Stand Guard

 

Cleveland's baseball team will officially stop being the Indians at the end of the 2021 season and become the Cleveland Guardians.   

This is great news for a myriad of reasons, front and foremost because it ends the use of native Americans as a baseball club name.  The team, which dropped Chief Wahoo years ago as a mascot has settled on a wonderful name - one that homage to the city and its skyline and traditions: The Guardians. 

So what is the relationship between the name and the architecture?  The Guardians of Traffic are four pylons - two on the Cleveland side and two on the west side of Cleveland, at each end of the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge, renamed the Hope Memorial Bridge.  Bob Hope's father helped carve the pylons, and Bob Hope grew up in Cleveland.

Each pylon has an art deco east-facing "guardian" and a west-facing "guardian".  Each holds a different means of transport - eight altogether.  Erected in 1932, the vehicles include pioneer wagons to automobiles and trucks.  At 43 feet tall above the roadbed, and 100 over the Cuyahoga valley below, they are among the largest pieces of public art in Cleveland.   The easternmost pylons are about 1,000 feet from Jacobs Field - which now goes by Progressive name, strangely enough, an automobile insurance company. 

The homage goes much further.  Cleveland has fought and struggled to maintain that which is our own.  People have stood guardian over our art museum, our beloved Browns, our ethnic communities, and our surrounding communities.  And we accept change but push back hard as hell when something of merit is threatened.  And we worked hard to reclaim the Cuyahoga River valley as our own after that last burning river incident 50 years ago, too.  (Cleveland also has the Guardian building.  Built-in the early 1920s it was the second-largest office building in the nation.  Still huge by anyone's imagination, it's slated to become condos, event space, and offices by 2025-27.)

The symbolism of the bridge is also deep and important. It was one of the new modern high-level bridges to link Cleveland east bank with the west, designed for automobile and truck traffic.  That may not seem like much, but the Cuyahoga river valley is a wide and deep gorge, and it splits the city into two distinct places - the west side and the east side. At one point, Cleveland was on the east bank, and Ohio City, its own municipality, was on the west.  While Cleveland assumed Ohio City, that gorge was still there.  So the bridge unified one with the other, just like our sports teams do.  And each side has four Guardians facing each direction with their winged helmets.

And if you have read this blog, you know how much Cookie loathes one Albert Porter, the Cuyahoga County Engineer who tried to ramrod the Clark Freeway into and through Shaker Heights, and how that plan thankfully failed when people pulled together to thwart that plan.  Well, Porter also wanted to remove the Guardians of Traffic for his own monument: a modern freeway style bridge in place of the Lorain Carnegie.  Cookie is hoping his remains (location unknown) are spinning in their grave, or in its urn, or whatever happened to it with this wonderful news. 

There is nothing worse than a sore loser, and plenty of people are bitching up a blue streak because they don't like "Guardians" as a team name.  (I, personally, would have preferred the Cleveland Kraken, but Seattle beat us to that in NHL Hockey this year.)   But I am embracing this change because it's as far away from the nonsensical team names like "Crush", "Krunch", and the "Power" - as one can get.  (A personal non-favorite of Cookies is any team named the Predators, which makes me think of child sexual deviants. Ick, right?)

Now there are plenty of people bitching and moaning about how "the team will always be blah, blah, blah," and "no one is going to take this Chief Wahoo* cap off my hat blah, blah, blah.   And buster, no one wants to. 

But I can guarantee you that once we make the playoffs because of great playing and the curse of Wahoo behind us, you'll stand "Guard" with the rest of us, too.

CBS NEWS and SPORTS articles on the symbolism of the change. 

*Totally Racist graphics at that, too.
 

With a wink of an eye and for $20

 

There used to be a show called Tattletails in the 1970s.  The idea was a hi-tech game show for three sets of celebrity couples based on the premise of the Newlywed Game.  That is to say, celebrities and their spouses would play Question, Answer Match.  Along the way, there would be funny banter and clever repartee sprinkled with drama.  The drama was along the lines of "Gee, I don't what Marmaduke will say," or, "Hesperia will kill me if I don't get this right..."

In the older days, like the fifties, the spouse being sent away would step into an isolation chamber, put on the earphones, and asked a question: "Othello, can you hear us?"  Well, of course Othello wouldn't answer one way or another - that was part of the fun.  In the sixties, one-half of the couple was taken off stage.  Well on Tattletales, the one-half of the three couples were taken and placed out of sight, in a soundproof chamber, given earphones, and then covered by a camera.   The camera would then carry the feed to a monitor facing the audience built into the panelists' desk.

And the couples were the likes of Ken Berry and Jackie Joseph, Bobby Van and Elaine Joyce, Phyllis Diller, and her husband Sherwood. But, then again, it could have been that guy from, err, you know, and his wife, whatever her name was.  Missing from the slate were couples that really could have been a hoot.  James and Pamela Mason, Liz and Dick, ZsaZsa, and any of her former husbands. 

INTO THIS came game show favorite, Fanny Flagg,  and Dick Sargent best know at the time as Second Darrin on Bewitched.  As a couple. That's why I posted the picture.  

Flagg is a wonderfully funny and witty multitalented person.  Dick was beloved by those who knew him, save for Agnes Morehead who reportedly gave him the cold shoulder when he joined Bewitched.  Agnes wanted off the show, she considered it fluff.  Dick York's health no longer permitted him to act.  Seeing that as a possible out, in came Sargent, meaning the show would go on.

ANYWAY, the hook for Tattltails was that the studio audience was divided into teams, based on the color of the desk section.  The left side was blue, the middle yellow, and the right side was red.  As the couples answered correct questions, that translated into money for each studio group, which I believe wasn't much.  But it kept the audience in the game. 

So for this episode, Patty Duke Astin and her husband actor John Astin were the blue team. Actor Bill Daily and his wife were the yellow team, and winning money for the red section, Fannie Flagg and "her guy" Dick Sargent.  

Here's the show so you can enjoy it for yourself. 

Follow up: The Dishwasher That is Finally Repaired

 

Some of you may remember in May when our dishwasher arm stopped moving and we had to deal with "Twiddle Dee and Twittle Dummy" appliance repair. 

The two from Twiddle Dee showed up twice, baffled, and more or less shrugged their shoulders.  "We got no idea what's wrong with that," they said leaving our house, but leaving their body odor behind. 

To use the dishwasher, because the arm was stationary, we had to load it carefully, making sure the worst of the dishes and silverware was centered exactly over one of the three wash heads on the arm.  

That worked until the arm started moving on its own, and that lasted about two weeks, then we were back to square one.  

Not repairing this unit wasn't in the cards.  A dishwasher uses very little water compared to running water through a faucet.  And water in Baltimore is horribly expensive because our water department is totally fucked up.  So we had to get the machine working.

So Cookie put on his best "I demand satisfaction" attitude and went back to the warranty company and filed a third claim. 

They want to send the feckless duo out a third time, but I explained - this is wasting my time, their money, and nothing is getting fixed because those two can't even tie their own shoes.  When I said my next call was to the Maryland AG's office, they snapped out of it, went off-script, and scheduled a factory service warranty guy. 

This man was organized, prompt, took twenty minutes, and came back and said "When you gave me the model number over the phone and told me what was going on, I knew exactly what it is."

Well, what was it?

EVIDENTLY, the inverter - that piece that drives the impellor that moves the arm was fried - a common problem with these dishwashers with the advanced armature models.  That was the good news.  The bad news? "It's a really expensive repair, but it's under warranty."  Then he showed me the video he took with his phone of the motor just whirling away, but the inverted shaft doing nothing. 

What to do? 

"I'll file the paperwork, if you hear from me, they are replacing the part.  If you hear from them, they are replacing the dishwasher." And with a wink and a smile, he was on his way. 

And you know what, I didn't hear from him, or the warranty people, but a big ass box showed up on our doorstep with the part.  We scheduled a time, he showed up and fixed the damned thing.

It's been running fine for the last couple of days.  Now I have to drive that heavy-ass broken part to the dump.  Do I care? Not one wit. 

One thing he did recommend was to stop using detergent in gel packs. 

"Stick with the powder or the liquids."

Sir, yes sir.

Something for almost everyone...

 ...who has a foot fetish, or loves correcting grammar.

This spooled across my Amazon ad feed, and what Cookie wants to know is, why? 

Cookie is not a foot fetishist. Cookie is not sexually into women.  I mean, Cookie does not view woman as the object of desire. Cookie does not visit such sites.  In fact, Cookie is horrified by feet.  I mean they're there for a purpose, but I just don't understand how a foot in one's mouth is a turn-on, or hygienic. 

And yet Amazon gives me this item. 

Go figure.

What I want to know is, why are the suggestions written in a manner that suggest that these piggies deserve extra special attention?   "...after the item dried apply some talcum powder evenly on the skin surface in order to care for the item and generate a good touch feeling."

Hello?

And like real skin, the limit direct sun.  It may not get creppie, but it can age the material.

AND the material that is so life-like, IT MAY FRIGHTEN YOU.  As if I am not already horrified by this enough.

If I need to "bendedfreely" a toe, it will be mine, that you very much. 

As for finding shoes for this item, I bet you'll be the waggle of the storeroom in the shoe salon at Nordstrom's when you take these "foots" in for some cha-cha heel action. 

 

Culottes

 

David Sedaris has been professing his love of culottes.  In interviews, my favorite author tells of his love through words such as "stylish" and "comfortable".  The garments aren't new - the term was used by the French in the 18th century refers to breeches that buttoned at the knee, according to Wikipedia. 

Being born in the early 1960s, I remember culottes as a clothing staple that girls and women wore in the 1965-1970 era.   Back then, the culottes I remember were garments that were above the knee, but the shorts were hidden behind an apron of fabric in the front (and sometimes the back) of like material.   

More freeing than a skirt, but more formal than shorts, these skirts were especially popular with the mothers who were you, who golfed, or played tennis.  The store, to the pool and to watch Ed Sullivan. 

I saw them everywhere but two places - temple, because you always wore your best to temple, and at school. 

Shaker, like most public schools, had a dress code. And ours at our elementary included the then-standard "no jeans" rule.  But for girls, culottes were a big no-no in kindergarten and first grade.  That was spelled out on the ditto sent home to parents, and lectured by Alice Van Dusen, the beloved principal of the school. 

And back then, no meant no. If some said no, you didn't do it. Unless you were a certain girl with a first name of "T" who was clearly the bully in our classes.  

One of my friends was a girl named Mary Beth Healy, and Mary Beth rolled out of your mouth as "Marybeth".  I loved her because she was kind, but she was her own person. If so and so didn't want to sit next to Mary Beth, then someone else was happy to do so.  She always had friends. 

We made it through Kindergarten, but because I had been tracked into a regrettable whole language experiment called ITA in kindergarten, our first-grade classrooms had the same children as the kindergarten classes that were taught by a wonderful woman named Mrs. Bauter.  Mrs. Bauter's children were funneled into the class of another saintly woman, Mrs. Smiley.  Her job was to get us back onto English leave the whole language behind. 

Mrs. Smiley was a dear, and no one dared to say a word else wise.  She never had to deal with anyone sassing her. 

So when the year was winding down were told at the beginning of the last week of school that since it was mid-June, on the last day of school, we could wear shorts.  

And that was a big deal. 

Then on the second to last day of school, Mary Beth Healy showed up in culottes.  Deep pink culottes.

And they were the type that had a front flap only. 

"You aren't allowed to wear them," we said - as if she had just committed a high crime of some sort.

Marybeth was non-plussed.  Ever the cool cookie, she simply said "We're moving after school."

For the rest of the day, all eyes were on her.  In those days, Shaker students in grade school went home for lunch.  When I got home, I told my mother "Mary Beth Healy wore culottes today, and they're not allowed at school!"

My mother took a drag off her Kent cigarette, blew the smoke up into the high kitchen air, and said "People aren't supposed to speed, but everyone drives a couple miles over the limit." 

Since I was and still am a literalist, the whole comparison was lost on me. I ate my bologna sandwich and soon became engrossed in what Pixie and Dixie were doing to Jinx the cat. 

Back in school, Mrs. Smiley told us to "come sit on the floor Indian style" - a term that no one uses anymore, but that was what she said. And we gathered around her, and at that moment, she caught a look at the shorts under the material flap on Mary Beth's Culottes.  

Mary Beth stood, as directed, turned around, and Mrs. Smiley said, you can sit down - they look more like a skirt.  She had won in our mind.  I don't think it was ever her idea to be a rebel - I think that there was a lot going on at her house in preparation for the move and she wore what she was going to wear. 

"I knew she wouldn't send me home," she reasoned. 

At the end of the day, Mrs. Smiley reminded us that we could wear shorts (no cut-off or anything ragged) and we all went home. 

The next day, which was a half-day, there was no Mary Beth.  Evidently, when she said her family was moving after school, they were moving after the second to last day of school. 

And it was also Mrs. Smiley's last day of school as well. She was ending her teaching career.  I don't any of us had an idea in our head that we would never see her, or even Mary Beth again, but that's how six years old sometimes think when they are insulated from the finality of a goodbye that won't be undone.

I often wonder what happened to Grace Smiley, I hope her time after teaching was full and enriching.  She was by far my favorite teacher.  After first grade, the affection I felt for my grade school teachers declined every year.  The last, an old battle-ax named Maxine Brown was a horrible old yeti, and that feeling is evidently shared by a number of us that year. 

But Mary Beth Healy remains an utter mystery. 

If you are out there Mary Beth, you have been missed.  Let me know how you are doing.  We have a lot to catch up on.