"Wedding Bell Blues"

Not only do I love today's newspaper, I love yesterday's as well. I just love reading old papers, and with the internet, I don't get inky fingers from reading stories such as this one from 1924, when two really really rich girls eloped...

Don't bother with the magnifying glass; I'll tell you what happened. This Winthrop family from Lenox, Massachusetts, is American bigtime semi-royalty since they all climbed off the Mayflower or the next boat in. So here in 1924 was Grenville Lindall Winthrop, a lawyer and all-over rich guy, widowed, eighth-generation descendant of John Winthrop, first governor of Massachusetts. Grenville had two daughters (Emily and Kate) whom he had tried to raise by giving them everything under the sun. 

They wanted more. They wanted love, which Grenville found out the day he caught thirsty Emily clapping cheeks in the chicken coop with the chauffeur (Corey Lucien Miles) who had apparently misunderstood Grenville's orders when he told Miles to drive his daughter around. 

And not only was Emily getting busy, so was her sister Kate, who took a fancy to Darwin Morse, who is described as both an electrician and the man who took care of the chickens around the mansion. I guess that made him a Chicken Tender!

Morse's mother wanted to help, so with the two girls 'n' guys, she helped cook up a scheme to get old Grenville out of the house for a few days, and then here comes the preacher man, and presto! Two weddings, and away those kids ran! And the preacher was quoted saying, “Well, they are nice young people—as nice as you’ll find anywhere these days.”

The next day, the headline in the New York TIMES said  

NEWS OF ELOPEMENT UNNERVES WINTHROP; Treated for Shock Due to Daughters' Marriage to Chauffeur and Electrician.

and that meant for a fun Thanksgiving that year. The couples took off separately - one "borrowing" Dad's limousine - and the next story I could find about them was from a year later, when the women were received at the family home and the grooms were not. 

I'm sure that many movies and TV shows have borrowed from this story, and I'm sure that in each of them, the guy playing poor old Dad is seen saying, "Now see here! This is highly irregular!" and calling for an aspirin and some bicarbonate of soda. 

My research couldn't answer my question as to whether Kate Winthrop was the person talked about in the 1922 hit song "I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate." I'm sure Big Daddy's plans for his daughters did not include having them getting with "the help," and that makes the whole thing funny even now, a hundred years later, when they're all up in Heaven watching Glenville say "Hrrumph" about the whole sweet thing.

Grenville Lindall Winthrop
(1864 - 1943)

10-57

I know better than to pay much attention to some of the nuts  people who populate Facebook, but there I was the other night, reading about a local woman who saw a car smack another vehicle on the supermarket parking lot and then keep going. This Good "Samerican" (my homemade portmanteau; it's for sale) took pictures of the crime car and reported everything to the store office. Store personnel found the driver of the banged car and all the information was turned over to her. Good deed, right?

You're wrong, according to the people who called her "snitch" and said she needs to mind her own business. 

One of the posts that decried the woman's actions in reporting the hit & run.

Of course, it's YOUR car being used in the demolition derby at the Weis store, you doggone well want to be told whodunit, I'm sure. 

We're all in this big rowboat called Life and we need help paddling to the other shore. Someone needs to know if someone else is drilling holes in the boat to make it sink. That's not being a snitch. That's making things right.

Yeah, that'll buff right out.

T & T

Let's say you run the National Football League. What is the dumbest thing you could possibly do? 

If you guess "tip people off that Taylor Swift is coming to the Chiefs-Ravens game in Kansas City," that would come close to the top of the list.

It's the Chiefs who are upset, according to what I read, that the league tipped off a sports news source that the #1 pop star in the world - a woman whose security situation rivals that of any world leader - was coming to the game.

She is dating Travis Kelce of the Chiefs, as you know, unless you just got back from a year in the steppes of Russia.

If you didn't know about her love life, you might not know that she had to cancel three shows in Austria this summer and hike up her threat level because of the preponderance of buttheads in this modern world.

Her people are upset any time her whereabouts are known, so letting people know she was heading to Arrowhead Stadium the other night was not good.

The Chiefs were ready for the throng of gawkers; they had to learn on the fly when love was just aborning for those two crazy kids. 

“We’ll be prepared for her, and obviously welcome her with open arms,” Chiefs president Mark Donovan said before the game. “She brings a lot with her, and it’s a pretty valuable, targeted demographic when you look at the makeup of her fan base. And we’ve looked at ways that we could be respectful.”

Last year, Taylor came to Baltimore when the Chiefs played the Ravens in the AFC Championship game and there was no huge security problem, but that was long ago. 

It seems to be a uniquely American thing, to chase after celebrities - with or without mayhem in mind. I couldn't imagine a day of life under the scrutiny and fan frenzy she and Kelce face if they so much as go to the Dollar Tree to stock up on licorice.

That's their life; I wouldn't want it, but I wouldn't want to make it worse for them by tipping off their stalkers to where they are going to be.

As we are

I saw this meme and I got to thinking...life is so much simpler when we live as ourselves. 

When we see monster movies about Martians from Mars and Venusians from Venus and what-have-you, notice, they all look alike out there. Boxy bodies, antennae, metallic sheen - you can't tell Mr Roboto from Junior Roboto. 

Here on Earth, we are all born pretty much the same size and dressed alike in birthday suits. but as the years go by our bodies grow differently, we choose different clothing, and we have different and distinct personalities.

If we didn't wear our hair as we please, dress as we please, express ourselves and find pleasure in different ways and means, what would we be? Non-unique automatons, moving in machine-like precision to the Grand Parade of Sameness?

I got a great piece of advice one time, and I would give anything if I could remember what it was. But I figured on my own that it's best for us to be ourselves and learn to like ourselves as we are. 

 

 

Sunday Rerun: It only takes tenants to rent an apartment

 Someone left a coffee cake too close to the fax machine in an office where I worked. And I want to tell you, the ants that came to gobble the cake over the weekend also checked into the fax machine. By Monday, the fax machine was not working, but the ants were. 

We had to replace the machine. You never saw so many ants in one colony.  (A group of ants is a colony; a group of aunts is a book club.)

And yes, ants come to pester us around here every spring. One single ant, as far away as Cleveland, can tell when one single grain of sugar falls onto our kitchen counter, and the next thing you know, that ant and his entire family move in, until remedial measures are taken.

But now, here we are in 2023, finding out that ants can do medical research, when they're not busy bedeviling suburban homeowners.

Researchers have now trained ants to detect cancer in urine.

I know, it's a lot to imagine, but with ten million people dying of cancer every year, any tool we can use to diagnose the dreaded disease is for the good.

And scientists have figured that ants can use their tiny antennae to sniff out cancer in urine. 

The full story is in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: journal (your copy should be in the mail). Without getting too gross, let's just say that we now know that some types of cancer change the smell of our liquid waste, and the reason for this is that cancer cells emit what science calls VOCs: volatile organic compounds.

And just as dogs can sniff out cancer by identifying body smells, ants, which do not detect smells through their noses as we do, have antennae, as we do not, and scientists have had ants traipsing through puddles of pee and coming back to report they smell cancer VOCs.

And they learned to do this in just three training sessions, which is two fewer than it took a crack team of Baltimore County IT trainers to get me to learn to work Excel spreadsheets!

So, next time, how's about not stepping on that ant you see? Someday, it might just save your life with an early diagnosis.

 

The Saturday Picture Show, September 7, 2024

 

The old switcheroo! Always open, until they're not. Try IHOP!

If this were my eggplant, I would name it "Nixon" and display it proudly among my other presidential treats, including the Jimmy Carter peanuts and Dolley Madison snack cakes.

Cruel summer trickery: this a stick-on, fake electric outlet bound to frustrate  someone at an airport trying to plug in their charger. 

I used to work down near the Baltimore Washington Friendship Thurgood Marshall airport, and it was not uncommon to be out on the parking lot and see the belly of one of those BA jets looking like they were ten feet overhead. But of course, that was before Boeing planes started dropping parts like cones off a spruce tree.

From the real estate listing: "Wide open spaces! Drift along with the tumbling tumbleweeds! This airy handyman's special is just right for your special TLC! Directions: go to the end of the earth and turn left for six miles."

This little baby mantis is just learning to pray!

Today's free wallpaper is these really pretty fall wildflowers! I can feel autumn coming right around the corner!

These are called ice flowers, but if you plan to take a bouquet home to your one and only, get there before they melt!

When you checked in for a lengthy stay at the Alcatraz Hilton, they made it quite clear that you had four entitlements, and I don't see premium cable anywhere on that list. Stay out of prison, be my advice.

This sign was on display at one of those rallies where people try to show how decent they are by pointing out the moral shortcomings of everyone else. I looked over the list, and just about everyone I know is going to blazes...according to "them."

Full Circles

We baseball fans might not remember to pick up the dry cleaning, or how many cups are in a quart, but we remember things that happened on baseball fields long ago.

The year is 2002. The San Francisco Giants, managed by Dusty Baker, are in the World Series against the (then) Anaheim Angels. Baker thought it would be cute as all get out to have his 3-year-old son Darren serve as a batboy, and then when a play at the plate was coming up in Game 5, Darren wandered out to home plate to pick up a bat left lying there by the previous hitter. He did not appreciate the danger he was in as large men converged on the area, but Giant player J. T. Snow swooped in and scooped the tot up. Big news then, and still remembered by the millions watching.

2002

Now the year is 2024, and Darren Baker, now 25, was just called up to the big league roster by the Washington Nationals after a stellar season at minor-league Rochester. He got a hit in his first at bat, a single as a pinch-hitter in the ninth inning the other night as the Nats lost 14-1, sort of a microcosm of the season for them. But that will be a night Baker will remember forever, no matter how his major league career turns out in future. 

And that will be his biggest baseball memory for the time being, because his father insists his night in the spotlight in 2002 is something the young man "doesn't even remember. He's reminded of it constantly, but he doesn't remember. That's quite a story.  At the time, it seemed kind of funny or embarrassing or whatever, but in the full circle of life, maybe it was supposed to happen."

And isn't that what life is, a lot of full circle moments?   

2024

The Honour of your presents

One of the things I have always wanted to do was to maintain a running list of things I have always wanted to do.

And I have not started the list, but one of the items was always going to be a list of things I have not heard of before. 

That's based on George Carlin's line about sentences no one ever said, e.g. "Hand me that piano" or "Please saw my legs off."

Add this to the list: People getting married are asking their guests to pay their way to attend the wedding.

And I don't mean the price of your ticket and lodging at the Gilligan Islands resort hotel to see Elinore and Trevor tie the knot, I mean they want you to pay for your dinner at the reception at the gala shindig at Les Bouffons. And bring a gift.

File this under unmitigated gall, but don't mention that to Hassan Ahmed from Houston. He's 23 and he wants his guests to shell out $450 each for a seat at his wedding next year.  As of now, he hasn't heard from many of the 125 stunned friends who got the bill in the mail, but he's already $100,000 deep in this affair, having plunked down loot for the venue, the DJ and the photographer.

Ahmed is surprised that the money isn't pouring in, since his friends "have paid a lot more than $450 on Beyoncé or Chris Brown tickets."

That wedding planning website called The Knot asked 10,000 couples who got hitched here last year, and the average cost was $35,000 - up $5,000 from the year before.

Now I feel really chintzy, handing brides and grooms an electric can opener.

Over in London, Matthew Shaw, who runs Sauveur, another wedding planning company but with a French name, says selling tickets “introduces a strange relationship between you and your guests, turning your guests into customers.  You’re no longer hosting — you’re offering them a paid experience, which introduces a very different narrative in terms of what guests are expecting.”

What he's saying is, if you want The O'Hoolahans (Frank and Mildred) to plop down serious coin to attend your hitching, you'd better be certain that the prime rib is truly prime and the salad is crisp and studded with croutons like walnuts on a sundae, which they will also expect.

 

This year's winner was Oliver Closeoff

Congratulations! We have now arrived at a point in our civilization at which organizers of the annual Philly Naked Bike Ride saw fit to hold the event in August instead of September, because those chilly September winds threatened to freeze the WaWas off the riders.

So, they had the event in late August, and you don't have to be nekkid as a jaybird to participate. They had riders "in various states of undress" around the City of Brotherly Love, riding their Schwinns and getting cheered all over.

It's all for a good cause, promoting riding a bike as a key form of transportation and "fuel-conspicuous consumption." As an aside, it encourages body positivity, as people get as bare as they dare.

They even have folks riding skateboards and scooters and rollerblades - any form of "human-powered transportation” is fine.

I don't mean to brag, but in my fair city of Baltimore, people scooting around au naturel is not going to be a thing. You rent a bike to take part, and who knows where that seat has been?

 

 

Don't swallow this rumor

So there he was,  the guy once known as Chris Bridges and now he's Ludacris, once known as a rapper and know he's an actor as well as being a musical performer, and he dipped his water bottle into an Alaskan glacier and drank that water, and you would think he drank liquid fire or Dr Pepper or something.

He posted a video (of course he did) of himself guzzling that water and hollering. "Oh my God" and millions of Tik Tokers and Instagrammarians saw this action and immediately assumed he was drinking poison.

It wasn't all that long ago that we thought that the streams of our land flowed with crystal clear water. Beer companies sought to associate their product as being cans full of mountain spring water, plus hops, whatever they are. Movies and TV shows were filmed for years showing people with those blanket-wrapped canteens, filling up in an eddying whirlpool near a forest and then taking a long pull from the jug, before climbing back on their horse and telling him, "Kay, boy, let's hit the trail, Many a mile between here and Wichita."

And you know the horse was thinking, couldn't you just drive, instead of me toting your asterisk all over the west?

Back to Ludacris. Glacier experts from the University of Alaska in Fairbanks (which is precisely where I would expect to find them) said this commotion online is, well, "ludicrous.”

Glaciologist Martin Truffer said, "He’s totally fine.”

“It’s sort of understandable that somebody would be concerned about just drinking untreated water, but if you drink water from a melt stream on a glacier, that’s about the cleanest water you’ll ever get.”

 

Ludacris was in Alaska to perform at the State Fair, and to quaff some tasty water at the same time. Walking this Knik Glacier, some 40 miles north of Anchorage, was on his bucket list.

“I’m a water snob,” he said later. “It was the best tasting water I’ve ever had in my life.”

He only says that because, it would appear, he has never tasted the ambrosia we all know as Baltimore Tap Water. Ours comes from Loch Raven Reservoir and is filtered at the Montebello Water Filtration Plant to get all the fish waste and McWrappers out.

So here's an invitation, Ludacris. Come to BMore and drink like we do!

Labor Day 2024

 a

Unless you thought that the Labor Day holiday, the eight-hour day, and health and safety benefits were the result of the beneficence of the wagemasters...

Frederick Douglass (1818 - 1895)  “is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more, I notice.”

 - a president of the United States, 2017

Sunday Rerun: On Further Review

Do they even still sell Baby Ruth candy bars? I know they sold a ton of them when I was a bicycle riding, Coke swigging, candy bar munching ball of energy. I was not for the Baby Ruths at all. I liked the Snickers and the Mars bars so much, I invested some stray dollars in a nougat mine out West, but it didn't pay off. The miners didn't take the right kind of drill with them.

But the name of the Baby Ruth candy bar was always questioned. Most people just assumed that the candy company ripped off the name of the Baltimore-born Yankee slugger Babe Ruth, whose popularity zoomed in the early 1920s.

At that same time, the Curtiss Candy Company in Chicago had a treat called the Kandy Kake that wasn't selling so well, so they changed the recipe to a chocolate-covered peanut-caramel-nougat bar and changed the name to Baby Ruth. 

And within five years, Curtiss was selling a million dollars worth a month, a nickel a throw. The money was coming in so fast that the company hired airplane pilots to fly around dropping thousands of Baby Ruth bars from their planes, with little parachutes to guide them to earth and the waiting hands of hoi polloi.

Back in New York, Babe Ruth noticed all this commerce and decided he wanted a slice of the candy, so he put out a bar called "Ruth's Home Run Candy." The Curtiss people said hold on a second here: our lawyers can spot copyright infringement a thousand miles away, and anyway, our candy bar is not named for you, but for President Grover Cleveland's oldest daughter, Ruth.

And that would have been much more believable had not Baby Ruth Cleveland been born in 1891, thirty years before the candy bar. Not only that: Baby Ruth was not even alive anymore; she died of diphtheria in 1904.

So it would seem that claiming they named the candy bar after a baby born three decades before was stretching the truth a little. Stretching is ok... if you're a Bonomo's Turkish Taffy. 

And that taffy has nothing to with the nation of Turkey whatsoever.

Maybe I'll switch to Clark Bars and claim to have invented them!  

 

The Saturday Picture Show, August 31, 2024

Only 116 days until we all get to be the Charlie Browniest we can be!

It looks like this sign has been telling people where to go for some time now.

This is the Clinton Gulch Dam Reservoir, built in Colorado in 1977 because some people looked around and said, "This would be a pretty nice place to store our drinking water."

If you have to ask that that pedal is to the left of the brake, you can't drive this '57 Chevy with a manual 3-on-the-tree transmission (but I could teach you!) What's that little button on the floor, huh?

This is the Shot Tower in Baltimore, where molten lead took a vertical trip down 215 feet to become shot for rifles. Built in 1828, this was, at the time, the tallest building in the United States. It's in downtown Baltimore on E. Fayette St, close to Little Italy.

I don't think people use sundials anymore, but if the awning here is at the right angle, you could use the shadows to tell the time.

They do not mess around in Australia. So you cut down some trees to improve your view from the sunroom? Fine. The government will impair your view with a nice sign until the vegetation returns as before. FAFO!

There's an extra kick in my step this week because "Only Murders In The Building" is back for season 4. Every time I think they couldn't keep up the quality, they always do. Selena Gomez, Steve Martin, and Martin Short, left to right. 

An interesting life, this. He was known as Cory Wells, one of three lead singers for Three Dog Night. They alternated leads among Cory, Danny Hutton, and Chuck Negron. You remember Cory's sweet soulful voice from "Try A Little Tenderness," "Eli's Coming," "Mama Told Me Not To Come," "Never Been To Spain," "Shambala," "Let Me Serenade You," and "Play Something Sweet (Brickyard Blues)." But his story as a member of one of the biggest bands of the early 70's rarely mentions that he led an abstemious life forever, never touching drugs or alcohol at all (the other members of 3DN cannot say that). While they were coming in at 4 AM from a night of carousing, Cory was getting up to go fishing! He loved fishing so much that he wrote articles about it for field and range magazines, but no one connected the writer to the singer, because he wrote them under his real name: Emil Lewandowski. He passed from blood cancer in 2015, but what a story!

I'll bet this house is in Pennsylvania, where the custom was to have two front doors on a house: one for regular in and out traffic, and one leading to the parlor, for when the preacher came a-calling. This house gives me a homey feeling.

That shirtin' feeling

So, what do you do with your old shirts?

Speaking for myself, I wear them until they vanish. I once gave a few of my old T-shirts to the kids in the neighborhood who wore them around as beach coverups, too.

But - if you are friends with someone who you feel is destined to become a baseball legend, and that person offers you his soiled, game-worn jersey, hang on to that garment. Here's why:

You've heard of Babe Ruth, the baseball player from the streets of Baltimore, right? And probably, you have heard of his "called shot" in the 1932 World Series.

Ruth's Yankees were playing the Chicago Cubs in that "fall classic," and he was receiving maybe even more than his usual hoots and catcalls from the Windy City crowd. According to the legend of Ruth, he stopped for a moment to make sure all eyes were on him during game 3, as the shrieking reached a crescendo. It was then that Babe took a step out of the batter's box, and with his Ruthian bat, which was a whale of a war club at 35 ¾ inches and weighing approximately 38 ounces, he pointed to the deep center field stands without a word.

Then, he stepped back into the box and hit the next pitch right where he had pointed. Instant legend! Another chapter in the Book of Ruth.

Ruth, an expert shirtmaker himself (a trade he learned at the St. Mary's Industrial School for Boys, having been shipped off there after a judge found him "incorrigible and vicious...beyond the control" of his parents) later gave the jersey he wore on that historic day to one of his golfing buddies, who really should have told his descendants to hang onto it!

Because...that "New York" uniform jersey sold this past weekend at auction for a sweet $24.1 million, making it the most expensive piece of sports memorabilia ever.

These Yankee fans have deep pockets! The previous record was the $12.6 million someone shelled out for a Mickey Mantle baseball card, and you can't even put that on and wear it around.

Well, you could, but there would be trouble.

 

Way Out There

Is there a cure for claustrophobia?

I mean, getting stuck in a small room is bad enough, but when that small room is also known as the International Space Station Boeing Starliner, and you've been on it since early June, and your eight-day mission is now going to run until February... Yikes!

SpaceX will bring them home. Their Boeing space machine is..."having problems," says NASA.

Above all, the return trip for astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams must be safe. 

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said this over the weekend: “Spaceflight is risky — even at its safest and even at its most routine — and a test flight, by nature, is neither safe nor routine, and so the decision to keep Butch and Suni aboard the International Space Station and bring the Boeing Starliner home uncrewed is a result of a commitment to safety,” 

This Starliner program, sending people rocketing around who-knows-where, was supposed to be a big deal for Boeing. They have been chasing Elon Musk's SpaceX company, but Starliner is more than $1.5 billion over their budget, and years behind their schedule.

But the eight-day trip is oddly reminiscent of the inane plot of TV's Gilligan's Island, where some people went off on a "three-hour tour," only to find themselves stuck on an island and having to live with Jim Backus and company. That had to be tough, even on Jim Backus!

That was make-believe, and it passed for high comedy in the 1960s, when merry mixups of that sort were considered amusing. This is real life! Wilmore and Williams will miss the baseball playoffs and World Series, college and professional football, the presidential election, Labor Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, New Year's Eve, and the fall TV season, which will undoubtedly feature shows with plots about two people stuck in a space capsule, eating freeze-dried Thanksgiving dinners and watching their shoes float in air.

Meanwhile, W&W will hitchhike home on a SpaceX launch (Crew-9) that will be delivering crew members to the Space Station. The Starliner will return to home base empty after dropping off the two stranded flyers.

I have an idea for what they can do while waiting for the X to bring them home (in time for Valentine's Day, we hope). They can get a small piece of paper and write down all the reasons one would ever have for wanting to go explore outer space when they haven't seen everything on Earth yet!

 

 

For the kids

It hasn't been that great a season for the Seattle Mariners. They seem to be stuck in second place in the American League West division, trailing the cheating Houston Astros. Ownership seems to have grown tired of their manager, Scott Servais, to the point of inviting him to watch the rest of this season's games from the comfort of his home.  They didn't even bother to call him and let him know they had tied a can to him; he heard it as a news bulletin on the radio. I hope he wasn't shaving at the time.

But it hasn't been all doom and gloom for the Mariners in 2024. Earlier in the season, outfielder Mitch Haniger gave off a positive vibe, reminding one and all what mattered after all.

Haniger came up with a great idea for something for the kids at Seattle Children’s Hospital. Instead of the kids lining up for autographed baseball cards from baseball players, Haniger showed up with a bunch of players who wanted autographs from the kids.

He called it a ‘reversed signing’ and the kids got to feel like the stars for the players. They had a nice turnout, too, from what I hear.

 

Even the Mariner Moose mascot took time out from his busy schedule to join the fun.

And the Seattle Children's Hospital posted their thanks online:

Thank you Mitch Haniger for hosting Seattle Children's patient families for a reverse card signing event. We appreciate @Topps for creating one of a kind trading cards for our kids. Shout out to @MarinerMoose, Cal Raleigh, JP Crawford, George Kirby, Dylan Moore, Luke Raley, Justin Turner and Cade Marlowe for joining in on the fun!

Haniger, at 33, is batting .211 this season, so this has not been the most successful season he's had, but what's a batting average when a man does something so far above the average?

Lock it up

When I was in high school, I was advised that I should never stop learning.

So, this spring, decades - and I mean decades later -  I found myself in the hallowed halls of dear old alma mater Towson High School, and I learned something!

I learned that students there do not use lockers anymore! 

I was really surprised, but then, the reasons my ears heard while my mouth hung agape made sense.

They don't have that many textbooks at all; learning material is on laptops and learning platforms (online books). 

They use backpacks to carry what they need, including water bottles and snacks, so they don't have bag lunches to stash.

Some schools stopped using lockers during COVID to keep bunches of kids from congregating in the hallways. 

Have you noticed this, too: back in the Pleistocene Era, we wore overcoats and heavy parks, with scarves and gloves, during wintertime. Now, no matter if the temperature is down around the teens, the teens are wearing a hoodie, maybe even shorts. 

Conclusion: kids are tougher today, more resilient in the face of cold weather, and they don't need lockers to store all that gear. 

Guess I would need another place to hide the stashes I stashed in lockers back in the day.

Time, she do march on. But I can still tell you the combination to my old Master padlock: 16-36-24!

 

Cool to be kind

 "No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted."  - Aesop

Parents, when your kids get home from school these new days of the school year, be sure to ask them about their accomplishments, who their teachers are, what they look forward to in their various classes, how their friends' summers went, all the usual.

And then, please remember to ask them this simple question: Did you make someone feel better today?

There are so many people with so many things dragging them down, and not everyone jumps out of bed looking forward to their day like we lucky people do.

But it doesn't cost a penny to look around the classroom or the cafeteria or gym and find someone who looks lonesome, and offer that person the hand of friendship.

I can't imagine what it would feel like to be the "new boy," just moved in from Keokuk or someplace. But if you can encourage your child to be cool to the new kid, to say an inspiring word to the one who seems a little lost, to show someone how to get around...your child just may be the one who unlocks a heart of gold.

And then others might follow your kid, and before you know it, it's anarchy, all over the place, kindness and goodness spreading like syrup on a waffle!

"You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one."  - John Lennon

Sunday Rerun (from 2019): The wrong right leg

 The widow of the late U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings, Maya Rockeymoore Cummings, made the decision to have a double mastectomy last week. This was called a "preventive" surgery; she did not have breast cancer, but her mother died from that disease and her sister was recently diagnosed with it, so her decision to have her breasts removed to prevent the disease is one that many women around the world are making.  I wish her the best and acknowledge what a tough personal medical decision this must have been.

HowEVER...the grammar guy in me barked when a local television anchor referred to this as "preventable" surgery. She meant to say "preventive" surgery.

And that leads us down another wormhole, because there exists a debate among people much smarter than I as to whether it's acceptable to say "preventative" instead of "preventive." I say, save a syllable, and call it preventive, but don't call it "preventable."

When I researched this, I found out something even more interesting. 

Did you know there is a topic, one which most medical people would prefer not to talk about with you, known as Wrong Site Surgery?  These mistakes involve:

• surgery performed on the wrong part of the body (e.g. left knee instead of right knee)
• wrong surgery performed on the right part of the body
• right surgery performed on the wrong patient

I've gone under the knife a total of three times, and the last two, the surgeons about to slice into me (back and knee) took marking pens to draw arrows on me pointing exactly to where the surgery was to take place.  Since I was not going to be conscious when the cuttin' was happening, this left me in a peaceful state as I dropped off with the anesthesia.

I had to trust them to do the proper surgery, and they did, and as to whether I was the proper person on whom to operate, I guess they read the stylish ID bracelet that the hospital stuck on me.

We like to think that the people we entrust with our medical care are wise and well-trained and careful, but things happen.  That's why a lot of people give up practicing medicine and become lawyers.

The Saturday Picture Show, August 24, 2024

 

In 1925, all vehicular and pedestrian traffic came to a halt in New York City for a mama cat and her little bitty baby.

Gotta be some sort of record: This sunflower reached 13 feet in height this sunny summer!

I don't know what you do for a living, but there are people whose work involves getting Mariah Carey ready to sing her Christmas song, and they are already on the job!

The Tide is rolling again! Classes (and football practice) are underway at the U of Alabama.

Ina Garten and I want to share our secret for the best bacon ever: Cook it in the oven and sprinkle brown sugar over it first!

This picture looks like it could have been taken last week, but it actually dates back to 1907! It shows a Thai woman posing in a Panung, their national costume.

Almost time for my favorite color!

Remember those "If you can draw this lumberjack, you might be on your way to big bucks as a commercial illustrator" ads? Here's how to practice by drawing Snoopy.

We have now lived in our house for 25 years, and yet, when I want to turn on a light upstairs or outside or in the foyer, I need a chart to tell me which switch switches which light. My idea of printing little labels is still under consideration.

For all of us who have an occasional lack of self-confidence, I share this little soliloquy from John Candy as Del Griffith in "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles." The message lives on: once you get to the point of liking yourself, it doesn't matter who else does.