Musical Appreciation

In his later years,
Congreve was known as
"Billy Idol"

William Congreve (1670- 1729), an English playwright and poet who was also known as 'Will.I.Am Congreve," once sat around philosophising and pointed out that “Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.”

Well now.  Oak trees are rather tough to bend, and only volcanic fire can really soften rocks, and it's best not to discuss breasts in a nice family-style blog such as this.  I can tell you that more than half the time, people who misquote Congreve do so by saying "savage BEAST," because we can't think of breasts being savage.

Savage.  The word comes to us from Middle English via the Anglo-French word salvage, which came from the Latin word silvaticus, meaning "of the woods."  Another word that came from that root is "sylvan," meaning an area with a lot of woods, and from that we called the large state with a lot of trees founded by William Penn "Penn's Sylvania," or Pennsylvania.

Discuss:  Was Congreve telling us that the best breasts come from Pennsylvania?  How could he have known, given the clothing styles of the early 1700s, and the fact that he never traveled to colonial America?

Once again, I took the long way around to the topic of the day, which is that science now knows that there are people who just do not enjoy music, or don't start their toes a-tapping when that fiddler starts sawing away on "Orange Blossom Special" or "Alla Turca."  They sit there at a wedding conception, toying with their green beans almondine or twice-baked potato when the band breaks out with "Double Shot Of My Baby's Love" or the DJ spins "Baby Got Back."  Or you're watching MTV a quarter of a century ago when Billy Idol's video for "Cradle of Love" comes on and no one even looks up from the newspaper to watch Molly Shattuck's sister play the part of Devon.

Yes, she did.

If you don't enjoy music, you're missing out on a lot, and you have to listen to nutty reactionary talk radio instead of music, and this is why you come home from work all bound up.  Slip in a little Mötley Crüe into your CD player and see if you don't feel better!

"The first to apologize is the strongest. The first to forget is the happiest."

Probably because I began getting things wrong at a very early age, I learned as a child that it's always easier to own up to a mistake, apologize, and move on.  For one reason, it's the right thing to do. For another, it ends most of the commotion, because others can't keep poundin' on ya when you're standing there saying, "I'm sorry, already!"

And the best reason of all: most people are so staggered when you apologize and take the foul, they sputter and stammer and yak and yammer while you walk on with the rest of your life.

So I was glad that a couple of people in the sports world either took it on themselves, or someone wise got to them, and made appropriate niceness after public missteps.

What started it all

It started last Friday when Manny Machado, whiz kid third baseman for the Orioles, got all worked up when opposing third baseman Josh Donaldson tagged him out with what Manny considered to be a little too much ooooooomph.  Manny lost his balance in more ways than one, going after Donaldson after getting back to his feet. That set the tone for the three games between the Baltimores and the Oaklands, with players on both teams being hit by pitches and rough slides and tags. In Sunday afternoon's game, Manny, accidentally or not, clomped the A's catcher on the helmeted head with the backswing of his bat.  By the time the game was almost over, with Oakland ahead by a ton of runs, the A's brought in a relief pitcher who first threw a pitch behind Manny ("just a bit off the plate") and then one that hit him.  Manny let go of his bat, intentionally or otherwise, and his temper  The situation devolved into one of those baseball fights in which 50 men, plus coaches and the guy who sells hot dogs in the box seats, push each other around in an eddying mob.  No punches are usually thrown in a baseball fight, but they do let the benchwarmers get out and get a little fresh air and sunshine, so no problem.

On Monday, before the game, Manny said, "I want to apologize to all my teammates, my coaching staff, the Orioles organization and Oakland, and the fans also, for the way I acted and overreacted on that. It was a frustrating weekend, and I just let my emotions get the best of me."

What more is there to say, after he says he's sorry?

And then, on Saturday, as California Chrome went for the Triple Crown of horse racing, he finished out of the money, leading his 1/2 owner, Steve Coburn, to do a Yosemite Sam impersonation and get all red faced and hoarse, hollering about his horse, and how the other horses who didn't run in the other races had an unfair advantage, and on and on until he also seemed to be the south end of a horse headed north.

Just about to lose it

He even turned and shushed his wife in public, which violates rule 1 through 1 million of how to stay married.

He acted a fool, and he stayed that way Sunday when interviewed again, but on Monday, talking to Robin Roberts on Good Morning, America, he was singing Manny's tune: “First of all, I need to apologize to the winners. They ran a beautiful race. Their horse won the race. They deserve that. I did not mean to take anything away from them. I want to apologize to everyone associated with Tonalist.”

Coburn explained that he got "carried away" when his horse lost at Belmont.

“I wanted so much for this horse to win the Triple Crown, for the people of America, and I was very emotional, very emotional.”

“(Tonalist) won the race fair and square. He deserved to win,” Coburn said. “I need to apologize to the world and America, our fans, who have written us, given us so much support, I apologize, I sincerely apologize,” he concluded.

Manny Machado is a fan favorite here in Baltimore, just 21, and who among us did not pop off with somethin' stoopid at that age? So we're glad he manned up (Mannyed up?) and we're moving on.

Steve Coburn is 61, but in his defense, none of us knew him from a set of racing silks six weeks ago.  The time he's spent in the national spotlight was pretty intense this spring, and since it was his first time with all those cameras and reporters all up in his grill, you can't blame him for spitting the bit once.

Ignoble use for a noble flag

In an act of unspeakable evil, a man and a woman ambushed two Las Vegas police  - Officer Alyn Beck, 41, and Officer Igor Soldo, 31,  who were just eating their lunch at a CiCi's pizza place.  The murderers were a couple whom neighbors described as "militant;" they had threatened previously to kill police. As they fired, they yelled, "This is a revolution." They then covered the fallen officers' bodies with a yellow banner with a coiled snake above the words, "Don't Tread on Me," before going to a nearby WalMart, where they killed a woman in the name of their foul revolution.  Then, carrying out what seems to be a murder-suicide pact, the woman shot the man and then herself.

Just what good was supposed to come from this revolution will never be known, because there was none.  But maybe, now that the "Don't Tread on Me" flag has been used in such a venomous way, people will think twice before waving it around thoughtlessly in America.

You see, the flag itself was known as the Gadsden Flag in our colonial era and represented our fight against Britain.  Using it as a symbol in a domestic argument confuses our fellow Americans with international enemies.

Franklin's cartoon

The 13 original colonies were here in the East, of course, where poisonous snakes abound. In 1751, tired of England sending their criminals to America as a punishment,  Benjamin Franklin wrote in his Pennsylvania Gazette that we ought to deport our poisonous snakes to England in retaliation. Three years later, as the French and Indian War was being fought, he made a political cartoon - the first ever in an American newspaper - showing a snake that had been cut into 13 pieces, with the slogan "Join, or Die" to indicate that the colonies needed to co-operate for mutual defense in the war.  There was a belief in those days that a snake cut into pieces would find itself whole again if the pieces were placed next to each other by sunset.

Really.  They thought that.

The first 7 ships of the US Navy, put together in time to fight in the Revolutionary War, carried the "Liberty Tree" flag, the one with a pine tree and the slogan "Appeal To Heaven," but Continental Colonel Christopher Gadsden, in charge of outfitting the vessels, had a flag made up showing a rattler with 13 rattles and the motto "Don't Tread on Me" to fly on the mainmast as the distinctive personal standard of the flagship of the commander-in-chief of the Navy, Commodore Esek Hopkins. 

A later version of the flag, with the the snake uncoiled (and possibly ready to strike) became the flag of the Navy in colonial days, and since 1977, this flag has flown from the bow of the US Navy ship that has been in service for the longest continuous time. Currently, that's the USS Enterprise (CVN 65).

How a flag with noble origins dating back to our fight for freedom from the country from which we broke away has been bastardized into being the symbol of people who shoot down police officers is something I can't explain, though.

What people did before the Internet

As the school year winds to another inglorious halt, and teachers look forward to their summer jobs, do you have time for one more historical tidbit?  

Well, I'm going to share this one anyway, so that if there is an embarrassing lull in the conversation while waiting for the bail bondsman or person with the handcuff key to show up, we'll all have something interesting to discuss.  

First, there was a president named John Tyler.  Only people who have an interest in the arcane political figures of the 19th Century know this, but there was.  He's often mentioned in the upper pantheon of the lists of the worst presidents ever, as he was a strong advocate of states' rights over the federal government while at the same time being a fan of manifest destiny, without which we never would have been able to steal Texas from the Mexicans.  As a national philosophy of expansion because of the "superiority" of Americans over people who happened to have lived somewhere for thousands of years, manifest destiny was as racist as it was despicable, but if it had a Facebook page, Tyler would have "liked" it.  

He was elected vice president in 1840 with running mate William Henry Harrison, who came down with a cold three weeks after his inauguration.  The cold turned to pneumonia, just like your mother told you it would, and also septicemia and jaundice, and Harrison's term ended 32 days after it began, ushering in the Tyler Administration, which ended in four years. He had devoted all his energy to grabbing up Texas.  Oh, and he became a bigtime Confederate when the Civil War came along. Tyler chose not to run for re-election in 1844, a wise choice that should have been repeated in 1984 and 2004.

Now, you ask what does a decision, made by the man who is also widely regarded as the president who looks the most like Cris Collinsworth, have to do with 1984, 2004 or even 2014?  I will now tell you why I'm even writing about the man who was president of the US in the 1840s. 

Collinsworth

Tyler

His grandchildren are still alive. His grandchildren! Lyon Gardiner Tyler, one of President Tyler’s 15 kids, was born in 1853, when Old Tyler was 63! At age 71. he fathered Lyon Gardiner Tyler Jr. in 1924, and Harrison Ruffin Tyler in 1928, when he was a spry 75.  Both of these men are still stomping around in Virginia, even though their grandfather died at 73 in 1862...152 years ago!

Tomorrow, let's take a look at why TV shows from the 1840s were not funny at all.

Sunday Rerun: Meat me on the front porch

Maybe I'm a big old cynic, or maybe I'm the wisest man in the world.  There can be no middle ground in the situation I'm about to share with you...

Yesterday, I was in the kitchen, waiting for the Dr Phil show to be over so I could turn the television on, and there was a jaunty knock at the door.  I answered it to find a young man on the porch, advising me that he was a route salesperson for a certain meat company, and that he had finished his route for the day and found he had steak and chicken left over.  If I would "pick up" the steak, he proposed to throw the chicken in free for nothin'.

"Picking up" the steak, in this case, means "buying" a crate of frozen steak that was in the back of a van conveniently idling down by the end of the driveway.

"The steak" in this case, for all I know, was recently on a carcass being ridden down the homestretch at Pimlico.

I told the guy no thanks, and to my utter amazement, he did not go away gracefully, instead waxing rhapsodic about how great it would be to fire up the grill and toss a couple of his carnivore's delights on there, or toss a Caesar salad and grill up some poultry and there I'd go!

Betcha it didn't look like this!

I told him I was not in the habit of buying frozen meat from people I've never heard of.  Now, if you were to have someone driving through the neighborhood selling cases of beer out of the back of a van, then we might have something to talk about!

When I got a minute, I went online and googled "door to door meat salesperson" and opened up a veritable onslaught of complaints from across the nation, all from people who answered the siren call of cheap meat and were very shortly very sorry, as they tried to saw their way through a porterhouse of dubious provenance.

So, I'm glad I didn't buy the steaks, because I'm chicken.

The Saturday Picture Show, June 7, 2014

 Say hello to scenic Lake Sylvenstein, the cream of Bavarian dams!

 I can't get over the looks on the faces of these ivory 12th Century chessmen.  It's like they can't believe the moves some people make!

Of course, we globetrotting world travelers recognize this as Oppstrynsvatnet lake, near Stryn in western Norway. If you travel to Norway, there's a fjord in your future!

 I miss the days when listening to the radio was an esthetic pleasure as much as an aural joy.  Sure, technology has improved, but listening to radio online is not much to look at, not like these table radios were!

 You still see these now and again, advertising signs painted directly onto brick walls in the city.  Two chewing gums, a soda and an attorney want your attention here.

We associate sick days with Bob Barker, or Mike Douglas before him, and of course medicine and Campbell's soup.  Being home sick on a Thursday was never a good idea, because you'd get tomato soup and a grilled cheese sammy and then go back to school on Friday and have the same doggone thing!

Are You Being Served?

Because I was offered, and accepted, a high position with the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company (hereinafter known as "The A&P") while I was still in high school (the position was known as 'clerk,' and was just nine or ten rungs down the ladder from CEO, as I understood it) I have come to expect good, pleasant and friendly, cooperative customer service in retail establishments.


Of course, I also have come to expect that passing strangers will wax my car and Dick Cheney will stop taking his friends hunting, so what do I know?  

At the A&P, we were not allowed to shrug our shoulders and say, "I dunno" when asked when a certain product would be back in stock, and a desultory pointed finger in a nebulous direction, accompanied by "Over there somewhere," was not considered a satisfactory answer to "Can you tell me where the orange marmalade is?"  Our manager - and I have Facebook friends who worked there with me to bear this out - was Mr Hinchliffe, and he tolerated no foolishness when it came to how we interacted with customers.  Sure, he knew that certain of us would fill our palms with whipped cream and lurk atop the walk-in cooler in the stockroom, ready to drop a Redi-Wip bomb on some unsuspecting coworker.  And he probably knew that there was a reason why we always found Oreos and Mr Chips cookies open or damaged on the shelves, forcing us to eat them lest food be wasted.  Never did we find those Lorna Doone or Strawberry Wafer cookies damaged.  How about that!   As long as he didn't have customers walking out of his store to shop across the street at Food Fair, he was cool.  And he knew the way to keep 'em coming back was to be nice to them, to be polite.



It's usually not that way in stores.  I think Peggy would sooner walk around looking for something than to bother asking where anything is, and I find it's not often that someone takes the time to be kind and courteous in a retail setting, especially the big stores like groceries and anything with the word "Mart" in its name.  

They used to make beer in this building.  Now the
building is full of condos full of people who
drink martinis and cosmos.

However! Certain indications indicate that the trend is changing. For example - we went to the new Harris Teeter grocery store down in Canton the other day.  Canton is the part of Baltimore where for years, new Americans got their start working hard in canneries, breweries and broom factories.  Now it's where young professionals plunk down $335,000 for a row house on which those immigrants worked like the dickens to pay the $3,350 mortgage a hundred years ago.  The entire American economy, once based on making things, is now based on selling things to each other, from insanely overpriced cups of coffee to apartments in a building that used to be a brewery, and I wonder if it still has that delightful beer-y aroma.  

Anyhow, the people at Harris Teeter were everywhere, greeting us as we ankled in, as they heated our banana bread treat at Starbucks, at the checkout area, and all around.  Even the off-duty city cop working security was like a cheery greeter.  

And I went to Home Depot for some topsoil and grass seed the other day, and everywhere I went, cheerful clerks asked if I was finding everything ok, and did I need help hauling my stuff to the car, and hoping I was having a good day.

And finally, most surprisingly, I hit a Subway last night, because no one felt like cooking after a delightful afternoon of snoozing reading at the library.  The young lady - the Sandwich Artist - asked what kind of roll I wanted, got the toasting done, made the subs with care and skill, got the toppings right the first time and still took time for a moment or two of pleasant banter with a very surprised older gentleman.  

I am too a gentleman!

But I saved the receipts from the HD and the S Way and I am going to drop emails to the home offices about how great their customer service is.  It's the least I can do and, as Rocky Balboa would say, it don't cost nothin', you know what I'm sayin'
to you here?

"And, remember, commencement is not a conclusion, but a big inning!"

For the 45th consecutive year, no one asked me to speak at the commencement exercises at any high school, college, university, barber college or even a school of fish.

Which is fine; I would have had to have the pinstripes pressed and wear a tie, and it's getting way too hot for that.  But here are some thoughts that I would have passed along to the Class of 2014, had I been asked.

I would have opened with my notion of turning our lives upside down.  Let's figure out how long the average person gets to be retired before moving into a one-person bungalow with silver handles, and then say, OK, you just finished high school, college, whatever.  You get your retirement NOW, while you still feel like running around the world and sailing kayaks and dancing in the moonlight and dating three or four people at once and participating in IronMan competitions.  Please report to Work at age 30 and then you'll work 'til that great Hallelujah Day.

Sound good?

And I would also tell this year's graduates this simple advice, which is to pretty much forget everything you've heard about how the world is eagerly awaiting your arrival.  One of the most puzzling things about seeing young people right out of school come to work was always their expectation that they not have to do anything they deemed "beneath" them.  Their mommies had always made sure that the roads they were to travel were plowed and leveled evenly, and then they come to work with a bunch of older adults who were trying to get a job done and had little time or concern about young Brattleboro's wishes to arrive late, leave early, and have plenty of time for personal self-expression during the shift.  People are alway surprised to hear that lots of successful people started their careers sorting mail, hauling out the trash, frying a burger.  Much later in your lives, you will realize that getting to do those mundane chores is great preparation for someday owning the company where people are sorting mail, hauling out trash, frying burgers and the like.  You will understand that with what they call "experience."  We can't give that to you; you can only get it for yourselves, and we want you to get the best of it.

There is nothing much weirder than getting a phone call from the parent of a 23-year-old saying their "child" will be late for work because they were out a little late last night, but I got that call once. And the employee was completely floored when told that I needed to hear from them, not their parents, unless they also wanted their paycheck made out to their mom.

I'm afraid that young people today don't get many good examples as they set out to join the workforce.  They watch television and see fools like Donald Trump amassing fortunes, they are encouraged to believe that tawdry fiction is great literature, and they hear people bragging about cheating on their taxes, employers, spouses, and I don't know what-all else.

My advice to the graduates is to find a job that will lead to the career they seek, to remember that there is no disgrace in any honest work, and to give a good day's work for their day's pay. And remember, you can learn a lot from the people you'll spend your days with.  Assess them carefully, sort out the sneaky cheats from the industrious achievers, and follow the lead of the latter.

You can become anything you want to be.  Please want to be good.

So help me, Hanna

Everything used to be so consarned sexist, it wasn't even funny. No one even thought it odd that all the hurricanes back in the day carried female names only.

AS IF men never destroyed anything.  

So here comes a story saying that researchers at the University of Illinois figured out why more people tend to die in hurricanes named after women, now that we alternate male/female monikers right down the line.  They say that people don't take storms as seriously when the hurricane has a girl's name.

Yes, fellow citizens of yours and mine, right here in these United States, hear that Hurricane Gladys is on the way, and don't figure it to be much of a bother.  Hurricane Elmer, now that would be good reason to run to Home Depot and stock up on plywood.

The story goes on to point out that the figures might be a tad skewed, since ALL of yesteryear's hurricanes had feminine names. Still, you have to wonder if people could really be so haphazard as to figure that a storm named Stormy wouldn't be as bad as one named Kenny. 

Now that hurricane season is here, I will have my annual time of wondering why people who live in places like Florida would not already have a supply of plywood, plastic sheeting, bottled water and batteries handy at all times.  But then again, every time it snows up here, you can't even get on the Home Depot parking lot for all the people who up until that minute did not own a snow shovel.

Hannah Storm

For your planning purposes (and child-naming purposes), here is the chart for hurricane names for this year.  I'm still not on it, although 'Marco' will come close.  That's a storm like me, but with a Spanish accent.  And my sister's grandchildren call her Nana, so keep an eye on that one!  And I assume that if Tropical Storm Hanna develops, it will be covered on ESPN, with Hannah Storm as lead reporter.

2014 Atlantic Storm Names

Arthur 

Bertha

Cristobal

Dolly

Edouard

Fay

Gonzalo

Hanna

Isaias

Josephine

Kyle

Laura

Marco

Nana

Omar

Paulette

Rene

Sally

Teddy

Vicky

Wilfred

Before anyone asks, no, there are no dates established for these storms.  They will arrive as nature intends.  Keep an eye on your local meteorologist.  You know what I mean.

"Come and let me show you my tattoo" - Gregg Allman

We were at BJ's, that cavernous warehouse that allows members to purchase both a ton and a half of corn flakes and a wheelbarrow to cart it away.  We bought peanut butter, paper towels, napkins, tp, some supplies for mom, and enough shredded parmesan cheese to sink a lasagna and headed for the checkout.

The cashier was a friendly young lady, wearing a pair of those calf-length pants that in my distant youth were called "clam diggers," but I don't think that's where she was headed after work.  She had an Ace® Bandage wrapped all the way around her calf, so I said I was sorry she had gotten hurt and that I hoped she felt better soon.

"Oh. I didn't get hurt," she said. "The store makes me wear this because I have a large tattoo on my leg."

Popular with sailors

Charley Horse

Now I'm confused.  It would appear that in the world of big-box club merchandising, the very thought of employees being seen to be bearing tattooed skin is so abhorrent that they would rather have their customers think the employee has a pulled muscle or Charley Horse or something.

This is Alllman, brother

Listen, I remember the old days, when only a sailor who had been shanghaied in Hong Kong (or Hong Konged in Shanghai, I can never remember which is which) would sport tattoos, which were indigo pictures of nekkid girls with name banners or reddish pictures of hearts abloom, bearing legends such as "Marge and Nick forever."  From Asheville to Ashtabula, people are inking it up all over the place, and it's ok with me if a cashier has a tattoo. I mean, if the man pictured here, Gregory LeNoir "Gregg" Allman, wants to sing "Whipping Post" for you, are you going to tell him you'd rather someone untattooed did the vocal?

Just for the record, BJ's management, as long as the person running the cash register where I buy things is polite and professional and decently groomed (clean and non-stanky), then I could not care any less if they have decorated their leg or forearm with artworks.  


 

The Annual Problem

As seen in 1969

What I remember about my high school graduation photo is that I had to go all the way downtown to the Fabian Bachrach studio while wearing cutoffs and a t-shirt.  Once at the photographer's, I slipped into a white shirt recently doffed by a dozen or so photographic victims, clipped on the rakish bow tie and slipped my arms into a dampish white dinner jacket that would have been at home at any underworld funeral party, and sat down before a bored cameraman to give the old piano keyboard smile since reproduced in one yearbook and countless gag posters and blog entries.

No one ever confused me with some Hollywood type, but a larger version of this picture hung on the wall at the homestead for several years, and no milk curdled as a result.  There was no call to touch up the photo, but I see that some high school grads out in Utah got their yearbooks the other day and found that some joker decided that some of their pictures had to be altered so as to make them acceptable to people who read high school yearbooks. Of course, the problem is that the joker in question is one Terry E. Shoemaker, who is the superintendent of schools for the Wasatch County School District.  And another problem is that some girls' pictures got the electronic airbrush from Photoshop, and some similarly depicted girls did not.  Here are two examples, the left photos being the originals, the right being Terry Shoemaker's idea of what everyone ought to look like:

“We only apologize in the sense that we want to be more consistent with what we`re trying to do in that sense we can help kids better prepare for their future by knowing how to dress appropriately for things.”

The person who said that obfuscatory sentence is none other than Terry E. Shoemaker.  I think Shoemaker, whose picture from when he was chosen as Utah School Superintendent of the Year appears below, could a) get a new suit without those corny wide lapels  b) get a new haircut  and c) lose the lapel pin.  Or we could just photoshop all that mess away.  Sound ok, Terry?  Or don't you think it's right to alter someone else's appearance?

Sunday rerun: Master of the Souse

As Alton Benes

If you remember the Seinfeld episode called "The Jacket" (Jerry has a "fabulous" new suede jacket; he's wearing it when he and George meet up with Elaine and her father Alton Benes for dinner...) then you remember the tough-guy actor Lawrence Tierney, who played Alton.

As Sam Wild in Born to Kill

Lawrence Tierney (1919-2002) was a Brooklyn-born actor who was either too busy playing the tough guy for real in his real life to make his career work out, or maybe he couldn't separate the gangster thug roles he played from reality.  The difference is, in the movies he was in, such as "Born To Kill" and "The Devil Thumbs A Ride," when he got locked up, the director hollered "CUT" and they opened the cell door right away.  In real life, in the jails he was in, it didn't happen that easily.  Tierney was arrested over a dozen times, for fighting and/or drunkenness, and he didn't give up the booze until 1992, following a stroke.

The cast and crew of "Seinfeld" said that Tierney certainly would have been brought back for further appearances as Elaine's gruff Dad, but the cast and crew were scared of him.  He tried to steal a kitchen knife from Seinfeld's apartment set.

As Don Brodka

He was also on "The Simpsons" as security guard Don Brodka, who caught Bart trying to rip off a copy of the video game "Bonestorm" from the Try-N-Save discount store.  Reports are that he intimidated and threatened people at the recording of that episode (called "Marge Be Not Proud" from December, 1995.)

The thing is, we saw that "Jacket" episode the other night.  George kept singing bits from that "Master of the House" song and Alton told him to "knock it off, chorus boy" and then on his way back home (to Maryland - remember, Elaine was from Towson!) old Alton couldn't get that "M of the H" song out of his mind.

And now, neither can I.

Master of the house
Doling out the charm
Ready with a handshake
And an open palm...

The Saturday Picture Show, May 31, 2014

 This is a pretty poppy flower named Celandine.  I had never heard of it, but I ran across this picture and I thought it was pretty.

 All of a sudden, with millions of years passed since they were roaming the earth, dinosaurs are getting picked on for having short arms.  All they needed was a little orthopedic surgery!  Anyone who's had that gets sent home from the hospital with one of those grabber thingies that helps get the paper off the lawn in the morning and also retrieves that one brown sock that is trying to hide behind the dryer.

 "The path one chooses matters little, if all you watch is your feet."  I'm willing to bet that there are people whose daily trek takes them past some of the most wonderful sights on God's green earth, and yet, they don't even look.  Look around and appreciate what there is to see!

 For instance...Well, honestly, if your path takes you along Trail Creek Road in Idaho, I guess you're well advised to keep both eyes on the road at all times.  Pretty view, though.  Just don't become part of it!

 I admire practicality at all times, and, of course, I like "repurposing," which is the new form of the old word "reuse."  Just take the clip from an old looseleaf binder, drill it into the wall, and your jacket will doggone sure stay where you put it, all day!

The Peanuts gang pays tribute to the Beatles gang at Universal Studios, Japan.

Just Add Water

It appears that Peggy and I were the last to come down with this stomach cootie or whatever it is that's been going around the last month or so.  So that's it for that, and good riddance. You know what they say; a couple of days being sick is a drag, but seven of them makes one weak.

OK. They don't all say that, but more of them do than you think.

The whole thing made me think about appreciation for the little things, because the first night when I was "busy" "being sick," I came down with a side effect known in the medical and sewing trades as "Velcro mouth."  When I wanted to say something, I felt as if I had to pry my lips apart and manually separate my tongue from the roof of my mouth.  I don't know what causes dry mouth, but I am willing to give it back. 

But my angelic wife Peggy went down to the kitchen and brought me a bottle of water.  Never tasted anything so sweet as a nice sip of cold water in the middle of a sick night.  I know water is not on the bucket list for a lot of people; folks go for bottled soda and sweet tea and Arnold Palmers, that combination of lemonade and iced tea.  Nobody does commercials for plain old water, but that plain old WalMart H2O in the crinkly plastic bottle tasted like champagne at 3:30 in the yawning.

I remember Howard Stern arguing with someone years ago; it was a caller who said she could not have a baked potato without butter and sour cream and all the other fixin's.  Howard's point was that if she had been in a concentration camp for three months, living on water and crumbs, that plain baked potato would taste like heaven to her.

It's all a matter of perspective, I know, but I just want to give a shoutout to plain ol' water. Sometimes, the simplest things are the best.  

Laundry does not hamper me

I hang my head in my shame over how many loads of laundry Peggy did over the first 40 yrs. of our marriage.  We've always divided up the chores very well; I love buying, cooking and  - heaven knows -eating food, and she is excellent at cleaning up (and loves to do it; it's part of her skills to be hyper-organized.)  I'll run the vacuum and dust about 1/2 of the time, but I will admit to being far behind in the bedmaking category.  Of course, when I have attempted to make the bed, it turned out looking like a pile of sheets and blankets that formed a wolverine's den somewhere, whereas when Peggy is through bending the linen, you expect to see a Marine drill sgt. walk in, bounce a quarter off the bed and say, "This is the way I want ALL these bunks made up, do you HEAR me?"

But I got started throwing the laundry in while Peggy was still working and it's an obsession with me now to throw soiled clothing into a metal box, toss in a little Arm & Hammer, throw a couple of switches and walk away, coming back to wet but clean clothes in 35 mins.  I take them out and put them in an adjoining metal box, push ONE button and walk off for half an hour and before you know it, I'm folding t-shirts and matching up socks.  

Why did they hold the truth from me about how much fun this is? 

Which brings me to this.  Recently the CEO of Levi Strauss, one Chip Bergh, appeared on the TODAY show and said that he would not be washing his jeans today, tomorrow or ever.   

“These jeans are maybe a year old and these have yet to see a washing machine,” he said. “I know that sounds totally disgusting. I know it does. But believe me, it can be done.”

That's what he said.  The article said that in the past, Levi's has suggested freezing your jeans - without you in them, one assumes - for killing cooties.  This Bergh says you can spot-clean them and air them out and they'll be wonderful forever.  Then Natalie Morales proved that she has never been within a hundred miles of Kansas by stating, "Spot-cleaning is not going to work when you’re on a cow farm."

And all across America, people realized that you can call a cattle ranch a "cow farm" and become an anchor on a network tv show, and you can be a maniac and be the head of a large clothing firm.

Or you can drop your laundry off to me for same day service.  In by 9, out by 4.

Up in the mornin' and out to school...The teacher is teachin' the Golden Rule

I would like to ask teachers to comment on an article that was in the Baltimore SUN paper last week (page 1, May 22). It talked of eight ‘opportunity schools’ in Baltimore City that are doing better than other schools, and goes into detail about why this might be happening.   The schools are in low-income areas, parts of town where 80 - 95 % of students get free and reduced-price meals, and yet...most students in almost every grade topped the statewide proficiency rates in both reading and math on the 2012 and 2013 Maryland School Assessments.

At Hamilton Elementary/Middle, 87% of elementary school kids qualify for subsidized meals, and 96 percent of the 4th graders achieved proficiency in math - as opposed to the statewide average of 89%.

At Thomas Johnson Elementary/Middle in South Baltimore, (left) with 88% of its middle schoolers enjoying subsidized meals, 94% of the 6th grade scored "proficient" in the math test.  Statewide average? 77%.

Now, here is what I need to have someone discuss for me!

A 7th grade language teacher says that everyone “is on equal ground. For example, nobody in my room is wrong. I always try to find a way to make their response work. No one wants to feel invalidated. The kids trust me not to make them feel less than they are.”

Teachers - and I love you and completely respect your thoughts as just about the only thoughts that matter here - what the heck?  Does it really make a child feel invalidated to be told that it wasn't the Germans who invaded Pearl Harbor? Does it scar a developing psyche to find out that 7 x 6 doesn't make 76? How does it make a child feel less than they are to be told by his/her teacher that Abraham Lincoln was not really a vampire hunter?

Maybe it's just I with my prickliness about proper grammar as was taught to me in the good old Eisenhower Days, but I think that if I had given the wrong answer to "Dick and his friend were probably drunk out of (their, there, or they're) minds when they decided to go hunting that afternoon," I should have been glad to have a teacher tell (me, I) about it.

Even after thousands of bummer attempts at making a light bulb, Thomas Edison did not consider himself a failure.  He knew that what he had done was find 10,000 ways not to make a light bulb! 

So teachers, let me hear from you, please, and I will, in return, shorten the school year by one day this year*.  Thank you!

*subject to approval from people I've never even met, so don't plan on it. 
 

Everybody Doesn't Love Raymell

The long-awaited press conference with Raymell Mourice "Ray" Rice of the Baltimore Ravens took place Friday.  For those unaware, he's our local football star who, several months ago, got into trouble by slugging his soon-to-be wife at a casino in Atlantic City.  He has been placed in a pre-trial intervention program that will, if completed properly, leave him with a clean record in the eyes of the law. There is still a possible suspension from the National Football League to consider, but they have a huge backlog of these things to deal with, you understand.

The press conference was really more like a statement; Ray took no questions and there was no elaboration beyond what he said, which was that he was sorry for his fans and partners.  Then his wife read her statement apologizing for her role in the brouhaha.

But he did not apologize to his wife.  And Twitter and Facebook lit up about that. They seemed oddly distant for newlyweds, truth to tell.  No handholding, not even eye contact.  Other comments tossed around on Facebook were that he seemed awkward for having stashed his talking points on his phone, requiring him to fool with the phone at the podium (his wife printed out her points.) 

And - the team's general manager, the great Ozzie Newsome, urged Rice to hold off until Tuesday, when Newsome and coach John Harbaugh would be in town to stand by him.  Nope, he wouldn't do that.

From a public relations standpoint, this was not handled well.  A good counselor would have worked with Rice to point out how bad it would be to label the whole incident as "this thing that happened to me."  No, sir.  You did it.  No one thinks that a ghost plied you with liquor and made you start slapping your woman down to the ground.  Which brings up another point: Ray said several times that he failed in this episode but was not a failure because he got back up after being knocked down. 

Poor choice of terminology, Ray.  "Knocked down" is what you did to your woman, the mother of your daughter.  

What makes me sad is that we're all talking about how it will affect the Ravens if the league suspends Rice for a few games and not how there is not a gigantic silo of shame over his head for being drunk and disorderly in public, and most awfully, assaulting his fiancée.

In his first five years with the Ravens, Rice set up a website to help school children deal with bullying and gave away a fortune in school supplies to hard-working teachers.  He was loved all over town, then.

It will be interesting to see how many #27 jerseys we see all over town this fall.  Everyone is entitled to make a mistake, but there are mistakes and there are MISTAKES.

Memorial Day 2014

Lately, people have gone out of their way to remind us, and I hope the word is getting across.  We've all fallen into the trap of thinking of Memorial Day as the first pool or beach weekend, a time for good deals on carpets, cars, and washer/dryer combinations, a good reason to haul out the grill and fry some burgers and franks.  Sure, those can be part of Memorial Day, the federal holiday on which the men and women who died serving in the United States Armed Forces are remembered.  It started as "Decoration Day," a salute to fallen soldiers from both sides in the Civil War.  So it goes back that far, and it's still good for us to remember the reason we pause from our usual endeavors today and say homage to those who died in service.

Sunday rerun: The Name's the Same

This Robin!

I'm like June Cleaver or Donna Reed around here lately in the mornings...I get Peggy off to work and then turn to my housework.

Not this Robin.

So yesterday, as always, I kissed-and-waved Peggy a sweet goodbye and then turned to cleaning up the breakfast dishes and getting the overnight breaking news from Robin Roberts.  I was up to my elbows in suds when the kitchen floor flew open and in flew Peggy, madder than a scalded hen.

She had left and got about 1/2 a block away when she realized she had an unfortunate wardrobe malfunction.  Not of the Janet Jackson variety, though.

The problem? She was wearing an olive green shirt, Navy pants and black shoes.

If you see the problem there, you're far smarter than I.  "I should be wearing black pants," she panted, dashing up to change her pants.  While this was going on, she told me that wearing navy pants with black shoes was completely unacceptable.  I know it's OK for men, but did not know that the color laws were different for women.

The fact is, I don't know what colors go together and what clashes.  I'm not colorblind, but no one ever took the time during my rural upbringing to sit me down and spin a color wheel, showing what to wear with what.  Consequently, during my working days, I got into the habit of picking out my duds the night before, so that Peggy could walk by where they hung and let me know if the colors matched up all right.

Now that I have joined the ranks of the Retired, it doesn't seem to matter what color gym shorts I wear, and for that I am glad.  There are days in which the only other non-televised person I see is the woman who delivers our mail, and she never complains about a thing.

The Saturday Picture Show, May 24, 2014

 If you'll pardon me for a moment for getting personal, this is the recent photo from the Old Timers' Night at the Providence Volunteer Fire Company, where I, starting at 16, learned firefighting, EMS, and life lessons that have paid off a thousand times.  Every year now, they put on a dinner for us "alumni," and we go, tie on the feedbag, and swap tales of fires and incidents long ago.

 The caption reads, "Jack Whinery, homesteader, and his family, Pie Town, New Mexico, October 1940."  I wonder how things turned out for this family through the war years of the 40s.  I do know one thing: not one of these people ever ever once said, "Ewww!  I don't like this!" when they sat down to sup.

 If the goal is to make people question your sanity and judgement, congratulations!  The park rangers in Yosemite must love this special foolhardiness.

 In one of the few healthy moves I ever made, I gave up soda years ago, but I remember all the ersatz brand names for off-brand sodas. The big name in fakey pop is what everyone calls their imitation Dr Pepper, seen here.  I want to market a can called "Dr Oz" - all hot air with no substance.

Haters gonna hate.  It's pollen time!

I borrowed this picture from Mary Hays Vollmer, who was in my class
in elementary school back when Ike was president.  It reminds me of Mr Lennon
encouraging us all to imagine all the people sharing all the world. 

Friday rerun: Oh, THAT Wib Davenport!

Down in Virginia, if you want to drive away from a certain Chevrolet dealer, you should know this: they really drive a hard bargain!

Danny Sawyer, 40, bought a black Chevy Traverse from Priority Chevrolet back in May, but woke up the next day wishing he had bought a blue one.  He drove back to the dealership and found a blue one that caught his fancy, and that's where things go crazy.

The blue one must have had some optional equipment that the black SUV lacked, because after Sawyer swapped cars, went on vacation and came home, he came home to many frantic messages from the car lot and its sales manager, whose name is Wib Davenport.  We've all known someone named "Wib," haven't we?  The car Sawyer wound up with cost $5,600 more than the original one, and how would he like to pay for that, was the point of all the messages.

All this turmoil over this?

He wouldn't like to pay for that.  Sawyer says no one told him that the blue car cost more, and even though the dealership says they told him that it did, there still seems to be a matter of him not signing anything additional to attest to the switcheroo.

Completely disregarding the basic tenet of good customer service (Never have your customers thrown in jail, since it's hard to buy a car from there) the dealership called the local cops, who mistook a civil matter for a crime, and ushered Sawyer into a cell for four hours.

Dennis Ellmer, president of Priority Chevrolet, has decided to be adorable about the whole thing and says Sawyer can keep the blue car for the price of the black one, and hey!  How about a free tire rotation, buddy boy?

Ironically enough, Sawyer rotated those tires himself, driving over to the office of a lawyer, upon whose sage advice he has filed two lawsuits against the dealer, accusing the business of malicious prosecution, slander, defamation and abuse of process. He'll need a total of $2.2 million in damages, plus attorney fees before he feels better about the whole doggone thing.

We used to have a Chevy dealer in Baltimore who advertised that his dealership, at the corner of York and Bellona, was "the best place to become a Chevrolet ownah!"

Priority Chevrolet can now claim proudly that they offer a car buyer the chance to "come on down and get a Chevy on sale - and if we don't like you, we'll throw you in jail!"