It shouldn't happen, but it does

Do we chalk this up to a stupid local custom, or to national stupidity? You probably saw this on the news - a high school teacher and golf coach in Georgia, Jason Hughes, was killed when a stupid juvenile prank went horribly wrong. 

It's prom season down there, and the local custom in Gainesville GA is for kids to "roll" the houses of teachers and what-have-you, which means covering the dwellings in hundreds of sheets of two-ply Charmin.

Mr Hughes, 40, was said to be excited about the prank, and was skulking around in his own yard hoping to "catch" the kids in the act, according to his widowed wife.

It was raining last Friday the 6th when the kids did their prank, and Hughes came running toward them, and slipped on the wet road, and got run over by a pickup truck driven by Jayden Ryan Wallace, 18, according to local sheriff’s office.

The story is that the students got out of their vehicles and tried to help Hughes until medics arrived, but you know how that went.

The New York TIMES reports that Mrs Laura Hughes is also a teacher at the same school, North Hall High, and she says her husband and the students all loved each other.

 

Aware of the annual tradition, Hughes was approaching them, not to be confrontational, but to be part of the fun with them.

Mrs Hughes says the family supports dropping the charges against all the kids,

These are the charges:  Wallace is up on a felony charge of homicide by vehicle in the first degree, as well as charges of criminal trespass, reckless driving and littering. Four other individuals involved in the prank face charges of criminal trespass and littering.   

The school district put out a warning about prom season pranks just days before the incident:

“While we understand that prom is a time for celebration and creating lasting memories, we must emphasize the importance of responsible behavior and respect for others and their property. In previous years, some pranks during prom season–sometimes referred to as Junior/Senior Wars– have gone too far, resulting in damage to property.”

I don't even know how to think about this. Of course, you can already hear people saying, "Never in anyone's wildest DREAMS did the thought occur that someone would be injured, let alone KILLED, by a seemingly innocuous bit of fol-de-rol..."

Any time you have moving vehicles and six people running around them, plus wet streets, you run a horrible risk.

I'm not trying to be Mr Buzzkill. I'm trying to be Mr Find A Better Buzz.

Great moments

And so, we add another name to the "99 Club," for those who fall a year or so short of living to 100 years of age.

But this man deserves all the glory and honor, for he was Alexander Butterfield, a former Nixon White House aide, who passed away in his California home yesterday morning. During his time working in that disgraced administration, Butterfield was involved with the installation of a covert voice-recording system that recorded the voices of the president and All His Men.  “Everything was taped … as long as the president was in attendance,” Butterfield testified on July 16, 1973, at a hearing of the Senate Watergate Committee panel, led by Sen. Fred Thompson, a Tennessee GOP lawmaker and chief minority counsel to the Watergate committee. 

TV viewers will remember Fred for playing District Attorney Arthur Branch on "Law & Order," where he chewed scenery for five seasons, attempting to be a down-home country lawyer running the prosecutions in Manhattan. Bad fit.

I was watching the Watergate Hearings myself that day, and when Butterfield bravely broke ranks and told the truth, I leaned my head toward the window in the direction of Washington, D.C. because I was sure I heard the sound of lawyers running and subpoenas being typed. All the Nixon chicanery, dirty tricks and lies, so long suspected and rumored, were actually recorded! 

55 weeks later, his last pitiful defenses shattered, Nixon stepped down into ignominy, and the courage of Mr Butterfield largely made that possible. 

When they finally dug out the tapes, I'm sure there was one with Nixon going, "Butterfield said what????"

He didn't give a hoot

There's an antique store in Durham, upstate New York, where one can really find anything on earth. As so it was that recently, a shopper looked over a cookie jar in the form of a chicken and saw a real live owl next to it.

No word on whether the owl was full of cookies or not, though.

The little town of Durham is 127 miles north of Manhattan, in case you want to shop up there. 

Customers, apparently used to seeing nature on display, told the front counter that something "extremely lifelike" was on the novelty shelf.

And when the environmental conservation police officers got to the store, they found a brown-and-white owl perched on a shelf with its eyes firmly shut.

And the officers took the sleepy owl out of the store and into a woods, where it flew into a tree, with a heck of a great story to tell his friends and family.

Eastern screech owls are nocturnal and spend most of their time nesting in tree cavities, when they're not out shopping for a gift for their moms.

Sunday rerun (from 2021): Get up!

Here we sit in 2021, with all the latest inventions and conveniences, living like I don't know what.

But I'll bet that at least half of us awoke this morning because an alarm pierced our ears as we tried to sleep a little more...a phone, a watch, a clock radio, whatever. My clock radio sounds off at 0505; if not, the cats would pile in at 0506 demanding food, water, and attention, all of which I am glad to offer.

But what if we were back in the olden days, without alarms and clock radios, and I wanted to get up before the rooster woke up and starting his caterwauling?

I would engage the services of a knocker-upper. How about that? More about that in a minute...

Even longer ago, there were candle clocks, invented in China. The deal was, candles were filled with nails down toward the bottom, and allowed to burn all night. At a certain point, the wax would melt all the way, allowing a cascade of nails to make a hellish noise on a metal tray below it. Nice way to wake up, but it must have been tough to set the candle clock to disturb you at some specific time.

And of course, on The Simpsons episode "Miracle on Evergreen Terrace" (season 9, episode 10) we see Bart drink 10 glasses of water at bedtime on Christmas Eve so he can get up early the next day to tear into his presents. It's always about the Simpsons for me.

Lisa tells Bart, "You didn't invent that, Bart. The Indians used to drink water to wake up early for their attacks."

To which Bart replies, "It's always about the Indians, isn't it, Lise?"

I hate to tell Bart this, but when you are of Social Security age, ten glasses of water won't let you sleep for more than 45 minutes, trust me.

As society grew, factory whistles and church bells woke some people, whether they wanted to get up or not.  And those knocker-uppers...

Wake-up girl Mary Smith, 1930, London

Bob Cratchit had to get up early to get to the office before Mr Scrooge, so he could put one lump of coal on the fire. People in London, people known as "knocker-uppers" went door to door with a list of what time people wanted to get up. With a long stick in their hand, or a pea shooter for those whose rooms were on the ground floor, they went around doing their duty, getting Scrooge and Cratchit alike out of bed and off to the office.

What history does not tell us is, who woke up the knocker-uppers? Just like how the snow plow driver gets to work in a blizzard, there are things we are not meant to know.

The Saturday Picture Show, March 7, 2026

 

Now it's the restroom, requesting a review. It's a wonder it doesn't ask for a tip!

A great "gift for him" for any occasion - a wallet that makes his license photo look like Batman!

Here is a one-horsepower Mustang!

Amish Country in the spring is a ride worth taking!

This can be your free wallpaper for the week and also the name of your alternative-country band: Turkeys In The Fog.

You won't see this in the Army recruiting commercials. Here's your breakfast, Eisenhower. 

The Halloween pennant dragonfly (Celithemis eponina) pays homage to the wonderful Alysa Liu.

The new home of the Philadelphia Kansas City Oakland  Las Vegas A's baseball team is taking shape in the desert. No rush, fellas. They'll just play in Sacramento for now. But hurry up before they move again!

This happened to me at work one day as well as to this person: I looked down at my feet and saw one Nike and one New Balance. I spent the rest of the day trying to hide my stompers. But I was able to remark that I had "another pair at home just like these!"

This crash victim grew tired of explaining his scars, so he added pictures.

Crazy at the store

Sometimes I feel like the steel ball in a pinball game, just careering from one odd thing to the next. 

Do you ever feel like some massive series of pranks is afoot? Do you wonder why does it always happen to you?

You tell me. I was in the grocery store - no names, please, but it rhymes with cries and tries - just for a couple of things (tea bags and brownie mix, to be exact.) When I got to the checkout area, there was a bit of a line at the one (ONE!) register with a live employee on duty, so I broke one of my cardinal rules and went to a self-checkout. Never again, grrrr.

Ahead of me was a young mom with a few items and her two little girls. Each of the girls had one of those little "shopper in training" miniature carts. Cute and cuter, I thought to myself, and waited for them to finish. Since the mom had to wrangle her purchases into a bag and then get the girls lined up to push their wee carts to the exit, this took a little time, of which I have nothing but, right?

Along comes the trail boss - an officious young woman who works for the store and wanted to break up the eddying mob around the checkout. "You can step up here to #6," she looked at me and commanded.

"All right. I'm just waiting for these ladies, no problem."

"Well, did you say, 'excuse me'?" she snarled.

I have to admit. I've been taken out to dinner, taken for a ride and taken for a fool, but it is rare that I am taken aback. I was yesterday, though. In fact, I was so surprised that I said, "Did you really ask me if I said 'excuse me' to these ladies?" and she said, "We got to keep these lines moving."

I guess the total time it took for the three females to move out was 7 to 8 seconds, but here it is, hours later, and I am still reeling from the shock of being offered etiquette lessons from someone who just months ago was attending the Junior Prom. 

Years ago - even before the age of cell phones - the Roman orator Cicero went around saying, "O tempora, o mores!". It was all right for him to speak in Latin, as that's what everyone did back then. The expression means "Oh, the times! Oh, the customs!", and Cicero was talking about the decline in manners and proper behavior in the days of the Roman Republic. 

Maybe I should say that to her the next time she tries to get an old man hustling.

Last Call

I can't say for sure, but we've all heard that after the Titanic hit an iceberg, the band played the hymn “Nearer, My God, to Thee.”

We don't know for sure if the bandleader was taking requests, or if he thought of that number on his own. 

But recently, at the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, N.J, the well-to-do put on the feedbags and heard that song while having the dinner served on the ill-fated ship as its last supper. And the guests were served a cocktail called "Nearer, My God, To Thee."

(Could I just have a glass of beer, please?)

It must have been at least a bit eerie to chow down on soup (consommé and cream of barley) and main courses such as salmon, duckling and squab. While everyone talked about how it must have been aboard the Titanic as the craft took  on water, the guests were taking on desserts such as peaches in chartreuse jelly, éclairs and French ice cream. 

A cookbook author and food-television personality named Gail Simmons threw the shindig. “We made the portions smaller,” she said, and she also cut the meal down from ten courses to seven.

The thought is that the diners hit the hay shortly after dinner was over (no karaoke that night) and you have to figure, the last thing anyone was worrying about was sinking a supposedly unsinkable ship.

Surprise!

Back to the bill of fare, because some of the survivors tucked a menu in their pockets that night, that's how we know what they ate. But none of the recipes survived, so today's chefs have to guess.

Around the Lazy 'C' chuckwagon, I use the traditional Clark family recipe for Salmon in Mousseline Sauce. I just run out to the garden and, just before cooking the fish, I cut up some fresh mousseline, right off the mousseline bush.

And a guy in traffic recently shared his recipe for Consommé Olga when he hollered at me the name of a really great sauce only available in Tasmania until recently. The guy said to call his friend, whose full name is Olga Fack-Yaselph. She told me exactly what to do with my consommé.

A message from Mr Musk

You really have to be careful. Here is an actual message I got on my messenger the other morning, You see anything suspicious?

CONGRATULATIONS!!!

This is Elon Musk Tesla, we are happy to inform you that your name has been randomly selected via your comment on our Facebook post & page with ACCEPT to proceed thank you. Congratulations to you once again.

My first clue was that I ostensibly got anything in any form of message from the supremely bizarre Elon Musk. I'll tell you how strange I think he is...Jeff Goldblum seems normal by comparison. I mean, really.

And this "Elon Musk Tesla"...are they trying to make me think that the peculiar South African is running a Tesla dealership, rather than Tesla itself, not to mention Space-X and FedEx, X Games and Durex? If I went to the dealership, could I expect to see Elon selling coupes while wearing a loud plaid suit and bellowing, "My name is Elon Musk, and I'm making deals like you ain't never seen before, hot damn! So git your wagon on down here to Elon Musk Tesla, by cracky!" 

No, because that lacks the dignity that Mr Musk has always brought to his enterprises. And I know that it's way beneath his solid standing to toss Teslas around like paper towels at a Puerto Rican flood.

So I will not be clicking on that link to get whatever free prize I'll never win. It really makes me sad, though, to realize that other people will.

There really is a sucker born every minute. Don't let it be you.

Commuting in slippers

If the pandemic (remember???) was good for anything, it was solid proof that not all work has to be done in a traditional office or designated setting. The virus was kind enough to wait until just about everyone had computer access at home, enabling many to work or study from the comfort of their overstuffed chair at home. 

So, when some large national or international companies started to pull in the reins a little and say "we need to see your smiling face around the worksite a little more," a lot of the younger workers, who had gotten used to typing up motions for the Landseeker vs Honeyman case while clad in slippers and those flannel pants that are just right for the bedroom, living room, and produce aisle at the Giant, said "hey no, wait a minute..."

Gallup polls said that older workers, whose spirits have been broken by decades of office coffee, improper personal hygiene among coworkers, and actually having to drive the roads to work with all those maniacs out there, were less resistant to coming back.

But here's the twist: the younger workers were also the least interested in jobs that were entirely remote. Go figure.

As people will, someone studied that contradiction and found that young people feel they suffer in terms of career advancement by working from home because they have fewer chances to train and, therefore, fewer opportunities that climb up that old corporate ladder.

Getting it done at home

 

As I celebrate the 14th (!) anniversary of my retirement, I wish to tell the younger people on the job that there are very few training sessions, unless you are working in the field of diesel mechanics or pancake making, that can't be covered in a memo and/or a phone call. 

And as for promotions, the time honored advancement system based upon who you know will never go out of date. Know more people. In fact, have them over for lunch while you work at home!

But they have to leave by 1:30. Your show comes on at 2!

 

Rolling in the dough

I have been around dozens - hundreds - of volunteer fire companies, and the one thing they all have in common is this - they have to have some sort of revenue source to keep operating. Sometimes they get some sort of stipend from the local government, but not all counties do this. It costs big bucks to purchase and maintain fire and EMS apparatus, so volunteer companies have always had to be creative.

From demolition derbies to carnivals to music concerts to firehouse suppers, they have to work hard to come up with the money to serve the public. I thought this was interesting on the Library Of Congress page. In 1942, the volunteer fire company in Bantam, Connecticut, installed a bowling alley in the basement of the firehouse. 

Every night of the week, there were matches between groups, and the caption read that there were several hot rivalries going on. I can see the Plumbers vs the Steamfitters, the farmers vs the grocers, the Presbyterian choir against the Lutheran singers...a fun night out for the bowlers and their friends and families...

Sunday Rerun: All Rise!

 Years ago, someone in his audience asked TV comic Steve Allen, "Do they get your show in Oakland?"

Quick as always, "Steverino" said, "They SEE my show in Oakland, but I'm not sure they GET it!"

This makes me wonder if they see American TV shows in other countries. Sure, they see those "Real Housewives of Omaha" and "ER" and all those Chicago shows and Law & Order and what-have-you, but I mean the day-to-day stuff like "Judge Lauren Lake" and "Judge Hatchett."

Lately I find myself dawdling over the breakfast dishes to see what sort of human drama is dragged out in front of those two women. Just the other morning, Lake handled the landmark case of a woman whose daughter dropped a dookie in her friend's swimming pool.  With her customary grace, she handed down a ruling that didn't even mention "Caddyshack," which would have been my go-to from the get-go.

And then the judicial wheel turned to the courtroom of Judge Hatchett, in which a guy named Omar was accused of bringing a meatloaf challenge to his workplace. The loaf was stuffed with ghost peppers, and the challenge was to survive eating it. One guy ate some, but was gripped with paroxysms of coughing that caused internal injuries. The meatloaf purveyor viewed all this with a certain amount of glee, even though his coworker was in the hospital for surgery and three weeks of recovery. Big fun, huh? Judge H threw the book at him - a judgement for the plaintiff to the tune of $5,000.

And remember, I have always told people who have nothing on their calendar for any random weekday morning or afternoon, the best free show in town is in your nearest District Court, where protestations of innocence rival the best theatrics of Gielgud and Barrymore (or Nicolas Cage, for you youngsters.) But what if people in distant lands can tune in and see our judge shows and form an impression that Americans are always running around deucing in the pool and creating foods to blow out their co-workers' esophagi?

America, where is our precious dignity?

 

 

The Saturday Picture Show, February 28, 2026

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ferris Wheeler's Day Off

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

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

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

Plenty of parking for the High School High Climbers

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

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

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

Count 'em!

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

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

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

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

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

Things Change

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

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

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

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

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

The church building, with the parsonage in the far left

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

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

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

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

What the shell

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sacred Grounds

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

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

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

If those bricks could talk

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

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

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

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

 

Sunday Rerun: The Hand That Rocks

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

Oh yes he did!

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

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

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

And there's more:

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

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

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

AND he's not alone in this.

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

He sayeth:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Saturday Picture Show, February 21, 2026

 

If you see odd markings like this on your barn door, check this glossary to see if the local hobo is trying to tell you or his friend something. To be honest, I only posted this because I always go out of my way to find a reason to say "hobo."

This is a bit of a reach, but with only 130 days until my birthday, here's my annual reminder that the one piece of art I desperately crave for hanging on my den wall is a sketch - a 'simple charcoal rendering,' as they say on The Simpsons - showing me as rendered by a courtroom sketch artist. With the possible exception of boardwalk Spin-Art, there is no more American artform extant.

I hope you agree that the cracker aisle is just not the same since Stoned Wheat Thins went away to the same place where Wheatsworth disappeared. Where oh where am I to shmear my Camembert?

Six more weeks of winter! The pea plant sprout saw its shadow.

This is why Franklin D. Roosevelt was a great man and president. 

Two things about this headline amuse me: the fact that there is such a thing as a double-yolk Dino egg, and that a literal reading means that scientists were buried for 68 million years and still made this discovery.

I used to take sport in calling places like this, just to hear the receptionist chirp, "Flossmore Dental! How may I help you today?"

On my way to Towson, back in the day, over by Bob Davidson Ford, someone posted a sign on the telephone pile reading simply "When?" I hope they got a good answer.

This doggie ran out in the snow and did not take long about changing its mind. We might get more snow tomorrow evening, or then again, we might not, but this dog is staying in.

I don't know which international border(s) we've crossed here, but just in Baltimore County, we have Texas, Nottingham, Jacksonville, and Phoenix, and the charming town of Boring. So Paris can't be too far away.

How can you mend a broken heart?

If you remember the good old days in the late 1980s, MTV had a game show called "Remote Control." It had everything I could ask for in a game show...a young Adam Sandler, TV trivia questions, losing contestants being physically ejected from the recliner chairs they sat in, and Kari Wuhrer.

Kari was not the quizmaster - that was Ken Ober - but she was more than just a letter-turner, taking fun parts in the skits and questions that made up the show. And woe unto anyone who pronounced her name like "Carrie"! It's KAHRRY!

But, as things go in show business, the last few years have not been so happy for her. I follow her on Instagram; she recently lost her dad, and feels that her ex-husband has cheated her out of a lot of money. I'm not a doctor, but I have to agree with Kari, who writes on Insta that she is just out of the hospital, suffering from..

"Takotsubo cardiomyopathy. Or broken heart syndrome put me in the hospital for 8 days. I can’t thank my family and friends enough for the support and concern..."

I don't need to repeat this; I am not a doctor, so I will quote from the American Heart Association: "Takotsubo syndrome, or broken heart syndrome, is a temporary heart condition often triggered by intense emotional or physical stress (e.g., grief, fear, or severe illness), resulting in sudden chest pain and shortness of breath. It causes temporary dysfunction of the left ventricle, resembling a heart attack, but without blocked coronary arteries. The condition, which disproportionately affects postmenopausal women, typically resolves within 1–4 weeks with supportive care."

So, if someone or something "breaks your heart," that old expression might be more accurate than we know. It's sad to live in a world which Roger Miller once described as "A world so full of love yet not enough to go around."

Sweet healing, Kari, and may 2026 be a better year for you!