So, what's new?

Right before the big family holidays of the year comes news that the ABC News family has an issue to work out. It seems that Amy Robach, and T.J. Holmes, co-hosts of the "Good Morning America Even Though It's Afternoon Now" show that comes on at 1 PM, have each left their respective spouses and are currently engaged in the age-old practice of running around together, hiding from the public in plain sight.

And do we even know what sort of marriages they had? Perhaps cavorting around with others is all part of the game for them, who knows? On the other hand, their spouses might be devastated by this treachery, in which case, shame on them. 

People are now examining the tapes of their shows from the last several months like Kennedy scholars looking over the Zapruder footage frame by frame, and they are finding times when the two gave each other twinkly looks or said things that ostensibly have to do with operating a news/talk show on a major network, but are, when viewed in the light of currently available information, evidence these two crazy kids (she's 49, he's 45) are doing the hibbidy-dibbidy every chance they get. Recently, they fell into mutual paroxysms of giggling when told that poppy seed bagels can give one a positive result on a drug test. You know, that sort of thing.

Because I didn't just get here the other day, I worked long enough to see couples tossing caution to the winds and having their love blossom all over the workplace. They always think no one knows. They're always wrong about that.

If you read the comments online, most people seem to say that it's no biggie when the same person who tells you stories about political hi-jinx in DC are planning to go home that night and dump their spouse for some real hi-jinx. To me, it's mox nix (a term used to mean "it makes no diffy diff to me," from the German "Es macht nichts," meaning "it means nothing"). These two are paid to, and are expected to, deliver the news, and some information, and some nonchalant banter, and as long as they do that, what they do once they leave the studio is a matter between A and B, so I will C my way out.

 

12/8/73 - ∞

It was on this day in 1973 that Peggy and I said our vows and got married, making this our 49th anniversary on our way to forever together, as Paul Harvey used to say.

Not THIS Andy Taylor!

We got married because, as Andy Taylor said so often, when you marry someone, the polite thing is for them to marry you back. 

This one!

I have to say, we didn't know the first thing about being married, except for the one thing that has never changed about us. We are still in love like a couple of schoolkids passing notes in Geometry, and that has never faded a bit. 

I've heard it said that there is a lid for every pot. Well, I got lucky and found mine, and I can't speak for Peggy, but the fact that she was here for breakfast this morning would seem to indicate that she's happy and sticking around. I could give you verse and chapter about why I love her, but suffice it so say I really do, for all the reasons anyone could think up.

We have had a lot of adventures, a lot of stories, a lot of laughs (you wouldn't believe how many!) and more than our share of good luck. Sure, there were sad times, like in any life. Loss, death, sickness, the whole wagonload of what-have-you. But every bad day has been leavened by a hundred good ones, and I can't really complain about a thing.

Next year when we celebrate 50 years, don't look for a trip to France or a new car or a huge party to mark the occasion. When you've been this happy every day, you don't need a lavish wing-ding or boat trip across an ocean to put an exclamation point on one certain day.

I am the luckiest man alive, and I celebrate that luck every time I look into Peggy's root-beer-colored eyes. Thank you God, for all this happiness.

One Man's Trash

How interesting it was to see that the Japanese soccer fans at the World Cup took the trouble to clean up the stadium after their team's games...win or lose, they picked up the detritus left behind by spectators.  That is not something that is normally done here, where people leave mountains of peanut shells, popcornucopias (I made up that word; don't look it up!), and empty drink containers as they leave arenas to go to the parking lot and make even more mess.

BUT! Had those decluttering Japanese folks been around in the days of the Roman Empire, we might now know what we know now about Roman snack habits.  Archeologists are prowling the areas beneath the old Colosseum, its drains and walkways, and what they find left behind is telling the story of a night out in old Rome, centuries ago.

Ticketholders for plays and gladiator bouts 1900 years ago refreshed themselves with olives, nuts, meats, cherries, grapes, figs, blackberries and peaches, judging from the trash left down there. Pass the pistachios please!

Alfonsina Russo is the director of the Colosseum Archaeological Park, and she says these discoveries “deepen our understanding of the experience and habits of those who came to this place during the long days dedicated to the performances."

Beside the snack leavin's, these sad items were found: bones from lions, bears, dogs and other species that researchers figure were used to fight each other for the entertainment of the crowd, or as the targets in hunting demonstrations. But we have not come that far as a culture, when dog fighting is still practiced in the less-self-aware portions of the US.

Coin collectors must have been thrilled to see that the Colosseum researchers found some 50 bronze coins dating back to between the third and seventh centuries.

My suggestion: Put in some new seats and skyboxes and let the Raiders play there.

Since 2021, experts have been scooping out the lower passages and sewers underneath that stadium, trying to figure out their advanced water drainage system. Those old Romans knew how to flood the tunnels beneath the stands to put on water shows, and if it ever got cold enough, they were going to have the Ice Capades for a week or so!

We think of that Roman amphitheater, which was the largest in the world in ancient times, as mainly a place for gladiator events, but besides those and the water shows, there were theatrical productions, fire shows, and mock naval battles to go see, and they drew respectable crowds, although the place became less popular when Comcastico Cable came to Italy in AD 522. The last events we know about in the Colosseum were held in 523.

Had the National Football League been in business then, they certainly would have put a team there, but no. They wound up with Cleveland instead.  

Turkey trottin'

You know those GEICO commercials on TV? And the one where LiMu Emu is marrying Emu Linda, and they get that Doug guy to do the honors and Emu Kevin objects, but Doug stops that nonsense right away with a quick "Not today, Kevin!"

We don't have emus in our neighborhood but every now and then we see a wild turkey strutting around, and up in Woburn, Massachusetts, a whole flock of wild turkeys has been going buck wild, intimidating the locals, pecking at tires, who knows what's next...and a woman named Meaghan Tolson has named the leader bird "Kevin."

Meaghan has her hands full with this. Five wild turkeys are squatting on her lawn with impunity, but she says Kevin is the ringleader, and she wants the ring closed down.

She did take time from her busy turkey-hating schedule to give names (Gladys, Ester, Monica and Patricia) to the hens, while blaming Kevin for the turkey trotting:

“The women are more mellow and not so territorial. But I think he kind of amps them up to get them going to chase people,” she told The Guardian website.

Ms Tolson has shared lots of videos of Kevin lurking around her front door and her car, and feels sort of trapped by them:

 “They don’t let you out of your house,” she said.

She's not alone. “They’re up at 6 a.m. in my lawn and start chasing us, trying to pop the tires,” Woburn resident Devin Farren told NBC Boston. “It’s wild!”

Good news for jobseekers: there is a position called "turkey expert" with the Massachusetts State Wildlife Department. David Scarpitti currently holds the job, and he blames all this on the turkeys getting too used to being around people. People feed them directly or allow them access to bird feeders meant for the scarlet tanagers.

“Turkeys are just kind of acting out what they do amongst themselves,” says Scarpitti. And he wants you to know that if you run from the turkeys, that only makes it worse, because in that case, the turkeys will see you as being "subdominant" to them.

So, he advises, instead of running off, carry an umbrella and open it to scare away the turkeys. This works because the turkeys fear rain.

They think it's gravy.

 

 

Not just that, but the 13 cans of tuna really gave it away

The old expression has it that there is more than one way to skin a cat, but that only applies to people who would be interested in skinning a cat, and I hope they get seriously clawed.

But there must be more than one explanation when you get caught by the TSA trying to smuggle a cat through the check-in while concealed inside a carry-on bag.  An agent at New York’s John F. Kennedy airport was right on top of the situation when he saw little tufts of orange fur sticking out of a slightly-unzipped  suitcase. He cleverly deduced that something was up.

A quick x-ray later, and the TSA guy saw four paws and one tail, and that painted a pawtrait of feline problems.

As the bag went through the X-ray unit Nov. 16, the Transportation Security Administration agent was in for a surprise: Inside were four paws and one tail, and that adds up to one cat.  

I have to say, they will let an occasional boxcutter through the impregnable checkpoint, but they do not miss a chance for a witty remark about a stowaway cat. 

“On the bright side, the cat’s out of the bag,” a TSA spokesperson tweeted, quick as a wink, a week ago today. (No one was working at Twitter to rule on how funny this was.)

Not so fast, they said, and the passenger was paged to come back to the ticket counter. 

“The traveler said that the cat belonged to someone else in the household, implying that he was not aware that the cat was in the suitcase,” TSA spokesperson Lisa Farbstein said, as if she believed that tail tale.

“We call that a good CATch!” she also said. It's a regular comedy cavalcade with these cat-catchers.

So, the upshot is, the cat's name is "Smells," and he is back in the tender care of his owner, who says that "Smells must have crawled into the suitcase of a visiting friend."

I will go along with the part about him crawling into the bag. Zipping the bag up and taking it to the airport, now that's a whole 'nother story.  I'm not kitten.

Just hear meowt.

Sunday Rerun: Aisle Be Damned

We grocery shoppers just took another step closer to the Brave New World that has been predicted for so long. First came the coin-counting machines in the lobby, and then it was the check-yourself-out lane instead of a human cashier, and then it was the self-scanner that you carry around and tote up all the UPC codes on your curds and whey and now...

Now, Giant Food Stores are going to have a whole cadre of new employees running (stalking) around their stores.

They are all named "Marty," if you wanted to know.

New Marty

                                      Old Marty

The Martys just started working there, but they are gray already. They have big googly eyes. They are not in the union, so they will work all sorts of crazy hours without a break.  Or a paycheck.

Marty is a robot.

All the Martys have a sign reading "This store is monitored by Marty for your safety. Marty is an autonomous robot that uses image capturing technology to report spills, debris and other potential hazards to store employees to improve your shopping experience.”

Giant Food announced earlier this week that they will put Martys to work in all of their 172 stores in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia.

“Bringing robotics and A.I. from a research lab to the sales floor has been a very exciting journey, and we were thrilled by the customer response in our pilot stores,” Nicholas Bertram, president of Giant Food Stores, said in a statement. “Our associates have worked hard to bring this innovation to life with amazing partners.”

Here's the company line: the robots parade around the store autonomously, keeping their goofy eyes peeled for spills and trip hazards. If the RoboClerk sees some water or spilled soda on the floor, or the classic banana peel, it will bark out "Danger, Will Robinson!"  "Caution, hazard detected!” and also notify a human with a mop and bucket.

Continuing his peripatetic journey, Marty will do price checks, verifying the price of a can of peas against the store's computerized pea-pricing system.

Deep down toward the end of the press release trumpeting Marty's arrival, they tell us that Marty has onboard scanners so he won't run into you or your cart, that he is "powered by rechargeable lithium batteries," and that he has "has multiple cameras."

So the ceiling mounted cameras aren't enough, and now furtive-looking people will have this robot dogging their two paces behind all through the store.

Hello, 2022? 1984 calling!

The Saturday Picture Show, December 3, 2022

 

Nice try, but this is a really poor attempt at making applesauce, or apple cider. 

Once they're toasted and cleaned up and put in a bag, walnuts look better.

Apparently this has been a thing for some time now! These Hans Gruber Advent Calendars, saluting the descent of the "Die Hard" terrorist, are for sale everywhere. Maybe next year there can be one for Sgt.  Al Powell!

This will be the last of my Autumn Glory pictures for the year. The colors on the few remaining leaves are much less vivid and the trees are turning bare. And it's dark by 5. In other words, my kind of days!

First of all, I would never get in one of these little private planes, and the experience of the pilot and his passenger from last Sunday, crashing into a giant electrical transmission tower and being stuck in the dangling wreckage for 7 hours, is not about to change my mind. But a big shoutout to the rescue personnel for getting them down safely!

I've not seen this thing yet, mainly because I avoid Target like I avoid private airplanes. The deal is, for free, you can stick your cell in there and get it charged...while you continue to shop for another half hour, forty-five minutes. Smart move for the store, although the thought of being unreachable for that length of time is unthinkable to many.

My buddy worked at a radio station where a guy went crazy with the Dymo labelmaker and put little red stickers on every surface..."news copy" on the cubbyhole where news copy was stored, "pens and pencils" on the Exxon tiger mug where pens and pencils were kept, and "stopwatch" on the back of the stopwatch. So my buddy and I, what we did, we made a label that said "Dymo labelmaker" and put it on the Dymo labelmaker and no one thought it was funny but we.

This is the picturesque village of Qaqortoq, Greenland, and I hope you brought your sled.

You can tell it was time for this railroad car to be retired. It looks awfully tired.

Somehow, someone drove their car onto the boardwalk of the Jones Falls jogging trail here in Baltimore. You have to wonder just how far they got before realizing they made a wrong turn.

He's no longer on the A Team

Those among us who choose to be "wet blankets, party poopers and killjoys" because they do not wish to go out with the office gang after work and tie on a snootful in the name of someone's idea of camaraderie can take heart from the ruling in France's highest court.

They said that "Mr T" (not our Mr T, mais non) was wrongfully dismissed by the Paris consulting firm that let him go for not being "fun enough" at work. The precedent cited was from the 1972 Woody Allen movie "Play It Again, Sam," in which Allen's character claimed that his wife was not entitled to a divorce on the grounds of "insufficient laughter." 

This French Mr T was with Cubik Partners until 2015, when he said he would not attend any more seminars and weekend social events that he claimed involved "excessive alcoholism” and “promiscuity.”

Rather than finding these extra-curriculars enjoyable, Mr. T said the "fun culture" of his coworkers centered around “humiliating and intrusive practices," such as  mock sexual acts, crude nicknames and making him share his bed with another employee during work functions.

In its judgment this month, France's highest court, the Court of Cassation, said T was entitled to “freedom of expression” and that avoiding workgroup socializined is a “fundamental freedom” under labor and human rights laws, and not grounds for his dismissal.

After working with Cubik Partners for four years (and being promoted to director after three!) T got the well-known ax for what they called  “professional incompetence” for "failing to adhere to the firm’s convivial values."

No work function I ever attended had alcohol as part of the bill of fare, but I participated dozens of time in those games where a group is given a list of items - a box of chocolate, some matches, fresh water, a length of rope, etc - along with a scenario about being broken down on the surface of Mars or outside Cleveland. The goal was to work with the group to prioritize which items would be most helpful to get us back to earth, or at least, away from Cleveland. 

I used to wonder whether it was really all that good an idea to get back to earth, if we were only going to have more dumb meetings like that. I salute Mr T and hope that on his first day back at the office, no one asked to stop off for a short one after work.

Where in the world have you been?

Thinking back to April, 1992...that was a long time ago...more than thirty years, in fact! The Baltimore Orioles opened their new stadium, Oriole Park at Camden Yards, and changed the way baseball designed its fields for decades to come. Also that month, EuroDisney opened and so did the first McDonald's in China, and at the end of the month, a jury acquitted Los Angeles Police officers on charges of excessive force in the beating of motorist Rodney King. Massive riots erupted in response.

One more:  The babies born just several weeks ago to Rachel and Philip Ridgeway were frozen as embryos.

Yes! Lydia and Timothy Ridgeway were born on Halloween of this year, from what appear to be the longest-frozen embryos to ever result in a live birth. That's the word from the National Embryo Donation Center.

"There is something mind-boggling about it," Philip Ridgeway said as he and his wife cradled their newborns in their laps at their home outside Portland, Oregon. "I was 5 years old when God gave life to Lydia and Timothy, and he's been preserving that life ever since."

He went on: "In a sense, they're our oldest children, even though they're our smallest children."  The Ridgeways have four other children, ages 8, 6, 3 and almost 2, none of whom were conceived out of the standard method.

Those 1992 embryos were set aside to provide in-vitro fertilized children for an anonymous couple, and they were stored in liquid nitrogen at 200 degrees below zero at a West Coast fertility lab until 2007, when the original couple donated them to the National Embryo Donation Center in Knoxville, Tennessee. 

The procedure for the birthing process that the Ridgeways used is called embryo donation. As it happens, people trying for IVF often produce more embryos than they can use in the procedure. Those extra embryos can be saved by cryopreservation, they can be used in research or training, or, as in the present case, used for the benefit of people wishing to add to their family. 

The Ridgeways will have the interesting responsibility of driving the twins Lydia and Timothy to the polls in 2024. Technically, they are old enough to vote, but not to drive.

Of Mice and Men

We always heard that an infinite number of monkeys typing away on typewriters for infinite amounts of time would inevitably reproduce "Hamlet." In fact, although most people claim that Shakespeare wrote the line "To sleep, perchance to dream," those words were actually spoken first by me when shaken out of a deep slumber in English 12. 

It was right after lunch, that's my story. 

But even now, we are finding that the animal kingdom is pretty darn smart. We are now in a position to grow mini brains from human and mouse neurons and teach those tiny brains to play Pong.

These are actual humans playing pong for illustrative purposes. The pong-playing mini brains wear red hats for easy identification. 

I know this is all being done in the holy name of Science, but researchers have formed a synthetic network of neurons and integrated the brain cells into an electrode array controlled by a computer program.

It's like, I get up in the morning and go feed the cat, because I have taught myself this simple skill by arranging what few brains cells I still own and operate. Same way, people in lab coats are hooking up these laboratory-made mini brains to a bunch of electrical conductors in such a way that they can learn simple tasks, just as I learned not to put too much kibble in the bowl and not to give Eddie more wet food than she needs. This means we know now that it's not just whole brains inside intact skulls that can learn stuff. 

Inside a little tiny box they call DishBrain, researchers placed row after row of imported electrodes, plus a caramel center. Once hooked up to computer software, this new noggin received electrical signals that spoke to certain parts of the neurons.  The first lesson taught DishBrain to play Pong, the first computer game from 1972 - the one where you move a paddle up and down to bat a "ball" back and forth right there on the screen. Then the computer sent information back to the neurons, telling them whether or not they had hit the imaginary ball.   

In less than five minutes, the neurons learned to alter the way the moved that paddle up and down so as to hit the ball more often. Science regards this as the first time a man-made biological neural network learned to complete a goal-oriented task all on its own. It was even written up in the journal "Neuron" last month. This is a big step forward for science and unemployed neurons, of which the world currently has a huge surplus.

That was a truly great day for science, although the afternoon was ruined for the crew in the laboratory. After lunch, they taught DishBrain how to play "Grand Theft Auto," and when 5 o'clock rolled around and the group knocked off for the day, they found all their cars were missing from the parking lot.

 

 

No No No It Ain't Me, Babe

I've been following Bob Dylan since forever, and if there's one thing that always stands out about the folky balladeer, it's that he is consistently inconsistent. This goes way back to when he was a pure acoustic performer, before he plugged in a band at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. It's the hallmark of a good performer, and a good way to become legendary like Bob - always keep the audience wondering what's next. 

Show business is part show and all business. Just ask anyone who is shelling out $700 for one ticket to see "The Music Man" on Broadway. You get the experience of seeing a true legend as Hugh Jackman struts across the stage as Professor Harold Hill. If that's what you want to do with $700, fine. We all saw on "CBS Sunday Morning" that there are people willing to pony up $250,000 to get in a mini submarine and drop in on the wreckage of the Titanic. Those who go will see the unmistakable bow of the great ship at rest on the Atlantic floor and know it's for real, and not some old sunken garbage scow.

We can't take it away from Bob Dylan that he has written and performed hundreds of great songs, too many even to think of listing here. But I'm throwing a penalty flag and walking off five yards against the wire-haired boy from Hibbing, not that he would even care what I think, but because he recently tried to cheat his fans, only to be caught and turn red.

Through his book publisher, Simon & Schuster, Dylan hawked 900 "personally hand-signed" copies of his new book, “The Philosophy of Modern Song.” Each copy set the purchaser back $599, but again, for a true believer, that's not too much to exchange for a true totem - the actual autograph of the author on a book he wrote.

The books sold out and were shipped a week or so ago, and it took two days of people proudly Instragramming pictures of their treasures before people started saying, "These signatures all look alike...."

It took two more days before Simon & Schuster acknowledged that complaints about the autographs actually being mechanical duplicates were true and legitimate.

The book's cover shows Little Richard, Alis Lesley (one of the several hundred "female Elvises"), and Eddie Cochran.

“To those who purchased the ‘Philosophy of Modern Song’ limited edition, we want to apologize,” said a tweet from Simon & Schuster.  “As it turns out, the limited edition books do contain Bob’s original signature, but in a penned replica form. We are addressing this information by providing each purchaser with an immediate refund.”

Such double-speak! Yes, it's Bob's autograph, but it isn't. The books were all signed by an autopen, a machine used by people who have to sign their names many times. (In high school, I looked into getting one for my father so he wouldn't get writer's cramp from signing so many letters from the school, but anyway...)

The people at Simon & Schuster have not learned much about crisis management, it would seem; their first response was to stonewall the criticism, saying, “We certainly understand any concerns you may have, however – Each individual copy of the limited signed edition of Bob Dylan’s THE PHILOSOPHY OF MODERN SONG was personally signed by the author and is accompanied by a letter of authenticity from the publisher of Simon & Schuster.”

Each book had been mailed with a letter signed (?) by Jonathan Karp, president and CEO of the publishing house, saying, “You hold in your hands something very special, one of just 900 copies available in the U.S.  This letter is confirmation that the copy of the book you hold in your hand has been hand-signed by Bob Dylan.”

Within two days, the company buckled, with Karp emailing each purchaser to say, "We apologize for the mistake that was made and are offering a full refund of your purchase. Please keep your copy of ‘The Philosophy of Modern Song’ at no cost. We hope you will enjoy reading it.”

We who try to understand Dylan understand that confounding us is the basis of his game, as when he refused to accept a Nobel Prize or attend the ceremony involved, only to say later he was sorry about all that. But explaining is something he doesn't do...until now. From his Facebook:

“I’ve been made aware that there’s some controversy about signatures on some of my recent artwork prints and on a limited-edition of Philosophy Of Modern Song. I’ve hand-signed each and every art print over the years, and there’s never been a problem. However, in 2019 I had a bad case of vertigo and it continued into the pandemic years. It takes a crew of five working in close quarters with me to help enable these signing sessions, and we could not find a safe and workable way to complete what I needed to do while the virus was raging. So, during the pandemic, it was impossible to sign anything and the vertigo didn’t help. With contractual deadlines looming, the idea of using an auto-pen was suggested to me, along with the assurance that this kind of thing is done ‘all the time’ in the art and literary worlds.

“Using a machine was an error in judgment and I want to rectify it immediately. I’m working with Simon & Schuster and my gallery partners to do just that,” he concluded.

It does not take a "crew of five" to get books signed. Just deliver 900 books, and a handful of Sharpies to his house, and tell him you'll be back to pick them up when he's finished scrawling his signature on the inside cover. 

It's disappointing to me that he did not write and record his 1/2-assed apology in the form of a song and release it as a special edition Holiday Gift To You on vinyl, cassette, CD or MP3, but I guess he can't think of every scam.

 

Stiiiiiiiiingy

We're told by our elders that virtue is its own reward, that we should do good things just for the sake of doing them, and that is all true, but then again, what's fair is fair.

Here's what I'm talking about: a guy in Germany found a lost check fluttering along the ground as he was on his way home after visiting his mother. It was a check for $4.8 million, made out to Haribo, the people who gum up your teeth with those little gummy bears.

 It was what they call a crossed check - a check that is preprinted with FOR DEPOSIT ONLY - and when the man, whose name is Anouar G,  called Haribo, they told him to destroy the check and send them a picture to show what he did.

The check was in payment of the account of German supermarket chain Rewe, and any way you look at it, that's a lot of hay. In Euros, it comes to €4,631,538.80, which sounds like even more, somehow.

 

Not long after, the mailman brought his reward - a thank you gift box containing candies.  Anouar thought that was a "a bit cheap." Six packs of Haribo candy in exchange for his honesty and for saving the company millions of dollars worth of massive PITA...I dunno.

Not that he could have done anything with the check, and not that he would have wanted to anyway, but gee whiz, right before the holidays is no time to be closefisted and mingy. 

At the very least, they could have donated a sleighful of candy and goodies to disadvantaged kids, you know what I mean?

Maybe sets of ice skates or rollerblades to kids in group homes, to show the company is not really a bunch of cheapskates!

 

Sunday Rerun: Huge old birds

 This might be a total fake news story, for all I know. I checked, and the dateline said "June 14," not "April 1," so maybe it's legit.

Here it is: According to this story, turkeys that were like the size of kangaroos once ran around Australia.  This took place about 2 million years ago, which is going to confound the segment of the population that believes life began 6,000 years ago with the birth of Betty White.

The whole thing came up in conversation among scientists at Flinders University in Western Australia, after someone found fossils in the Thylacoleo Caves on the Nullarbor Plain.

At first, everyone said, "That's cool," and went to lunch, but this all must have taken place on a Wednesday, because they decided to look further into the matter after lunch.  Had the fossils turned up on a Monday or a Friday, the proximity to the weekend would have meant letting it all go, but they dug deeper and took a look at modern brush turkeys and their ancestors. 


"Taxonomic review of the late Cenozoic megapodes (Galliformes: Megapodiidae) of Australia" was published several weeks ago by the Royal Society. I'm not going to pretend I know what they're talking about here (and you wouldn't believe me if I tried) but the point of the paper was that they figure that giant 3.2 foot-tall turkeys were running all over Australia, even before the arrival of Angus Young.  This was one big bird, and if all you know about turkey flight is that "WKRP In Cincinnati" rerun where the Big Guy says of a failed Thanksgiving promotion, "As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly!" these big huggers could fly!  A study of the bones reveals that the giant turkey not only flew, but also roosted in trees, because who was going to stop it?

This immense Butterball has a scientific name - Progura gallinacea - and wishes to be addressed by same. Paleontologists - people who make a living studying Sarah Paleon - are all over Australia looking into what they nicknamed "chunky birds." They figure these guys weighed 6.6 pounds to 17 pounds, but with a coupon and your Giant Food loyalty card, there was usually a buy-one, get-one deal.

Incidentally - one early spring afternoon, we looked out on the deck to see a wild turkey hanging around by the grill. He did fly away, but none too gracefully.  And the very next afternoon, a little red fox came up on the deck, but that's as much fox news as I can tolerate.

The Saturday Picture Show, November 26, 2022

 

Let's start off this week by looking at one of the worst architectural nightmares since the house I saw in which, if one wanted to go from the first floor to the second floor, one was obligated to go outside and use the stairs there. This door seems to open up to a closet, my best guess, but be careful when you leave, if you wander in there to look for that sweatshirt you can't find. 

Imagine telling someone very young that, back in the day, we got these special green stamps with every grocery purchase, and the youngest member of the family (raises hand) had to paste the stamps in a special book. Once the family had a drawerful of filled books, they went to a special store and turned the books in for a toaster or a set of hedge clippers. True story.

Yes sir, it is what you think, an AM-FM radio hat. If you are wearing this and the skies turn cloudy and the DJ plays Lou Christie's "Lightnin' Strikes," you better run!

This is the car in which Bonnie and Clyde, unattractive bank robbers from the 1930s, met their untimely end. Clyde loved his Ford V-8 so much, he wrote to Henry Ford, extolling its speed and handling qualities. He should have installed some armor plate, but oh well.

Rod Stewart, the singer, model railroader, and soccer fan, made a habit of kicking soccer balls into the audience during his concerts. Someone who caught one way back in the day has saved it and kept it inflated all these years. It even looks like someone played soccer with it.

A bird's-eye view of the baseball stadium at Appalachian State College down in Boone, North Carolina. Just over the next hill is Boone's Farm!

I love the can-do attitude of the people of Buffalo this week. Sure, give me 77" of snow, and I'll put on my shorts and deal with it!

Please! No cloves in my ham, but an orange studded with them makes a swell holiday pomander.

Our mail comes so late these days, it's always after dark. I'm thinking of installing a night light on the mailbox. But this old milk can is a pretty good idea too!

I'm on a good roll for finding pictures of cool old sheds lately. This one is custom-fitted with a hornet's nest and a spider web already installed. But I promise you, if you have so many gate hooks that you need an old mayonnaise jar to hold them, well, sir, you have a lifetime supply of gate hooks!

Making a list and checking it twice

I noticed it earlier this week, when the television meteorologists were giving the long range forecast for "the week's end and the weekend," and all they said about Friday was that it will be 50° with occasional rain showers.

Friday, as in the Day After Thanksgiving.  

My, how things have changed. From the late 1980s until just recently, the Day After Thanksgiving was known as Black Friday, as in, that's when retailers will suddenly get back in the black.  (The first law of owning any sort of store or mercantile establishment is to claim you lose money every day.  The greatest example is those stores at the beach that sell you towels, t-shirts, hats, sunblock, and inflatable sea serpents at unbelievably jacked prices. Every year, as they fold up their tents after Labor Day, with straight faces they tell the news reporters that "this summer was a disaster, we hardly broke even, I don't know how we can survive in this economy," and they, next Memorial Day, guess who's back out there, hawking their wares?)

OK, so you can believe it if you wish, that none of these merchants make a nickel until holiday shopping begins. The thing is, Black Friday got to be so crazy for a while, they started holding it on Thursday instead! All the big stores would allow their employees time enough to have their Thanksgiving with their families and even a quick slice of pie before opening the big box at 5 or 6 and allowing the shopping frenzy to begin. 

And on Friday itself, the tv news helicopters would hover over the mall, reporting on available parking spots ("Attttttt White Marsh Mall, by the Sears entrance, a blue Mercedes is backing out of a spot...and two spots are about to vacated down by J.C. Penney on the upper level..."). It was mayhem. Some of you who to this day cling to your chubby-cheeked little dolls from Christmas, 1984, may have heard your parents describe their valiant service in the Cabbage Patch Kids War. This took place just two short years after the Falkland Islands War, and was fought in every toy store and department store in the land, as moms and dads fought to outflank their neighbors in order to purchase a coveted doll that sort of looked like Telly Savalas. 

And then came Amazon.

And what used to be called Black Friday is now Black November, as American commerce adjusts to the new way of shopping - not just for the holidays, but for everyday needs. I can't tell you how many times this year I have needed something - broad-tip felt markers, kitty litter, bagel chips, all vital items for life around this house -  and found nothing except for in the warm embrace of Amazon, which has everything!

And brick-and-mortar retailers - that's the term for "people with stores" -  have figured out how to fight back, and that's by starting their Christmas sales as soon as the last of the Labor Day empty beer cans are hauled out.  

The National Retail Federation (NRF) and Prosper Insights & Analytics (whoever they are) say that they estimate 166.3 million people will shop between yesterday and this Monday, the 28th, Cyber Monday. 

Cyber Monday is the biggest online shopping day of the year. The name derives from the long-ago days when very few people had computers at home, but they did at work, so the Monday after Black Friday, they would rush to work and go on "Shoes. Com" or "Blazers4Less.com" and finish off their shopping lists. There were all sorts of charts showing that office productivity was was down on that day.

So, what started as, "let's look on the computer and see if we can find just the right rifle for Uncle Leroy" has become, "Hey! Just for something different, let's go to a store and look for Leroy's present!"

Or at least, that's the hope.

Thanksgiving 2022

 Remember, please, to stop and give thanks for all we have, whatever we have. So many people around the world suffer in great need. We tend to go along with our days and years, and we might not stop to ponder how very blessed we are. Would that the Spirit remind us of that, and allow us to show gratitude in thanksgiving and returned acts of kindness.

 

I always thought it tasted like cough syrup, anyway

I used to listen to Paul Harvey's "The Rest Of The Story" because I can always spare a quick five minutes to learn something new.

Such as...the story of the young pharmacist who was working in a drugstore and fell head over heels for the boss's daughter. This was in Virginia, 1880s. It looked like the romance would blossom until the day the mean old man sent the young one packing, saying that he wanted his daughter to marry a doctor or lawyer, not some humble pharmacist.

The old man did not know that the younger had whipped up a concoction of flavors to be served as a phosphate at the soda fountain. It was go time, and the young man packed up his broken heart and his recipe and moved to Texas, where he eventually owned his own drug store and found that the locals down there liked his soda, which he named after the old fool who threw him out of  Virginia.

He named that drink Dr Pepper.

But you still have more of the story to hear because Dr Pepper is part of a huge conglomerate these days. It's in the Keurig Dr Pepper company, which has a market cap of some $54 billion. Keurig and coffee pod giant Green Mountain formed the company after acquiring Dr Pepper Snapple Group in 2018.

Now, here is trouble for the company that even that young pharmacist could not have imagined. Keurig Dr Pepper CEO Ozan Dokmecioglu was shown the door from his job last week "due to unspecified violations related to his personal conduct," the company announced.

Dokmecioglu only got the job three months ago. The brass did not give any further explanation, except to say, “Keurig Dr Pepper’s Code of Conduct is built on a foundation of ethics, integrity and personal responsibility.  Every employee, without exception, is accountable for knowing and following the Code.” 

I'm shocked - SHOCKED, I tell you - that a big business mogul fell short in the area of ethics, integrity, and personal responsibility.

But I'm reasonably sure that Dokmecioglu will not have to take a job driving a Pepsi truck to put soda on his family table. The bigshots take care of one another.

I wonder what he did?

 

Bob Gamgort, the company’s current executive chairman and former CEO, will resume his old role following Dokmecioglu’s abrupt exit.

“KDP has a deep and talented executive team,” said Gamgort. “I look forward to continuing to work with the leadership team and the Board in the role I held less than four months ago.” 

Dokmecioglu took over as CEO in July as part of a management succession plan that was announced months earlier. He had previously served as the company’s CFO.

11/22/rerun: Looking back

 It happened one day 20-some years ago in a supermarket now closed. I was talking to a high-school-aged cashier about how little use she would ever have for algebra for the rest of her life unless she became an algebra teacher, and she said that even more than math, she hated history.

"You know, boring old presidents, like Kennedy."

And I was transported back to that day in 1963, seventh grade at the now-demolished Towsontown Junior High School.  It was report card day, and we were being sent back to homeroom to get the cards, and before that could happen, the principal, Maynard B. Henry, came on the public address system and told us that the president had been shot in Dallas, and then he put the radio on so that we could hear the news unfolding.

John F. Kennedy, 1917 - 1963

We couldn't know in the instant moment that the events of that day/weekend would come to be known as the end of the 1950's, the end of our innocence, the end of Camelot.  We only knew that we didn't know much about Lyndon Baines Johnson, who suddenly was our president.  Over the next three days, we saw the slain president come back to Washington in a casket, his personal effects removed from the White House, and the arrest and assassination of his killer. On Monday, we saw a funeral live on TV, and we prepared to enter an unknown future.

Johnson, master politician, leveraged the mourning into passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which knocked down legal barriers at the state and local levels preventing African Americans from exercising their right to vote under the 15th Amendment (1870) to the Constitution.  There is doubt among historians as to whether Kennedy could have gotten passage of these parts of his New Frontier program for the nation, but Johnson did it, and won re-election to his own term in '64, only to bow out of the race in 1968 - one of the most tumultuous years in our history. The Viet Nam War proved to be Johnson's undoing, but his early days in office gave us progress long overdue and still worthy of respect.

All this, we could never have predicted that gray Friday, 11/22/63, but looking back on it, one could never call those days "boring," unless one was not paying attention in History class.  I told the cashier that I was certain her teacher knew some ways to bring the 1960s alive for the Class of '96.  And I hope she asked.

If you are looking for some words to help bring those days in perspective, I can think of few better examples than those of columnist Jimmy Breslin. He knew that every other reporter would interview Johnson, DeGaulle, the other Kennedys, and other people of note. Breslin interviewed the man who dug Kennedy's grave, and wrote about it as only he can.  I urge all interested in looking back with me today to read his piece here.

Once A Year, I Promise

I like to mention Fox "News" about once a year; watching or talking or thinking about them makes me choleric, and I don't want to be choleric.

Everyone knows the new senator-elect from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania - the state that gave us the cheese steak, the Bristol Stomp, and the Liberty Bell - is a man who is outsized in every way. Long tall John Fetterman won a hard-fought campaign against the Wizard of Oz for the seat, and will be sworn in in January. For now, he's just being sworn at, and so is his wife, the lovely Gisele Barretto Fetterman, because jealousy is like that.

Fetterman is 6' 8" tall. I myself topped out at 6' 5" before the ravages of time and diminished bone density lowered my altitude, but still, I know the horror that Mrs Fetterman's husband knows any time someone aims a camera in his direction. We tall people know there's a good chance when the picture comes out, not all of our head will be shown. People get the normal-sized people in the frame just fine, but those whose heads are up in the clouds don't get to see their whole head.

Or - the other thing - we wind up bending in half at the waist or doing a knee bend in order to try to match the heights of the other photo participants. You'd think this would be the answer, but no, because these bend-over shots tend to make us look like Gorgo leaning over to grab a section of a railroad bridge to use as a toothpick.

But those amiable FOXers have been messing with photos of the Fettermans as they prepare to move to DC. They don't realize that Mrs F has been intentionally taking headless Norseman pictures of Mr F for fifteen years now, but they crop the photos to make it seem like she wishes to marginalize the big man and shine all the brighter herself.

As it happens, Mrs Fetterman opened a Free Store in the town where they live in order to help people in their community find food and needed supplies. Read the story and then decide for yourself if her star doesn't shine brightly enough on its own without trying to detract from her spouse's good work to add attention to herself.

That "news" channel is great at fomenting displeasure and suspicion. Perhaps they could step up and help people as Mrs Fetterman does, or at least not demean her for doing so.

Sunday Rerun: "Remember, it's a holiday, not a holi-week!"

 For years, the greatest part of Thanksgiving dinner was always when Uncle Tonoose, full of Natty Boh and holiday happiness, took a nose dive into the mashed potatoes. 

Oh, the hew and cry from everyone as they pulled him out of the creamed spuds, and his tie out of the gravy tureen, and gently placed him face-down over the ottoman. Not that the concern was all about Tonoose's welfare (he'd be fine in the morning, back at the lumberyard) but for the mashed potatoes themselves, because one of the best parts of the whole weekend was the subsequent meals after the big dinner on Thursday.

Don't throw away those mashed patooties! In the morning, stir them (2 cups) up with an egg, and a cup of flour, some diced onion, salt and pepper, and then make patties to fry with your b'fast. Ain't that just like living! Potato Cakes!

Baltimore has always been big on leftover sandwiches, too, and if you're skillful you can make a great one on rye bread with turkey, cranberry sauce, stuffing, and a tad of sauerkraut (dried by pressing down a paper towel, or one of the shirts Tonoose left behind, to soak up excess kraut juice).

And I credit Baltimore with the invention of what I am calling "Stwaffles," which are waffles made of stuffing on the waffle iron. How could anything be better?

I do have to share this from Wisconsin, speaking of Thanksgiving chow. There is a restaurant there called the Dreamland Supper Club, and their year-round specialty is french-fried turkey breast.

This is not like chicken-fried steak, in which a thin steak is dipped in the flour and seasonings and breading that is used for fried chicken, and cooked that same way. No sir, this is a hunk of turkey breast dipped in sweet batter and deep-fried, and served with melted butter and a baked potato.

The sweet batter would suggest some powdered sugar and syrup, but no. This is a very big deal in Wisconsin. According to some reviews I read, this Dreamland is a popular place for holiday celebrations.

Wisconsin, thank you for your beer and cheese, but I'm going to pass on this Turkey Twinkie.