Small world: Halloween rerun

 It's Halloween, so I have to reminisce about my old days running around the neighborhood dressed as a hobo with my bindle over my shoulder, tramping around collecting Bonomo's Turkish Taffy, and Chunky ("What a chunk o' chocolate!"). And always, always, the little milk carton went with us, collecting coins for UNICEF.

Having been established in 1946 in the wake of the worldwide devastation of World War II, UNICEF (the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund) was developed with the aim of "providing lifesaving health care, clean water, nutrition, education, and emergency relief to children and their families." Of course, people were only too happy to drop some coins in the cartons for those needy kids. It felt good!

I see that "Trick or Treat for UNICEF!" is still a thing, bit I honestly cannot remember the last time a kid came to our porch in their Halloween getup and asked for coins. But, they're still in business, doing good things, so that's good.

Now then. Since it's Halloween, it's a good time to remind everyone that it was
the lovely and talented actress Téa Leoni, star of stage, screen, and TV's "Madam Secretary," whose grandmother, Helenka Pantaleoni, co-founded UNICEF.  Téa's father, Anthony Pantaleoni, was once board chair of UNICEF USA, and the actress herself works for the charity as the third generation in her family to be involved.

Not only that...but guess who her great uncle was! Téa's mother, Emily Ann (née Patterson) was from Amarillo, Texas, and her uncle was the great actor Hank Patterson, known for playing roles in 192 different movie and TV productions, most notably Fred Ziffel on "Green Acres," the husband of Doris Ziffel and the "father" of Arnold Ziffel.

Arnold

It's a small world, and crazy. Someone ought to sell tickets.

Who's your Capy Daddy?

Listen, I know capybaras have been around since Héctor was a pup, but seriously, had you even heard of them until the past few years? We know they are the largest rodents in the world, and they’re cute as the dickens, and they spend so much time in water, the Catholic Church once classified them as fish, so people could have a nice Capyburger during Lent. I did not make that up!

So it's wonderful that we're now aware of the friendly critters from South America. What's more, other animals love them. You can Google videos and see them happily getting along with birds, sheep, horses, even crocodiles! You see people wearing capybara tshirts and caps, saluting them, and all around the world, they make people smile. 

And now, people in the Maryland/ Pennsylvania/ New Jersey area (known worldwide as the best part of the country) no longer need to travel thousands of miles to have a capybara experience. Two baby capys were born this week at the Cape May County Park & Zoo on the South Jersey shore...and more pups are on the way! The mothers are Buttercup, who presented the world the babies seen below, and Marigold, who is due any day now.

The proud papa in all this is Goomba, the zoo's "resident bachelor."

Does anyone else see this as a future reality show?

Dinosaurs who knew Dinah Shore

I know what your first thought will be, but remember, Jurassic Park didn't turn out so well. Think safety! But science, always on the lookout for something to look at, has found a perfectly preserved dinosaur egg and everyone is just over the moon about it!

Some surprised Argentinian scientists (that's a phrase I remember from a typing course in high school) found the egg on October 7. It's 70 million years old, according to the expiration date printed on the shell, and it is fossilized. The scientists call it "Mitch." 

The fossil is said not to like having fingers pointed at it.

Anyway, the "perfectly-preserved prehistoric relic" turned up near the Rio Negro in General Roca, Patagonia by a group from Argentina's Museum of Natural Sciences .

 "We've never seen anything like it, we've never seen an egg so well preserved," said one of the scientists on the expedition. Adding to the thrill, a well-preserved side of grits and sausage gravy, as yet untouched after all this time, was found next to the egg.

 

 As you have probably guessed, experts say the egg was laid by a member of the carnivorous bonapartenykus genus. As any paleontologist will tell you over and over again, that was a family of long-legged, bipedal dinosaurs that once roamed the Rio Negro Province in the late Cretaceous period.

There were also remains of some other reptiles and all sort of old mammals near the egg, so those in the know think they have stumbled on an oldtime nesting ground. 

Scientists also found the remains of other reptiles and ancient mammals near the egg, lending to the theory that the area could have been a nesting ground back in the day.

One particularly unpleasant-looking dinosaur skull was wearing a red baseball hat with the words MAKE PATAGONIA GREAT AGAIN.

New man in town

The unprepossessing man you see below is Craig Albernaz, the former associate manager with the Cleveland Guardians, who was just hired as manager of the Baltimore Orioles, who came into the 2025 season regarded as favorites to get to the World Series but are watching the series from their homes because the team fell way out of contention before the hydrangea even had a chance to bloom this spring.

The manager, Brandon Hyde, got his walking papers in mid-May, and was replaced by third-base coach Tony Mansolino, but Mansolino was only given the title of "interim manager."  In other words, don't hang up any pictures on the wall, pal. You're only here for a while.

With only a few exceptions, Albernaz inherits the same team that had such high prospects a year ago, and it will be his job to lead them to a higher finish in 2026.

 

“I am deeply honored and humbled to join the storied Baltimore Orioles organization,” is how Albernaz expressed his gladness at being chosen. “This is a tremendous honor, and I’m grateful to (president of Baseball Operations) Mike Elias and the entire Orioles team for entrusting me with the responsibility of leading this talented club.”

I won't go into all the details here; the Orioles finished in last place last year, even though they did better under Mansolino than were doing with Hyde in charge, the top brass still got out the broom and made sweeping changes.

Albernaz is highly regarded, so let's see. What I wanted to say here was, the minute the news came out that the new man was coming on board, Facebook and other social media went to town. I guess those sports talk radio shows suffered a drop in audience for a while, because all the guys (it's almost always guys) who call them to pontificate on the virtues of the squeeze bunt and why "pound for pound (whatever that means) Vladimir Guerrero, Jr. is the finest ballplayer of the day - truly a generational talent" put down the phones and started pounding on the keyboards.

They really say things like that, and they often end their soliloquy with "any way you slice it, it is what it is." 

People can't enjoy the game for the intrinsic value of enjoying it. Nosireee Bob, they have to weigh in with the considerable expertise they gained as backup catcher on the 9-10 Unlimited Tigers back in the day. Sometimes, I used to ask them how come, if they knew so much about sports strategy and game management, how come the Orioles weren't calling THEM with job offers? 

And the answer was usually that it is what it was, or something.

Good luck, Craig. Get to know the players and the Baltimore community, and we wish you many years of success here. If you need advice, just tune in to the 37 sports talk radio shows that dot our airwaves and podcast zones like seeds on a watermelon.

 

What's the attraction?

Over in New Zealand, a 13 year old boy is learning a serious lesson. 

Don't swallow magnets!

He says he bought from Temu (although that online retailer has yet to confirm that) “four linear chains of magnets” stuck together, made up of “approximately 80–100 5x2mm high-power (neodymium) magnets.”

They are not disclosing the name of this child, and the New Zealand Medical Journal did not say why on earth he swallowed up to 100 magnets. The journal did say that “accessibility to high-power magnets is a rising concern for our [pediatric] population, which may be due to the ability to purchase from online marketplaces at inexpensive prices.”

He ate the magnets, complained of abdominal pain four days later, and then wound up in the hospital for eight days after surgery that required his bowel to be cut in sections to get the magnets out.

And unlike the kids who swallow a quarter and pass two dimes and a nickel, the magnets stayed put because...get this...they were stuck together! And that ain't gonna pass.

Word is, this is one of those daggone TikTok games, a popular teen challenge for the easily-distracted. Way past my teens, I cannot envision any amount of peer pressure that would have led me to such foolishness, but if you know a kid who is easily suggestible, please get a hundred super-strong magnets and show them what they look like on top of each other and ask him (it's always a he) how he thinks that mess of earth metal is going to leave his colon:

Sunday rerun: The Devil You Say

 As opposed to how we see him on the Looney Tunes cartoons, the Tasmanian devil actually exists, and is a carnivorous marsupial of the family Dasyuridae.

You remember that family. They lived around the corner and they had that one kid who wouldn't come out of the house to play. He slept in the grocery cart while his mom shopped, and the other kids called him "Waffle Face."

With my basic knowledge of zoology, I know that carnivores are meat eaters, and marsupials are like kangaroos in that the mother totes them around in a pouch. And from my basic knowledge of theology, I can tell you with assurance that something named the devil is not something you want to be around.

This devil got his start in Australia, but couldn't get along with the neighbors and wound up on the island of Tasmania.

That's all we used to know about these creepy critters...their terrifying screams, their fierce way of chowing down on whatever they felt like...but now we know they GLOW in the DARK!

Researchers at Toledo Zoo in Ohio discovered that the Tas Devil lights up like a police car with a drunk driver ahead of it when exposed to ultraviolet light.

I must have cut Biology the day they talked about this, but it's called biofluorescence. Some organisms can absorb and re-emit blue light as other even more vibrant colors. Animals and others who can do this have proteins in their skin that soak up the sun and glow like Joseph's amazing dreamcoat.

Not so long ago, the zoo staff discovered that wombats and platypuses (platypi?) had the gift of glow, so they just had to put the devil under the glow light to check him out, and yes! He did.

A full report on just why people in a zoo were holding a UV light up to their animals is forthcoming, I'm sure.

Anyway, under the blue light, the Tasmanian Devil's snout, eyes, and inner ears turned blue.

In a previous experiment in an apple orchard near my childhood, I ate six green apples and turned six shades of green. 

The Saturday Picture Show, October 25, 2025

 

Now here is a great idea to improve your mind and your body in the same room. Who needs a stair stepper machine when you climb up and down in search of your next reading fun?

Free Wallpaper for the day reminds me of the beauty of this season.

The cat heard it was picture time so he just had to get in on it!

There's a tree near us that does the same thing...it's like a sunbather who forgot to turn over. But this tree will soon be fall-like all over!

So you're cruising from Santa Fe to Albuquerque and you see this on a New Mexico highway! You buckle up and then that annoying beeping noise suddenly ends!

I read an article about apple detectives in the Saturday Evening Post. There are hundreds of types of apples out there. Some have become hard to find, but fruit lovers are working to make them available to all. That's not so Ludacrisp!

New Yorker cartoon by Adam Douglas Thompson.

Pillsbury says they're bringing back the popular Poppin' Fresh cookie jar. For only $39.99, you too can stuff your chocolate chips in a jar that doesn't hold nearly as many cookies as we can get here at home in the former peanut butter jar we use. 

Ladies and Gentlemen, I've never been able to understand the world of fashion. This sepulchral getup is all that stands between you and seeing Kim Kardashian. How does this make sense? Please clue me in.

I can just see it now...lots of black hair and dark clothing and everyone doing the Achy Breaky Heart.

Advice from Marie

I don't think I could get along well with Marie Kondo, the Japanese expert on how we all should live. Oh, she do go on, do she not, about how to fold your socks and deck your halls and she really lost me when she said one should only have 30 books in their house. Marie, darling, I have 30 books about what a flibbertigibbet you are, so don't @ me with book limits! 

I mean, really. But the best part of all that was when her book publisher called her aside and said "It's not good for business for one of our authors to recommend that people don't buy books, so ixnay, capiche?"

Then she backed way the hell off..

 I mean, we book hoarders  collectors figure it's no one's business how many books we own. 

Anyway, she talked to the New York Times through an interpreter the other day, and reiterated her point that we should apply this question to everything we can choose to do or not do: "Does it spark joy?"

She says she has some habits that are just instinct with her, e.g. greeting her home before cleaning it up, or thanking objects before tossing them out. I do speak to our house and our cat, since they both have the same homey spirit. The cat will occasionally talk back; the house, no. On a windy day, the window frames will wheeze a little, but no substantial conversation.

In Japan, there’s a saying that means “A bird does not leave a mess behind when it flies away.” It’s something teachers and parents often tell us from the time we’re children.

Well, Marie, you need to come to Perry Hall, MD, where the high school football team's fans and parents need to wear hats to home football games, because 45 vultures, apparently fed by a school neighbor, have taken to perching on the tall tall light standards that illuminate the playing field. Those are birds who leave a mess behind when they fly away.

But otherwise, sure, anyone who is not a total slobola will wipe out the sink after they tidy up their face, that sort of thing.

Marie says she checks her luggage on a flight rather than squeezing everything into a carry-on bag. 

I prefer simply to load the entire contents of my bathroom into three or four large Tupperware tubs. That way, I won't leave anything behind.

That might be the reason why we don't travel so much. Staying home sparks our joy!

 

 

 

 

Aw, nuts!

No matter what your sister says I told her in 1971, I am not a medical doctor.

But I have long been interested in this peanut allergy problem. For real, right after  my father's funeral, I had to stop at the funeral home to settle some paperwork, and the place was packed with kids from my old high school mourning the loss of a classmate who ate what he thought was a Christmas sugar cookie, but it was a peanut butter cookie, and his reaction was fatal.

I have asked lots of people in the know about how something like this happens, but I can't understand the explanation, owing to the fact that it has to do with chemistry and the like. 

BUT! Even if I can't understand peanut allergies, learned people can, and they are doing something about them! And now we are finding that the rate of allergies in kids has been dropping since doctors have encouraged parents to introduce peanuts into a child's daily menu.

A trial in 2015 showed that it would be good to feed peanut products to babies, and they figure it will cut the rate of kids affected by over 80 %.

And now, eggs are the #1 food allergen for the small fry.

Dr. Edith Bracho-Sanchez, a pediatrician at Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York, says, “We’re talking about the prevention of a potentially deadly, life-changing diagnosis. This is real world data of how a public health recommendation can change children’s health.”

Even though no one knows all the ins and outs of peanut allergies, medical science has decided on one thing about how allergies develop. A child's skin - especially if it's broken or inflamed - can let allergens in, and that prompts the immune system to regard them as threats. But, take those same allergens through the tummy, and your gut builds tolerance.

Same with Whoopie Pies. Eat enough of them, and your body will stop telling you no!

And it is now believed that since the immune system is still developing in infancy, introducing allergenic foods at that time can help the body say, "Say, this is all right!"

Dr. Bracho-Sanchez says to train the babies at four to six months. Give them a pea-sized smear of Skippy or a little bite of scrambled eggs and let them go to town.

Well, I mean, a four-month old is not old enough to go to town, but they'll get there!

"And in center field..."

The Baltimore Orioles play baseball at the regally-named Orioles Park at Camden Yards, way downtown where the Baltimore & Ohio railroad terminals used to meet, back when people used to travel, or ship merchandise, by rail. The warehouse that you see here is the longest brick building on the east coast of America. 1,116 feet long and eight stories high, it has overseen a lot since it was completed in 1905.

A lot of baseball! I mean, the Orioles built the stadium around that giant wall, and the childhood home of Babe Ruth, whose father operated a saloon in what is now center field. Young Babe, in and out of reform school, lived in the family quarters above the bar, and used the outhouse in the back yard. 

That backyard was full of Rams last week, a few dozen of the Los Angeles variety. 

What happened was, the National Football League Rams came to Baltimore to beat the Ravens a couple of weeks ago, and their next game was in London, so rather than flying home to Southern California, they bivouacked in Baltimore, having arranged with the Maryland Stadium Authority to lay out a miniature gridiron in the baseball outfield. Then they jetted off to swinging London, where they easily defeated the Jacksonville Jaguars, and if all that is not confusing enough, I'll remind you that once there was a football team called the Baltimore Colts, whose owner traded them for the Rams, and then he drowned in the ocean. (No kidding.)

The nice part of all this is the parting gift the Rams had for the Orioles. They are paying to replace the sod they tore up, so it will be nice and fresh in March when baseball comes back. It's only nice to leave a gift for your hosts!

It would sure do me good...

When you think about it, it's a mystery why no company that provides services to people ever thought about using the song "I Can Help" by Billy Swan to advertise the availability of their fine services...until now.

It was a catchy little ditty, wasn't it? It came out in 1974 and was a hit on the country and pop charts most of that summer and fall. I was on a country station at the time and the programmer refused to let us DJs play it for reasons he never explained. It wasn't really a country song, and as a pop song it sounded more like the organ at a roller rink. I'm sure that had a lot to do with its popularity; so many people could hear it and be transported back to the days of "Ladies Choice" turns at the Roller Drome.

Billy Swan was one of those guys who was always around in Nashville working as a session musician and songwriter. He wrote "Lover, Please" for Clyde McPhatter as a high school student and member of the band Mirt Mirly & the Rhythm Steppers. You have to admit, he writes a catchy tune!

But again, no one thought to use "I Can Help" to show the many ways they could help until Constellation Home, the home repair and maintenance outfit formerly known as BGE Home, chose it to show people that the HVAC guy will sing to them while he refurbishes your whatsis.

I just wonder how many people remember a 51-year old song when they see the commercial? And does Billy Swan hear the sound of money being stuffed into his bank account every day now?

Remember?

Set your time machine to October, 1987, Wednesday the 14th, to be precise. By that coming weekend, the predictions of television turning the world into a "global village" came true as the citizens from Boise to Bolivia tuned to CNN to see how little Jessica McClure was doing. At the age of 18 months, "Baby Jessica," as the news invariably referred to her, fell into a well in Midland, Texas, and was rescued after almost 60 hours down there. 

I remember it all very clearly because we had bought our first house earlier that year, and I was down in what would become the family room, rigging up a cable connection that no one needed to know about, you know what I mean? Just be cool.

So I got to watch a lot of the coverage and CNN was over it like sauce on a pizza, leading the media horde in beaming a signal all over the globe as the rescue took place.

Midland is Texas Oil Country, so the locals are not without experience with digging and drilling.  So, the initial plan was to drill a shaft parallel to the well where Jessica lay in wait, and then tunnel horizontally to reach her. BUT! Even though local oil drillers showed up to help, they couldn't, because the rescue field was all rocky.

It was a mining engineer who showed up with the way to go...waterjet cutting, which I figured was like some giant Water Pik. It took 45 hours to get the shaft and cross-tunnel done with his supervision. By then, rescuers could hear the little girl singing "Winnie The Pooh."

Years later, I was reminded of what happened next, when the tallest man in the world saved two dolphins by reaching his incredibly lengthy arms down their gullets to remove dangerous pieces of plastic that would have killed the fish and which no surgery could get to.  What happened was, a local guy - a roofing contractor named Ron Short  - volunteered to be lowered down the shaft. Short's unique qualification was that he was born with no collarbones, and therefore could work in tight spaces with his shoulders collapsed. 

But in the end, Paramedic Robert O' Donnell went down the hole, got Jessica from inside the well (she had one leg pressed up on her forehead all that time) and handed her off to another paramedic who took her to the surface.

All that was on live TV on a Friday night in prime time, as it happened, and to this day, although she has no memory of the events at all, Jessica McClure Morales still meets people who realize that, at the age of 39, she is still Baby Jessica, the girl in the well. 

"In a way I guess it happened the way it was supposed to," she once told People Magazine. "I was picked on because of it, but most people are kind and think what happened is an amazing miracle. It is. I don’t believe that any of it would’ve happened without God."

Then, and now.

 

Sunday Rerun: "Cash me outside, how 'bout dah?"

 It's been cool and rainy here in Baltimore, although the temperature flirted with the 90° range a couple of weeks ago (that sort of flirtation should never be encouraged), and I sit here, all jealous of people in Australia and other points below, because they have lived through summer and will soon enjoy winter. 

I really think the best way for me to live is to move to Australia from April through October every year, the way I dislike summer heat and humidity.

I love winter and heavy coats and wool sox so much that others have suggested I move to Denmark, full time.

Still others have suggested that I move anywhere, full time, as soon as possible.

But there is a word from Denmark that is becoming popular here, and who wouldn't like feeling "hygge"? It's not easy to pronounce, but it's easy to like.  You say "hoo-guh," and just think of "a quality of cosiness and comfortable conviviality that engenders a feeling of contentment or well-being."  That's the Oxford English Dictionary speaking, and there is no greater authority on our native tongue than they.


The etymology of the word says it comes from a sixteenth-century Norwegian term, hugga, meaning "to comfort" or "to console," and it's related to the English word "hug."

The Danes have used the word forever, but it's only becoming a thing in the English-speaking word just now.  There are books about it; I even saw one on the shelves of the library the other day where I went to hygge out for a while. British journalist Helen Russell wrote a book called "The Year of Living Danishly," and she says hygge is all about "taking pleasure in the presence of gentle, soothing things," like a freshly brewed cup of coffee and cashmere socks.

I prefer hot tea, and if you want to get a head start on your Christmas shopping for me, Brooks Brothers is offering a pair of cashmere socks for just $298. Red, please.

Danish doctors advise their patients who come down with colds to try "tea and hygge," and they say it's ok to wear your hyggebukser, which are those worn-out pants that people tell you never to wear outside, but feel so good because they're just worn perfectly. 

I think we all understand.  Snuggle up with your hot tea or coffee and your flannel blanket and get all hygge-y. It's only a few short months until winter comes to America.  Blessed, beautiful, winter.

The Saturday Picture Show, October 18, 2025

 

I'm going to make a wallpaper of this right soon! My favorite time of the year is at hand.

An interesting thought on the sign, but the top part struck me! A church for seniors 50+!  That's the way to build the congregation for the future, dadgum it!

Who is this? Power Ranger or Mr Machine? Either way, that's a mess of pumpkin pies coming up soon!

Another wallpaper! You can't beat a nice sunrise!

I have heard that the best way to keep squirrels and coyote and what-have-you from nibbling on your gourd is to slather it with hot sauce! And I guess store brand would do you fine, no need to spend extra for Cholula!

If you tried to save a buck and buy cheaper flooring, even the floor looks at you sadly.

Back back back back back back! OK stop.

UniPro International makes the best unifroms. Doesn't anyone use spell-check at all?

In 2001, this man tried to sneak across the border by dressing up as the back seat in a Dodge minivan. He would have made it, too, had Border Patrol not seen the seat reaching for a Marlboro. Whoops.

In 1967 Sidney Poitier did his usual magnificent acting in "In the Heat of the Night." Rod Steiger did his usual magnificent overacting. Sidney's great line, "They call me MISTER Tibbs!" became the title of the sequel three years later. The guy who played Sgt Hulka in "Stripes," Warren Oates, plays a none-too-bright cop in "ITHOTN." 

Keep your pants on

There have always been sports that made sense and plenty that made none. And for every person such as I who has not a whit of interest in basketball and soccer, there are those who disdain my beloved baseball and football.

We all have our favorites, but I think we can all agree that the dumbest sport ever conceived (and worse, played) is ferret-legging.

I hear you asking. What is ferret-legging? It's the weirdest game of endurance ever, unless you can think of something more bizarre than a game where you and others put a live ferret in your pants - with the pantlegs tied around the ankles, mind you - with the point being to see who can stand a wild animal nibbling on their giblets the longest.

And, you can't wear underwear - so there goes your plan to wear steel mesh boxers - and the ferrets must all be fully dentulated, as in, they have to have all their teeth.

The sport, if you will, is said to have originated in England among miners, who really don't have many alternatives for entertainment. 

And if you want to go for the world record this weekend, try to beat the pace set by Frank Bartlett and Christine Farnsworth in 2010: 5 hours and 30 minutes, eclipsing Reg Mellor's mark of 5: 26.  .

In some quarter among participants, the game is known as "put-'em-down." I can see some claim for calling it "stitch-'em-up." 

I see a tall dark stranger

You might see one of those lists of  Amazing Facts To Know And Share on a tablemat at your diner, but if you see it written that "fortune telling is illegal in the state of Maryland," tell the lady at the register on your way out that the placemat contains bogus information.

There was (still is, maybe) an anchor on MSNBC named Krystal Ball, and if that law was in effect in Maryland, it would have been illegal to watch her here. But you're ok if you do. There's no statewide ban on this folly in Maryland, but it is regulated in various areas. It's illegal in Baltimore City, but even I can predict your fortune if you go to some areas in the city, shall we say. Calvert County, one of the last counties in the state to have a) slot machines and b) tobacco crops, joins Salisbury, down on the Eastern shore, in requiring a business license and background checks, and then it's ok to tell all the fortunes you can.

I like knowing this:  The Maryland Court of Appeals, always on the lookout for what's best for all of us, said in 2010 that it would be unconstitutional to outlaw fortune telling statewide, because looking into a crystal ball (note: not a Krystal Ball) and saying that "your second cousin Abner is about to buy the farm and leave you a tidy bundle" is totally acceptable, but calling Abner on your way home, using a handheld phone, to see how he's feeling is illegal. The law is tricky.

Wait til you get home to call Abner. Tell him he's been looking a bit peaked lately.

 

Goes great with porkchops

You might as well call me Mott or Musselman, the way I love applesauce.  Peggy too - it's one of the 5 foods on which we agree!

As a kid, I picked apples off the trees in the backyard in September, and Mom cleaned them and pared them and cooked them and ground them up in an ancient device called a "mill" and then filled up a couple dozen plastic tubs and froze them. We had applesauce for a year, until the next harvest.

I heard of people buying store-bought applesauce but it seemed sort of foolish, what with trees right in our back yard dropping Granny Smiths on the heads of the unsuspecting. 

When we got married and had no free apples, I could have bought a bagful and made our own, but we didn't have the mill, or the room to store it, or the desire to go through all those steps, so I went into the shadows and bought applesauce from shifty dealers who sold "Tangy Green" from the trunks of their cars behind the tire store.

No, just kidding. We bought it by the jar from supermarkets, and lately we buy it in those little one-serving cups because why not?

But it was sad to read about this from Illinois the other day, where they had to shut down the highway in Franklin County because a semi overturned while speeding to get a truckload of the good green stuff to the food warehouse, and crews had to get that mess up by the shovelful.

No other vehicles were involved in the wreck on northbound I-57 down by mile marker 76. No one was hurt; the driver was embarrassed, though.

The total damage was 46,000 lbs. of applesauce - the equivalent of 184,000 4-ounce applesauce containers.

No estimate was available on how much nutmeg would be required to season that much applesauce. 

 

"What's more, you'll be a man..."

Thinking about how the Phillies game ended the night so disastrously, as relief pitcher Orion Kerkering made the wrong throw and a bad throw at that, throwing the ball away as the winning run scored for the Dodgers, my first thought was that most everyone has been in that situation at one time, feeling like you made a huge mistake as the entire world looked on.

Kerkering deals with it.

But then a thousand what-ifs come to mind...what if the ballpark was not so raucous and Kerkering had been able to hear the catcher telling him to go to first with the ball?

 what if the Phillies batters had gotten some hits and runs so that the game didn't come down to one man's error in the 11th inning?

what if he had fielded the ball cleanly and made a good throw to first, but the batter beat the play?

We all know the value of ifs and buts. The fact is, the game is over, and at age 24, Orion Kerkering is now one of those footnotes in baseball history.

People are blaming him, but not so fast, please. We all see the people online who write and the people who call the sports talk radio shows and the people who talk the loudest in the line at the delicatessen department at the Try 'N' Save...they are not the ballplayers. They don't know the years of dedication and hard work and sacrifice it takes to become a professional baseball player, let alone a major-leaguer. They just know it's easier to sit on the Barca-lounger at home and knock a big leaguer.

And again, if the Phillies' hitters had done as they were supposed to be able to, the matter new would have come down to a freaky play in the 11th inning. Like many things in life, baseball is a group effort, and it takes all the team to win or lose. 

The other Phillies understand. Nick Castellanos and J.T. Realmuto were two who made sure to have Kerkering's back, walking off the field and into the clubhouse with him.

And Kerkering was man enough to face the world after the game, disappointed but not vanquished. That's the way to face bad times.

Rudyard Kipling said it well: 

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

    And treat those two impostors just the same...

 

  

Indigenous

 Indigenous Peoples' Day is a holiday celebrating and honoring Native American peoples by commemorating their histories and cultures.  After all, they were here first! It's time to recognize and pay them respect! Indigenous Peoples' Day is a holiday in Baltimore County and is observed today, meaning county offices are closed. 

 

Sunday Rerun: Sling Sting

 A two-year-old child hurls his dinner plate at the wall and gets hauled away to quiet time and whatever other punishment his parents deem appropriate. He is taught that we must eat the food put before us, unless, of course, someone drops asparagus on my plate, and then you'll see some flying greenery.  There are limits, after all.

Same way when Dennis The Menace, Jr, runs around the neighborhood winging other kids or someone's patio window with his slingshot or pea shooter or whatever. He will learn his lesson when a deputized squad of bigger kids gets ahold of him and his bike and his weapon, and he enters a reeducation program that will likely involve opening a can of whoopass, which might involve the administration of purple nurples.

In this way, young men learn the dangers and consequences of an errant lifestyle, the hope being that by the time they reach 81 years of age, they don't have to be arrested for going around striking residential windows, denting car windshields, and shooting off pellets a bit too close to several neighbors out in Azusa, California.

The search of the Kingdom

But such a felony spree took place over like 10 years, so the Azusa Police Department termed it a  “quality of life issue” victimizing dozens of citizens over the decade.

Warrant in hand, police appeared at the residence of one Prince King. They found the slingshot and ball bearings there.

Lt. Jake Bushey of the APD says no injuries were reported in all this.

“It’s been ongoing for many years because we just didn’t identify who the suspect was,” Bushey says, adding that no one has any idea why the man was doing this juvenile prank as his his 70s turned into his 80s.

“We’re not aware of any kind of motive other than just malicious mischief.” 

If I may hazard a guess, maybe it's the result of a lifetime of confusion over whether he's a Prince or a King.

 

The Saturday Picture Show, October, 11, 2025

 

Look at the way the sun glints off the stream!

It looks like there's an abandoned gas station there in Lost Springs, but with a population of four, who needs that much gas?

Now...here we go. Fall is here and will look like this very soon...bare trees and short days. It's always worth the wait.

I never knew the Leaning Tower of Pisa was so fancy outside.

We used to stay in a motel in Amish Country, right across the road from a farm where a very loud rooster crowed to mark a new day. I always liked getting up before he did, but I didn't say anything to him.

You've heard of Angry Birds, now try dodging Irate Donuts.

If you have the right kind of porch and a little time, you too can make your home appear to be carnivorous!

To me, I'm seeing a cloud wear Ray-Ban sunglasses. But that's just me.

Ask your friends in the Flat Earth Society what's happening here. Did the sun just drop off the table?

America's greatest wits are now working in the field of store, church, and school signs.