I made reference to this cartoon a day or two ago, and one of my readers thought I ought to have posted the cartoon itself, so people would know what I'm talking about.

Excellent idea, but until he mailed it to me, I hadn't seen it in years. In appeared in 1993 or so, in The New Yorker.

By way of thanking TNY for this cartoon, which has been referenced by so many people over so many years, I should point out that you can get their wonderful cartoons and magazine covers on a variety of media, such as coffee cups, t-shirts, note cards and the like, at The New Yorker Store. It's a wonderful site to browse, and it's hard to resist buying all sorts of things you don't really need, because you want to share them with your friends and relatives.

Annabelle writes:

Love Janelle and the Channel 8 news. What has happened to the ring Janelle once wore?

I Was Flummoxed

I have to admit: it has me flummoxed. I couldn't tell you about Janelle's rings, or her marital status, or the status of her romantic relationships.

I do know that a third of all men over 40, maybe more, in the Channel 8 viewing viewing area, are entranced by Janelle's smile, her laugh, the way her hair dances. There's something about an intelligent woman with a take-charge attitude that is compelling, and if you add her appealing face and her nice curves, it makes her the Marilyn Monroe of the Conestoga Valley.

That's not to say that Anne Shannon isn't appealing as well, and since Anne comes from Conestoga Valley (Janelle originally comes from the pacific northwest), there are a lot of local men rooting for her.

And women, too, rooting for both of them.

Anne, I Know Something About

But while I have been given to understand that Anne is married, with a couple of young kids, I know very little of Janelle's life when the camera turns off. The picture here shows Janelle Stelson with her fiance and entertainer Bonnie Heller at the Quentin Riding Club Christmas Party in Mount Joy in 2009.

When a woman stops wearing a ring, especially an engagement ring, it usually means she is no longer engaged to him. This usually happens about the same time that he is no longer engaged to her, but not always.

What's more, when an engagement ends, it's usually for one of two reasons. One is that the couple got married. The other is that the couple split up. If a women stops wearing an engagement ring and doesn't start wearing a wedding band, it's usually the second case.

As A Diligent Journalist

So as a result of my diligent journalism skills, I would be willing to venture a guess that the couple broke up. I wouldn't bet the ranch on it, but I still think it's likely.

Sometimes, rings get lost or damaged. And it could be that Janelle converted to the Old Order Amish faith; they don't wear wedding rings. Or possibly she was robbed at gunpoint.

If anyone has details they would like to add to this largely vacuous discussion, please drop me a note. You can use the Contact Form or drop me an email at harl (at) canthook.com.

People think of quakes as being relatively uncommon events. They're not. Even if you restrict yourself to quakes of magnitude 2.5 and greater, there's less than an hour between quakes.

Typically, there will be a strong quake, and then a series of six to twenty lesser quakes over the next couple of days. In Japan, though the news media is saying little about it, they are still experiencing very strong quakes, really frequently. A few days ago, they were mostly in the magnitude 5-7 range, and they have finally dropped to the point where many of them are in the 4-5 range, although there are as many in the 5-6 range.

And instead of Japan's quakes amounting to 80% of the world's quakes, the percentage has finally dropped. In this listing of recent quakes, you'll see "east of Honshu" given as a location; that's where the Big One hit. The date/time stamp is Lancaster PA time.

When will it all end? Never....

Other Bloggers On Related Topics:
earthquakes - Honshu - Japan - USGS

It was only a few days ago, while parked in the industrial park, that I noticed the raspberry canes coming up over the greenery that separated my parking space from the property next door.

I don't know who planted black raspberries in the industrial park. They aren't that attractive. The raspberry leaves themselves are singularly pretty, but they grow on an exceptionally tall and spindly cane that cannot support its own weight. The real problem, of course, is that you cannot consider raspberries by themselves. They are a bramble, constantly invaded by all sorts of unkempt weeds, and they capture all sorts of dead leaves and other unsightly yard waste.

And if you try to keep the bramble nice-looking, you'll be scarred for life by the thorns on the black raspberry. It's bad enough when you simply are trying to harvest a pint of the berries, perhaps to eat with a few scoops of rich vanilla ice cream.

Familiarity Breeds

Reach in to grab one, and you disturb twenty canes, get stabbed by 12 thorns. Before you grab the fruit, chances are pretty good that it falls off the cane onto the ground, out of your grasp. You've heard that
"familiarity breeds", but the raspberry cane insists that the proper place for its fruit is on the ground, the rotting fruit providing fertilizer for the seed of the next generation.

So allow me to tell you a trick of the Mohawk. Don't restrict yourself to only the fruit of the raspberry. Harvest the leaves as well. Steep the leaves of raspberries to make a wonderful tea, especially sweetened with honey or with fruit. He heals the soul, and a poltice of the leaves heals wounds.

And this afternoon, @berutt (aka Bryan Rutt) announced that Strawberry beat Raspberry in his poll, by a vote of 12 to 7. Immediately, @JacksValentine insisted that the poll was defective, that raspberry will beat strawberry's booty in any competition - and then taunted Brian with raspberry cheesecake, just out of his reach.

And At Convenience Stores

There's a brisk raspberry tea at 7Eleven, apparently, I gather from another tweet. I've not been to 7Eleven in years, and I don't know if it's available at other convenience stores. I assume it's Lipton. I've ever tried it, but I can't imaging that it's really raspberry tea. It's probably black tea with raspberry flavoring, which isn't the same thing at all. If you want to enjoy raspberry tea, you need to try the REAL thing.

The REAL thing. What an interesting slogan that would make for a beverage!

Other Bloggers On Related Topics:
brambles - canes - convenience stores - industrial park - Iriquois - raspberry tea

When Venus and Serena Williams exploded into the public's attention, everyone talked about how astounding they were as tennis players, but the cameras spent a lot more time on Venus, the younger, more photogenic of the two.

And although I was drawn a little more to the older sister, I didn't know why. It was obvious that Venus was pretty, while Serena was a lot more on the plain side. I just marked it up to my quirkiness, to my tendency to favor the underdog, to my preference for older women, even when the two I am comparing are both entirely too young for my tastes.

Years have passed, and there have been medical problems. The girls have changed, and in the case of Serena, especially so. I'll agree with the makers of this video game - Serena is, indeed, incredibly sexy.

The ad ends with a warning - you realize this is all a fantasy, don't you? - but that should go unsaid. All romance and all sexiness is fantasy.

I'm told that 2K Sports has officially withdrawn this commercial, but I don't know what that means. It could mean that this will soon disappear from YouTube. That's the problem with depending on a foreign website for graphics - the blog owner never gets told his own website is now broken. I wish I could host the videos I embed.

Other Bloggers On Related Topics:
2K Sports - fantasy - Serena Williams - sexiness - Venus Williams - video games