The Saturday Picture Show, May 8, 2021

 

Birds of a feather, etc....this man went out to feed his chickens and found a mama duck had made herself a little nest and is expecting a couple of dozen kids! Nature will find a way!

I always think of people looking back on their days, and I know that very few of them are saying, "I should have stayed late at work more often, come in on days off, and given more of myself to a company that couldn't care less about me." Do your best, make your way, and take care of yourself as you go. 

It's also free range, if you want it.

Orioles left handed pitcher John Means is shown here celebrating his no-hit game from this Wednesday. It was the first one-man no-hitter by an Orioles pitcher since 1969, when I was just finishing my distinguished high school career. Jim Palmer pitched that last great game. It's been a long time!

It's funny to see Western movies. The good guys all look like Jimmy Stewart or Clint Eastwood, and the bad guys are all Brad Pitt or Clu Gulager - handsome, rugged, raw-boned (however that works!) and then you see a picture of a real bad guy, and he looks like this addled delinquent. This is Billy The Kid, who went by "Henry McCarty" at his birth in 1859. He died in a gunfight at 21, after taking 8 lives himself. Seeing him for real makes the Wild West a little less enchanting.

One great thing about this internet thing is that we learn a lot more about the rest of the world every chance we get. Never forget the reason why we are still the greatest country in the world. This 19-year-old is Olga Misik, a Russian who went to a demonstration and read the Russian Constitution to riot police. For this sin, she will be sentenced to two years in prison. Never take your freedom for granted.

Of course, you recognize Marilyn Monroe, meeting Queen Elizabeth in 1956 in London. The man next to her is movie performer Victor Mature. I would call him an actor, but he himself told his daughter Victoria, "I'm no actor, and I have 64 movies to prove it." He often played guys who just got out of prison and were handed a 5 dollar bill and a custom-made suit that fit like, well, like a custom-made suit.

"Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a disorder in which people have recurring, unwanted thoughts, ideas or sensations (obsessions) that make them feel driven to do something repetitively (compulsions)." - from a psychology textbook.
"Texas never backs down" - from a T-shirt.

This is one of those situations where you figure someone knows enough to know whether this is ok, but I am not setting foot in this building. Or under it.

The last line, and the title, of a great poem by Robert Frost (1874 -1963) used to appear on this wall, but, ironically, those words couldn't stay.  The complete poem:

Nature’s first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf’s a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

In loving memory

Like the rest of the world, I was shocked at the news that those two crazy kids from out west, Bill and Melinda Gates, were calling their marriage a closed file. I always had the impression they were like any other married couple - both working, saving, scrimping, somehow coming up with enough money to go to the beach for a week in summer OR buy a nation in the Balkans. 

It's nice to have options.

Hey, we even saw Bill, like any other schlub, waiting in line for burgers instead of just buying the burger joint.

It did come as a surprise to find that a little-known codicil in the Gates marriage contract allowed him to have an annual getaway weekend with his ex-girlfriend, one Ann Winblad. The news reported that “Every spring, as they have for more than a decade, Gates spends a long weekend with Winblad at her beach cottage on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, where they ride dune buggies, hang-glide and walk on the beach.”

“We can play putt-putt while discussing biotechnology,” Gates said of his annual trip to see Winblad.

Attention, young men embarking on the sea of matrimony who a) do not have Gates money and b) might be considering asking for such an annual hall pass:

Just don't. Trust me.

Because my thoughts are never far from cheeseburgers, the whole thing makes me think of another super-rich guy, namely Ray Kroc, the milkshake-mixer salesman with the vision to predict America's hunger for burgers, shakes, and fries. No one has ever gone broke selling food around here, and Ray, founder of McDonald's, died in 1984 without taking a penny to Heaven with him.

It all fell to his wife, Joan, who endured his alcoholism, his philandering, his devotion to the hamburger chain and his right-wing politics, to use his money for good.  And did she ever!

She started with a pile totaling $500 million when the Big French Fry Timer ran out on Ray in 1984, and at the time of her death, she had $3 Billion to bequeath. It's said she had zero interest in running his business, but infinite interest in giving his money away in ways that would have driven him crazy if he were still around, such as:

• NPR listeners are used to hearing her name on the air, thanks to the $225 million they received from Joan. 
• She began The Kroc Foundation and made one of her first projects the establishment of Operation Cork, a personal enhancement program for the families of alcoholics, and was later a patron of the Betty Ford Clinic. 
• A native of the Upper Midwest, she went to Grand Forks, North Dakota in 1997 with a check for $15 million for flood relief.
• Following a mass shooting at a San Diego McD's in 1984, she had her chauffeur drive her to the site (she lived in SD) and set up a victim's fund and benefits for the family of the gunman as well, a troubled soul. She had the restaurant demolished within days. 
• She gave the University of Notre Dame $6 million to establish The Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.  
• She gave $80 million to the local Salvation Army in San Diego for the Ray & Joan Kroc Corps Community Center where families enjoy an Olympic sized swimming pool, ice rink, and concert hall.   
• However...after she bought a $100,000 Bosendorfer grand piano (she had one in her living room) for the Kroc Center, the Salvation Army would not allow the Gay Men’s Chorus of San Diego to perform. Joan bought another Bosendorfer for the chorus to use in their hall.
• Diagnosed with brain cancer in 2003, Mrs Kroc sought to disburse as much of the burger money as she could. That's when $225 million went to NPR, $60 million to Ronald McDonald House Charities, $50 million to the Kroc Institute at Notre Dame, and…$1.5 billion to Salvation Army, to build 26 centers similar to the original one in San Diego.

As a biographer put it, "You may not like fast food, but she happened to take the proceeds of it and did something remarkable.”

And you can just imagine how Ray felt about it!

They'll ax you if you wish the spend the night

With weddings getting back to "normal" again, here's a swell idea for an interesting honeymoon spot. Located in scenic, bucolic Fall River, Massachusetts, this 19th century home of a very famous family was recently purchased and upgraded, so anyone looking to combine a first sail down the river of matrimony with a chance to solve an unsolved murder can now check into The Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast/Museum.

A fella named Lance Zaal, of U.S. Ghost Adventures, plunked down around 2 million simoleons for the house where Lizzie Borden’s father and stepmother were chopped to bits with a hatchet in 1892. 

I wouldn't sleep too soundly if I were you...

U.S. Ghost Adventures is in the business of hosting "experiences" throughout the country. I have to be honest. The only thing I want to "experience" on vacation is a breakfast buffet, with tubs of bacon, sausage, and ham, and great tureens filled with grits.

Back in 1892, on the fourth of August,  Andrew Borden, 69, and his 64-year-old wife Abby, were murdered. Abby was upstairs, Andrew had been napping on a couch, and there they were, “their heads smashed with a hatchet,” as the Boston Globe said at the time. 

Their daughter Lizzie, 32, was charged with the two homicides, but she beat the rap. People continued to suspect her, which would have made for awkward conversations at the local Starbucks had there been one in 1892. 

Irony is not lost on Mr Zaal. He wants to set up an axe-throwing venue, plus an outdoor seating area for visitors who wish to socialize.  

Let's hope there is a good wall between those two spots.

Oh, and period-appropriate dinners, and music, and paint nights, but “We’ll be painting happy little axes instead of happy little clouds,” says Zaal. 

I can recommend other places, ghost free, if you wish.

Look up!

You don't necessarily need to take offense if, over the next several days, someone tells you to take a shower.

They might just mean a meteor shower!

Skywatchers are on alert, and if it's not too cloudy or stormy, they will have a great opportunity to see wild things above - even more interesting than when that couple down the street has another of their tiffs on the balcony.

They're called the Eta Aquariids, but unlike you and I, they don't need two eyes. Call them "Aquarids." They're peaking today and will show about 10 or 20 meteors an hour.  The show ends on May 28, and to be honest, it's much brighter in the Southern Hemisphere, but we'll make do with what we get up here.

These Eta Aquarid meteors, I wanna tell you, they move faster than that goof you saw on the Beltway the other day. They're going about 148,000 mph (66 km/s) from space into Earth's atmosphere. What we see are glowing "trains," which are bits of incandescent debris the meteor leaves behind it its wake. The train might glow for as long as two minutes, and there are usually 30 Eta Aquarid meteors on display every hour at the peak.

Our local weather is calling for partly cloudy skies and showers these nights, but isn't that the all-purpose weather forecast around here: "Partly cloudy, chance of rain"?

Enjoy the showers, take an umbrella, see a free show!

The Sock Market

I have to chortle when I see people crying that they refuse to get vaccinated against the dreaded COVID-19 on the grounds that "they" put something in the juice to "track" you, because their cell phones, social media outbursts, and credit card usage don't do enough of that already.

So while you're worried about Bill Gates needing a few extra bucks, so he slips a tracking chip into your vaccine like you're a housecat or something, maybe spend a little time worrying about your socks.

Because, down in Silver Spring, Montgomery County, cops have arrested a man they say was part of a three-man gang that threatened, assaulted, and bound a family with duct tape 18 years ago.

And they nabbed him because he wore socks as gloves during the whole awful crime. And in so doing, he left DNA behind on the socks.

I'm not going to go into the gory details of the crime. I can point you to this article on the Patch if you really want to read all about it.

But just remember this - while you're worried about Bill Gates and Dr Fauci and all the other people who are trying to help this nation and the world get out of this mess, don't try committing a crime while wearing sockgloves (or is the term glovesocks?) because you will get caught and they will send you to a place where the socks are thin and made of polyester.

But on the other hand, if you take the vaccine, you'll still be alive to wear them!

Tough Guy, eh?

America is going through a bad phase right now. We can't stop focusing on all the wrong things, such as the fear of LGBTQ people. You might recall that I am still waiting for a rational answer to the question of what other people's sex lives has to do with anyone else's. It's just silly, and it leads to all sorts of antagonism that we don't really need.

F'rinstance, up in Monmouth County, New Jersey, a middle school vice principal is on the hot seat. It all started when Michael Smurro's wife, Lisa, got all flibbertiggibet because a transgender woman was taking a leak in the ladies room.

She was walking around - there is a video - carping to others about how upset she was that a fellow human being sought relief for a full bladder.

“There’s a man pissing in the bathroom, the women’s bathroom,” Mrs Smurro says to the waitress in the video. “She’s a man. She was in the women’s bathroom.”

Finding no quarter from the waitress, the harping harridan turns to other diners who are trying to sit outside and have their meal in peace. In the video uploaded by "Peach CC," we see her whining about "She's a man, she's a man" until the diners tell her, “You’re being inappropriate. Take your hate elsewhere, please.” 

Then, Mr Smurro, who spends his days dealing with recalcitrant juveniles, steps up and tries to act like Steven Seagal in one of those movies of his with three words in the title ("I Can't Act," "Filing For Retirement," and "Just Forget Me" are three recent examples) saying, “Here you go, pal. There you go.”

Tough guy. He douses the crowd with the rest of a beer. Ironically, if he had tossed away beer all day instead of drinking it, he would be happier right now, ya know?

Well, a couple of days go by, and after the Schlitz really hit the fan, Smurro wrote to the Associated Press: 

“I allowed my emotions to get in the way of my normally sound judgment and reacted in a way that was inappropriate. I do not condone violence or discrimination of any kind and should have simply walked away. I apologize to the person I threw my beer at and wish I hadn’t done so. I apologize to anyone I offended.”

 

He educates the youth of New Jersey. And by the way, one of the people he showered with suds is a child.

 

The Neptune School District offered a statement: “This event is troubling as its perception potentially threatens the social-emotional well-being and climate of belonging that our Neptune School District community represents. The actions shown in the video do not reflect our district’s commitment to inclusivity, cooperation, respect, and nonviolence."

“The Board of Education and Superintendent will respond to this incident in a manner that is appropriate and relative to the seriousness of the situation and that takes into consideration the impact this incident has had on the reputation of our wonderful district,” it concluded.

There's nothing funnier than a would-be tough guy tossing beer on his fellow citizens one night and then issuing non-apology apologies days later. Smurro clearly has issues and should not be around children.

But before that school board hands down their decision, I think he should have to sit in a classroom and write "I will not throw beer on others in support of my wife's idiotic transphobia" 100 times.

Sunday Rerun: There WILL always be an England (from 2017)

 I say, I like the British people, and I love England and all its history. My roots are there; the first Clarks arrived here on a rowboat being tugged across the ocean by the Mayflower, so there's that.

I've never met an English person I didn't like, and I can't even say that for all American people. Not naming names...but you know...

I have never watched this show "Suits" although I know some people who do. Fact is, if I ever ran so low on things to do that I would watch a drama on the USA Network that concerns lawyers, I'd report to my den at once and crack a book.  Over my head.

But this Meghan Markle, who has turned the world on with her smile this week, has officially announced that she will not be coming back to the role of Rachel Zane, and it turns out that the producers of the show took a gamble a year ago that her thing with Harry would work out, and so it did. So that all works out fine, except that it brings up the old joke about the guy who complains to his buddy that he hates his job at the circus because he has to follow the elephants (I told you it was an old joke) around and scoop up what they leave behind, and he hated that hokey cart and he hated the broom and garbage pan and everything else about it - the low pay, the stench, the derision from the high-wire performers, the fact that the clowns wouldn't give him a ride home in their car because, they claim, there just isn't room for one more guy in the tiny machine.

So his friend goes, "Well, why don't you quit?"

And the poopscooper says, "What? And give up show business?"

Ms Markle is giving up show business, all right, and moving to a whole new kind of stage. God Save The Princess!

But she won't be known as Princess Meghan. It turns out that by the standards of British protocol, she lacks "royal blood" and cannot go by Princess Meghan. Same as Kate Middleton, who married Prince William, is known as Her Royal Highness, Princess William of Wales, Meghan will go by HRH Princess Harry of Wales.

I read these things and my head hurts.  She cannot be Princess Meghan, but she can be Princess Harry. Gotcha.

The Saturday Picture Show, May 1, 2021

 

Just your standard sub, featuring Sorpessata, Cappacola, Prosciutto, homemade Mozzerella, sun-dried tomato pesto, EVOO, red onion, red pepper flakes, and Italian seasoning. I read an article this week that attempted to explain why Mozzarella is pronounced "mootcerell," Prosciutto is "prozhuute" and Cappacola is "gobbagoo." It was a weak attempt, I still don't understand, and most of my ordering in Italian delicatessens is done by pointing. 

A little bit of skillful editing will remove the spaghetti-gobbling photo bomber.

May 4 will mark the 51st anniversary of the Kent State massacre. The mournful woman in the picture, Mary Ann Vecchio, was 14 at the time, a runaway from Florida. This tragic scene haunts her to this day, as you can imagine. You can read a fascinating article about her life and how it has gone since then at this Washington POST site.

You can count on Calvin to put all of our thoughts into words.

When someone says they want a shirt or wall paint in "robin's egg blue," here is the swatch to match it to.

The full "pink" moon as photographed in Baltimore this week.

Beachgoers who go through Delaware are acutely aware of the Sunday speedtrap in some towns along the way, those towns where they get you coming and going. They need these special police cars.

Speaking of the beach - this is the entrance to Poverty Beach in Cape May, New Jersey. It's laughably ironic that the beach where "the help" was supposed to bathe and relax back in the day is now the beach for some well-heeled people who have huge beach houses to get away from it all. I guess the help goes somewhere else.

Rainbow meets rainbow. Love is love. 

We leave you this week with a hamster eating blackberries.

Shell Game

The stretch of I-95 that runs through our county takes travelers north and south, even if they don't mean to.

It's wild, the way they drive on that road. I mean, local Maryland drivers are fine, but you add in the Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey ticket catchers, and it's every Volvo for itself out there. 

I've never taken 95 all the way to Florida, due to a disdain for mice, but I can only imagine how crazy the traffic is, the nearer one gets to the race tracks and Happiest Place On This Here Earth.

And it's just not the cars that will drive you nuts.

Here's what happened the other day down by Daytona Beach: a 71-year-old woman was cruising 95 with her daughter when a turtle smashed through her windshield. She suffered a cut to her forehead, along with the biggest shock of her life.

The daughter was driving, and here I get to type a sentence I have never even imagined typing. Seeing the turtle smash through the glass and hit her poor mom, she pulled over and received help from a kind motorist.

While the daughter called 911 for help, the operators could hear that man saying “There is a turtle in there!” 

To which the daughter, in some shock, replies, “A turtle! An actual turtle?”

I've heard crazier questions.

The unfortunate mom bled profusely, but she was not seriously hurt. 

The police figure the turtle ignored the posted TURTLE CROSSING signs and was crossing the interstate (to get to the other side...) when it was hit by another car, sending it airborne.

“I swear to God this lady has the worst luck of anything,” the daughter told the 911 operator as they awaited police and EMS.

You'd have to say the turtle had all the luck. With just a few scratches on its shell, it was released into the woods nearby, no doubt wondering why all these people were going so fast in their crazy shells.

"Rah! Rah! Boom Dee Ay! You can't tell me what to say!"

Sometimes, life is like an apple. You see it for what it is, you enjoy it, and you move on.

Sometimes, life is like an artichoke. You don't know what it is but you know it contains different layers and textures.

And sometimes, the case of a high school girl getting jammed up over some salty language is a lot more than what it appears to be on the surface.

You know how people in a minor dispute will sometimes say, "Why make a federal case of it?" Here's a situation of a cheerleader blowing off steam on Snapchat turning into a Supreme Court case.

Brandi Levy is 18 now and attending college, but when she was 14 and finishing her freshman year at Mahanoy Area High School in Pennsylvania (near Pittsburgh) she got some bad news: she was going to stay on the junior varsity cheerleading team as a sophomore. 

In the time-honored fashion of 14-year-olds, she blew up, dropping f-bombs all over her world. “F--- school, f--- softball, f--- cheer, f--- everything,” she Snapchatted on a Saturday morning. To illustrate the nature of her ire, she and a friend posed with their middle fingers up, saying, "Love how me and [another student, whom Levy identified by name] get told we need a year of jv before we make varsity but that doesn’t matter to anyone else?” All this, punctuated with an upside-down smiley face.

For those unaware, a snap posted to a Snapchat story disappears within 24 hours, except when someone screenshots it, giving life to the truth about the internet being forever.

Someone took a screenshot and before you know it, it was in the hands of the daughter of one of the cheerleading coaches. Other cheerleaders said "Gimme an "F!" and complained, and the coaches suspended Brandi from the squad for a year.

The coaches says she had agreed to certain team rules (including showing respect, avoiding “foul language and inappropriate gestures,” and a strict policy against “any negative information regarding cheerleading, cheerleaders, or coaches placed on the Internet.”) and broke said rules.

Larry and Betty Lou Levy, Brandi’s parents, launched appeals with the athletic director, the principal, the superintendent and the school board, and rang up a "NO SALE" at every turn. So, they got with the ACLU and filed a federal suit.

Justin Driver, a Yale law professor and author of “The Schoolhouse Gate: Public Education, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for the American Mind," says, “This is the most momentous case in more than five decades involving student speech.” 

And here's why: 

Previous cases that involve a student's right to free speech concerned speech on school grounds. Notably, in 1969, the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District that "students and teachers do not shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”

In other words, it was ok that I replied "The hell should I know?" when asked for an exegesis of Edgar A. Poe's "The Bells" in junior English, but the teacher didn't know it yet.

Professor Driver says, “Much of the speech from students is off-campus and increasingly online. When I talk to school administrators, they consistently tell me that off-campus speech bedevils them, and the lower courts desperately need some guidance in this area.”

In their side of the fight, the Mahanoy Area School District said, "Wherever student speech originates, schools should be able to treat students alike when their speech is directed at the school and imposes the same disruptive harms on the school environment.”

“This may seem like a very narrow case about a minor temper tantrum on Snapchat, but it is about speech anywhere and everywhere, by students of all ages,” said Frank LoMonte, director of the Brechner Center for Freedom of Information at the University of Florida.

And these standards as delineated in this verdict will set the standards for off-school free speech for generations.

It almost makes me want to go back to high school!

At the old ball game

It seems like ancient history these days, but you can still win a bet sometimes by asking "Who won the 1994 World Series?"

I'll cut right to it. You can usually get someone to say "The Braves" or "The Blue Jays," but the fact is, no one won the 1994 World Series because they didn't HAVE one. The players went on strike and the last 1/2 of the season was cancelled, and baseball fans were steamed, I wanna tell you.

The next season, the game realized they needed to do a lot of getting back in good with the fans, and, it being the season that Cal Ripken, Jr, of the Orioles was set to break Lou Gehrig's consecutive game record, Cal went out of his way to do public relations for the sport. Night after night, he stood on the field as fans lined up past midnight for his autograph. And, signature by signature, he did yeoman's work toward getting the fans back.

A portion of my Cal museum

Of course, last year, no one could go to any ballgames, and there was just an abbreviated 60-game schedule. This year, with the exception of Texas, a state where the laws of immunology and common sense are suspended, clubs are allowing smaller crowds, and trying their best to keep interest alive.

I've always thought that a few more Ripkens would be good for the game, players who play to the crowd and actually admit to breathing the same air as Freddie and Felicia Fan. Fans enjoy a little byplay with athletic heroes, and here's a guy who seems to understand that.

His name is Cole Calhoun. (This year, 35% of major league ballplayers are named "Cole" (Cole Sulser, Cole Hamels, Gerrit Cole...it goes on and on...)

Playing right field for the Arizona Diamondbacks the other night, Calhoun snaked his way (!) over toward the stands, trying to catch a fly ball gone foul into the seats. He put up his glove, and so did a kid, and the kid, wearing a glove, snagged it like an old pro.  

It was perfectly ok for the kid to make the play; anything into the stands is fair game for everyone. And instead of storming off in a huff, Calhoun gave the kid a cool fist bump. The first base umpire, hustling down the line to make the call, gave him a bump too. 

Cole and kid

And the Braves gave him a collectible Henry Aaron bobblehead, and he was interviewed on live tv.

And - it was his first big league game! I can't promise him similar thrills the next time he shows up at the park, but the point is, there will be a next time!

To the younger generation

I wish to address the children now, so, adults, please go read Buzzfeed or check your horoscope or work the Jumble a minute, ok? I need to tell the young people something.

OK, gang, I need to tell you something, and it's about figuring things out with a discerning ear.

You may have been told that by the time you reach your 20s, 30s, whatever, you will be mature and capable and will know which end is up and will be able to handle yourself in the world.

And I am here to tell you that adults are not doing all that good a job of it right now, so don't worry about being as good as us. That's pretty much assured, you will be. Because I am certain you will not behave as these adults do:

• Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) was the only senator who voted AGAINST a bill that was written to fight the recent uptick in hate crimes against Asian-Americans. The man who encouraged the Capitol riot on January 6 with a raised fist to a roiling mob of troublemakers says "it’s dangerous to simply give the federal government open-ended authority to define a whole new class of federal hate crime incidents." So he, out of all the US Senators, doesn't mind Asian people getting smacked around on the streets, targeted for their ethnicity.
• Emergent, manufacturer of AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson COVID vaccines, mixed up the ingredients at their Baltimore plant, ruining millions of vaccine doses because, apparently, people were not paying attention to their job. Hey, it's only medicine, not something important like making Chicken McNuggets.
• Hundreds of people who received their vaccine at the US Army's Kimbrough Ambulatory Care Center (KACC) at Fort Meade, Maryland received vaccines that were allowed to sit at room temperature for 24 hours, even though everyone in the world knows that vaccines have to be maintained under strict temperature guidelines. No harm done, except for the waste, and 800 people will have to be re-vaccinated, and those in the public who are leery or disdainful of the vaccine's value have another arrow in their "See? I TOLD you it's no good!" quiver.
• A man from Baltimore County man was thrown off a Southwest Airlines flight for eating Twizzlers. He was on the plane, waiting to take off for Ft. Lauderdale, and he pulled his mask down to eat a Twizzler, only to be told that a new rule went into effect in February that says if you are on a plane and eating or drinking, that mask better be on your face even between sips and bites.
  
  
  

You see, guys, adults sometimes get so caught up in setting themselves up as a rogue candidate for political office that they don't care how many people suffer for their ambition, or they get to gabbing on the job or checking their phones instead of making sure the right chemicals go in the right bottle, or they forget to keep life-saving vaccines cold, or they become ridiculously strict about following impractical rules, and in doing so they cause harm.

Your generation will do better! I have no doubt. Go prove me right.

Eat, Sleep, Sleep

Man oh man, if there ever existed a case for saying "I TOLD you so..." here it is...

There is research that says if you get plenty of sleep now, you have less risk of dementia later on.

Sure, there are factors (age, genetics) that will make dementia inevitable for some, no matter how much sleep they are getting. There is no way we can control that. But with 50 million people around the world diagnosed with dementia, why not do what we can to avoid joining that crowd?

The journal called Nature Communications is out with a study showing that high-quality sleep in middle age is a great prevention tactic. They followed 8,000 people in the United Kingdom over 25 years, and found that getting not even six hours of shuteye in one's 50s and 60s gives a 30% higher risk of dementia as compared with those who log (get it?) 7 hours +.

Stephanie Stahl, a sleep disorder specialist with Indiana University Health, says that while this is not the first study to make this sleep connection, but it is one of the largest.

“We know that getting insufficient sleep or getting poor quality sleep increases the risk of dementia,” Stahl told the HuffPost. “This is a larger scale study, so it definitely adds value to the evidence.”

Sure, it makes sense, but no one can say exactly WHY it's true, but there are theories:

“During sleep, our brain is allowed to clear toxins and that includes beta-amyloid,” Stahl said. (Beta-amyloid is a clumping brain protein that is often associated with  Alzheimer’s disease.)

She goes on: “Also, our sleep is really important for us to consolidate our memories. Sleep disruption leads to inflammation and that can lead to clogging of the arteries, and that includes those arteries in the brain.”

Experts say that while there is no assurance that any certain amount of sleep now will have us all bright-eyed well into our 90s, just like chicken soup for a cold, it can't hurt!

  

Sunday Rerun: Medical Assurance

 Alan King used to do great routines about doctors and lawyers and house painters and such, and they were funny.

  An elderly man went to the doctor complaining of aches and pains all over his body. After a thorough examination, the doctor gives him a clean bill of health. 
“Who asked you to make me younger? Just make sure I get older!” 

“You’re in fine shape for an eighty-year-old. After all, I’m not a magician – I can’t make you any younger,” said the doctor. 

It's not as funny, for real, when a real doctor makes a real mistake. My mother, whose health is not at all good at age 88, recently underwent a series of iron infusions to try to get her past the anemia that has plagued her since childhood and is now making things ever more difficult as she battles other issues.  At 88, you need all the strength you can get, that's for sure.

So we were hopeful for good news when we went to see the doctor for the results of blood testing after the iron went to work.  We waited as the med tech took more blood for testing, and soon the doctor appeared, with notebook computer in hand. If you've ever seen the movie "The Hospital," where the bumbling doctor walks into a patient's room, takes a cursory glance at a chart and says, "Well, Drummond, you're none the worse for wear!" and the patient explodes, "I'm not Drummond, you monkey!" then you know how I felt when the doctor knit his brow and pursed his lips and said, "Your mother's iron levels are low...I'm going to recommend that she comes in for some iron infusions..."

And I did not call him a monkey, but I said, "Are you talking about the same procedure she's just had for the past month?"

Oh, how he blushed.  He got all tomato-faced, reminding me of the quote from English temperance leader Clara Lucas Balfour, defining a blush as "The ambiguous livery worn alike by modesty and shame."

But, did he say, "Wow!  Look at me, almost sending your mom to repeat something she already had done!"  He did not.  He stuttered and stammered, "Well, I had not reviewed her files before I came in... I mean...er...uh..."

Not trying to harsh out the good doctor here.  The point is, everyone is going to make mistakes, from the best to the worst of us. (The worst of us just make our mistakes on nationwide TV.) Something they might want to teach in medical schools, yea, in all schools everywhere, is how to be gracious enough to say, "Whoa! I was wrong there!  What I should have said was..."

Ladies and Gentlemen,
Victor Newman!

The Saturday Picture Show, April 24, 2021

 

Townhouses in Baltimore are called 'row houses,' and this is a perfect example of how neighborhoods cooperate, by coordinating colors!

When a guy in a tiger suit in an Asian zoo is hurt on the job, his fellow Panthera tigris lends support.

I'm sad to read in many places that people don't listen to radio that much, preferring podcasts for news and information, and their own mp3 collections for music. Back in the day, the pride of every home was the big console radio in the living room. A man happened to find this old relic in the crawl space of a house he bought, and he refurbished and repurposed it to hold knick-knacks...and a radio.

Springtime on the farm. Time to get the corn crops planted!

What's more American than a free stack of "dog stiks" (sic)? Such a fetching idea!

And how about this community pantry for canned goods and a Frigidaire for fresh meat and produce? People can give and take, according to ability and need. How nice!

A solid favorite in every diner and luncheonette: the club sandwich. I have belonged to many a club over the years, and no one ever handed me a tall three-decker.

Some emotions cut across the lines. Is there a mom out there who hasn't looked out on the world with this wistful vista?

Famous Hats In History: this is the Texas Rangers cap that José Canseco wore on May 26, 1993. It was on that day that Carlos Martínez of the Indians hit a fly ball to right field, where Canseco's steroid-riddled body was stationed, for the purpose of catching fly balls. Maladroit as ever, José allowed the ball to hit him on his head, right off the dome of this very cap, for a home run. There were two immediate results: the Harrisburg Heat soccer team offered Canseco a contract to play a game where headers are allowed and encouraged, and three days later, José talked his manager into allowing him to pitch in relief in a game long lost. José injured his arm in this effort and had to undergo Tommy John surgery, missing the rest of the season. Always a good sport, Canseco sold the dented cap to a collector and continued on his erratic life path.

If you can spend $425,000 on it, this house in Siler City, NC, can be yours. It once was owned by a television actress who lived there in a peculiar fashion, keeping 14 cats in the house and a broken-down Studebaker with 4 flat tires in the garage. She was known as warm and welcoming to some fellow Siler Citizens, and reclusive and aloof to others. But she left an annuity of $100,000 to the local police department, which they banked, and still use to distribute Christmas bonuses to officers and staffers alike, just a way to thank the cops for keeping fans away from the home of Frances Bavier, Andy Griffith's beloved Aunt Bee.

Slow the truck down

Just a year ago, Peggy and I would take a nice ride on Sunday afternoons as we kicked into full lockdown. We wouldn't go anywhere at all, since there was nowhere to go. But gas was dirt cheap since no one was driving much.

So we'd hit the road in northern Baltimore County and Harford County, just seeing the sights. You can see a lot of farms and ranchettes by staying off the main roads and driving up and down the old country lanes. Seeing another car was almost like the first days of auto travel - we almost felt like waving at the people in that Stutz Bearcat or Model T as they careered on past us.

It was a good way to see other sights beside the walls here at the Lazy 'C' Ranch bunkhouse, and then we'd go home and be back in hibernation. We always remarked on the scarcity of other vehicles, and we figured that besides us Sunday drivers (so THAT'S where the expression comes from!) everyone else was home, with the Biscayne parked for the nonce. 

So here we are, one year later, and guess what? Yes, traffic was way down last year, and traffic deaths were way up!

How's that? Well, while we were out toodling along on Milk Barn Rd, America's car fiends saw those unoccupied lanes on highways and mistook them for the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

The National Safety Council put out a report the other day, and they say 42,060 people never got to come home from the last car ride they over took in 2020. That was up 8% over 2019, and remember, there was much less traffic in 2020.

This was the first increase in four years.

Broken down on a per-million-miles-driven basis, the fatality rate jumped 24%, and that was the biggest increase since the safety council started jotting down the data in 1923 - and they should know, because, as Doug Heffernan says, they are The Department Of Driving.

And, as people will, once we get into a bad habit, we tend to keep it going. “It’s kind of terrifying what we're seeing on our roads,” said Michael Hanson, director of the Minnesota Public Safety Department’s Office of Traffic Safety. “We’re seeing a huge increase in the amount of risk-taking behavior.”

We drove a chunky 13% fewer miles last year, and yet we kept the ambulances and busy.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says speed is the top factor in our parade of foolish behaviors, and of course, tests of trauma center patients involved in traffic crashes show increased use of alcohol, marijuana and opioids.

In Minnesota, traffic volumes fell 60% when stay-home orders were issued early in the pandemic last spring. Hanson said state officials expected a corresponding drop in crashes and deaths, but while crashes declined, deaths increased.

Back to the Empty Roads As An Invitation theme: the Minnesota State Patrol ticketed just over 500 drivers for exceeding 100 mph in 2019. In 2020, that figure more than doubled, to 1068.

Masters of stating the obvious the safety council reminds us that driving over 100 mph results in far more serious crashes.

Is this the best we can do?

Getting Inside Your Head

I have time to do this stuff, and maybe you don't, so I thought I would share with everyone my research on a common medical situation to which I fell prey not long ago whilst enjoying a drink of ice water.

Medical science knows it as The Heartbreak of Sphenopalatine Ganglioneuralgia, and we lay folk call it "ice cream headache." Brain freeze. The Chilly Willie (not to be confused with The Wet Willie.)

Classic Schoolboy Wet Willie

Wet Willie, Jr.

You guzzle a Slurpee or snowball or you gobble a spoonful of Breyer's or you go all in on a Popsicle, and you get it. 

Brain freeze is also called ice cream headache, or cold  headache. It is a short-term headache typically linked to the rapid consumption of ice cream, ice pops, or very cold drinks. It happens when a lot of something really cold hits your upper palate - the roof of your mouth. It's even worse when the rest of you is really hot.

And it's more than that the momentary unpleasant you get from that Icee. Up at Harvard Medical School, the brainiacs are looking into them, with an eye toward curing migraines and pain resulting from brain injuries.

So far, we know that the cold stuff causes our blood vessels to constrict quickly, and the best cure is gulping down some warm water right on top of the Sundae.

Oh, and we also know that it doesn't have to be food or drink that causes a melon cramp. You could get one from sticking an ice cold drain pipe in your mouth, which would also result in failing out of plumbing school.

Next up: science will try to figure out a name for the time between the time a falling hammer hits you on top of the head (you would be surprised at how often this happens to me) and the pain begins. You just about have time to say, "Oh man, is this ever gonna HURT!"

 

 

What to do?

 A friend posted on social media that she faced a choice. She had promised to go out with friends, but that day, a book she had long had wanted to read came in the mail. So, should she "call out sick" and stay home and read, or give up reading the book she was dying to dive into, to keep the date?

By the way, this is not technically a dilemma. A dilemma is a choice between two unpleasant alternatives, such as, "there are only two books left on the shelf, and they're both by John Grisham..."

You can't win there if you decide to jump and plow through the turgid prose of Grisham. And my friend is young and cool and popular, so that means a feeling of social responsibility to friends and what-have-you.

Being unyoung and uncool and unpopular, I have no problem saying, "Hey, I was waiting for this new compendium of Tom Wolfe essays, so I think I'll stay home tonight and read. See you next time!"

Tom Wolfe on a bus, 1960s

The beauty of that is, you don't have to tell a little fib to get out of going, because inevitably, someone will call you back the day after you say you can't go out because you have pellagra, to ask how your pellagra rash is going. You blow the whole caper if you reply, "What pellagra rash? The hell you talkin' about?"

See, when you get to a certain age, a lot of the social constructs and fabricated rules just seem to flake off and go away. I had a friend who used to joke that the coolest thing is to live to be 80, because you can walk around 1/2 nekkid or stand on the corner singing "Mack The Knife" or have lasagna with eggs for breakfast, and what's everyone going to say?

"Well, he's 80, so...you know how they get..."

The reason you can't blow your friends off with total insouciance when you're 30 is that many many decades stretch out ahead of you. At 80 (ten years to go for me!) most of your decades are back over your left shoulder, so read your doggone book!

Long-awaited

 

I cannot think of a better way to open a podcast than with this challenge:

"Who's ready to learn some stuff?  Let's go!"

But those are the words of Tyler Mahan Coe, who is back today with Season Two of his great podcast, a scattered, non-linear history of real country music called "Cocaine and Rhinestones." He's a little miffed because accidentally, today's launch day for Season Two accidentally coincided with what he calls a "weed holiday."

The title might be a bit off, because some might think that Coe, the son of fabled country singer/songwriter David Allan Coe, is extolling drug use. He's not. He's been down that highway and avoids the on-ramps to it now.  It's not insignificant that he is estranged from his father and states publicly he hopes never to speak with the man who wrote and sang "Mona Lisa Lost Her Smile" and was the writer of Johnny Paycheck's biggest hit "Take This Job And Shove It." The elder Coe is not a fine man by any means. Look at any of his records - his millions of albums and CDs, yeah, but his jail record, his marriage record and his history of tax avoidance don't point to a well-adjusted life.

David Allan Coe

The Washington Post wrote a long long article about Coe and his podcast and his bizarre family history. When you have a father capable of writing tender songs such as his ode to eternity "Would You Lay With Me (In A Field Of Stone") and "She Used To Love Me A Lot" and then turn around and fill concert halls with vile racism and misogyny, you tend to grow up confused. Tyler spent twelve years playing guitar for his father and then ran away from the old man because of how disgusting he is, taking with him an abiding love for what we call real country music - the kind without Luke and Blake and that bunch.

Tyler Mahan Coe, at the card catalog of the Country
Music Association. He does extensive research.

Tyler does painstaking research. Lover of arcane fact that I am, I sat mesmerized as season one played out, detailing the genius of the well-known (Buck Owens) as well as those obscure to all but serious country nuts (steel guitar king Ralph Mooney) and lots of others in between. The first three episodes are devoted to the best country singer of all, George Jones.

And it doesn't matter that most of the people Coe chronicles are no longer living, because he does not do interviews to get his information. He researches painstakingly, which is why it's been several years since he put out the last installment. 

And he flatly turned down the opportunity to become a millionaire by selling the rights to the podcast to some outside party who would then have editorial and distribution control and authority over him. As he says on the website, “If I didn’t make ‘Cocaine & Rhinestones,’ it was never going to exist and I couldn’t bear the thought of it.” He wants the information out there, and he is in charge of sharing it.

He doesn't have a great voice for podcasting, but what he does have is the pedigree, and doggone if he doesn't have the facts to back himself up! The website is here, with all the info about past episodes and links to all, old and new. I'll see you there!

 

 

Shell Game

Half a million people live in Poznan, Poland, and yet it takes but eight mollusks to make sure their water is pure.

Huh? What say, Mark? Mussels are checking the water purity of a large city? Next thing, you'll tell me that computers are running the elevators and the traffic lights.

Fun fact: They do, and they do.

The Warta River supplies the water for the Poznanians. 

What you see in the picture is a zebra mussel. It turns out that they are very sensitive to pollution. Instead of going out to eat, or cooking for themselves, they feed by filtering water in the river they live in, trapping microscopic plankton.

And you know, there's nothing better than seafood! The Plankton Platter also comes with fries and slaw!

All right. As the mollusk filters the water, if there is something funky afloat, it closes the valves of its shell. The eight mollusks who work for the city in Water Purity each have a magnet attached to their shell. There is a water-sealed relay in the mussel that sends a signal to a computer to say "I just clammed up."

If more than 3 of the 8 shells close up, that's a signal to the Water Dept. that the river water is bad, and it's time to switch over to the tanks of clean water set aside for just such eventualities.

And get this! These mollusks live for between 4 and 8 years, depending on whether they smoke. BUT the retirement plan! They get pensioned off after just three months of work, and are sent to a nice clean retirement tank.

And this is kind to the animal, sure, but also, after a short period of time, these guys get used to foul water and stop noticing the low quality. 

They are replaced with younger, sharper mussels, and life goes on.

It's a lot like humans, without the nice retirement party.

 

Sunday Rerun: from the early pandemic days: It's Hard to Believe Some People

 Hello from your Pandemic News headquarters: Today's allotment is one story of hopeless foolishness and one of worthy hopefulness. The fool first:

Roseanne Barr, who claims to be funny and smart, says that the coronavirus outbreak is a bioweapon that was made to kill us baby boomers.

She talked to the great Norm Macdonald, who has a YouTube show called “Quarantined with Norm Macdonald.” The two were talking about quarantining and this whole COVID-19 experience.

Roseann said, “You know I’m crazy so I’m speaking as a crazy woman now. I think we’re being forced to evolve. You know what it is, Norm? I think they’re just trying to get rid of all my generation.”

“The boomer ladies that, you know, that inherited their, you know, are widows. They inherited the money, so they got to go wherever the money is and figure out a way to get it from people,” she continued.

So, if you follow her "logic" (and remember, she had a great chance at a comeback last year when they brought back the sitcom that made her famous, only to blow it with a series of racist comments) she is saying that a lot of widows in their 60s have all this inherited money that young people want to get their hands on, so they came up with this virus to get those women out of the picture.

Barr has been lately blessing the state of Hawaii with her regal presence. She told Norm that Hawaiians have “no toilet paper and are out of white rice.”

Contrary to reports that there have been 385 confirmed cases and five deaths on the island, Roseann said there is one case of COVID-19 there.

And she went on, telling Norm that the time in isolation has given her a chance to “research and come up with the perfect lawsuit … against Hollywood.”

“I’m devising the perfect lawsuit and I am so blessed to have that time and sit here and be able to compile my thoughts,” she said. “So I can figure out how to *^$% over everybody in the &^%# world over there.”

Really. I'm sure the Hollywood legal community is scared.

Meanwhile, the good news:

The Red Cross says they want Americans who have gotten over the COVID-19 to donate plasma. The science is, that blood can help current patients with serious or immediately life-threatening COVID-19 infections because that plasma has antibodies that will attack the virus.

They call it "convalescent plasma," and in the past, it's come in handy as a  lifesaving treatment for new diseases for which no treatments or vaccines have been developed. I think it's fascinating to think that nature gives us the cure to use on others like this, and it gives me hope that medicine will come up with a vaccine to prevent, and a cure to heal, this coronavirus.

In the same spirit, I happen to think that Norm MacDonald is one of the funniest and brightest people alive. Maybe some time with him will be good for Roseanne and make her funny and smart again.