Sparks

By now you have heard the story: a couple of Californians had a gender reveal party. It's the thing now. But instead of slicing into a blue or pink cake or tossing out colored confetti, they took the reveal device into a field of dry four-foot tall grasses and let it go. If they had planned to set a gigantic fire, they could not have chosen better conditions: the day featured triple-digit temperatures, low humidity, dry vegetation and a stiff breeze.

They had their other children along, and someone with a cell phone to record the event (a video which will be played in courtrooms soon). The fire started at once, of course, and spread "like wildfire" as the couple ran back to their vehicle to get water bottles to try to put it out. The fire in the San Bernardino National Forest was labeled the El Dorado Fire. Beside the loss of property and destruction of the land, the awful, awful thing is that a firefighter was killed while working at the scene, the U.S. Forest Service said in a statement.

Capt. Bennet Milloy of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said, "You can’t fight a fire like this with a water bottle. They had no chance after it started. It’s a pretty tragic situation. Obviously this was supposed to be a happy event.”

I'm not writing this to decry the use of pyrotechnics at gender reveal parties; of course I am opposed to such a practice, but my opposition and yours won't mean a thing to the gozzleheads who do these things without a second thought.

That's my issue. The second thought. I wonder. How does it feel to be the couple who, through their own sheer selfish indifference, caused this ineffable agony? Do they spend the rest of their lives in penitence and sorrow? Will they feel awful pangs every time they think of the day they told the world that their as yet unborn child is a whatever gender, and in so doing, despoiled nature of thousands of acres of beauty, and, incalculably worse, deprived the world of a human being who had friends and family and a future with them? 

The officials in California saw the couple, as yet unidentified, has been forthcoming and cooperative. They may face charges up to manslaughter; all that is being determined by prosecutors.

I don't know how anyone can live with that sort of grief and guilt. I know what their attorneys will say in court, if it gets that far. "My clients, in an attempt to bring a little joy into the world, and share their glee over the impending birth of their young one, made a simple error of judgement..."

And you wanna know the crazy thing? That is true. No one is about to say they intended for this to be the outcome. 

But, as many people wiser than I have said before, it's the result that matters. 

I hope this couple gets the counseling they will need to deal with the guilt. I don't see that incarcerating them will serve a useful purpose. Others will keep up this stupid game of Light My Fire until it goes out of style. Perhaps these two can speak out in public about the dangers of sparking fires in tinderbox conditions.

Perhaps someone will listen.

Fish Story

Here in Baltimore, we have the great National Aquarium, the huge fishtank downtown that visitors enjoy. It costs a pretty penny to get in the place, but I guess if the people who run it start to run out of money, they can always a float a loan.

There is an aquarium down south - the North Carolina Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores -  and although I assume there is an admission charge to get in there, they also have a large waterfall that many folks use as a wishing well, tossing in coins in hopes of finding true love, hitting the lottery, getting hired for a better job, you know the drill...

They've been closed for six months because of you-know-what, and someone came up with the idea to drain the waterfall and see how many quarters, halves, nickels, dimes and slugs were down at the bottom.  Why not? With the national coin shortage and with no income coming in, it made sense.

They dredged up about 100 gallons of coins, and by the time they run all that metal through the coin counter down at the Food4Less, they'll have some operating loot to keep going a while. The money "...will go toward the general care of the aquarium and animals during this time," the aquarium said in a Facebook post last week.

Myself, I toss pocket change into a peanut butter jar and turn it in at the credit union to get money to buy more peanut butter, but I can't even dream up how much 100 gallons of jingly money comes out to.

They're taking guesses on their Facebook page, and meanwhile, while still closed to humans, the aquarium has virtual events, behind-the-scenes tours and animal encounters. All while keeping the facility up and running and taking care for the fishies and other inhabitants.

So, I hope they find it all adds to several million simoleons!

YourTube

In case you missed it sneaking up on us, October will be here on Thursday, and that means two of the greatest days of the year will be here soon...November 1 is the end of the dreaded Daylight Savings Time, and the day before, October 31, is Halloween.

I've been fretting about whether there will be trick-and/or-treating this year. What with the pandemic and all, I'm wondering what will be done for all the little ghouls who want to lurk about in their Stephen Miller masks.  And Miller himself, that little demon with the spray-on hair! What will he do on the spookiest night of the year?

It will be up to each neighborhood to decide what to do, how to hand out the Goobers and Raisinets. There should be costume parties where kids can vie for the honor of having the most realistic Dr Fauci getup!

Here is proof that we aren't the only ones noodling over the topic. Andrew Beattie from Cincinnati, along with his 6-year-old daughter, developed a very simple Snickers Delivery System.  All you need is to find the mailing tube you put down in the basement 17 years ago, knowing it would come in handy, and then spruce it up til it looks like a Cincinnati Bengals uniform, attach it to the porch railing and get ready to slide the Smarties right on down to the waiting hobs and goblins!

And, as Mr Beattie says, "This is something that the kids will enjoy and not think of it as I'm doing this to prevent disease,” Beattie says. “They are doing it to have a good time."

Holidays and fun times are going to be really different for a while, but that doesn't mean we can't still have fun.

Sunday Rerun: Another Brilliant Idea

 OK. A tiger, a lemur, two macaws, and an African fennec fox walk into a high school prom.

That's not the setup for a joke. It's what happened at the prom for Christopher Columbus High School, a private high school in Miami. It's such a ritzy school that they held the prom at the swank Double Tree by Hilton out by Miami International Airport! Imagine swimming in such elegance, or at least dancing in it.

For reasons I will never understand, the people who run CCHS thought it would be a helluva great idea to have these animals on display as high school kids did the Stank Legg. These children spent 12 years in school in order to be taught as a final lesson that it's ok to put jungle beasts in small cages, drag them into a noisy room and flash bright lights all around them.

And, just as you'd think, after Friday's prom comes Monday's half-fast apology from Principal David Pugh:

"Upon reflection, we regret the decision to have live animals at our prom. This decision in no way reflects the Marist values, teachings of the Catholic Church and/or the accomplishments of our young and that of our distinguished alumni."

"Upon reflection" is current American English for "I did not use my brain before, but I sure am using it now!"

I also hope that Pugh never taught anyone how to use words effectively. IKEA assembly manuals are better written than his word salad.

The school just about tripped over itself in putting out a statement that, in effect, said, "Don't look at US! We got these critters from facilities  licensed by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission."

"The tiger, which was displayed for a few minutes in a cage, was never harmed or in danger, was not forced to perform, was always accompanied by his handlers, and for the great majority of the time was laying down in a relaxed state, facing away from the audience," the earlier school statement said.


Ron Magill of Zoo Miami doesn't quite agree.

"This tiger's not celebrating. This tiger's not having a party," Magill said to ABC News. "This tiger is being stressed out."

Magill said he "didn't know what they were thinking."

"It's not even walking," Magill said. "It's going back and forth, back and forth; its tail is slashing back and forth; its ears are going into helicopter mode -- all signs of distress."

(I can add that, as someone who is owned by two cats 1/25th the size of these jungle kitties, that tail flying back and forth and perked-up ears mean you are doing something to displease a cat and will soon wish you had not.)

Mari-Chris Castellanos, sister of a guy who goes to the all-boys private school, said on Facebook that  the tiger "was used as an exotic amusement for the mindless teenagers who were present."

Arranged by mindless adults and supplied by more of the same.

Listen, I am not the most stalwart of animal advocates, but I am against humiliation and subjugation of any animal, no matter how many legs they have.  Dragging a caged animal into a noisy banquet hall is not a good idea, to me.

Letting the tiger out of his cage, now that would make for a great prom.

The Saturday Picture Show, September 26, 2020

 

I love fall colors so much, I thought I'd treat us to them twice today. This first one takes some looking up.

Not sure how many of you recognize this fella - he's PacMan's grandfather.

In the season finale of nighttime soap opera "Dallas" in 1986, Bobby Ewing returned from the dead, since he had never been really dead, but still needed a shower. In 1999, "Family Guy" dragged him out and soaped him up again, but this time, when Pam told him it was all a dream she saw on "Family Guy," all Bobby could say were the three most memorable words of December 1999, as we all careered toward who-knew-what in Y2K. He said, "What's Family Guy?"

This building at Ellis Island in New York Harbor is now part of a museum of American Immigration. When this picture was taken, the building was abandoned, prior to refurbishment. But you have to wonder how many came here, saw the Statue of Liberty, and set about making their new life in a new land that very day.

This is the Fearless Girl statue on Wall Street, recently redecorated to salute our beloved fearless Justice Ginsburg.

Young people today might find it odd to even dream that there were men who drove around the neighborhood in the olden days, leaving milk and butter and eggs and cheese on your porch.

Old Corvettes are always a popular attraction at antique car fests. I always laugh to think of the old show "Route 66," in which Martin Milner, along with George Maharis or Glenn Corbett, roamed from town to town across America, finding odd jobs and romance before hopping back in the car, bound for the next burg, and more romance and adventure. What amused me was the thought that with a car like that, they hardly had room to pack more than a toothbrush and comb, and yet every week they were all togged out in all sorts of attire. 

Still lake, mirror image. Happy Fall!

Marshmallow out

I'm going to report this story to you straight, with no editorial comments about how little I care for Peeps, those marshmallow candies so prized by so many who like marshmallow. I do like to keep some on hand, just in case I am dealing with a hole or gouge in the drywall. Peeps make excellent replacement spackle!

The dreadful little things (that's the last one, I promise!) are made by the good people over at Just Born Quality Confections, and they are saying that you won't find Halloween Peeps this year, and don't look for them at Christmastime either!

Pumpkins, ghosts and monsters are all the usual starting lineup for Halloween Peeps, and I guess Christmas peeps look like little trees and gingerbread people, but they're all officially on break until 2021.

And if you're one of those cheapskates whose idea of a nice Valentine's Day gift is a dozen Valentine Peeps, guess what, fella? You're SOL too (Short On Luck).

Just Born is up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and they knocked off all candy production in April due to the you-know-what. They did it to protect the health and safety of their employees during the pandemic.

They made some upgrades to their plant and reopened in May, but that still put them behind in production and stock.

"This situation resulted in us having to make the difficult decision to forego production of our seasonal candies for Halloween, Christmas and Valentine's Day in order to focus on meeting the expected overwhelming demand for Peeps for next Easter season, as well as our everyday candies," according to a company statement.

Of course! Peeps that look like yellow chicks are the big deal during Easter season, so they are throwing all their eggs in that basket, so to speak, and cranking out Peeps at a rate of roughly 2 billion a year.

Oh, by the way, no luck for your Halloween and Christmas Hot Tamales and Mike and Ike fruit candies.

I don't like them either, in case you were heading out to do some shopping today. Peanut M & Ms, Almond Joy, Snickers, and Peppermint Patties, now you're talking.

Resort town says "Stay Away"

Imagine what it takes for the mayor of a beach resort town to ask people to stay away from the seaside this weekend, but that's what's happening in Ocean City, MD right now, because of a "social media event" in which hundreds of carheads will descend on the town to drive their cars, park their cars, do funny things in the public roads with their cars, and generally annoy people with their cars.

Mayor Rick Meehan of Ocean City, Maryland, says attendees of this annual unwanted car rally cause problems by terrorizing the town.

Meehan figures the exhilarated accelerators will be screeching their way into town even now, ahead of the weekend. He worries that people won't be safe and he's put in place strict rules with tough punishments for scofflaws.

Meanwhile, local residents and people who unfortunately chose this weekend for a nice little seaside getaway will get to enjoy lots of noise, traffic delays, and crowds. Businesses are being told to sign up to have police keep an eye on their property, especially after hours.

They call this event H2Oi (I guess for the ocean water) and last year, one of the Phi Beta Kappa candidates racing around out of control hit bystanders on the street. Very nice gathering.

This year, there are new rules allowing the police to write more expensive tickets and impound cars under Maryland's new "Special Event Zone" law. With other agencies lending support to Ocean City's relatively small police force, there will be some 200 police on duty at all times all weekend long. Last year, 1,400 tickets were issued to violators, and odds are that figure will be eclipsed this weekend.

“Due to the pop-up car rally, this upcoming weekend is not going to be a typical fall weekend at the beach,” said Mayor Meehan. “We encourage our residents to avoid traveling on Coastal Highway if possible, as traffic is going to be unusually heavy. In addition, we urge our visitors seeking a family-friendly experience to plan a visit to Ocean City for another weekend. We pride ourselves on being a coastal community that everyone can enjoy year-round, but unfortunately, we are asking everyone to please exercise caution before deciding to visit Ocean City this weekend.”

The mayor added that some bars and restaurants are shuttering their doors, rather than deal with all this commotion, thus losing out on more revenue during a horrible year for business.

And all this is due to these gearheads. Let me say this: all my life, I have looked at cars and trucks as vehicles, useful for getting from one place to another and hauling a load of whatever from A to B. I buy reliable cars and pay people to maintain them so I can reasonably expect that they will a) start  b) stop and c) haul home a case of seltzer.

All this aside, I fully understand that some people are into their cars like I'm into reading, writing, listening to music and baking cornbread. And that's perfectly oke with me. Hunky dory. You want to spend the day in the garage waxing your Willys, go right ahead! Gapping the spark plugs for your Suzuki? Have at it! Putting tires on your Tesla? Good for you! Changing the oil in the Oldsmobile? Be my guest.

BUT - your love of cars and driving them in a flamboyant, illegal manner on the public highway is where we come in conflict. Unless you would be ok with me shutting down a road so I could put my desk out in the open air, or moving my oven into your living room so I could turn out a batch of cornbread, you don't get to close the roads for your hobby.

I urge all who wish to behave like this to buy a very large piece of land and pave over it, and you and your friends can do burnouts and wheelies and modify your cambers to your hearts' content.

Sound fair? 

Bottoms Up

This summer, we saw Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms on the news quite a bit. There was unrest in her city and grumpy governor Kemp of Georgia got all up in her business when she required all within the city limits of ATL to wear masks during a virulent virus outbreak and Kemp ruled that no mayor had the right to do so, even though other cities in GA had similar rules and Kemp pretended he didn't know that. As it turned out, Kemp threw out his own dumb rule, making himself look quite the fool.

I have been impressed with her handling of major issues in her town but it came as a whole shock to me when I was listening to the 60s on 6 channel and heard them play the classic Major Lance song from 1962, "The Monkey Time" (#8 Billboard in 1962.) DJ Dave Hoeffel mentioned that Major's daughter Keisha was the mayor of Atlanta, and I hereby forgive all my friends in ATL who kept this vital information from me.

To be fair, some of those friends are way too young to remember Major Lance and his two hits. His other Top Ten Hit, "Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um," was #5 Billboard in 1963. Major Lance grew up in Chicago, hanging around with future stars Jerry Butler and Curtis Mayfield of The Impressions. Mayfield wrote both of Major's hits. Their style of music was called "Northern Soul," and it became very popular in England, so much so that when his records weren't selling here in America, Major moved to England in the late 60s, backed up on tour by a band called Bluesology, whose piano player was a fellow named Reg Dwight.

After returning to America, Major Lance did not know success or peace; he wound up in prison for four years for cocaine possession and distribution, and also lost his sight due to glaucoma. He died in 1994 at age 55, just after daughter Keisha's law school graduation and just before her marriage.

About the funeral, she says, "a group of “eccentric-looking white men” attended Major's service, and Bottoms didn’t realize that one of them was Elton John until he left.

For the record, Elton John was Reg Dwight until he changed his name. I love how the story hangs together in the end!

 

Up Euphemism Creek

  I'm a big fan of Chris Elliott (we have our annual convention in a very tiny room) so I watched the "Schitt's Creek" show when it started out. Back in those days, it was on the beloved TV Guide Channel, which then became Pop TV when people realized that most of us figured The TV Guide Channel was something that showed what time the King of Queens rerun came on.

I liked the show, the whole fish-out-of-familiar water premise, and the trademark Chris Elliott snark went well with the goofiness of the Levys père et fils. I lost the show somehow, heard that Chris had left, and somehow managed to go on with my life without "Schitt's Creek."

I've heard that it was on Netflix now and very popular, and I thought it was nice to hear the other night that the show, and the actors on it, won every Emmy award for this year. 

And then came the morning TV shows, when all the network people shied away from naming the show. On the Today Show, Hoda Kotb grumbled mildly that she was not allowed to say the name of the big winner because NBC only allows them to say "that word" once.

In a nation where the president spews indelicate profanities with the zest of a longshoreman, in a world where any sort of language can be heard on the playgrounds and radio shows and classrooms, it seems to be almost quaint to see Hoda and Savannah with their knickers in a spin over a homophone for poop.

Please don't Bowdlerize my news! 

I can hear you saying, "I would never Bowdlerize your news," but that's a term derived from a Dr Thomas Bowdler (1754 - 1825) an English physician of whom it can be truly said that he was born in a town called Box, near Bath, and is buried in a place called Oystermouth.

And oh yes, he found it necessary to produce expurgated versions of great books written by others. He removed all the words that might make one giggle or blush from fine literature written by that naughty Mr Shakespeare, and others, and for his inane efforts he will be remembered with the word "bowdlerize," meaning to "remove 'offensive' material from the writings of others, rendering the work less meaningful."

Another person whose name became a verb was Horace Fletcher, a 19th century man who, with no background in medicine or physiology whatsoever, proclaimed that we should chew every bit of food 32 times ("one for every tooth"). Fletcher became known as the "Great Masticator" and to this day, chewing your food 32 times is called "fletcherizing" it.

I hope I gave you something to chew on.

Drawing attention

In my long-ago high school days, the joint was so packed with us baby boomers that the administration had to stagger dismissal times. One fleet of us left on school buses and then, when another yellow flotilla of wheeled chariots arrived, more kids got to leave.  

But to avoid having everyone and his/her brother mobbing the halls at the time of first dismissal, only students bearing the coveted "first bus" card could leave their 7th period class. All the rest had to sit around in the time-honored desultory fashion of teenagers everywhere, staring at the bulletin boards.

Most of us who rode the early buses pasted the "first bus" card to the front of their notebooks, to be shown on demand to hypervigilant teachers. I had one, although I rarely rode the bus home.

I was in a hurry to get to Smetana's Delly at York Rd & Burke Av so I could have a cold cut sub and chips and spend some time in the company of lazy Towson State students, before moving along to Read's Drugstore for ice cream, before hitchhiking home to dinner. All while weighing 140 lbs.

But our Spanish teacher, the late Jorge Ordóñez, was hypervigilant about being hypervigilant. One day he proudly told us that he had caught some kid who had gotten some paper the same color as the bus passes, and hand-lettered a fakeroo. Remember, this was long before the days of color xerography and technology.

So impressed was Sr. Ordóñez that he said he decided to encourage the young forger's efforts by requiring him to make 25 more of the fakes, which he then tore up.  Lesson learned, 60's style. I have no idea how long it took to make all those bogus bus passes but it was more than a while.

Which brings us to Kentucky 2020, where a hapless motorist found himself short on the price of a license tag for his beater. So he made his own, with Sharpie and a few hours of work!

The unidentified motorist gets extra points from me for making the 290 JCC characters look faded and worn.  But it was something else that drew the attention of eagle-eyed law enforcement down in Old Kaintuck.

He forgot to add a drawn-on registration sticker up in the corner!

All this took place in bucolic Millersburg, about 100 miles east of Lousville. Officers pulled him over for lacking the sticker, and then found out this loser had no insurance and was driving on a suspended license.

Once he's free to cross state lines, he should drive up here and I would take him to Smetana's for a cold cut sub, chips, and a Coke, except they tore Smetana's down to build a damn Starbucks.

Sunday Rerun: As the nosy landlady said, "I heard a roomer"

When my father reached his dotage, he was still holding up pretty well for someone well into his 80s.

But one thing that went afoul for him was his hearing.  He used to say that he could no longer hear high-pitched, annoying sounds, like the little hourly chirp on his digital watch, and the phone ringing, and being called to do something when all he wanted to do was read his newspaper.

He made hearing loss a gain! Who wants to be disturbed by shrieks, human or otherwise?

And now comes news of a woman named Chen over in sunny China. She has a hearing disorder that is making her the envy of women all over the world: she can no longer hear men’s voices.

Forbes reports that she woke up one day and just couldn't hear her boyfriend speak.

There is a name for this, and I see lots of you looking it up right now. Google "reverse slope hearing loss" and find out that it means she can't hear low frequencies, such as male voices, and the sound of  – which includes the average male voice, Forbes reports.

“She was able to hear me when I spoke to her, but when a young male patient walked in, she couldn’t hear him at all,” said Chen's doctor, Lin Xiaoqing.

It can be a genetic thing, just as if your parents didn't have any children, you can't either. But doctors who know stuff tell us that reverse slope hearing loss could also come from stress and not getting enough sleep.  And being stressed over not getting enough sleep.

Chen has been told that her condition is temporary and she should recover fully. She knows that because a female doctor told her so.

I'm notifying my HMO that a large contingent of female patients will soon descend upon their physicians' offices, complaining of not hearing a word their husbands are yakking.

The Saturday Picture Show, September 19, 2020

 

This is the work of an artist who calls himself Seth Globepainter. You know, the Harlem Globetrotters played basketball in 124 countries and territories worldwide, and Seth wants to cover the earth in as much of his art as he can, so he is planning to do wall murals everywhere. He uses "Globe" in his nickname because creates his wall works all over the world. Very interesting work, to use the wall of an old brick building as your canvas.

It's popular in England to build these curved brick walls. They call them "crinkle crankle," or "serpentine" garden walls. Yes, it's pleasing and pretty, but guess what else? This masonry uses fewer bricks than a straight wall, because the curving form gives stability, allowing the mason to use just one layer of bricks. A straight wall with one layer and no buttressing would tumble down faster than Humpty Dumpty could call for help. 

Townhouses in Baltimore are known for having painted screens like this. It all began in 1913, when a Czech immigrant grocer named William Oktavec daubed paint on his screen door - from the inside! Soon, everyone and his brother wanted their door, window, or transom screen painted up, so a tradition was born.

It's not just that it's amazing that these critters can build their honeycomb, it's how uniform every cell is!

You know I kid; I'm a kidder. But this resident of the warm parts of the Atlanic Ocean is colloquially known as the Chocolate Chip Sea Cucumber. I'm not kidding. I looked it up! Its formal name is Isostichopus badionotus, and please file it away in your holiday card mailing list as a member of the family Stichopodidae. 

I guess they still sell these make-your-own pizza kits, complete with flour and yeast and a stingy can of sauce. There are better ways, trust me.

Stuart Little's third cousin is El Ratoncito Pérez or Ratón Pérez (Perez the Mouse) and he is the Spanish and Hispanic American version of the tooth fairy. Notice his tiny mask. He knows more than some humans do.

Rows and rows and lots of different colored tulips in Voorhout, Holland. 

Paper View

Besides being the name of the second-most overused computer font in the world (running close behind the annoying Comic Sans), Papyrus was what they used in Egypt many years ago because they couldn't borrow notepaper from the people at the next desk.  There is a plant called Papyrus, and Egyptians extracted the pith from that plant and sliced it thin, let it dry, and they had something on which to write a grocery list.  You couldn't call it paper, per se, but it did well enough until someone invented paper as we know it today.

The first type of paper used in America was made of old cotton and linen rags, but you can see how that was not going to work for long, since most people wear their tee shirts until someone throws them out, or the dryer tears them to bits. We needed a more efficient source of paper for Ben Franklin to print his Almanack. People considered silk (too expensive) and bamboo (too heavy), but it wasn't until a Frenchman named René-Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur went for a nature walk one day, as Frenchmen will.

Standing out there in the woods, watching the wasps chew paper and mix it with saliva to produce a substance from which to build nests, old Ferchault de Réaumur was heard exclaiming to no one in particular, "¿ Où ai-je laissé mon déjeuner?" ("Where did I leave my lunch?")

And as he gnawed on his Pastrami on Rye, he said, "¡Ces guêpes ont la bonne idée!" ("These wasps have the right idea!")

But no one heard him. He was alone in that forest, in more ways than one.

Eventually, after several hundred thousand false attempts at getting enough wasps to make paper for us, we decided that getting stung a dozen times just to have enough paper to send a love note to the new girl in Geometry was not going to cut it, and we invented giant machines to chew trees and make paper for us.

You really can't blame wasps for being mad at people who swat at them with a rolled up newspaper. I mean, after all...

Speaking of paper, a designer and artist named Wolfram Kampffmeyer makes animals out of paper.  He calls it creative taxidermy, and no animals need lose their lives in the process!

This last one is for baseball fans in Detroit, and football fans in Cincinnati and Louisiana.

Sticky Situation

One thing I miss about work (and it might be the only thing, beside the hearty camaraderie of my happy coworkers as we spent days deep down in the salt mines) is the time-honored ritual in which someone comes back from a week's vacation, slightly sunburned, a little worn out, reeking of Sea & Ski sun lotion, and bearing either some Fisher's caramel popcorn or some salt water taffy. Enough for everyone in the office to share, including that summer intern who had to be reminded to wash his hands before sticking a grubby paw into the goods.  

When the talk turned to salt water taffy, someone would always pass around the old stories about how the gooey treat got its name. It's one of those candies you only see by the seashore, after all, so the ocean water seems naturally to be a part of the recipe.

Truth to tell, they might as well have whomped up the first batch in Keokuk or Kankakee, for all the salt water it contains. Sure, there is salt in there, and water too, but not scooped out of the ocean, no no. Today's taffy is made primarily from corn syrup, glycerin and butter, with flavorings as needed.

When you go to buy your taffy, you get to see the "pulling" process, in which the mixed ingredients are pulled and stretched and aerated. That addition of air makes it lighter and chewier. This process was developed by a candy man from Atlantic City, New Jersey, by the name of Enoch James. He also figured out a vital part of the saltwater taffy appeal: he made it less sticky, so that it was easier to peel off the wax paper from the taffy itself, which comes in little patties or little links the size of your pinky.

Oh! As to the apocryphal stories about where they got the "salt water" taffy name, one has it that some underassistant candy cook was told to get a bucket of water and add it to the ingredients, and out of either ignorance or indolence (that deadly combination) he just went down to the surf and added some ocean aqua.

That account would miss the fact that the factory sink had to be closer than the ocean, unless we're to believe that the young man just wanted to get his feet wet awhile.

And the other tale is just as big a whopper. In that version, the candy guy made his candy but left it in an open tub, and overnight there was a super high tide and the ocean washed into the store and everything got wet but the taffy still tasted as good, if not better, so why not?

If you're going down the ocean, don't forget me, please! 

Right on cue

The Baltimore Orioles baseball team has had some surprises for us fans this year, both on the field, where they have been better than anyone expected them to be, and in the broadcast booths for radio and TV, where they have all sorts of new people calling the games for us.

Ben McDonald, who pitched very well for the O's for a few seasons in the 90s, is one of the announcers on the TV side, and he talked about the difficulty for a catcher to pick up a hot bunt that has "English" on it, spinning as it bobs around in the dirt and grass in front of home plate.

Because I have lots of time to Googulate these things, I am now prepared to report on my findings. I didn't even have to go anywhere!

We're familiar with pool, the game that developed from billiards. If you've ever seen "The Music Man" (and I think you should!) you know that the protagonist, "Professor" Harold Hill, engenders fear among the humble villagers of River City by foreshadowing the evil represented by a pool table being brought into the genteel billiard parlor. 

He sings (or more properly, raps): 

But just as I say

It takes judgment, brains, and maturity to score

In a balkline game

I say that any boob can take

And shove a ball in a pocket!

A balkline game, I found out, is a sort of billiards where the object is to have the ball carom off the side of the table and then do something other than go into a hole, as in pool. I don't see the difference, but what matters is, one of the tricks of billiards is to make the ball spin around by hitting it in a certain manner by hitting it off center.  And when pool players ("poolers"?  "poolists"?) use this trick, they called it "putting English on the ball" because they called billiards the English game.

OK, so I hope that clears it up for all of us. You know what, in baseball, when your teammate encourages you to throw the ball a little harder, they say, "Put some mustard on it!"  And that could be confusing. 

"Put a little French's mustard on it so the batter won't be able to put much English on it!"

Keep On Truckin'

Just as Baltimore has our own town band, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, New York has the NY Philharmonic as their own orchestra.  Their president is also a violinist, Deborah Borda by name. Since the pandemic, she says, "Our musicians, their life is making music. They have been completely cut off from being able to give their gift to people."

Has anyone ever noticed that when you have a problem, it's very often a woman who comes up with a solution?  Ms Borda came up with a winner.

As you've heard, New York was for a time the epicenter of the coronavirus in the US. In the six months since the dreaded virus came ashore here, more than 23,000 New Yorkers lost their lives from it. And since the spring, many of the city's restaurants, businesses, museums, and offices have been shuttered.

That includes Lincoln Center, where the Philharmonic played, but has not played since March. Ms Bonda came up with the idea for a bandwagon. She rented a Ford pickup, rigged up a sound system, rounded up staff and some musicians, and they tour the Big Apple's five boroughs, playing music where the people are, while the people can't come to where the music is.

"It's a little rough and ready," she admitted. "That's just typical New York."
'Forget everything and do what we do.''

This is a totally casual operation. They don't even announce where they will be parkin' and playin', so that the crowd size will stay low and social distancing, high.  They only play for 15 minutes tops, to keep the crowds down.

"This is a way that we can connect with people," said Cynthia Phelps, the Philharmonic's principal violist. "It allows us to forget everything and do what we do."

"It gives us hope," violinist Yulia Ziskel said.

"We haven't played together since March," said cellist Sumire Kudo.

Recently, Anthony Roth Costanzo, noted countertenor with the Metropolitan Opera, grabbed a mic and joined the band in bed...uh, the bed of the truck...and gave the classical music version of "All right, Schenectady! Lemme hear you say yeah!"

"We're so excited to find you here in Brooklyn Bridge Park!" was what he said.

Three players performed a serenade in C major by Hungarian composer Ernst von Dohnányi, and then segued right into what Costanzo introduced as "the saddest aria"-- Henry Purcell's "Dido's Lament."

It's an appropriate song for that city, for our nation, for the world. Costanzo sang, "Remember me but forget my fate. Remember me but forget my fate."

"Those are powerful words," Costanzo said to the audience when the aria ended. "They stick in my head."


Borda also says that during the quick concerts, volunteers from the League of Woman Voters are signing people up to vote in the upcoming election.

The truck will make three stops a day on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, and will eventually get to perform in all five boroughs.
"This is something we'll keep doing for a while," Ms Borda said.

Again: problem, woman, solution.

Locked up

My birthday isn't coming up for a while (if ever) but here's a great idea for that Lincolnphile in your life:

UPI reports "A lock of Abraham Lincoln's hair wrapped in a telegram stained with the 16th president's blood is up for auction online."

An auction house called RR Auction, up in Boston, is peddling the lock of hair and the stained telegram, and they figure to get about $75,000 for it.

Anyone who paid attention in History can tell you, Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth (the first in a long line of three-named assassins) at Ford's Theatre in Washington, April, 1865.  Soldiers carried the poor man across the street to the Petersen family boarding house, where his dying body was laid diagonally on a bed, awaiting the end.

And as the postmortem examination was conducted, someone said, "Hey! Hand me the scissors, so's I can snip off a couple of inches of his hair!"

In death there is no dignity. But there will be no snipping around my recumbent form, if death should ever overtake me, or those responsible will be plagued with everything I can throw down on them.

Anyway.  Dr. Lyman Beecher Todd, a cousin of Lincoln's widow, Mary Todd Lincoln, and great-grandfather of Abigail Beecher, scooped up the lock of hair and wrapped it in a telegram he had received the day before. It was fortunate for him that he had the telegram, as ZipLoc bags were not invented until 1968.

The message said "All goes well but you are missed," and that had to be the eeriest harbinger since Keith Moon sat down in a chair stenciled 'NOT TO BE TAKEN AWAY' three weeks before he died and was, indeed, taken away.

If you want to buy the hair and telegram, be aware that bidding closed September 12. I wonder where Moon's chair ever wound up.

Sunday Rerun: It's The Berries

I am always in search of superlatives. Tell me something or someone is the best or the tallest or the tastiest, and I'm right there with you, wanting to know more. 

And if Casey Stengel, a man who once doffed his cap at home plate to allow a bird to fly away off his head, says someone is the strangest man ever to play baseball, that man automatically enters my Hall of Heroes.

Stengel said that about Moe Berg, the polymath who played a almost a decade and a half in the major leagues, but never took it too seriously.  What the backup catcher took seriously was learning, and he did that in 12 languages, reading books and newspapers by the ton.  

I can hardly imagine how happy he would be to be alive today, what with the internet serving a torrent of information with the stroke of a few keys! Plus, he would be 115 years of age, so he'd have that going for him.

But today I don't want to write about his baseball exploits, or how he went on a tour of Japan in the 1930s to spread the love of baseball worldwide and wound up taking home movies of Japanese defense plants and munitions storage that wound up being used by US spy agencies in World War II, or that he parachuted into Yugoslavia as a spy, or that he did not speak to his brother, Dr Sam Berg M.D. for over 30 years, or that Moe trained as a lawyer and worked for several of the big firms in New York during baseball offseasons, but gave up the practice of law because he found it boring.

No, I want to give gardening advice, because one of my favorite stories in one of the books I've read about Moe, and there have been a few, came from The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg, written by Nicholas Dawidoff and published by Pantheon Books in 1994.

And in that book we learn that Moe's sister Ethel, who was a kindergarten teacher for many years and served as a trainer for new teachers, had the habit of roller skating through the halls of her school. And that she raised raspberries in her home garden, raspberries so tasty that she would regularly trade a quart of them for a meal at New York's finest restaurants, where the pastry chefs used them for their finest pies and tarts.

And that the secret to her great raspberries was that she lived a block away from a mounted police stable.

The Saturday Picture Show, September 12, 2020

They did not allow spectators at the Kentucky Derby this year, so maybe that's why this horse named Authentic broke bad during the presentation of the roses. He's headed for the Preakness here in Baltimore next. Get ready!

Some other guys tried to capture the prize for turning in a 240-lb tuna, but they were disqualified because he was a piano tuna.

You can like or dislike Kamala Harris as you see fit, but you can't argue with the wisdom of her choice of sneakers for the campaign trail. Out on the hustings, it's Converse Chuck Taylors for her - she has six pairs.

They're making these pre-fabricated houses in California now. If 46 square meters sounds a little small, how about 495.14 square feet? That sounds larger, at least.

Of course, no matter how tiny or immense your house is, the great outdoors is the same size for all of us.

300 years ago, people in Scotland made this perfectly-arched stone bridge.

However much "£3" is worth, I think you deserve a refund for this improperly-marked merchandise. But I can't stop thinking about your grandchildren studying 2020 in 20 years.

I don't know where this is, but this is a veterinarian's office where they have a comfort dog to comfort their patient dogs.