What Else Is On?

It was former FCC Commissioner Newton Minow who described television as a "vast wasteland" in a 1961 speech, and Newt, it ain't gotten much better since.

What brings this to mind is the sad, sad news that hundreds of Americans will soon be parking it in the big old recliner in front of the 48" Sony to watch Season 2 of Celebrity Big Brother.  Get ready for this list of luminaries about to light up living rooms from San Diego to Schenectady:

• Tamar Braxton, whose sister is famous.
• Anthony Scaramucci, who was Trump's mouthpiece for a week.
• Dina Lohan, whose daughter is famous.
• Ryan Lochte, the most obnoxious thing in a pool since that Baby Ruth bar in "Caddyshack"
• Kato Kaelin, who once mooched off O.J. Simpson
• Joey Lawrence, famous for saying, "Whoa!" on "Blossom."
• Ricky Williams, who chose marijuana over continuing to play pro football (so he's famous for saying "Whoa!" on blossoms.)
• Lolo Jones, who's one of the few people ever to compete in both the Winter and Summer Olympics (so maybe she'll be on the regular "Big Brother" too)
• Tom Green, whose movie "Freddy Got Fingered" set new frontiers for lovers of humor that makes you want to throw yourself off the roof

Kato Kaelin, who lived in O.J. Simpson's pool house, is seen here at the
former football legend's trial, trying to remember meeting O.J. Simpson

Julie Chen Moonves, who added her husband Les Moonves's surname to her own right after they hauled his cheating lecherous leering self out of CBS last fall, will join this merry band as master of ceremonies.

Public libraries, bookstores, parks and petting zoos are still open, by the way.

Tie One On

I guess I should give up and go along with the new new...

Men don't always wear ties anymore.

Floyd wore a tie!

As a former tie-wearing American, I am still a bit surprised to see men not wearing ties while attending weddings and funerals, reading the news on television, selling cars or insurance, telling jokes on television, or in lots of other places where, until now, wearing a tie has been a hard-and-fast rule.

I balked at wrapping silk around my neck many a time, only to be reminded that dressing that way was a sign of the respect I felt toward the people around me.

Goober didn't.

I don't guess that people not wearing ties have any less respect for others than they used to, but it's still jarring to see open necks so often.

Howard bowed.

I know plenty of guys who never learned to tie a regular four-in-hand tie, choosing to stick with clip-ons or having someone tie their tie for them and then carefully removing it and putting it back on as needed.

Try as I might, I never got the hang of tying a bow tie, but Howard Sprague did.

Perhaps it's time for me to up my style game a little and stop having The Men of Mayberry be my fashion icons.

Sunday Rerun: Have a little class

A friend posted a meme from South America, quoting Pepe Mujica, President of Uruguay, speaking a solid truth for all the world.


Here's the quote from the picture: "No le pidamos al docente que arregle los agujeros que hay en el hogar."


It took a little figuring and a Spanish-English dictionary, but I translate this as, "Do not ask the teacher to fix the holes in the home."


And yes, I agree.  I know a lot of teachers, and to a man and woman, they are dedicated, hard-working, learned and part of what makes America great (always has been, always will be.)


The very fact that they continue to teach when they could make much more dinero on the outside bespeaks their dogged determination to take young Agatha and Marmaduke on a journey of guided self-exploration from September to June every year, and for the most part, A & M are better for their efforts.


But they also get to hear from parents via text and email and phone call (and visits to their homes, for all I know) and the parents blame the teacher for when Junior gets marked down for not doing his homework (the family took a trip to the Gilligan Islands on a school week, you see) or demand that Sally Sue get extra credit for building a model of the Sphinx out of lime Jell-o (for her senior project!) and want all the grades from the final exams recalculated because of Hanging Chads. The problem was with whom Chad was hanging...all strangers to the honor society.


And please don't even start on parents who brag to Ursula and Wilberforce how they cheat on their taxes and park in handicapped spots "just for a minute" and teach the kids that cutting corners is the pathway to success, and THEN demand that the public school provide a Christian education for all the kids, just 'cause.  This is not exactly what the parents of Abijah, Jabir, Kumudesh, Dharma, Kong Qiu, Nyorai, and Kamaljeet had in mind when they paid their school taxes, but the truly querulous parents fall back on the tired old "majority rules" saw, disregarding what Tocqueville said about rules that "base their claims upon numbers, not upon rightness or excellence."


In other words, public schools are there to teach every child, but not to be their spiritual mentors.  As Mr Mujica said:

In the house you learn to: Greet, thank, be clean, be honest, be punctual, be correct, speak well, do not say rudeness, respect the likes and dislikes, be supportive, eat with your mouth closed , Not to steal, not to lie, to take care of the property and the property of others, to be organized.
At school you will learn: Mathematics, language, science, social studies, English, geometry and reinforce the values that parents have instilled in their children.



It's clear who should be doing what and where, so, parents, please take care of your end of things, so there will be no need for the teachers to call you at 9 AM on Sunday to ask why Mervyn and Maybelle don't know that they aren't supposed to spraypaint the school walls and why don't they take a shower now and then, too?


Teachers and parents are the two key segments of the village that it takes to raise a child. Everyone, please do your part!

The Saturday Picture Show, January 12, 2019

I suppose that if you want a sunflower this tall by the end of summer, you should plant the seed by the beginning of spring.

Looks like the advice in this book is pretty good. OR they let John Grisham write it and people just fell asleep right away.

This is a section of track from an abandoned railroad in Paris called “La Petite Ceinture.”

This picture from the back exit at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant features a shadow tribute to owner and founder C. Montgomery Burns.

With some snow in the forecast for the weekend, I hope this is what my street looks like on Monday. Quick! Put your pajamas on backwards!

I'm not sure what the technical name of this knife is, but I remember when Martha Stewart was an inmate at a federal hoosegow and showed the other kitchen inmates how to make one like it with a folded-over tuna can lid.

I'm always there when TCM shows an Ida Lupino movie. The titles alone keep me around!

This is what happens in a really cool high school when the librarian and the art teacher work together. I think it's amazing.

Moments make the difference

Isn't it funny how just one incident can make an impression - good or bad - about other people, places or things?

Many times, people say, "Oh I don't like so-and-so," and yet you find that person perfectly admirable. Or it could be the other way around. First impressions tend to be the longest-lasting, but it might not be fair to decide about someone or something based on a fleeting encounter.

For instance, suppose you encounter a famous person somewhere, and you ask for a moment of their time for an autograph or a selfie or a handshake, only to be told they didn't have time. Sometimes they're sorry and sometimes they're abrupt.

But there was the time that Peggy and I ran into John Lowenstein, the outfielder for the Orioles during some pretty good seasons (1979 - 1985) and we were plenty happy when he seemed to be as interested in getting to say hey to US as we were in meeting HIM. He asked our names, and some baseball questions, and then we went on our way, happy. And it was the same when we met Brooks Robinson in the jewelry store. The greatest third baseman of all time acted like we were special, and that made us quite happy.

We've all heard stories that go the other way, but there are reasons, a lot of the time. I mean, I'm the King of All Unimportant People, but there are times when I'm busy getting my deli order in or filling the gas tank or having blood removed from my right arm, and if someone were to come up and start talking, I might be a bit busy to reply.

And then I think of the time I was watching the Dallas Cowboys game and they showed the owner of the team, one Jerry Jones, sitting in his palatial owner's booth.  And then he took off his eyeglasses and held them over his head.

And some lackey appeared in a trice to take the glasses and wipe them with some sort of special chamois, gently handing them back to Jones.

And I think wow, that's pretty high-handed, and I remember the guy I know who, back in the days when wrist watches needed winding every so often, would hold his arm up in the air, a signal for his wife to come over and wind his watch.

Celebrities - they're just like us! Just richer.

It's not funny

We'll start this one off by saying that at no time in my life have I ever said either of the following things:

"Did you hear this great joke that Louis C.K. said?"

"I can't wait until the next time I see Louis C.K. on television! His wit and warmth are balms to the soul."

So don't expect much objectivity. I know that everyone has the right to decide what's funny and what isn't, but really...if you think that joking about the kids who survived the Parkland high school shooting (and by extension, the ones who didn't) is funny, go right ahead.  But, really.

So over the holidays, Louis C.K. (real name: Louis Székely), who has been way off the celebrity radar since it turned out that he forced female comedians to watch as he explored various methods of self-gratification, took a faltering step along the comeback trail by goofing on kids who lived through a mass slaughter.  Funny stuff, huh?

He is 51, seemingly old enough to have acquired a sense of decency, but not yet.

He also aimed his arrows at young people in gender questioning and prefer to use the pronouns they/them.

I guess next, he'll want to go to the orthopedic ward and tip people out of their wheelchairs. What a funny man!

“They testify in front of Congress, these kids? What are they doing? You’re young! You should be crazy! You should be unhinged! Not in a suit… You’re not interesting. Because you went to a high school where kids got shot? Why does that mean I have to listen to you? Why does that make you interesting? You didn’t get shot. You pushed some fat kid in the way, and now I’ve got to listen to you talking?”

CNN also reported that he mocked people with disabilities and trotted out the old reliable jokes about people being "too PC."

And then it dawned on me, just as if I were Kevin Arnold in "The Wonder Years." Louis is going for the far right crowd, the only people around who found it funny to sneer at the kids from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, who took their concerns to Congress following the Valentine's Day massacre that killed 17 people.

Sarah Palin and others led the charge, criticizing the people who had their lives altered forever by the actions of one sick gunman, and she will probably find Louis's new material hilarious.

"Louis had to go all right wing to get an audience, no decent people were going to buy a ticket it the first place let alone listen to his (expletive)..." one person tweeted.

Another said: "LouisCk comedy is abusive just like the way he sexually harasses women is abusive. Making fun of gunned downed children? Isn't funny at ALL. it's disgusting #ParklandShooting Louis CK has always been overrated. Now it's time for him to change careers."

There's always a bright future in computer programming, Louis.

"Hello" out there

The reasons people MISDIAL 911 are almost as numerous as the reasons they call for real.

Back before we had to dial the area code before making a local call (remember?) we often had people calling 911 because they thought they were calling their friend in Randallstown whose number started with 922-. And they hit the 9 and the 1 and they hit the 1 again and before they could talk to Edith about who was bringing the potato salad on Sunday, they were hearing "Baltimore County 911" in their left ear.

And then there were the Saturday Specials- people who had 911 on speed dial (!) who picked up the phone to give it a good dusting and accidentally hit that button.

And the ones who were surprised to find the police at their door, having been sent because someone in the house called 911 and hung up, and they avowed over and over that no one in the house could have done that..until little baby Hildegarde walked in with the phone in her hand...

But I digress. The point is that if you have misdialed 911, don't feel so bad...there's this news story from Vice.com...

Dutch astronaut André Kuipers confessed to accidentally dialing 911 from orbit.

Kuipers revealed last week that in trying to make a call—by pressing 9 and then 011 for an international line—he missed a crucial number, triggering an alert at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.


“The next day I received an email message: Did you call 911?” Kuipers, a 60-year-old astronaut with the European Space Agency, told Dutch radio show Met Het Oog Op Morgen.

Astronauts on the ISS can place phone calls via a constellation of communication satellites and an IP phone that relies on internet protocol rather than a PTSN, or public switched telephone network. Using a form of “Space Skype,” they can easily dial Earth with a surprisingly clear connections, Geek pointed out in a 2013 conversation between NASA Flight Director Holly Riddings and Space Answers. The station even has its own Houston area code, according to the Washington Post.

So now we know that astronauts whirring about in space have access to movies, e-books, YouTube, phone calls with their families, and all the rest that connectivity brings us.

Tim Peake, a British astronaut also with the European Space Agency, tweeted that he dialed a wrong number while Out There and had to say, "I'd like to apologise to the lady I just called by mistake saying ‘Hello, is this planet Earth?' - not a prank call...just a wrong number."

I have gotten many odd phone calls, and now I know they must have come from outer space. Just as I suspected.

Meanwhile, I'd like a chance to be a guest on the Dutch radio show called "Met Het Oog Op Morgen" just to have a chance to say those words out loud.

My book review

An interesting book, this one is. It's the story of Peter and John Ministries, which was formed by Peter and John Bisset, two preachers originally from Scotland, who came to Baltimore and set up a radio ministry that led to their owning a radio station, and now that includes an FM station, and AM station, and an HD outlet - 95.1 Shine FM, WRBS 1230 AM, and Bright FM, respectively.

Their ministry also includes River Valley Ranch, a campground in Carroll County where young people get back to the earth with a healthy dose of preachin', and they used to operate a bookstore.

It was always a pleasure, during the days when I was involved in radio both as a broadcaster and as an instructor of the noble art of sitting in a room, playing records and talking about them, to come in contact with people from WRBS. I don't know anything about the music they play, and their format is not my choice of tea, but they have always been kind and wholesome people in my experience, and Tom Bisset - nephew of Peter and son of John - was no exception to that. Even though I didn't always get along well with radio station management, I always found him to be a gentleman of his word, and I liked his book.  And whether the station you run plays rock and roll, country, talk shows, sports talk, or Latvian folk ballads, running a radio station involves dealing with the same problems all over. It's a business like few others.

One anecdote from the book that I found notable is represented by the cover of the book. Back in the day, when Peter and John were considering whether to launch a daily program on WBMD radio, they stood outside of the station trying to make up their minds, when a delivery truck from Baugher's Orchards (a huge apple operation near here that's almost as big as Apple with the computers!) passed by. The driver recognized the two preachers from their ministerial appearances, and he came around the block again to present the two men with a basket of apples.

They took that as a sign to hold to the admonition about hard work bearing fruit under divine guidance, and so they went into WBMD, happily munching on some delicious Red Delicious apples, and started a radio ministry that continues now, many years later.

So I recommend reading "A Risky Obedience: The Story of Peter and John Ministries" by Tom Bisset, even if you aren't necessarily into religious broadcasting. Taken overall, it has a lot to do with life itself.

Just like religion!

We face challenges

You've probably heard that most movies, while in production, have working titles, and the final title for the picture is sometimes decided upon after all the filming is done. For instance, only in the last minute was the title "Frankly Scarlet" changed to "Gone With The Wind."

It's now coming out that the Netflix movie now known as "Bird Box" was entitled "Get Blindfolded and Do Stupid Things" while in production.

"Bird Box" was a movie that everyone in the free world watched over the holidays, with the sole exception being myself, it would seem, as I was happily dancing my way through Hallmark holiday movies, all of which star Claudia from "Party of Five" as a young woman of tremendous professional accomplishment who still seeks personal satisfaction of the kind that can only be found by going to one's childhood home town and reconnecting with someone who crushed mightily on you in high school.

Anyway, this bird box picture has Sandra Bullock leading two children to safety. The children are blindfolded for some reason or another.

But this has led to a world in which children (and some adults) are donning the blindfold and then stumbling around like ninnies, banging into the furniture.  And it's only a matter of time before they're out directing traffic with their eyes covered, riding unicycles on the beltway with a blindfold on, tying a handkerchief over their eyes while chopping onions for soup.

Naturally, Netflix, spurred on by a sense of social responsibility and their lawyers, put out a statement:

“Can’t believe I have to say this, but: PLEASE DO NOT HURT YOURSELVES WITH THIS BIRD BOX CHALLENGE.”
“We don’t know how this started, and we appreciate the love, but Boy and Girl have just one wish for 2019 and it is that you not end up in the hospital due to memes.”

Man oh man. If it isn't the Tide Pods or the Condom Challenge of the Deodorant Challenge, it's going to be something else. And as my wise and wonderful wife says, the need that some people seem to have to get famous on the internet through some silly video is powerful stuff.



45 million people have watched the movie, says Netflix.  YouTube says more than 2 million views have been logged of some girl and a friend doing mundane chores like ordering chicken from Popeyes while blindfolded or getting on an escalator.

And then, someone with a lot more Instagram time than sense combined the Bird Box challenge with the Kiki challenge. That's the one where you climb out of a moving car and dance on the road.



I'm not saying that a lot of kids are doing this, or even that many are. I am saying that even one kid doing this is more than common sense would seem to allow.

And I'm sitting here writing about it.

I do wish to encourage some people to try the deodorant challenge, however. Apply as directed.

Sunday Rerun: Pack it in

There was a scene in the funny Woody Allen movie "Play It Again, Sam" in which Woody plans a weekend getaway with his friends, who want to take him to the beach to help him forget another failed romance.  Woody tells them he will be glad to ride in their car, but they'll need another vehicle to trail them to carry along all of his medications, prescriptions and nostrums.

I've seen the movie in the oldtime theatre at Pocomoke City, MD, at a mall theatre in Baltimore, and on television.  Every time that scene unfolds, everyone else around me laughs uproariously.  And I sit there thinking, "What a great idea!"

I am the very opposite of a light packer.  In fact, the Green Bay Packers travel with fewer packages and suitcases for all their players, coaches and trainers than I do for a weekend getaway.

Why, you and Peggy ask, why do I take so much stuff everywhere I go?

First of all, this being Maryland, you can't count on the weather to be the same two hours in a row, so you need long and short sleeved shirts, long and short cargo pants, wool sox and red cotton sox, and a light jacket and a heavy jacket.  Razors, aftershave, emollients, talcum powder, Tylenol, Tylenol PM, vitamins, aspirin.

Books, magazines, newspapers, cell phone, tablet, stamps for postcards, chargers, snacks, and bottled water all go for the ride, too.

In some other life, I must have been in a vacation spot and all the drugstores were closed, so I was forced to go on the beach without Sea and Ski or something.

It's hard to pack and carry all this gear, but on the other hand, I don't need to take as much money with me, because I'm always prepared.

In fact, sometimes the drugstore at our favorite beach place calls when they run out of calamine lotion or Noxzema.



They know I have some!

The Saturday Picture Show, January 5, 2018

For all those who said it couldn't happen, the Baltimore Ravens won their division this year and cordially invite you to the playoffs!

Those were the days when the New Year was represented as a baby just born, and 1939 turned out to be quite a bad baby as it went along.

So this happened at the Cotton Bowl, before Notre Dame lost to Clemson...an eagle that was part of the pregame festivities decided to land on a Notre Dame fan. That was the highlight of the day for him!

What we can't tell from Prof. A. Barker's ad is whether the man shown here HAS or HAS NOT had his face improved.

Another New Year and another giant bird. Parents used to tell children that "the stork" brought them, while the mechanics of human reproduction would have been much easier for a child to understand than a lurid tale of birds picking up diapered babies in a cabbage patch and dropping them into the nurseries at their new homes.

I found this image somewhat disturbing; it looks like that traffic cop put Frosty The Snowman in jail.

Did anyone else look at this shower and wonder why these people had a pay phone in their bathroom?

Twelve years ago, NASA sent the New Horizons probe out into deep space, and here is the result: photographs of Ultima Thule, the most distant of the known objects in the solar system that look like potato chips. A theme song for the flyby project was written by Queen lead guitarist Roger May, who also composed "Fat Bottomed Girls" before he earned a doctorate in astrophysics. And every word of this is true!

Animal Instinct

When do you think people will start respecting the natural natures of nature?

Two stories this week leap to mind. First, in Caswell County, North Carolina, a 22-year-old woman who had just recently been graduated from college, and who was working at the Conservators Center, a nonprofit animal haven, was killed because someone failed to make sure a lock was secured on a lion enclosure.

A lion came out of its enclosed space and fatally mauled her.

Most zoos have firm policies of having two people check on door locks, but no such precautions took place here, and a young woman who had planned to devote her life to animal husbandry had her life come to an end before it really began.

And then on New Year's Day in Melbourne, Florida, someone decided to take a two-year-old to a rhinoceros yard, where people can reach through two-foot wide slats to touch rhinos. 

And toddlers can squeeze through those slats, you know, and the little girl was injured in what the zoo calls a "hands-on educational experience with the zoo's white rhinoceroses."

The child survived being nuzzled by a rhinoceros's snout.

 "Our number one concern is the safety and welfare of our guests and our hearts go out to the family," said Keith Winsten, the zoo's executive director.

The hands-on program is for people three and up, so why this child's parents thought it wise to let her in among these giant creatures is not known.

The Melbourne zoo is suspending the rhino encounter until they have reviewed their processes and procedures, and the Conservators Center is closed until further notice.

"This is the worst day of my life. We've lost a person. We've lost an animal. We have lost the faith in ourselves a little today," said Mindy Stinner, Executive Director of the Conservators Center.

I don't mean to pile on to people involved in this tragedy, and in the near tragedy, but I mean, really. Lions are adorable, but they will kill you. Rhinoceroses are something that makes us feel like stegosauri still walk among us, but they weigh thousands of pounds and would obviously crush a human with or without intending to do so.

We enjoy animals but there's a certain element of danger involved in it, and I think it's time that people acted sensibly. Sure, it's fun to interact with animals, but it's also fun to live tomorrow.

Spaced

One of those "factoids" that you always see on restaurant placemats and Larry King's three-dot column in USA Today is the statement that "The Great Wall of China is the only man-made object on earth that you can see on the moon."

I've said it a thousand times, I must have been absent the day in elementary school when they explained the solar system, because any child currently attending elementary school has a much better grasp on planetary matters than I do.

So I take it from those who know, and NASA types say it ain't so. They say no one can really make out an earthly details on the moon, but then again, they say that people on the International Space Station can't see the Wall either because the guy in front of them keeps standing up.

NASA is quick to point out that this rumor has been floating around (not in outer space, but right here) since the1930s, and that was a good long time before we started sending manned space missions up in the air.

Here's the view, and what you might take to be the Great Wall is actually a restroom line at Disney Beijing!

NASA does say that the boundary between Earth’s and outer space is about 62 miles above sea level. As a gauge, it's 55 miles from our house in world-famous Carney, MD to Pennsylvania Dutch Country, but that's driving, not shooting straight up in a rocket.

The best test of this came when China sent an astronaut up in space in 2003. Yang Liwei is his name, and when he got back, he said, “The scenery was very beautiful. But I didn’t see the Great Wall.”

But there is something quite visible from up there, and it's something (else) I've never heard of! It's a gigantic 64,000 acre agricultural area in Southeastern Spain in the Almería region. As you see below, the entire place is virtually covered in plastic greenhouses producing 1.5 billion dollars worth of produce - tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, and so forth - every year.

So ask for extra tomatoes and pickles on your next sub and feel like part of something special!

Kitchen Gear from the Ironbar Hilton

There has always been something appealing to me about living in Maine. I mean, it's way up north and it's pretty cold in winter, so that suits me.

I have suggested that they change their name to "Not Florida," but the only response I get suggests that they like their name just fine as it is.

And I have long been interested in prison life, not so much as a potential resident. In fact, I don't think I would enjoy prison life much at all, but I always wanted to be in a large cafeteria, spooning through my gruel, and then hollering, "Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! I ain't eatin' this slop!" and starting a prison riot.

I have some odd daydreams. Many of them were formed by watching cinema prison classics such as "San Quentin," "Angels With Dirty Faces," and "The Sound Of Music," in which people learn to deal with mindnumbing ennui day after day.

Sometimes, in the movies at least, they get a job in the prison workshop, and Peggy and I are recently the beneficiaries of such enterprise.  You see, for years, I have been sticking my paws right into the toaster over to extract toasted bread, muffins, bagels and I don't know what-all else, but now, because of the generosity of a friend, we are the owners and operators of a pair of wooden toaster tongs!


What's cool is that the tongs came from the Maine State Prison Showroom (motto: Craftsmen Rebuilding Their Lives") which is behind the original Maine State Prison. That was the fictional setting for the Stephen King novella "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption," which, of course, was turned into the movie "The Shawshank Redemption."

According to a brochure we got along with the tongs, the Industries Program "provides inmates with an avenue of learning marketable job skills, work ethics, and responsibility - tools for reentry into the workforce upon release."

They make and sell quality furniture, model ships, cutting boards and home goods, bird houses, stools, and "hundreds of other signature Showroom goods."

They make everything that can be made of wood, with the exception of pole vaulting gear.

Happy 2019!

Happy New Year! And in case you didn't get a free calendar from your credit union or life insurance salesperson, here you go! May all of these be good days for you.

New Year's Eve rerun: One Good Turn

More than in any other city in the nation, from what "they" say, people in Baltimore are known for their high school. It doesn't matter if you've gone to Harvard or Harford, Yale or jail, we want to know which high school you went to.  

Which is why I am proud to wear the maroon and white of Dear Old Towson High, my alma mater.  The irony is that, while I was actually enrolled there, I didn't spend as much time there as I was supposed to, but that's all water under the bridge that leads to the new synthetic turf field (above)...

But what I am about to brag about is nothing that took place on the athletic field, but, rather, in the classroom of English department chairperson Jenna Zava, who, in an interesting assignment, gave her students a month to do three acts of kindness. Claire Fluharty gave her 12th grade AP English class the same task. Students had free choice of what to do, but the goal stated by Ms Zava was "to spread kindness and cheer in the school and the Towson community."

You may read all about it here in the Baltimore SUN: 

I was impressed!  One of the students baked a plate of chocolate chip cookies for a hard-working member of the custodial staff. Another presented her Spanish teacher with a plate of homemade cookies ("Un plato de galletas caseras," as I learned to say at THS.)

Another young woman chose to compliment five passersby per day, which led to a lot of "You talking to ME???" responses. Another chased the mail truck up her street to catch up to, and thank, the surprised letter carrier at the wheel. 

From baking homemade latkes for a family Hanukkah celebration to helping elderly people reach items on the top shelf at the grocery store (they always put that stuff way up high!), all the students found ways to complete the assignment, which Ms Zava devised after a group of her friends raised money to help her care for her six-year-old son, who has a rare genetic disease.  She mentioned the Random Acts of Kindness website, which shares ideas about doing this very thing.

From my days as a Boy Scout, where we tried to perform a good turn daily, I have tried to carry on this tradition, with varying levels of success.  But one thing I do know is, if you really want to get in the habit of doing something nice for someone every day, it's not that hard. Going to that Random Acts website will give you hundreds of ideas in many categories. 

"I wanted to try it out on a small scale this year and see how it went," is Ms Zava's reaction to how the assignment turned out. "Perhaps next year we can have more students participate."

And perhaps all of us can do something nice for someone every day in 2019.  Want to bet that we can?

Sunday Rerun: What do you know about that?

Sometimes I sit around, thinking about what I can think about next.

And here is what I came up with today:  It's based on an aphorism attributed to Will Rogers - "Everybody is dumb, just on different topics."

Couldn't be more right.  Take me.  What I know about dinosaurs and the solar system could fit in one of the little plastic cups that come with cough syrup, and yet I know children - pre-schoolers! - who know more about those topics than I do, and I say good for them.  As long as T Rex isn't charging after me when I go to the Try 'N' Save, and the sun keeps coming up every day, I'm fine not knowing why the former doesn't happen and why the latter does.

Ring Lardner

I hasten to point out that there are topics on which I am quite knowledgeable, such as the works of Ring Lardner and Jerry Lee Lewis, and how to make grits just right (not soupy, not thick), and things related to the study of history, so I always have something to talk about in case I'm invited to a cocktail party. ("Benjamin Franklin was the only president of the United States who was never president of the United States!")


But...there's always a but. Why do so many of us talk of things about which we know nada, zilch, zed, zero. F'rinstance, the recent disappearance of the Air Asia plane - still a mystery as I write this - has brought out a veritable plethora (all plethoras are "veritable," just like all long waits are "seemingly interminable") of people whose work brings them no closer to Asian air travel than the latest issue of US Weekly, and yet are willing to state what happened to that Malaysian airplane earlier this year.

"It was shot down by the Taliban"

"It was hijacked to Syria"

"It was vaporized by gamma rays by the Martians"


And they make these statements so unabashedly, and their friends all form an echoing chorus of approval, never once asking, "How do you know that?"

Jerry Lee Lewis

The last moments of people who passed away under mysterious circumstances, the whereabouts of Jimmy Hoffa, and the reasons why Jennifer Aniston has never found true happiness in love are all grist for these mills.  They couldn't possibly know, but that doesn't stop them from sharing their uninformation.



And we're polite enough to act like we agree.