The Saturday Picture Show, February 28, 2026

Teachers and others who deal with adolescents: we now know that it was Johnny Carson and James Stewart who started this 6-7 craze a long time ago. And they don't care!

You have seen the fabled ivy walls of Chicago's Wrigley Field, home of the Cubs. This winter, they were doing maintenance on the brickwork, so the ivy was carefully removed and stored in a special greenhouse of sorts. Let's hope it's back for opening day!

Consider the work, the dedication, and the basic athletic talent that led Alysa Liu to be the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympic women's figure skating gold medalist. And remain a very cool person as well! 

I have long been in favor of lengthy prison terms for anyone who does anything untoward to a library book. You dog-ear a book or write in it, you're off to the Ironbar Hilton for sixty days, wise guy!

I hope this officer charges this galoot with everything in and off the books, including the 1864 Crédit Mobilier scandal. Way to go, pal.

Honey! I think the milk expires on Monday, but don't ask which Monday. 

They usually cover up the zipper after they finish the brick part, but here is a secret construction secret.

Today's free wallpaper is a close-up view of a glass marble.

Why go all the way to Callahan Auto Parts for the right door latch for the Oldsmobile? Take the knob off the shed door and don't tell anyone!

An ambulance and a school bus got married and here's their first baby!
 

Ferris Wheeler's Day Off

Up in Phoenixville, Pa., where they are proud to have been named (by Travel & Leisure) as the best small town in America last year, they are hoping to celebrate 2026 by bringing a big deal back to town.

It's the Phoenix Wheel, the oldest amusement wheel in existence, which thrilled 'em by the hundreds from 1895 to 1988 in Asbury Park, N. J.  It's coming back to where it was crafted way back when, but don't get too excited about going for a spin up in the air, because it's coming back as a still statue, brightly illuminated for the boys from the local high schools, who will be sure to climb up there.

78' high and 68' feet wide, the wheel is being reassembled now, rising from the junkpile right in the center of Phoenixville. They hope to have it back together next spring at a newly-cleared plot of land adjacent to the Township Building and the French Creek Trail.

Plenty of parking for the High School High Climbers

“The Phoenix Wheel's revival is more than just restoring an artifact,” said Barbara Cohen, President of the Schuylkill River Heritage Commission, a non-profit museum that "celebrates the industrial legacy of Phoenixville and the Schuylkill River." 

“It’s about community, heritage, resilience, and the power of preserving Phoenixville’s unique history for future generations," Ms Cohen concluded. 

It's a two-million dollar project, and I can't wait to see the first "Class of '27" graffiti adorn it. 

Count 'em!

 Who enjoys rolling up a sleeve on a freezing Tuesday morning so that someone can stick a needle in it and suck blood out of a vein? 

I don’t mind it. It's for a physical,  so they need the juice. And the people at the Quest lab are remarkably friendly at what some consider an awful hour ( 7 AM) and in no time at all, I'll be tuckering down to a great breakfast as soon as I cook it.

On my way out, two ladies were sitting in the waiting room, so I chatted with them. I'm an irrepressible chatterbox. And one of them said to me, as I donned my hoodie (Alabama)  and cap (Orioles), "Have a blessed day!"

Well, ma'am, thank you for that! I am fortunate to be blessed. I look at my life and I can't help but be grateful for all my blessings! I have love (the greatest and most patient wife, friends and family), health (thanks in part to a tremendous squad of doctors and my own stubbornness), a marvelous house (come see our new front door latch, expertly installed by Easter Lock & Key!) and all the happiness this old heart can hold.

And laughter. What a blessing that is. Did you hear the one about the old man and his blog?

Things Change

If you remember watching the Baltimore-centric movie "Diner," you'll recall a scene in which Kevin Bacon is drunk and rambunctious, lying amid the outdoor crèche scene at a church.  That church, in the middle of a very nice neighborhood in Towson, is known as First and St. Stephen’s Church, and according to Céilí Doyle in the Banner newspaper, the church building, its land and stone parsonage have all been sold to a man from the neighborhood for $1.1 million.

The congregation now numbers just 20 people. Church attendance is way down in this country.  Twenty years ago, 42% of American adults attended religious services on the regular. Ten years ago, that number was 38%. Today, it's 30%.

I'm not about to list all the reasons for the decline, but it's fair to state that if more adults felt services were relevant to their lives, they would be there. Not to drag Yogi Berra into this blog for a second time this week, but as he said about baseball attendance, "If people don't want to come, how are you gonna stop them?"

No. I'm not here to discuss church attendance. But what's happening here in an affluent community with First and St. Stephen’s must be happening in hundreds of churches, temples and mosques around the country.

Instead of it being a religious issue, it becomes a matter of commercial real estate. There are churches around that have become taverns, libraries, senior centers and what-have-you. Faced with a dwindling membership, First and St. Stephen's sold out to Steve McIntire, whose plan for the property involves selling off the parsonage as a private home, and turning the church into a community or recreation center. 

The church building, with the parsonage in the far left

There's a preschool downstairs, which will continue to operate. Stacking on a few more leases, as McIntire puts it, will leave the building reconfigured but still serving the community.

As Emily Perl, president of the church’s governing body, says, “As a church we have to morph and change, and that’s what we’re doing.”

People change, the nature of the building will change, but it will still continue to serve the public in a meaningful way.

And who knows? Someday, some people might want to turn it into a church again!

What the shell

For my money, and there isn't much of it, you can keep your raw kale and your sauteed blowfish and your coriander-honey pomegranates. I have always felt that the best snack is right in a shell, and now we know that this simple little treat can  supercharge blood flow in our brains. You might have guessed, that's a vital function that gets a bit weaker as we get older, which must be happening to me, since almost all of my mail and email seems to be about moving to some Seniorville where life is a pleasant dream of companionship, fine chow, and round-the-clock health care.

And speaking of, the treat I mention here is good for your memory and also for your heart health, so the ticker will keep ticking fine.

Here's the dealio: Researchers at Maastricht University in the Netherlands took (not forcefully, I hope) 31 healthy adults ages 60 to 75 - just a bunch of kids! - and got them to eat just over two ounces of unsalted, skin-roasted peanuts every day for 16 weeks.

Blood tests at the onset, halfway mark, and finish line of the trial showed "a significant improvement in brain vascular responsiveness, or the ability of their blood vessels to widen and constrict to regulate blood flow."

And after the 16 weeks, participants’ global cerebral blood flow (CBF) was up by 3.6%.

“CBF is an important physiological marker of brain vascular function and refers to the amount of blood that flows through the brain, delivering oxygen and nutrients that are essential for maintaining brain health,” Dr. Peter Joris, the study’s author, said in a statement. 

(Wouldn't it be great if Dr Joris's nickname were "Peter Pan"?)

So eat your peanuts every day and make friends with an elephant! Don't forget.

Sacred Grounds

Toward the end of his legendary playing career with the Yankees, Yogi Berra got up from behind the plate and played left field, to save his knees from all the squatting a catcher has to do. 

And so it was that Yogi was in left for the Yankees in game 7 of the 1960 World Series, and it was his sad task to watch the winning home run in the bottom of the ninth inning sail over his head and into the history books. That leadoff homer was hit by Pittsburgh Pirate third baseman Bill Mazeroski, who died last week at 89.

They saved a portion of the outfield wall in Pittsburgh as a memorial to that 1960 team. It's not in the original location where Forbes Field once stood, rather, it has stood, restored and placed on the Riverwalk outside of PNC Park since 2009 to honor that 1960 championship.

If those bricks could talk

I'm all for celebrating the past like this. Sparks Elementary School in northern Baltimore County burned down in 1995 (irony noted) and the school board kept the old threshold in place, even though the school was rebuilt several miles away on Belfast Rd.

The County also kept historic old entrances intact at Martin Boulevard Elementary School and Essex Elementary down on the east side after big fires. I can't say for sure if those entryways are intact; I don't get down that way anymore, to be honest. Someone will know!

And, on the site of the old Memorial Stadium in Baltimore, the YMCA has offices and a multipurpose athletic field on the sacred ground once trod by Johnny Unitas and Brooks Robinson. In fact, home plate there is the exact location as the old ballpark had it.

I think it's very cool when we can honor the past without paving it over. 

 

Sunday Rerun: The Hand That Rocks

 You won't believe this (or at least you won't want to believe it) but there is a preacher, to wit, a Bishop, named Edir Macedo who says that "daughters should not be allowed to seek out higher education because if they do they will be smarter than their husbands."

Oh yes he did!

Bishop Macedo is with the very well-known Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, and he unwisely continued to speak, explaining that it's his belief that he didn't want his daughters to attend college because he believes that "an educated woman cannot have a happy marriage."

I'm sure that by this time, someone much wiser than he was begging him to call it a day or a night or a career, but he droned on, saying that higher education is not for women because they supposed to “serve God” and not themselves:

"When they (his daughters) went out, I said they would just go to high school and they wouldn’t go to college. My wife supported me, but the relatives found it absurd. Why don’t you go to college? Because if you graduate from a particular profession, you will serve yourself, you will work for yourself. But I don’t want that, you came to serve God."

And there's more:

"Because if … she was a doctor and had a high degree of knowledge and found a boy who had a low degree of knowledge, he would not be the head, she would be the head. And if it were the head, it would not serve God’s will."

"I want my daughters to marry a male. A man who has to be head. They have to be head. Because if they are not head their marriage is doomed to failure."

SO, The Bish says that only by submitting to man can a woman find happiness.

AND he's not alone in this.

There is a "Christian" radio host Jesse Lee Peterson who says that you won't find good wives and/or mothers among the educated.

He sayeth:

"Women, God has given you the gift of being the assistant of the man, to watch over his children, to make sure things are well at home, to be there when the kids come home, to cook, clean, provide in that way. There is no greater job for a woman than that. And I don’t know why these men would marry these women if they don’t have that mindset. It’s like being married to another man. It’s selfishness, it’s not love."

"Men, you need to come back to your proper state of being so God can give you the right kind of woman to marry. I wouldn’t recommend you marry these educated women with these degrees; they don’t make for good wives and mothers."

Ever see a woman do this? No.  And you won't.

Owing to a rare outburst of common sense, I have chosen to let these men speak for themselves here. They feel that uneducated women make the best spouses, and urge men seeking female mates to look for one unschooled.

They don't want men to get involved with women smarter than themselves.

But if they listen to this mindless blather, they aren't going to find anyone as foolish as they are.

Most men have all they can do to be as smart as they were yesterday, and most women are smarter than tomorrow already.