Chickens and Eggs

Unless you're a modern day Rip Van Winkle and just waking up from  layers of cardboard and newspaper under your favorite overpass, you probably have already heard the news about chickens, bird flu and the price of eggs.

The price of eggs has skyrocketed, and is only now coming a bit down to earth. Massive flocks of chickens had to be euthanized to keep bird flu from jumping from birds to humans. Supply and demand. Supply of egg-laying chickens goes down, the price of eggs goes up.

I have to say I'm unaffected by whatever eggs cost. My wife will eat them now and then, but that's it. Perhaps when I was 10 I declared I was allergic to eggs. My mother made some holiday eggnog and I got sick.

I never remember her even cooking eggs. Growing up food was not prepared much in my house. I hate the smell of eggs. And when my daughter Susan visits, she and my wife dig in for a breakfast with eggs, or bring back a Mickie D's Egg McMuffin, I leave the kitchen.

I cringe when I see the commercial for the happy family at breakfast tucking into plates of Eggland Best eggs, smiling with joy at consuming that white and yellow sulfurous goo. Did I tell you I hate eggs?

I'm old enough to remember when there was an oil crisis in the 70s due to an Arab boycott exporting it, causing a massive gasoline and home heating oil shortage. There were those intrepid souls, even on Long Island, who went into woodlands of Suffolk County to harvest firewood for their newly purchased wood burning stoves they were using to heat their homes.

This was a very short lived adventure, because as soon as the embargo lifted, the suburbanites put their chainsaws away and did probably put the stoves outside.

And so it is with eggs. There are those who are shoe- horning chickens into their backyards in an effort to gain what they view will be "free" eggs.

The always reliable WSJ has done an A-Hed piece on this: 

Raising Chicken Isn't All It's Cracked Up to Be
Backyard egg-layers can be messy, costly; 'We put the kibosh on it.'

The belief that the eggs will be free is dashed when it is revealed that the first egg for these suburban farmers will come at a cost of nearly $1,500.  No Golden Goose there. 

As usual, the A-Hed piece does its best to insert as many puns as possible, starting with the headline, "cracked..."

"...a surge in egg prices—has sent Americans flocking for their own poultry. There were 11 million households with backyard chickens in 2024, up from 5.8 million in 2018..."

"Local regulations often throw up red tape, or neighbors squawk..."

"But when it comes to saving money, chickens aren't all they're cracked up to be."

"Nervous new chicken parents could shell out up to $2,495 for a "Smart Coop," a poultry condo equipped with automatic doors and cameras that alert owners via an app when predators like racoon are nearby. They can activate alarms to scare predators."

That sounds more sensible than coming out the backdoor with a shotgun and scaring everyone with badly aimed blasts.

..."lobbied her town to change the rules to permit backyard chickens over a decade ago—and she's glad to see the hobby take flight..."

One town is trying to strike a balance between the backyard barnyards and the concerns of others over rats that eat the grain. No roosters.

Aside from food and eggs, consider what idioms and slang chickens have given us:

•chicken shit: insignificant things
•chicken feed: insignificant information. Spy novels are filled with references to chicken feed.
•playing chicken: daring someone to not..."chicken out."
•lay an egg: not succeed.
•goose eggs: zeroes on the scoreboard.

All the news lately of chickens and eggs has got me thinking. Not what came first, but what is the biology that leads a hen to lay eggs? They just didn't cover that in any school I went to. But now there's Google.

A laying hen's ovary holds thousands of tiny ova, or future egg yolks. Birds are unique among animals because only one ovary (the left) matures to the stage where it releases eggs. When a yolk is ready, it moves out of the ovary and into the oviduct - a tube-like structure that is divided into different sections. 

Ovulation (release of the yolk from the ovary) occurs every 24 – 26 hours regardless of fertilization (so a rooster is not needed). A hen ovulates a new yolk after the previous egg was laid. It takes 26 hours for an egg to fully form (white and shell added), so a hen will lay an egg later and later each day. 

"So a rooster is not needed."

Thus, like a lot of guys, he's worthless and noisy.

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Saddie and the Speedball

Joe DePugh is not famous for being famous. He earned a tribute obit in the NYT because he was Bruce Springsteen's boyhood friend and was the inspiration for one of The Boss's rockin' anthems to friends and days gone by, "Glory Days."

It is a tribute to the NYT obit desk that Joe is recognized, because certainly all things Springsteen are recognized. Michael S. Rosenwald's informative obit tells me at least, why Springsteen seemed to call a fastball—which would have fit into his song, two syllables—a speedball. Bruce stunk at baseball and probably didn't care what anything was called. No broadcast announcer from the booth has ever called a pitcher's pitch a "speedball." I never understood until now why "fastball" wasn't used in the lyric.

The great thing about an online obit edition is that imbedded in the obit is a link to a video of Springsteen and the E Street Band playing "Glory Days." Everyone looks so young.

The above photo is from 2005, and I would have thought it would have been older. Saddie—as in sad— was Joe's nickname for Bruce because Bruce was an indifferent Little League player whose inability to catch a routine fly ball in right field cost the team the game. The ball actually hit Bruce in the head. He could have been nicknamed Charlie Brown.

My wife remembers Bruce as a teenager playing in the cellar of Gordon (Tex) Vineyard's house in the 60s in Freehold, New Jersey. She spent half her summers in Freehold staying at Aunt Helen's place on Jerseyville Avenue, hard by the Nescafé plant.

Aunt Helen and Uncle Bill had four kids. They were contemporaries of Bruce's and followed his growing up in Freehold. Tex was Bruce's first manager who got him dates in all the bars he knew of, and he knew plenty of them. Tex was a bit a garrulous guy who worked at the local hospital. His wife was Marion, and they had no children.

I remember Tex at Aunt Helen's when my wife and I visited in the '70s. I never met Bruce, but his Aunt was a hairdresser at Bamberger's department store where cousin Eileen worked. Everyone in Freehold knew of Bruce. They all said he was the nicest, most genuine type of guy.

After Tex died Bruce bought a house for Marion to live in. Bruce had remained devoted to Tex for getting him started and chose to go to his funeral rather than Roy Orbison's, who passed away at the same time. Bruce provided for those he cared about. Tex was actually born in Oklahoma, and figures in one of Bruce's songs. 

Marion was a childhood classmate of Uncle Bill, and when he was widowed and needing medical care, she provided what was really hospice care in her home. My wife and I visited Uncle Bill there and in the finished cellar were several gold/platinum records Bruce had given Marion.  I'm not sure Marion is still alive.

I've never been to a Springsteen concert. I'm not sure I could stand up that long, because surely no one remains in their seat. Perhaps oddly, my wife never liked Springsteen. She didn't like him as a teenager, and doesn't like him now. She says, "he yells."

No matter. I think next to Billy Joel he's a total talent, and it turns out my own contemporary. When my father was in the final stages of cancer at Calvary Hospital in the Bronx in 1987, some patients were treated to music on the veranda that was of their era, WW II songs like "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree."  I thought to myself they'll be playing Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen if I wind up in the same place.

Bruce never  did a Christmas album. Perhaps thankfully. However, one of my favorite Springsteen songs is "Santa Claus in Coming to Town." "Hey band" followed by questions about their awareness of Christmas and their behavior will always have me turning up the volume, much to the annoyance of my family because I'll do it even if it isn't Christmastime. It's about being with his buddies, to whom he will always be steadfastly loyal to.

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Reinaldo Herrera

The coolest man on earth has just passed away, and most of us have missed the funeral Mass.

Yesterday's NYT tells us in more laudatory, breathless words than I ever thought possible, that Reinaldo Herrera, 91, Essence of Style At Vanity Fair and Around Town has passed away on March 18 and that the funeral Mass has already been held at the Church of St. Vincent Ferrer on Lexington Avenue in Manhattan.

I don't think the obituary writer, Penelope Green, has failed to leave out a single complimentary word found in the English language. The man had no faults.

Ms. Green's lede tells us all we need to know, but leaves us wanting to know more about an "indispensable story wrangler and all-around fixer for Vanity Fair magazine where he served as a contributing editor for more than three decades. That's a long time to be at a magazine and not piss off the wrong people. There should be a sub-category to the Nobel Peace Prize.

Mr. Herrera was born into South American nobility (he was a Marquis, not to be confused with the Marriott hotel or the lighted signage in front of a theater.) Ms. Green tells us, "after attending Harvard and Georgetown Universities and working as a presenter for a morning show in Venezuela, he joined Europe's emerging jet set, mingling with Rothchilds and Agnellis, Italian nobles and British royals."

He married his younger sister's best friend, Maria Carolina Josefina Pacanins, who became known as Carolina Herrera, a famous fashion designer. In fact, Carolina Herrera's name became so well known that one could be forgiven if they thought that he took her name when they married. 

Ms. Green piles the encomiums on in a pair of paragraphs that ooze charm in themselves. 

•he was old school and old world
•he wore bespoke suits with immaculate pocket squares
•his jeans were crisply pressed
•his manners were impeccable
•he spoke classical French without an accent
•his voice was described by Graydon Carter, a former editor of Vanity Fair, as a combination of Charles Boyer, the suave French actor, and the Count von Count, the numbers-obsessed Muppet. (When you come out ahead as being described as a Muppet, what wrong can you do?)

And here's where I'm sent to the OED.

"By the late 1970s, the Herreras were part of a frothy mix that defined Manhattan society at the time—socialites, financiers, walkers and rock stars, along with a smattering of politicians, authors and artists, who dined on and off Park Avenue and danced at Studio 54."

Walkers? Surely not dog walkers? No, stupid. The 10th definition of a walker as found in the OED tells us it can mean: "A man who accompanies women as an escort at fashionable social occasions. US slang. L20. ("Do you think Reinaldo is available?")

In the early 1980s, Tina Brown was editor of Vanity Fair, and after being introduced to Reinaldo Herrera, who so entertained her with story after story, that she hired him on the spot. "Ms. Brown knew the news value of a man like Mr. Herrera."  

She wrote of him that he was like a "golden retriever in a dinner jacket," who brought her back dispatches each morning from the evening's parties.

When being compared to a Muppet and a dog is high praise, I have to say I regret not ever hearing of Reinaldo sooner.

"Mr. Herrera was very good with royals. He was friends with Queen Elizabeth's II sister Margaret. "He used his title—a marquis—only in countries that had functioning monarchies." (A marquis is historically defined as a nobleman ranking below a duke but above a count.) 

The Reverend Boniface Ramsey recounted at Mr. Herrera's funeral Mass at the Church of St. Vincent Ferrer on Lexington Avenue, that Reinaldo was good at protocol in all sorts of areas. Father Ramsey recounted the time Mr. Herrera, an ardent Catholic, pointed out that the yellow and white Vatican flag outside the parish was hanging upside down. (An upside down flag means peril, so maybe there was a reason it was flying upside down. Just saying.)  

Mr. Herrera earned his chops at parties. He apparently believed a successful evening was achieved if it included a controversial figure. Claus von Bülow was a friend he often called in from the bullpen to add intrigue, spice and a sense of malevolence to his parties. Claus famously was acquitted of the attempted murder of his heiress wife Sonny.  Mr. Herrera told the NYT in 1987 that "Claus is a great catalyst."    

I once read that someone would try and have a few leggy blondes in attendance at a party who might carelessly cross their legs as being indispensable.

There are those amongst us who have dream teams, a hypothetical collection of all-stars all on the same side. Mr. Herrera once thought a great gathering of invitees would include Jean Harris, who in a blackout rage gunned down her lover Dr. Tarnower, famous for creating the Scarsdale Diet, and Ivan Boesky, the corporate rider charged with insider trading at the same soiree. 

The duo never made it to one of Mr. Herrera's parties since when he thought of it, they were both in prison at the time. The wardens sent the RSVPs back as could not attend. (I made that up.)

I don't know who it was, but they imagined a chance meeting of Greta Garbo, Jack Nicholson, and maybe Marlene Dietrich, each carrying Bloomingdale shopping bag, getting stuck on the same Manhattan street corner waiting for the light to change. All it takes is imagination.

Tina Brown wrote, "Over the years, I came to see Reinaldo's impeccable comportment as a moral quality. He felt it was on him to elevate the room and leave people feeling better about themselves."

I wish I met the guy.

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