The Saturday Picture Show, May 15, 2021

 

Let's start today with a sunset view of Cairo, Egypt. Not every city has a view of the ancient pyramids.

This ad probably appeared in the late 1950s and here we are, STILL waiting for plug-in electric flying carpets. Hurry up, already!

Homeowners' Corner: Why go to Lowe's and purchase high-priced shower heads when Dollar Tree sells just what you need, but in the garden aisle?

There was a time when the simple process of finding out what time it is involved pulling out a pocket watch, which was carried on a chain attached to something called a fob. I notice fewer and fewer people using watches, on the wrist or in pockets, anymore. A lot of people will tell you, they rely on their cell phones to tell them the time. Even more will tell you they just don't care what time it is!

This week in 1972 saw the release of the Rolling Stones' "Exile On Main Street," featuring great tunes like "Tumbling Dice" and Keith Richards's "Happy." It hardly seems like it's been 49 years.

Someone drew this with markers. If you stare at it for 49 years, you will hear "Tumbling Dice" in your mind.

Some really cool mom put a handmade cartoon in her kid's lunchbox every Monday just to get the week off to a good start. And the kid saved them! What a treasure!

When squirrels build their nest up against your window...

We never thought we would see Fonzie go fishing. Ayyyyyyyyyyyy!

Starting today, I am going to make sure all my desserts are labeled, so as to avoid confusion.

What in the hill

We Americans like to say that something clearly superior is "the bee's knees," but in Australia, the superlative gets called "the ant's pants."

And with more than 12,000 species of ants all over the world, that's a lot of pants! Here's how they break it down: In any ant colony, you'll find three kinds of ants:  The queen, the female workers, and males.

Funny, that's how it is in most workplaces! (Notice, it said female WORKERS, and males. Draw your own conclusion about how stuff gets done.)

Second graders will find this interesting: An ant can lift 20 times its own body weight. I mean, you've seen them carrying cake crumbs the size of Joe Pesci! But if you second graders were as strong as ants, you would be able to lift a car! So give it up for the ants, unless you can lift a car.

While I was looking up stuff about ants (because I wanted to write about Ansan, a city in South Korea, but I didn't get far enough in the dictionary) I discovered that at one time on earth, the total weight of ants running around on earth equaled the total weight of people.

Entomologists  - or "bug experts" - figure there are at least one million trillion insects among us. One percent of them are ants. 

That comes to ten thousand trillion ants. 

2,000 years ago, Before the days when there was a froyo stand on every corner and people were less, uh, corpulent, if you had a giant scale, and had all the ants on one side and all the humans on the other, it would have balanced out perfectly, says Francis Ratnieks, professor of Apiculture at the University of Sussex.

Professor Ratnieks would probably agree, that would look silly, all those people stomping on all those ants.

Murder is forever

 

The more you read about some people, the more you can't believe most people.

You heard about these two young Americans who went to Italy for a good time and wound up in hell. Finnegan Lee Elder was 19 in July, 2019, when he and his old high school buddy Gabriel Christian Natale-Hjorth, then 18, tried to purchase cocaine on a Roman street corner. Big surprise, they got burned, so they robbed the guy who had steered them to the drug dealer. They took his backpack and demanded 100 Euros and a bag of cocaine if he wanted it back.

Natale-Hjorth, left, Elder, right

The man agreed, and also notified the police. Italy's Carabinieri paramilitary police force got in on it, and in the early morning of July 26, 2019, Carabinieri Vice Brigadier Mario Cerciello Rega, 35,  and his partner met the two American idiots near their swanky hotel.

The police were in plainclothes. Next thing you know, they all four were fighting, and Elder allegedly stabbed Cerciello Rega 11 times with a 7" combat knife that he wisely packed for his big trip (remember this fact!). Meanwhile Natale-Hjorth was busy belting Cerciello Rega's partner repeatedly, according to prosecutors. 

Cerciello Rega had just come back to the job after his honeymoon. He died at age 35 from his wounds.

The two young Americans were sentenced to life in prison.

Two years later, here come Ethan and Leah Elder, parents of the man who killed a policeman, to tell "Good Morning America" that they are concerned about their son's mental health behind bars.

The Elders

"We just want Finn to be able to survive this," Leah Elder said. "He has a noted history of attempted suicide, and we're really worried and really concerned. He was utterly devastated by the verdict, just devastated. It was completely unexpected for him."

(He went to a foreign country and killed a cop and he didn't expect to get sent to prison.)

During the trial, Elder's mother testified that he had attempted to commit suicide several times in the past.

"He struggles with anxiety and depression, and his current situation is really perilous," she said.

(Knowing this, she sends him off to Italy, rather than making sure he gets treatment.)

Elder's parents told the morning show that he is "incredibly kind, incredibly sensitive" and "painfully honest."

"He does not see a reason to lie," Leah Elder said of her son. "From the moment Finn was detained, he has not changed his version of that night one iota."

(Simply telling the truth does not relieve one of the burden of guilt.)

Elder, the incredibly honest young man, and Natale-Hjorth were seen on surveillance video running away from the murder, still holding the backpack they had ripped off. A block away, at their hotel, police found their bloody clothing and the murder weapon stashed in the ceiling.

Elder and Natale-Hjorth were questioned by police and confessed.

Natale-Hjorth testified that the amazingly kind and sensitive Elder told him to hide the knife he had just used to kill a newlywed policeman.

Elder's parents said that their boy was "illegally interrogated" by police "without a lawyer present."

(But he was always honest.)

"We raised Finnegan, as I’m sure many other parents do, to tell the truth and things will be okay," Ethan Elder said. "And part of his utter devastation at this verdict is he has told the truth from the very moment he was being illegally interrogated."

("I admitted to killing the man, so why do I have to be punished?")

In Italy, an accomplice in murder can also go up on murder charges, so both Elder, now 21, and Natale-Hjorth, now 20, were found guilty on all five identical charges and received life sentences. That is the toughest penalty in Italy.

Elder's parents, who seem immured in a world that keeps reality away, told ABC  they were "shocked" that their son's sidekick was charged and convicted the same.

"My heart breaks for that entire family," Leah Elder said.

(Heartbreak for the policeman's wife? Nope.)

Elder's parents said they feel their son's sentencing was too harsh, given his mental health issues and young age, and that they plan to appeal the ruling.

(But he was old enough and mentally sound enough to traipse across Europe, killing people.)

"He feels like he has been sentenced to something worse than the death penalty," Leah Elder said of her son.

"I understand that a man's life was lost that night, I understand that Finnegan should serve some time," she added. "I would like Finnegan to have some sort of sentence that’s proportionate and something that helps at least acknowledge his mental health issues."

(What's proportionate for taking the life of another man? A week in jail and a strong talking-to?)

The parents said their son's new reality -- his life as a prisoner -- is at times "too painful" to think about.

(They are not thinking of the policeman's widow.)

"This tragedy that happened, it's changed us all," Ethan Elder said. "Watching your son mature in prison is very hard."

(Attending your husband's funeral is harder.)

"Tyger Tyger, burning bright, in the forests of the night..."

"And checking the American League baseball schedule, I see the Tigers are in Houston..."

We saw this on the news, and now, here are the details. Over the weekend, in a city called Houston, in a crazy state the natives call "Texas," a tiger was roaming around a residential area. The police have taken a suspect into custody.

And because it's "Texas," the suspect was walking around free, on bond, from a murder charge.

He's 26, his name is Victor Hugo Cuevas, and now he has to face an additional charge of evading arrest with his pet tiger.

As of this writing (yesterday morning) the tiger is still on the loose, police said.

Attention people attending law school: there might come a time in your legal career when you will need to issue a statement such as this:

"My client is not the owner of the tiger."

KHOU-TV reports that Cuevas's attorney, Michael Elliott, went on to say, "HPD was in such a hurry to wrap it and find their guy that they just assumed because my client was the one who caught this tiger, who went out and got it and brought it back into safety, everyone is just assuming that he is the owner of the tiger."

Please take a moment to read that sentence out loud. Then, look at yourself in a mirror. You'll see that your eyes are spinning like slot machine cherries.

Attorney Elliott went on to lament, "He's already been convicted, which is a shame."

He went on to claim that Cuevas had a deal with the police that he would turn himself in at 8:15, but the cops double crossed Cuevas and pinched him at 8.

This whole confusing situation began on Sunday when a neighbor called 911 to report the big cat strutting around the neighborhood. Someone came along and corralled the beast and they drove off in an SUV. 

The only person in this whole saga whose story holds up is the tiger. Stay tuned for more!

Winning by cheating is not winning at all

Against all odds and common sense, it really seems to mean a lot to some people to hold titles such as "Homecoming Queen." 

Sure, when you're 16, 17, whatever, a large part of your self-image comes from being so highly regarded as a local deity. It's understandable for people of that age, and if the competition is fair and open to all, it's all right.

But there is a reason why parents - or someone - should keep eyes on their children as they compete in these things. Suppose the desire to be the Queen is so overriding that it blinds a teen to what's right? That's when you need a responsible adult to provide direction.

Emily Rose Grover, down in Florida, needed some guidance a couple of years ago, and she got it - but in the wrong direction. She was running for HQ at Tate High, in an election where the other kids voted on their computers, and now the state is charging Emily Rose with felonies as an adult.  Also charged is the person who should have been guiding her toward more wholesome ways of competition, her mother, Laura Carroll, former assistant principal at Bellview Elementary School.

It's staggering that people who are paid to educate can be involved in scandals like this, and in fact, Ms Carroll's job led to the whole scheme, because the allegation is that old Emily Rose used her mom's password to get into the school computer network and rack up votes for herself. She got enough votes to win...for the time being.

Grover and Carroll stand accused by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement with one count each of felony offenses against users of computers, computer systems, computer networks, and electronic devices; felony unlawful use of a two-way communications device, felony criminal use of personally identifiable information, and conspiracy to commit these offenses.

Mother (l) and daughter

They have both bonded out, and are at home reading Glamour magazine while awaiting trial.

The computer network is called FOCUS and it's the student information system for the Escambia County School District. District officials called the law when they noticed that hundreds of student accounts had been breached. The presidential campaign of 2020 was not the only closely-watched contest down there in the Fla panhandle. The vote for Tate High School’s Homecoming Court seemed a bit shady, what with 117 votes coming in from the same IP address within a short period of time.  It took cops about 5 minutes to link Carroll's cellphone to this, and that included 3 minutes for coffee. 

Part of the school system's computer setup is an app called Election Runner, for such things as homecoming court elections. The people at Election Runner notified the police of over 100 questionable votes, and an ethics complaint, about the election that Grover "won," but didn't.

Carroll was expelled from Tate High over all this, and even though her mother protested, the expulsion was upheld.

So, nothing to do until the trial. But this mom and daughter, like the rest of us, have plenty of time to wonder how it can be so important to be the homecoming queen that it's worth all this trouble. And could Grover have been comfortable wearing the vaunted crown, knowing she "won" it by illegitimate methods?

Even more troubling - how many students (and teachers!) did Carroll come in contact with over the years, exposing them to her deficient sense of right and wrong?

The Reasons

In Mexico, Cinco de Mayo is considered a relatively minor holiday. It is not their version of July 4; it isn't their Independence Day.

What happened on Cinco de Mayo - May 5, 1862 - was the victory of the Mexican army over France in the Battle of Puebla during the Franco-Mexican War. 

That war came about after Mexico, torn apart by years of internal fighting, had to default on loan payments to France, Britain, and Spain. Those three nations sent their navies to Veracruz, Mexico to settle things in the time-honored way of warfare, but Britain and Spain came to a sensible conclusion and arranged settlements with Mexico. 

Napoleon III, Emperor Of The French, saw a chance to take some Mexican territory for himself, and kept fighting, sending a large fleet and strong forces to Veracruz.

With 6,000 French soldiers and sailors on the attack, Napoleon III nonetheless saw his dreams of carving out some of Mexico as a "Little France" when 2,000 Mexicans, led by Texas-born General Ignacio Zaragoza, sent the French packing, ending the invasion at the Battle of Puebla.

Today, the Battle of Puebla is still a cause for national celebration and pride among the Mexicans. They have parades, battle recreations, and other fiestas but May 5 is not a national holiday in Mexico. Offices, banks and stores remain open as usual.

I mention all this as a bit of historical perspective, because May 5 has become one of those holidays in the United States that is nothing more than a reason for people to throw a party.

I worked with a woman who was born and raised in Ireland. Every year, she was aghast at the way this nation turns what is considered a holy day in Ireland into a day of green-tinged decadence.

I doubt that a lot of the people who were wearing sombreros and guzzling Dos Equis the other night knew the reasons why Cinco de Mayo matters in Mexico, any more than the revelers on March 17 know why St Patrick is important in Ireland. 

I've noticed a trend to what I call "Hallmark Holidays," events promoted by the greeting card and balloon industries to sell more of their product. Why not? It's a free marketplace, and have fun, I say!

But not like this:  Maryland State Police arrested 21 impaired drivers, issued more than 700 citations and nearly 1,000 warnings during their increased enforcement last Wednesday, Cinco de Mayo.

Three people died in car wrecks on that day, and also, a state trooper investigating a crash on I-95 was almost hit by a box truck that the police say was being driven by an impaired 45-year-old driver.

I'm not trying to get all preachy. People are going to drink and misbehave even without beer, whiskey, and wine manufacturers creating silly reasons to encourage them. But maybe they could also take time to educate people about the real meaning of holidays at the same time. 

The Sunday Rerun (from January 2017): Color Me Surprised

 In a mountain greenery,

Where God paints the scenery
Just two crazy people together. 

- Mountain Greenery (Rodgers & Hart)

Well, the wait is over, and for those who thought the election results would never be final, relax...the Color Of The Year has been chosen.

The other colors are all green with envy, because this year,  the good people at Pantone - "the authority on color, provider of color systems and leading technology for accurate communication of color" - have decided that Greenery is the color of the year.

It's a yellowish green, to be sure, "refreshing and revitalizing" in the words of Pantone, and "symbolic of new beginnings."

I've had plenty of new beginnings, and none of them reminded me of this color. What's more, we say someone is "green" when they are inexperienced, callow. 

Rougned Odor (r) finally had
his fill of Bautista as well.

As a lover of all things Autumn and Winter, I'm more of a brown and orange kind of guy. Spring does not thrill me because it inevitably leads to the horror we call summer, with its heat, humidity, broiling sunshine, mosquitoes and Jose Bautista.

Some years ago, a celery-colored color called Celadon was briefly popular.  This was just after all doctors were required to outfit their waiting rooms in mauve and gray shades, but before all rooms were decorated in the color known as "stainless steel."  I liked celadon.  I like celery, the negative-calorie food (you burn more calories grinding on it than you take in.  It's sort of a reverse milkshake in that.)  Celery adds the green to shrimp salad and the crunch to a tossed salad, too.

They're trying to make this greenery look like mint, but mint is the one crop that grows well here at the Lazy 'C', and it's much darker than this "greenery."  Home gardeners, and lovers of iced beverages, I recommend that you visit your local greenhouse in spring, buy some potted mint, and plant it down by the shed or near the spigot.  You'll snip leaves of tasty greenery-goodness forever, and be delighted as they add that certain zest to your iced tea.


And I hereby nominate "iced tea" to be color of the year for 2017.

The Saturday Picture Show, May 8, 2021

 

Birds of a feather, etc....this man went out to feed his chickens and found a mama duck had made herself a little nest and is expecting a couple of dozen kids! Nature will find a way!

I always think of people looking back on their days, and I know that very few of them are saying, "I should have stayed late at work more often, come in on days off, and given more of myself to a company that couldn't care less about me." Do your best, make your way, and take care of yourself as you go. 

It's also free range, if you want it.

Orioles left handed pitcher John Means is shown here celebrating his no-hit game from this Wednesday. It was the first one-man no-hitter by an Orioles pitcher since 1969, when I was just finishing my distinguished high school career. Jim Palmer pitched that last great game. It's been a long time!

It's funny to see Western movies. The good guys all look like Jimmy Stewart or Clint Eastwood, and the bad guys are all Brad Pitt or Clu Gulager - handsome, rugged, raw-boned (however that works!) and then you see a picture of a real bad guy, and he looks like this addled delinquent. This is Billy The Kid, who went by "Henry McCarty" at his birth in 1859. He died in a gunfight at 21, after taking 8 lives himself. Seeing him for real makes the Wild West a little less enchanting.

One great thing about this internet thing is that we learn a lot more about the rest of the world every chance we get. Never forget the reason why we are still the greatest country in the world. This 19-year-old is Olga Misik, a Russian who went to a demonstration and read the Russian Constitution to riot police. For this sin, she will be sentenced to two years in prison. Never take your freedom for granted.

Of course, you recognize Marilyn Monroe, meeting Queen Elizabeth in 1956 in London. The man next to her is movie performer Victor Mature. I would call him an actor, but he himself told his daughter Victoria, "I'm no actor, and I have 64 movies to prove it." He often played guys who just got out of prison and were handed a 5 dollar bill and a custom-made suit that fit like, well, like a custom-made suit.

"Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a disorder in which people have recurring, unwanted thoughts, ideas or sensations (obsessions) that make them feel driven to do something repetitively (compulsions)." - from a psychology textbook.
"Texas never backs down" - from a T-shirt.

This is one of those situations where you figure someone knows enough to know whether this is ok, but I am not setting foot in this building. Or under it.

The last line, and the title, of a great poem by Robert Frost (1874 -1963) used to appear on this wall, but, ironically, those words couldn't stay.  The complete poem:

Nature’s first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf’s a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

In loving memory

Like the rest of the world, I was shocked at the news that those two crazy kids from out west, Bill and Melinda Gates, were calling their marriage a closed file. I always had the impression they were like any other married couple - both working, saving, scrimping, somehow coming up with enough money to go to the beach for a week in summer OR buy a nation in the Balkans. 

It's nice to have options.

Hey, we even saw Bill, like any other schlub, waiting in line for burgers instead of just buying the burger joint.

It did come as a surprise to find that a little-known codicil in the Gates marriage contract allowed him to have an annual getaway weekend with his ex-girlfriend, one Ann Winblad. The news reported that “Every spring, as they have for more than a decade, Gates spends a long weekend with Winblad at her beach cottage on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, where they ride dune buggies, hang-glide and walk on the beach.”

“We can play putt-putt while discussing biotechnology,” Gates said of his annual trip to see Winblad.

Attention, young men embarking on the sea of matrimony who a) do not have Gates money and b) might be considering asking for such an annual hall pass:

Just don't. Trust me.

Because my thoughts are never far from cheeseburgers, the whole thing makes me think of another super-rich guy, namely Ray Kroc, the milkshake-mixer salesman with the vision to predict America's hunger for burgers, shakes, and fries. No one has ever gone broke selling food around here, and Ray, founder of McDonald's, died in 1984 without taking a penny to Heaven with him.

It all fell to his wife, Joan, who endured his alcoholism, his philandering, his devotion to the hamburger chain and his right-wing politics, to use his money for good.  And did she ever!

She started with a pile totaling $500 million when the Big French Fry Timer ran out on Ray in 1984, and at the time of her death, she had $3 Billion to bequeath. It's said she had zero interest in running his business, but infinite interest in giving his money away in ways that would have driven him crazy if he were still around, such as:

• NPR listeners are used to hearing her name on the air, thanks to the $225 million they received from Joan. 
• She began The Kroc Foundation and made one of her first projects the establishment of Operation Cork, a personal enhancement program for the families of alcoholics, and was later a patron of the Betty Ford Clinic. 
• A native of the Upper Midwest, she went to Grand Forks, North Dakota in 1997 with a check for $15 million for flood relief.
• Following a mass shooting at a San Diego McD's in 1984, she had her chauffeur drive her to the site (she lived in SD) and set up a victim's fund and benefits for the family of the gunman as well, a troubled soul. She had the restaurant demolished within days. 
• She gave the University of Notre Dame $6 million to establish The Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.  
• She gave $80 million to the local Salvation Army in San Diego for the Ray & Joan Kroc Corps Community Center where families enjoy an Olympic sized swimming pool, ice rink, and concert hall.   
• However...after she bought a $100,000 Bosendorfer grand piano (she had one in her living room) for the Kroc Center, the Salvation Army would not allow the Gay Men’s Chorus of San Diego to perform. Joan bought another Bosendorfer for the chorus to use in their hall.
• Diagnosed with brain cancer in 2003, Mrs Kroc sought to disburse as much of the burger money as she could. That's when $225 million went to NPR, $60 million to Ronald McDonald House Charities, $50 million to the Kroc Institute at Notre Dame, and…$1.5 billion to Salvation Army, to build 26 centers similar to the original one in San Diego.

As a biographer put it, "You may not like fast food, but she happened to take the proceeds of it and did something remarkable.”

And you can just imagine how Ray felt about it!

They'll ax you if you wish the spend the night

With weddings getting back to "normal" again, here's a swell idea for an interesting honeymoon spot. Located in scenic, bucolic Fall River, Massachusetts, this 19th century home of a very famous family was recently purchased and upgraded, so anyone looking to combine a first sail down the river of matrimony with a chance to solve an unsolved murder can now check into The Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast/Museum.

A fella named Lance Zaal, of U.S. Ghost Adventures, plunked down around 2 million simoleons for the house where Lizzie Borden’s father and stepmother were chopped to bits with a hatchet in 1892. 

I wouldn't sleep too soundly if I were you...

U.S. Ghost Adventures is in the business of hosting "experiences" throughout the country. I have to be honest. The only thing I want to "experience" on vacation is a breakfast buffet, with tubs of bacon, sausage, and ham, and great tureens filled with grits.

Back in 1892, on the fourth of August,  Andrew Borden, 69, and his 64-year-old wife Abby, were murdered. Abby was upstairs, Andrew had been napping on a couch, and there they were, “their heads smashed with a hatchet,” as the Boston Globe said at the time. 

Their daughter Lizzie, 32, was charged with the two homicides, but she beat the rap. People continued to suspect her, which would have made for awkward conversations at the local Starbucks had there been one in 1892. 

Irony is not lost on Mr Zaal. He wants to set up an axe-throwing venue, plus an outdoor seating area for visitors who wish to socialize.  

Let's hope there is a good wall between those two spots.

Oh, and period-appropriate dinners, and music, and paint nights, but “We’ll be painting happy little axes instead of happy little clouds,” says Zaal. 

I can recommend other places, ghost free, if you wish.

Look up!

You don't necessarily need to take offense if, over the next several days, someone tells you to take a shower.

They might just mean a meteor shower!

Skywatchers are on alert, and if it's not too cloudy or stormy, they will have a great opportunity to see wild things above - even more interesting than when that couple down the street has another of their tiffs on the balcony.

They're called the Eta Aquariids, but unlike you and I, they don't need two eyes. Call them "Aquarids." They're peaking today and will show about 10 or 20 meteors an hour.  The show ends on May 28, and to be honest, it's much brighter in the Southern Hemisphere, but we'll make do with what we get up here.

These Eta Aquarid meteors, I wanna tell you, they move faster than that goof you saw on the Beltway the other day. They're going about 148,000 mph (66 km/s) from space into Earth's atmosphere. What we see are glowing "trains," which are bits of incandescent debris the meteor leaves behind it its wake. The train might glow for as long as two minutes, and there are usually 30 Eta Aquarid meteors on display every hour at the peak.

Our local weather is calling for partly cloudy skies and showers these nights, but isn't that the all-purpose weather forecast around here: "Partly cloudy, chance of rain"?

Enjoy the showers, take an umbrella, see a free show!

The Sock Market

I have to chortle when I see people crying that they refuse to get vaccinated against the dreaded COVID-19 on the grounds that "they" put something in the juice to "track" you, because their cell phones, social media outbursts, and credit card usage don't do enough of that already.

So while you're worried about Bill Gates needing a few extra bucks, so he slips a tracking chip into your vaccine like you're a housecat or something, maybe spend a little time worrying about your socks.

Because, down in Silver Spring, Montgomery County, cops have arrested a man they say was part of a three-man gang that threatened, assaulted, and bound a family with duct tape 18 years ago.

And they nabbed him because he wore socks as gloves during the whole awful crime. And in so doing, he left DNA behind on the socks.

I'm not going to go into the gory details of the crime. I can point you to this article on the Patch if you really want to read all about it.

But just remember this - while you're worried about Bill Gates and Dr Fauci and all the other people who are trying to help this nation and the world get out of this mess, don't try committing a crime while wearing sockgloves (or is the term glovesocks?) because you will get caught and they will send you to a place where the socks are thin and made of polyester.

But on the other hand, if you take the vaccine, you'll still be alive to wear them!

Tough Guy, eh?

America is going through a bad phase right now. We can't stop focusing on all the wrong things, such as the fear of LGBTQ people. You might recall that I am still waiting for a rational answer to the question of what other people's sex lives has to do with anyone else's. It's just silly, and it leads to all sorts of antagonism that we don't really need.

F'rinstance, up in Monmouth County, New Jersey, a middle school vice principal is on the hot seat. It all started when Michael Smurro's wife, Lisa, got all flibbertiggibet because a transgender woman was taking a leak in the ladies room.

She was walking around - there is a video - carping to others about how upset she was that a fellow human being sought relief for a full bladder.

“There’s a man pissing in the bathroom, the women’s bathroom,” Mrs Smurro says to the waitress in the video. “She’s a man. She was in the women’s bathroom.”

Finding no quarter from the waitress, the harping harridan turns to other diners who are trying to sit outside and have their meal in peace. In the video uploaded by "Peach CC," we see her whining about "She's a man, she's a man" until the diners tell her, “You’re being inappropriate. Take your hate elsewhere, please.” 

Then, Mr Smurro, who spends his days dealing with recalcitrant juveniles, steps up and tries to act like Steven Seagal in one of those movies of his with three words in the title ("I Can't Act," "Filing For Retirement," and "Just Forget Me" are three recent examples) saying, “Here you go, pal. There you go.”

Tough guy. He douses the crowd with the rest of a beer. Ironically, if he had tossed away beer all day instead of drinking it, he would be happier right now, ya know?

Well, a couple of days go by, and after the Schlitz really hit the fan, Smurro wrote to the Associated Press: 

“I allowed my emotions to get in the way of my normally sound judgment and reacted in a way that was inappropriate. I do not condone violence or discrimination of any kind and should have simply walked away. I apologize to the person I threw my beer at and wish I hadn’t done so. I apologize to anyone I offended.”

 

He educates the youth of New Jersey. And by the way, one of the people he showered with suds is a child.

 

The Neptune School District offered a statement: “This event is troubling as its perception potentially threatens the social-emotional well-being and climate of belonging that our Neptune School District community represents. The actions shown in the video do not reflect our district’s commitment to inclusivity, cooperation, respect, and nonviolence."

“The Board of Education and Superintendent will respond to this incident in a manner that is appropriate and relative to the seriousness of the situation and that takes into consideration the impact this incident has had on the reputation of our wonderful district,” it concluded.

There's nothing funnier than a would-be tough guy tossing beer on his fellow citizens one night and then issuing non-apology apologies days later. Smurro clearly has issues and should not be around children.

But before that school board hands down their decision, I think he should have to sit in a classroom and write "I will not throw beer on others in support of my wife's idiotic transphobia" 100 times.

Sunday Rerun: There WILL always be an England (from 2017)

 I say, I like the British people, and I love England and all its history. My roots are there; the first Clarks arrived here on a rowboat being tugged across the ocean by the Mayflower, so there's that.

I've never met an English person I didn't like, and I can't even say that for all American people. Not naming names...but you know...

I have never watched this show "Suits" although I know some people who do. Fact is, if I ever ran so low on things to do that I would watch a drama on the USA Network that concerns lawyers, I'd report to my den at once and crack a book.  Over my head.

But this Meghan Markle, who has turned the world on with her smile this week, has officially announced that she will not be coming back to the role of Rachel Zane, and it turns out that the producers of the show took a gamble a year ago that her thing with Harry would work out, and so it did. So that all works out fine, except that it brings up the old joke about the guy who complains to his buddy that he hates his job at the circus because he has to follow the elephants (I told you it was an old joke) around and scoop up what they leave behind, and he hated that hokey cart and he hated the broom and garbage pan and everything else about it - the low pay, the stench, the derision from the high-wire performers, the fact that the clowns wouldn't give him a ride home in their car because, they claim, there just isn't room for one more guy in the tiny machine.

So his friend goes, "Well, why don't you quit?"

And the poopscooper says, "What? And give up show business?"

Ms Markle is giving up show business, all right, and moving to a whole new kind of stage. God Save The Princess!

But she won't be known as Princess Meghan. It turns out that by the standards of British protocol, she lacks "royal blood" and cannot go by Princess Meghan. Same as Kate Middleton, who married Prince William, is known as Her Royal Highness, Princess William of Wales, Meghan will go by HRH Princess Harry of Wales.

I read these things and my head hurts.  She cannot be Princess Meghan, but she can be Princess Harry. Gotcha.

The Saturday Picture Show, May 1, 2021

 

Just your standard sub, featuring Sorpessata, Cappacola, Prosciutto, homemade Mozzerella, sun-dried tomato pesto, EVOO, red onion, red pepper flakes, and Italian seasoning. I read an article this week that attempted to explain why Mozzarella is pronounced "mootcerell," Prosciutto is "prozhuute" and Cappacola is "gobbagoo." It was a weak attempt, I still don't understand, and most of my ordering in Italian delicatessens is done by pointing. 

A little bit of skillful editing will remove the spaghetti-gobbling photo bomber.

May 4 will mark the 51st anniversary of the Kent State massacre. The mournful woman in the picture, Mary Ann Vecchio, was 14 at the time, a runaway from Florida. This tragic scene haunts her to this day, as you can imagine. You can read a fascinating article about her life and how it has gone since then at this Washington POST site.

You can count on Calvin to put all of our thoughts into words.

When someone says they want a shirt or wall paint in "robin's egg blue," here is the swatch to match it to.

The full "pink" moon as photographed in Baltimore this week.

Beachgoers who go through Delaware are acutely aware of the Sunday speedtrap in some towns along the way, those towns where they get you coming and going. They need these special police cars.

Speaking of the beach - this is the entrance to Poverty Beach in Cape May, New Jersey. It's laughably ironic that the beach where "the help" was supposed to bathe and relax back in the day is now the beach for some well-heeled people who have huge beach houses to get away from it all. I guess the help goes somewhere else.

Rainbow meets rainbow. Love is love. 

We leave you this week with a hamster eating blackberries.

Shell Game

The stretch of I-95 that runs through our county takes travelers north and south, even if they don't mean to.

It's wild, the way they drive on that road. I mean, local Maryland drivers are fine, but you add in the Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey ticket catchers, and it's every Volvo for itself out there. 

I've never taken 95 all the way to Florida, due to a disdain for mice, but I can only imagine how crazy the traffic is, the nearer one gets to the race tracks and Happiest Place On This Here Earth.

And it's just not the cars that will drive you nuts.

Here's what happened the other day down by Daytona Beach: a 71-year-old woman was cruising 95 with her daughter when a turtle smashed through her windshield. She suffered a cut to her forehead, along with the biggest shock of her life.

The daughter was driving, and here I get to type a sentence I have never even imagined typing. Seeing the turtle smash through the glass and hit her poor mom, she pulled over and received help from a kind motorist.

While the daughter called 911 for help, the operators could hear that man saying “There is a turtle in there!” 

To which the daughter, in some shock, replies, “A turtle! An actual turtle?”

I've heard crazier questions.

The unfortunate mom bled profusely, but she was not seriously hurt. 

The police figure the turtle ignored the posted TURTLE CROSSING signs and was crossing the interstate (to get to the other side...) when it was hit by another car, sending it airborne.

“I swear to God this lady has the worst luck of anything,” the daughter told the 911 operator as they awaited police and EMS.

You'd have to say the turtle had all the luck. With just a few scratches on its shell, it was released into the woods nearby, no doubt wondering why all these people were going so fast in their crazy shells.

"Rah! Rah! Boom Dee Ay! You can't tell me what to say!"

Sometimes, life is like an apple. You see it for what it is, you enjoy it, and you move on.

Sometimes, life is like an artichoke. You don't know what it is but you know it contains different layers and textures.

And sometimes, the case of a high school girl getting jammed up over some salty language is a lot more than what it appears to be on the surface.

You know how people in a minor dispute will sometimes say, "Why make a federal case of it?" Here's a situation of a cheerleader blowing off steam on Snapchat turning into a Supreme Court case.

Brandi Levy is 18 now and attending college, but when she was 14 and finishing her freshman year at Mahanoy Area High School in Pennsylvania (near Pittsburgh) she got some bad news: she was going to stay on the junior varsity cheerleading team as a sophomore. 

In the time-honored fashion of 14-year-olds, she blew up, dropping f-bombs all over her world. “F--- school, f--- softball, f--- cheer, f--- everything,” she Snapchatted on a Saturday morning. To illustrate the nature of her ire, she and a friend posed with their middle fingers up, saying, "Love how me and [another student, whom Levy identified by name] get told we need a year of jv before we make varsity but that doesn’t matter to anyone else?” All this, punctuated with an upside-down smiley face.

For those unaware, a snap posted to a Snapchat story disappears within 24 hours, except when someone screenshots it, giving life to the truth about the internet being forever.

Someone took a screenshot and before you know it, it was in the hands of the daughter of one of the cheerleading coaches. Other cheerleaders said "Gimme an "F!" and complained, and the coaches suspended Brandi from the squad for a year.

The coaches says she had agreed to certain team rules (including showing respect, avoiding “foul language and inappropriate gestures,” and a strict policy against “any negative information regarding cheerleading, cheerleaders, or coaches placed on the Internet.”) and broke said rules.

Larry and Betty Lou Levy, Brandi’s parents, launched appeals with the athletic director, the principal, the superintendent and the school board, and rang up a "NO SALE" at every turn. So, they got with the ACLU and filed a federal suit.

Justin Driver, a Yale law professor and author of “The Schoolhouse Gate: Public Education, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for the American Mind," says, “This is the most momentous case in more than five decades involving student speech.” 

And here's why: 

Previous cases that involve a student's right to free speech concerned speech on school grounds. Notably, in 1969, the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District that "students and teachers do not shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”

In other words, it was ok that I replied "The hell should I know?" when asked for an exegesis of Edgar A. Poe's "The Bells" in junior English, but the teacher didn't know it yet.

Professor Driver says, “Much of the speech from students is off-campus and increasingly online. When I talk to school administrators, they consistently tell me that off-campus speech bedevils them, and the lower courts desperately need some guidance in this area.”

In their side of the fight, the Mahanoy Area School District said, "Wherever student speech originates, schools should be able to treat students alike when their speech is directed at the school and imposes the same disruptive harms on the school environment.”

“This may seem like a very narrow case about a minor temper tantrum on Snapchat, but it is about speech anywhere and everywhere, by students of all ages,” said Frank LoMonte, director of the Brechner Center for Freedom of Information at the University of Florida.

And these standards as delineated in this verdict will set the standards for off-school free speech for generations.

It almost makes me want to go back to high school!

At the old ball game

It seems like ancient history these days, but you can still win a bet sometimes by asking "Who won the 1994 World Series?"

I'll cut right to it. You can usually get someone to say "The Braves" or "The Blue Jays," but the fact is, no one won the 1994 World Series because they didn't HAVE one. The players went on strike and the last 1/2 of the season was cancelled, and baseball fans were steamed, I wanna tell you.

The next season, the game realized they needed to do a lot of getting back in good with the fans, and, it being the season that Cal Ripken, Jr, of the Orioles was set to break Lou Gehrig's consecutive game record, Cal went out of his way to do public relations for the sport. Night after night, he stood on the field as fans lined up past midnight for his autograph. And, signature by signature, he did yeoman's work toward getting the fans back.

A portion of my Cal museum

Of course, last year, no one could go to any ballgames, and there was just an abbreviated 60-game schedule. This year, with the exception of Texas, a state where the laws of immunology and common sense are suspended, clubs are allowing smaller crowds, and trying their best to keep interest alive.

I've always thought that a few more Ripkens would be good for the game, players who play to the crowd and actually admit to breathing the same air as Freddie and Felicia Fan. Fans enjoy a little byplay with athletic heroes, and here's a guy who seems to understand that.

His name is Cole Calhoun. (This year, 35% of major league ballplayers are named "Cole" (Cole Sulser, Cole Hamels, Gerrit Cole...it goes on and on...)

Playing right field for the Arizona Diamondbacks the other night, Calhoun snaked his way (!) over toward the stands, trying to catch a fly ball gone foul into the seats. He put up his glove, and so did a kid, and the kid, wearing a glove, snagged it like an old pro.  

It was perfectly ok for the kid to make the play; anything into the stands is fair game for everyone. And instead of storming off in a huff, Calhoun gave the kid a cool fist bump. The first base umpire, hustling down the line to make the call, gave him a bump too. 

Cole and kid

And the Braves gave him a collectible Henry Aaron bobblehead, and he was interviewed on live tv.

And - it was his first big league game! I can't promise him similar thrills the next time he shows up at the park, but the point is, there will be a next time!

To the younger generation

I wish to address the children now, so, adults, please go read Buzzfeed or check your horoscope or work the Jumble a minute, ok? I need to tell the young people something.

OK, gang, I need to tell you something, and it's about figuring things out with a discerning ear.

You may have been told that by the time you reach your 20s, 30s, whatever, you will be mature and capable and will know which end is up and will be able to handle yourself in the world.

And I am here to tell you that adults are not doing all that good a job of it right now, so don't worry about being as good as us. That's pretty much assured, you will be. Because I am certain you will not behave as these adults do:

• Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) was the only senator who voted AGAINST a bill that was written to fight the recent uptick in hate crimes against Asian-Americans. The man who encouraged the Capitol riot on January 6 with a raised fist to a roiling mob of troublemakers says "it’s dangerous to simply give the federal government open-ended authority to define a whole new class of federal hate crime incidents." So he, out of all the US Senators, doesn't mind Asian people getting smacked around on the streets, targeted for their ethnicity.
• Emergent, manufacturer of AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson COVID vaccines, mixed up the ingredients at their Baltimore plant, ruining millions of vaccine doses because, apparently, people were not paying attention to their job. Hey, it's only medicine, not something important like making Chicken McNuggets.
• Hundreds of people who received their vaccine at the US Army's Kimbrough Ambulatory Care Center (KACC) at Fort Meade, Maryland received vaccines that were allowed to sit at room temperature for 24 hours, even though everyone in the world knows that vaccines have to be maintained under strict temperature guidelines. No harm done, except for the waste, and 800 people will have to be re-vaccinated, and those in the public who are leery or disdainful of the vaccine's value have another arrow in their "See? I TOLD you it's no good!" quiver.
• A man from Baltimore County man was thrown off a Southwest Airlines flight for eating Twizzlers. He was on the plane, waiting to take off for Ft. Lauderdale, and he pulled his mask down to eat a Twizzler, only to be told that a new rule went into effect in February that says if you are on a plane and eating or drinking, that mask better be on your face even between sips and bites.
  
  
  

You see, guys, adults sometimes get so caught up in setting themselves up as a rogue candidate for political office that they don't care how many people suffer for their ambition, or they get to gabbing on the job or checking their phones instead of making sure the right chemicals go in the right bottle, or they forget to keep life-saving vaccines cold, or they become ridiculously strict about following impractical rules, and in doing so they cause harm.

Your generation will do better! I have no doubt. Go prove me right.

Eat, Sleep, Sleep

Man oh man, if there ever existed a case for saying "I TOLD you so..." here it is...

There is research that says if you get plenty of sleep now, you have less risk of dementia later on.

Sure, there are factors (age, genetics) that will make dementia inevitable for some, no matter how much sleep they are getting. There is no way we can control that. But with 50 million people around the world diagnosed with dementia, why not do what we can to avoid joining that crowd?

The journal called Nature Communications is out with a study showing that high-quality sleep in middle age is a great prevention tactic. They followed 8,000 people in the United Kingdom over 25 years, and found that getting not even six hours of shuteye in one's 50s and 60s gives a 30% higher risk of dementia as compared with those who log (get it?) 7 hours +.

Stephanie Stahl, a sleep disorder specialist with Indiana University Health, says that while this is not the first study to make this sleep connection, but it is one of the largest.

“We know that getting insufficient sleep or getting poor quality sleep increases the risk of dementia,” Stahl told the HuffPost. “This is a larger scale study, so it definitely adds value to the evidence.”

Sure, it makes sense, but no one can say exactly WHY it's true, but there are theories:

“During sleep, our brain is allowed to clear toxins and that includes beta-amyloid,” Stahl said. (Beta-amyloid is a clumping brain protein that is often associated with  Alzheimer’s disease.)

She goes on: “Also, our sleep is really important for us to consolidate our memories. Sleep disruption leads to inflammation and that can lead to clogging of the arteries, and that includes those arteries in the brain.”

Experts say that while there is no assurance that any certain amount of sleep now will have us all bright-eyed well into our 90s, just like chicken soup for a cold, it can't hurt!

  

Sunday Rerun: Medical Assurance

 Alan King used to do great routines about doctors and lawyers and house painters and such, and they were funny.

  An elderly man went to the doctor complaining of aches and pains all over his body. After a thorough examination, the doctor gives him a clean bill of health. 
“Who asked you to make me younger? Just make sure I get older!” 

“You’re in fine shape for an eighty-year-old. After all, I’m not a magician – I can’t make you any younger,” said the doctor. 

It's not as funny, for real, when a real doctor makes a real mistake. My mother, whose health is not at all good at age 88, recently underwent a series of iron infusions to try to get her past the anemia that has plagued her since childhood and is now making things ever more difficult as she battles other issues.  At 88, you need all the strength you can get, that's for sure.

So we were hopeful for good news when we went to see the doctor for the results of blood testing after the iron went to work.  We waited as the med tech took more blood for testing, and soon the doctor appeared, with notebook computer in hand. If you've ever seen the movie "The Hospital," where the bumbling doctor walks into a patient's room, takes a cursory glance at a chart and says, "Well, Drummond, you're none the worse for wear!" and the patient explodes, "I'm not Drummond, you monkey!" then you know how I felt when the doctor knit his brow and pursed his lips and said, "Your mother's iron levels are low...I'm going to recommend that she comes in for some iron infusions..."

And I did not call him a monkey, but I said, "Are you talking about the same procedure she's just had for the past month?"

Oh, how he blushed.  He got all tomato-faced, reminding me of the quote from English temperance leader Clara Lucas Balfour, defining a blush as "The ambiguous livery worn alike by modesty and shame."

But, did he say, "Wow!  Look at me, almost sending your mom to repeat something she already had done!"  He did not.  He stuttered and stammered, "Well, I had not reviewed her files before I came in... I mean...er...uh..."

Not trying to harsh out the good doctor here.  The point is, everyone is going to make mistakes, from the best to the worst of us. (The worst of us just make our mistakes on nationwide TV.) Something they might want to teach in medical schools, yea, in all schools everywhere, is how to be gracious enough to say, "Whoa! I was wrong there!  What I should have said was..."

Ladies and Gentlemen,
Victor Newman!