Sunday rerun: Not Taylor Swift!

 Zac Taylor is the coach of the Cincinnati Bengals football team. I'm sure I'm not the only football fan who wonders if he were named for the 12th president of the United States, and if the coach avoids cold milk and cherries.

What, now? President Zachary Taylor (1784 - 1850) spent his final Fourth of July on the land in Washington DC where the Washington Monument was to be built. He had only served 16 months at the time. Remember, sanitation and hygiene were primitive in those days, and maybe it would have been better if he had not gobbled a lot of cherries and cold milk on that scorching hot day.

Cholera, the killer disease borne by bacteria, was not uncommon at all in the 19th century, especially in hot weather in areas of poor sewage systems. What it was that caused the president to become ill is still in doubt. Perhaps it was cholera, perhaps gastroenteritis from all those acidic cherries mixed with milk. It might even have been food poisoning or typhoid fever that felled Taylor, a Mexican War hero, but his last four days were full of sickness (cramping, diarrhea, nausea and dehydration) and an agonizing death that his doctors attributed to cholera morbus, a bacterial infection of the small intestine.

Zachary Taylor

Millard Fillmore succeeded Taylor as president, and we can assume that he avoided dangerous foods. He was unable to secure his Whig party's nomination to run for president in 1852. His wife caught a cold at the 1853 inauguration of Franklin Pierce, who won that election, and died of pneumonia soon thereafter...and his only daughter died of cholera in 1854.

I'll have a happier story for you on Monday. Until then, watch what you eat! 

The Saturday Picture Show, Semiquincentennial Edition, July 4, 2026

 

We remember 1976, the Bicentennial, and how Baltimore's Inner Harbor was packed with people to see the tall ships. Four years later, Harborplace opened, and for years, every weekend down there was packed like 1976. But that shopping destination has fallen, the way all malls are either closing or tottering on the brink thereof. An interesting future awaits. We're doing a July 4-themed picture show this week.

Out in far Western Maryland, boaters float on Deep Creek Lake for the holiday.

Even in the smallest towns across the nation, banners fly and hopes soar.

We are under a heat dome these days, so uniforms like these, snazzy as they may be, are hazardous to the marchers. Stay cool and hydrated.

And for the love of Pete, if you insist on being around fireworks, leave it to the professionals. This house being destroyed would still be standing, except that someone thought they knew what they were doing with bottle rockets.

We love baseball, hot dogs, and deep fried apple pie, just like Mom used to deep fry.  McDonald's is bringing these back for a limited time, just because we missed them.

Here you go, the way it should be.  A neighborhood display at the park, with professionals lighting the way.

This is not what it seems to be! This is a roast beef sundae, with mashed taters and gravy!

Back in the days of reading newspaper, I was often hollered at for reading a paper and then reaching into the Kelvinator, leaving black fingerprints from the printer's ink. 250 years later, we still don't know who left prints on this early hand copy of the Declaration of Independence.

It's still a grand old flag.

"I need a love to keep me happy" - Keith Richards

When it comes to happiness, Sonja Lyubomirsky will be glad to tell you how to find it and keep it. After all, she is a distinguished professor of psychology at the University of California at Riverside, and she's been at this chase for 30 years now, studying happiness and how to keep it around.

Pro tip from Dr Lyubormirsky - it ain't easy!

She says it's one thing to know the basics, such as maintaining connections with other humans, staying exercised, meditating, but knowing how to fit it all into your life while you're working, shopping for food, taking the Dodge to the dealer for new tires...it's a lot.

Connecting with people, exercising regularly, meditating — all of these research-backed strategies to improve health and happiness take effort. Like many of us, said it’s challenging to fit it all in.

Like so many in her line, Lyubomirsky wrote a book for you to read, called “The How of Happiness.” 

Here's how!

• Exercise every day, even if only for a half a minute. It's invigorating.  
• Reach out to people, literally. Being social makes us happier.
• Go beyond small talk. Lyubomirsky says, “So many of us are really hesitant to share ourselves and it just seems scary." Learn to be honest and vulnerable when sharing your thoughts.
• Practice spirituality, because people who identify as religious are happier, according to research.
• Breathe deeply. Breathing exercises can calm us down. And in times of anxiety, consciously slowing our breathing will take our body to a more physiologically relaxed place. 
• List the good things. She says you don't have to maintain a formal gratitude journal, but just keeping a running list of good things coming your way on your phone or pc is a benefit.

So what I'm going to do, is start my list with Professor Lyubomirsky's list!

 

"Mahomes, party of two"

What was rumored since last summer is happening - your English teacher is marrying your gym teacher: Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are going to tie the knot!

With my luck, our invitation will arrive next week. Our mail is notoriously slow and misguided, so if Travis and Taylor sent us a wedding invite, it might not be here in time.

The whole barn dance will take place at the Madison Square Garden up New York Way, apparently on Friday into the yawning on Saturday, and you know the rules are strict for us guests: dress to impress, black tie, no cellphones (they will be confiscated at the door, just like the schools are going to do this year).

I have a black tie left over from my uniform. It's nice, a polyester clip-on, and with a bottle of ReNuzIt, I can probably get most of the stains out in time.

Trav 'n' Tay took out a permit for between 500 - 999 people, and some mighty big names are on the roster: George Kittle, Andy Reid, Graham Norton, Suki Waterhouse*, Ed Sheeran, Zoë Kravitz, Jack Antonoff, and Stevie Nicks.

Kittle told some magazine that Trav laid down the law: absolutely no gifts. You're telling me they don't need a toaster oven or an iron or an Oster Osterizer!? Everybody needs something! Big reader that he probably is, Travis could use a Barnes & Noble gift card, and what bride doesn't want a one-year supply of Rice-A-Roni, the San Francisco Treat?

I'll tell you everything, soon as I can!

* Who, now?

We're havin' a heat wave....

It always amazes me when weather events that every Ava, Steve, and Abigail have talked about for days on end take some people by surprise.

"I didn't hear anything about severe thunderstorms/a blizzard/a long intense heat wave!" they holler. They can tell you what happened on "Let's All Eat!" or whatever else they see on the Food Channel, but the weather, nah.

So, just so's you know...there will be a big heat wave for this upcoming Fourth of July weekend in the mid-Atlantic area. Temperatures will be dangerously high, and don't even ask about the humidity!

It's a heat dome - the fancy name for a hot air mass - that's been headed eastward for a week or so. It's traveling eastbound on I-70 and I-81, stopped at Waffle House and Buc-ees, and will be here unpacking its sweaty luggage starting today!

The heat index, driven mad by humidity, might scorch out at 115.

 

 

Read and heed! Take precautions, take ice, take breaks, take off for the beach!

"Tatsu tori ato wo nigosazu."

 "Tatsu tori ato wo nigosazu" is how they say it in Japanese. That's how they say, "Return it the way you find it." 

Literally, it translates to, "A bird leaves nothing behind," which is true unless you've had to visit a dry cleaner after a pigeon flew overhead.

Americans are neat in a lot of ways...we obediently dump our trash in fast food places. But why do we leave public parks and stadiums looking like that space was just declared a landfill? 

There's a nice system of parks here in my beloved Baltimore County, and yet, most every Monday morning, you'll see Facebook posts about how some slobs picnicking at one of them left chicken boxes and burger wrappers and soda cups and I don't know what-all else on the ground, tables, and parking lot when they left.

So how come Japanese soccer fans clean up everything when their games are over? It happens after every match, and here is how Scott North, professor of sociology at Osaka University, explains it: "Cleaning up after football matches is an extension of basic behaviours that are taught in school, where the children clean their school classrooms and hallways.

"With constant reminders throughout childhood, these behaviours become habits for much of the population."

He added: "In addition to their heightened consciousness of the need to be clean and to recycle, cleaning up at events like the World Cup is a way Japanese fans demonstrate pride in their way of life."

As a longtime sufferer of SIN (soccer-induced narcolepsy) I would be inclined to help them, even before the game ended. 

You have a meeting with the Bobs

 Female plebes (first-year students) at the United States Naval Academy must now have their hair cut to chin length.

Women arriving at USNA in Annapolis last week who did not have their hair in a "bob" cut had to report to a processing station to get a regulation haircut to begin their "plebe summer," the seven-week orientation and initiation process.

Male students have their heads shaved.

This was the rule for women at Annapolis from 1976 (the first year women were admitted) until 2019, when sensible people sought to create a more inclusive atmosphere and follow the Navy's standards for differences in hair texture.

US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who likes to call himself the Secretary of War since he's so tough, came up with this change on the grounds that "efforts to promote diversity make the armed forces weaker."

In being this hard-headed, Hegseth aligns himself with former Maryland Governor Bob "Bob" Ehrlich, who used to go around saying "multiculturalism is bunk." 

It would be good for the Bobs and the Petes to remember that there are different kinds of people in this crazy old world.