The age-old story

Sometimes, your day in the sun is short, but it's always good to remember that feeling of being special for just a little while.

It's like the guy or gal who invented the hamburger. What an idea! Take some ground beef, fry it up in a patty with some onions and slap it on a roll with some catsup and mustard and pickles, and you really have yourself a fine meal, right? And that person basked in the glory for as long as it took until someone else came along and said, "Hey!  Look at what I did!  I put cheese on that thang!"

Cora Purcell is about to turn 104 years old tomorrow, and last Saturday night she had the honor of throwing out the ceremonial first pitch at the Orioles' game against the Nationals.  Mrs Purcell has been a fan for a long time. She saw Babe Ruth hit his 60th home run in Washington in 1927, a record that lasted for a long time.  

But she has lasted even longer, and did very well at her task, tossing a curve ball to O's second baseman Jonathan Schoop and getting a nice hand from the crowd.  

You'd have to figure that no one any older was going to come along and top that, and then the very next day in Seattle, Evelyn Jones left the retirement home where she lives to go to the Mariners game and throw out the first pitch.

Ms Jones is 108 years of age.

For those of you planning to take the mound after becoming a centenarian, Ms Jones credits her long life to exercise, eating beef and vegetables, and drinking alcohol just once a week. And the good genes play a part too... her mother lived to 89 and her father lived to be 95.

But, alcohol just once a week?  Come on, now!

"I'm 18, I get confused every day" - Alice Cooper

Someday, I hope to understand how certain people think, and how, when they go to think about something, they forget what they were like when they were 18.

Now, I love people of all ages, and 18 is a pretty good age.  It was for me. I finished high school (owing in no small part to a reluctance among the faculty to see me looming in their classroom doors again that fall) and I had a union job at the A&P that paid pretty sweet and I had friends to run around and guzzle beer meditate on the meaning of life with and I was a volunteer firefighter and that summer alone, I had three different women ask me to get married.

The fact that they were my mother, my sister and my grandmother takes nothing away from what a happy dude I was at 18.

But I was not responsible enough to get behind the wheel of a big rig semi and roar across the nation's highways, no Siree Bob.  

However, right now, some people in Congress (I won't mention what party they're with, but you can guess) are proposing to change the regulations that so far have kept you and me alive to allow people as young as 18 to roll 18 wheels under 16 tons.

Right now, you have to be 21 to drive a truckload of turnips to the Buy Bye Bye warehouse, but these senators want to allow an unlimited amount of contiguous states that join together in "compacts" to drop the age limit to 18 for interstate trips.  

That means if Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania sign such a deal, that goofy kid down the street could be pushing a big Mack from Portsmouth to Williamsport, from Hershey to Harrisonburg, or from St Mary's PA to St Mary's County, MD.  And probably without stopping or even slowing down very much!

The Senate plan would allow them to start careers careering up and down the roads, and then after four years, the Secretary of Transportation would be required to see whether teens have "an equivalent level of safety" in comparison with older truckers.

In 2013, drivers aged 18-20 were in 66 percent more fatal traffic accidents than drivers 21 and over.  

You want to see an 18-year old driving this?  Like
the kid down the street who races to pick up
his girlfriend at 127 miles an hour?

But there's a shortage of truck drivers, because everyone these days is breaking their neck to enter the burgeoning fields of computer repair, forensic investigation at gooey crime scenes, and running for US president.  So, instead of trying to get mature individuals to stop watching "Judge Mablean" all afternoon and start driving truckloads of velour track suits to WalMarts so people could dress right for the casinos, the trucking industry is choosing to get the Senate to allow callow youths to drive 82 hours a week behind the wheel of a giant tractor-trailer. 

The hope here is that Congress will hear from the public and let teenagers drive their parents crazy in every state, instead of driving trucks along the interstate.

The Boom boom

Unlike my friend from around the corner, A. Rory Borealis, who loves to see bright lights in the sky, I'm all meh about fireworks. Something about the loud kaboom! seems to enthrall a lot of people.  Big noise, big fun.  And these are often people who also enjoy a good mime performance, so go figure.

And the lights lighting up the sky with phosphorescent glory can never be one tenth as glorious as a sunrise or sunset, in my opinion.

Jason Pierre-Paul

So that makes it harder for me to figure why someone who has been gifted with the physique and the coordination to play football in the National Football League would jeopardize that career by playing with fireworks in their back yards, but Jason Pierre-Paul, the star player for the New York Giants, has lost a finger after a fireworks accident over Fourth of July weekend.

Pierre-Paul is currently unsigned, and the Giants had told him they'd pay him $60 million over a long term contract to keep playing for them.

Guess what they're saying now? “Given the timing of the event and the apparent judgment displayed, the Giants do not believe a long-term offer is in the best interest of those involved at this point.”

Also,  Tampa Bay Buccaneers cornerback C.J. Wilson lost two fingers in a fireworks accident that same weekend, per his father's account.  Curtis Wilson, Sr.,  told Charlotte TV station WBTV that the fireworks did not pop out of the canister when they exploded.

"We are aware that C.J. was involved in an accident that occurred over the July 4th holiday," the Buccaneers said in a statement. "It is our understanding that the injury occurred to one of his hands, and our primary concern at this moment is for his long-term health. We have been in contact with C.J. and are continuing to monitor the situation."

Wilson is in the final season of a two-year deal that carries a nonguaranteed base salary of $585,000 for the 2015 season.

Michael Strahan, former Giant defensive end like Pierre-Paul, said on "Good Morning America" that players know the risks in doing these things, but said "They're young; they don't think it will ever happen to them."

So, someone needs to figure out a way to tell them that it does. They call it "football," but you do need your hands to play it right.

Sunday Rerun: Musical Appreciation

In his later years,
Congreve was known as
"Billy Idol"

William Congreve (1670- 1729), an English playwright and poet who was also known as 'Will.I.Am' Congreve," once sat around philosophising and pointed out that “Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.”

Well now.  Oak trees are rather tough to bend, and only volcanic fire can really soften rocks, and it's best not to discuss breasts in a nice family-style blog such as this.  I can tell you that more than half the time, people who misquote Congreve do so by saying "savage BEAST," because we can't think of breasts being savage. 

Savage.  The word comes to us from Middle English via the Anglo-French word salvage, which came from the Latin wordsilvaticus, meaning "of the woods."  Another word that came from that root is "sylvan," meaning an area with a lot of woods, and from that we called the large state with a lot of trees founded by William Penn "Penn's Sylvania," or Pennsylvania. 

Discuss:  Was Congreve telling us that the best breasts come from Pennsylvania? How could he have known, given the clothing styles of the early 1700s, and the fact that he never traveled to colonial America?

Once again, I took the long way around to the topic of the day, which is that science now knows that there are people who just do not enjoy music, or don't start their toes a-tapping when that fiddler starts sawing away on "Orange Blossom Special" or "Alla Turca."  They sit there at a wedding conception, toying with their green beans almondine or twice-baked potato when the band breaks out with "Double Shot Of My Baby's Love" or the DJ spins "Baby Got Back."  Or you're watching MTV a quarter of a century ago when Billy Idol's video for "Cradle of Love" comes on and no one even looks up from the newspaper to watch Molly Shattuck's sister play the part of Devon.

Yes, she did.

If you don't enjoy music, you're missing out on a lot, and you have to listen to nutty reactionary talk radio instead of music, and this is why you come home from work all bound up.  Slip in a little Mötley Crüe into your CD player and see if you don't feel better!

The Saturday Picture Show, July 11, 2015

They call them "bon fires," 'bon' being French for good, so they are fires meant not to destroy, but to illuminate and give warmth and background for evening fun.  By the way, firefighters never call them bonfires because that word can easily be confused for "barn fire," which is a whole 'nother thing altogether.

Just another church festival at a church in England, long ago, except that the "Quarry Men" skiffle group included a guitarist named John Lennon, and at this garden party, young Lennon met young Paul McCartney, and the whole world was changed for the better.

 It was always fun to go back to work after lunch to deal with coworkers and their "diet indiscretions."

 This is why we must be careful with our ice cream snacks!

You don't see deuces so much these days, but they are still around.

It's always worth noting that the more a person knows, the smarter he or she seems to be.  Isn't that something?

This week's classic album cover art features Rod Stewart from the days when he was really good. This 1972 record had "Angel," "True Blue," "You Wear It Well" and "Mama You Been On My Mind."  Several years later, Stewart inexplicably went disco, and there you have it.

We grew up learning that Abe Lincoln learned to read by the fireplace in his humble home.  The modern-day equivalent would be this homeless child in the Phillipines, doing his homework by the light of a McDonald's.  May he have a life like Abe's.

A Plague Upon Us

In Exodus, Pharaoh refused to let the Hebrew people (or Israelites) leave Egypt. 10 plagues were sent as a divine demonstration of power and displeasure, designed to persuade Pharaoh to "let my people go," in the words of the spiritual Go Down Moses.

So, what were the 10 Plagues?

1.  Water to Blood
2.  Frogs
3.  Gnats or Lice
4.  Flies
5.  Livestock Diseased
6.  Boils
7.  Thunder and Hail
8.  Locusts
9.  Darkness
10.  Death of all the Firstborn


Wow.  I feel sorry for all the people who had these plagues visited upon them, and especially for all you first-born people!  I'm a second child, born at 8:30 on a Saturday morning, and I've been an early riser ever since.

But what if the deities wished to foist off another 10 plagues on us today?  Here's what I would worry about:

1. Chickpeas and hummus are all you get for dinner and you'll LIKE it!
2. Having to sit through 127 trailers for upcoming movies that I'm not about to see ever
3. Hangnails and split fingers.  How come a tiny cut one billionth of an inch hurts worse than getting 1 billion stitches?
4. The tuning knob breaks and you have to listen to Nickelback* for the rest of your life
5. You have to listen to people who have not one scintilla of an iota of an inkling of any knowledge of what they are talking about
6. Mosquitoes that are the size of the USS New Jersey and live in New Jersey

#8

7. People who keep saying their pet phrase wrong ("For all intensive purposes", "It ain't rocket scientists", "I wouldn't want to have that on my conscious")
8. Those little eye crumbs that you find in your eye every morning.
9. People who can't wait for the next season to get here..."If only it would cool off so I can say 'If only it would warm up' "
10. Hearing people who devoted twenty years to becoming famous whinging about being famous.


Of course, I just realized that all these plagues are happening to us now!  And we're doing fine.  We can stand more than we think...Yay us!

*You may substitute Adele for Nickelback, or Garth Brooks, as you wish.

Don't waste the gift

It's funny how life works.  Funny and kind of sad, sometimes.

I've known so many people who wanted to have children and had all sorts of trouble getting to be parents.  It's great that we have in vitro fertilization and other means of assisting the stork these days, but still, many who yearn for a family full of kids running around the house in their socks have to do without.

There are ways to compensate, I'm sure, and most people learn to accept life the way it comes to them.  How great would it be if everyone got everything they wanted, and if everyone could be happy and content?  It doesn't seem to be in the cards for all of us, though, and that makes me sad.

On the other hand, there are people who are blessed with children, and here's how they treat them...they put them out of their car along a roadside, in their little infant carrier.

Sandra Clara McClary, no stranger to the Maryland judicial system, was charged with child neglect and reckless endangerment by Anne Arundel County police.  She is the mother of a baby girl found apparently abandoned on the side of Druid Hill Road in that county this past weekend.

McClary and her child. AACO PD photos

After a preacher found the baby and someone called the police, the infant's picture was posted on social media, and Ms McClary called to say it was her child, and that the little girl's father was was supposed to have her, but neither of them knew where the child was, according to the police, who said they believe she removed the child from the vehicle and left her on the side of the road, police said.

And then, up in Maine, we read of the man who performed as a Disney character who so lightly regarded his own life that he used his head as a launch pad for a fireworks mortar tube.

It did not end well, unlike most other Disney stories.  22-year-old Devon Staples of Calais, Maine, who used to perform as Gaston, died instantly.

So, just to clear your head of all these horrible ways some people misuse and waste the most precious gift of all - life - here is a video that shows the love of a mother duck and how she frets about her ducklings as some kind firefighters save them from a drain.

Please click on that link and feel happy right away!  I love the look on the mother duck's face. Oh, if we could all look at each other with that much love and gratitude!

They call the wind "Maria," and I don't know why

My lovely bride Peggy loves this magazine, a quarterly that's more like a book, called "Bella Grace."  It features essays, poetry, and pictures, dedicated to "finding magic in the ordinary."

Peggy finds all this enthralling, and I keep wondering about just one thing.  Is the title of the magazine, which translates from the Italian as "Beautiful Grace," pronounced in the Italian manner as BEL-lah GRAH-chay, or do they just call it "Bella Grace"?  I emailed the magazine staff to ask, but I did not get a reply.  Imagine that.

It all comes back to baseball.  The Oakland A's of the early 70's had a really good leftfielder named Gene Tenace, pronounced just like the game they play at Wimbledon.  It turns out, his real name is Fiore Gino Tennaci, (feeOREay GEEno tenAHchee) which was not widely known at the time.  I don't know why that had to be kept secret.

Baltimore Orioles relief pitcher Darren O'Day has a curious sidearm delivery and an even more curious personal story.  No matter how much his name conjures an Irish background, O'Day is Polish by heritage.  His grandmother, Mrs Odachowski, found herself widowed with three sons to raise in Chicago, and she found it easier to go by "Odach" (with the final two letters silent, in the Polish way).  She worked hard enough to put all three through college, and then two of her sons, including Darren's dad, changed their names legally to O'Day in tribute.

And the story I love to tell involves the late Billy Martin, Yankee manager, infielder and all-around spitfire.  He was born Alfred Manuel Pesano, Jr, the son of a man who split from his family eight months after the baby boy's birth. In other words, he left town shortly after meeting Billy Martin, and that's not hard to believe. Billy's mother did not want him to know he was related to Pesano, Sr, and changed their surname to Martin for reasons unknown.  And his grandmother was so enchanted with young Alfred's handsome looks that she took to calling him "Bello" (Italian for beautiful).

I can see calling Tennaci "Tennis," and I can understand the plucky widow Odachowski going by "O'Day," but under no circumstances could I see calling Billy Martin "beautiful."  I should ask the people at the magazine about it.

Fried Day

How about this? Yesterday was National Fried Chicken Day, and I didn't get one greeting card in the mail wishing me a happy NFC Day!

Chicken-fried steak

I don't know whose idea it was to salute America's Favorite Dinner with its own special day, but it was a good idea. Why do I say it's our favorite dinner? Because fried chicken is so good, it's even the best way to serve steak! It's sort of confusing, but if you take a hunk of cube steak and fry it up as if it were chicken, you've got something tasty right there.

There are several methods for having great fried chicken for dinner.  It all starts with pieces of chicken - breast, leg, thigh and wing - breaded or floured, and then cooked: in a pan with an inch or two of oil, in a deep fryer in which the pieces go for one last swim, or done up in a pressure cooker.

But the fastest and easiest, and probably tastiest way is to get into the Studebaker and ride over to see Colonel Sanders or Popeye or Baltimore County's own amazing Friendly Farm - all places to get fried chicken cooked by someone else, and quite well, too.

On his way to Popeye's

In the Olde Worlde, English people baked chicken, or boiled it, which is why you've never seen a chain called "Andy Capp's Boiled Chicken." It was the Scottish who heated up some cooking oil and tossed in some chicken. This revolutionized the world, especially after some clever Scot invented tongs to get the chicken out of the oil and onto his plate, thereby avoiding the dreaded "burned finger syndrome."  

Because of this, we are able to forgive Scotland for bagpipes and golf.

I hope your Fried Chicken Day was tasty and crispy and slathered in hot sauce!

Change for the better

At the time I'm writing this (Sunday evening, listening to an old Jean Shepherd radio show) Delmon Damarcus Young, former Baltimore Oriole, is sitting somewhere waiting to be told which team has traded which player in return for the right to employ Young as a pinch hitter, designated hitter, and outfielder.

Old #27

Young came to the Orioles last year, and helped lead them to the American League East championship (you can still hear the din down at the ballpark from when he doubled in the 8th inning of game 2 of the 2014 American League Division Series against the Detroit Tigers, a hit that put the Orioles ahead for good in the game.)

This year, the club has more talented outfielders than they have seats on the bench, so Delmon has been "designated for assignment," which means he's off the team while the front office negotiates possible deals with other teams. It's for sure that he will bring the Orioles something good in return, and find a club where he can play every day.

But there were incidents in Delmon Young's past that no one mentioned while he played here, and for good reason. He was a prime example of a man who made mistakes as a younger man, and redeemed himself by changing his ways.

A Californian, Young was the #1 pick in the amateur baseball draft when he finished high school in 2003. By 2006, he had advanced through the minor league rungs in the Tampa Bay Rays organization to the Durham Bulls, where he reacted to a called third strike by throwing his bat at the umpire, for which he was suspended 50 games. He had been suspended for three games the year before for bumping an umpire, while a member of the Montgomery Biscuits.

You have to love the names of minor league ballclubs. The Modesto Nuts! The Akron Rubber Ducks! The Biloxi Shuckers! And by the way, since you asked, the team colors of the Montgomery Biscuits are "butter and blue."

Anyhow, Young made the big league team later in '06, and stayed in Tampa Bay for two years, and then wound up with the Minnesota Twins, and then the Detroit Tigers, and then the Philadelphia Phillies. The Tigers cut him loose after he got drunk one night in New York and hollered an anti-Semitic slur (it was not a pretty incident), and then he wound up back in the minors, and with the Philadelphia Phillies for a while, and finally the Orioles gave him the chance to resurrect his career, which he certainly did.

But Young did the right thing. He got counseling for his alcohol and anger management issues, and he met with a rabbi in Detroit to deal with his anti-Semitism. He was puzzled by that aspect of his life, saying that he grew up in a diverse area where everyone was accepted and there were no problems of that sort.  Between the rabbi and the counselors, his career (with its considerable earning power) was restored. He was by all measures a well-adjusted part of the team here with the Orioles, and takes our best wishes with him to whichever new team he suits up for.

It's a reminder that even those of us with issues that manifest themselves in many ways can always get help, and get life back on an even keel.

Sunday rerun: Out of their league

I had no idea that bowling was this big of a deal!  There was a Johnny Unitas Colt Lanes bowling place down the road apiece when I was a kid, and we would hang around there, hoping to catch a glimpse of the greatest quarterback ever to play in the NFL while we tossed the ball down the alley.  Eventually, the manager would come out and holler at us, claiming that throwing the balls down the back alley was hurting his business, so we'd come in and actually roll the balls toward the pins.


And I know that tens of millions of Americans wear shirts that look a lot like they came from Charlie Sheen's wardrobe so they can go bowling in a league, one or two nights per week.  Looks like fun, if a little overly noisy.  But the camaraderie must be worth it!


Now comes news via my local Patch that a local guy is charged with embezzling 47 thousand semolians from his local bowling league.  This is stunning news, not least because you read that the bowling league started out in 1896, long before most of us were born, and because there is a bowling league that has   had   $47,000 in its bank acct.   


So you read on, and it turns out that all the bowlers chipped in between $200 and $1,000, and this is the prize money that is now missing.  The treasurer is the one on the "hook," if you will, and you can only hope that he doesn't wind up in the "gutter."  Unless he's being "frame"d, he will have to come up with a better story than "the family had a party at my house while I was away, and when I came back, the money was GONE!"


Hey, whaddya know?  We should see if we can "spare" him any extra cash, so this doesn't "strike" him too hard. 

I'm not saying anyone did anything; I don't know anything beyond what was in the Patch.  But I remember when a detective buddy of mine had to investigate a local clown organization for the same sort of thing: dues money missing.  His investigation in that case was hampered by the clowns' practice of only referring to each other by their clown name, so his notes on the case said things such as, "Mr Flopsy said that he saw Pee-Poe with a large stack of cash on the night that they all went to celebrate Baggy Britches's engagement to Miss Choo Choo."

The money was eventually recovered in that case, but still missing are one (1) six-foot Styrofoam hot dog and roll, and a pair of men's shoes, black, size 37.

The Saturday Picture Show for the Fourth of July, 2015

Mexican piñata makers are working overtime to meet the demand for papier-mâché likenesses of an oafish American figure whose boorishness trumps anything I've ever seen.

 John Adams had it right - light up the sky with celebration!

 This is what we celebrate.  It makes nice reading, if you have time.

There is nothing that says "Baltimore" like a pile of steamed crabs, some corn, and a beer or two.

The classic album cover for this week is this unforgettable Springsteen collection from 1984.

 Tonight at 8 on PBS - the annual "A Capital Fourth" celebration.  Songs, prose and fireworks, right on the TV for you!

We recommend Ted 2 for those of you who like to laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh.

This is America: the annual Towson MD Fourth of July parade thunders past the County Courts Building where I worked for many a year, sometimes during the parade!

It takes a lot of thin mints

I should have paid more attention in the psychology classes through which I dozed on many a leafy autumn college afternoon. Let's be honest.  I should have paid more attention in all my classes, but it would have helped to learn more about the human psyche if I had asked Professor Freud (I had some really great teachers!), "Why would a person bestow a generous gift upon a worthy organization and then, like a person teasing a kitten, place an onerous qualification on that gift in order to pull it back intentionally?"

What I'm talking about happened in Washington State. An anonymous donor sent a check for $100,000 to the Girl Scouts. That is nice. A hundred thousand bucks is enough to send 500 girls to camp.

But then, apparently in the grip of an awful case of Caitlynphobia, the would-be benefactor sent a message that said, "Please guarantee that our gift will not be used to support transgender girls. If you can’t, please return the money."

So, it's like this: "Here is some money for a good cause, and it's sandwiches and camp for all, but nothing for any red-haired kids. Or kids with braces on their teeth, or girls who like to dance the polka."

To their credit, the Girl Scouts of Western Washington gave the money back to the churlish one.  Their CEO, Megan Ferland, said it wasn't even a tough decision at all: “Girl Scouts is for every girl,” she says. “And every girl should have the opportunity to be a Girl Scout if she wants to.”

Scouting, for Boys and Girls, is supposed to be an inclusive activity, with room for all kids, as should be the case.  Ms Ferland sums it up nicely: “Every girl that is a Girl Scout is a Girl Scout because her parent or guardian brings her to us and says, ‘I want my child to participate,’ And I don’t question whether or not they’re a girl.” 

There will always be the fearful among us, people who love to develop stories in their minds.  And while they're worrying about little Buster McGaffigan, the tough boy from around the corner, dressing up as a girl for the sole purpose of annoying girls in the Girl Scouts, they should be worrying about living in a world in which there are people who would make a pretense of generosity as a setting for what they're really up to, which is fomenting fear and disharmony.

The happy wrapper to all this is that the good people of Washington have now given money that amounts to more than the $100 G that the original donor waved and withdrew. The best outcome would be if that person gave the money back, no strings attached, because a kid is a kid is a kid.

A $50,000 donation is cause for celebration at the Queen Anne offices of the Girl Scouts of Western Washington. “We have these little clapper thingies, and the clappers go mad when we get that kind of gift,” says the council’s CEO, Megan Ferland. So when Ferland came back to the office earlier this spring and announced that she’d just landed a $100,000 donation, the place went mad. Not only did it represent nearly a quarter of the council’s annual fundraising goal, it would pay to send 500 girls to camp. “We were thrilled,” Ferland says.

Except there was a catch. In late May, as news of Caitlyn Jenner’s transition was blowing up your Facebook news feed, she received a letter from the donor with a brief request: 

Ferland chooses her words carefully when discussing the donor, whose identity she won’t reveal out of respect for their privacy. “The relationship is complex,” is all she’ll say. But she does admit to being “very sad” upon receiving the letter. Shortly after that, though, she made up her mind about how to respond: In a short letter, she informed the donor that she would, in fact, be returning the money. Her reasoning was simple. 

This is the second time in less than five years that a Girl Scouts council has taken a public stand to support transgender girls, and both times Ferland was at the center of the story. In 2012, when she headed the organization’s Colorado council, a 7-year-old transgender girl in Denver was denied entry to a troop. Although the council had never specifically said that it accepted transgender girls, the national organization had always made inclusivity the foundation of its mission. So after checking with the council’s attorney, Ferland issued a public statement welcoming transgender girls and explaining that the council was working to find a troop for the girl who’d been rejected. 

She’s not shying away from controversy this time, either. And an Indiegogo campaign that the Girl Scouts of Western Washington launched Monday morning makes that pretty clear: “Help us raise back the $100,000 a donor asked us to return because we welcome transgender girls,” reads the council’s statement on the site, front and center under a video proclaiming that “Girl Scouts is for every girl.”

The Gender Justice League, which supports the transgender community in Seattle, has pledged to spread the word about the campaign. “We’re so profoundly grateful that Girl Scouts of Western Washington are standing by their values to support all girls,” says executive director Danni Askini. “It’s also mortifying that the donor withdrew this funding. It’s a clear example of how much bias and prejudice against transgender people still exists in our society.”

The word inclusivity comes up a lot when talking to Ferland about Girl Scouts, and according to a psychology professor at the University of Washington, it’s a concept that’s even more important to transgender children. “It certainly is the case that for all people—transgender or otherwise—having people acknowledge the identity that you see yourself as having is very important,” says Kristina Olson. “And feeling supported in who you are—in any aspect of any kid’s life—is going to make them feel better about themselves, do better in the world. So we have a lot of evidence that what we call social support is associated with much better outcomes for kids. And that seems to be especially true among transgender kids.”

Yet while they may acknowledge their identity to themselves, being open about it with others can be much more difficult. “There’s a lot of violence and discrimination and prejudice against transgender people,” Askini says. “So even if people know they’re transgender, they don’t always transition because of that prejudice and bias and discrimination. So the thing about Girl Scouts that’s so vital to all girls is that it’s about creating community and ending isolation.”

Olson is currently conducting a long term study on gender identity among young children. Among the more than 100 trans children her research has focused on in the last two years, 97 percent identified themselves as being the opposite gender than their sex would suggest between one and a half and three and a half years of age. “And that’s the same age that we see other kids who aren’t transgender identify their gender for the first time,” she says.

The Girl Scouts of Colorado took heat from some parents for taking such a clear stand in support of transgender girls, but Ferland wasn’t worried about blowback then. And she isn’t now. “This is the right thing to do, so there was not anything else to do other than return the gift,” she says. “And we need the $100,000 back so we can serve more girls. So we’re going to do everything we can to raise that money. And if it raises a ruckus, it raises a ruckus.”

If the results of the campaign after one day are any indication, it already has. By 5pm—just nine hours after going live—the council had raised nearly $25,000.

UPDATE: As of 9:30am on June 30, the Girl Scouts had surpassed their $100,000 goa

Warden threw a party at the county jail

I hate to keep bringing this up, but may I ask just what is going on in the American prison system?

And I'm not talking about people still being in jail since 1967 for having marijuana seeds in their pocket or something.  I know those inequities exist, but is there any doubt that David Sweat and the late Richard Matt should have been locked up with the key thrown into nearby Niagara Falls?

At 34, David Sweat was in stir for shooting Deputy Kevin Tarsia 15 times and running over him with his car. Sweat's mother, Pamela Sweat, said her son was a troubled child with a violent streak. "I don't want nothing to do with him," Ms Sweat told the Press & Sun-Bulletin of Binghamton, New York. "He has tormented me since he was nine years old, and now he's 34 and I feel like he's still doing it."

Richard Matt was shot to death by a border patrol SWAT team after almost three weeks on the run through rural New York State.  He was 48 and seemed to be just a little slice on Hell on earth, starting out by terrorizing other kids on the school bus, running away from home on a stolen horse as a teenager (what is this, "The Rifleman"?) and as a local thug in Towanda, NY, dismembering the body of his former employer.  At least he was kind enough to kill the man before sawing him into a million pieces, after which he fled to Mexico, where he killed another American and, for his sins, was incarcerated in the prison in Dannemora on a term that was to run until 2032 with no chance of parole.  Matt "is the most vicious, evil person I've ever come across in 38 years as a police officer," Gabriel DiBernardo, a retired captain with the North Tonawanda Police Department, told the New York Times.

So.  One guy is a longtime troublemaker, guilty of two murders, and the other saw a long string of crimes culminate in the murder of a police officer who was attempting to arrest him for possession of stolen guns.  The penal system of New York saw fit to place these two upstanding citizens in the "honor block," where they could apparently come and go as they pleased, dress in civilian clothes, and saw their way to freedom through cell walls and steam pipes, aided by tools brought to them by a prison worker who thought maybe she loved one or both of them and by a guard who allowed them onto the catwalks behind their cells so that they could wire their executive suites for electric outlets for their toaster oven.

They even made a practice run of their escape the night before they pulled off the real thing.  Any performer can tell you the value of a good dress rehearsal.  I wouldn't be surprised to hear that the warden, his top brass and most of the guards were in the audience with Playbills in their hands, enjoying the show.

There were supposed to be hourly bed checks of all 180 cells on the night shift at the lockup.  I guess that was overlooked.  And in the evening, while they were breaking that brick wall with a sledge hammer they found sitting there in the prison, no one heard the unmistakable sound of a wall being dismantled?

Here's what happened instead:  Sweat and Matt slipped through an opening they had cut in the back of his Sweat's cell.  They climbed down five flights of piping to the tunnels below the prison. Then, they crawled through the hole they had made in a brick wall. From there, it was an easy matter to slip into a steam pipe which they had cut holes in, walk down another tunnel, and pop out of a manhole cover two blocks from the prison.

That's where they were supposed to be met by their ride, fickle-hearted Joyce Mitchell, but that didn't work out so well.

Sawing through this wall probably violated their
lease, and they will forfeit their security deposit

Now, the three top officials at the Clinton Correctional Facility and nine other security employees are out on their assessments, on administrative leave. Among them are the two guards who regularly worked the night shift on the inmates’ cellblock and who were on duty the night of the escape. Guarding, but not guarding.


I've said this before, but I need someone to help me understand. It all seems so simple to me, but I'm just a guy without advanced degrees in penology and criminology and sociology.  Why do we even have prisons if the evil sons of witches we send there are treated like the cast of "Saved By The Bell: The College Years" and allowed to roam about at will, cooking in their cells, dressing like models in the LL Bean catalog, and sawing their way out as no one looks to see what they're up to?

I almost wonder why they'd want to get out, anyway.  Sounds like they had it pretty cushy in there already.

Things I Have Learned By Being Alive for 64 Years

1. Worrying about something never changes anything.
2. If I were being pursued by bad guys, I would want G. Gordon Liddy on my side.  If I were being pursued by good guys, I would want attorney Lenny Shapiro on my side.
3. Satchell Paige was right when he said, "Don't look back. Something might be gaining on you."  I don't look back and regret things I did, but I do regret some things I didn't do.
4. Clothing and shoe salespeople don't mean it when they say a pair of pants or shoes will fit really nice once you take it home and wear it a few times.  If it doesn't fit in the store, it won't fit at home.
4. Same thing with people.  If they don't seem like they will be nice or be your friend, they won't be.
5. Everything a person needs to know has been written about in The New Yorker magazine or depicted in The Simpsons.
6. People who have passed on are doing wonderful things for us every day. My angels protect me, guide me, comfort me, hear me.
7. No matter how much I whine about it, people are still going to use the adjective "everyday" as an adverb. This happens every day.
8. I will never ever ever get to read all that I want to read.
9. As much as people ask you to be honest in assessing their new hairdid/car/jacket/significant other, they really want affirmation. And I want them to have it.
10. A lot of people have achieved fame, fortune and riches, and yet they can't even look at themselves in the mirror because they cheated, lied and hurt others on the way up the ladder. Success is hollow without a firm foundation.
11. A kindness to an animal is always repaid, sometimes by the animal itself.

12. No matter the level of hostility they display, every person has a need to feel loved, to fit in, to have a certain status.
13. I've seen this written and it is true: you can tell everything you need to know about a person by seeing how they interact with "service" personnel: housekeepers, servers, cashiers.
14. In 64 years, I have yet to learn to act, so there goes any dream of starring in romantic comedies with Mila Kunis.
15. I wouldn't trade one second of my life for anything.  I've had the love of the most wonderful woman alive, my Peggy, and friendship and adventure with the whole world.  I just don't know how to say enough thanks, but I thank you all!

Pound for pound

Hello and welcome to Consumers' Corner, where we will address marketplace issues that affect us all.

First up is this report from New York, New York - "the town so nice they named it New York." Their Department of Consumer Affairs Commissioner, Julie Menin, says Whole Foods supermarkets have made a habit of cheating their customers by overstating the weight of prepackaged meat, dairy and baked goods.

Let's talk about these stores.  Since it's hard for me to distinguish among Whole Foods, Fresh Market, MOM'S Organic Market, and the dim aisle with wooden floors and track lighting in Wegmans, I just call them all "The Hippie Store."  They all have great heaping bins full of granola and bulgur wheat and brown rice and dried kale and seeds and nuts and flours and grains and split peas and lentils
and I don't know what-all else, and in those plastic tubs, one can find most anything they want to eat, as long as one doesn't want it to be especially tasty or easy to prepare.

"Mantequilla" is Spanish
for "butter"

I get so confused with the news about food anyway. One day bacon and coffee are bad for you and wine and chocolate are good for you, and the next day, they change places.  And then, you study Spanish and find out that butter is meant to kill ya.

Lentils, Peas and Rice: America's Snack!

But, whether it's the deli at Try 'N' Buy or the upscale slice-a-rama at the swanky stores, a pound of ground beef should weigh 16 ounces anywhere.  Even if it's not all beef.  Just saying.

In New York, the Consumer Affairs Department examined 80 pre-packaged WF products and found incorrect weights for each.  You'd have paid  - overpaid -  80 cents for a package of pecan panko. And that's assuming that you even meant to purchase pecan panko.  If you were buying coconut shrimp, you were really in for a hosing, to the tune of a $14.84 markup.

Check out the video before you check out at the grocery store! You'll be a-gassed, as they say.

Nathan Thurm, Attorney

By the way, you have to like the guy from Whole Foods whose advice to you is to challenge the store to be certain that 8-oz package of gluten-free organic Gluten you just picked up really weighs half a pound. Go weigh it yourself, if you don't trust us, he admonishes. Dear Whole Foods, you might want to get a public spokesperson who doesn't remind us all of Nathan Sturm, Martin Short's lawyer character on SNL...

And our next letter comes from Mr D. Sweat of Clinton State Prison in New York State.  Mr Sweat writes: "OK, me and my partner Rich bought a pound of ground beef to cook in our cell in our little toaster oven, but when we opened that package, inside the meat we found hacksaw blades and drill bits in it.  We think there was something wrong with that meat; every since we done ate it, we've been breaking out."

Answer to Mr Sweat:  Is there too much lead in your diet?

It's a gas

You can bet that doctors are going to be a little more careful in how they talk about their patients in the future, following the awarding of a half a million Doctor Dollars to a man from Vienna, Virginia. The man, unidentified in press accounts, went to a medical suite in Reston, Va. for a colonoscopy.  He had a pretty good idea: he hit the "voice record" button on his smart phone so as to capture the post-procedure instructions his doctor would give him.

On the way home, he pressed play and was surprised to find that a) he had let the thing keep recording all along   and
b) the anesthesiologist and her staff were big-time goofing on him all through the procedure.

Anyone over 50 knows the pleasure of spending one day at home, draining the crankcase, as it were, so that the next day the doctor can slide a hose up the old sit biscuit, a hose with a flashlight and a camera and a microwave on the end of it.  The purpose is serious; they are looking for polyps which could become cancerous, so it's worth it to have this completely embarrassing and inconvenient ordeal done to you every so often (doctors recommend at least three of them per month, just to be safe.)

Anyway, the doctors weren't just insulting him to his second face; they were also rigging up a false diagnosis on his chart and planning to avoid speaking with him afterwards.

On the recording, one hears such delightful, professional passages as, "After five minutes of talking to you in pre-op, I wanted to punch you in the face and man you up a little bit,” (anesthesiologist to nurse, about him.)

A medical assistant saw he had a rash. The anesthesiologist told her not to touch it. "You might get some syphilis on your arm or something. It’s probably tuberculosis in the penis, so you’ll be all right."

And, the most disgusting of all (and that took some doing): The man was queasy when watching the IV needle being placed in his arm, and this wonderful anesthesiologist said, “Well, why are you looking then ?”

And she used that vile "r" word that I abhor.

And there were other horrible things, and in a suit for defamation and medical malpractice, a Fairfax County jury ordered the anesthesiologist and her practice to pay him $500,000.

The name of the anesthesiologist is Tiffany M. Ingham.  At  42, she is acting like a six-year-old playing doctor.  The Washington POST said she has left the practice and moved to Florida, and has already left the job she recently started there.

A spokesperson for Aisthesis, former employer of Dr Ingham, said in a statement: “We apologize to this patient and regret the distress and suffering that this most unfortunate incident caused. The anesthesiologist involved  is no longer with our practice. Once we learned of this incident we assured that every anesthesia staff member reviewed and reiterated their pledge to abide by our professional organization’s code of ethics.”

The man was awarded $100,000 for defamation — $50,000 each for comments about the man having syphilis and tuberculosis — and $200,000 for medical malpractice, as well as the $200,000 in punitive damages.

Listen. We understand that doctors are only human, and we men know with certainty that while we are under sedation, a veritable phalanx of doctors, nurses and medical staff will be goofing on our noodles.  We just wish they'd be nice about it, but maybe having to shell out half a mill will help.

Sunday Rerun: She Must Have Been Very Mad

As Stewie would say..."here we go.........."

From NBC News:

ARBUTUS, Md. — Authorities in Maryland say two women threw bleach and another chemical on each other during a fight at a Walmart, prompting officials to evacuate the store for two hours and call in a hazardous materials team.

Fire officials say 19 people had to be taken to hospitals, although only one was thought to have serious injuries. That person was taken to the Wilmer Eye Institute with a potentially serious eye injury.

Fire officials were called to the store in the Baltimore suburb of Arbutus shortly before 11 a.m. Saturday.

Fire Department spokesman Glenn Blackwell says one person was arrested and charges are pending.

"This is obviously not the type of behavior we would expect from people at our stores. We apologize for any inconvenience this caused to our customers," Walmart officials said in a  statement.

This is the other end of the county from here,  but do you see what's going on?  Unwilling to rely on conventional weapons, this woman chose to wage chemical warfare on the new girl seen on the arm of her baby daddy, according to the police down there.  And not only did she toss bleach on her rival, she followed that with Pine-Sol, which contains ammonia, and every schoolkid knows, that's a combination that makes chlorine gas and other unpleasant reactions.

They had to evacuate the entire WalMart on a Saturday morning, causing moans to be heard from here to Bentonville, AR.

And then the bleach-bomber showed up at the police station, asking to take out a protective order to keep the victim from getting back at her!

Now I have to worry every time I go into a WalMart.  I can assure you, if you're looking for the guy who is stepping out with your baby momma, I am not the guy.  Among my manifold sins you will not find infidelity.

But there just might be those who would want to toss something unexpected on me in a huge megastore.  For their convenience, here is a list of things that I would accept as incoming liquid projectiles:

• Kozy Shack rice pudding is always nice.  Reminds me of diners.
• English Leather after shave.  It's all I ever use, after I shave.
• National Bohemian beer
• A homemade milkshake 
• Cole Slaw

Rice pudding!

So you see, there is no real need to toss hazardous chemicals at one another, when much more pleasant fluids can be flung. If you ever see much dashing out of a WalMart with bits of cole slaw trailing behind me, and smelling like I just shaved, please say hi! And I'll share the rice pudding.