Battlefield ghosts

Jim Goldsworthy's Dec. 3 column in the Cumberland Times-News is about battlefield ghosts. He cites an unnamed friend, a Civil War re-enactor, who was on a tour at Manassas, Va. The guide asked a group of children whether they knew what a Zouave uniform looked like.

"One little girl said they wore baggy red pants and blue jackets and funny red hats. When the guide asked how she knew that, she pointed to a cannon at the top of a nearby hill and said, 'One of them was standing up there.' We looked, but nobody was there," said my friend. ... My friend described a photograph taken by one of his buddies at a Georgia battlefield. It shows three mounted cavalry troopers that no one saw, and there had been no re-enactors on horseback present that day. He says the photo looks exactly like an old painting he's seen.

As is usual in the field of the paranormal, we move easily from "This happened to a friend of mine" to "This happened to a friend of a friend of mine." Often, too, as here, the related experience is claimed to be just like a previously mediated experience -- a painting or movie or photo we saw, a story someone else told -- which always makes me wonder how much of the related experience is just an unintentional Xerox of the "original."

Goldsworthy contributes an experience of his own:

When I made my so-far only visit to the Antietam battlefield at Sharpsburg 35 years ago, I actually could smell the blood. I know what blood smells like, and it wasn't my imagination.

I've never been to Antietam, though I've never smelled blood at the bloody places I have visitied, such as Gettysburg, and Normandy, and the Tower of London. I can, however, recommend to Goldsworthy and his friend and his friend's friend the American Battlefield Ghost Hunters Society, based in Charlotte Hall, Md., the only such specialty organization I know of.

Not-so-mad scientists

I really like this Wesley Haines photo from the Cumberland Times-News, of fifth-graders doing a science project, but why is the headline "Mad Scientists"?In what sense are these kids mad? Are they mad simply because they're doing science? Because all scientists are mad? Because science itself is mad?

The Martian spring

To the latest hints of water on Mars, Tim Radford in The Guardian applies a necessary, uh, splash of cold water:

Since 1996, orbiters and landers have been crashing down on Mars (in some cases, literally) every 18 months or so and mission scientists have announced the discovery of water on Mars at least half a dozen times in the past seven years. But, in each case, they haven't actually discovered water at all: just indirect evidence, either that it must once have been there, or that it could still be lurking furtively below the arid Martian dust, waiting to sneak out and leave a gully, a wadi or a wash as teasing evidence of its fleeting presence. ... The Martian water torture will continue until somebody actually lands on Mars, drills a borehole, taps into an aquifer and then makes a cup of tea with the stuff.

Holiday, Ollieday

This lead illustration in a newspaper insert encapsulates everything I love about Ollie's Bargain Outlet, a 48-store retail chain based in Harrisburg, Pa., whose advertising approaches South of the Border or Pigman's Bar-Be-Que grandeur. Note the goose (or duck?) in the background crying, "Cheap! Cheap! Cheap!" The late Ollie Rosenberg, a backer of the chain when it started in 1982, was presumably less moth-eaten in real life than his Ollie's avatar. We discovered the Ollie's in LaVale, Md., soon after moving here, and I am in fact a card-carrying member of Ollie's Army. My card:

Must be karma

Seeing this ad in the Cumberland Times-News made me realize that while I wasn't paying attention, both a 1,700-year-old Sanskrit text on the arts of love and a 1980s swimsuit model whose out-of-date calendar image once adorned the closet door of my first apartment in Greensboro, N.C., have become pillars of the U.S. economy.

Could it be ... Satan?

This saga of Lisa Jensen's Christmas wreath is my favorite holiday story of the season so far. In brief: Jensen, who lives in Colorado, put up a Christmas wreath shaped like a peace sign. Her homeowners association -- which deserves to be named: It's the Loma Linda Homeowners Association -- told her to take down the wreath or suffer a $25-per-day fine. The problem with the wreath, they explained, was that it could be viewed as a divisive antiwar protest and, possibly, a symbol of Satan. In response, Jensen did exactly what she should have done: Told the homeowners association to stick it in their yule log, and then spread the word far and wide, so that every English-language news organization on Earth (by my rough estimate) has now covered the story. Countless strangers contacted Jensen, offering to pay her fine throughout the holiday. The nearby town of Pagosa Springs put up an identical wreath to show its solidarity. After a few days of global derision, stunned by their new awareness of this divisive, possibly Satanic device called "The Internet," the Loma Linda Homeowners Association sent Jensen this note:

We had a misunderstanding with your Christmas decoration and for that we apologize. We withdraw any and all previous requests for removal of your decoration.

By "misunderstanding," they mean, of course, "We failed to understand that our pettiness and ignorance would make us the laughingstock of millions." One wonders why they didn't just say that. Oh, and the wires report that two of the three homeowners' board members have had their numbers changed; the third isn't answering calls.

Gruber's Almanack

I picked up a copy of J. Gruber's Hagers-Town Town and Country Almanack without realizing this Maryland annual is the second oldest continuously published periodical in the United States. Gruber's almanac first appeared in 1797 -- the year John Adams was inaugurated, Lord Nelson lost his arm, and Mary Shelley was born -- and still is published by the descendants of its founder, the titular John Gruber.

No longer, alas, does Gruber's almanac sponsor its annual Woolly Bear Contest, which once offered a $100 prize for the biggest woolly bear caterpillar. The goal was to examine the width of the black bands on as many woolly bears as possible to determine the severity of the coming winter; according to folk belief, the more black on the woolly bear, the worse the weather will be. In the last years of the contest, the number of woolly-bear entries had dropped off to practically nothing. (After all, when was the last time you went looking for woolly bears? J'accuse!)

I'm pleased to report, however, that the almanac still will predict the sex of your next child for a mere $5. This service is provided using the signs of the Zodiac according to the formula established by Hagerstown's own "Aunt" Lydia Cline, a retired nurse who died in 1973. The editors are careful to point out (on Page 61 of the current edition) that the prognostication works not with a first child, but only with successive children. Send the birthdate and gender of the first child, plus the aforementioned $5 and a self-addressed stamped envelope, to:

"Aunt Lydia"
c/o The Gruber Almanack, LLC.
1120-C Professional Court
Hagerstown, MD 21741-0609

"While we cannot guarantee the accuracy of the predictions," the editors note, "be assured that 'Aunt Lydia' still maintains an accuracy of other 80%!"

Since you asked: The oldest continuously published periodical in the United States is The Old Farmer's Almanac out of Dublin, N.H., which first appeared in 1792. What blog will beat that?

Something no candidate mentioned this election

The comptroller general of the United States -- basically, the federal government's chief accountant -- is traveling the country warning of economic disaster if something isn't done about federal spending, beginning with Medicare:

Realistically, what we hope to accomplish through the Fiscal Wake-Up Tour is ensure that any serious candidate for the presidency in 2008 will be forced to deal with the issue. The best we're going to get in the next couple of years is to slow the bleeding.

O.J. Simpson and the grammar police

Has any recent news story been more dependent on correct verb tenses than the O.J. Simpson flap? Consider this passage from an Associated Press story (emphases mine):

"If I Did It," in which Simpson was to have described how he would have killed his ex-wife, had been scheduled to air as a two-part interview Nov. 27 and Nov. 29 on Fox. The book was to have followed on Nov. 30.

My breath is taken away by this stately procession of properly parsed time elements, without which the news story would make no sense whatsover. Are grammarians using this news coverage in their classrooms?

Astrological prudence

The other day, my horoscope read, in part: "You can entertain others with unusual tidbits of information or lightning-fast reflexes."

After I read that aloud at the breakfast table, Sydney thought for a moment and said: "If I were you, I'd go with the unusual tidbits of information."

The "face" of Jack the Ripper

Much is being made over the composite "police sketch" of Jack the Ripper done for a new Channel Five TV documentary. As always, the invaluable Casebook: Jack the Ripper website does a good job of sifting the facts from the hype. While conceding the sketch's resemblance to Ripper suspect George Chapman, Casebook editor Stephen P. Ryder focuses on the larger point:

There simply isn't enough information in the surviving witness testimony to make such a detailed facial sketch of "Jack the Ripper."

Chick & Ruth's Delly

I was pleased to read in Sunday's paper about Chick & Ruth's Delly in Annapolis, where the Pledge of Allegiance is recited every morning, where the owner (son of the late Chick & Ruth) does magic tricks, and where most of the menu items are named for current Maryland politicians. The sandwich menu, for example, includes the Roscoe G. Bartlett Jr., a veggie burger with lettuce, tomato and provolone cheese on toasted whole wheat. (I mention this only because I live in Maryland's 6th District, which Bartlett represents on Capitol Hill.)

Now that we have a new governor-elect, Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley, he's getting his own sandwich on the menu. The ingredients are up to him; so far, all we know is that it'll involve roast beef, of which O'Malley apparently is a fan.

Politicians lower on the pecking order than governors apparently don't always get to pick their signature dish. State Sen. John Astle still is brooding over the menu's original John Astle: a hot dog wrapped in baloney. "What a sandwich for a politician," Astle says.

Not all the sandwiches have Maryland connections; the George W. Bush is grilled Swiss, bacon and tomato on rye, while the Golda Meir is lox, cream cheese, onion and tomato served open face on a bagel.

I read the version picked up on the wires, but here's the original feature in the Annapolis newspaper, The Capital.

Quotes in the news

"We may have lost a dear old friend and teacher."
-- Michael Meyer, lead scientist for NASA's Mars Exploration Program, on the newly silent Mars Global Surveyor, which has been orbiting the red planet for 10 years

"What's really great about this place is you can smoke almost anywhere."
-- Actress Liv Tyler, who's filming a movie in Florence, S.C.

"Remember how Herbie could only be a dentist in the Land of the Misfits? Well, maybe this is the only place in Division I where I could be a head coach."
-- Rich Rodriguez, head football coach, West Virginia University, who is thinking of the Land of Misfit Toys and the elf Hermey, not Herbie; his confusion is common, as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer expert Rick Goldschmidt notes with frustration:

One thing I should make clear is that the elf who wants to be a dentist is named Hermey. Why everyone is calling him "Herbie" I will never fully understand.

Patenting the genetic alphabet

Michael Crichton's next novel, appropriately titled Next, is about the abuse of gene patents, so Crichton is giving interviews about the subject. "Major hepatitis C and HIV genes and various diabetes genes are all owned," he tells Parade. "Researchers working on those diseases must worry about getting permission and paying high fees. ... It's OK to own a treatment or test for a disease, but no one should own a disease."

In agreement is Lori Andrews, a professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law and an ethics adviser to the Human Genome Project. She tells Parade, "Gene patenting is like someone owning the alphabet and charging you each time you speak."

Here's the brief Parade article, which includes a "Genetic Bill of Rights" that's written, oddly enough, in the second person.

Everyday movie quotes -- identified

Back in October, I posted a partial list of movie quotes that Sydney and I invoke in our everyday conversation. But I never followed up by identifying the movies! So here we go.

"The Devil thought he had the keys."
-- One of the tent-revival preachers in Robert Duvall's The Apostle

"Everybody needs money. That’s why they call it money."
-- Danny DeVito in David Mamet's Heist

"How ‘bout more beans, Mr. Taggart?"
"I’d say you had enough."
-- Burton Gilliam and Slim Pickens in Blazing Saddles

"I am shocked, shocked."
-- Claude Rains in Casablanca

"Is correct."
-- Benicio Del Toro in Traffic

"It’s very nice." (Said in a bad French accent.)
-- John Cleese as the rude French knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail

"Oh, deary dear."
-- Gene Wilder in Blazing Saddles

"Pull the string!" (Said in an Eastern European accent.)
-- Bela Lugosi in Glen or Glenda and (imitating Bela) Martin Landau in Ed Wood

"So much time and so little to do. Wait a minute. Strike that. Reverse it. Thank you."
-- Gene Wilder (accept no substitutes) in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

"Superstitious, perhaps. Baloney, perhaps not." (Said in that same Eastern European accent.)
-- Bela Lugosi in The Black Cat

The last two, as I acknowledged earlier, are actually TV quotes.

"What has it got in its pocketses?"
-- Brother Theodore as Gollum in the Rankin-Bass TV movie of The Hobbit

"Wrapped in plastic."
-- Jack Nance in the Twin Peaks pilot

More on the Edmund Fitzgerald

My post about the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald -- the event and the Gordon Lightfoot song -- generated a lot of responses. My friend Katy Miller writes:

Amen, Brother! I LOVE this song. There are a few songs from my childhood that have invaded my psyche, and this is one of them...

My favorite "hair on the back of your neck standing up" lyrics from the song are: Does any one know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?

Oooooohhh... Love it love it love it.

Let the bell ring 29 times!

My hero F. Brett Cox points out, however, that Mariner's Church in Detroit no longer marks the anniversary by ringing the bell 29 times, once for each crew member who went down with the ship; instead, the AP reports, the bell now rings only eight times, "one toll for each of the Great Lakes and the interconnected waterways," in memory not merely of the Edmund Fitzgerald crew but of all the thousands who have died in Great Lakes shipping through the years. I dunno about this; wasn't the wreck observance always about all the deaths, via the symbolic 29?

Brett also writes:

Anyone who would link "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" with meretricious drivel like "Seasons in the Sun" is tone-deaf and tasteless.

Lightfoot also wrote and recorded another long song about a shipwreck: "The Ballad of Yarmouth Castle," which, if memory serves, is about a Caribbean cruise ship that caught fire and sank. Honest.

I haven't heard that one, but I'm glad to know it exists. Here are the lyrics, at the useful Lightfoot! fan site; and here is Wikipedia's extensive account of the disastrous fire, which occurred in 1965 between Miami and Nassau and left 90 people dead.

On the general topic of commemorating news headlines in song, something much more common in earlier centuries, my hero Jeffrey Ford writes:

The only thing similar that I can think of is "Hurricane" by Bob Dylan, although that wasn't an event but the tragedy of a single individual. I really like Gordon Lightfoot's music -- "In the Early Morning Rain," "If You Could Read My Mind," etc. The second of those songs refers to one of my favorite Abbott and Costello movies -- The Time of Their Lives. ... Thanks for helping me remember the Edmund Fitzgerald.

I never before knew there was an Abbott and Costello-Gordon Lightfoot connection, but I'm delighted to know it now!

My Clarion 2004 student Phil ("Dr. Phil") Kaldon writes:

Growing up near the Canadian border, we ran into a young Gordon Lightfoot in Niagara Falls ON while he was filming his first TV special. We asked who this guy we'd ridden on the elevator was, who did take after take of this song about a river flowing by. Our breathless waitress said, "That's Gordon Lightfoot."

Long before "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, us GL fans delighted with "The Canadian Railroad Trilogy," a song WAY too long for radio to play. Oddly, I've always loved really long and complicated songs, including the long "American Pie," and long program pieces by Emerson, Lake & Palmer and the group Renaissance (sigh).

Living in the middle of Lake Superior for 7 1/2 years, and in Michigan since 1984, the Edmund Fitzgerald -- boat, story, song and legend -- are a big news resonance every November. Hell, the wreck date is even on my mother's birthday and I teach about the wreck in my first semester physics classes.

What sort of physics lesson do you haul from the wreck, Phil? I'm curious.

I was always fond of long songs, too, even that hippie epic "Alice's Restaurant Massacree" -- infamous during my undergraduate days at the University of South Carolina for being the first song one half-assed student DJ at WUSC (90.5 FM) invariably played each shift, to give himself 18 minutes and 20 seconds of cover while he did his paperwork and the other chores he should have done already.

And speaking of Alice's restaurant: Happy Thanksgiving! Hope you all had another dinner that couldn't be beat.

Walk right in, it's around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
You can get anything you want
At Alice's restaurant.

Ate some more burnt hoss flesh

In reply to my post about James Thurber and "No News, or What Killed the Dog," Rick Bowes writes:

Wow! That's my story with variations. The Thurber Carnival, the classic 1945 compilation which includes the entire My Life And Hard Times, was what my parents read to me at bedtime. At age four and five, stories like "The Night The Ghost Got In" and "The Night The Bed Fell" were funny/scary magic. When I was maybe ten or eleven - this was in the mid '50's when any old family house had '78's and phonographs to play them - a friend on a rainy afternoon played "No News...". It was revelation - The Dead Sea Scrolls - were as nothing. Thanks for reminding me.

"Funny/scary magic" is exactly how I felt about My Life and Hard Times. I've often thought that book, in the right hands, would make a riotous kids' movie, on the order of A Christmas Story. (One shudders, of course, to imagine it in the wrong hands.)

Two afterthoughts on "No News, or What Killed the Dog":

According to a brief bio by professional clown Bruce "Charlie" Johnson, now-forgotten vaudeville and Ziegfeld headliner Nat Wills (1873-1917) performed "No News, or What Killed the Dog" as a one-sided telephone conversation -- so it not only was an early variation of "The Aristocrats," but an ancestor of Bob Newhart's celebrated telephone routines and the brilliant scene of the president's bad-news phone call in Dr. Strangelove.

Archeophone Records plans a 26-track CD of Wills' greatest hits, the first track, of course, being "No News, or What Killed the Dog." I'd pay extra for a bonus track that repeats in the same spot as the recording in the Thurber household.

A Lefty Grove website

After reading my post about the great pitcher Lefty Grove, Bruce Pringle kindly sent a link to his informative Lefty Grove tribute site, which I recommend to all.

Bruce says that when he was about 11 years old, he saw the great man himself, standing outside his Lonaconing, Md., bowling alley. Bruce, where was that bowling alley? Is it still around?

More post-election analysis

"The bottom line here is that I think that the majority of folks in Maryland want Martin O'Malley as governor rather than Bob Ehrlich."

-- Maryland Gov. Bob Ehrlich, four days after he was defeated in his re-election bid by Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley, 53 percent to 46 percent

My favorite recent "lineup" photo

You have to admire a Future Business Leader of America, newly elected as club historian, who wears a T-shirt that says "I came, I partied, I dont [sic] remember."

In all my high-school photos, I'm wearing plaid polyester pants, so the laugh's on me.

Here's the T-shirt in the online Wal-Mart catalog.