Where's the beef?

Many people don't understand that air pollution is a real thing. Our cars, our factories, and other energy users contribute to that.

I guess that younger people of today would be surprised that this nation once elected a former actor in terrible movies to serve as its president for two terms! That obscure historical figure was known as Ronald Reagan. He was very good at playing the role of president and was effective at reading the words others wrote for him.  When he used his own words, he revealed himself to be living in a land far from the facts.

Take this one: In 1981, Reagan said that trees produce more air pollution than automobiles. This was based on someone having told him that forests do produce volatile organic compounds and stinky hydrocarbons that form part of air pollution.  BUT he must have stepped out for more jelly beans when the speaker went on to say that this happens because of other substances reacting to the tree emissions...and those other substances are the results of things such as car exhaust. 

You have to wonder if there was so much air pollution in the days before mechanized transportation. When we went from place to place on horses, the only source of foul air was old Stewball.

Today, science figures that 3.9% of US global greenhouse gas emissions comes from livestock. You wouldn't think that cow flatulence was such a big problem, unless you ever tried to walk barefoot across a pasture.  Then you'd know!

Leave it to the good people over at Burger King. They have come up with a solution. They are going to add lemongrass to the daily diet Old Bessie enjoys as she dines out in the field, waiting for her chance to star in a Whopper.

The new patty that results from the new diet will be available only for a short time at select locations in Miami, New York, Austin, Portland and Los Angeles.

The guess is that eating lemongrass will reduce about a third of methane emissions (!) as the bovines await their day at the abattoir.

It's not only because some feel that meat is bad for them...some also gave up real filet mignon for plant-based "meat" because of environmental concerns. Using Impossible Burgers leads to 89% fewer greenhouse gas emissions than patties from cow’s beef.

If there is a more ludicrous oxymoron than "plant-based beef," it might be "resident alien," but that's "old news."

Sunday Rerun: Blame It On The Moon

In the early days of our marriage, Peggy and I really had to get to know each other.  Our engagement was so brief that we still had to go on voyages of discovery to find out how we liked our burgers cooked (rare for me, medium for her), whether she liked hominy made from scratch ("What is hominy?") and how cold was cold, how hot was hot.

We settled most of those matters. Peggy still won't touch hominy, or grits, for that matter. After lengthy negotiations, we finally figured out what thermostat settings (summer and winter) are good compromises, and most of the time, I can fix a satisfactory burger.

But there was one question I asked Peggy about that got me a look of utter stupefaction and an adamant "How could you even ASK that?"

It's the kind of thing that can be enjoyed in mixed company among consenting adults, or in homogeneity. It doesn't matter. It's pleasurable, no one gets hurt, and it gives fresh air to a body part that is all too often covered in denim.

We're talking about mooning here, and it was quite the popular sport in my youth.  Get a passenger with a sense of humor and pull up next to a car being driven by a Fred Rutherford type, have him drop trou, and hang a moon right on out the window.

1880's western style

Not that I ever was involved in such degradation, you understand, having devoted my teen years to quiet contemplation in dim salons and libraries and the "glass aisle" at the A&P (condiments, jams, jellies...) In junior high, we were fortunate enough to have a guy in our class whose brother was in high school, and from him we learned, like young seminarians from a bishop, that in wintertime when it was too cold to open the window, mooning was referred to as "pressed ham."

I heard about what was going on and I still find it hilarious, which explains why I still hold the record at the Regal Theatre in Bel Air as the only person ever to request a Senior Matinee Ticket for a "Jackass" movie.

I think that today's teens are too busy playing those video games and listening to Seven Seconds Of Summer or Z Money or whoever to ride in cars with their patooties on display, and that represents a dropoff in our culture from which we may never recover.

The Saturday Picture Show, July 18, 2020

Here is the list, supposedly written by Elvis's dad Vernon, of the items that were to be on hand at Graceland "for Elvis - AT ALL TIMES - EVERY DAY." In case you haven't done your shopping for the week, please print and take this to the BiSumMor this afternoon.

Meteorologists will tell you that this red rainbow occurred in Finland because it was in the morning sunrise, when dust and air particles scatter sunlight to block out the prismatic blues and green and enhancing the reds and oranges. I couldn't say how right that is, not being schooled in the art of meteorology, but still, it sounds reasonable.

Man! This escalator is sloooooooooow!

I'm not the only one who is obsessed by knowing what time it is!

I was going to say that one time the Washington Bullets had the tallest (7' 7" Manute Bol from Sudan) and the shortest (5' 3" Muggsy Bogues from Dunbar High in Baltimore) players in the NBA, but since the hot topic these days is D.C. team names, can you imagine there was a basketball team named the Bullets? And of course, they started out as the Baltimore Bullets.

I have to wonder about a laundromat that forbids patrons from folding their laundry. Are people just supposed to ball their clean stuff up and roll it home? Anyway, I like the punchback. We had origami the other night...it was great!

This is from the 1918 flu pandemic, but the message to the slackers is valid today.

If you don't recognize this landmark, I'm glad to say you have not yet seen Rock Bottom.

A scoop of history

One of the very best "Andy Griffith Show" episodes was the one called "Bailey's Bad Boy," (Season 2, episode 15, January 15, 1962) in which Bill Bixby plays young playboy Ron Bailey, who gets tossed in the Mayberry hoosegow for speeding and finally grows up with a nudge from Andy.

Forced to spend the day with the Taylors, young Ron is amazed to find that people actually make ice cream with a home freezer, and for anyone who ever had homemade ice cream back in the day, it reminds us of how great summer was when summers were sweet, pre-covid.

BUT! If you are like me and Thomas Jefferson, you love your ice cream so you won't mind going to a little colonial-style trouble and making your own! Old Tom learned to love ice cream in France, and when he returned to the fledgling US from there in 1789, he planned to make his own.

In 1791, he went on Ye Olde Amazone and ordered 50 vanilla bean pods, which, as he knew, are "much used in seasoning ice creams." And, before the days of Whirlpool home freezers, he needed to save ice from the previous winter, so he built an ice house at his house (Monticello) in 1802. Every winter, he and his crew went to the Rivanna River and sawed off 62 big ice blocks to store in there and use all summer. (He wrote in 1815 that his supply lasted until October.)

History records that George Washington wrote about ice cream, but Jefferson was kind enough to leave us a recipe, so here's the deal (from the Library of Congress)


Ice Cream.
2. bottles of good cream.
6. yolks of eggs.
1/2 lb. sugar

mix the yolks & sugar
put the cream on a fire in a casserole, first putting in a stick of Vanilla.

when near boiling take it off & pour it gently into the mixture of eggs & sugar.

stir it well.

put it on the fire again stirring it thoroughly with a spoon to prevent it's (sic) sticking to the casserole.

when near boiling take it off and strain it thro' a towel.

put it in the Sabottiere*

then set it in ice an hour before it is to be served. put into the ice a handful of salt.

put salt on the coverlid of the Sabottiere & cover the whole with ice.

leave it still half a quarter of an hour.

then turn the Sabottiere in the ice 10 minutes

open it to loosen with a spatula the ice from the inner sides of the Sabotiere.

shut it & replace it in the ice

open it from time to time to detach the ice from the sides

when well taken (prise**) stir it well with the Spatula.

put it in moulds, justling it well down on the knee.

then put the mould into the same bucket of ice.

leave it there to the moment of serving it.

to withdraw it, immerse the mould in warm water, turning it well till it will come out & turn it into a plate.



*The sabottiere is the canister still in use in many homes. In those days, they didn't have a crank, so "turn the Sabottiere in the ice 10 minutes," meant to have someone turn it upside down and back again many times.





This will be the best vanilla ice cream you ever had, so please invite me over to taste it! I'm free most nights.

**prise is the old form of "pry," meaning to move something with force.  You didn't have to pry that out of me!

Coining a new way

On our local Facebook page, in much the same way we talk about where to find the best Halloween costume for Junior and how best to make Hollandaise sauce, we talk of which stores just got a truckload of Lysol wipes and spray cleaners.

It seems like just the other day we were all in frenzied search of paper towels and toilet paper, but the Bounty lumberjack felled a few thousand extra Douglas firs and we're good to go. Literally.

So now, life has turned around and given us a new shortage, and no amount of money can fix this one. 

It's money.

Now there is a shortage of coins.

Here's why: “This is one of those things nobody really expected,” said Drew McKone, an executive vice president and chief deposit officer at Howard Bank. “But when you look in the rear view mirror, it makes sense. When the economy shut down and people stayed home, the supply of coin in the market was pretty much choked off.”

While we sat at home not spending coins, banks stopped making as many deposits to the Federal Reserve, and the US Mint cut down on how many coins they were cranking out to protect workers.

And then! Banks started opening up and ordering coins from the Fed, and they had to rummage through their other pants and the sofa cushions came up with $12,48 to pass out to all these banks.  So the Fed put limits on coin distribution in June.

Businesses that are open are starting to ask people to help. A sign at our local  Lowes home improvement store says, “The U.S. is currently experiencing a coin shortage. Please use correct change or other form of tender if possible.”

And some banks are giving people the option of having the coin amount of their cashed checks deposited electronically, or they ask that, in the case of a check you cash for $13.84, you give them 16 cents and they give you 14 dollars.

And some stores have those coin-swallowing machines where you can turn in your peanut butter jars full of coins for almost their dollar value (they do charge a fee for this).

McKone says that the 15 Howard Bank offices around town are checking with business customers about the coin supply. So far, they are keeping up, but "we have to be more aware of inventory and use,” he said.

“Coin was never in short supply,” before, he explains. "There was always an abundance, but now we have to be more mindful of what we have been able to get.”

I like the idea that Wawa came up. I also like their sandwiches, but anyway, their deal is, they ask if you would like to "round up" your purchase to the nearest dollar and donate the change to the Wawa Foundation.  So you buy lunch, it comes to $9.48, you give them a ten spot, and donate the 52 cents to local charities supporting causes related to health, hunger and everyday heroes and local chapters of the USO.

I like it when everyone wins.

Gallup Pole

I stumbled across this article in The Smithsonian Magazine.  When the topic is chemistry or economics or local zoning regulations, I scoot right on past it. But when the talk turns to firehouses, you have my undivided.

In the 1800s, firehouses were always built in two stories- sleeping and living quarters upstairs next to the top of the hose tower, where used hoses were hung up to dry, and horses and the horse-drawn pumper downstairs.

They used circular staircases between the two floors because the horses weren't about to climb them to get up and see what was cooking, or ask to be dealt in in the pinochle game.  But at the same time, that made it slow going for the crew to race downstairs and get to the fire.

So, sometime in the 1870s, a firefighter named David Kenyon of Company 21, an all-African-American firehouse in Chicago, had a lightbulb moment.

There happened to be a long pole in the firehouse. It was used to bale hay for the horses, and one time, in order to respond to a call, a fellow firefighter grabbed the pole upstairs and shimmied down.

Ah ha! Put in a permanent pole and cut down the clambering to the first floor!

After Firefighter Kenyon put in the pole, other firefighters thought it was a crazy idea...until they started noticing that Engine 21 was getting to calls well ahead of others. The idea spread to Boston in 1880, and they used a brass pole, which is what came to be the standard. By 1890, your firehouse either had that pole, or you were nowheresville!

There was then, and still is today, a certain competition among fire companies to get to the scene of an emergency rapidly, so they can begin rendering assistance. Certain bragging rights accrue to the crew that "got there first."

However, the Fire Service, a tradition-rich environment of men and women, occasionally comes across the world of law and public policy. Remember when you would see firefighters on the back step of an engine? It's been a while, I know. The explanation is that it was unsafe (obviously) to be hanging on the back of a vehicle racing through traffic, so they extended the cab and the people who used to stand in back of the bus got a seat right up the middle.

Lawyers being as they are, they did not use the term "guys falling off the engine." The term was "involuntary dismount," and I will not share the jokes that went along with that.

Getting rid of poles in fire stations is taking a while longer. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration says poles are the safest way to get down one floor, but of course they use the term "not an approved means of egress."

But some stations still have them, although one-story suburban stations obviously don't.  And there are hose dryers now, so there's no need for the hose tower.  But, for instance, Sean Colby, a lieutenant on Engine 10 in Boston says, “It’s a major part of firefighting. I enjoy using it and believe it’s an iconic tradition we shouldn’t let go.”

Speaking of the word egress, as you know, it means leaving or exiting. People didn't always know that, and P.T. Barnum, carnival huckster first class, found himself with a situation.  People paid to get in his sideshows, and then, they wouldn't leave, and he couldn't jam more people in the tent until some left.  So, he put up a sign by the exit reading "THIS WAY TO THE EGRESS," and people, thinking an egress was an animal or something else to see, hurried through, finding themselves right outside in a hurry, right where Barnum wanted them.

Bon jour

News item, sad as can be:

MULTIPLE injuries have been reported after an explosion and blaze hit a docked US navy assault ship late Saturday night.

Among the injured are 17 sailors and four civilians whose injuries have been described as non-life threatening. All remaining staff were evacuated from the ship.

In a statement, Rear Admiral Philip Sobeck said that the cause of the fire aboaed the USS Bonhomme Richard is not yet known, though there are initial reports that the following explosion was caused by “a backdraft of over-pressurisation as the compartment started heating up.”

This ship is the fifth US Navy vessel named the Bonhomme Richard. The last couple of days, I have heard the name of the ship being pronounced as if it were "BON home RICH ard," and your French teacher is mad at you about that. It's not "Bon" as in Bon Scott nor is it "Richard" as in Little Richard.

Here's a link to an audio pronunciation guide. Meanwhile, you may practice by saying bahnAHM reeSHAHD.

In French, Bonhomme Richard means Good Man Richard. The name is in honor of Benjamin Franklin, whom your American History teacher is sure you recall as the author of Poor Richard's Almanack (known in France as "Les Maximes du Bonhomme Richard"). Franklin, an author, publisher, inventor and statesman, was the first US Ambassador to France and is regarded there as "The First American" for his work in organizing the colonies into the United States.

The first ship known as USS Bonhomme Richard was a frigate built in France as the Duc de Duras, and was turned over to John Paul Jones in 1779 for his use in defeating the British. Renamed, it served well in battle.

Other vessels bore the name, most notably USS Bon Homme Richard (CV-31),  an aircraft carrier that saw action at the end of World War II, throughout the
Korean War, and through the Vietnam War.

The current version is USS Bonhomme Richard (LHD-6), is an amphibious assault ship currently in service since 1995. Let's hope it's not out of service for long and that all the injured personnel are back aboard soon!

Injustice system

Last week, a Baltimore City homicide sergeant, who lives in Baltimore County, was arrested and refused bail. Allegedly, he extorted money, kidnapped, and threatened to arrest a home contractor.

He had paid a guy money to build a patio at his house. He was unhappy that some of the paver stones were crumbling, and said that the patio should have been larger per the original agreement.  When the contractor showed up to discuss it all, he said he wanted more money to do more work.

The sergeant then is alleged to have demanded money back, and then showed the man printouts of his driving record, threatening to arrest him for driving on a suspended license.  He then put the man in a police car and drove him to a bank in Anne Arundel County, according to the charges, and made the man get a cashier's check for half the money paid.

Also, at one time during all this, three other homicide detectives were involved in pressuring the man to come up with the money, and the city says all four of the detectives were on duty at the time.

Here's how the sergeant put it to the contractor: “You are going to give me my money back, and I’m going to give you freedom.”

He was cooling his heels in the county lockup over the weekend, and his attorney claimed that this was all a civil matter, a contractual dispute over some supposedly shoddy work.

Except that civil matters don't usually involve flashing guns and badges and forced rides to Glen Burnie to withdraw money.

So I'm throwing the penalty flag on the attorney for mischaracterizing a crime as a civil suit, and I'm also pointing out that these matters should be handled on one's personal time, instead of on-duty time. The news is full of stories of unsolved homicides in the city. Perhaps they could spend time working on them?

I have plenty of support for police, but the problem is that these few shady cops throw unfair shade on the many good ones.

Sunday Rerun: Plug It In

When it comes to newfangled kitchen appliances, I have found it best to think twice.  

Take that Ronco, or Popeil, whichever, home rotisserie. Owners tout the ease with which you can run to the Food 'N' More, come back with a Perdue fryer, sauce it up and put it on the skewer, and then "Set It and Forget It!"  Just push a button and come back later to claim your cooked bird.  And then eat the chicken and spend the evening cleaning the rotisserie machine and all the inside parts, and putting it away under the cabinet where the cat stores her toys. Cleanup time, at least an hour, plus the time it takes to get the cat to move her stuff.

OR - run to the Food 'N' More, and come back with a nicely done chicken in a plastic tub that makes a great container in which to throw away the bones etc.  Cleanup time, one minute.

Take the bread maker (please.)  The big hits of the early 90s are still around in the lower cabinets by the steamer pot, and used about as often as a dictionary in the Oval Office.  You can run and get flour and yeast and I don't know what-all else and bake yourself a loaf of bread in an hour.

OR - mix three cups of self-rising flour, 1/4 cup sugar, and a can of beer into a greased loaf pan, bake it for an hour at 400°, and enjoy the beerbread yeastfeast.

OR - stop in the bakery section of the Shop4Eats and get a loaf of bread.

So I was thinking about the combination air fryer/instant pot/printer/scanner/automatic vacuum cleaner.  Some friends have them and are raving about how great they are for cooking ribs and fries and soups and pot roast.

Some say the fries are dry, the ribs come out 1/2 done, and the soups are no better than Campbell's red and white cans contain.

I can get ribs and fries and soups and roasts from my standard sources, and not have to get rid of the unused breadmaker, because that's the only way we could wedge an instant pot up in here.

The Saturday Picture Show, July 11, 2020

The storms along the Atlantic Coast this past Monday were responsible for this waterspout in the Atlantic Ocean off the beach at Stone Harbor, New Jersey. A waterspout is the same as a tornado, except that it forms over water, not land.

 A longtime salad bar favorite, it turns out that red cabbage is more than just colorful. It's extremely useful for fighting kidney disease, osteoarthritis, and rheumatic pain. And it's packed with vitamin C, which increases the body's immunity against breast cancer. So what if it doesn't look all that "red"? Pass the red cabbage!

 This is what you get when you tell a baby grey seal harp, "It's Monday! Time to get up for work!"

 In the first place, a lot of people are surprised to learn that the Robin Roberts on Good Morning America is not the first famous person with that name. GMA Robin is a fine broadcaster and this Robin was such a fine pitcher that his 286-245 win-loss record over 19 seasons put him in the Hall of Fame. Most of that pitching was done for some frankly poor Phillies teams in the 50s and early 60s, but when the Orioles picked him up for four seasons ('62-65), he not only helped the club get ready for their 1966 Championship season, he also was mentor to young Jim Palmer, who to this day credits Robin for tips that put HIM in the Hall of Fame.

This is a thing now and I think we all ought to try it. Ladies and Gentlemen, you have now been introduced to the world of Table Nachos. Make of this what you will.

Deep thoughts from the outstanding "Macanudo" comic strip, which does not appear in the Baltimore SUN because they need the room for "One Big Happy," "The Middletons," "Shoe," and "Zits." I must say that kids reading books in bathtubs, although a staple of comic strip depictions of life, is not a good idea.

These intricate soapstone carvings are made on the Six Nations Iroquois Reservation in Ontario, Canada. I like this because it depicts a smile!

Suddenly, we're all Sheldon, even if we can't find Lysol Spray.

Yeah Yeah Yeah

As my favorite Beatle, Ringo Starr, turned 80 this week, he reminisced with the Sunday Mirror about a time when a promoter offered the Fab Four a pile of loot to Come Together one more time in concert.


But it wasn't Shark Week, so they said no.

It was 1976, six years after the stormy breakup of the band that changed everything, and a promoter named Bill Sargent peppered the group with an offer to shell out $50 million for a one-time show, but the opening act for this pay-per-view would have been a guy fighting a great white shark.

“We did talk one time. There was a crazy offer out there,” Ringo says. “We called each other to see what we think. We decided not to do it because the opening act was a guy biting a shark. So we thought no.”

1976 was also the year that Saturday Night Live offered The Beatles a check for $3000 to appear on that show, and as it happened, John Lennon and Paul McCartney happened to be watching...

Shortly before his death in 1980, Lennon told the story:  "Paul ... was visiting us at our place in the Dakota. We were watching it and almost went down to the studio, just as a gag. We nearly got into a cab, but we were actually too tired. ... He and I were just sitting there watching the show, and we went, 'Ha ha, wouldn't it be funny if we went down? But we didn’t.”

McCartney has confirmed that this took place. “John said, ‘We should go down, just you and me. There’s only two of us so we’ll take half the money.’ And for a second. … But It would have been work, and we were having a night off, so we elected not to go. It was a nice idea – we nearly did it.”

(Tell me you didn't just read that in McCartney's voice!)

Ringo also said in his interview that he always held out hope for a reunion, until John and George Harrison died.

“If John and George had not died there was surely a possibility of that. Paul and I are still on the road. John would have still been on the road,” he said. “I don’t know about George. We’d still be doing what we love to do. Maybe separately, maybe together. Nobody knows.”

Ever the cheerful optimist, Ringo also lets on that he figured the breakup would not be permanent...

“When we finished Abbey Road I did not walk away thinking that’s the last album. I thought ‘we’ll be back in how many months and we’ll do another’. Between times we did actually break. No one went away thinking ‘That’s it,'” Ringo said.

“I didn’t leave the studio thinking that will be the last record we’d ever make. I never thought that. I didn’t think it would be the last time we’d ever tour together either,” he added.

TCM showed "A Hard Day's Night" the other day, and it took me back to 1964, and I still wish that younger people had some way to know what it was like when The Beatles arrived.

Repaid

I think that most acts of kindness are repaid in some way, and here's an example of one such event.  Let's go way way back to a shameful period in our history.

Andrew Jackson was president then. Some people even today think of him as a fine, fine man, but fine, fine men don't force thousands of people off their ancestral land. Jackson did that to the Choctaw people, sent them marching away from their own land on what is called the Trail of Tears. They lost thousands of people to disease and starvation along the way, and wound up re-settled in the "Indian colonization zone" in what is now Oklahoma, having given up valuable agricultural and hunting land in the southeast.

The Choctaws, resourceful as always, made the best of their new situation, but they weren't exactly living like kings in 1845. That's when word reached them that people in Ireland, across the sea, were having a tough time too. Their chief crop was potatoes, but a fungus had destroyed their crop, leaving the Irish in great need of food and funds just to survive.

Just as the Trail of Tears exacted a toll of death and disease among the Choctaws, so did the potato famine to the Irish.

It was a man named Major William Armstrong who came to Oklahoma to "raise money for the starving poor of Ireland," as historian Turtle Bunbury writes. Armstrong called together missionaries, traders and chiefs of the Choctaw Nation to appeal for help, passing the hat, as it were.

Hearing about this, the Choctaws - and it cannot be stressed enough that they were hardly rolling in money at the time - came up with $170 to send to people across an ocean they had never crossed, for people they had never met.

That $170 is the equivalent of about $5,000 today.

Did the Irish forget? They did not. Hearing that the Navajo and Hopi people here are being hit hard in 2020 by the coronavirus pandemic, people all across Ireland are sending money to a GoFundMe account set up to help them.

"From Ireland, 170 years later, the favour is returned!" says a message from one of the donors.  "To our Native American brothers and sisters in your moment of hardship."

So far, the Irish have donated a half million dollars to the campaign, which started when Naomi O'Leary, a journalist from the Irish Times, tweeted about the need for funds.

"Native Americans raised a huge amount in famine relief for Ireland at a time when they had very little," O'Leary wrote on Saturday. "It's time for us to come through for them now."

The funds raised will go toward food, water and other necessary supplies for Navajo and Hopi communities, which have seen more than 2,400 confirmed Covid-19 cases and more than 70 deaths. On the Hopi reservation 53 cases are reported.

This monument stands in Midleton, Ireland's Bailick Park as a tribute to the Choctaw charity during the Great Famine. It's called “Kindred Spirits.” It features nine giant stainless steel feathers, in the shape of an empty bowl.

Kindness in another's trouble...

Try it?

I've seen some things in my day, food wise. I've seen the main attraction at a pig roast brought in royally on a cot, ready for the feasting, and someone thought it was a cake.

I've seen (but never tasted) a mock apple pie made of Ritz crackers, instead of apples.

I've been to MOM's Organic Market and seen people buy crickets, apparently to use instead of croutons. (I'm not kidding. This is from their website: "Since 2016, MOM’s has been selling cricket and mealworm products as part of our sustainable protein initiative."

I've heard my wonderful wife tell me of her high school days, where they ate big soft pretzels with ice cream. I say that combining salt and sweet is like putting syrup on a pizza, but multitudes side with Peggy in this debate, so I bow out. But I will admit to a habit that dates back to the early days of Colonel Sanders's campaign: I will put hot sauce on fried chicken and then douse the whole thing with honey. Can't beat it.

My dad used to like apple pie the old fashioned way, with a slice of cheddar cheese. I've never been able to try it, but then again, when I put apple butter on cottage cheese, I get the hairy eyeball a lot, so it's a to-each-his-own thing.

This one comes up every year at Thanksgiving: putting marshmallows on sweet potatoes. Marshmallows are candy, but try putting a Butterfinger bar on your yams...

Pineapple on pizza? Couldn't give you a bigger no.

Oh yeah, I've seen a guy eat a pepperoni pizza and wash it down with milk. I've seen people turn a simple cup of coffee into a pumpkin spice-gingerbread latte thing, and I think about whether the Colombian coffee farmer even dreams of such aberrations.

But I can let everything else go, now that I have seen what I saw yesterday morning on Facebook, where someone showed a picture of crabcakes desecrated with mustard on them.

No mustard, no catsup

Friends and neighbors, a crabcake is not a hot dog or a hamburger. It says here, the only suitable condiment for it is Worcestershire sauce, usually known as "worsdaedaestershay" sauce in Baltimore.

The very idea!

Home is where

I didn't know that I had any Asian forebears, but it seems that I am Asian, if you go by what I'm going to tell you.  And there's even a word for the condition, and for those who walk around with it.

We are called hikikomori (Japanese: ひきこもり or 引きこもり. It means  "pulling inward, being confined", or "dealing with acute social withdrawal". If a Japanese person is reclusive, be they adolescent or adult, prone to withdrawing from society and preferring a lot of isolation and confinement, they fit the bill.

SO if you feel that way, you are part of the Hikikomori  condition, and you have Hikikomori. We are modern day hermits.

Japanese clinicians interview their patients and look at four boxes to check:


⌧  spending most of the day and nearly every day confined to home,
⌧  marked and persistent avoidance of social situations, and social relationships,
⌧  social withdrawal symptoms causing significant functional impairment,
      duration of at least six months, and
⌧   no apparent physical or mental etiology to account for the social withdrawal symptoms.

In modern Japan, some 700,000 residents are certified Hikikomori.

Now, maybe I kid, but only just a little. I do spend most of every day hanging around the house, I do avoid social situations, I get a little nervous if I have to go to some function (so I don't go) and there is no etiology (cause for the condition) that any doctor can spot, not that they are looking.

Truth to tell, I am one of the millions of Americans whose status (retired) means that I have no business strutting around in public as long as the pandemic is still going on.

I make my grocery run once a week and order in what I can't easily pick up at the Giant, and we do fine with my cooking here. For entertainment, for crying out loud, I have books I have yet to get around to reading, movies I have yet to watch, and enough music on vinyl, cassette, CD and mp3 to listen to until the world ends.

Speaking of which, I have selected the theme song for my funeral. It's "Happy Days Are Here Again" by the Ferko String Band, and I expect all participants except myself to form a jubilant conga line and snake out into the community happily.

The Joseph A. Ferko String Band

No, I have no sign that the curtain is coming down any time soon, but the Asian in me says that I am happy here at home with my wonderful wife and we don't need to be any closer to the madding crowd than we are. I love Peggy and I love life and the best part of it takes place right here in our house!

Life's path

It's 1983, December, and Deirdre Taylor is 4 years old, living in a loft apartment in the SoHo section of New York with her mother. When a fire broke out in the apartment, a man on the street hollered to a firefighter who was doing one of the side duties the Fire Dept handles - checking water pipes in buildings for adequate pressure.

That firefighter ran up to the apartment and found Taylor's young mom, who was screaming for help to save her baby. He was Vincent Pugliese, who served the city of New York for decades before retiring 24 years ago. He remembers that day vividly, naturally.

Deirdre today

He ran up to the sixth-floor apartment and rescued Deirdre's mom, who gasped that her daughter was still inside the smoke-filled apartment.

"She kept screaming, 'My baby!' so I went back in and found a young girl who was unconscious," says Pugliese, recounting that he gave the child rescue breathing until she came back to consciousness.

Deirdre told CNN recently, "I always knew I came close to losing my life that day. Without him, I wouldn't be here. I had a second chance at life, thanks to him."

Fast-forward to 2020. Remember how, when New York City was hit so hard by COVID cases this spring, nurses and doctors from all over the nation came to help them out?  Deirdre Taylor is an emergency room nurse in Alexandria, Virginia now, and she was one of those volunteers.  Before she left to fly to NYC, she took along a tattered old newspaper about a firefighter who saved a little girl there a long time ago.

Along life's path, Deirdre met her husband, and they have two kids. She always wondered about that brave fireman who save her life, but found nothing about Vincent Pugliese online.

Vincent today

She spent two months doing valiant service at BYU Langone Hospital in Brooklyn, and found out a secret, which is that firefighters either know everybody who ever was in the fire department, or they know someone who knows someone who does. She asked a firefighter whom she met in the hospital, and he called the captain of FDNY Ladder 20 in Manhattan, and that led her directly to her hero.

She called him and was glad to make the connection! "I wondered about him on 9/11 and hoped I would get the chance to thank him, and I finally did," said Taylor.

Pugliese is 75 years of age now, and says she was "on cloud nine" when he got that call from Taylor.

Vincent has had that same newspaper article, framed, hanging on the wall of his home in Spring Lake, NJ, for all these years as well. "The two of us just sat there crying on the phone," he told CNN. "She turned out to be a remarkable woman with a magnificent life."

Taylor was just a tot when Pugliese saved her, so of course her memories are sketchy, but he says, "I didn't see her ever again after that, but I always wondered about her."

He was awarded the Walter Scott Medal for Valor for his rescue of Taylor, who joined the Army on her 17th birthday and became a National Guard helicopter pilot before she started her family.  Military service is something else the two share; he was a Marine in Vietnam before joining the FDNY.

"On top of that, we're both die-hard Yankees fans!" said Taylor, proving that no one, no matter how heroic, is perfect.

They haven't met up, but they do chat on the phone, and have made plans to go see a Yankee game with her family. This year, that might just take another miracle, but we'll see.

Sunday Rerun: "Sometimes, all I need is the air that I breathe" - The Hollies

If you heard the report on CNN that said that 7% of the American populace believes that chocolate milk comes from brown cows, please stop banging your head against the refrigerator. All that does is shake up the milk inside it, and then, if you live in a cottage, you'll have cottage cheese.

That 7% of America, by the way, comes to 17.3 million Americans.

Gulp.

The people who took the survey of Americans and found those 17 million gozzleheads told CNN they have no idea where this idea comes from.

I can tell you about a friend of mine who refused to eat corned beef because she believed that that tasty sandwich meat was produced by feeding cows nothing but corn.

Anyone who goes around the Petting Zoo at the State Fair when a bunch of city kids examine chickens that don't come in an eight-piece bucket knows they don't know much about critter life.

Dave Durian on WBAL used to talk about a woman in his home town who believed that we lost an hour of sleep EVERY NIGHT during Daylight Savings Time.

There are plenty of people who believe that if they walk with a forked stick (a "divining rod") the stick will suddenly bend earthward, indicating a good place to dig a well, thus illustrating the well-known scientific principle of the magnetic effect water has on wood.

We already discussed the belief among basketball players that Earth is flat. They think that, because they are 7 feet tall and can see the distant horizon better than most.

And now, riding in on a strong gust of wind, come Akahi Ricardo and Camila Castello, husband and wife, mom and dad, and practicing "Breatharians." 

They claim that since becoming breatharians nine years ago, they have barely eaten, choosing instead to live off "the universe’s energy."

Castello and Ricardo have a 5-year-old son and a 2-year-old daughter, and say that three times a week, everyone chows down on some vegetable broth or a piece of fruit. And that's it, except for all the air they can breathe. Camila claims not to have eaten at all while carrying and delivering the baby.

They really feel that food and water are not required to live a full and happy and healthy life, and that by not spending their money on Big Macs, Cheez Doodles and linguini, they have more money to travel.

This blog, which is always written after I have had a nice breakfast, exists solely to inform while amusing, or to amuse while informing, and so I urge Castello and Ricardo to avoid the following destinations this summer as they load up their Airmobile to See The USA:

• Sandwich, Massachusetts.
• Burnt Corn, Alabama.
• Chicken, Alaska.
• Cookietown, Oklahoma.
• Coconut Creek, Florida.
• Cream, Wisconsin.
• Ding Dong, Texas.
• Hot Coffee, Mississippi.

The Saturday Picture Show, Fourth of July, 2020

Even if it's an abbreviated state, I am glad that baseball will be back soon! Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and....

There might be some parts of the Betsy Ross legend that are apocryphal, but still, the story is, she stitched Old Glory for us.

I would love to see a Bald Eagle and a Baltimore Oriole in real life, but I'm not that lucky yet.

What's more American than a family, proud of their flag?

I'm sorry the parades have been cancelled this year. The kids on decorated bikes were always a favorite part!

If we keep it small and appropriately distanced, we can have that red-white-and blue picnic.

A reminder that no Fourth of July would matter if not for this one.

Happy 4th! Celebrate what matters.

Call a cab

And let's see, where were we?  In March, all the baseball spring training camps broke up faster than an anti-vax meeting when someone shows up with books, and only this week are we getting back to baseball.

Instead of 162 games, there will be 60, with limited travel. The designated hitter will lumber off the bench for all teams in all games. Extra inning games will have a new wrinkle - each half inning will begin with a runner on second base and no outs, making it much easier to score. This wrinkle will remind former backyard players of the whole "imaginary man on base" rule that we had when we played with 3 or 4 guys on a team.

And when the dust settles, there will be 26 players on each team plus a taxi squad of three extras ready to step in on road trips for players who are injured or COVID-infected. One of the three must be a catcher, and the others will be position players or pitchers.

"Taxi squad" has come to be a term we use for any group of auxiliary personnel ready to step in at a moment's notice. The concept has been used in the National Football League for years, where teams always have extra guys around for when a regular player finds that his kneebone is no longer connected to his shinbone (or anything else).

It's new to baseball, but the definition doesn't mean that these extra players are sitting around, a cab ride away from getting a good break when someone else gets a bad one. In the late 1940s, a man named Paul Brown ran the Cleveland Browns football team. He was such an adept scout of talent that he always had more players around than he was allowed to have on the team, but team owner Arthur B. "Mickey" McBride okayed his plan to claim that the extra guys were actually driving his Yellow Cabs around Cleveland.

There is a word "sinecure" to describe a job that you don't have to do to get paid; it often comes up in discussions of the sons-in-law of politicians who appoint the useless new relative to the position of Assistant Vice-Chairperson of the Employees Benefit Council at a sweet salary and no need to even show up the council office, if he even knows where it is. As far as anyone at the league was concerned, these guys were cabdrivers.

Don't ask too many questions; it's bad for your health, got it?

There are regular stitions and there are superstitions

As a collector of worldwide superstitions, I was happy to come across this list of what are supposed to be authentic Italian beliefs. As I am probably the least Italian person in the universe, married to a semi-Italian, I would appreciate any of you who know of such things fact-checking me before I try to make conversation with them!

In 1971, the Baltimore Orioles traded one of their all-time greatest players, Frank Robinson, to the Los Angeles Dodgers in exchange for some used jockstraps and a pitcher named Doyle Lafayette Alexander out of Cordova, Alabama. Alexander was always going to be great at pitching, and heaven knows the Dodgers, Orioles, New York Yankees, Texas Rangers, Atlanta Braves, San Francisco Giants, Toronto Blue Jays, and Detroit Tigers gave him ample opportunity to achieve greatness over the next 19 years, but the best he could do was a lifetime record of 194 wins and 174 losses, besides a post-season record of 0 and 5.

Some credence is given to the theory that Doyle might have been a pretty good pitcher if he not insisted on wearing uniform #13, but that's just for the superstitious. I bring this all up to say that in Italy, 13 is seen as a lucky number, as it is associated with the Goddess of Fertility, who controls the lunar cycles. I don't get the connection, but they feel that a 13 means abundance and wealth, so go on with your 12 + 1!

However, the number 17 is unlucky in Italian culture, because, according to my research, "in Roman numerals, the number 17 is written as XVII. This can be rearranged to spell the Latin word “vixi,” which translates to 'I have lived.' "
So they avoid using the number 17, and most of their hotels don't have anything  called the 17th floor.

If you are jealous of someone, or just want to mess up their mojo, feel free to put the evil eye on them. It's the Malocchio (“malo” for bad, and “occhio” for eye) curse, and all it takes is one dirty look.

The evil eye curse can put the schneid on your enemy, but the belief is that it can be warded off by wearing a corno, or horn-shaped necklace.

Our "knock on wood" jinxbreaker has no truck with Italians, but they will say  “tocca ferro,” or “touch iron” to snap a curse. Some even carry around a nail so they'll always have iron to touch!

Here's one we share! Our old custom was that, if you spill salt, you should throw over your left shoulder. Salt used to be very expensive, so just to teach ourselves not to waste any, we would throw more of it away. And we threw it over the left shoulder because Christian tradition is that the devil hangs around our left sides, so it would get him right in the eye. But I am lefthanded, so that hand is busy at meals. I throw it over my right shoulder and that gets your devil twice!

You know that deal with show business types, where they say "Break a leg!" before someone performs, as a way to make good happen by wishing for bad? Same in Italian culture, where they say “bocca al lupo,” and that means “in the mouth of the wolf.” Just like in Little Red Riding Hood...

Remember, I found this information by researching it, and I have to count on the people who posted it to have it right. Don't send the wolf after me, please!

The Art of Deception

Sometimes, you have to read a lot of words in a news story before you find the kernel of truth that lies at the core of it all.

In this story, that sentence is:

Spanish law allows people without professional training in conservation to try their hand at mending old artworks.

Which means that with no qualifications at all, you, too, can strut into a Spanish museum or art collection with your brushes and oil paints and say, "Let me have a go at fixing up that cracked, priceless masterpiece."

And here you see the result.  According to the Europa Press reports, a man who collects paintings over in Valéncia, Spain, saw that his painting of the Virgin Mary was getting old and worn. He paid €1,200 (that's like $1,350) to have it cleaned and restored. The image at the right top above shows the amazing job he did, and then someone else took a crack at it (literally) and the bottom right is how the Blessed Mother now appears.  They have her looking like that woman on The Young And The Restless who slept with Victor. Yes, I know that's a lot of women.

So now, in the name of all that makes sense, Spanish authorities are calling for someone to step and regulate this travesty.

The first one of these popped up in 2012. You'll remember it in its before and after images that were mainstays on every tv show, except Ice Road Truckers, for weeks.  They call this Monkey Christ because this hapless helpless painter said she would return the fresco of Jesus to its original glory, and wound up with something resembling a monkey from "Animal Kingdom."

I mean, really.

“I don’t think these people should be referred to as restorers,” Fernando Carrera, a professor at the Galician School for the Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Heritage and former president of ACRE, told the Guardian newspaper. “Let’s be honest: They’re bodgers who botch things up. They destroy things.”


I had to look up "Bodgers." That's a name for a skilled woodworker in England.  Why drag them into this? 

Hint to Spanish art lovers: if someone comes along and tells you they can restore your treasures, tell them to fix up this courtroom artist rendering of the most holy Tom Brady.  If they can make this look like Brady, they can have the job!