Sunday Rerun (from 2011): Twist and Shout

  My Review of Books I Bought For A Dollar at the Dollar Tree

First in a series:  "A Twist Of Lemmon" by Chris Lemmon

Q - What could be worse than being the son of a famous man, especially one who dumped your mother when you were still a tot and then married a woman who did not especially care for you?  

A - Being the son of Jack Lemmon, which brought his son Chris all of the painful moments above, along with being the son of an egomaniacal actor to boot. 


Chris does make a good point in this book: If your father is in show business, and you try to do the same, everyone hollers "Nepotism!"   But, if your father is a butcher, baker or attorney, and you go into his line of work, everyone says, "Hey! That's great! A chip off the old block!"  


Well, no one was about to chip anything off of Jack Lemmon, whom I always considered to be not nearly as funny as he seemed to think he was.  Whatever.  His many awards and hit movies would tend to show that my opinion was not in line with the vast majority, who, to this day, roar with laughter over his acting in "Some Like It Hot" and countless other snoozefests. 
But Chris went into acting, and if you read the book, you'd think he was up there along with his father in fame and fortune.  He mentions all the movies he was in, but fails to add that they were mainly bit parts  - a cop, a guy in an office - that he was given because of his last name.  


And that's fine, really.  If you can find enough roles where you play the cop who's parked in the driveway in a Goldie Hawn movie, you can have a nice career, make a decent dollar and get to play golf with Clint Eastwood.  I feel a little sorry for Chris. He mentions how he hardly had any relationship with his father, and recounts being pushed aside by autograph hounds who spotted his father.  Of course, Jack being Jack, as soon as that happened, he turned on the charm and played to the crowd with that bum-bum-bumbling Everyman goofiness of his, leaving his son adrift in a sea of knees and elbows.  Chris then realized that being a good family man meant more than being a famous man, and he lives in Connecticut with his wife and three kids, happy to be home with them.  Almost every page in this book contains an anecdote that paints Jack as a foul-mouthed drunkard who was rarely home. 


My takeaway from the book is that Chris, although not nearly as famous as his pop, is a much better man.  It really seems that great fame and fortune make it very tough to be a good family man, because making that fortune and fame means not being home in the first place.  


But I'd rather be famous in my own home, and I'm fortunate that way.  Reading "A Twist Of Lemmon" reminded me of that.  


I rate this book $$$$$. Three dollar signs out of five. 

The Saturday Picture Show, September 17, 2022

 

Just what we needed... a mug with instructions!

Nine years ago this week, this young man fell asleep at a White House event. The coolest president ever knew what to do.

Always on the lookout for something to read, I've puzzled over labels for years. I've seen mustard labeled as "fancy" mustard (as opposed to sloppy) and "salad" mustard (as in who puts mustard on a salad?) So now we are faced with "heavy duty" mayonnaise, and what are we to make of it? 

Readers of a certain age will remember the line in Tommy James's song "Draggin' The Line": "My dog Sam eats purple flowers; ain't got much but what we got's ours." In the sandhills of North Carolina, I don't know where the bees are going for pollen, but they make purple honey.

The annual debate about whether to rake the lawn in autumn will start up soon, pitting teenagers on the "no" side versus their parents standing there with rakes in their hands. 

Before Jack Frost starts nipping at your nose, these chestnuts will be ready for roasting on an open fire.

The latest in my series of barns that need just a little handyman touch to get them all spruced up again.

I am always flabbergasted when someone tells me they don't like coconut, but there are a lot of people who really can't stand it. One of my favorite snack treats is a spoonful of shredded coconut and some almonds...no need for chocolate for my Almond Joys.

When you get that bag of walnuts, remember, this is what they look like when they're fresh off the tree. They remind me of brains.

This whimsical rain gutter system is really impressive. I'd love to see it in action during a real downpour.

Two balls, no strikes

A couple of baseball stories to round out the week...

Albert Pujols of the St. Louis Cardinals has been hitting baseballs for a living since Woodrow Wilson was president, or so it would seem. He is trying to hit his 700th home run, and this week, he clobbered #697, passing Alex Rodriguez for 4th place on the all-time home run hitters list. 

A young fan who caught the ball was willing to give it to the Dominican Republic-born slugger, and most players cherish these souvenirs -  but the fan told him that she lost her father on the same day one year ago, and Pujols told her to keep the ball and gave her two more signed balls, saying that homer ball would mean more to her than to him.

That's the sort of kindness that will inspire karma to help him hit three more "circuit clouts" to reach his goal. I love stories like that, and like this next one, which starts out foul but ends up in the seats...

On September 1, a young girl was at the Washington Nats game with her Shenandoah Rec League softball all-star team. Out in the bleachers, she - all of 10 - was spotted by Joey Meneses, a new star outfielder for Washington, and that oddest of rookies: a 30-year-old.

Meneses tossed a ball to the girl and some horse's patootie of an "adult" cut in front of her and snagged the ball. The video is all over the virals, but it makes me sick to see it.

The girl was heartbroken, naturally, and her mom wrote to the Washington team to see if somehow she could get a ball to mend her feelings.

On Tuesday, she had a signed ball and a nice note from right fielder Meneses, who did the right thing. She got what she deserved.

And I hope the man who stole the ball from a child gets what's coming to him, too.

 

 

Traffic Jam

A couple of decades ago, Peggy and I took a fabulous cruise across the Delaware Bay on the Cape May (NJ) - Lewes (DE) Ferry. This is a 17-mile crossing on one of three very large ferry boats. The thought of the ferry sinking never crossed my mind, until a man drove a huge tractor-trailer aboard, carrying a mammoth load of cantaloupes bound for the New Jersey side. I mean, there must have been enough 'loupes on that trailer for every man, woman, and Snooki in the Garden State to have a nice fresh one for breakfast every day that summer. I had never seen, let alone dreamed of, that many cantaloupes in one place, and of course I had Titanic visions of the mighty vessel going down in the Bay as ten million cantaloupes bobbed on the surface. 

I did think that little kids might have been saved by using cantaloupes as flotation devices. 

It just seemed to make sense that a giant heavy truck would be too much for the ferry to carry, but I thought better of my idea to discuss my concerns with the ship's captain, and when we docked ninety minutes later, I remember wondering why I was worried.

Now I have something new to worry about, and it's the chance that I might be behind a truckload of tomatoes that overturns. That's just what happened the other day near Vacaville, CA.

The load of fruit (remember, tomatoes are fruits, the same as plums and melons) spilled across several lanes of Highway 80 in Northern California. It took over six hours to get the mess off the road, according to the California Highway Patrol.

This stretch of road where the truck hit the center divider is between San Francisco and Sacramento. 

 

Because I was raised in a bucolic setting, my grandmother made her own pickles and mayonnaise and root beer and catsup, and she told me many times of going to the produce market downtown to get bushels of tomatoes. She recalled that there would be giant vats and tubs full of ugly tomatoes: not rotten, but squishy and unfit for the pretty produce section at the supermarket. Grandma told me in a hushed aside that the big catsup companies bought the bad tomatoes, pointedly reminding me that the homemade version was better. 

Now, I'm not saying that the tomato companies were on the scene there, helping with the big cleanup. But I will be on the lookout for tiny bits of gravel or asphalt on my burger for the next few years.

And I still don't eat cantaloupe.

 

Is progress progressive?

Maybe it started with the pandemic, but it probably goes farther back than that. As soon as some people got computers in their houses, the next thing you know, they were working from home, or possibly "working" from "home." If you get the point.

I'm sure that for administrative types and insurance offices and lots of sales jobs, working from home is just as good as working from an office, and the ability to pad around the house in your big fuzzy slippers while working is always a plus. And with pandemic restrictions easing, a lot of companies are telling people to get on back to their office or their cubicle now, and some are saying "Nah" to that. This in turn has sparked the "quiet quitting" movement, in which people are just not showing up to work, so take that, Mr or Ms Bigboss!

At the same time, computers and technology are not only teaming up to allow us to time shift, they are also letting us do things from far, far away. The Baltimore SUN newspaper is a good example. They have far fewer people on the staff now, and far fewer pages in the paper, less locally-originated reporting, not as many ads. It's a shame.

But to make ends meet, the paper, which used to be printed right on Calvert St, and then in Port Covington when the paper moved down there, is now printed in Delaware, which, as any schoolkid with a basic knowledge of East Coast Geography knows, is a whole 'nother state up the road from here. The paper, which used to be delivered to our front walkway by 6 AM, is now supposed to be here by 7, but rarely is. I can't blame the delivery people; they have to wait until the paper is trucked down here from another state, coming down I-95 with all the cigarette smugglers and narcotics dealers. Usually the paper is here around 8:30 or so, by which time I've watched the three network morning shows and my My Three Sons rerun. And of course since they need extra time to get the paper here, the baseball scores from the night before are never there, as they used to be.

Also, they say that the switching - the technical part of TV where they add the commercials and play the non-network shows, such as local news and infomercials, where people with British accents tell us how to get stains out of our clothes - for one of the local TV stations is being done out of town, in Indianapolis, for God's sweet sake. This would account for the dead air on that station, the gaps where nothing is heard and nothing is seen for 20 seconds or so.

People in Baltimore don't like Indianapolis. They stole our football team one dark night in 1984. Fortunately, in those days, the paper arrived on time, so I knew about it before the sun came up!

Bear with us

I know it's well-intended, but the practice of leaving items at memorial sites and gravesites is a little puzzling to me. For one thing, if you want a person to have flowers, send them today or tomorrow at the latest. They will do more good while the person is still on this level.

As far as covering sad sites with stuffed animals and commemorative material, how about taking that stuff to an orphanage or a police station (some police keep a comforting toy in the trunk of their squad car, to be given to a child involved in an accident or other traumatic situation)? At any rate, it would only take a phone call or two to find some place where your largesse would do a lot of good.

This all comes to mind because of this headline news from Great Britain: 

Mourners Have Been Asked To Stop Leaving Paddington Bears And Marmalade Sandwiches For The Queen

Reading on, it turns out that the mournful public has been dropping off Paddington toys, stuffed animals and the like, along with jars of marmalade and sandwiches for the love of Pete. Now officials are saying enough is enough is enough.

You'll recall that Her Majesty co-starred with Paddington in a television sketch that had the two having tea at the Palace. The gag was that the Queen, who was famous for toting her purse every where she went, pulled a marmalade sandwich out of her purse to feed the bear.

So now people want to commemorate her passing by leaving sandwiches sitting around.

In the sketch, Paddington said to the Queen, "Thank you, Ma'am, for everything." This week, the Paddington Twitter account has the bear saying that again. 

Green Park in London is the more-or-less official site for floral tributes to the queen, and the toys and the jars of orange marmalade and the ready-made sandwiches are piling up all over the place. And now, officials have issued guidelines for all this.

They're asking that any and all flowers left in tribute have the plastic wrapping removed, which will make it easier for the flowers to become compost a week after the funeral. 

And in the polite British manner, they also said, "We would prefer visitors not to bring non-floral objects/artefacts such as teddy bears or balloons."

BBC news presenter Sally Nugent told viewers, "They are suggesting that there are enough Paddingtons and marmalade sandwiches in the parks at the moment, so please feel free to bring flowers but maybe don't bring any more Paddingtons or marmalade sandwiches for now."

I have a feeling that the homeless and underresourced people of London and all over the British Isles would appreciate money or outright gifts of bread and marmalade (or gift cards to buy them). I'll bet the Queen would approve.

Give in her honor. Don't leave edible food out in public, please.

The hardest thing about riding a horse is the ground

Well, well, well. Baltimore keeps figuring in the life of the late Queen Elizabeth II.

First, if not for a woman from here, things might have turned out quite differently for Her Majesty. She became Queen after her father, King George VI passed away. But George had only become King because his brother Edward married a woman from Baltimore named Wallis Simpson, who was twice divorced, and both exes were still alive. That was a scandal that could only be remedied by having Edward abdicate in 1936 to "marry the woman I love," as he put it.

Wallis Simpson grew up at 212 E. Biddle St, a house that still stands, in the tony mid-town Belvedere neighborhood.

Then of course, Her Majesty came to Maryland several times, once to shop at the Giant in Hyattsville (1957) and again to see an Orioles ballgame at Memorial Stadium (1991). 

AND...just this past Saturday, she had a hand in helping people from Baltimore make a quick dollar or two.

Over at Old Hilltop, the nickname for Pimlico Racetrack ("Home of the Preakness"), a horse bred by Queen Elizabeth II won a race on Saturday, two days after the British monarch passed away at 96, following seven decades on the throne.

West Newton, a six-year-old gelding, was way back of the pack in sixth place, but hit the homestretch hard to win by a half-length.

West Newton wins! So why the long face?

He ran one and one-eighth mile on turf in one minute and 52.12 seconds. I've had cars that couldn't match that pace. The jockey was Forest Boyce and the trainer was Richard Hendriks. 

West Newton was only seen as having an outside chance to win this race. He hadn't raced for 11 months.

“An unexpected but awesome win!!” owner Patrick Lewis said.

“He had been training well but closed like a steam engine today.”

West Newton's mother was the mare Queen’s Prize, also bred by the late monarch.

The Queen got into horse racing when her father took her to the races when she was 16.

“She saw this magnificent horse and was captivated by it and when she touched its neck it felt like velvet, and she said she didn’t wash her hands for three days,” said a royal onlooker.

I hope someone local won a nice pile at Pimlico on Saturday. I have a strict policy of never betting on anything that eats, and you never can tell what these oatburners are going to do when they race. 

The last time I wanted to bet, the hoss in question was so well-mannered, when the gate opened, he turned around and closed it. 

 

Sunday Rerun: A 9/11 Story

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

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

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

The water.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Saturday Picture Show, September 10, 2022

 

If you even punched a time clock, or the wall it was mounted on, here is where they stored your card. 

This is part of the wall at Fort McHenry in Baltimore, where Francis Scott Key was inspired to write the words that became our national anthem during the Battle of Baltimore on September 13-14, 1814. 

This is history for sure. They dated the invoice two days later, but on January 4, 1954, Elvis drove his Crown Electric truck to Memphis Recording and made a record, singing two songs for his mother's birthday. His recordings of  "It Wouldn't Be The Same Without You" and "I’ll Never Stand In Your Way" came to the attention of Sam Phillips, who ran the recording company and Sun Records, and he asked The King to come and maybe make a few more records. Magic ensued.

I read a lot about World War II. The noted author J.D. Salinger fought in the Battle Of The Bulge, and he wrote home and said that more than anything people thought of, the soldiers needed warm woolen sox, and plenty of knitters back home were doing their best to keep feet warm over there. 

This was a Roman amphora, recently found in Italy's Lake Como and filled with hundreds of gold coins - a fortune then and now.

This is the Baltimore Shot Tower, downtown where Old Town meets Little Italy (every tiny section of Baltimore has its own identity). Built 234 feet tall in 1828, it was then the tallest building in the United States (so of course #Fake45 claimed he owned it). Shot for rifles was produced by dropping molten lead from the top through a series of sieves into cold water.

My high school locker combination was 16-29-36. I can still remember that, but I can't remember to change one of the light bulbs in the garage (the dark one).

You're really a serious chef if you own and operate a mortar and pestle to pulverize your coriander. I'm not that serious.

This is the foreign beer selection and a reminder that gift certificates are wonderful for holiday giving. The fall equinox is September 22, and you know what that means.

If you don't recognize these pictures, it means you haven't had a complete eye exam, and maybe you should look into that.

Crab Shell Batteries

Listen, I know that California is not going to allow the sale of gas-powered cars after 2035, at which point I will be 84, and not even being mentioned as a host for any game show or a lead part on a soap opera. I probably won't be driving anyway, and if I can't buy a new internal combustion car, I'll get a beater somewhere and drive it around.

And in other news, science has figured out that they can make batteries out of old crab shells. (The ones filled with crabmeat are way too expensive).

And one of my great cultural shortcomings is a total lack of familiarity with the show "Sponge Bob," beyond the name. Apparently it involves sea creatures running around doing things we all do, but the cartoon that I most relate to is "Top Cat," and I don't want to start a new show.

So I can't draw the connection between this dream of crab batteries and Sponge Bob, but it seems that the fact is, the journal called "Matter" (I guess I should subscribe, but it doesn't matter), they write that researchers claim to have made a biodegradable battery with something found in crab and lobster shells - a great use for empty crustaceans!

In any battery, there has to be an electrolyte between the two terminals at either end. That's how they work: they send ions racing between the positive and negative terminals, and that's how they make electricity to power your phone or flashlight or whatever.

Regular "conventional" batteries - known as lead or lithium batteries  - have been the standards for years, but they come with issues. We will need to make great batteries to run electric cars, but the traditional electrolytes have problems:

•  Recycling them is a gigantic hassle
•  Electrolytes are not biodegradable, so they will be around   forever
•  They can explode or start fires.
•  There are problems with the mining process we use to get lithium out of the ground. 

So how do crabs and lobsters fit in? They have a material in their exoskeletons called chitin. That's what makes the shells hard and tough. With chitin, science can make a derivative called chitosan. Combine chitosan with zinc, and you have a new electrolyte that can run your Walkman for 400 hours.

Or your cell phone, or your game machine.

And what's more, this gunk will break down in five months, leaving just the zinc, which can be recycled and used again!

“In the future, I hope all components in batteries are biodegradable,” says lead author Liangbing Hu, director of the University of Maryland’s Center for Materials Innovation. “Not only the material itself but also the fabrication process of biomaterials.”

This sounds like something to make us hopeful. And don't worry about your crab platter becoming even more expensive...we can also extract that precious chitin from fungi and squid.

So, maybe soon we will be driving to the seafood restaurant and already have the scent of Old Bay Seasoning in the car!

 

 

 

Scram, Hitler!

Way out west in the wilds known as the Umpqua National Forest, outside Eugene, Oregon, stands a proud mountain known as Swastika Mountain. It got that name from a local cattle ranch at the beginning of the 20th Century. Until recently, not many people had heard of the mountain, even in Oregon, let alone the rest of the nation. But now...time for a new name, which will likely be Mount Halo, after a local tribal leader.

Why the new name? Ask Joyce McClain, who had never heard of this big hill until this past January, when she read about two marooned hikers being rescued from the peak. At 81, Joyce has been around long enough to know what the word "swastika" means to many people, and she found it hard to believe that here, 77 years after we put the Nazi swastika and its evil fuehrer down, a mountain in America still has that name.

And let me tell you something about people who are 81. They do not believe in waiting around to see if things get better on their own. They don't have time to!

"People need to come forward and take action when they see something that isn't right or needs to be changed, because one person can make a difference, and this shows how that is so true," McClain told NPR.

She got up with the Oregon Historical Society and the Oregon Geographic Names Board, and did all the paperwork to request a name change. Kerry Tymchuk is the executive secretary for the historical society, and he said he never knew of anyone before McClain to put in a request to rename the repugnantly-named mountain.

"It is not a very well-known mountain, and frankly, I didn't know there was one," Tymchuk told NPR. "It's in a national forest, not accessible to many people like Mount Hood or Mount St. Helen. It's not very well-known throughout the state; the vast majority of people likely never even knew it was there."

Long before the Nazis came to power by using techniques that fascists continue to employ even today, the mountain and a small town in Oregon were named that way after a cattle ranch that branded their cattle with a swastika. In all fairness, at the time, the swastika meant well-being in the symbolism of several ancient world societies. Only when it was taken up by Hitler did it take on the evil connotation of Nazi Germany.

But, as The Monkees said, that was then, this is now, and Tymchuk points out, "What we name things, our features, reflects history, but also reflects values. And as history changes, so do values."

"And certainly, something bearing the name Swastika in 1903 is different than in 2022, when it's been associated with such an evil person and evil ideology."

The Society is leaning toward changing the name to Mount Halo, in honor of Chief Halito of the Yoncalla Kalapuya tribe. At first, McClain wanted to call is Umpqua Mountain, but now she's going with "Halo," too, believing it to be a better fit for the peak.

There will almost certainly be opposition from the hidebound conservatives who say, "Gee whiz! Everything's always changin' and stuff! It's getting to where you can't remember what's all right to say, and what ain't!"

I'll make it easy for you, Lee Roy. In fact, I can give you six million reasons why this is a bad name.

Eight years of this!

The death of Mikhail Gorbachev, former premier of the former Soviet Union that we were supposed to be so afraid of, brought to mind an interesting story from 1985, when he attended a summit meeting in Geneva with global leaders, including Ronald W. Reagan, a former movie actor who, through a series of unlikely events, had been catapulted to power as the president of the United States.

I mean, he wasn't even a good actor. But he was president, so off he went to Geneva, once he got clearance from his wife and their astrologer.

Now, Reagan was a big science-fiction fan, not hard to believe from a guy who made the crummy movies he did. 

And later on, it turned out that Reagan and Gorbachev excused themselves from the proceedings to talk a walk to a little cabin there on Lake Geneva. It was decades before anyone in this country or Russia found out the topic. Only their trusted personal interpreters went along with the two world leaders on their stroll, and they didn't blab at all.

But in 2009, former television presenter Charlie Rose interviewed Gorbachev and Reagan’s Secretary of State George Shultz, and during that show, Gorbachev told the world what was on Reagan's mind that day.

Reagan asked Gorbachev straight up if they could work together to save the world in case the world was invaded by aliens.

And we're not talking about some people from another country here. 

Gorbachev told Rose, "From the fireside house, President Reagan suddenly said to me, 'What would you do if the United States were suddenly attacked by someone from outer space? Would you help us?'

"I said, 'No doubt about it.'"

"He said, 'We too.'"

"So that's interesting," Gorbachev, still stunned 24 years later, said to much laughter.

It might seem impossible to imagine such thoughts darting through the mind of an American president. Remember, too, Reagan came up with the brilliant idea for the Star Wars Defense System, in which America would defend itself from attacks from other parts of the world with weaponized lasers and electromagnetic high-speed railguns firing projectiles at incoming missiles.

This technology did not exist at the time Reagan proposed it and it still does not. But instead of turning to defense experts for answers about defense issues, the amiable Reagan took advice from the Citizens' Advisory Council on National Space Policy, a group that counted science-fiction writers like Robert Heinlein and Jerry Pournelle among its members.

Reagan, who never really seemed sure about what he was doing, had been fooling around in 1984, rehearsing a radio address to the nation, when he said this into a live microphone:

 "My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes."

We were lucky in that Russia knew he was like some nutty uncle who was always pulling quarters out of your ear. No one took him seriously.

 

The Eagle's Greatest Hit

Clark (no relation) is 19, and has already found a good career. He works in public relations, and travels the nation spreading the good news about conservation. He gets a lot of frequent flier miles, and even though he travels with a support staff, he gets his own hotel room at overnight stops. He likes to watch TV, mainly cartoons and nature shows.

Oh, and he has a tarpaulin spread over the hotel room, because Clark is... a bald eagle!

Now it all adds up. Clark is not suited to life in the wild - the scales on his talons did not develop, so he would surely die of pneumonia if he were on his own - so he flies around as an ambassador of World Bird Sanctuary in south St. Louis. 

He earns his supper (rat chunks 😬) by attending graduations, convocations and such, flying overhead while inspirational music plays. In so doing, the eagle raises consciousness about conservation and raises money for the Sanctuary.

Clark is named for William Clark of Lewis and Clark fame. (There's an eagle named Lewis back at the sanctuary). His work schedule is not grueling, calling for him to make four to six appearances yearly.  

When his handlers take him through the TSA checkpoint, the agents look into his crate and the carpet that lines it. You never know what he might try to smuggle in - crackers, maybe?

And people at the airports are ill-advised to try to stick their fingers into his crate. I mean, really?

Southwest is the only airline that allows Clark to fly in the main cabin. All the other carriers make him fly in the cargo area. Once, he got lost doing that, just like your luggage when you came back from Cincinnati, so don't feel too bad.

Southwest puts him (in his crate) in two seats, snugged up with three seat-belt extenders. The other seat is occupied by one of his human companions, who feeds him his rat bits and keeps him company with small talk and cartoon noises.

Oh, and this King Of The Sky, our fearless national symbol of freedom travels well...from the airport staff to the pilots, every effort is made to make his travel free of jostling. He hates turbulence.

 

 

 

Happy Labor Day 2022!

 Remember the words of Frederick Douglass. Thank the Labor Movement for this day and every good thing workers have. 

Sunday Rerun: Brother bought a coconut, he bought it for a dime

 There was a time that a builder was trying to ship enough bricks to Alaska for a project. According to US Post Office lore, he went to the post office, and addressed each stamp, and had them individually mailed to the job site.

You can mail a potato to your friend. Just to go Mail A Spud and send a tuber to your cousin.

The winner of the Ripley's Believe It Or Not contest in 2014 was the person who mailed a Hula Hoop.

What child wouldn't be enchanted to open the mailbox and find a nice pink toy pig?

You can send a Frisbee by mail! You might try a boomerang, but it would probably arrive marked "return to sender."

And here's a way to send a coconut to your friends back home.

And here is the story of someone who sent a coconut to the San Diego Opera!

Apparently, this person went to the Post Office in Hawaii, and mailed a labelled coconut back to the mainland. The opera staff was so happy about it, they put a picture of it on Facebook!

"We get the strangest mail here some days," the post said.

The Opera said they think that an employee on vacation sent back the coconut.

Here in Baltimore, when we go on vacation, we bring back boxes of saltwater taffy or macaroons or caramel popcorn and pass it around, so everyone knows who brought the goodies.

I don't get the point to the nameless coconut.

The Saturday Picture Show, September 3, 2022

 

Everyone has something about which to be sentimental. I have many, and old fire engines, such as this 1968 Seagrave, hold so many stories, I wish they could talk. This old buggy saw some fires in its day, and now it sits, a diamond among the rust.

Ever been to a drive-in? There's only one around here nowadays, and it's good that it's still active. It would be fun to drive across this field and pull up, sticking the speaker on the car door to see what you'd hear...

In North Dakota, vast acreage is devoted to sunflowers. There are all sorts of uses for the plant and its seeds, so they seem to go on forever.  A sure sign of summer coming to an end!

Time for college football! Tonight, the nation's best team, the Crimson Tide of Alabama, will kick off their season against the vaunted Aggies of Utah State. Expect all 100,077 seats at Bryant-Denny Stadium in Tuscaloosa to be filled with happy fans!

Here's Cheap Trick's leader, Rick Neilsen, playing nine songs at once on his nine-neck guitar. Well, maybe not, but if anyone could, he would be the one.

I was trying to tell someone about Y2K and people storing water and food and money and expecting the world to come to an end. I'm fairly certain she did not believe me.

Words to live by from Søren Kierkegaard, the Danish theologian and philosopher who was the founder of the school of existentialism, the thought approach that holds people responsible for the course of their lives through self-determination. I'm sure this little critter would agree with it.

Every year, Emerald Downs in Washington State holds this T-Rex race. Over 150 people dressed as Marc Bolan race around a horse track, because why not?

For pies, I go with Granny Smith. For slicing and eating, Honeycrisp or its new cousin Cosmic Crisp, please. Nothing like an apple in fall!

Up in the sky

Zipping along the highways and byways across America, I enjoy reading the signs motels post out front to get your business. 

Inn-Room Coffee! Free HBO! Air Conditioned! Free Breakfast!

And now, soon the join the list of vacation spots touting their freebies:

Free high-speed internet service!

And that's not the Shak-A-Way Motel offering a www.hookup, no sir.

It's Mount Kilimanjaro!

Yes, thanks to modern technology, mountain climbers ascending Africa's tallest mountain can get their bearings and navigate to the peak just by looking at their phones.

And it goes without saying, they can also post their smiling selfies to Instagram and check the baseball scores and read the comics and horoscope.  It's all there.

It's courtesy of the state-owned Tanzania Telecommunications Corporation, which set up a broadband network 12,200 feet up in the air. They promise to have connectivity at the very tip top of the 19,300-foot mountain by the end of the year.

"Today ... I am hoisting high-speed INTERNET COMMUNICATIONS (BROADBAND) on the ROOF OF AFRICA," Nape Nnauye, the minister for information, communication and information technology, tweeted last week. "Tourists can now communicate worldwide from the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro."

There are two good things coming from this: it will be a boon for tourism as well as for safety of the climbers. 

Mr. Nnauye acknowledges that it was previously "a bit dangerous" up there with no internet service. And this is not a handful of people: tourism officials figure that 35,000 people attempt to summit* Kilimanjaro each year. About a third of them turn back due to altitude sickness and sudden onsets of good sense.

Over in Nepal, Mount Everest has 4G internet and fiber-optic broadband.

Predictably enough, there is homefront controversy about Tanzania doing this. Less than 45% of Tanzania is covered by cell reception, so people accuse the government of putting the tourists' needs over those of the locals. 

And people all over the world hear that and say, "And...?"

* I am efforting to find out just how and when "summit" became a verb. I'm having trouble languaging again.

 

Doctor No

My doctor has a cartoon in his exam room; it shows a medical office with a sign reading "Thank you for not discussing your WebMD results."

But what did people do before they had folklore and superstition and "down-home bear-grease rubs to cure the rheumatiz" ? 

Over in England, the Cambridge University Library is displaying some really weird old bizarre medieval medical cures.

They are downright bizarre!

They cover everything from how to treat battle wounds to more common ailments we still deal with today, among them headache, toothache, diarrhea, coughs and aching limbs.

But even if you have one of those afflictions, don't run to these age-old books for the answer.

This chart was to show the doctors where on the body to do bloodletting.

For example, if you have the gout, the prescription called for baking a salted owl and grinding it into powder.

I checked with Walgreens and they are all out of baked salted owl.

They did have alternative medicine in the medieval days. The alternative cure for the gout was stuffing a puppy with snail and sage, roasting it over a fire, and making a salve out of the drippings.

For cataracts, the ℞ was stirring some honey onto the gall bladder of a hare, and then applying that goo to your eye with a feather.

Just for the sake of posterity, the Cambridge Library is digitizing 8,000 of these "cures" found in 180 old manuscripts that date back to the 14th and 15th centuries. 

Besides pulling back the curtain on how primitive medical care used to be, these books also show us how violent life was back then. We tend to think of these old-timers sitting around by campfires, playing their lutes and singing, but their medical people had to be ready to treat combat injuries ranging from broken bones to broken skulls.

Digitization project leader Dr James Freeman describes the old cures as a "bewildering array of ingredients" - animal, vegetable and mineral.

"They show medieval people trying to manage their health with the knowledge that was available to them at the time - just as we do."

And he adds, "They are also a reminder of the pain and precarity of medieval life, before antibiotics, before antiseptics and before pain relief as we would know them all today."

Of course, hundreds of years from now, people will look back and laugh, because we take pills and use ointments that cause side effects such as severe blisters and peeling skin, blisters around the mouth, red, painful palms and feet, shooting pain, numbness and tingling, loss of smell, unusual urges for sex and gambling, and  nightmares and vivid dreams. 

But, I mean, other than that...