He Honored Life

"Kerouac opened a million coffee bars and sold a million pairs of Levis to both sexes. Woodstock rises from his pages."

                                                         William S. Burroughs

Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac was born 100 years ago tomorrow in Lowell, Massachusetts. He came to be known as Jack Kerouac, and for those of us who came of age at a certain time, his influence was towering. He was a novelist and poet who was often regarded as the leader of the beatniks and the beat movement in general in the 1950s, although Kerouac himself often said things such as "I'm not a beatnik. I'm a Catholic."

He was conflicted that way over a lot of things - religion (he dabbled in Eastern religions, Indian art and culture, but always returned to his Catholic roots), athletics (he was good enough to make the football team at Columbia University but argued so much with Coach Lou Little that he became a benchwarmer before leaving school for the military), the military (he washed out of both the Merchant Marine and the Navy, which discharged him for having an "indifferent character) and his writing, which he sometimes called "a crock as literature."

I don't see a lot of young people today talking about him, so maybe his works are not being taught in high school and college any longer, and that's a shame, because he created an entire style of writing. 

Jim Sampas is Kerouac's nephew, and serves as the literary executor of Kerouac's  estate. He is working on establishing a Kerouac museum at the St. Jean Baptiste Church, the site of Jack's christening and funeral (and where he served as an altar boy). Sampas points out that people such as including Bob Dylan, the Beatles and Barack Obama cite Kerouac as an influence. 

Kerouac is best known for the 1957 novel  “On the Road,” which was the first and most important description of the restlessness that settled over America after World War II.  It was so different from the usual American novel that it took six years before he could find a publisher for a book that would change the way books were written. Literally. 

In the days before word processing, one processed words by typing them on a typewriter, but Kerouac fueled his energy with a diet of pea soup, coffee and cigarettes. Not wishing to have to insert a new piece of paper every time he filled a page with his story, he taped together enough sheets of paper to form a 120' scroll, and he wrote "On The Road" in a three-week solid burst.

That scroll, by the way, has fallen into the hands of Jim Irsay, a Kerouac devotee who happens to own the Indianapolis Colts of the NFL, having inherited the team from his father Robert, about whom, the less said, the better.

What Sampas called "Kerouac’s true-to-life, spontaneous prose” has influenced literature ever since it was published. I like to compare it to a natural conversation, when people are talking, as opposed to the pinched style of a heavily edited and rewritten book. I've read both the standard version of "On The Road" and the verbatim transcript of the scroll, with typos, extra words, and other mistakes, and they are both like a warm conversation with a friend relating the story of a cross-country excursion.

It was hard to follow up the success of "On The Road" for Jack, and he fell into a life of dissolution, passing away in October, 1969, a sad lonely man in Florida. But his early flame still glows, if you care to be warmed by it!

Now there are 643 things to write about!

Out in the great Midwest there exists an "upscale" city (the kind where they don't take kindly to newcomers and poor people and poor newcomers) called Hudson, Ohio, some 30 miles southeast of Cleveland, home of the Indians Guardians.  

The job of mayor there is largely ceremonial, and yet the man who held the job since the fall of 2019, Craig Shubert, managed to muddy up the waters more than anyone in recent memory.

First, he asked Hudson school board members to resign last spring, because the high school was using a book with writing prompts for a college-level class and he thought some of the writing prompts constituted child pornography. The book is called "642 Things To Write About" and the mayor was so doggone het up about it, he threatened to prosecute members of the board for not jumping to the tune he called.  The Summit County prosecutor deemed his claims baseless, but declined to prosecute, possibly because they saw a train wreck coming up fast.

And then, this winter, Hizzoner (a former TV news reporter) spoke up at a city council meeting, saying he wanted to raise some “data points” when the talk turned to allowing shanties on a frozen lake for the purpose of ice fishing.

“Does someone come back next year and say, ‘I want an ice shanty on Hudson Springs Park for x amount of time?’” Shubert said. “And if you then allow ice fishing with shanties, then that leads to another problem — prostitution. Now you’ve got the police chief and and the police department involved.”

He told  WJW-TV in Cleveland that he said that about Ice Shanty Hookers ("The Shame Of The American Ice Fishing Community") because of his days as a news hawk, where he dealt with law enforcement agencies arresting people for prostitution in shanties.

“When discussing proposed legislation, it is wise to discuss the potential for unintended consequences,” Shubert told the station.

Well, a week after that foolish display, Shubert resigned from his job, saying that the whole thing was his attempt to inject dry humor into the meeting. I guess that bit about rounding up frozen tarts on Lake ComeoninIwannalayya was just made up.

I have never lived anywhere where it gets cold enough to do much ice fishing. I do know from listening to Garrison Keillor that it's a big deal in the flyover states, and that they commonly drag a broken-down Dodge automobile onto the lake and put money in a pool to see when the ice is sufficiently weak to send the car to the lake's bottom to join other derelict cars and missing gangsters. The person who guesses the date most accurately gets half the jackpot and the volunteer fire company gets the other half of the swag.

If the mayor had spent any time at all watching Ricky Gervais in "After Life," he would know that we no longer call them prostitutes; they are properly known as sex workers. 

And we no longer call him mayor, so it all evens out. 

 

More free advice!

There was an article in the SUNpaper about a high school teacher named Katie Peters, an English teacher at Whitmer High School in Toledo, Ohio. I did not read the entire article because it dealt with the parents' bill of rights, an issue which continues to gain steam (or hot air) because, you see, it turns out that parents know better about what ought to be taught in school, more so than educators who have spent their adult lives in classrooms, in front of classrooms, and in conference rooms determining the courses that will best produce a course of success for young Ferdinand and Isabella. 

Or so some say. I can't decide. I'm too busy trying to figure out people who said they didn't need masks or vaccines because they take plenty of vitamins.

I don't know when it started being the normal thing in this country for everyone to consider themselves an expert on every topic under the sun, but it's amazing how that works. Even my doctor says he is frequently contradicted by patients whose vast experience and knowledge of their duodenum surpasses his because of something they heard on the Dr Phil Oz Show.

Anyway, I'll climb down from the pulpit to tell you what caught my eye in the picture of the teacher, Ms Peters. She had on her bulletin board a poster, hand-lettered, reading "Life Instructions." And they are as follows:

Memorize your favorite poem

Never laugh at anyone's dreams

Marry someone you love talking to

Smile when you answer the phone

Silence can be the best reply

 

I think the students in Ms Peters's class are lucky, and I have a feeling she is one of those teachers whose classes learn more than they realize at first. Just that first one - memorize a favorite poem - is great advice. Even if the poem is a song lyric, it's still a way to be in touch with the soul. I can still remember my father reciting Frost's "Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening," and I have long enjoyed calling out "Abraham Lincoln Walks At Midnight" (Vachel Lindsay) and "Celery Stalks At Midnight" (Will Bradley). 

I learned a long time ago that people will surprise you, not only with what they dream of accomplishing, but with what they actually accomplish. Why, I knew a fellow who worked down at General Motors, and every night he would wheel out a wheelbarrow full of auto parts, his goal being to build a car out of them. Well, after two years of this, and a lot of hard work, what did he have, but 378 wheelbarrows! Now, who's laughing?!

My dear sweet Peggy has been on the receiving end of my diatribes, screeds, sermons, and lengthy denunciations of the oppressors for almost 49 years, and we have had many a fun chat. Yes, I love her and I love talking with her. I always learn a lot!

One of the cardinal rules from my days on the radio was, "The listeners can hear you smile." Now, answering the phone is quite different. You folks in your 30s and below might be surprised to find there was a day when the phone rang, and you didn't know who in the hell it was on the other end! Now you do. Or at least you have an idea who in the hell it is from the Caller ID, and you can answer accordingly, or not. And if they are calling from Hell, you can give them some more of it!

Or not! Silence can be the best reply, after all.  Anyone will tell you, when people ask a deeply personal question about one's age, weight, income, or mental stability, it used to be de rigueur to play it off by saying, "Gee, that's a little personal, don't you think?" or "I'm shocked that you would ask such a question" or "Who wants to know?" I've learned the value of saying nothing. If you can, raise one eyebrow and walk away.

Thank you, Ms Peters!

 

Someone named Folsom might be going to prison

"Fake it 'til you make it" was a popular expression, and now, a lot of the people who preached that philosophy are making license plates, if you know what I mean...

I think now the term should be "Fake it and say you didn't," at least according to one Robin Folsom, who is charged with faking several pregnancies over the past several years.

Robin is a Georgia Belle, but the next thing that rings for her might be the prison train. You see, she said she was pregnant, and it is not possible to be a little bit pregnant. There are only two boxes to check:

[ ] pregnant

[ ] not pregnant

But she got her seven weeks paid time off because her employer checked box #1.

And she had done the same thing before! But this time, someone got wise to her, and she’s facing three counts of making false statements and one count of identity fraud.

"Mother" of the year.

Folsom, 43, was working as the director of external affairs at the Georgia Vocational Rehabilitation Agency (GVRA)in late 2020, when she told her supervisor she was awaiting a visit from the stork. She claimed to give birth in May 2021.

But according to the Georgia Office of the Inspector General (OIG), there was no baby after all (OMG!)

“When [GVRA] first sent us this case, we thought there had to be a misunderstanding. We couldn’t believe it,” said State Inspector General Scott McAfee.

I'm sure she was not the first to try to pull off this ruse, but she wasn't too clever about it...one of her co-workers saw something not quite right with her "baby bump." 

“[I]n March 2021, a co-worker observed the lower portion of Folsom’s stomach ‘come away’ from her body and believed Folsom wore a fake pregnant stomach,” the OIG said, adding, “In addition, Folsom allegedly sent pictures of her new baby to various GVRA employees, however, the pictures appeared to be inconsistent and depicted children with varying skin tones.”

I will promise you one thing:  McAfee credits Folsom’s colleagues for figuring out what was up, and the one thing I will say for sure, the people who figured it out were women.

“The GVRA employees, the human resources, just started putting two and two together,” McAfee said. “Things weren’t adding up, and thankfully they didn’t shrug it off. They realized that this was something that was more serious.”

He did not say, nor did he have to, that men don't know from nothin' about pregnancies. Ask any woman who is not married to an OB/GYN.

Anyway, as the investigation picked up steam, Folsom picked up her belongings and resigned in October 2021.

And it does not appear that her primary motivation was to be gifted a garage full of Graco strollers,  Aveeno lotion sets and monogrammed burp cloths. She wanted that paid time off, the investigators say, even going so far as to send in a letter signed by Bran Otmembebwe and sent to her bosses. The letter stated that Otmembebwe was the father of Folsom's child and further claimed her doctor had “mandated several weeks of rest following the delivery.”

Just one problem. Investigators searched the world over, and there is no such person as Bran Otmembebwe.

I thought the whole thing sounded kind of flaky.

She got seven weeks paid time off that she did not deserve, and for that, she is charged with identity fraud.  She’s now facing criminal charges after being indicted by a grand jury on Feb. 10. Trial is set for on April 4, and, if found guilty, she could spend up to 25 years in prison and pay up to $103,000 in fines.

Unless she's busy giving birth on April 4. We shall see.

 

 

 

Pat answers

Lupita Nyong’o is a famous, award-winning actress who has earned her place in the spotlight by winning an Oscar award and doing great and important things in society.  The list of her accomplishments is long and notable.

When she received that Academy Award some years ago, her brother, who had accompanied her to the ceremonies, crowded into the picture with her and the other winners, and I felt sorry for the both of them. 

Jackson Mahomes is the younger brother of Patrick Mahomes, and Patrick has won fame and glory for playing quarterback for the Kansas City Chiefs extremely well. So Jackson spent the greater part of his time last year tagging along with his big brother.  We talked last month about all that commotion with the Brothers Mahomes and Patrick's significant other, all vying for the most time in the spotlight.

So it should come as no surprise (but it was a bit faster than I thought it would be) that suddenly Jackson is fed up to here! with the media attention he’s received from chasing the limelight.

Jackson put on a pair of glasses to achieve that pensive, thoughtful look, and snapped a selfie for Instagram with the caption, “I hate media/news it’s destroying my life…”

And then he selfied again, this time describing himself as “broken/sad/disrespected,” according to a screen grab on Twitter.

It used to be that people would come along on whatever communications medium they had - the phone, a newspaper column, a radio interview, and give us verse and chapter on what was wrong and how we could fix it. But the new trend is to drop a mood on us and let us all try to figure out what's ailing us.

And, of course, the "media/news" is always glad to be the punching bag for everyone's dissatisfaction. Man oh man, go rob a bank and holler because your name is in the news.

In other words, Jackson gave no details to illuminate the reasons for his seeming despondency, although eagle-eyed KC fans were quick to point out that brother Patrick had a bachelor party in Las Vegas last week, and among the celebrants photographed at the bacchanal, Jackson was nowhere to be seen.

Last week, JM's name popped up again, this time over the allegations made by a snack company which claimed he got them to send him a Care package of gourmet goodies and promised plugs on his TikTok in return but failed to deliver said mentions. JM said he did not get the promised goodies but the company said they didn't hear about that and all around the barn they went.

(To the manufacturers of Chex Mix, I will praise your product to the heights every day if you will just ship me a few bags. One bag. I'm not hard to please.)

And their mother is disputing claims that Patrick had a Come To Jesus meeting with his girlfriend and his brother to tell them their continued antics were bad for his image. 

 

 In a way, I feel sad for a guy who struts around wearing his brother's jacket - and identity - as if it were his own. There must be a lot going on in that family. Remember, their father, Pat, was a major league pitcher for many years but never any sort of star at all. It makes for an interesting family dynamic, but Thanksgiving is a long time off, so here's my idea, Jackson. 

Get your own job and your own significant other and your own life! It's like you're literally wearing your brother's hand-me-downs and it's not as good a look as you think.

Sunday Rerun: Put It Right Over The Plate

 I think we need to talk about a problem that bids fair to end life in America as we know it, especially on weekends, especially at times when we choose to dine out.

Friends and neighbors, and friends of neighbors, I speak today of a real nationwide problem.  There seems to be a shortage of plates in the diners and dining halls and finer restaurants in America.

How else to explain that I am still eating my food and some 17-year-old busboy dives in from the left, much like Ed Reed going for a deflection interception, and grabs my plate as he says, "Can I take that away for you?"

"Son, I ain't finished yet," is my standard reply.  See, I am a slow eater.  Oh, I can gobble when the situation calls for it.  Was a time when I got 1/2 an hour for lunch, and you deduct from that 3 minutes to nuke a Stouffer's lo-cal tuna surprise, and by the time I sat down to chow down, it was either gobble or go hungry.  And you know how I voted on that one!

So, a lot of times when we're eating out on real plates, I will linger over my few remaining scraps, maybe sop up some sauce with bread, or spear one more broccoli spear.  It's hard to do that when I have to be vigilant, lest young Fisher or Hunter or Sailor make his move and snatch the platter from in front of me.  Peggy is always great about this, and pleasantly tells the young man that I am not ready to relinquish the crockery, but it unnerves me to think that someone over near where it used to be the smoking section has to wait for his club sandwich because I am still using the plate they would put it on, if only I'd give it up.

So maybe we should all start taking our own plates, mugs and cutlery down to the ChewSumMor next time.  I don't know.  It's a nationwide problem that threatens to curtail our nights out and make us stay home and watch "Everybody Loves Raymond" reruns on TBS. 


And that's not nearly as much fun.

The Saturday Picture Show, March 5, 2022

 

We Atlantic Coastal types are used to seeing seagull tracks at the beach and shopping center parking lots. But this picture was taken in Northern Idaho, which I did not believe would be seagull territory. Hmmm.

I happened to be in the courtroom the day a snail came to file an assault complaint against a turtle. When the judge asked him what happened, all he could say was, "I don't know, your honor; it all happened so fast!"

I hear owls hooting and hollering around our house, but never have I seen one up close and personal. Still, I can enjoy this picture.

A delightful change from the stick figure families and "My child is an honor student at O'Hoolahan Middle School" brags

Nature has a way of protecting itself. Can someone please identify this pretty flower?

All the kids on board knew it was going to be an interesting day at school...

I always like to see the stoic looks on the faces of people driving gigantic farm equipment on a rural road, going to work in some other fields. People are behind them, itching to pass, and the guy at the wheel just keeps on choogling, all 15 mph worth...

Old Chinese saying: The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The best place is in the engine compartment of an old Dodge Dart.

Here is the place where snow, sand, and surf come together in Hokkaido, Japan.

Long before Peter Graves became famous for saying, "Joey, have you ever been in a cockpit before?" he was dealing with marauding giant insects.

 

There must be another way

Recently in Annapolis, Maryland's capitol city, a man turned himself in to police and is facing charges of first-degree assault and reckless endangerment, as well as weapons charges.

John Estep, 41, is accused of shooting a 14-year-old and a 10-year-old several weeks ago. Police said he had called 911 an hour before the shooting, complaining that a group of juveniles were banging on his door, but by the time police arrived the first time, the kids were gone.

Later that evening, another neighbor reported a crowd of juveniles banging on his door, and five minutes after that call, police got a report of shots being fired.

Estep is saying that someone kicked his door in and had come inside his home, which is when he fired at the alleged intruder, and then at a group at his side window. After that, he went outside and fired a shot into the ground.

The window of Estep's house

The 14-year-old is a male who was shot twice in the legs; the other victim was a 10-year-old girl, shot in the back. 

Annapolis police stated that “there was damage consistent with breaking and entering on the door” of Estep’s house.

It reminds me of a situation that occurred in Baltimore County's east side in 1980, when Roman Welzant, 68, tired of the years of antagonism with the neighborhood teens, confronted a bunch who had been lobbing snowballs at his house by firing a .22 pistol at them. He called it self-defense, but the state of Maryland called it  second-degree murder, as his four bullets killed Albert Raymond Kahl Jr., 18, and seriously wounded James F. Willey, 16.

It had gone on for years and years, both sides acknowledged, the kids tormenting Welzant and his family home with snowballs and eggs and stones and catcalls, and Welzant coming out of the house, hollering curses at the mob and taking their photographs (the kids called him "Cameraman.")

Mr Welzant had been a shoe salesman and a salesman for a kitchen equipment firm; his wife worked her way up to being head teller at a bank. They represented that generation who came of age during the Depression, worked hard, and found pride in their homes and, in his case, a boat moored at Miller's Island and a shiny Cadillac.

But that night in January in a snowfall, Albert Kahl's life ended. He is buried in Oak Lawn Cemetery near his family home. Mr Welzant was acquitted at a trial in June, 1980, but his life and his family were shattered, and he died in 1990.

For as long as there have been kids and adults, there have been kids acting up toward adults. We would like to think that stories such as this would have led our society to find other ways to handle the problems...the kids saying there is nothing to do, so they bedevil the older people, and the older people can take just so much before tragedy falls down on the community.

At the time of the Welzant incident, Diane Silvestri, mother of a son who was a friend of young Kahl, told the Washington POST: "I think (the local kids) have learned a vital lesson. It's made them grow up and more adult-like about a lot of things, how serious life is and how quickly it can be taken away."

How quickly, indeed.

Robots are taking over

It's hard to remember the days before we could get groceries delivered right to our front step, or bagged for easy pickup at the Try'N'Save.

But I would miss going to the store if I did that. In a way, I relate to Brian Johnson from The Breakfast Club movie, who had a fake ID so he could vote. It was a big deal to get my driver's license because I could start running to the A&P to save Mom a trip. In fact, I was there so often, they gave me a job and I loved it. I do love supermarkets. 

I do understand that some people are not really up to the task of pushing a cart around the store (note for Southern readers: you call a cart a "buggy" and we don't understand why).  And then you have to haul it out to the car and that's a workout for some.

So, technology to the rescue, as always! Here comes Gita!

The word "Gita" in Italian means "short trip." A robotics company, Piaggio Fast Forward, over there has come up with a tiny robot companion to follow you around the Piggly Wiggly and on out to the car. It uses built-in cameras and recognition technology to stay with its master, so to speak.

You won't see it in your local store just yet; it's currently under test in Newcastle, England, by the UK National Innovation Centre for Aging.

"Gita is a first of a kind, a carrying, following robot," said Professor Nic Palmarini, director at the National Innovation Centre.

 

I mean, you can put 40 pounds of canned string beans, corn flakes, and rib roast in the cargo compartment, and you can lock it up, and if you run into someone from church who insists on holding a fifteen-minute conversation about the new choir director right in the middle of the tea-and-coffee aisle, it turns into a seat!

Put a microwave and a little TV in there, and what else could we ask?

"Well, it would be great to have something to carry your shopping," Gita tester  Carol says. "Have your hands free, particularly if it's a bad day and you're dealing with an umbrella, and your phone, and your purse and things, and somewhere to store it safely, your stuff.  And handy to have something to sit on if you've had enough or you want to sit down when you're shopping," she continued.

Now here comes Mr Palmarini to say, the point of Gita is to get us to exercise more.

"One good rule of longevity, of living healthier, longer life is just to walk," Palmarini said. "We should have to take at least 10,000 steps a day, so why instead of keep on generating objects and devices on top of which we sit and they bring us somewhere?

"Why don't we empower ourselves to walk more?" he continued. "And that's what we think is very interesting as a different approach to leverage the most innovative technology, machine learning, and robots, to allow people to walk more."

So it will be good to go for a long walk and be trailed by canned sodas, bunches of carrots, and 5-lb. bags of sugar!

Expect to shell out $103 a month to rent your shop bot when they become available.

Volts Wagon

The hip kids today use the expression IYKYK, which I, being no kid and no hipster, thought was a laughing noise like nyuk-nyuk.

But a young person was kind enough to put me wise. It stands for If You Know, You Know.

Well, if you know me at all, you know I am a big fan of AC/DC, the legendary band. Leader and guitarist Angus Young plugs his amplifiers into electrical outlets and very  loud and wonderful things result.  Angus and his brother Malcolm got the name for the band from seeing "AC/DC" on their sister Margaret's sewing machine...the same Singer that made Angus's stage outfits of schoolboy pants, hat, and tie.

 

And you might have heard me say that my late father, who loved all things electrical so much that he worked for the Baltimore Gas & Electric, was a huge fan of Nikola Tesla, the Serbian inventor who numbered among his developments and discoveries the rotating magnetic field, the basis of most alternating-current - AC - electricity. The idea for three-phase electric power transmission was his too.

He came here to America with four cents in his pocket and soon found work with Thomas Edison, but Edison had one of those lightbulb moments of his and came up with a plan to use DC - direct current - to distribute electricity to every home and office and school and church and store in America.

Tesla (who also invented the Tesla Coil, tiny versions of which are seen across America every spring at Science Fair time) and Edison fought like demons over whose system was right, and probably because he realized that with DC, there would need to be a power transmission station around every corner of the country, Edison fired Tesla, who wound up digging ditches for a while before finding financial backing from George Westinghouse, whose company made the washer-dryer that keeps your pants so clean and the refrigerator that makes your cold cuts so cold. 

In the end, Tesla was right, and Alternating Current became the standard in America.  And he, like Angus Young who proudly wears the T-shirt above, was quite the showman. 

In order to allay fears that AC power was dangerous, Tesla put on shows, allowing  allowing electricity to flow through his body and light up lamps. 

 Now THAT sounds like a Science Fair project to me! 

Number please?

Fifty years after its release, "The Godfather" stands as the best American movie ever made in many opinions. 

I mean, if you haven't seen it even once, you have stood there many times wondering what everyone was talking about when they said:

• "I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse."
• "Leave the gun.  Take the cannoli."
• "Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes." (I say this any time I open any sort of package)
• "Bonasera…Bonasera…What have I ever done to make you treat me so disrespectfully?"
• "Don’t ever take sides with anyone against the family again.  Ever."
• "Tom, can you get me off the hook?  For old times’ sake?" (When the actor who played Tessio,  Abe Vigoda, played a detective on "Barney Miller," it was even funnier to quote him saying this).
• "Revenge is a dish that tastes best when served cold."
• "It’s not personal, Sonny.  It’s strictly business."
• "You can act like a man! What’s the matter with you? Is this how you turned out, a Hollywood finocchio that cries like a woman?"

So I believe that you should run right out and watch this movie and marvel at how they wove such a story with so many lessons. Just tell your boss you will need the afternoon off. 

Virgil Sollozzo

A small thing I always think about is the scene where Sollozzo's men have taken Tom Hagen hostage, after Don Corleone is shot 147 times while buying fruit, and Sollozzo calls Sonny to say that Hagen will be released in three hours.

I always marveled at Sonny, writing the time down on the wall by the telephone. I mean, shouldn't the home of a leading olive oil importer have a note pad near the phone, to write down important messages?

Then I got to thinking about other times people wrote something on the wall.

When 911 service came to Baltimore County in the early 80s, we printed up about a zillion little white stickers saying "Baltimore County Police Fire Ambulance - Dial 911 for emergencies" and when I was passing them out at community meetings and fairs and supermarket openings, more than one person told me, "We don't need the sticker; we already wrote the number on the wall right by the phone!"

In the song "Memphis" by Chuck Berry, the singer says:

"Long distance information, give me Memphis Tennessee

Help me find a party that tried to get in touch with me

She did not leave a number but I know who placed the call

'Cause my uncle took a message and he wrote it on the wall"

Younger folks, yes, there was a time you could dial "0" and get help from a friendly voice, a woman who would look up a number for you, tell you what time it was in Memphis, what time it would cost less to call long distance, and a nice recipe for leftover roast beef.

And in those days, it was fine to take a pencil and jot down messages and phone numbers and, I guess, recipes on the kitchen wall. Once a year, Uncle Nutsy would get the Kem-Tone and a brush and slap on a new coat of paint, readying the wall for new notes.

 

 

Seven Simple Steps to Happiness

"Happiness depends upon ourselves." —Aristotle

Greek philosopher Aristotle (c. 384 B.C. to 322 B.C.) searched for many things in his day: wisdom, philosophy, logic, criticism, rhetoric, physics, biology, psychology. He found everything except for the one quest that eluded him in the end: a last name.

But he was wise enough to tell us that we have to make our own kind of music and find happiness where we can. It's true that very few of us have known the pleasure that comes from some stranger knocking on the front door, offering to bring happiness to our hearth and home if we will just let him or her inside to share the latest copy of  The New American magazine, the semi-monthly magazine of the John Birch Society.

Just don't answer the doorbell.

But there is something I found to share from author Minda Zetlin, and she wants to share these 7 Small Joys You Should Make Sure to Add to Your Daily Routine.

Let's take a look at the list!

1. Savor your favorite morning beverage.

So many of us guzzle that morning cup o' Joe like it's the only way to jumpstart our heart.  A lot of us also take some fruit juice, maybe some water too, but the advice here is to taste it! As I sip my morning tea, I like to think about the people in Asia bringing in the crop of Camellia sinensis to fill my Lipton teabag, and send thoughtful appreciation to whoever works the stapler that keeps all the tealeaves inside of the bag. And by the time I'm finished that reverie, here it is, almost 10 AM!

2. Get outdoors.

As a dedicated indoorsman, I realize that until I find a way to get the trash collectors and letter carriers and UPS men and women to back up their trucks to my garage, I will need to go outside from time to time, and that's the least I can do in the spirit of getting outdoors.

3. Talk with someone you care about.

It's true that being alone will drive you out of your noodle, especially if you have two-way conversations with your mirror while shaving, or brushing your teeth, or shaving your toothbrush. Even if you live alone, you need to talk to someone you like, who likes you back, to bring joy to your world. The very fact that you like them is proof that they add something to your life...and don't forget that they like you too! So they get a boot out of talking to you, too, as soon as you finish shaving and brushing your choppers.

4. Take a nap.

Now we're in my sweet spot! I like to go to bed late and get up early, so a little midday nod sweetens the day a good bit. And no one says you need to make like a log for 4 hours, but as Ms Zetlin says, a little catnap "can improve your mental function, memory, and problem-solving ability, as well as improve your mood."

President John F. Kennedy was said to be a fan of a fifteen-minute power nap in the middle of his busy Camelot days. At least, that's what everyone thought he was doing.

5. Read a good book.

Everyone knows that "Reading maketh a full man," as Francis Bacon said, and he certainly would have said "a full PERSON" if he thought about it.

Now all I can think about is bacon.

But books are full of fun and information and challenges to the mind, and there is reason to believe that the habit of reading good books will bring joy.  And the good news is, the libraries are open again, so you can borrow books from there and it won't cost you a daggone cent.

I will admit that as a younger man, I thought that once I started reading a book, I had to finish it, no matter how turgid the writing. But now, in addition to the pleasure I get from reading a great book (I heartily recommend The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society) I also get immense joy from not reading anything by John Grisham!

6. Laugh.

Mark Twain was fond of saying, "The human race has only one effective weapon, and that is laughter.” Sure, Twain overlooked a well-placed punch in the nose, but he wasn't wrong about laughter being good for the soul and the spirit. 

But just be sure that your jokes are funny before you unleash them (unless you are a teacher or doctor or boss, in which cases everything you say is a laugh riot) because, as Norm MacDonald said, "Comedy is surprises, so if you're intending to make somebody laugh and they don’t laugh, that’s funny."

Google "Norm MacDonald moth joke" to see something funny.

7. Spend a little time doing nothing.

Take this simple test: ask your browser for other words that mean "brain surgeon" or "petroleum engineer" or "rocket designer," and you'll find maybe two or three synonyms at most for these hi-class professions. But Google "do nothing" and the words will come spilling onto your screen like when you hit the slot machine that time.  

It's because of what Abe Lincoln said that one time when he said "I just want to sit home tonight and play with the cat. I don't feel like going to the theater."

Don't make the same mistake! Goof off now before there's no time to! 

 

Sunday rerun: It all comes back

 Many years ago, as Peggy and I strolled along the beach in scenic Ocean City, Maryland, one of the flip-flops I was wearing was rudely yanked off my left foot by a surging tide that seemed not to care what it churned up as it rolled majestically landward. (Sorry for the dramatics; I gave Peggy a book of Truman Capote's short stories and I guess I was paying him tribute there.) (Yes, he did just roll over in his grave.) Anyway, to get back to the story, I figured that would be the last I would see of that flip-flop. We continued walking, Peggy with her usual grace, and me in the sort of ducky gait that only a man wearing one flip-flop can manage, and at length we turned back. It was dark - really dark - and for once I was carrying no flashlight. When we got back up to where we had started walking, I almost tripped over something on the beach. It was my flip-flop, recently returned from Davy Jones's locker (too big for the diminutive Monkee.) The Saturday before last, when I had to report to work for the snow emergency, I, as usual, packed just a little less than Hannibal did when preparing for his alpine journey - and I had no elephant to carry my gear! I put extras of this and that into a huge bag and off I went. When I came home, I was putting the equipment - hats, gloves, flashlight, cans of soup, the usual emergency gear - away, and I came up short by one glove. Then for the next 10 days, I had to deal with the issue of the remaining glove. Having searched the truck and other places it might have been, I was about to toss out the odd glove. Then on Monday, coming home from work, I found the glove frozen on the tundra that is currently our front yard, right where a huge pile of snow had been. I reckon I dropped it getting out of the truck when I came home that day, and it was covered by snow for all this time, and now that the snow piles are gone, here's that frozen leather glove. Which reminds me of the Blizzard of '03, when I crazily put out a blue bag of recycling - bottles, cans, plastics. That bag was covered in February by a snowpile the approximate size of Brattleboro, Vermont, and when I next saw it, it was just around Opening Day for baseball. I felt like the archeologists who found that frozen guy Ötzi in a glacier. Except that Ötzi left behind no empty National Bohemian cans or Skippy jars. Most scholars agree that he was in fact on a B double E double R UN. And here's the strangest one of them all, and yet it totally lacks veracity. Not long after we were married, Peggy and I went fishing at Loch Raven, and somehow the diamond came out of her ring and fell into the water. Well, we fished (!) around as much as could, looking for the precious stone, only to give up as both nightfall and the game warden descended. For weeks and weeks, Peggy was disconsolate, and finally, to cheer her up, I said, "Let's go out for a nice dinner." We went to a local beanery and Peggy ordered fish, and when she cut into that fish, what do you think was inside of it? Bones!

The Saturday Picture Show, February 26, 2022

 

I love walkways between buildings; they save countless pedestrians from getting run over and soaked. Oldtimers in Baltimore County will remember the plans to build a new County Office Building at Chesapeake Av & Bosley Av with a plan for a skywalk from there to the Courts Building. It was all the talk in 1991 and that's as far as it got.

These "horror" movies always seemed to have a woman clad in just a sheet and some hapless male being strangled by a tentacle. They always drew the woman to look like Janet Leigh. And your pistols are worthless against the faceless demon!

I'm not going to spoil the movie for you if you haven't seen it, but the faces on the warden and the head guard and Red were priceless!

Snow on the roof! Maybe we'll have some too soon. 

I was always a big fan of the pointing finger used in old advertisements. Also I am a fan of the smell of Bay Rum. No fan of irritated surfaces am I, though.

There are people whose lives are made complete by having a car with an elegant interior and "impressive looks." Others are thrilled to have Positive Valve Rotators for peak rocket V-8 action that lasts and lasts. I have always been satisfied with a vehicle that starts and stops where I wish it to while playing the music I want to hear and hauling around what I want to have hauled. The heck with elegance and valve rotators.

They call it beach glass because it washes up on the sand of salty waters, former cold cream and soda and liquor jars and bottles broken, weathered and smoothed by the sea. 

It takes so little to make a little squirrel happy!

Here's an interesting effect: icicles formed during sustained high winds, resulting in angled formations. Never saw this anywhere before! This is a picture from Armenia.

The Colonial Capital building in Williamsburg, Virginia. As pretty as it looks during the day as throngs mill around, it's even prettier at night! But take a mini flashlight along...those cobblestone streets make for a trippy walk. 

Donut Make My Brown Eyes Blue

There is a term in the mean world of politics: "Yellow-Dog Democat," meaning that the person to whom this adjective is directed will, without fail, vote for the Democrat in any election, no matter who the opponent is, even if the candidate proffered by the Democrats happens to be a yellow dog.

In response, some moderate-to-illiberal Democrats began labeling themselves "Blue-Dog Democrats," meaning that they would be willing to stand in the middle of the spectrum.

Meanwhile, in Russia, there is an actual pack of actually blue dogs roaming around, and while residents of Dzerzhinsk at first feared some bizarre gene coding gone berserk, turning brown dogs blue and other extreme changes of nature, there is a simple explanation, so don't panic.

These poochie dogs were hanging around the old Dzerzhinskoye Orgsteklo cluster of chemical factories. That business went kaputsky in 2015, but no one bothered to clear out what was left behind.

The poor hounds had rolled around in copper sulfate, which, mixed with water, turns things blue. 

“Dogs are running around the area,” said Andrey Mislivets, the bankruptcy manager of Dzerzhinskoye Plexiglas. “Perhaps, in one of the buildings, they found some kind of chemical residue — copper sulfate, for example, and rolled in it.”

I wish all dogs had happy homes to play in instead of abandoned chemical factories.

By the way, the world of music recently lost the great pianist Hargus "Pig" Robbins, who played piano on hundreds of records you've heard over the years, including Crystal Gayle's "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue."

Robbins got that nickname as a child growing up in the Tennessee School For The Blind, where a supervisor knew where to look for him when he was not around: out on a fire escape, "getting dirty as a pig."  He was universally known by that sobriquet by all but Bob Dylan, who found it too disrespectful.

Dylan called on "Mr Robbins" to play on his "Blonde On Blonde" album to get that "Salvation Army band" sound on songs like "Rainy Day Women # 12 and 35."

It's not every day that we can tie Russian dogs to Nashville session piano players, but that's the world we made. Don't be blue about it.

 

He went thataway!

In Baltimore City, the police commissioner is asking citizens to tell the police just who is committing all this mayhem down there- the armed robberies, the shootings, the murders, and everything else  - because the usual sources of information are not forthcoming so much anymore.

There is a "Stop The Snitch" ethos in the city; people find it unsafe to tell the law who did what because they fear retribution. You can hardly blame someone for not naming the name of a vicious criminal, if they feel there's a chance that the viciousness might be visited upon them one day soon, especially given the unlikelihood that the bad guy(s) will be in prison for a long time. It's a difficult choice, understood.

But here's a story from Pflugerville,  Texas, where police tracked down the driver they think is responsible for a hit-and-run crash with some help from local Girl Scouts. The wreck occurred on East Pflugerville Parkway, where, I guess, maybe someone was driving a bit too pfast or something. Or maybe not; let's be pfair about it.

All I know is, 911 sent officers to the scene, and they were told on arrival that two cars were involved, but one vehicle took off toward a nearby Walgreens, leaving an 82-year old man at the scene complaining of a chest injury.

They couldn't find a suspect in the parking lot, but a gaggle of girls selling cookies in front of the store said they saw the guy go into the store.

And that's where he was found, in there buying some items. Upon questioning, he admitted that he was James Crawford, the guy driving the car involved. His story was that he was talking to a frontseat passenger when the car in front of him stopped suddenly and then  Boom!, as the late John Madden would have said. 

 

He took a nice booking photo.

Crawford, 41, told the cops that he stopped to check that the other driver was all right, but ran off because "he was nervous and wanted to use the phone." He also told the police he didn't think he needed to hang around the scene of the crash because he "didn't have any information to exchange with the other driver."

The other driver was checked out by a hospital and is ok, except for the part where his car is smashed up in the rear by a man who has no information. Crawford faces charges of failure to stop, causing bodily injury, and causing damage to a vehicle exceeding $200.

If Girl Scouts can still earn merit badges, these fine young ladies should be first in line!

Thin ice

That's why they play the games, or skate the skates, as it were. We never know how things are going to turn out, no matter what all the indications are.

It's certain that none of us has the slightest sure knowledge of what goes on with Kamila Valieva, the great young Russian figure skater.

She was in first place, chasing the gold in the Olympics, and the the other night she had a disastrous turn on the ice, falling repeatedly and dropping out of medal contention with a fourth-place finish.

In the space of a week, she was the face of a doping scandal as worldwide outcries cried out to do something about the rules. She tested positive for a heart medication on Christmas Day, and it was blamed on a mixup with her grandfather's medications.

I will add that the only medication my grandfather ever shared with me was Crystal Hot Sauce. He always kept his in the refrigerator, because of the prevailing wisdom of the day, which said, right on the label, "To keep it hot, keep it cold," a paradox that amused me then and now.

But that was just me and my grandpa. Our interaction did not have the attention of the entire world, and that is why it was tough to see what happened to Ms Valieva the other night, not that I was watching. 

To get an idea of how silly I think it is to have a "sport" where the outcome hinges on the opinions of onlookers, imagine if, after 60 minutes of football or nine innings of baseball, a panel of observers held up cards to indicate who they think the winner is.

And think of yourself at age 15. I was a hot-sauce eating, lawn-mowing, Weejun-wearing, Max Shulman-reading mess, good at English and history, horrible at Math and Science (still am) and no part of that should have been on a worldwide stage. I was fortunate enough to be allowed to grow up out of the spotlight. 

2014 Olympian Ashley Wagner said this on Twitter: "This is a moment where you genuinely have to say – that poor kid. She should not have ever been put in this position."

Possibly because she was unnerved by all the publicity of the week, or possibility because she is still young, or possibly because, no matter her age, she is still just a human and all of us have bad days,  Valieva made mistakes on her first four jumps and then hit the ice as she attempted a quad toe loop.

I have performed many quad toe leaps in my sloping driveway, just going out to get the newspaper on an icy morning. But again, no one but maybe an amused neighbor or two saw me.  Valieva finished fifth in the long program, as two of her teammates and training partners, Anna Shcherbakova and Alexandra Trusova, won the gold and the silver, respectively.

Valieva was seen crying as her dance music, "Bolero" by Maurice Ravel, stopped playing. 

That song was used with much happier results in the movie "10", starring Bo Derek and Dudley Moore. 

As sad as it was to see Valieva in tears, the part that angered many was seeing her  coach, Eteri Tutberidze, pouncing on her as camera caught the whole horrible one-sided conversation.

 "Why did you let it go?" Tutberidze said, according to Russian tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda. "Why did you stop fighting? Explain it to me, why? You let it go after that axel. Why?"

What was worse, I ask: coming face to face with her own shortcomings, or coming literally face to face with this awful man screeching at her like that?

Valieva was considered the world's best figure skater even before her remarkable performance a week ago that gave the Russians a gold medal in the team competition. And the very next day, she learned that she had tested positive for  trimetazidine, a heart medication that is banned because it can improve endurance and blood flow.

And the supervisors and the coaches and, you may be sure, the lawyers got into it and who knows how it will all play out. Of course we will never know if she intentionally took the drug, or if someone intentionally slipped it to her to enhance her performance, or if the whole thing was a merry mixup.

But we do know that she is 15, and maybe it would be best for the Olympics to set an age limit above that and allow tweens to stay home and do what 15-year-olds do so well, which is being 15.

"Hey, Boss..."

It's good to stop and realize that people are pretty much the same and always have been. We are often surprised to hear that our parents cut classes, drove fast, and dropped f-bombs with alacrity, but people didn't just start doing shady things when TV came along.

That's the point of a recent article on the Open Culture website: all the things we see from antiquity, all the marvels produced by men and women, were just that: things made by the work of humans.

They discuss the pyramids of ancient Egypt. They were made by men working together in great numbers to produce miracles, and yet...for everyone on that work crew on any certain day, there had to be a strong core group of folks getting things done, and someone who had a doctor's appointment and someone who showed up late because he had to take the cat to the vet and someone who was sick and did not show up for work.

Yes, people will need to use their sick time now and again, and today's modern office keeps tally of your hours on a computer. Back in the day, though, they used a laptop!

Well, actually, it was written on a real laptop.  And a tablet.

“Ancient Egyptian employers kept track of employee days off in registers written on tablets,” writes Madeleine Muzdakis at My Modern Met. Pictured above, we see a stone tablet that is on view at the British Museum. It dates back to 1250 BCE and is what Ms Muzdakis calls "an incredible window into ancient work-life balance.” 

The Egyptian word for these tablets formed from limestone flakes was ostracon (plural ostraca). Using a stylus, with the stone sitting on their laps as they etched their entries, people used them like notepads to keep lists and notes like laundry lists, expense sheets, private letters, and cartoons where a gimlet-eyed cat bickers with a screaming blond woman. 

Tomb builders had a village called Deir el-Medina, and the ostracon above was found among thousands of others there. They show us a lot about the everyday lives of working men and their families. For instance this one covers 280 days worth of work attendance records, replete with excuses for missing time at the job such as "I was brewing beer" and "My wife's Aunt Flo was visiting."

Well, you know what I mean.

Ms Muzdakis points out that beer “was a daily fortifying drink in Egypt and was even associated with gods such as Hathor. As such, brewing beer was a very important activity.” It was so important, we can deduce, that it was ok to use personal leave time to sit home and whomp up a batch.

And she also says that while one's wife having her period might not fly with the 2022 workplace, in those days men actually picked up more child-and-home duties when women were unavailable due to their monthly visitor:  “Clearly men were needed on the home front to pick up some slack during this time. While one’s wife menstruating is not an excuse one hears nowadays, certainly the ancients seem to have had a similar work-life juggling act to perform.” 

I guess someone somewhere in modern times has called out sick due to a scorpion bite, and such absences are recorded on this notepad - as well as "having a feast day," "making an offering to a god," and "embalming my brother."

Let me know if they work for you.

Dolphins Help Rescue Swimmer

They say that humans are almost as smart as most dolphins, and that's a sign that we are moving on up the ladder!

No fooling, those big fish are smart, and compassionate. For instance, take this pod (group) of Irish dolphins.  

Last summer, they were out doing what dolphins do, swimming around, practicing jumping through imaginary hoops, making barky noises. But on this one certain day, they came up a swimmer who had been missing for 12 hours, and that meant twelve hours of bobbing and floating and hoping.

The dolphins did the best thing they could - they protectively surrounded him and attracted the attention of people with what the man needed most - a boat!

Ireland has the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), operated by volunteers. They came upon the man treading water because they saw the dolphins dancing around.

“At 20:30, the volunteer lifeboat crew with Fenit RNLI spotted a pod of dolphins and a head above the water about two-and-a-half miles of Castlegregory beach,” the RNLI said. “The casualty was conscious and immediately recovered onto the lifeboat and brought to Fenit Harbour to be taken to hospital.”

The man was not identified by name; the media was told only that was from  County Londonderry and is in his 30s. Quite naturally, he was suffering from both hypothermia and exhaustion after bobbing around in frigid waters all that time. He was trying to swim to Mucklaghmore Rock, which is more than five miles from the beach he was enjoying.

Another fellow beachgoer noticed the clothing he left behind and notified authorities, who went right into action. Fenit RNLI’s Gerard O’Donnell said he and his group had been “scanning the water for any sign of movement and were worried with light fading that they would not find anyone.”

Call it a miracle, call it animals helping mankind, whatever you term it, the man was saved because some bottlenose dolphins took it upon themselves to call attention to a swimmer needing help.

Be nice if some of us could return the favor, huh?

It's a holiday!

The Castles Made of Sand offices are closed today in observance of Presidents Day. 

We'll be back tomorrow at the same crazy time. I like to think about my family connection to the presidency, which is that Warren G. Harding patted my father on the top of his 7-year-old head during a 1920 campaign parade in Baltimore.