blue."  Well up here in Maryland, we have sunflowers by the acre, but the only bluebonnets we get are on margarine packages, and so here is what an acre of bluebonnets looks like.  George "Van Gogh" Bush is painting some right now as we speak, and nothing can be done about it.

Once around the field, and then right off to a nice cold cell

OK, it was a bit over the line for Adam Jones, the Orioles center fielder and de facto team captain, to say that he wished a fan who had run onto the field at an O's game had shattered his femur instead of simply breaking his ankle in the effort, but I have to agree in theory with what he said to ESPN the other night. People pay to watch a ballgame, and they do not pay to see drunked-up ne'er-do-wells prancing around the field.

Adam wishes the drunken fool a
nice time at Riker's Island

The Tuesday afternoon game between the Orioles and the Yankees had to be interrupted for these shenanigans.  (Note, there is never just one "shenanigan;" it's always plural!) Afterward, Jones told ESPN, "You look like a [idiot] when you run on the field. We don't go to any other events. We don't go to other sporting events and do that to their jobs, but they come to ours and do that. I get it, you're drunk and you want to be on "SportsCenter." Your [butt] is going to jail with a fine, and you might not be allowed to come back to the ballpark."

Hmmm.  Imagine not being able to go to Yankee Stadium ever again.  Hmmm.

I was at the Colts game in December, 1971, when a fan ran onto the field and tried to run off with the ball.  After linebacker Mike Curtis shivered his timbers with a forearm to the solar plexus, the drunk ran off with naught but pain, leaving the ball and his dignity out there on the field.

Part of the problem is that some fans reinforce this misbehavior by cheering and yapping in approval, leading fools with more beer than brains in them to decide to jump the railing and head for center field (or the distant goal line). And people being as they are, a certain contingent among us  yearns for attention, no matter how it's obtained, no matter how negative it is.  This is why they do it.

Of course, if you're Adam Jones, this is your workplace, and just as Chief Justice John "Bob Johnson" Roberts does not allow drunks to run screaming through the Supreme Courtroom, nor should Adam have to put up with the same.  Add to this the very real fear that some crackpot is going to show up at the ballpark with a weapon of some sort, and you can appreciate Jones's apprehension.


Speaking of apprehension, the cops always get these guys.  It's a crime with a 100% clearance rate, so you'd have better luck sticking up a bank or something.

Book him, Danno.

ABCs of MKC

It was almost like finding a Wonderful Waterful in the kitchen the other day when I found one of those surveys that tore across the nascent internet back in the 90's like John Goodman at a buffet. We all filled them out and sent them on, and sometimes I wish I could go back and see again what I said was my favorite movie in 1996.  So for posterity, but not for the last time, I hope...here are the ABCs of little old me.  Emphasis on the Old.

A - Age: 62
B - Bed size: Larry King
C - Chore you hate: Cleaning out a closet
D - Dog's name: Never had a dog but would name one Elvis
E - Essential start your day item: hot tea w/ muesli
F - Favorite color: Brown and orange
G - Gold or Silver or platinum: Platinum
H - Height: 6" 5"
I - Instrument played: radio
J - Job title: Retiree in good standing (even while seated)
K - Kids' names: see "D" above
L - Living arrangements: in a big happy house with the greatest wife of them all
M - Mom's name: Beverly Elizabeth Willis Schissler Clark
N - Nicknames: Marky Mark, Mark E. Mark, Master of All Space and Time
O - Overnight hospital stay: two knee replacements (same knee), spinal fusion, unknown neurological problem when I was 12.  It was supposed to kill me, but look how that turned out.
P - Pet Peeve: Anyone being made to feel left out of anything.
Q - Quote from a movie: "Did you see the way I stopped the beanbag with my stomach? That's instinct. You can't teach that." - Johnny Knoxville in "Jackass"
R - Right or left handed: Left (quite apropos)
S - Siblings: One much-older sister
T - Time you wake up: 0515
U- Underwear: cotton boxers, plaid.
V - Vegetable you dislike: spinach
W - Ways you run late: I have not been late for anything since 1976! I am neurotically early
X - X-rays you've had: You name it, there's a see-through picture of it.
Y - Yummy food you make: They come a-runnin' when I slide a big ol' tub o'lasagna out of the oven
Z- Zoo favorite: Prairie dogs

Sometimes you Schwinn, sometimes you get all Huffy

I've told you before that, of the 23 counties and one independent city that comprise the merry state of Maryland, Anne Arundel County is consistently the one subdivision where the funniest stuff happens. I don't know why, but you have to give it up for a county that has a delegate to the state legislature, one Don Dwyer,  cooling his heels in the county hoosegow on weekends these days because of his DWI convictions (yes, plural.)  Last weekend, as his fellow senators and delegates approached the end of their 90-day term, they had to do without him voting on Saturday.

But he said he hopes the end of his term will come soon too.

Still at large, but a good candidate to occupy a cell near the one that DWIer (couldn't resist) is the guy who held up a branch of the Bay Bank

Here's where he got the idea

, in Severn, down near the US Naval Academy, and then made his escape on a bicycle.

A bicycle which he later abandoned on a nearby parking lot.

The local branch of the Ecology Club is preparing a plaque for him, in recognition of his public-spiritedness and interest in reducing the carbon footprint of society.  They just need to know his name.

Speaking of footprints...

Too early for dis

I like to get up early, catch up on the news, gobble some muesli, guzzle some tea.

Click on the link below to hear
"The Duke Of Prunes"

These days, the muesli and the tea go down much more smoothly than does the news.  Just yesterday, in one burst of news, I was told that I live - we ALL live - in a world in which New York cops and firefighters got together for a hockey game for charity, and a huge fracas broke out...students at the U of Kaintucky decided that the best way to celebrate winning the semi-final basketball game was so set fire to 80 couches...students at the U of Cali Santa Barbara decided that the best way to celebrate spring break was to hit a police officer in the face with a backpack full of full bottles, and then riot over it when the cop took exception to their "youthful indiscretion"...gun enthusiast Oscar Pistorius took a break from vomiting on the stand long enough to cry on the stand with his lachrymose apology to the parents of the young woman he shot to death...Mickey Rooney died, having been in show business since 1922, and the radio newsman said he achieved "great fame playing Andy Hardy in the 'Hardy Boys' movies" - which may have been the only movies without him in the cast...some butthead threw a live cigarette butt into the mulch around the plants outside a banquet hall in Massachusetts, burning the place to the ground as wedding celebrants ran for for their lives..."country" singers sang with people like Shakira and soft rock relic Steve E. Nicks at the Academy of "Country" Music awards show...and, saddest of all, as this horrifying spectacle unreeled before our eyes, America's eyes were averted toward Australia, all agog at the arrival of the Duke and Duchess, along with their son, the Duke of Snider.  I really have nothing against this young couple, but I think that being cast as entertainment figures on Entertainment Tonight and those other 7:30 shows reduces the majesty of Their Majesties.

As Mr Zappa said in "Brown Shoes Don't Make It, "Do you love it? Do you hate it? There it is . . .The way you made it . . ."

Tomorrow's news will be better.  It has to be.  It always is. 

Right church, wrong pew

We've all been there...you show up late, thinking your appointment was for 2 when it was 1 all along...or you spill your entire cafeteria tray, including the salad and gooey dessert...or you're trying to call a coworker in the middle of the night because there's an emergency at work, but you don't turn on the light so as not to wake your dozing bedmate, and you wind up calling some random stranger who didn't have to get up for five more hours (and tells you so...)

Doesn't matter who you are, something like this will happen now and then. The gracious among us shrug, make apologies as needed, and go on with life in good humor.  The bumptious oafs among us bluster and thunder, blaming their appointments secretary for telling them the wrong time, some phantom person who just tripped them, or the "stupid phone company" for giving them the wrong number. 

So that's why Senator Dan Coats (R, Indiana) gets a tip of the hat today.  On Thursday, he was supposed to be testifying at a Senate hearing on defense appropriations, which sounds as soporific as it can be.  Instead, he wound up in the wrong room and began addressing a crowd of Treasury operatives.   If you have the same opinion as I do about 99% of meetings I ever attended, which is that if all the people at the meeting had been back at their desks working, rather than sitting around a boat-shaped table, a lot more would have been accomplished, then you understand why the solon saw the usual assortment of people in suits and figured he was in the right room.  But, after someone handed him a hastily-scrawled note ("HEY!  You are in the WRONG ROOM! Back out now!") he was good-natured about it, and packed up his briefcase and left, presumably headed for the right spot.

Old yearbook photo

There came a time in my life when I felt like Senator Coats, and no one was handing me any notes.  In my first day of Towson High School, I stupidly asked a senior for directions to my Biology classroom, and he waggishly directed me to a classroom about five miles from where I needed to be.  I sat in that classroom as a thin teacher named Mr R. Blaine Gainer began laying out the curriculum for his English 11 class, and my 15-year old brain, honed to razor sharpness from a summer of watching "Where The Action Is" and consuming as many Kool cigarettes and cans of Schlitz as I could obtain, cleverly deduced that I was in the wrong room.  After about ten minutes, I somehow found it in me to excuse myself and leave for the right room, and I left to a trail of snickers and chortles from a roomful of juniors.

Flash forward 31 years, and I found myself entering the mausoleum out at Dulaney Valley for my father's funeral.  Right across the way from Dad's crypt is the final resting place of guess who?  That's right.  I hope Dad and Mr Gainer have lots to talk about in there.  Nice to know they have something in common.

Sunday rerun: However you slice it

I want to do this carefully, so as not to appear to be poking fun at the person involved, because I'm not trying to do that at all.  Yes, I poke fun at the bombastic, the self-inflated self-important, but never at people who are just trying to get by.

However.

We went into the deli dept. of a grocery store the other day.  We were planning to fix Reuben sandwiches for dinner, so I ordered three-quarters of a pound of corned beef.  The young lady sliced up the brisket and slid the package over to me...weighing .27 lb.

I said, "Oh, I need more; I need three quarters of a pound."

Puzzled, she took the meat back, got the corned beef out, and sliced it up.  This time, she happily slid across the counter top to me a package weighing .24 lb.

Sliding it back, I said, "I'm looking for three quarters of a pound here...we have two one-quarter-pound packages done...so one more, and I'll be all set."

As other people with higher deli numbers were getting their cold cuts and moving along, I (#65) was still standing there, three quarters of a pound shy of three quarters of a pound of corned beef.  The manager of the deli, a beefy (!) guy, came over and asked her what was going on.  She said, "He asked for three quarters of a pound, and I don't know what that means."

He told her that three-quarters would show up on the scale as .75 lb, and she looked at him as if he had said all that in Mandarin.  Finally, he hit on a solution and told her to slice corned beef and pile it on the scale until it weighed .75, and then he helped her print out the little sticker.

Again, let me be totally clear; I am not picking on the woman.  No one ever taught her fractions.  Some school handed her a diploma and did not check to see that she knew rudimentary arithmetic, and here she is, out in the working world, and she won't get much farther than where she is because someone somewhere along the line said, oh, let's pass her, she's a nice kid.

I raged before in this space about creative spelling, or whatever in Hades the enlightened educators call it.  How sad that they think they are doing a fine job, churning out people who don't know three quarters of a pound from the correct way to spell abattoir.

And young lady, I am very sorry that they passed you and led you to thinking you were all set to compete.

I also need to point out that this new store has a very nice little device for checking one's eyeglass prescription.  It's sort of like that little thing at the Motor Vehicle Administration; you stick your face in it and see if you can read tiny print all right.  It's a great device...if you happen to stand 6' 5" as I do.  If not, tough noogies, because that's how high they have this thing set up.  Sorry!  (But it confirms that for reading, I am a +2.0).

And one last thing: the deli manager guy did not seem the least bit surprised or shocked by the young woman's unfamiliarity with fractions and quarters of pounds, leading me to believe this was not the first time he found an employee broken down on the same patch of bumpy road.  A road that we all paved.

The Saturday Picture Show, April 5, 2014

This week, in response to public demand, SIX photos, not just four!  And still at the low, low Castles Made of Sand price of absolutely free!

I don't often sneak pictures of nekkid ladies on here, but this is rather clever.  It is not a bird, I'll tell you that right now.  Look closely!

The text I found with this picture said that in the Soviet Union there was a table for checking observation. Its name is "Entertaining table."  You're supposed to find the numbers sequentially from 1 to 90.  If you can get this chore accomplished in from 5-10 minutes, then you have exceptional powers of observation. 10-15 minutes - good. 15-20 minutes is average. 20-25 min - satisfactory.  There's no score for walking away mumbling, "And I need to do this, why, now?"

Eagle-eyed sports fans will recognize this as NOT being an official NY Yankees cap.  A guy with time on his hands, but not the 35 bucks they get for an official lid these days, got a black hat and hand-stitched the iconic NY logo.  That's all for "A Lot Of Work For Not A Lot Of Hat" for today; we'll see you next week, when a man from Cleveland will show us a new way to make a top hat out of Tupperware.

I like this idea and if we ever go anywhere again, I'll do it.  Cut those vacay photos into the shape of the state you were in and make a map!

One of the pet peeves that I inherited from my dad was the improper use of UPPER CASE in certain fonts.  You see a lot of people use all CAPS when they go for Olde English because they think it looks "classy."  Ask any olde English person and go upper and lower, please.  Another prime offender was Michael Jackson, who had an estate called "Neverland" after the Peter Pan story.  The ranch had 3,000 acres, a zoo, two railroads, a train station, and a sign that said "NEVERLAND" in a semi-script font that should never be used in all caps.

Poochie Dog here is, apparently, a Rolling Stones devotee, with a particular liking for the 1972 album "Exile on Main Street," the jacket of which featured a photo of a man with remarkably elastic lips:

And that makes 7 pictures and one song.  See you next week, when we'll take a look at the Romney family at work, at play, and shopping at KMart.  I have an exclusive photo called "Mitt needs new tube socks" that I think you will enjoy.

Barbara Booey! Barbara Booey!

Thinking about houses today.  As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.”  And as his buddy Thoreau said, "Hey Ralphie boy!  Let me have some money to build myself a house!"

And there you have it.  You have to live somewhere, but how you get there is determined by a lot of factors.

Up in Spartansburg, PA, a house needed to be moved.  Details are unclear from the article I read, but if you go there, you get to see a video.  If someone ever riddles you, "How many Amish men does it take to move a house?" you can just tell them, "80."  Look at the video.  In a society that disdains power tools, bulldozers, tractors, overhead cranes, and electronic devices that would bring the voice of Bill O'Reilly into the home, these men just pick up the doggone house and move it.

And you think your job is tough!

Meanwhile, down in Tennessee, landlady Oprah Winfrey is moving to evict a woman from one of the approximately 3700 houses the "talk show titan" owns around the globe.  Oprah's father, Vernon, was married to one Barbara Winfrey for more than ten years, and Oprah gave him a house in Nashville for the happy couple to occupy. This Barbara became Oprah's stepmother the minute she and Vernon said "I do," and someone seems to have told her that such status conferred upon her the right to call the house her home.

"This house is not your home," Oprah should have said.  "Even when there's no one sitting there."

The marriage got all messy, with Vernon filing for divorce, citing inappropriate marital conduct, and Barbara claiming that he regularly consorted with prostitutes, including one named "One Tooth."

That's just edentulous.

But the deal is, Barbara said she wanted to keep living in the nice house in Music City USA and Oprah, the owner of that house and many more, said she can't, and the judge sided with Oprah on Monday and gave Barbara 60 days to hit the road.

This is certainly one for the courts and the judges and the late-night comics. I would side with Oprah, but she got mad at me when she worked at channel 13 here so I have to recuse myself.

Oh, Say Can You See?

Last Saturday, it was raining cats and dogs around here.  Seriously.  I almost stepped in a poodle.

But we had to drive up to Harford Mall, and along the main road, I saw at least three houses where the American flag was unfurled at the top of a flagpole at a private home.   In the pouring rain.

I am certain that the proprietors of the flags and poles are all good Americans and true, patriotic, and only desirous of displaying both the flag and their undying patriotism.

Which is why I almost hate to mention it, but flying the flag at a private home or estate during rain or violent weather is a violation of § 6 of the US Flag Code, which states: 
(a) It is the universal custom to display the flag only from sunrise to sunset on buildings and on stationary flagstaffs in the open. However, when a patriotic effect is desired, the flag may be displayed 24 hours a day if properly illuminated during the hours of darkness.
(b) The flag should be hoisted briskly and lowered ceremoniously.
(c) The flag should not be displayed on days when the weather is inclement, except when an all-weather flag is displayed.

An all-weather flag is defined as one made of nylon or non-absorbent material, and I can't say for sure that the flags I saw were or were not all-weather flags. But as night fell, and there was no illumination provided, the flags should have been taken down and properly furled.

Maybe the lesson is that patriotism takes a little effort, installing lights if you want to fly that flag all night, or getting off the recliner and going out in the rain to lower it at dark.  Think about the people who have fought and sacrificed under that flag.  That ought to be enough motivation to fly the flag as the code says to.

It's right here for easy reference. 

Live, local, inaccurate

As Mark Twain wisely pointed out, there's a big difference between lightning, and a lightning bug.

There is also a big difference between someone really shooting a rifle at a school and someone having a rifle at a school.  Big diff. Not that I think that anyone should do either, but still...

Here's the deal, and what I think it says about modern journalism.  The other day as the Orioles were celebrating Opening Day down at the ballpark, the campus of one of our suburban colleges was upset when a couple of students who had been hunting squirrels with pellet rifles in the woods near the school wandered onto the campus, still with rifles in hand.  Another student saw them and reported same to security, and within minutes the school's plan for handling such events went to work.  

Bringing the guns on campus was a foolish thing to do.

There was only one problem, which became an even bigger problem: the school's head of security issued an immediate text to all school personnel advising them to shelter in place due to a report of someone on the Owings Mills campus seen with a gun. That was wise.  What was not wise was the the school posted this warning on their website: "Active shooter reported on Owings Mills Campus. Shelter in place until further notice."

That's the school's problem, but putting that on their website meant that a local TV news station grabbed that headline and put it out as Live Local Latebreaking news: Active Shooter at Stevenson University.

This is the worst kind of journalism, to be quite frank about it.  I was watching the ballgame and the bulletin came across my Facebook newsfeed, but as I checked into it, I was able to find that no one was actively shooting on the campus, which is certainly what "Active shooter" means.  There is no wiggle room there.

And then friends of mine with family members who work at or attend the school were upset, asking what was going on.  Had they had the opportunity to check further as I did, they would have found that the police advised that a person or persons was/were seen with a rifle, but there was no shooting; no bullets were fired.  I pointed this out via FB and the news website rather archly told me that all they did was repeat what the school had said.

Whatever happened to news agencies verifying what someone said before they put it out there as solid fact?  This is what happens now; people see a story on The Daily Currant or The Onion, two websites that publish satirical news stories, and they take them to be true, upsetting those to whom they disseminate the story.  No worthwhile news agency sees something written by a public relations person at a school and runs with it.

The shame is that we have come to trust what we see in print or on the web, and if "they said it on TV," it must be true.  

By the way, this same TV station reported in January that the killer of two people at a local mall and his two victims were involved in a love triangle, an adduction they had to retract when not one scintilla of evidence of it being true was unearthed.

Also by the way, as the back and forth went on between me and the news station, I found that "gun enthusiasts," always touchy when their right to tote and brandish firearms in any public forum is even mentioned in a bad light, were taking my back in the fight.  Politics does indeed "make strange bedfellows," as Charles Dudley Warner said before Facebook was invented.

Up Early in the Morning

They're breaking up the Dream Team over at ABC Television, or, more accurate to say, the Dream Team is breaking itself up.

Their morning show, "Good Morning America," is the top rated show, ahead of "Today" on NBC and "CBS This Morning."  People really seem to like the team on GMA.  They're led by Robin Roberts, whose brave battle against cancer has inspired people the world over to face their own medical situations, and George Stephanopoulos.  Josh Elliott is their news reader.  

Well, Josh is leaving for NBC Sports.  It seems that he was making a million dollars a year for getting up at oh-dark-thirty to smile and read news stories, deftly moving from Putin/Obama sabre rattling to stories about kids stuck in vending machines and being rescued by firefighters.  Josh felt underpaid for his million, and so he is joining Sam Champion, the weather guy who is not a meteorologist, in heading out the door.  (Champion left for the Weather Channel a couple of months ago.)  

The reports say that Josh was asking for a raise from one million to ten million per year, and Lara Spencer, the hoarse-voiced person who handles "Pop" news - celebrity weddings, breakups, plastic surgery fails and stories about Justin Bieber getting stuck in a vending machine - just signed a new contract last week, probably for the kind of money Elliott was asking.  So no ten million clams for Josh, and out he goes.

I get the chance to flip around the three shows while I'm doing my breakfast dishes.  ABC seems to be for people who really are not into news but love celebrity stuff - sort of like People magazine.  NBC,  I don't know what they're going for.  They have a lot of concerts outside in Rockefeller Plaza but they try to do hard news too.  They say things like "And we're back after this" which make me wonder, well, are you back or are you not?  And CBS, bringing up the rear, focuses more on real hard news than the others, and pays the price with #3 ratings.

He's leaving, she's staying: Spencer and Elliott

All of the morning shows, as well as CNN and, I guess FOX News (I never watch them) have focused an awful lot lately about speculation as to the fate of the Malaysian airplane.  A well-informed person can look at the newspaper and see that the plane has not been found yet, and no one knows any more than anyone else about what happened to flight 370.  But that doesn't stop the news shows from showing distraught family members and loved ones of the people on the plane in their agony, and showing reporters dubbed "aviation experts" with their ideas about where the damned plane is.

Their guess is as good as yours, and you can ask for 10 million dollars for being on a show that puts their guesses on your screen.  You might not get it, but it doesn't hurt to ask.

Spring hope's eternal

I've been a fan of the Baltimore Orioles since a long long LONG time ago, and I am really looking forward to the new season, which begins this afternoon at our home stadium downtown.  It's been up and down for years with this baseball team.  They won the World Series in 1966, 1970 and 1983, and if you notice, it's been a while since 1983.  For a few years in the '90s, they got into the playoffs, but not the World Series, and then, from 1997 through 2011, nada. Bupkis. Katy bar the door, 186 pages Dear John.

Led by manager Buck Showalter and some better players, the team got to the playoffs again in 2012, and the fans got excited again, turning up in numbers at the ballpark not seen since the ballpark was new.  Last year, some of the magic that had sparkled our way the year before didn't come through, and they finished out of the playoff race.

But they went out this winter as their 60th season in Baltimore approached, and they signed a slugger, Nelson Cruz.  Cruz comes with a little baggage in the form of a 50-game suspension last year for the use of performance-enhancing drugs while a member of the Texas Rangers.  They went out and signed a relief pitcher, an Australian chap named Grant Balfour, and Balfour failed the team physical exam, so he was told to hop away to another team and the Orioles are gambling on Tommy Hunter as their closer. They also signed starting pitcher Ubaldo Jimenez for the bargain price of $50 million for four years.

Second baseman Brian Roberts, whose tenure with the team dates back to the really bad days, was not in the team's plans and found work with the New York Yankees.  There was a time that a star leaving for the Bronx would have caused weeping and wailing around here.  Now it's more like "Good luck, BRob, see you around" and bring on 2014.

I have a feeling it's going to be a great year!

Sunday Rerun: All The Kingsmen

Pretty Boy?

Babyface

You really have to hand it to the FBI.  Anyone who looks at the history of America (which rules out most people in most schools) knows that they rounded up John Dillinger, Babyface Nelson, Ma Barker and Pretty Boy Floyd during the 1930s, and although there was later an argument concerning Mr Floyd's relative beauty, FBI big man J. Edgar Hoover, dressed in a stunning evening gown of the finest silk brocade, finally ruled in favor of the notorious Midwestern bank robber.  As part of the legal settlement of the matter, Babyface Nelson won the right never to be referred to by his real name, which, as any schoolkid knows, was Lester J. Gillis.

Your FBI in action

Lest he see his agency become irrelevant, J. Edgar Hoover had his "G-Men" investigate whether or not entertainers were communists, protected the Civil Rights of minorities by wiretapping Dr Martin Luther King, and allowed four men to be wrongfully convicted of murder while protecting one of their ten million informants (March, 1965.)  The term "G-Man," incidentally, came about during the arrest of Lester J. Gillis, who, brought by proud agents into Hoover's office, reportedly quipped, "Gee, man, are you wearing a dress?"

Ah, but surely the FBI's finest moment had to be when they spent two years at taxpayer expense investigating the lyrics to "Louie Louie."  "Louie Louie" was a song written as sort of a calypso-Cha-Cha-Jamaican number by a guy named Richard Berry in the late 50's.  His version of the song never quite took off, but The Kingsmen, out of Portland, Oregon, cut it in 1964.  They were a local band performing in a teen night club owned by a local disc jockey, and trust me, you could get a better recording today by using a Radio Shack portable cassette machine.  You can hear the original version right here! And you can see the real lyrics vis-a-vis the "dirty" version that was passed among the students of every public high school and junior high school here on Snopes.  Every kid knew, all you had to do was play the 45 of "Louie Louie" at 33 1/3 rpm to hear the true lyrics, a rumor which no doubt was started by the record company selling all those 45s.  But in the end, Hoover's crack laboratory was not able to decipher the lyrics, even after they interrogated Jack Ely, the lead singer of The Kingsmen.  

I've often wondered how that interrogation went.  Did they sit him down in a small room with just one naked 100-watt bulb aimed right at him, and did they say, "All right, we know you're dirty, see?  You're singing dirty, kid, and we wanna know what you're singing, see?  So don't get cute, kid, just talk.  Or sing. I don't care.  See?"


Myself, I was never much of a Kingsmen fan.  Out of intense family loyalty, I was more devoted to my distant cousin Doug Clark and The Hot Nuts, the real-life version of Otis Day and the Knights.  Here's another song that old J. Edgar should have checked into.  

The Saturday Picture Show, March 29, 2014

I'll bet you anything this guy is retired.  Only a man with unlimited time and a good pair of gloves on his hands will stack his firewood to look like a felled tree.  Next, he probably will buy a side of beef from a wholesale butcher and then reassemble the steer in his freezer.

They missed the chance to say "SIGN IS YELLOW WITH BLACK LETTERS" but this is pretty good for the Captain Obvious contest.

Nice photograph, is it not?  Only thing is, this is a photograph of an oil painting of a snowy mountaintop.  Nicely done!

There is a big market for the originals of the fruit crate labels that used to come on the wooden crates that apples, oranges, pears and the like used to be shipped in.  The artwork was just great, and the people in the pictures always really seemed to be having a great time eating fruit.

Good for the goose

Like all health-conscious adults of a certain age (and I am certain of it!), I have had to stop and look at my dietary choices.  Gone are the days when a whole cheeseburger sub, an order of fries and a quart of beer made for a proper supper.

Of course, when I ate like that, I was 19 and weighed about 150 lbs, so go figure.

The good people at Comcast have a Lifestyle blog written by Audrey Morrison, and the other day the blog listed 14 "superfoods" that are supposed to stretch your budget and boost your health.  I scanned the list, and what do you know? It does not list Doritos, Ding-Dongs or Diet Sprite.  

But here's what's odd.  I actually LIKE a lot of the foods on the list!  To wit:

Beans - this musical fruit encompasses a large family of low-fat protein sources. I like kidney beans in a salad, and even though I love baked beans such as Bush's and even Campbell's, they load them up with enough sugary stuff as to make them not so good for me, so I just take the canned kidney beans, throw a little mustard and horseradish in there, and heat them up!  The website says beans have a lot of potassium, magnesium and iron.  It's a wonder I don't have magnets stuck to me.
Blueberries - During my Opie-like childhood, I used to pick berries of all sorts and gobble them right down. I'm confused about blueberries.  For one thing, they taste great, but they're still good for you because they have "antioxidants."  I thought oxygen was a good thing.  
Broccoli is described in the blog as "nature's perfect food," and it is, as long as it is covered in nature's perfect topping - cheddar cheese (not on the list, oddly.)
Green or black tea - I love tea more than coffee, but here's the deal if you prefer tea with your breakfast in a restaurant.  Coffee drinkers, sure, they wheel out a big 2-gal Tub O'Mocha Java for you, but if you want tea, they give you 1 (one) tea bag and a cup of hot tap water, and if you want another cup of tea, you get the MER* and a mighty sigh.  I'm thinking of coming out with a brand of orange tea called "Mighty Sigh," endorsed by John Boehner.
Oats contain B vitamins, fiber, protein, zinc, copper and potassium, the website says.  The great thing is that oatmeal is easy to nuke, and when you're finished with the box, you have a little drum with a picture of a Quaker on it.
Oranges confuse me too, because everyone know they have Vitamin C, but they are also loaded with "flavinoids."  "Oids" sounds funny, especially the ones from the "Hemorrh" family.
Pumpkin is full of good things but, frankly, are you going to buy a can of pumpkin in May, or order a pumpkin spice lattadoodle from Sbux in August? Pumpkin works from October through New Year's Eve and takes off the first nine months of the year.  Pretty sweet deal!
Soy, not so much. Love the sauce, though.
Spinach makes the list and that's good, but I wonder if the other greens, such as turnip greens, collard greens, mustard greens and kale are just as good, because they are much tastier and fresher tasting to me, and I'm the one who has to eat them.  You can have my spinach.
Tomatoes, long thought of as part of the lettuce-tomato-mayonnaise trio that serve as dressing on cold cut sandwiches, have a life of their own, and proudly walk around all full of "lycopene, a carotenoid and phytonutrient that’s also found in other red fruits like strawberries, watermelons and cherries," according to the blog, and lycopene may be helpful in lowering the risk of lung, stomach and prostate cancer.  All this, and you couldn't have marinara sauce or pizza without them.  Well done!
Turkey is good for more than just one dinner and 27 lunches in November. I prefer ground turkey or chicken (and they are all ground animals: they cannot fly) in burgers or tacos, and the fact that turkey is full of iron, vitamin B and zinc is beside the point.
Walnuts are good nuts to put in salads and other foods or just to munch on. And of course they bring to mind that certain "Dick Van Dyke" episode.
Wild salmon is loaded with vitamins and good nutrition, and when you have one on your plate, you're having dinner with a fish who was strong enough and amorous enough to fight his way upstream to spawn.  And now look.
Yogurt contains probiotics, live bacteria that aid in digestion.  If you're serious about your nutrition, avoid amateur biotics and stick with the pros.

So it turns out that I love most of these foods that are good for me.  I am officially the healthiest person in the room where I am writing this right now.**

*Maximum Eye Roll
** I'm all alone

You're breaking me up here

There are dozens of reasons why I am such a happy man.

One of them is that I never got into the habit of adopting a heavy foreign accent when I use words such as "mozzarella," "hors d'oeuvres," and "Rafael Palmeiro." And for those who do, those who talk about pizza cheese by calling it "mooootcerell', " I wonder why you don't apply an English accent to the words "Winston Churchill" or a regional American Southern twang to "Jerry Lee Lewis."

Here's another reason.  You could go broke if I had to pay you a nickel for every Gwyneth Paltrow movie I have ever seen.  If she's your cup of tea, fine by me, but she seems a bit on the...haughty....side to me.  

She could have done this!

Now comes word that she and her husband, Chris Martin of the band Coldplay (don't look for any nickels from me on that account either!) have broken up.  Well, when people who live on Earth decide to stop being married to each other, that's what we Earthlings say: They "broke up."  They "went to Splitsville."  Someone "got dumped," "got the ax," "got a can tied to him."

Up in the clouds where the Paltrows among us dwell, here's what they say: 

We are parents first and foremost, to two incredibly wonderful children (Note: they named their children Apple and Moses) and we ask for their and our space and privacy to be respected at this difficult time. We have always conducted our relationship privately, and we hope that as we consciously uncouple and coparent, we will be able to continue in the same manner.

"Consciously uncouple."  I have to tell you a story from many years ago, when I worked at 911 and one of my tasks was preparing tapes of phone calls to 911 and radio transmissions of emergency responders for use in trials and other hearings.  An attorney called to get a copy of the call his client made to 911 from his house. The man had hit another car, but went home to call the police, rather than remaining at the scene of the crash.  Accordingly, he was charged with leaving the scene of an accident.  His mouthpiece figured that anyone who heard the distress in the man's voice as he called 911 would realize how upset he was, and understand why he went on home.  I asked the plea peddler why the man didn't just stay at the scene, and the answer will ring forever in the annals of American jurisprudence:

"My client had to go home because he suffered an act of involuntary defecation."

And really, who hasn't?

Malled

I was a young radio DJ, doing a remote broadcast from the grand opening of a new record store in an old mall, and a guy about my age ankled up to me and started talking about "the outside world."  I had no idea where the boundary line was drawn to designate the inside world versus the outside, but as he spoke, I found that he sliced it this way: the mall was his world and whatever happened beyond the parking lot was part of the great "outside."  

I asked the denim-clad guy just what it was that he did and he said, "I hang around the mall."  I said I could see that, but what did he do for, you know, a job?  And the answer was the same.  He told me that he went home to his parents' to sleep and shower, and then reported to the mall when it opened and stayed until it closed.  When he got hungry, the guy at "Eats-a Pizza" would give him a slice in exchange for hauling out the trash or something, and that was pretty much his existence.

I haven't thought of that fellow for many years, not until I saw the report on the news the other day that said malls are a dying way to do business. There has not been a new enclosed mall built in the United States for six years now, and do you remember the days when it seemed like a new one opened every six days?

Reasons for the decline of the mall as we know it vary from fear of crime and terrorist activity (as witness the recent fatal shootings of two employees at a Zumiez store in the Columbia MD mall), the added popularity of smaller stores as opposed to mega-department stores,  and the easier availability that shopping online offers.  I have to say, you can't beat Amazon for having everything, including the ability to get everything to you in a day or two, even before they start sending you pants by drone. 

Malls used to say they were the new American town centers, where the entire family could spend a day shopping for shoes, clothes, and drill bits, grab some supper at the Food Court and then take in a movie at the Cinemania 27.

Experts say that local strip malls, or "neighborhood and community shopping centers," as they like to be called, will continue to thrive, what with the easy access they offer to nail salons, tuxedo rental shops, bank branches and overpriced coffee desserts.  And good news for lovers of fine films...local theaters, the kind with just one or two screens and popcorn and Jujubes at the concession stand, will always do well, because they show the films that people really want to see. 

Sign, sign, everywhere a sign

In the enlightened county in which I live, it is against the law to post those 16" x 24" signs on the roadway...the ones that advertise houses for sale, new developments springing up like a rosy rash around the ankles of society, political or civic opinions and suggestions, big blowout sales at CrabLand, car detailing, brand new queen size mattresses never used...you can't do it, and code inspectors will remove them and store them for you at the County Office Building.  There are citizens who will remove them from the public right-of-way and trash them, thus filling the landfills with signs.

The signs are not pretty and they detract from the scenery in many a lovely neighborhood.  Sure, developers and real estate people want to sell houses, but the problem with these signs, and with those "LAWNS MOWED TREES TRIMMED SHRUBS PLANTED CALL LENNY THE GARDENER 555-0976" signs that someone climbs a utility pole to post, is that they are free advertising...at your expense.  If you own a newspaper or a radio station or other advertising medium, Fligh-By-Knight Construction could not walk their muddy boots into your office with their latest commercial message and tell you when and how to run their ad for free, but they have no problem sending people around with signs on stakes to hoist upon public roadways.

Believe me, this is not the greatest extant threat to our society, but it struck me the other day when I was driving my auto through the lovely Long Green Valley and saw a telephone pole near the volunteer fire house, a utility pole where one gardener after another has posted signs asking for business.  Since some of these signs are 12 feet in the air, one realizes that either the world's tallest gardener is prowling around with a stack of signs and a fully-loaded Arrow Tack-Master staple gun, or someone is climbing a ladder to post the signs, and that can only lead to trouble and lawsuits.  And view-blocking congestion!  It's like the time I went golfing with my buddy Leon DeForest.  Every time I got off a bad drive, he picked up the little white stands off of which we drove the balls to begin playing a hole, and he began to pile them up.  Why, that pile got so big 
that after the 9th hole, I couldn't see DeForest for the tees!

The best way for these small business types to advertise is the medium that dentists have chosen for centuries.  Word of mouth.  Absolutely right!

It's not my fault

I don't live in Southern California, have never been there, and it doesn't look like I'll be invited to join Connie Chung as cohost of TV's "Big Brother" any time soon, so I have very little personal experience with earthquakes   I'm sorry for my friends who live out there on the fault lines.

We did have that miniquake here a couple of Augusts ago, but I simply attributed that to the earth being mad because of the consarned heat around here in the eighth month.  Local car dealers would have had a big "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" sale to get rid of all those leftover Dodges, had they been given forewarning of the big shaker.  

Now, maybe this happens a lot out there, and so people are used to the whole getting the jumpin' jive at any time, but I would like to think that if I were working with someone and we were live on the air at the time an earthquake hit, I would make sure that others were safe before I did a Lord Jim and headed for safety under the Action Central EyeWitness Live Local LegBreaking desk.

Watch the video of the KTLA early morning newscast and watch the male anchor head for lower ground as soon as he realizes he's on shaky ground. And to me, this is not a male-should-always-protect-the-female thing.  People ought to take care of each other first, I figure.  If you always do that, someone will be there to take care of you, I promise.

I don't mean to be too hard on this anchorman.  When people have half a mo to think about what they'll do next time, they usually do better next time.  I remember my first days at a new position with the County.  The water was cut off suddenly and people were running around the halls in a sheer panic.  I couldn't comprehend their apprehension, until someone pointed out that I was used to real emergencies.  It's simply a matter of practice.

"Take care of each other," as Robert Louis Stevenson once said.  

Sunday rerun: NASA's gone funky

Stop me if you've heard this story before.  It's true, and it says a lot about predictions.

Gaylord Perry was a major league baseball pitcher from 1962 - 1983.  When I say "major league," I mean it, because he pitched for just about every team in the major leagues.

His strong points as a pitcher were two: throwing spitballs, and making batters believe he was throwing spitters.  You know that putting a foreign substance on the ball - saliva, Vaseline, WD40, mayonnaise, tofu - is totally against the rules of baseball.  Wetting the ball makes the pitcher able to throw an elusive dipping pitch.  Making the batter think that an elusive pitch is coming his way is effective too - and drier!

Gaylord Perry

Gaylord won 314 games in the big leagues and was voted #97 in the Sporting News list of the 100 greatest baseball players.  This was not for his batting prowess.  In fact, his manager for the San Francisco Giants, Alvin Dark, said in 1964 that the US would put a man on the moon before Gaylord Perry hit a home run.

In 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon one warm Sunday afternoon.  An hour after Apollo 11 got to the moon and found a parking spot, Gaylord Perry hit the first of his six career home runs. While Neil and Buzz flipped packages of Tang to see who would hop out first, Perry ran around the bases on earth while the astronauts were on the moon.

And I read about it in the SUN!