This picture happens to be from England, so it proves that the English are not the only ones who have a tough time with English.
The woman who posted it was all upset because she wanted balloons that spelled out H A P P Y B I R T H D A Y for her son, but she feels that a mistake was made: "They left out the D in birthDay, but they gave me an extra A...."
Who wants to give her a hand before young Cholmondley's birthday is totally ruined? Anyone? Anyone?
This year, the New York Mets have an interesting relief pitcher named Jefry (correct spelling) Yan. He shows some promise, and got off to a good start this summer, but people are paying attention to him because of his exuberance when he strikes a guy out. He does this whole "jump up - jump down" thing that is supposed to convey his elation, but in sports, that is considered bad form, because it shows the other guy up, and he will be looking to hit the next pitch he sees halfway to Cooperstown.
BUT seeing that surname Yan made me think of someone we haven't seen for a while. His name is Martin Yan, a chef by trade, and when cooking shows were all over PBS in the era of mauve furniture and shoulder pads for men and women, his was one you saw every day..."Yan Can Cook." His schtick was teaching you how to whip up his home-gourmet food - hot and sour soup, egg rolls, stir fry, egg foo young, and of course, my favorite Chinese food dirty joke item, beef and broccoli.
I don't remember if you could send away for his recipes or what. This was before the internet, so there had to be a way to get the details down, unless you were good at shorthand. He made it look simple enough, not to mention tasty, and along the way, he would throw in jokes along with the bean sprouts and mushrooms.
And when he was finished making the Moo Goo, he would hold the dish up and proudly say his closing line: "Yan can cook and so can you!"
Hello, PBS? Put me on with my sure-fire simple chow recipes. We can call it "Eaty Gourmet"!
Ah, for the days when we went to high school to learn enough things to go to college or get a job. Not any more, apparently. And this story brings me to another of the peevelets that keep me up during my nap, namely: why can't people have their coffee and their breakfast before they leave the house?
Dateline, BEAVER FALLS, New York, where a high school student ran afoul of a new policy on the first day of class at Beaver River Central School because she strolled into her first-period class with a cup of java in her hand.
Julie Kaputa, a senior at Beaver River (!) told WWNY News, “I walked in, I had my coffee with me. I got to my first-period class and my teacher said, ‘I’m either going to need you to dump that out or consume it on the spot or go down to the office.’”
Apparently, none of those options met with her approval, so she was given an in-school suspension for violating the school's outside food and drink rule, which was a new addition to the school's code of conduct.
I remember toting a brown bag lunch (roast beef sammy, some sort of heavily salted snack chips, and a Tastykake pie or cake) for years...for lunch. It never dawned on me that school was a place for a kaffeeklatsch.
And so the undercaffeinated young lady's mother got into it with the school, and doesn't believe the "code is valid" and the superintendent agreed and feels the August meeting at which the new code was promulgated was not sufficiently publicized and he's sorry and Julie is glad it's all worked out and through all of this, I see no mention of whether Julie went back to class or anything, and now I know why I grumble that high school students should be able to identify the Battle of Hastings and the Pythagorean theory and the difference between the words "versus" and "verse."
But first things first! Coffee for everyone, and then we'll look at your hypotenuse.
I haven't heard this lately, but people used to say, "Now that everyone knows about the trouble I'm in, I guess my name is mud!" when their reputation was besmirched.
I guess today's cool people say, "My reputation has been besmirched!" It's shorter, and quite to the point.
But there was really a man whose name was mud, and here is his story. You remember reading that John Wilkes Booth killed President Abraham Lincoln with his derringer pistol at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. in April, 1865, just as the Civil War was ending. Booth was a Confederacy fan.
The assassin made his getaway on horseback with a broken leg, by which I should make clear, Booth had the busted leg. The horse went on to win the fifth race at Laurel the next afternoon, after dropping Booth off at the Charles County home of Dr. Samuel Mudd.
Mudd's descendants, including Roger Mudd, the newsman on CBS, fought for years to clear Dr Sam's name, because it was he who set the fracture for Booth and allowed him to hide out in Waldorf, MD.
Booth took it on the lam and made it as far as a farm in Port Royal, Virginia, before being killed by a Union Army Sergeant, one Boston Corbett, whose troops had set fire to the barn in an effort to flush Booth out.
As the investigation went on, it was determined that Mudd had known Booth and had indeed offered help with the assassination of Lincoln, although it was never proven that he knew what was cooking that particular night. Nonetheless, he was tried by a military commission and convicted of conspiracy, and sent to the military prison on Fort Jefferson, a remote island 70 miles west of Key West.
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| Dr Mudd |
Two years later, an outbreak of yellow fever swept through the prison camp. One of the first to die was the prison doctor. Mudd rose to the challenge, using his medical skills to treat the afflicted and contain the epidemic. Responding to a petition signed by soldiers and officers at the fort, President Andrew Johnson granted Mudd a full and unconditional pardon, and Mudd returned to Charles County, still a convicted, but pardoned, man.
So, that explains that name thing. We still don't understand why people thought it was all right to own slaves, though.
Here is news from Willemstad, Curaçao. It's an island in the southern Caribbean Sea with a temperate climate (82°-88° year-round) and a location out of the standard hurricane path. It belongs to the Kingdom of the Netherlands as an autonomous, self-governing constituent country.
Speaking of which, a guy Baltimore remembers fondly for his skills at playing second base for the Orioles, Jonathan Schoop, got himself in Dutch down there. It's his home country, but last January, he was arrested after an investigation at his home turned up firearms, ammunition, cartridge casings and knives. He was locked up for a month at the time, and after his trial, he was sentenced on Friday to 30 months in prison with six months suspended.
And this is actually a lighter sentence than he might have received had the judge followed the prosecution's request for four years with eight months suspended. He also missed playing for the Kingdom of the Netherlands team in the World Baseball Classic in March, although his major league career in the US ended in 2023 with his release by the Detroit Tigers.
Now, you have to figure he knew the gun laws were strict in Curaçao, having grown up there. Why he felt the next to have an artillery handy is something he can ponder for the next 24 months.
I salute the island nation for taking steps to keep guns out. You're probably less likely to get shot to death in a place like that. Yes, the US homicide-by-gun rate is decreasing, probably because people can't afford the gas to go out and buy bullets, but it's still unacceptable to have people strutting around in any nation carrying weapons of mass destruction.
Let's contact old #6 in a couple of years and see how he feels about the proliferation of guns.
Two of my favorite Beatles, John Lennon and George Harrison, have gone on to their rewards, leaving my third favorite, Ringo Starr, and that guy with the eyebrows, Paul, I think is his name.
And as we all know, all four of the Fab Four came from working class backgrounds in Merrie Olde England. George came from such a family: his father, Harold, was a school bus driver; his mom, Louise, kept the home, raised four kids, and taught ballroom dance.
And I would think that a real Beatles fan would jump at the chance to do an Airbnb thing, and rent that house where George lived from ages 6 to 18, right? Here's the story...
The home where The Beatles rehearsed many times is at 25 Upton Green in Speke, which is a southeast suburb of Liverpool, England. It's what the British call a terrace house, and we call a rowhouse or a townhouse. George and his three siblings and their parents moved in in 1949, moving out in 1962 just as Beatlemania swept England and headed for our shores.
Another family bought the house from the Harrisons; they stayed for 50-some years, moving out in 2014. At that point, the new owners turned it into a rental for a while until 2021, when it went up for auction. A Beatle fan from New Hampshire, Ken Lambert, bought it then for £171,000, (about $223,000), having seen the listing from Omega Auctions calling the house a “truly unique opportunity to own the property where George spent his formative years and that played an important part in helping The Beatles flourish.”
Lambert, with help of a Liverpudlian local, has been ever since working on the place, getting it ready for company. He found furniture and wall treatments appropriate to the time of the fifties and early sixties, and posted photos and added furniture for the right feel. He studied old photographs and found period-appropriate furniture and wallpaper to help transport guests back in time. Of course, he brought in a record player and a stack of Beatles albums.
“I wanted to do it for myself, to play the guitar and play the Beatles in the room the Beatles played guitar,” Lambert tells the Herald. “That really is a cool thing for people to experience.”
While the childhood homes of Paul McCartney (THAT'S his name!) and John Lennon are maintained for preservation by the National Trust, a European conservation organization, Harrison’s house has not been given that treatment. I don't know why. But Mr Lambert is doing his part, opening the place for rental by fans on a pilgrimage.
And you can rent it for less than the price of a top beach resort! The erstwhile Harrison home is available for short-term rentals on Airbnb (£200, or $260, per night).
If you go, please share lots of pictures, and send me a postcard!
