Look away!

 After Alabama finished off Florida State, 50-36 on Saturday, the eyes of the college football world turned to Oxford, Mississippi, in hopes that Ole Miss could send Louisiana State home empty-handed.

The score of that game did not mean that much to me, but I often look back on the days when Mississippi finally had to face up to their past and allow African American students to enroll in their university (which is and was for the people who live there, not a private institution.) The struggle for basic human decency and opportunity for all came to Ole Miss in the fall of 1962, when Air Force veteran James Meredith (eventually) enrolled as the school's first Black student. With support from the NAACP, Meredith had sought to transfer to the U of MS, and a federal court order was granted to make that happen.

(The sports teams at that fine institution of higher learning were, and are, called the Rebels. That should tell you something about how popular the Civil War was there.)

Mississippi's Governor Ross Barnett openly defied the federal court order trying to keep Meredith registering. In fact, riots brought out on the campus on September 30, 1962, with segregationists fighting the federal marshalls sent by President John F. Kennedy. Two rioters died; hundreds more were injured. Faced with armed rebellion, Kennedy federalized the Mississippi National Guard and sent thousands of U.S. Army troops and federal marshals the campus. That worked, and Meredith enrolled for classes on October 1. He needed, and was given, round-the-clock federal protection just to be able to go to class and get an education. 

The amazing thing to me continues to be that such a basic right offered to all citizens had to be fought for at all, let alone with soldiers and deaths. I was in sixth grade and already an keen watcher of the nightly news with Douglas Edwards, who was to tell us just two weeks later about the Cuban Missile Crisis unfolding. Just to think, in that one month, we faced destruction from within and from without, and the strong hand of John F. Kennedy guided us to safe conclusions.

That's the sort of thing that should be considered honorable.

By the way - the backup quarterback on the undefeated Rebels football team that autumn was a guy who found his living in music, instead of football. Jim Weatherly wrote "Neither One Of Us," "Midnight Train To Georgia," and "Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me," and also composed music for movies and television show. 

Jim Weatherly passed away in 2021. Long before that, African American students and athletes became vital parts of the University of Mississippi. It's just a shame that it took courts and deaths and so much time for it to happen. 

Tonight's the night!

 Do you remember the 21st night of September? As the song goes, "Love was changin' the minds of pretenders, While chasin' the clouds away..."

Tonight is the 21st night of September, and this song by pop-funk group Earth, Wind, and Fire urges you to remember the happy times in your days gone by, and not to dig too deeply into what the song is about. 

The chant of "Ba-de-ya" was written as a hook that anyone in the world could sing, no matter their usual language.

The song was released in November in 1978, so the month was not significant.

Matter of fact, the day - the 21st - didn't matter either. The songwriters say they tried any number of dates in the first line, and "the 21st" fit in best.

That's all. Listen, I come from the days when people took the lyrics to a song and spread them out on their desk like a buffet of words and then tried to say, "When they wrote about watching the roll on by, they were talking about tears rolling down the cheeks of someone who just had their heartbroken."

No. Sometimes the words are just the words. Listen to the song and try not to dance around the floor.

Sunday Rerun: Generous

 People from other countries often have difficulty comprehending the concept (there's that word again!) of volunteer fire companies. I guess it's a purely American idea, people doing something at considerable personal risk, inconvenience, and expense that one could say is the responsibility of the government to handle.

But since the days of Benjamin Franklin, who organized the first "fire brigade" in Philadelphian, people here have dropped - literally! - what they're doing and run to the fire house to go help someone or some someones in need.

Things like this don't happen for free, and that was the problem for a volunteer company in Calhoun, Missouri, where chief Mark Hardin gloomily scanned the balance sheet for his company and saw a bottom line of $169. 

169 bucks won't go far when you need new turnout gear and mobile equipment. They had not been able to afford either since the 1980s.

“It was pretty discouraging — we’d already been paying for stuff out of our own pockets to keep things going,” said Hardin. He retired as a firefighter in Arkansas and moved to Calhoun, winding up as chief of the company, serving a town of maybe 500. “I probably shouldn’t tell how much of our own money we’ve spent. My wife would divorce me," he said. 

On an annual stipend of $4800, his 28 volunteers were trying to keep two engines on the road and scrape by for fuel and other supplies. They are lucky in that they receive donations of hand-me-down gear and other necessities from other departments. Volunteer companies are like that. They'll as likely give a recently-replaced engine to a smaller company down the road as trade it in. It's all part of the giving-back ethos.

As Hardin was noodling his way out of the financial morass, along came a phone call from 91-year-old Sam Sloan, who lives two miles up the road from the fire house.

Hardin said: "I’d never met Sam, but he invited me to breakfast. He wanted to ask me a bunch of general questions about the fire department.”

They went to breakfast again the next week, and the third week, Sloan invited Chief Hardin to come up to his house, where he presented the company with a check for $500,000.

“I walked in the door and Sam said, ‘What do you think about this?’” Hardin said.

And what he thought about that was, that he had never seen that many zeroes in a check.

Sloan told the chief that his cattle and seed businesses had been good for him, and he decided that when he sold his businesses and land that he was determined to make a contribution to the volunteers.

He and his wife Jan have a nice house and 60 acres to pass on to their one son someday, and for now the couple want to share their bounty with deserving people. He just says he has always admired volunteer firefighters.

“I’ve been thinking about this for a long time, and I knew at this point in my life, I could help. It’s important to have a good fire department, especially with all the grass we have around here.”

Hardin thanked Sloan 20 times for the kind donation, then drove straight to the bank to increase the company's balance to $500,169.

Chief Hardin plans to get a new fire engine and some other equipment, plus new protective gear for all the members. 

And they bought a helmet for their new honorary chief Sloan to wear around.

The Saturday Picture Show, September 19, 2026

 

Autumn starts next week! I'm already dusting off my hoodies. Here's a preview from Lake Yamanaka in Japan! C'mon, you leaves! Change, doggone it!

There are so many things about which I know nothing. Up until today, I did not know that you could paint a picture of tangerines on newspaper.

This is inside an abadoned house somewhere, but I wanna tell you, with a little TLC, that chair could look great in someone's den! 

Why should old Marmaduke here have to sit with his business on the cold, cold ground when some other huckleberry hound will be glad to serve as his pillow?

I was telling someone the other day how I razzed my father for going to the Revco drugstore on Wednesdays to get his Skin Bracer aftershave on Senior Discount Day. Times have changed and now I'm all over the 10% off! 

I was never a big fan of Baseball Hall of Famer Robin Yount, but i have to say I like his taste in sportscoats!

I would never sign in under a gag name at the Doctor's Office, no sir. But if you ever heard the clerk at the pick-up window at Best & Co announcing an order was ready for "Colin O'Scopy," I might have known the prankster involved.

I think this is someone's dream, but what a great idea, with so many jerks zooming past stopped school buses. Just let the bus driver mark up the offending vehicles.

So, from here on in, Snooky won't be left out when you place the Girl Scout cookie orders. "Patch Pal" dog cookies are new for this year!

We Simpsons fans know Santa's Little Helper (Santos L. Halper to the credit card company). In the very first show, SLH was discarded by his owner, and it looks like life is imitating art. Someone please take him home!

A bit of a rough spell

 This picture happens to be from England, so it proves that the English are not the only ones who have a tough time with English.

The woman who posted it was all upset because she wanted balloons that spelled out H A P P Y   B I R T H D A Y for her son, but she feels that a mistake was made: "They left out the D in birthDay, but they gave me an extra A...."

Who wants to give her a hand before young Cholmondley's birthday is totally ruined? Anyone? Anyone?

Yan Canned Food

 This year, the New York Mets have an interesting relief pitcher named Jefry (correct spelling) Yan. He shows some promise, and got off to a good start this summer, but people are paying attention to him because of his exuberance when he strikes a guy out. He does this whole "jump up - jump down" thing that is supposed to convey his elation, but in sports, that is considered bad form, because it shows the other guy up, and he will be looking to hit the next pitch he sees halfway to Cooperstown.

BUT seeing that surname Yan made me think of someone we haven't seen for a while. His name is Martin Yan, a chef by trade, and when cooking shows were all over PBS in the era of mauve furniture and shoulder pads for men and women, his was one you saw every day..."Yan Can Cook." His schtick was teaching you how to whip up his home-gourmet food - hot and sour soup, egg rolls, stir fry, egg foo young, and of course, my favorite Chinese food dirty joke item, beef and broccoli.

I don't remember if you could send away for his recipes or what. This was before the internet, so there had to be a way to get the details down, unless you were good at shorthand. He made it look simple enough, not to mention tasty, and along the way, he would throw in jokes along with the bean sprouts and mushrooms.

And when he was finished making the Moo Goo, he would hold the dish up and proudly say his closing line: "Yan can cook and so can you!"

Hello, PBS? Put me on with my sure-fire simple chow recipes. We can call it "Eaty Gourmet"!

Covfefe Break

Ah, for the days when we went to high school to learn enough things to go to college or get a job. Not any more, apparently. And this story brings me to another of the peevelets that keep me up during my nap, namely: why can't people have their coffee and their breakfast before they leave the house? 

Dateline, BEAVER FALLS, New York, where a high school student ran afoul of a new policy on the first day of class at Beaver River Central School because she strolled into her first-period class with a cup of java in her hand.

Julie Kaputa, a senior at Beaver River (!) told WWNY News, “I walked in, I had my coffee with me. I got to my first-period class and my teacher said, ‘I’m either going to need you to dump that out or consume it on the spot or go down to the office.’”

Apparently, none of those options met with her approval, so she was given an in-school suspension for violating the school's outside food and drink rule, which was a new addition to the school's code of conduct.

I remember toting a brown bag lunch (roast beef sammy, some sort of heavily salted snack chips, and a Tastykake pie or cake) for years...for lunch. It never dawned on me that school was a place for a kaffeeklatsch.

And so the undercaffeinated young lady's mother got into it with the school, and doesn't believe the "code is valid" and the superintendent agreed and feels the August meeting at which the new code was promulgated was not sufficiently publicized and he's sorry and Julie is glad it's all worked out and through all of this, I see no mention of whether Julie went back to class or anything, and now I know why I grumble that high school students should be able to identify the Battle of Hastings and the Pythagorean theory and the difference between the words "versus" and "verse."

But first things first! Coffee for everyone, and then we'll look at your hypotenuse.

His name is...

I haven't heard this lately, but people used to say, "Now that everyone knows about the trouble I'm in, I guess my name is mud!" when their reputation was besmirched. 

I guess today's cool people say, "My reputation has been besmirched!" It's shorter, and quite to the point.

But there was really a man whose name was mud, and here is his story. You remember reading that John Wilkes Booth killed President Abraham Lincoln with his derringer pistol at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. in April, 1865, just as the Civil War was ending. Booth was a Confederacy fan.

The assassin made his getaway on horseback with a broken leg, by which I should make clear, Booth had the busted leg. The horse went on to win the fifth race at Laurel the next afternoon, after dropping Booth off at the Charles County home of Dr. Samuel Mudd.

Mudd's descendants, including Roger Mudd, the newsman on CBS, fought for years to clear Dr Sam's name, because it was he who set the fracture for Booth and allowed him to hide out in Waldorf, MD. 

Booth took it on the lam and made it as far as a farm in Port Royal, Virginia, before being killed by a Union Army Sergeant, one Boston Corbett, whose troops had set fire to the barn in an effort to flush Booth out.

As the investigation went on, it was determined that Mudd had known Booth and had indeed offered help with the assassination of Lincoln, although it was never proven that he knew what was cooking that particular night. Nonetheless, he was tried by a military commission and convicted of conspiracy, and sent to the military prison on Fort Jefferson, a remote island 70 miles west of Key West.

Dr Mudd

Two years later, an outbreak of yellow fever swept through the prison camp. One of the first to die was the prison doctor. Mudd rose to the challenge, using his medical skills to treat the afflicted and contain the epidemic. Responding to a petition signed by soldiers and officers at the fort, President Andrew Johnson granted Mudd a full and unconditional pardon, and Mudd returned to Charles County, still a convicted, but pardoned, man.

So, that explains that name thing. We still don't understand why people thought it was all right to own slaves, though.

 

 

Out with a bang

Here is news from Willemstad, Curaçao. It's an island in the southern Caribbean Sea with a temperate climate (82°-88° year-round) and a location out of the standard hurricane path. It belongs to the Kingdom of the Netherlands as an autonomous, self-governing constituent country. 

Speaking of which, a guy Baltimore remembers fondly for his skills at playing second base for the Orioles, Jonathan Schoop, got himself in Dutch down there. It's his home country, but last January, he was arrested after an investigation at his home turned up firearms, ammunition, cartridge casings and knives. He was locked up for a month at the time, and after his trial, he was sentenced on Friday to 30 months in prison with six months suspended.

And this is actually a lighter sentence than he might have received had the judge followed the prosecution's request for four years with eight months suspended. He also missed playing for the Kingdom of the Netherlands team in the World Baseball Classic in March, although his major league career in the US ended in 2023 with his release by the Detroit Tigers.

Now, you have to figure he knew the gun laws were strict in Curaçao, having grown up there. Why he felt the next to have an artillery handy is something he can ponder for the next 24 months.

I salute the island nation for taking steps to keep guns out. You're probably less likely to get shot to death in a place like that. Yes, the US homicide-by-gun rate is decreasing, probably because people can't afford the gas to go out and buy bullets, but it's still unacceptable to have people strutting around in any nation carrying weapons of mass destruction.

Let's contact old #6 in a couple of years and see how he feels about the proliferation of guns.

 

Sunday Rerun: Here Come The Renters

 Two of my favorite Beatles, John Lennon and George Harrison, have gone on to their rewards, leaving my third favorite, Ringo Starr, and that guy with the eyebrows, Paul, I think is his name.

And as we all know, all four of the Fab Four came from working class backgrounds in Merrie Olde England. George came from such a family: his father, Harold, was a school bus driver; his mom, Louise, kept the home, raised four kids, and taught ballroom dance.

And I would think that a real Beatles fan would jump at the chance to do an Airbnb thing, and rent that house where George lived from ages 6 to 18, right?  Here's the story...

The home where The Beatles rehearsed many times is at 25 Upton Green in Speke, which is a southeast suburb of Liverpool, England.  It's what the British call a terrace house, and we call a rowhouse or a townhouse. George and his three siblings and their parents moved in in 1949, moving out in 1962 just as Beatlemania swept England and headed for our shores.

Another family bought the house from the Harrisons; they stayed for 50-some years, moving out in 2014. At that point, the new owners turned it into a rental for a while until 2021, when it went up for auction. A Beatle fan from New Hampshire, Ken Lambert, bought it then for £171,000, (about $223,000), having seen the listing from Omega Auctions calling the house a “truly unique opportunity to own the property where George spent his formative years and that played an important part in helping The Beatles flourish.”

Lambert, with help of a Liverpudlian local, has been ever since working on the place, getting it ready for company.  He found furniture and wall treatments appropriate to the time of the fifties and early sixties, and posted photos and added furniture for the right feel. He studied old photographs and found period-appropriate furniture and wallpaper to help transport guests back in time. Of course, he brought in a record player and a stack of Beatles albums.  

“I wanted to do it for myself, to play the guitar and play the Beatles in the room the Beatles played guitar,” Lambert tells the Herald. “That really is a cool thing for people to experience.”

While the childhood homes of Paul McCartney (THAT'S his name!) and John Lennon are maintained for preservation by the National Trust, a European conservation organization, Harrison’s house has not been given that treatment. I don't know why. But Mr Lambert is doing his part, opening the place for rental by fans on a pilgrimage.

And you can rent it for less than the price of a top beach resort! The erstwhile  Harrison home is available for short-term rentals on Airbnb (£200, or $260, per night). 

If you go, please share lots of pictures, and send me a postcard!

The Saturday Picture Show, September 12, 2026

 

This orange will give your morning a smile and he hasn't even been turned into juice yet!

Compact Cars Only? Sure, and this is my compact little Rolls Royce Phantom.

I'll have half a dozen figs, hold the Newton.

He's a baby, sure, but he's still a rattlesnake and will grow to be a bigger one!

This is in Hanoi, North Viet Nam, where the train comes right through the shopping district.

The remote will never get lost again if you chain it to a couple of pounds of marble.

How cool would it be to have a national leader as cool as Mark Carney, the Canadian Prime Minister seen here having lunch with Bryan Adams in Ontario?

If you don't own a cat, the first two things you will learn about them when you get one are A) they sit where they wish to sit and 2) no box is "too small."

I cannot explain this one, except to guess that the angry man is also the photographer. Why was he angry and how did he channel that anger? Those are two questions I might assign to a Creative Writing seminar, were I teaching one.

Burt Reynolds had a fine sense of humor, if you like pranks like the time he grew tired of the National Enquirer printing half-truths and untruths about him, so he rented a helicopter and flew over their headquarters in Florida for the purpose of dumping several buckets of meadow muffins, cow patties, and cattle dung on them. 

A rerun of a 9/11 story

It's September 11, and everyone has their memories and feelings about that day that really changed everything.

And it's good for us "of a certain age" to remember that 9/11/2001 was 19 years ago, meaning that for people currently in high school, and some in college,
they have no personal connection to the events. Sure, they have seen video and heard a lot about it, but there's always room for everyone to learn more.

F'rinstance, not a whole lot of us know a whole lot about the 9/11 Boatlift. With what seemed to be the entire world crashing down on them, people who found themselves around Ground Zero came to a staggering realization: Manhattan is an island, and when the streets and highways that are usually clogged in the town where gridlock began, there's only going to be one escape.

The water.

Those who know such things believe that more than half a million people needed to be transported out of the southern tip of Lower Manhattan.  You remember the videos, the dazed survivors out in the streets, a long way from home and comfort.

As so often happens here in the greatest country in the world (it never needed to be made great again; it always has been) saw ordinary people respond to an extraordinary situation and become a team of heroes in what is regarded as the world's largest water evacuation of all time.

Of course, there was no plan for how to get 500,000+ humans off the island and on their way. It's hard for civic officials to even grasp the concept. (Here in Maryland, the last plan I ever heard about for what we would do in case of a nuclear attack, devastating earthquake or catastrophic weather event was no more detailed than "Everyone get in your cars and head for West Virginia.")

And there certainly was no way for New York officials to lay out a plan for getting folks off Manhattan.  But as so often happens, leave it to the people, and good things result.  Boats and ferries are always active in those waters, of course, and they began turning for shore to pick people up.  Destination? To be determined. Just getting away from the desolation was the goal.

What happened was that feeling we get when there's a chance to help a stranger - someone we don't know, nothing in it for us but the feeling of helping a fellow citizen. So mariners did what they could.  And the United States Coast Guard -  the first to protect our seas and shores - operates the marine radios that all afloat listen to, and they put out the Mayday call for everyone to come help.

And along came tugboats, party pontoons, water taxis, runabouts, whatever, heading for the scene to take on passengers.

Let us not forget that all who headed for the tip of Manhattan that horrible but beautiful Tuesday morning saw what they were headed for - smoke and gases in the air and airborne debris were plentiful.  And that's what they SAW. None of them had the slightest idea if there would be further attacks, exposing the makeshift fleet to disaster. In fact, it's probable that few of them knew a whole lot about what HAD happened, and none of what might.

But with steadfast determination, the American kind, they loaded as many as their vessels held, dropped people off at a safe dock, and went back for more, as many times as it took to move 500,000 terrified fellow citizens.

The Coast Guard adds it up as more than 150 boats, crewed by 800-some people, getting that half a million off Manhattan.  It took until well into the night, but no one was left stranded.

Tom Hanks narrated a documentary entitled “Boatlift: An Untold Tale of 9/11 Resilience” in 2011. It told tales of people such as Vincent Ardolino of Brooklyn, captain of the Amberjack V. He recalls saying to his wife,“I’ve got to go do something … I’m going to take the Amberjack up into the city and help … I have to do what I have to do … Even if I rescue one person, that’s one person less that will suffer or die.”

And remember, he had no way of knowing if he would come home to his wife. America was at war, and he did what he could, and if you multiply that by 800 other good people, that's how every one of those survivors got on their way home on September 11, 2001.

Blow-up about a blow-up

You might remember seeing this on the local news, if you live in Maryland. It was August of 2024 when a house on Arthurs Woods Drive in Harford County exploded early one morning, killing the homeowner and a contractor working there, and injuring three others. The blowup also damaged several neighboring houses. The house itself was literally blown to tiny bits.

The National Transportation Safety Board investigated, and found that there were  communication failures at Baltimore Gas and Electric and its parent company, Exelon.

An underground electrical fault - electric lines were buried too close to gas lines - was the initial cause of the explosion, but the NTSB blames the deaths on BGE's "ineffective response to the initial gas leak."

The night before, a passerby sniffed the gas in the neighborhood and followed protocol, reporting his findings to BGE.

The BGE gas dispatcher sent a trouble truck to check the situation, but sent it to an intersection, instead of the exact address of the ill-fated house.

There seemed to be confusion at the utility, and no one was sent to the right location to look for the problem. It came to light that the BGE dispatcher was consuming alcohol and fell asleep at his work station, although his supervisors failed to send him for drug and alcohol testing.

In a classic case of locking the barn door a bit too late, BGE says they have made several policy changes. All gas leak calls are now monitored 24/7, dispatchers are receiving additional training, and there is now fitness-for-duty screening of their calltakers and dispatchers.

This is not like sending a truck to replace a street light. People all know that gas leaks can be deadly and should be handled with utmost care at once.  You would like to think that the gas company knew that.

Lightnin' Strikes

Before 1994, about the only music that  Antony (" Tony") Cicoria listened to was that good old rock 'n' roll. His parents had stuck him in piano lessons when he was 7, but he hated it and it did not stick.

In 1994, aged 42, he was a medical doctor, specializing in orthopedic medicine, orthopedic surgery, orthotics, prosthetic supplies, and sports medicine. He kept himself in excellent condition, which may explain why he lived through getting struck by lightning in Albany, New York, that summer.

Another reason he may have survived? He was outside waiting to use a pay phone when the bolt hit him. The next person in line to use the phone was an intensive care nurse.

Aside from a burn mark on his head and left foot where the lightning hit him and exited, he seemed to have no physical damage at first. Several weeks later, he developed memory issues and was sluggish. He consulted a neurologist, whose examination (EEG and MRI) found nothing wrong.

He went back to work, and two weeks later, his memory was restored and he felt energetic again.

Over the next few days, Dr Cicoria became obsessed with an insatiable desire to hear piano music. He bought a piano. He taught himself to play it, and within three months of the lightning strike, he was spending nearly off of his days writing and playing piano music.

Doctors who studied the case said that he had suffered a cardiac arrest during the incident, and that may have caused his brain to re-wire itself. He still practices medicine and the piano.

I always wanted to play the piano, too, so maybe I'll take out the garbage during the next electrical storm. Don't worry; I'll wear rubber-soled shoes to ground myself.

I mean, really

I don't know what part of this is worst! Starting from the beginning: last Friday night the umpire Doug Eddings was behind the plate for the game between St Louis and Colorado.

For whatever reason, he got a wild hair about the way that the Cardinals' rookie pitcher Hancel Rincon was wearing his hat while pitching. It was sort of cockeyed across his forehead, but facing the right way. Lots of guys have worn their hats that way. The Orioles used to have a guy (George Sherrill) who wore his hat right as it came out of the box, with a totally flat brim. They even called him "The Brim Reaper," but no one made a big deal of it.

Of course, as things tend to happen when people get off on power trips, things spun downhill fast. Eddings actually ordered the young man from the Dominican Republic to straighten out his cap. 

During the ensuing argument with St. Louis manager Oli Marmol, Eddings handed Rincon a pitch clock violation for not pitching during the specified time even though the umpire and the pitcher's manager were busy hollering at each other. 

 

And then the umpire made a dubious call that gave the Rockies the lead. Just absolutely inane. I guess that ump was just having manopause symptoms or something.

But I don't know that that was the worst of it, because on Saturday, someone calling herself Holly Baylor of "FAX Sports" wrote a tweet "reporting" that "MLB has suspended umpire Doug Eddings for the remainder of the 2026 season, including the entire postseason, following his controversial performance during Friday night’s Cardinals-Rockies game.

This did not turn out to be true, of course. But just as someone needs to sit down with Doug Eddings and tell him that his personal choices in millinery have nothing to do with the onfield hats of the ballplayers, someone somewhere needs to prevent "Holly Baylor" (if that is her name) from writing literal fake news stories.

And it's my personal feeling that every player in baseball should turn their brims 30 degrees toward their left ear for the next three games.

And that Doug Eddings should have to umpire whatever games he is assigned to for three days while wearing a complete clown outfit - giant shoes, rubber nose, red fright wig. If he needs to clean the plate, let him use a seltzer bottle spray.

UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE 

Eddings heard from someone - maybe his bosses at Major League Baseball, maybe his inner sense. Who knows? But he did apologize to the pitcher before the game on Saturday, a game in which all of the Cardinals wore their hats off-center.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that maybe Eddings came to his senses shortly after the whole thing started, but refused to back down. When that happens, you might as well back down right away. 

 

Everything the workers have and appreciate came because they had to demand it. Think of what Labor Day means.

Sunday Rerun: You don't have to call me "Mister," Mister.

 I read the great "Ask Amy" column every day in the SUN paper, because I am that kind of guy who needs help handling the vicissitudes of life.

One thing I have learned is that it's best to handle your own vicissitudes, but in private.

Anyway, the other day, a 77-year old lady wrote to ask Amy about how to deal with the cringe she gets from being called "young lady."  She is active, still working, so it's not like she's obviously worn down by life. So why do people - she cites "waiters, tour guides and all kinds of public servants" - and mentions that it's ALWAYS a man - marginalize her this way?

I submit, not by any kind of excuse because there is no excuse for such condescending behavior, but the problem is that most men don't know how to appreciate women.  This situation is emblematic of that. There is no reason to use this smarmy attempt at reverse flattery.  How about realizing that a 77-year-old woman is not a "young lady" or an "old lady," but, rather, a "woman"? Age has nothing to do with it. Lots of people of lots of genders are youthful well into their 80s, and plenty of us decided to seem superannuated at 25. Go figure.

And while I was mulling this over, I heard from an online friend who said she did not like being referred to as "honey" by a female customer service rep on the phone. I think it best to save "honey" for people we really know and are sweet on (and they, on us).  BUT there is one exception.

In Baltimore, one of the remaining vestiges of our onetime Southernness is a simple rule that any customer of any retail establishment is often called "hon." Sometimes, it's "honey," but usually, it's "hon," as in, "Did you want the white American cheese, or the yellow, hon?"

And "ma'am" and "sir" are still in vogue here. In my case, I dealt with citizens for most of my working life as a public servant, and referring to them by those honorifics is second nature to me. And noted Southerner Elvis A. Presley addressed everyone that way right up to his sad end.

So will I stop saying that? No ma'am, no sir. And I'll take the yellow cheese, hon.

The Saturday Picture Show, September 5, 2026

The trading card people had their printers working day and night after Colton Cowser made this sensational game-saving catch the other night. This is starting to look like the peak Oriole highlight for this season, though.

So you wonder what it looks like when water drops drop on 35-mm film? Wonder no more.

This just reinforces my notion that Scotland is a terrifically cool place. The horse hs hung her shawls right out in her pen!

You know you have a reputation for lead-footed driving when people are personalizing speed signs just for you. Slow down, Donna!

All my friends love the low rider. I understand that this truck has airbags so it can be lowered to the ground to park at Concrete Blocks 'R' Us.

A bit of philosophy from your local graffito-vandal.

This sort of competitive pricing is just why Grocery Outlet failed to catch on in Baltimore. No math majors, they.

I would feel really insulted if I cracked my Chinese cookie and got this sort of warning, rather than some Asian wisdom. For the record, our pet does not do her business in public, so nyahh nyahh.

No, he's not. He is of this plain no longer. That was 32 years ago! Hope you remember.

But that one commercial says to "tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection." Now you won't let me in the hospital to tell him. I'm so confused.
 

Lean on Me

Remember that oldie by The Rooftop Singers, "Walk Right In"? Well sir or ma'am, modern research says they should have called it "Walk Left In." 

And don't blame the Rooftops; the song dates back to 1929 and an original record by Carson's Jug Stompers.

But, according to science (and since school is back in sesh, better pay attention!) we humans tend to walk the way the other humans walk, and that means veering to the left as you strut about.

They even go so far as to say that we still do this even if no one else is around! 

A new study says humans instinctively drift left, or counterclockwise, when we walk — even if no one else is around.

These were the highly-regarded researchers from the University of Navarra.  They checked out the gaits of hundreds of people in Spain and Japan, and they say no matter what, no matter where, and even if the people are right-or-left handed - they're leaning left!

“Our findings are highly consistent,” the researchers recently wrote in the journal, Nature Communications....because, “regardless of crowd size, boundary effects or laterality traits such as handedness, footedness and eye dominance, counterclockwise motion systematically emerges.”

The ancients never suspected that the feet have their own brain!

The researches looked at all sorts of people in all sorts of situations on all kinds of terrain, and they are dead to rights, we walk left.

I can only hope that I was not among the unsuspecting amblers being tracked or filmed or whatever they did.  As the owner-operator of two replaced knees, I tend to left them decide which way to go.

It does no good to argue with titanium.

 

They put a spell on you

Do you have any little superstitious gestures? Such as what I read about the other day.  Apparently, every time some people board an airplane, they give that silver bird a little love tap as they climb aboard.

One flier described it as “like you give a dog a little pat on the head.” It establishes a connection.

This woman told the POST she gives the Boeing a triple tap and that she got the habit from her husband, who gives it the Boeing-Boeing double tap.

And it seems that a lot of people are in the habit of making themselves feel like that the plane will get them to where they hope to get because of that tap.

Whatever.

“Our bodies, I don’t think, are made to understand flying through the air,” said the triple tapper.

That's the thing about superstitions - they are specially geared to each person, and we all seem to have our own. Some people can't think of opening the morning news (online now, folded paper back then) without a sip of coffee.

A lot of people get all worked up about a broken mirror. This dates back to the ancient belief that mirrors capture a part of our souls. And because a leaning ladder forms a triangle that might stand for the Holy Trinity, many people will not walk under a ladder up against a wall. 

As Steve Allen once said, some people have a fear of falling, and some have a fear of loud noises. I personally have a fear of making a loud noise while falling.

Mister Lister

 Here's a fun list from the good folks at Mental Floss! It's a roster of everyday household items which were ubiquitous in the 70s and are now rarely seen, like a turn signal on a BMW.

• The Percolator: as in who makes bubble covfefe anymore? 
• The Fondue Pot: we got married in 1973, which was probably the peak year of fondue gifting in America. I think we got three, never used any, and I am far too self-conscious to regift a device for dunking chunks in molten cheese. Hello, Goodwill!
• The Aluminum TV Dinner Tray: they still had these by the time microwave ovens came into vogue, but try nuking your Stouffer's that way! Sparks and short circuits for the microwave and a still-frozen pot pie you had to eat like a Popsicle
• Avocado Green Appliances: We had a green blender and were proud to put it out for the years we lived in Glenmont Apts, with the green kitchen decor. Once we moved to our first house, that avocado blender that never blended an avocado wound up in storage next to the unused bread maker.
• The Popcorn Ceiling: that first house had one of these, and let me tell you, the edges on those joint compound ripples are razor sharp! Ask my right hand.
• The Rented Telephone: An odd concept to grasp. It was said to be illegal to hook up a phone to the Bell System, even if you owned a phone. We didn't.
• TV Guide: 15 cents a week back in the day and that included listings for all the shows on all the stations our antenna could pull in. Plus the easiest puzzle on earth, with the exception of Junior Jumble.
• The Encyclopedia Set: Many a term paper and report on World War II had their start in our good blue World Book, the three-ton printed Wikipedia of its time.
• The 8-Track Player: Never had one.
• The Kodak Carousel: Parents had one. Everyone's parents had one. Labor Day weekend always featured a slide show with pictures of everyone's days at camp, doing cannonballs in the pool, and eating crabs. 
• S&H Green Stamps: it was my job to fill the books with stamps. I used to use a soggy wad of paper towels to moisten the pages of stamps that would give us that long-wanted electric can opener or fake wicker picnic set. 
  
  
  

• The Glass Fever Thermometer: run it under hot water for a second and get another sick day out of it!

Some day, future generations will fight over antique Keurig machines and long-dead cell phones, but they won't know the thrill of setting up a new one of either!