Desk set

Back in 1852, some English explorers known as the Franklin Expedition were lost while exploring the Arctic. (It did not end well, let's just say that). Queen Victoria sent the HMS Resolute to see if the lost explorers could be found.

It gets very cold around the Arctic, and the Resolute became icebound. The crew got tired of waiting for help to arrive and abandoned ship. Along came an American ship skippered by Captain James Buddington, who saved the ship for the British as soon as the ice melted, and had it returned home. Buddington and his men had been on a whaling trip. I have long wished that Buddington's last name had been Jennings, because that way, we could call him "Whaling" Jennings, but anyway.

In 1880, Victoria scuttled the old boat and had its English oak timbers cut down to make wooden things, such as a desk to be given as a gift to the president of the United States. Buddington did not get a desk, but with all those whales he had, there was plenty to blubber about.

The desk wound up in the presidential study of President Rutherford B. Hayes. It's 2 feet 8" high, 6 feet wide, and 4 feet in depth.

It's in the style known as a "partner desk," and originally had clearance all the way through underneath. President Franklin Roosevelt had doors put on the front leghole to hide his leg braces. 

The desk remained in the study until First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, with her inerrant eye for style and grace, had it brought into the Oval Office for the use of her husband John F. Kennedy. One of the most popular images of his thousand-day presidency involved his kids, Caroline and JFK Jr, playing under the desk.

Following Kennedy's assassination in 1963, President Lyndon Johnson sent the desk on a nationwide tour of Kennedy artifacts, after which it was displayed at the Smithsonian Institution.

In 1977, fellow Navy man President Carter brought the desk back to the White House, and every president since, with the exception of George H.W. Bush, has used the Resolute secretaire.

President Barack Obama left the desk in good condition when he departed the White House in 2017. It is not known to history who has occupied the desk since then, but soon, the desk and the nation will be back in good hands, and the Resolute desk will be the work home of a fine new president, once the Coca-Cola stains and Big Mac wrappers are removed.

A broken-down Van

 English rock musicians Van Morrison and Eric Clapton were both born in 1945, the year that World War II ended.  If your history teacher ever gets back on line, he or she will confirm my statement that the war was tough on Britain, and caused tremendous suffering and sacrifice among the British people. Just as here in the US, the depredations and atrocities wrought by Hitler, Tojo, and Mussolini caused death and destruction, but we, as the British, got through by sacrificing for the common good. Meats, sugar, tobacco, all sorts of products were rationed, and no one marched in the streets with picket signs demanding an extra stick of butter, or called radio shows to proclaim that their governor was a fascist. That was probably because they knew what a fascist was, and wasn't.

All this comes to mind now as Clapton and Morrison (sounds like the name of a bakery that makes scones) are putting out a new “anti-lockdown” song. Cities all over the world are finding it necessary to impose stay-home regulations again because of the current alarming climb in COVID-19 cases, and these two can only fret about the fate of live music. So Morrison wrote this "Stand and Deliver” song to support his campaign called "Save Live Music." Clapton will do the performing honors, because he has so much time on his hands.

 Old Van is really on a kick these days, having already put out three “anti-lockdown” songs earlier this fall, including “Born to Be Free,” “As I Walked Out,” and the subtle “No More Lockdown.” If anyone buys this new record, proceeds are supposed to go to Morrison’s Lockdown Financial Hardship Fund for the benefit of musicians.

“There are many of us who support Van and his endeavors to save live music; he is an inspiration,” Clapton said in a statement Friday. “We must stand up and be counted because we need to find a way out of this mess. The alternative is not worth thinking about. Live music might never recover.”

Many people regard Clapton as some sort of guitar God, as if no one ever played the six strings as well as he. It's like people forget how racist he is/was/used to be. If you're new to this, just point yourself here and see his remarks from 1976, the least disgusting of which was, "Keep Britain White." The end of his sentence was,  "I used to be into dope. Now I’m into racism.”

What a nice man!

Sure, he tried to come back from that disgrace by blaming his racism on addiction and self-loathing. But he's not doing his image any favors by getting involved with this science-denying lunacy in the name of commerce.

Here are some people who are sharing a positive message:

And the Health Minister of Northern Ireland, Robin Swann, said "the country expected better" of Morrison. “Van Morrison is going way beyond raising questions,” he said. “He is singing about ‘fascist bullies’ and claiming governments are deceiving people and wanting to ‘enslave’. It’s actually a smear on all those involved in the public health response to a virus that has taken lives on a massive scale.”

While Clapton and Morrison wail, "We must stand up and be counted because we need to find a way out of this mess. The alternative is not worth thinking about. Live music might never recover.”

Listen, guys, there are far more important industries to worry about than music, I'm sorry to say. But if we don't get a grip on this virus, by whatever means, there won't be many live people around to sit and listen to Van Morrison perform his beloved "Moondance" or Clapton's treacly "Wonderful Tonight."

"Remember, it's a holiday, not a holi-week!"

For years, the greatest part of Thanksgiving dinner was always when Uncle Tonoose, full of Natty Boh and holiday happiness, took a nose dive into the mashed potatoes. 

Oh, the hew and cry from everyone as they pulled him out of the creamed spuds, and his tie out of the gravy tureen, and gently placed him face-down over the ottoman. Not that the concern was all about Tonoose's welfare (he'd be fine in the morning, back at the lumberyard) but for the mashed potatoes themselves, because one of the best parts of the whole weekend was the subsequent meals after the big dinner on Thursday.

Don't throw away those mashed patooties! In the morning, stir them (2 cups) up with an egg, and a cup of flour, some diced onion, salt and pepper, and then make patties to fry with your b'fast. Ain't that just like living! Potato Cakes!

Baltimore has always been big on leftover sandwiches, too, and if you're skillful you can make a great one on rye bread with turkey, cranberry sauce, stuffing, and a tad of sauerkraut (dried by pressing down a paper towel, or one of the shirts Tonoose left behind, to soak up excess kraut juice).

And I credit Baltimore with the invention of what I am calling "Stwaffles," which are waffles made of stuffing on the waffle iron. How could anything be better?

I do have to share this from Wisconsin, speaking of Thanksgiving chow. There is a restaurant there called the Dreamland Supper Club, and their year-round specialty is french-fried turkey breast.

This is not like chicken-fried steak, in which a thin steak is dipped in the flour and seasonings and breading that is used for fried chicken, and cooked that same way. No sir, this is a hunk of turkey breast dipped in sweet batter and deep-fried, and served with melted butter and a baked potato.

The sweet batter would suggest some powdered sugar and syrup, but no. This is a very big deal in Wisconsin. According to some reviews I read, this Dreamland is a popular place for holiday celebrations.

Wisconsin, thank you for your beer and cheese, but I'm going to pass on this Turkey Twinkie. 

 

Sunday Rerun: 2012: The Year In Weird

 

So here we are in the year 2012 and that means it's an election year (you might have heard some commotion in Iowa and New Hampshire of late) and it's time for another Olympics.  This is the one for which Baltimore actually put in a rather strong bid a few years ago, and had we been awarded the Summer Games, you may be sure that I would have spent my Summer some other place.  Like I need tourists clogging up the roadway early in the morning, trying to get to the water polo venue when I need to get motorvatin' over the hill.  Plus, it would have been a financial pleasure to rent out the house to a family of Latvians, in town for the Games. 

That'll be $20,000 there, Ludvigs.  Thank you.  Enjoy the games. 

I've never been much for the Olympics anyway.  Track and field events leave me shaking my head.  I mean, if you dig the broad jump and the pole vault and the discus throw and that crazy stuff where you ride a bike 50 miles, swim 50 miles, and shoot a mechanical duck, go for it!  Just leave me to baseball and football, and I'm fine.

It goes without saying that you can't have an Olympics without a really weird mascot.  Baseball has the Oriole Bird, the San Diego Chicken, the Phillie Phanatic, and Yogi Berra - all wholesome and fun symbols of the great game.  The Olympics seem bent on causing nightmares in children and impressionable adults with Wenlock and Mandeville here:

 

I mean, you decide if these monocular puzzle pieces are anything you want your children to dress as this Halloween.

It's never too late to persuade them to go as the King!

The Saturday Picture Show, November 28, 2020

 

It wasn't a good week for either of them, but we'll only have leftovers of the turkey in the foreground.

This is why they put sunroofs on cars these days, so you can make a new friend.

They're growing radishes on the International Space Station right now. I'm sure it has more to do with a science/horticulture experiment than it does giving the crew an extra choice at the salad bar. Who used to get a radish in their lunch with a tiny portion of salt wrapped in wax paper, show of hands?

Freeze is the word. It's got groove, it's got meaning...

This week's free wallpaper will be on my desktop soon!

In China, when you want a bucket o' chicken, an autonomous vehicle will be right there for you. And you say 2020 is all bad! 

Someday, this will be a watermelon, and then more people will discuss the important question: salt, or no salt?

I have a feeling that about 38 million people have had the idea to take a picture looking up from under the Eiffel Tower.

Taylor made

Who wouldn't like Taylor Swift?  I mean, even if you don't care for her music, you have to love how she's always doing something nice for other people.  This summer, realizing that independent record stores are facing crushing competition from national book and music chain stores and that daggone Amazon thing, Taylor gave free signed copies of her latest album "Folklore" to be used in promotions to drum up business.

Up in Maine and New Hampshire there are record stores called Bull Moose Records. Their spokesperson told Rolling Stone that a sales rep from Swift's record company contacted them with an offer to "get in on a promotional sale for signed CDs by a major artist.”

That sounds like something that a new unestablished artist would do, so the store said, "Who's the artist?" 

"And he said Taylor Swift, and I was pretty floored. The idea, as I understand it anyway, was to partner up with Record Store Day to give something super cool for indie stores to sell to drive some foot traffic into stores to help those affected by the pandemic.”

So the store was given all this valuable material to add to their inventory, free for nothin'!

And they tweeted that they had the goods for sale, and within two hours, zoom! All gone!

“Phones rang off the hook in every store. Folks took road trips to try to get one. It was a huge deal! Honestly, I expected it to be big, but this was huger than I expected!” the rep said.

(My eyebrows shot skyward at that last sentence, and I will not lodge a protest against the use of "huger," but, I mean, really.)

Out in Madison, Wisconsin, Angie Roloff owns Strictly Discs. She reports that they "weren’t permitted to talk about it until the CDs were in hand, and then we could post socially about it so folks could come and find us.”

“And the other requirement was it has to be just local customers, not just shipping them to people outside of our immediate area. So today has been the day of Taylor Swift frenzy, which was actually quite fun,” she shared.

Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram went nutty for Taylor and her fans showing off their new prizes. It would have been on Parler, but who would care?

I think the great thing about Taylor Swift is, when she came along as a teenage sensation a decade ago, we were all impressed at how down-to-earth and kind she was, and we all figured she would stay that way.

And we were right!

Happy Unique Thanksgiving

 Happy Thanksgiving to all, as we begin what will surely be the oddest and saddest of holiday seasons we've known here....ever. But there is reason to be hopeful, if  we all keep love alive and show each other caring, respect, and support. 

Southbound

It must have been hell for Jack Kerouac to have to live in Florida. I mean, really. The man who invented being a beatnik and wrote "On The Road" should have stayed on the road and written more books like "OTR" and "The Town And The City," but his dear mother was tired and cold from a lifetime of Lowell, Massachusetts winters. In 1965, she and his third wife Stella Sampas Kerouac packed up Jack and his Underwood typewriter, bound for 10th Avenue North in St. Petersburg. 

“St. Petersburg is a place where old ladies walk all by themselves at midnight, talking to themselves on the sidewalk,” Kerouac said. 

Jack was 43 then, and he had only four years to live. Rumors still say he was working on a novel about his father's print shop when an abdominal hemorrhage, the result of decades of alcohol abuse, took him. His first appearance in print came in the local Lowell press, when he covered high school football before starring in high school football himself, exploits which won him a college scholarship to Columbia, where a broken leg ended his days in the end zone.

Anyway, no he was not happy living in Florida, and spent a lot of time playing jazz music loudly and hanging around bars and a certain bookstore, where he was known for moving his books to more prominent locations on the shelves. Of course, that bookstore is said to be haunted by a ghost, for crying out loud.

St Petersburgers claim that Jack would stroll through the streets, loudly calling out, "I’m the world-famous author, Jack Kerouac.”

This house for sale.

Now he is the world-famous late writer, and his books are still popular with the crowd that, you know, reads.  And you can live in the house he came home to during those 4 hellish years in the Sunshine State! If you have $350,000.

His survivors still come down and get away for the winter until recently, and plans to refurbish the three-bedroom house for use as a writer's retreat (can you just imagine the inspiration!) fell through.

Enter local real estate guy Frank Viggiano, who plunked down $220,000 this year to buy the house. He has restored it to its mid-Century magnificence, and it can be your next abode for that $350,000.

“It took a lot of work, but we wanted to keep everything as authentic as we could, down to the outlets” Viggiano says. “We removed all outlets and cleaned them by hand to take off the aging and discoloration and then painted the walls the original color.”

In Jack Kerouac's early career, he had a clear vision of his destiny, and he said,      "Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion."

 In his Florida Elba, Jack said, "Fame makes you stop writing."

Bugged

You know the San Francisco Giants (baseball) and the New York Giants (football). Now, get ready to say hello to the Asian giant hornet (stinging). The variety of color that's known as the Japanese Giant Hornet wins the most 2020 award you ever heard of...he/she is the World's Largest Hornet!

It's native to temperate  and tropical areas such as East Asia, South Asia, Mainland Southeast Asia, and parts of the Russian Far East. If you don't live in any of those neighborhoods, you're good to go. Insect experts at the U of MD say it will be "years and years" before they get here on their own, and so urge the public not to worry about them for "years and years."

Earlier this year, the US Dept of Agriculture asked us all to keep an eye out for the flying annoyances. Beside being downright ugly, these hornets "could decimate bee populations in the United States and establish such a deep presence that all hope for eradication could be lost." So far, they have been spotted in Washington State, and cannot travel outside that state due to their stubborn refusal to put on masks. The government is doing all they can to eradicate these dudes.

As part of the research into the best ways to do just that, authorities have sent five Asian giant hornets to a lab here in Maryland to study them. 

 
This is a photograph of his face; please memorize it in case he shows up at your door and says he and his crew have been doing some window replacement in your neighborhood....

Photo by By Gary Alpert at en.wikipedia https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1546564

The hornets who came here: two pupae, one worker, one male and one queen, were found in the first nest found in the U.S. in Washington state. Then, just like Green Giant frozen corn, they were flash-frozen and zipped off to the Beltsville Agricultural Research Service lab and the Smithsonian. There, people will compare them to other Asian giant hornets (although it's really odious to compare) try to figure out just where in Asia they came from.

To do that, scientists will examine all their credit card purchases and cell phone pings.

 

Unrelated, but these kids from Ohio hit #96 on Billboard in 1996 with this tune.

What's Yer Name

The Social Security Administration has yet to release the list of the most popular baby names for 2019, let alone 2020's list so far, but at least they are still doling out that monthly check every thirty days. You would have heard me howling if they weren't getting that most vital task done!

Of course, you can blame the pandemic for the lack of a new list, and you can't blame them! Meanwhile, peep the 2018 list and see where the toddler in your life is:

 Popular Baby Girl Names

• Emma
• Olivia
• Ava
• Isabella
• Sophia
• Charlotte
• Mia
• Amelia
• Harper
• Evelyn

Popular Baby Boy Names

• Liam
• Noah
• William
• James
• Oliver
• Benjamin
• Elijah
• Lucas
• Mason
• Logan

No "Leon"? No "Lance"? No "Marmaduke"? "Ernest," Porter," "Hank," "Elvis." They all failed to make the list.

But look at the calendar! It's almost December, and we've been quarantulated since March, and that means it's been nine months since we could move about freely, unmasked and not reeking of Purell. 

And THAT means a sure baby boom is right around the corner, even though you were sure that you wanted no more after the way little Abner acted about his teeth coming in.

If you're in the family way, you will have enough to do just giving birth and bringing that little bitty bundle o' joy home.  So please let me help with some name ideas!

• Marcal, Sparkle, Bounty and Brawny, so you will always remember the great American Paper Towel Shortage, pts. 1 and 2.
• Charmin, Cottonelle and Quilted Northern. You know why.
• Pan. One of the oldest of the Greek gods, he's in charge of the shepherds and the flocks and everything that's wild out there, even the nature of the mountains and the rustic music and the impromptus.
• Demic. It's the suffix that goes with Pan and Epi, and it goes back to the Greek word "demos," meaning "people." How perfect! Have twins, and name one Pan and the other Demic!
• Impromptu. I mean, why not? Impromptu activity is probably the leading cause of the impending boom. As a bonus, a child with the full name of "Impromptu" gets the nickname "Imp." 
• Rona. Corona. Enza. ("I opened the door, and influenza!" Coe. Vid.)
• And if you really want to cheese off your non-science-believer friends, there's always Anthony, Tony, or ... Fauci. 

Sunday Rerun: Looking Back

 It happened one day 20-some years ago in a supermarket now closed. I was talking to a high-school-aged cashier about how little use she would ever have for algebra for the rest of her life unless she became an algebra teacher, and she said that even more than math, she hated history.

"You know, boring old presidents, like Kennedy."

And I was transported back to that day in 1963, seventh grade at the now-demolished Towsontown Junior High School.  It was report card day, and we were being sent back to homeroom to get the cards, and before that could happen, the principal, Maynard B. Henry, came on the public address system and told us that the president had been shot in Dallas, and then he put the radio on so that we could hear the news unfolding.

John F. Kennedy, 1917 - 1963

We couldn't know in the instant moment that the events of that day/weekend would come to be known as the end of the 1950's, the end of our innocence, the end of Camelot.  We only knew that we didn't know much about Lyndon Baines Johnson, who suddenly was our president.  Over the next three days, we saw the slain president come back to Washington in a casket, his personal effects removed from the White House, and the arrest and assassination of his killer. On Monday, we saw a funeral live on TV, and we prepared to enter an unknown future.

Johnson, master politician, leveraged the mourning into passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which knocked down legal barriers at the state and local levels preventing African Americans from exercising their right to vote under the 15th Amendment (1870) to the Constitution.  There is doubt among historians as to whether Kennedy could have gotten passage of these parts of his New Frontier program for the nation, but Johnson did it, and won re-election to his own term in '64, only to bow out of the race in 1968 - one of the most tumultuous years in our history. The Viet Nam War proved to be Johnson's undoing, but his early days in office gave us progress long overdue and still worthy of respect.

All this, we could never have predicted that gray Friday, 11/22/63, but looking back on it, one could never call those days "boring," unless one was not paying attention in History class.  I told the cashier that I was certain her teacher knew some ways to bring the 1960s alive for the Class of '96.  And I hope she asked.

If you are looking for some words to help bring those days in perspective, I can think of few better examples than those of columnist Jimmy Breslin. He knew that every other reporter would interview Johnson, DeGaulle, the other Kennedys, and other people of note. Breslin interviewed the man who dug Kennedy's grave, and wrote about it as only he can.  I urge all interested in looking back with me today to read his piece here.

The Saturday Picture Show, November 21, 2020

 

Well, you know I have to do it every Saturday in the fall...lovely pictures of fall landscapes for wallpaper. 

It seems that every Canadian family has one movie star, one mom, and three brothers. Say hi to Terry, Jeff and Patrick Reynolds, and their mom Tammy, and of course, you know Ryan...

I thought squirrels built their nests up in tall trees, but here's one who was kind enough to move into a window so that everyone could see, like a squirrelly ant farm.

Have you seen the new flavor of ice cream named for 2020?

Those tiny little tea leaves are all for Tea Rex!

This is a wishing tree, where young and old can write down their dreams for the angels to see.

No mask? No problem.

Who knew? Someone had the great idea of making a hoodie that looks like the stage suit - a true Nudie suit - of the late country star Porter Wagoner!

Cop Swap

If there is one thing we know about this Christmas and holiday season upcoming, it's that it is going to be an odd one...

We won't see shoppers thronging the malls and doing the traditional shopping. There will be a lot of mail order and online shopping, and a lot of this new way, with people on the neighborhood websites such as NextDoor.com and Neighborhood.com and WhoTheHellAreAllThesePeopleAnyway.com. People are saying, hey, I bought my son a PS347 last year and suddenly all he wants to do is read books. (It could happen!)

So you're stuck with this video game thang that's just collecting dust and you put a picture of it on WhoWantsIt.com and the next thing you know, you're supposed to meet "Keith from Kankakee" to swap your unused toy for his money.

You don't want "Keith" in your house, for sure, and you're not even sure you want him coming to your front porch. What do you do? What DO you DO?

If you live in stylish Baltimore County, Maryland, you have this option. Our Police Department has set up "safe areas" where people can meet up with strangers with whom they are selling or buying this, that, and the next thing.

The Police press release puts it this way: "As the number of online purchases and sales of goods quickly increase, so do the potential risks associated with these transactions when they involve meeting a stranger. In an effort to keep citizens safe, the Baltimore County Police Department encourages anyone who makes an online purchase that involves an in-person interaction to use our police facilities."

Clearly, the thinking is, if "Keith" is planning to rip you off, he will balk at being asked to meet at the parking lot of any of these locations:

Wilkens Precinct (1): 901 Walker Avenue Catonsville 21228

Woodlawn Precinct (2): 6424 Windsor Mill Road  21207

Franklin Precinct (3): 606 Nicodemus Road Reisterstown 21136

Pikesville Precinct (4): 215 Milford Mill Road  21208

Towson Precinct (6): 115 W. Susquehanna Avenue 21204

Cockeysville Precinct (7): 111 Wight Avenue  21030

Parkville Precinct (8): 8532 Old Harford Road  21234

White Marsh Precinct (9): 8220 Perry Hall Boulevard 21236

Essex Precinct (11): 216 N. Marlyn Avenue 21221

Dundalk Precinct (12): 428 Westham Way 21224

Public Safety Building: 700 East Joppa Road Towson 21286

Randallstown Substation: 9113 Liberty Road  21133

The police encourage you to meet "Keith" during daylight hours. I mean, common sense, all right? 

Wisdom

We think that all the wisdom of the ages just came to be a few weeks ago, and man, is that ever wrong. It turns out that people have known what they were doing long before Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk came along.

How about that?  No, seriously, it shouldn't amaze us that the Aztecs invented a sword blade that modern man has yet to top for sharpness, the ancient Greeks came up with the idea for studded dog collars to save their dogs' necks in wolf attacks, Mayans cultured stingless bees for honey (and saw them live to be as old as 80 years of age, the Aztec built a capital city where over 200,000 lived on a man-made island with causeways, giant pyramids, floating gardens, aqueducts and canals for water delivery, and in ancient India, numbers were invented, the world's first university was established in 700 BC, and the Sanskit language became the basis for all European languages.

So please, let us not think of those who came thousands of years before us as just having ridden in on a head of cabbage! They knew stuff!

I had a message from a friend named Khyati over in India, the reason I bring all this up. We were talking about people and how we can arrange our words to each other in such a way as to bring about peace and understanding, or strife and conflict. All from the same dictionary! I mentioned something William Blake had said, and she replied:

There was a renowned poet called Kabir Das here. He had written a couplet that goes - Aisi baani boliye mann ka aapa khoye, auran ko sheetal kare, aap hu sheetal hoye

Which roughly translates to - Speak in a manner that the anger and ego inside you disappears. Moreover, Speak in a manner which not only makes the other people feel cool inside but also makes you feel good.

Pretty wise, eh? And get this - Kabir Das isn't a modern-day mystic poet with his own show on YouTube and books, calendars, and diet manuals for sale. 

He lived from 1440 -1518!  He has a firm place among the world's greatest poets. In India, he is perhaps the most quoted author, and he is regarded as a great poet and saint by Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs. 

You can Google his works and words. I'm happy that Khyati told me about Kabir. This one passage in particular cheered me right up:

“...But if a mirror ever makes you sad, you should know that it does not know you.”

Which works out great, because I get up at 0505 and my mirror does not even WANT to know me. 

Any time you can get three groups to like someone, you know that person has something special! And to think, Kabir did all this without a computer, without a GPS to help him find his way to appointments, and without even a phone to text on.

Maybe he had the right idea!

Pandamonium

You thought the election season was over, but there is one more vote to be tallied. Please make your choice and vote accordingly!

There is a new giant panda cub in Washington, D.C. at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo. We know he is a male, because he has been seen scratching himself publicly, holding the remote, and laughing when other pandas drop their soup bowl. You may have seen him on Giant Panda Cam at the David M. Rubenstein Family Giant Panda Habitat.

There are only about 1,800 giant pandas left running around in this old world of ours. The species is a symbol of wildlife conservation and is currently in "vulnerable" status on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s list of endangered species. 

So this cub makes 1,801! Let's choose a name from among these (my suggestion, "Panda Demic," was rejected out of hand by the selection committee):

• Fu Zai (福仔), pronounced fu-tzai, meaning prosperous boy
• Xiao Qi ji (小奇迹), shiau-chi-ji, little miracle; 
• Xing Fu (幸福) , shing-fu, happy and prosperous; 
• and Zai Zai (仔仔), tzai-tzai, a traditional Chinese nickname for a boy.

My mom called me "little miracle," but she pronounced it differently.

Mother Mei Xiang has three other kids: Tai Shan, Bao Bao and Bei Bei, but all of them have moved to China under an agreement with the China Wildlife Conservation Association. This new little dude will have to move there when he turns four.

Mei Xiang, age 22, was artificially inseminated. The father is 23-year-old Tian Tian. Don't ask for details on this, please. Just use your imagination.

Busted

 Someone who is expert in the field of crime, or geriatrics, can you please help me with this question?  Why does it seem that aging celebrities are always getting caught pulling petty crimes?

One glance through the old-timers crime blotter shows these interesting cases:

• Rex Reed, the film critic, was arrested in 2000 for walking out of a music store with three CDs in his pocket. He was stopped by authorities at the store, and  charged with larceny and criminal possession of stolen property. 
• Lynn Anderson, one-time Queen of Country Music, was pinched for trying to rip off a $10 Harry Potter DVD in 2004, and also refused to accept the criminal citation the police wrote for her. That might be the saddest sentence I ever wrote.
• Back before cell phones and cheap long-distance access, the first hackers invented "blue boxes"... little doodads you could attach to your phone to make free long-distance calls.  Bob Cummings, an actor from the 50s, got caught blue-handed with one of these things in the 70s, in an apparent effort to steal from the phone company. He avoided prosecution on some sort of double-jeopardy legal maneuver.
  
  
  
• Al Martino, singer ("Painted Tainted Rose") and actor (Johnny Fontane in "The Godfather") got hauled in by Massachusetts cops in 1981 for stealing two shirts and some socks from a department store.
• In 1988, former Miss America and television panelist Bess Myerson pled guilty to charges of shoplifting jewelry, cosmetics and other items from a discount store in South Williamsport, PA. Her amusing alibi, a claim that she was only going to the parking lot to lock her car, and planned to come back in and pay for the loot, would have drawn hoots of derision in any Baltimore County district court, believe you me.

And don't think for a minute that it's only the over-60 celebrities who shop at Five Finger Discount. Amanda Bynes, Kim Richards, Winona Ryder, Lindsay Lohan, UCLA Basketball players, Megan Fox, Britney Spears, Farrah Fawcett...all of them were caught with items they didn't pay for secreted on their persons.

We have to think that entertainment celebrities have been pampered and coddled since they were babies, told that the world was a better place for their presence, and led to believe that they were entitled to take anything that struck their fancy. 

It was revealed, the same year that Bess Myerson pulled her caper, that she had a net worth of $16 million. Surely she could have paid for what she ripped off, and then the police wouldn't have to throw the book at her.

Bess Myerson under arrest

Speaking of which, I can find no evidence of any of these notables stealing a book.

Getting carded

Lot of us collected baseball cards when we were kids. We could play games like flipping them, or attach them to the frame of a bicycle with clothespins so that the bike would sound like a motorcycle as you pedaled away (about as much as grape cough syrup tastes like grapes, but anyway.)

And there were the true collectors, the ones who knew that an Al Pilarcik card from 1960 would someday be worth so much that a pocketful of them would put Sonny through college and pay for the down payment on a house. 

But then are people like Reese Osterberg. She is nine years of age, and she loves baseball (San Francisco Giants especially) and she loves her baseball cards. Loved them, I should say, because she and her family recently lost everything in the Creek Fire in Fresno, CA. And "everything" means everything from their house to Reese's 100-piece baseball card collection.

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection spokesperson talked on the radio one day about Reese's sadness. Try to imagine being nine and having your entire world literally go up in smoke. If there was any way to bring up just a part of a little girl's world...would anyone care to help?

Kevin Ashford, a guy from San Jose, happened to be listening to the radio as the spokesperson spoke. Ashford is what you call a committed card collector, especially if you are alliterative. He had accumulated 25,000 cards and estimated their value as being $35,000 and $50,000.

The plan was to sell the cards on eBay, but then, he had a better idea. He contacted Reese's family. "When she told me that she used to sit with her binder of baseball cards in front of the TV watching baseball, I knew I had made the right decision," Ashford said. "Because that's exactly what I used to do as a kid."

His collection included complete team sets from the 1990s through today, and, as he put it, "They'll be all organized, they can thumb through these, and you know, have at it, and they're going to find some great cards in here, I already know that." 

Mine were tossed quite randomly into a shoebox in which Jack Purcells had been packed, and when my mother threw the box away, Baltimore County's Solid Waste Division committed them to the landfill, where even today they decrease and decompose.

But young Reese is happy. "It's just one thing after another that's been happening here during 2020, and I just want to make it a little easier for these kids, so that's why I'm doing it," Ashford said.

"It's been really tough because, just thinking of the cards I owned, just brings back memories and stuff," Osterberg said.

I collect a lot of things, and the pleasure I get from thumbing through my books and records and CDs and tapes and sports memorabilia is partly because I plan to leave it all to someone who will enjoy all of them long after I have shuffled off to Buffalo. Thank you, Mr Ashford. You did a great thing!

Sunday Rerun: The Compost Office

I must say, the old days, when everyone who left this mortal coil got two days worth of viewing at the funeral home, followed by a proper funeral and interment in a one-person bungalow with service handles, are coming to an end. A lot of us plan to be cremated, which really burns me up.

And now there's this. It's out in Washington State, where Gov. Jay Inslee signed SB 5001, “concerning human remains.” Congratulations, Washington State! You are now the first US state to legalize human composting.

Of course, they're not going to call Uncle Nutsy or Aunt Thelma "compost," even though the tomatoes will never be redder or sweeter or juicier after next May, when the law goes into effect. What will happen to the dear departed will now be called “natural organic reduction.” To help the process along, a process called alkaline hydrolysis (“liquid cremation”) will also put your second cousin twice removed to work among the cantaloupes. Or beneath them.

There will soon be a hilariously-named project called "Recompose" in Washington- the first urban “organic reduction” funeral home in the country.
It will work a lot like a crematorium, but instead of In By 9, Out By 5 like at the dry cleaner, Recompose will take a while longer to perform the miracle of "organic reduction," or human composting.

Using wood chips and straw, the process takes about a month to turn that guy down the street with the really nice hydrangeas into topsoil for his wife's second husband's hydrangeas. Farmers have been doing this for years with deceased livestock.

It'll be just my luck to be lying there as the staff enjoys a Pentatonix marathon on a music streaming service.

Come see me. Not anytime soon, but someday.

The Saturday Picture Show, November 14, 2020

 

Sorry, it's too late for Halloween, and we really didn't have much of one this year. BUT before the Goths there were hippies, and before them, there were beatniks, who also were called Bohemians. Go ahead and rhapsodize!

There is so much coolness in Philadelphia - WAWA on every corner, cheese steaks and roasted chestnuts and hot pretzels and houses like this.

It's not only that the artwork is done so well, but remember, it was done by someone kneeling on the steps!

At the Robert F. Kennedy Stadium in DC, former home of the formerly named football team and the Senators baseball team, there is a drive-thru animatronic dinosaur display. Besides Tyrannosaurus, ‎Talarurus and ‎Triceratops, the most amazing display is the Mitchosaurus Rex, a mumbling depiction of an actual senator.

Cool Christmas House!

Norm Crosby, the comedian who had a deft way with a malaprop, died last week at 93. You remember him from all the Jerry Lewis Telethons and for saying things like, "If you've lost weight, your pants might need an altercation."

In 1960, there were 14 NFL teams, and somehow, LIFE Magazine talked all their quarterbacks into posing for a picture at once. Good to see the old classic uniforms!

This is breakfast in Switzerland, and of course, you get a cup of Swiss Miss cocoa.