The Saturday Picture Show, August 16, 2025

To protect the reindeer, Finnish farmers spray their antlers with light-reflective paint.




Behr Paints says "Hidden Gem" is the color of the year. It looks like "Elementary School Chalkboard" to me.




This is the real Smokey The Bear, saved from a New Mexico forest fire in
 1945. 

That's a real alligator, just a bit north of his usual surf. He was found in a lake in Bucks County, PA. Authorities figure he was a pet who wore out his welcome...

These little plastic nuggets are on their way to becoming Lego pieces. For now, they could play the part of "corn" in a Green Giant ad.

Art by Josh Byer entitled "Runaway Cow." It's nice that it packed a bindle for the road.

 

That's Lafayette Baker, a Union spy and investigator, in the center, leading the manhunt for John Wilkes Booth after the Lincoln assassination. They gave Patton Oswalt that Baker name in the TV series "Manhunt," which I have never seen, but he was great on "King of Queens," so maybe we should see it.

I love the Maryland Flag so much! It even looks great in Las Vegas on the Sphere.

Elizabeth Eaton Rosenthal, 84, of Brooklyn, NY, favors green, and has worn nothing but green clothing for 25 years. Match Game question: "Elizabeth's friends see her dressed this way daily and are _____ with envy." 

These are the only two photos in existence that show all four tones of tigers. The one second from the left on the bottom is from Cincinnati, I know. I will Burrow as deeply as I need for a joke.

I love noises

If you've ever been a teacher, a preacher, or some who conducts life-insurance seminars, you’re familiar with the sound of snoring. 

Notice, I was smart enough not to mention "husband" or "wife."

Anyway, if you or someone you love is a snorer, the solution to your snoring - and the medical term for snoring is stertor (from the Latin stertere, meaning 'to snore') - may be as close as the nearest conch shell.

Studies are telling the doctors that blowing air to make a noise through a conch shell may alleviate symptoms of Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA), and that's what snoring is all about.

Why is that, you might ask?

Well, conch shell blowing involves inhaling deeply and forcefully exhaling through the shell. The noise comes from the vibrations created, and the airflow resistance. This gives you better muscles in the throat and the soft palate, and those are the very muscles that collapse if you have OSA. 

A study concluded that people who regularly practiced conch blowing aren't as sleepy during the day, sleep better at night, and deal with fewer breathing interruptions. 

A word of caution: a separate study concluded that people who go around making noises in seashells often go to bed earlier than they wanted to, and often have been smacked silly before retiring for the night. Just sayin'.

 

The Wrong Brother

I used to smoke cigarettes, and it was tough to give them up for good (9/17/88 at 10 AM, but who's counting?)

But even at my nicotine-eist, I could have gone two hours without a smoke. 

Nguyen and the FA who brought him up short.

Peter Nguyen can't, so when he was on an airplane August 4 headed to San Francisco from Phoenix, he went into the restroom of the plane and took "one puff" from his vape device, which is that thing that makes a person blow steam like a teakettle.

A flight attendant barged in on him and made him stop. He replied that he is an influencer with 25,000 followers, and also claimed to be a lawyer.

The attendant said she didn't care what he is or is not, but he is NOT going to be puffing on the plane. He said he was sorry.

"You can keep saying you’re sorry, but I care about all these passengers," the flight attendant replied.

Smoking of any kind, including vaping, is illegal on an aircraft. It's a federal offense.

Nguyen now says, "I wish I never picked up a vape to begin with," but he was having nicotine withdrawal.

"It sucks knowing in order to be myself, I have to have nicotine," said Nguyen. "I feel so helpless."

And now he says he wants to give up his battery-powered joy stick because, "The more you do it, like, the less effective it is. "It's like your body builds a tolerance to it."

It's not easy giving up the nicotine addiction, but it's easier than making a patootie of yourself on a plane. Get some nicotine pouches or gum and join the smoke-free generation! The Wright Brothers will applaud you.

Think of how impressed your followers will be! Maybe one of them is a real lawyer, and could tell you how wrong it is to claim to be one. 

 

Safe!

I have to wonder why some people - most of them being male, but not all - are so quick to hoot and holler at Jen Pawol being given a chance to advance to the major leagues in her chosen field, that of umpiring baseball games.  

She's 48, so she didn't just ride in here on a turnip truck. She called more than 1,200 games in the minor leagues, the crucible for getting to the bigs, and when the Marlins and Braves had a doubleheader scheduled over the weekend, an extra person was needed on the umpire crew, and she got her chance.

And she did well, scoring a 93% accuracy on balls and strikes, according to the Statcast system of rating officials. That's right up there with many fulltime MLB umps.

 

With camera replays and technology that didn't even exist in the imagination back in the day, umpires are subject to a lot more scrutiny. This has been a change for the better. One can cite countless cases of wrong calls back before replay was available, and nothing could be done. A Detroit pitcher years ago had one out to go for a perfect game, and  MALE ump Jim Joyce called a guy safe at first, when people three counties over could see he was out. But in those days, the only voice that mattered was not a camera or a computer, just one man. 

Now the man or woman who makes the calls has all the tools he or she needs to make a correct decision, and that's good. 

As to why some people don't want to see a woman do the job, ask them! The answers are ridiculous versions of "It's a man's game!" or "But we've never had a woman ump before!" 

Well, you do now. Get with it. She will make mistakes, just like the men. She will please people and anger people in her days, but the ultimate accolade to pay to any official is that you watch the game and don't even notice who's in blue. 

When we get to that point, we'll be better off.

 

Good Call

If you've worked with, or known, the kind of guys who can tinker with electronics and turn what you thought was junk into a functioning radio or VCR or whatever, then you've known guys like Patrick Schlott, from out of Tunbridge, Vt. He is an electrician in his work career, and now, living in rural Vermont, he saw a way to turn his hobby into something good for everyone around. 

Electronics wizards like Patrick do things like doodling around with old pay phones, and he realized that penchant could provide a valuable public service out in the country. 

“I realized, wow, there’s no cell service for 10 miles in either direction,” he said. “The community could really benefit from something like this.”

Think about it...you never see pay phones around anymore, and that can be a problem when you're in a jam five miles from Smallville and you need to reach someone. So Schlott asked the owners of the general store out his way if he could put a refurbished coin phone outside the store. He's also installed them at the local public library, and at the information booth down by interstate 89.

There's no cost to the hosts, or to the user. Schott rounds up the old payphones and rigs them up to work via the wonderful internet. "Basically, there’s a small piece of equipment that converts an internet telephone line to an analog line that these phones can operate off of,” he said.

“Everyone’s pretty surprised, and they’re like, ‘Is that a real payphone? Does that really work?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, but it doesn’t cost any money now,’" said the general store owner, Mike Gross. "We’ve had people use it that broke down. It’s a great thing because service is so spotty in Vermont.”

So, instead of being out of touch, people out of cell phone range and unable to call Uncle Nutsy for a lift can make that call - for free - just because a guy took the time to do what so few have done, namely, figuring out what to solder to what. Good going!

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Java Jive

The price of everything imported from overseas is going up for reasons you could understand if you were a billionaire. The rest of us will just have to dig a little deeper into the coins in the sofa to pay for necessities such as coffee and Danish ham.

Meanwhile, have you tried  Panamanian Geisha coffee? It made the news again for being the most expensive java at the 2025 Best of Panama international online auction. Sip on this: they ask for (and get) $13,705 per pound for these beans.

You can save 45 cents if you have a coupon, though.

Some dude from Dubai shelled out for the coffee that won; it was grown by Hacienda La Esmeralda in Boquete, Chiriquí.

That's a new record for coffee anywhere.

 

This Best of Panama competition is an international specialty coffee competition and auction put on annually by the Specialty Coffee Association of Panama.

Rachel Peterson represents the winning farm, and she calls the result "a recognition of the effort of our entire team and the dedication Panama has put into cultivating excellence."

Coffee people say that Panama - especially in the highlands of Boquete and Volcán -- is great for growing coffee, since their altitudes are over 4.900 feet and the soil in enriched with volcano dust.

Oh, make mine tea, please. Hold the lava.

Sunday Rerun: Hey Mister!

 I don't read The Wall Street Journal and I don't think I would wrap fish in it, either, but I have to give them this credit: Their editor-in-chief, Emma Tucker, is changing the way they write about people. Ms Tucker said the bible of capitalism is "dropping the routine use of honorifics, or courtesy titles.” 

That means they will no longer preface someone's name with titles such as Mr. or Ms. in news stories. After the first time they name someone who just embezzled 35 million dollars from a widow-and-orphans trust fund, just their surname will do.

Tucker (notice, I stopped calling her "Ms") says, “The Journal has been one of the few news organizations to continue to use the titles, under our long-held belief that Mr., Ms. and so forth help us maintain a polite tone. However, the trend among almost all newspapers and magazines has been to go without, as editors have concluded that the titles in news articles are becoming a vestige of a more-formal past, and that the flood of Mr., Ms., Mx. or Mrs. in sentences can slow down readers’ enjoyment of our writing.”

And what's more, "Dropping courtesy titles is more in line with the way people communicate their identities. It puts everyone on a more-equal footing.”

Here's Tucker, headed to work with cellphone, lunch, topcoat, and coffee.

Most newspapers and news organizations in general, such as The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today and The Associated Press, do not use those titles.

The New York Times will continue to use Mr Ms Mrs Mx for news stories, but not for sports stories, which will make it possible to read on page C-1 that a certain wide receiver named "O'Hoolahan" caught four touchdown passes on Sunday, and then on the front page that "Mr. O'Hoolahan" was charged with four counts of handgun possession and aggravated battery that same Sunday. 

Thank you, Ms Tucker.  I mean, Emma.