70 Years!

Seventy years is how long I've gone not knowing that young Timmy on the 1950s TV show Lassie was an orphan—a foster child!

I'll admit this is not the most devastating piece of knowledge that you can acquire. Say you do one of those 23AandMe DNA searches and find that you're related to David Berkowitz, Son of Sam, a serial killer that held the citizens of New York City in paralyzing fear about going out at night in the 70s?  He was known as the .44 caliber killer. Dave was caught through research into a parking ticket and is sill incarcerated. If you are a relative, you might be able to visit. Bring documentation and maybe a Bible. He's discovered religion.

And how did I come to know this tidbit of information about Timmy? I read June Lockhart's New York Times obituary by Anita Gates. June just passed away at 100. How's that for not knowing she was alive the day before?

In one highly reveling sentence in the obit I learn of Timmy and the woman who played the mother before June:

"Ms Lockhart replaced Cloris Leachman in the role of Ruth Martin, a farm wife and the foster mother of Jon Provost's character and the courageous collie Lassie in 1958 before the beginning of the show's fifth season."

I don't know when I started to watch Lassie, but I'm sure my little boy eyes probably weren't aware that there was an actor change in the mother's character. Cloris Leachman! She went on to be in movies, notably The Last Picture Show, where she won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in 1972, to being Marry Tyler's sidekick Phyllis on the Mary Tyler Show., and then turning that character into her own show, Phyllis. 

I also suspect I was never clued in that there were two actresses who player Lois Lane in Superman. I was an only child, and didn't have an older brother or sister who might have set me straight.

Orphans and widowers were common in the comics and television. There was the comic strip Little Orphan Annie where Annie's parents died and she was sent to an orphanage. 

And of course the comic strip Dondi, the European waif whose Italian mother died during childbirth and his father, an American G.I. dies in combat.

Three of the most famous TV widowers were Stephen Douglas on My Three Sons, and Andy Griffin on The Andy Griffin Show. Widowers let the writers bring in more plot lines with dates.

The best widower was Lorne Greene's Ben Cartwright on Bonanza. His three sons, Adam, Hoss and Joe were from three different mothers, all deceased.

If there were crime TV shows back then, then Ben's Ponderosa ranch being searched with ground penetrating radar for three women in graves buried somewhere would have easily been a good pilot for a Western detective on a horse Just saying

But the biggest revelation from my childhood was that Franklin W. Dixon didn't really write the Hardy Boys books I devoured. Not only did he not write them, he didn't exist. He was complete fiction! The books are still being published by Simon and Schuster. I mean, who still wears sweaters?

This shook my foundation. Through delivering flowers for the family flower shop from an early age, I had a complete freedom to roam around Manhattan.

Imagine if I went up to the New York City offices of Simon and Schuster and asked the receptionist if I could meet Franklin W. Dixon? I might have needed help to get back home after fainting at the piece of news that he doesn't exist. Okay to no Santa Claus, Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy, but no Franklin W. Dixon?

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Numbers

I like numbers. I see numbers. No, not hallucinate numbers, but rather see them in my imagination. Imagination became by favorite word once I learned to spell it.

I don't see them like the photo at the right, and I don't see them in color. I see the "1" starting in the upper right hand corner of my mind and continuing clockwise like a 3-D coil, all the way up to 100. At "10" the numbers proceed in a bit of an upward  tangential line to "20," where I then see the sequence start again, but with depth. I see "18" nestled nicely in between "17" and ""19." When I do math in my head, I always see the numbers.

The Wall Street Journal's A-Hed piece has once again proved to be a blog muse. Yesterday's paper had a story about the business of providing Halloween decorations for clients and the large sums that are spent on what are sometimes very elaborate displays of pumpkins, skeletons, haystacks and other autumnal objects. There is a big, thriving business in Halloween these days.

A decoration like that shown here is not made by the homeowner with many trips to the supermarket, or a stop by a farm stand on a rural highway. No, it is done by a pro. There is nothing that can't be made into a business, and providing pumpkins has grown into one.

The reporter, Lane Florsheim, describes a nationwide group of businesses that satisfy the fairly recent desire to one-up the neighbors and have the grandest fall display in front of their house.

Perhaps the biggest of these entrepreneurs is Heather Torres, the founder and CEO of Porch Pumpkins. Whether Porch Pumpkins is going to go public via an IPO is not mentioned, but what is mentioned is that the business is so big that Heather and her firm fill "24 18-wheelers" of pumpkins to complete their commissions to decorate 1,300 households in Austin, Houston and the Dallas-Forth Worth area in Texas. Everything is bigger in Texas. They're sold out for 2025.

I respond to numbers. Someone once told me that when I tell a story I always manage to include some numerical part to the tale. Maybe it's true. As a septuagenarian retiree, other than my wife, no one hangs around me anymore, so there's no one else to ask.

The image of 24 tractor trailers! filled with pumpkins blows my mind. When I read that part I immediately thought of the Harry Chapin song about a truckload of bananas that crashes in Scranton, Pennsylvania. My mind works differently than others. Something always reminds me of something else.

I'm sure there are those for whom Harry Chapin's name means nothing, and knowing anything about his music even less. But Harry was a singer-songwriter whose popularity took off when he recorded a song called "Taxi."

His songs were long, and resisted being played on the radio. His songs were really short stories set to music. Mary Chapin Carpenter is a distant relative of Harry. They are fifth cousins.

Harry liked to drive fast, and as such he was impatient when he was going to miss his exit on the Long Island Expressway. He moved over to the get to the right lane at the last minute, hoping to clear the truck that was behind hum. Didn't happen, and Harry made an early exit of life at 38. No more songs. I think his son is now performing. I think there is a park here in East Meadow, on Long Island named after him. He passed away in Nassau University hospital on Hempstead Turnpike. The park is nearby.

Anyway, Harry wrote and sang a song, "30,000 Pounds of Bananas," about a news story that came out of Scranton, Pennsylvania of a truck that couldn't stop going down a hill, crashed, and deposited, in Harry's lyrics:

"It was after dark when the truck started down/ 
The hill that leads to Scranton, Pennsylvania, carrying 30,000 pounds of bananas...

...before he stopped and he smeared for four hundred yards along the hill that leads to Scranton, Pennsylvania

All those 30,000 pounds of bananas."

The song is better sung than read. Obviously, it was a mess and created a traffic delay of major proportions. The song is about a true truck accident on March 18, 1965. The driver died.

So, when I read there are 24! tractor-trailers on the road, filled with pumpkins that weigh, I don't know, 30,000 pounds plus?! I think what if one, or more of those trucks veers off the road or hits an overpass and smears a truckload of pumpkins across an Interstate? Talk about Smashing Pumpkins. The mind imagines.

Where in Texas is there acreage that grows these pumpkins? Or, are they brought in from Mexico? Will tariffs affect them? I'd love to see a drone shot of Texas growing these pumpkins.

Mr. Florsheim tells us of another company, The Curated Pumpkin (curate; a word for Gen Z)) started in 2024, "styling pumpkins on porches across Southern California. Options include the Rustic Charm, Autumn Elegance and the Grand Harvest. Business has already quintupled."

Want to use them this year? Sorry, bud, 2025 SOLD OUT. Try the wait list. I kid you not.

And who gets to remove all these pumpkins when the season passes? DUMPPUMPKINS.com? Disposal of 50 or so pumpkins would strain any ordinary municipal pickup. Leaving a Christmas tree out to turn into mulch is one thing. But a pallet load of ripening, smelly pumpkins is another.

When the kids were small, I always carved the pumpkin. My wife, from apartments in the Bronx, never heard of carving a pumpkin. After mince pie, pumpkin was always my favorite at the Automat.

There is nothing that can't be overdone and turned into a business.

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BIGFOOT

I'm sure there are those who do not realize that The Wall Street Journal publishes a great weekend edition. I've been subscribing to WSJ now for many years, and it's not because of financial reporting. I don't have enough money to invest that I would need their guidance. It's the other things in the paper that I gravitate to.

They do a great job on obituaries. Obituaries you say? Yes! In their Saturday/Sunday edition they do a full page, generally of two individuals who have passed away who have gained merit in some field of endeavor.

The New York Times of course does this, but rarely do the NYT and the WSJ highlight the same person. This week's edition is no exception. We are treated to an obit I'm not seeing in the NYT. The other so-far omitted obit is for Jeffrey Meldrum, seen above. Jeffrey gets the featured treatment and the most space and largest photos. The online story, as usual, has more great photos. And what is Mr. Meldrum famous for? Bigfoot!  

Oh jeez. A wack-a-do? Someone the late great Robert Mc.G. Thomas would have found and written about? Somebody like The Goat Man? No. Mr. Meldrum was a serious scientist who wrote a book on Bigfoot, "Sasquatch: Legends Meet Science," praised by none other than the late Jane Goodall, who believed in the existence of the fellow.

Mr. Meldrum, 1958-2025, passed away from a brain tumor. He was no crackpot. He approached his pursuit of Bigfoot with scientific rigor. He was an academic with a Ph.D. in anatomical sciences (it's a thing) from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1989. He had many teaching jobs around the country and at last settled in Pocatello, Idaho at the University of Idaho. He himself was from Eugene, Oregon, and as a child was fascinated by the now famous home movie of hairy Bigfoot striding upright along a river bed swinging his arms and disappearing into the forest.

The film was seen as absolute proof of the existence of Bigfoot—at least until it was debunked as a  hoax. The 1967 film known as the Patterson-Gimlin was taken by two ranchers at Happy Camp, California. You have to ask yourself why the ranchers didn't try and follow Bigfoot into the forest and at least see where he lived? Why? Because Bigfoot was a third rancher himself, that's why.

The legend of Bigfoot has been around so long that you reasonably have to then believe that he has at least reproduced by now. If he's continually seen, then Little Bigfoots are growing up and taking the place of the old man, or woman.

And where's Mrs. Bigfoot? If reproduction has occurred, than there has to be a female somewhere, no? And where does this cohort of creatures live? Well, that's the fun, isn't it? The unknown.

Mr. Meldrum was the go-to guy for Bigfoot research. He held presentations, as seen with him making a presentation at the North American Bigfoot Conference in 2023. (Yes, it is apparently a real thing.)

Mr. Meldrum had some 300 impressions of footprints, complete with anatomical analysis about why the impressions represented that of a humanoid based on the stress of the foot's parts:

"...noted that those footprints were clearly different from human prints, but all similar to each other. They shared a very distinct morphology of the forefoot, and a conspicuous flexibility in the middle, common in apes. There are expansion cracks, as you can see, as that substrate has heaved up to relieve pressure that has concentrated under the forefoot during the latter part of the stance." An analysis not from your run-of-mill nut job.

I like to think there's a Sasquatch out there. It would be exciting, even to discover a skeleton that can be attributed to such a creature.

My oldest daughter Nancy thinks there's a Sasquatch, but wonders, like me, there has to have been some propagation of the species since the legend has been going on for so long.

I list one thing I'd like to see proven before I pass on: life on another planet. Not some one-celled creatures found in moisture on Mars, but fully sentient beings who can guide those U.F.O.s (Now U.A.P.s; Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena. Definitely afuture Jeopardy clue if it hasn't already been used.) that are thought to be seen. Then maybe proof of Sasquatch.

My wife and I have now lived longer than my parents, and are close to living longer than her parents, but realistically, there isn't a lot of time left for these momentous discoveries to be made in our lifetimes.

It is possible these discoveries with be made in the lifetimes of our children, or maybe our grandchildren. If that's the case, I like to think someone will stop by the cemetery and tell us the news, and that Mr. Meldrum was holding casts of footprints that really belonged to Sasquatch, and not impressions from Shaquille O'Neal's bare feet on a nature hike.

Only time will tell.

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Frank and Whitey

Pretty much the last thing I expected to see in a pub/restaurant in Falmouth Massachusetts was a fairly large blowup of a mug shot of 22 year-old Frank Sinatra taken by the Bergen County, New Jersey Sheriff's office in 1938. To me, it was a show-stopper.

Frank's been dead since 1998, and there is certainly an adult generation that wouldn't know who he was, much less have heard him sing.

The Quarter Deck restaurant is not an Italian restaurant by any stretch of the imagination. It is evocative of an old sailing ship, with a decor of huge timbers. The photo was not prominently placed, and truthfully, although I was in the restaurant a few years ago, it never caught my eye. Frank was arrested?

At 76 I'm well aware of Frank Sinatra and who he was. In the 60s growing up I'd rather listen to Frank than the Beatles. I still don't like much of the Beatles.

Frank was born the same year as my father, 1915. I grew up with his songs, his movies, his wives and love affairs, and the stories about his behavior, like when he teed off at a female Asian casino croupier. Frank had a temper and a salty mouth.

He paled around with J.F.K. until Jack's Attorney General brother Bobby didn't think it looked good that Jack was paling around with someone who was always thought to be connected to the mob, principally Sam Giancana. As Attorney General, Bobby had the F.B.I. reporting to him. J. Edgar Hoover was the Bureau's director at the time. In those days it was called a "bad look." Now it's called bad "optics."

Frank built an elaborate dwelling in Palm Springs expecting J.F.K. was going to be his guest. Bobby nixed the visit. Frank was mad.

I knew the stories about Frank and the bar Jilly's in New York. The owner Jilly Rizzo loaned Frank money in the 50s when Frank was at the low point of his singing career. The part in the movie From Here to Eternity changed that. It is alluded to the first Godfather movie.

Frank was an Italian-America with stature and respect. I can't imagine any restaurant in New York or New Jersey displaying a photo of a 1938 mug shot photo of Frank with numbers in front of him. 

Rao's in East Harlem certainly wouldn't do it, nor Bamonte's in Brooklyn, where if you sit at the right table there's a small plaque on the wall that tells you it's from, "The Boys." Don Peppe's in South Ozone Park, hard by Aqueduct race track I'm sure does not display a photo of Frank being arrested for, get this, "seduction."

At the time seduction was a crime when a man had relations with an unmarried woman, ostensibly promising to marry her, then of course not marrying her.(Gee, really? The crime was leaving an unmarried woman soiled as a slice off a cut loaf.)  A woman made the charge against Sinatra, thus the booking.

Frank was then re-arrested and charged with adultery. (How quaint.) It was now adultery because it was revealed that the woman making the complaint and the basis for the seduction charge was really married. (Oh boy!) Seduction therefore didn't apply, but adultery did—to Frank, who was yet to marry his first wife, Nancy Barbato in 1939. Nancy was the mother of Frank's three children, Christina, Nancy and Frank Jr. All charges were eventually dropped when a $500 bond was paid.

Nancy Barbato passed away at 101 in 2018, having never remarried after Frank. They remained life-long friends and she was his confidante. The kicker in Nancy's NYT obituary by Margalit Fox goes:

"Let  Mrs. Sinatra, who hewed so long to steadfast midcentury propriety, have the last word. As Pete Hamill reported in his book "Why Sinatra Matters," first published in 1998, she was asked, later in life, why she never remarried.
Her answer was impeccable:
'After Sinatra?'"

I never knew any stories of his arrest this until I started looking into Frank's arrest based on the mug shot photo in a Cape Cod restaurant. I mean, he and Johnny Carson never discussed it on The Tonight show. No way. Next to the restaurant's photo is a reprint of the Bergen County News story about the initial arrest.

Growing up I always heard Frank claimed he would never sing in a New York City nightclub because the rules at the time required cabaret singers to be fingerprinted. It was always thought that Frank's reluctance to be fingerprinted was connected with his alleged mob pals, principally Sam Giancana. 

Thinking about that years later, it is implausible that Frank would sing in The Persian Room, the Copa, The Algonquin or the Carlyle, all leading night spots of the era. Here's a guy who filled the Paramount theater on Broadway. How would a nightclub be big enough?

Maybe the fingerprinting reluctance was a product of being arrested, an event not widely remembered by many. And I mean by many. I never heard anyone refer to the Bergen County arrests, probably because they were so long ago, and they happened in New Jersey, and the charges went away.

Frank did perform in New York City, but not at the famous the 45th birthday party for J.F.K. and Democratic fundraiser in Madison Square Garden on May 19, 1962 when Marilyn Monroe sang "Happy Birthday Mr. President," and Kennedy replied that now he could die and go to heaven after Marilyn Monroe wished him a happy birthday. The Kennedy/Sinatra relationship was fraying by then. Marilyn Monroe eerily died August 4, 1962.

I was in high school when Frank sang at the Forest Hills Tennis Stadium as part of their summer series of concerts. I was there. He was in good form.

I'm kicking myself now for not asking why the restaurant had the photo and the story on its walls when there was no other real memorabilia there. The place looked like an old sailing ship. 

None of this is the real reason for writing this posting. Whatever world I live in, there does seem to be some force at work that presents what some would surely call coincidences, but I just call the result of statistical probability. Remember, we live on a Möbius strip

So what is this "cosmic statistical probability" that brings me here today?

When on vacation I do not absorb any New York news. Generally, there are New York newspapers to buy, but I shun them for the local papers, however small.

Now the Boston Globe is not a small paper, but one day I did buy The Globe hoping to read news with a little more depth than the placement of sewage treatment plants and the local outrage (there is always local outrage).

That particular day there was a story about a bar, Savin Bar & Kitchen, in Dorchester, an area of Boston, that was taking major flak for displaying what is a famous mug shot photo of Whitey Bulger, a legendary New England crime boss that despite his ruthlessness, has his admirers. All crime bosses have admirers.

Stephen Osherow and photo of Bulger

If nothing else, it is a great photo that displays the type of hat men might be wearing at the time. Truthfully it's not too hard to see a comparison to the headgear of Carlo Gambino, a famous New York City crime boss, and the hat worn by Melania Trump at the second inauguration. But that's just me.

With no real interest, admiration or scorn in Whitey Bulger, I didn't think much of The Boston Globe story. I know a good deal about Whitey from the news of his long-time evasion from the Feds, (16 years) to his appearance as a wanted poster in Times Square, as if he was the latest underwear, jeans model for Calvin Klein, to this apprehension in a California condo where $822,000 in cash was found stuffed in the walls, to his murder in Federal prison, his eyes gauged out for being a informer. A rat.

Even the Boston Globe story did not provide impetus for this posting. But reading about Whitey Bulger and the bar in the New York Times on October 21 did.

The reporter, Jenna Russell, does a far better job rendering the story than the one I read from The Globe. It just shows you the reach of the NYT. We read about kerfuffles in Boston.

It seems Savin Bar and Kitchen and its owner Kenneth Osherow, are taking major flak for displaying Whitey's mug shot and another photo of one of Whitey's henchmen, Stephen Flemmi.

The NYT story is a large, five-column one, with two photos. The bar is in Dorchester, a tight knit residential community with many triple decker homes. all close together on relatively small plots of land. Your business is my business, and I'm minding yours.

My wife cousin's husband comes from the Dorchester neighborhood. He is of Scottish ancestry, as many of the people living there are, Irish as well. Lots of Irish.

The outrage is coming from locals who see the newly renovated bar with the photos as glorifying Whitey and his deeds. To me, it is interesting that it is even thought of to display a photo of so powerful a gangster. But I don't come from Dorchester.

I'm sure Sparks Steak House in New York doesn't have John Gotti's photo on its walls. Sparks is where Paul Costellano was headed to eat (a guy's got to, eat no matter who is) when he was gunned down in the street outside the East Side New York City restaurant (it is still there) in 1985 in a power struggle in the Gambino crime family. John Gotti was convicted of ordering the hit so he could, and did, take power (for a while). John Gotti died in prison of cancer.

But obviously the thinking in Dorchester is different, and Whitney is part of the area's history, as the owner Kenneth Osherow claims. Thus, the photos are staying. "The intent is not to glorify Whitey Bulger or the violence that scarred Boston, but to recognize a chapter in the complex gritty story of our neighborhood."

Many of the Dorchester residents who are most vocal about the restaurant's choice of decor are relatives of those who Whitey and his Wave Hill gang murdered during their heyday.

Ms. Russell reports the restaurant was featured in a Gordon Ramsey segment about the food and ambience that aired in August. Gordon Ramsey's take on things: "This used to be an old mobster hangout, so it's got that old 1970 mobster feel. There's nothing like this in the neighborhood, so it should stand out for the right reasons." 

Is El-Gordo sniffing the sauce in the pots? A 21st-century renovated bar/restaurant with dark wood, double-glazed windows, ferns or no ferns, no smoking, no ashtrays, LED lighting, clean rest rooms, and a selection of craft beers on tap, is evocative of a 1970s wiseguy dive bar? Gordo's from Scotland, so what does he know? Where he's from the mobsters probably wear kilts commando style, funny caps. and blow into a sheep's bladder.

The bar's owners are trying to mitigate the fallout from stepped-on-toes by adding a sort of "editor's note" next to the photos: "The photos are not "smiling portraits" or a "tribute, but a reminder of the consequences." A least they don't show Whitey's eyes gouged out from his prison murder.

Neighborhoods change, and Dorchester is undergoing gentrification. The first generation Scotch-Irish are dwindling, and the memories of who Whitey and the Wave Hill gang was are shrinking as well.

One more generational advancement and Whitey will be like Sinatra. Who?

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The Native Returns

Spent the last dew days on Cape Cod with my wife, seeing her cousin, shopping, eating, sleeping, sightseeing, although since we've made this trip many times, and since the cousin hasn't moved, any sights we've taken in are the same sights we've always seen. Thus, no new pictures.

Always absorbing a bit of their local news on TV, mostly coming from Boston. News is news no matter where you go, but the words to describe it may vary. 

I got the biggest kick out of the traffic reporter who pointed to snake lines of cars on the screen and told whoever wasn't in a car that getting thought the tunnel (The Big Dig I'll assume.) will take about 38 minutes. Other major spots were about the same; 30+ minutes. Their George Washington Bridge and Lincoln Tunnel.

The female broadcasters are dressed to kill, wearing what look like cocktail dresses, usually with a slit somewhere. The best thing description I heard from the traffic reporter was when she pointed out a traffic accident that was causing "curiosity" delays. No rubber-necking in Boston.

---------------------------------------------------

And who doesn't love a good heist story? Sunday morning's news brought us the delightful tale of the Louvre being looted in Paris on a sleepy Sunday morning at 9:30 a.m. Parisian time, a half hour after the museum opened. Crowds of visitors to protect, so no shooting taking place. Less traffic to get in the way of the getaway. And they did get away, on a pair of motor scooters.

The world was treated to the tale of deux hommes who used a monte-meubles truck to gain access to a second story window at the Louvre Museum, saw their way in, and smash and crag priceless royal jewels, setting off alarms, but not getting stopped by any gathering security guards. The perps then made their way back down the ladder truck, dropping booty along the way, and raced off on the back of  two accomplices on motor scooter to parts still unknown. Seven minutes. Ten minutes. Gone Fast.  

And what the hell is a monte-meubles truck? Well, it's a bit of a bucket truck, apparently used all over Paris to help hoist big furniture into apartments, probably because of winding staircases. and small elevators. How else is gigantic the Louis XIV armoire going to get in? Supposedly the trucks are seen all over Paris doing this. Youngsters in France rather than getting Hess trucks for Christmas are getting replica monte-meubles to play with, so what can you expect by wayward youths who grow up to think about?

No one was hurt during the caper. With all of us having watched heist movies since Topkapi, Riffi,  Entrapment, and the Oceans 11 franchise, we can see it now: the planning.

A group of four people, maybe all men, but I like to think there's a saucy female in leather somewhere,  driving the horny thieves crazy, in a dingy building outside Paris watching a Power Point presentation by the leader on how they are going to accomplish the heist. Or, maybe they are using a white board and colored Sharpies to diagram things out and post photos of the layout so all can become familiar. "Jacques, did you bring the croissants?" "Mais oui."

Law enforcement is abuzz. Professionals have done this. Well, yeah, who wants to think they were overtaken by amateurs? What will happen to the jewels? Removed from the settings and fenced? Or, is there an eccentric collector out there who just wants to sit on his yacht surrounded by French jewels while staring at the Vermeer's he's heisted from the Isabella Gardner Stewart museum in 1990?

Will they be caught and the loot returned? Use of the ladder truck puts a whole new slant on second-story robbery. It's obviously going to be a big clue. Where did it some from? Was it rented from somewhere? The thieves are not likely to go back to the rental place looking for their deposit back like the stupid 1993 Ryder truck renters who blew a huge hole in the New York's World Trade Center.

Museum heists stir the imagination. The Mona Lisa was taken in 1911. Murph the Surf, Jack Roland Murphy, led a crew through an unlocked New York City Museum of Natural History window in 1964 and made off with the Star of India Sapphire, a hunk of a gem, and other baubles. No alarms. Easy peasy. Murph though was apprehended shortly after and the gems returned. Big news back then.

Murph has passed away, but not people like him. Today's online NYT lists 6 heist movies to watch: The list is clearly made by someone who is not old enough to have seen Topkapi or Riffi. It does lead off, chronologically, with How to Steal a Million, a personal favorite of mine since I watched that movie in 1966 at Radio City Music Hall with my father while waiting for a late bus to take me to college in Potsdam, New York. But to list The Great Muppet caper, 1981? Are they kidding?

The Louvre fallout is mighty. Politicians are critical of so brazen a robbery in "broad daylight." Is there any other kind of daylight? Daylight is always "broad," a word the OED tells us can mean "wide open or fully expanded."

I think I read Ambrose Bierce list all the hackneyed newspaper phrases. "Shots ring out" is probably in there. Shots always "ring out." A favorite of mine.

Just this morning I complained via X to a NYT reporter who fell into the dogma of always saying certain high schools in new York City are "elite" high schools. Use of the word elite makes these schools, where admission is gained by a competitive exam, as always being "elite," as if they were Harrow and only the one percenters of New York managed to send their kids there. But I digress.

Leads? There are 60 investigators assigned to the case. One of the thieves was wearing a yellow workman's vest. Witnesses are being interviewed and security footage is being analyzed. I'm sure there is someone in front of a white board posting photos of things and exhorting the assembled to get busy. It's a real movie. We've seen this.

Worries? Time is running out. The items may be cannibalized for the jewels and gold. Gone forever. This morning's Wall Street Journal, on the first page, centers a large photo, above the fold, of the window the thieves entered: MUSEE DU LOUVRE GALERIES DES ANTIQUES. The place looks like a shabby apartment. Maybe a drug den. 

The continuing story of the heist is jumped to page A8.  The headline is damning: Heist Offers Window on France's Broken Finances. A sub-heading goes: Strained public finances hobble its ability to manage crowds, secure art. An outquote goes: Finding Public funds for any overhaul is going to be a challenge. Uh-Oh. For the want of a nail the kingdom is lost. It's like the very old joke about the Christine Keeler, Mandy Rice Davies British sex scandal many years ago: One screw and the Cabinet falls apart. One heist and we're doomed. The lede:

"The morning after thieves broke into the Louvre Museum in broad daylight, [see, it's always "broad"] making off with its crown jewels, an embarrassed nation is asking itself a question: How could France let this happen?"

How? First you get Power Point software, or a white board, assemble in a dingy house somewhere, rent  buy, or better yet steal, a monte-meubles (ladder truck), buy a saw and some masks, make use of motor scooters, and off you go, Bob's your uncle, the tiaras are yours. Lots of hand-wringing going on in the Macron government these days, and its not all about tariffs.

"The subject of museums and their vulnerability is old," said Culture Minister Rachida Dati. "For 40 years there was no interest in securing these great museums."

The New York Post can be counted on for a good headline: "Commando Raid. Evidence of Louvre 'expert' thieves."

The lede: French police revealed that they are hunting a "commando" of four robbers who pulled off the daring heist of priceless valuables—and now they've got some evidence."

Well yeah. What's a retired member of French Special Forces going to do? "On Monday, police recovered a motorcycle helmet belonging to one of the criminals, as well as a glove in the basket of the construction lift the robbers used to break in, investigators told Le Parisien." The robbers, on exiting tried to set the ladder's basket on fire, but failed. Something always doesn't go right.

And where did the ladder truck come from? Well it was stolen after the gang answered a classified ad on the French site Leboncoin. They assaulted the owner after turning up at his house in the small town called—of all things—Louvres, 15 miles northeast of Paris."

Clue, clue, clues. Street camera footage. Will they be caught?

Stay tuned. It's not over till it's over. Murph the Surf was caught quite quickly.

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Australian Rules

 "Class, today's assignment is to write something on deportment. John, do you have something?"
"I think I might."

We used to have pen pals, people we'd exchange letters with. Now we have all kinds of social media pals, friends and foes we trade pleasantries or barbs with.

A particular social media pal I have—Twitter, X, now Bluesky— is someone in Australia who I've come into contact with over the years because of our shared love of reading tribute obituaries. The kind in newspapers with bylines.

This particular friend also writes a few for Australian and U.K. publications. They are a retired OR nurse, former news writer for Australian TV and now a bit of a stringer for publications writing obituaries. They just did an obit on Jane Goodall for Australian Geographic. They also seem to travel a bit and are seldom home. (@justjenking.bsky.social)

Getting to the point, they recently posted a Bluesky tidbit about the success of women from England defeating Canadian women in the Women's Rugby World Cup.

Jen, wistfully comments in the posting: "I'd have been a great rugby player, I'm sure of it, but I was at deportment classes." In other words, she might have been a contendah.

Deportment is a word you seldom hear, much less see in writing. I had a vague notion it referred to behaving or learning social graces. I teased back a reply: "Is deportment really detention class?" There is a 16-hour time difference between New York (they are way ahead of us.) and where Jen lives in Australia, so getting an instant reply is never what happens.

I teased out a second query: Is deportment learning how to walk with a book on your head?"

It's taken a few days, but a reply from Jen has just been received. She is still feeling wistful about not being able to clomp onto the pitch in shorts to kick and carry what is a ball, but really looks like a swaddled baby being tossed around. Rugby players, male and female, all over the world do this while wearing a distinctive striped top called a "rugby shirt."

Just in from Jen. She adds a definition that will not likely appear in any acceptable dictionary: "Deportment classes are an outdated method of killing girls' dreams.

I think there is some PTSD going on here, and if this were the United States, Jen would likely be filing a lawsuit if there were no statue of limitations on childhood educational abuse. 

For the record, the OED tells us deportment is: 

1. Manner of conducting oneself; general behaviour [sic]
2. Bearing, demeanour, [sic] manners, esp. of a cultivated kind. 

Clearly, those deportment classes kept Jen from being on her field of dreams. 

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