Jimmie Rodgers – "Honeycomb" (1957)

It’s kinda funny

How the bee was made

And the bee made the honey

NOTE: In the last 2 or 3 lines, I introduced you to my former work colleague, Kerri Griffin, who became a beekeeper last year.  Kerri and her family are huge fans of Disney World, but had to cancel a planned trip to Orlando recently due to the coronavirus pandemic.  So Kerri used some of the time that she would have spent waiting in line to see the “Country Bear Jamboree” or take the “It’s a Small World” ride and put it to good use by writing an essay about queen and other bees for 2 or 3 lines.  Kerri, take it away!

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When the esteemed author of 2 or 3 lines offered me the chance to write about my idée fixe of the moment – honeybees – well, I just couldn’t say no. 

About a year ago, I became a beekeeper – not long after my husband and I moved our family from the Washington, DC suburbs to the Piedmont area of Virginia.  I started by setting up my first two beehives in our backyard, and we welcomed about 20,000 honeybees to the family.

Kerri and her kids,
dressed to visit her bees

It wasn’t long before I realized how much I (like most people) didn’t know about these amazing creatures.  And the more I learn and experience, the more I am in awe of honeybees and their resilience, not to mention their importance to our world. 

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Today’s featured song was a #1 hit for Jimmie Rodgers in 1957.

[NOTE: This Jimmie Rodgers was no relation to the legendary country-western singer of the same name who was known for his distinctive yodeling style, and is considered by many to be the father of American country music.  That Jimmie Rodgers died of tuberculosis at age 35 the same year – 1933 –  that our Jimmie Rodgers was born.]

Not only is “Honeycomb” a nice country/pop crossover record, it’s also a great jumping-off point for a discussion about bees.

The first verse is a little allegory of the importance of bees and their central role in our ecosystem.  The bee was God’s first creation, followed by trees, then birds, then romantic love – like the love between the singer and his honey. 

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As you are probably aware, the honeybee plays a key role in our food production.  Of course, we’re all aware of the bees’ culinary contribution in the form of honey, but a full third of the crops grown in America depend to some extent on pollination by honeybees.  

It’s interesting that the singer refers to his girlfriend as “Honeycomb” instead of calling her his “queen bee.”  

How many times have you heard a woman declare herself to be a queen bee – or a man use that same trope to describe his wife or girlfriend?   

It’s a ubiquitous expression, and that’s understandable: there is a widely-held view that the queen bee is the boss of her colony – a paragon of strength and beauty (not to mention booty!) who expects to be worshipped by her underlings. 

She even has an entourage of attendants who feed and groom her all day.  Who wouldn’t love that?

A queen bee surrounded
by her attendants

But though she is vital to the survival of a colony, this image of the queen bee as a spoiled diva is really a myth.  The facts paint a far grimmer picture of the queen bee’s existence.

I’d like to pause here and note that, while I find “Honeycomb” a sweet tribute to Jimmie’s beloved, I do take issue with these lines: “Got a hank o' hair and a piece o' bone / And made a walkin' talkin' Honeycomb.” This makes her sound more like a hairball than a divine creation.  Anyway, back to the queen bee and her harsh existence.

The struggle is real.  A newborn queen – known as a virgin queen – must fight for her life from the moment she breaks from her cocoon-like queen cell.  After emerging, she patrols the hive looking for other queen cells containing a pupating rival.  Upon finding one, she inserts her stinger, efficiently killing her competitor.  

It is possible, however, for her to be too late to the party, resulting in two or more virgin queens occupying the hive at the same time.  To resolve this complication, a virgin queen will emit a high-pitched tweet, known as “piping,” to challenge any rival to a fight to the death.  (And we thought our first hours of life were precarious!) 

[You can click here to watch a video of virgin queens piping.]

Queen bees live much longer than the other members of the colony.  While worker bees only live about six weeks, and drones die after mating or are forced out of the hive as winter approaches, the queen can live up to three years.  

However, a queen bee is virtually tethered to the hive for her entire lifetime.  She will only leave home twice in her life: to mate (her “wedding flight”) and to swarm.  (If the queen decided to strike out on her own, she could never survive because she lacks the ability to digest food – her attendants do that for her, and feed her directly from their mouths to hers.)

A bee colony swarms when it decides that it has outgrown its space, or there is something undesirable about its space. When the time is right, the queen and half of the colony leave to set up a new colony elsewhere. 

[You can click here to see a video of a beekeeper efficiently capturing a swarm of bees and relocating it to one of his hives.]

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Think your stay-at-home life during the coronavirus pandemic is boring?  The queen does the same thing all day, day in and day out.  Her majesty’s daily routine never varies: all she does is lay eggs – something she is quite proficient at.  

The queen doesn’t lay eggs in the winter.  But during the hive’s population build-up in spring, a queen can lay between 1,000 and 1,500 eggs per day! 

Queens deposit both fertilized eggs (which will produce female worker bees) and unfertilized eggs (which will produce male drones).  But the queen doesn’t really decide which type of eggs to lay.  The worker bees make that decision: a cell where a drone egg will go is constructed by the workers to be just the slightest bit wider, since drones are fatter than workers.  The queen knows which egg to lay by measuring the cells with her front legs. 

By the way, “brood comb” – where eggs are deposited – are located only in certain areas of the hive.  (The developing bees are known collectively as the “brood.”)

Brood comb

The queen does possess one superpower, however.  She constantly releases a pheromone that prevents the workers’ ovaries from producing eggs.  

If a hive goes without a queen for too long, the effect of the pheromone wears off and after a while you have a problem with egg-laying workers bees.  The worker bees start laying eggs, but those eggs will only produce drones because they are unfertilized.  

This spells doom for the colony because the only job the drones know how to do is to mate.  They don’t collect pollen or nectar, nor do they carry out any other jobs vital to the colony’s health (i.e., nursing brood, guarding the hive entrance, or cleaning house). 

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A queen bee experiences a form of body shaming.  Once the queen has mated and her abdomen becomes swollen with eggs, she is too heavy to fly.  So what happens when the colony decides to swarm and establish a new hive?  

She’s put on a crash diet.  Her attendants stop feeding her and they start pushing her around the hive to burn off her excess fat.  To keep her moving, they may bite her or grab her with their forearms to shake her violently.

Moreover, her majesty is held to the highest standards of perfection.  If the colony detects any flaw in its queen, they will kill her and create a new queen.  

What constitutes a fatal imperfection seems arbitrary and unfair at times.  It may be reasonable to replace a queen is if the quality of her egg-laying has declined.  But a queen may be usurped as the result of a tiny and seemingly irrelevant defect –for example, if she has a slightly shortened leg, or asymmetrical antennae. 

The process of killing the queen is called “balling.”  A large mass of workers literally forms a tight ball around her and generates enough body heat that they cook her to death.  How rude! 

[You can click here to see a video of worker bees “balling” their queen.]

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I explained above how a colony will replace a queen that falls short of expectations.  Beekeepers will also “requeen” the colony if there are signs that the queen’s laying instincts are subpar – she may be guilty of sloppy egg laying, for example— or her egg production drops. 

Beekeepers simply squash such nonproductive queens and replace them with mated queens purchased from a supplier.  (That’s right – there are people who breed and sell queen bees.) 

Though it may seem cruel, requeening helps the colony maintain strong genetics, which helps with pest and disease management.  It also creates a “brood break,” which can interrupt an infestation by one of the biggest threats to a bee colony, the varroa mite:

Varroa mites

So being a real queen bee is hardly a sweet gig.  (You might want to think twice before you call someone a queen bee!)

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It’s not easy being any caste of honeybee.  In addition to worker bees naturally working themselves to an early death at about six weeks of age, there are many external threats to the species.  

Honeybees – who are not native to North America, having been brought here by European colonists in the early 17th century – face many dangers: pesticides and parasites, to name just two.  As a result, honeybee populations are declining despite the feverish efforts of scientists working to reverse that trend. 

How can you help the honeybee? Here are just a few ways:

First of all, protect wildflowers.  Avoid disturbing meadows or other places where patches of wildflowers grow.  Some states allow you to plant wildflowers on public highways when you join an “adopt a highway” program. (Check with your state department of transportation.  And ask them if your state has a special license plate recognizing pollinators – if it doesn’t, you can petition for the creation of one.)

Next, plant a pollinator-friendly garden. (You can click here to get some tips for creating a honeybee-friendly garden from The Honeybee Conservancy.) 

And leave your dandelions alone.  Though they are considered a weed, dandelions are vital to the bees’ survival.  They are the #1 source of food for honeybees in early spring before most plants begin to flower.  I’m not saying you can’t mow your lawn – that may even help spread dandelion seeds – but maybe you can stop squirting every dandelion you see with Roundup.

Speaking of Roundup, laying off pesticides in general will help the bees.  (Maybe you can ask your neighbors to refrain as well.) 

Finally, please leave swarming bees alone.  Swarming bees are just moving to a new home, and pose no threat to humans – in fact, bees are at their most docile while swarming.  They are focused on staying close to their queen and waiting for scout bees to report on their house hunting.  

So if you see a large cluster of bees on a car, structure or patio table, don’t panic. They should move along within several hours (though they may hang around for a day or two).  However, if they don’t move along quickly enough for you, contact your local beekeeping club and see if anyone will come out and catch the swarm.  (Someone should jump at the chance to get free bees!)

I hope you’ve enjoyed this perspective of honeybees and that you’re inspired to learn more about the hardest working insect in “show buzz.”  (Sorry!) There is a ton of information out there for learning about these amazing creatures, so educate yourself.  (You can click here to visit one of my favorite beekeeping websites.)

You’ll amaze people at parties with your new-found knowledge – although I’ve bored my family and friends so much the past year that I should probably get one of these:

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Kerri, thanks for all the time and effort you put into your guest post.

As far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing better than a good guest-written 2 or 3 lines post.  It’s a welcome change of pace for my loyal readers, and it saves me a lot of work.  Winner, winner, chicken dinner!

Click here to listen to today’s featured song, “Honeycomb.”

Click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon:

Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys – "Take Me Back to Tulsa" (1941)

Little bee sucks the blossom

Big bee gets the honey

I met Kerri Griffin when she was a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed young lawyer just starting out at my old law firm.

The partners who Kerri worked for – including me – had a high opinion of her work.  She was even-tempered and easy to get along with, and her somewhat conventional exterior hid a very quirky sense of humor. 

Kerri eventually moved on to another law firm, and then decided she had better things to do with her life than be a lawyer.  

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After having a baby about ten years ago, Kerri started a blog called “Naptime Huddle,” which combined NFL-related posts with recipes.  

I contributed several guest posts to “Naptime Huddle” back in the day and Kerri returned the favor by writing guest posts for 2 or 3 lines.  (You click here to read the “Naptime Huddle” post featuring my killer gazpacho recipe.  And you can click here to read Kerri’s first 2 or 3 lines contribution.)

A few years ago, Kerri and her husband John packed up their son, daughter, and dog and moved to Culpeper, VA – which is about 70 miles southwest of downtown Washington, DC.  Since moving, they added a second dog to their family – not to mention some 100,000 bees.

An Apis mellifera (or western honey bee)

I learned from Facebook that Kerri became a beekeeper last year.  That’s a hobby I’ve certainly never considered pursuing, so I had to ask Kerri what was behind her decision.

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2 or 3 lines: Kerri, what made you decide to be a beekeeper?

Kerri: When John and I were planning our move out here, he kept bringing up the possibility of getting some kind of livestock – maybe chickens or goats . . . he seemed particularly interested in goats.  Knowing I’d be the one doing most of the husbandry – especially the less glamorous work – I kept shooting down his suggestions.  Then bees occurred to me – I already knew that they were really cool, and I thought it would be a different way to keep busy.  Plus bees don’t take up much space, and they’re not messy.  So I took a one-day introductory beekeeping class at a local bee supply store, and that hooked me.  

2 or 3 lines:  So bees are easier than goats?

Kerri: I have no idea – we never got any goats – but I will admit that I definitely underestimated the expense and the amount of labor  required to keep bees.

2 or 3 lines:  Have you harvested any honey yet?

Kerri:  Generally speaking, you don’t harvest honey your first year.  Your hives just can’t build up sufficient numbers to make enough honey that there is any extra for you to keep.  Once you get past the “nectar flow” – that’s the time when nectar sources are blooming in the spring and early summer – your focus in late summer and through the fall is preparing the hives for winter.  With the climate around here, each hive needs about 60 pounds of honey to get through winter and into early spring, when things start to bloom again.

2 or 3 lines: Once a hive is built up, how do you actually harvest the extra honey?

Kerri:  The bees live in two boxes.  Picture a two-drawer file cabinet – the frames that they build honeycomb on are like hanging files.  If the bees are able to fill up all of the frames in those two boxes during the buildup of the hive in spring, then you can add a honey “super,” which is a box that is about half the depth of the other boxes.  Any honey that is stored in that is what you can keep.  If you’re lucky, you might harvest two or more of these boxes from one hive in one season.

2 or 3 lines: Is it complicated to harvest honey?

Kerri: That depends on how you want your honey.  If you’re looking to harvest comb honey, you simply carve out a slice of honeycomb and put it in a jar.  But most people want plain honey.  Extracting honey from the comb is not exactly simple.  Once the bees have created honey, they cap the cells of honeycomb with wax.  So the first thing you have to do is to remove these cappings.  There are many tools you can use, from a simple scraping fork to heated electric knives.  Then you place the honeycomb into a honey extractor, which spins the honey out of the comb using centrifugal force.  The simplest (and cheapest) extractors only hold three or four frames of honeycomb and are manually cranked.  Top-of-the-line extractors can hold more frames and have powerful motors to spin them.  When the combs are drained, the honey goes into a bucket, which has a strainer on top. The bucket has a spigot at the bottom, so the honey goes from there into bottles or jars.

Kerri and her kids visit her bees

2 or 3 lines: So how did things go for you in your first season?

Kerri: One of my hives filled about half of a super by the end of summer, but I kept that honey to make sure I had enough feed the bees early this spring.  I really have no idea how much honey I might end up with this year.  My first batch will go to friends and family, but I would very much like to sell honey at a farmer’s market at some point.  We also have some prolific blueberry bushes, so maybe I’ll sell some berries as well.

2 and 3 lines: When you and I worked together, we spent a lot of our time evaluating health claims for foods, drugs, and dietary supplements that our clients wanted to make in their advertising.  There are a lot of health claims for honey and especially royal jelly, which is the honeybee secretion that is fed to queens.  Do you buy all those claims?

Kerri: The basic nutritional value of honey is not much in dispute – it has been consumed for thousands of years as a sweetener, and a lot of people believe it has health benefits.  I’m unclear about what specific health benefits have been substantiated by research, but I know the federal government has challenged advertising claims for royal jelly in particular.  Honey definitely has one unique property: since bacteria can’t survive in honey, it never spoils.  You may have had old honey crystallize, but it’s safe to eat – just heat it up a little to get rid of the crystals. 

2 or 3 lines: I think I’d have a hard time getting over my fear of being stung.  How afraid were you when you were getting started?  Are you completely comfortable with your bees now?

Kerri: I absolutely had fear at the beginning.  Before my first several interactions with them – picking up the packages of bees and installing them in the hive, and my first few inspections – I had butterflies and not just a little anxiety.  But eventually I was able to relax.  You have to be quite focused on the task at hand as you’re working with them – you have to push other thoughts aside.  Holding a frame covered with over a thousand bees puts you a little bit in awe of yourself, and you get a little more confidence after every trip to the apiary.  Stings are no fun – and I’ve been stung a few times – but it’s kind of like a rookie quarterback getting hit hard at the start of an NFL game.  Once you know what to expect, you don’t dread it as much.

2 or 3 lines:  But NFL quarterbacks wear helmets and lots of padding.  What kind of protective gear do you wear when working with your bees?

Kerri:  There are a variety of protective items you can wear, depending on your level of confidence: a hat with a veil, a heavy jacket and pants, thick gloves – some people don’t wear gloves, or just go with thin nitrile gloves.  There’s even a one-piece garment that has everything except the gloves – essentially long-sleeved coveralls with a netted head covering attached.  In the high heat of summer, you can easily get heatstroke if you aren’t well hydrated, so I’ve heard that people who like those coveralls wear only their underwear or a bathing suit under them.  Personally I wear a wide-brimmed hat with veil attached, a pullover jacket made of fairly thin material, a long-sleeved shirt under the jacket – because I have been stung through my jacket – my thickest pair of jeans (which I now only wear for this purpose), and rain boots that I can tuck my jeans into.

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The next 2 or 3 lines will feature an essay Kerri wrote about queen bees.  I guarantee you that it’s going to make you want to know even more about honeybees.

My thanks to her for all the time she put into writing that essay – which will include some fascinating photos and videos of honeybees in action – not to mention the time she spent answering all my questions today.

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Bob Wills, who formed the Texas Playboys in 1934, essentially invented the “Western swing” music genre.  He’s one of the very few people to have been inducted into both the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Bob Wills

To paraphrase Sir Walter Scott, “Breathes there the man (or woman) with soul so dead, who never to himself hath said ‘Take Me Back to Tulsa’ is SILLY BAZILLY”?

Click here to listen to “Take Me Back to Tulsa,” which was a big hit for the Texas Playboys in 1941.

Click here to buy the song from Amazon.

Michel Pagliaro – "Some Sing, Some Dance" (1971)

Now that I know you could be untrue

Now that I know I could hold you

Well, I do  . . . need to hold you

In the last 2 or 3 lines, I told you about a letter to “Ask Amy” – a syndicated newspaper advice column – that I recently read. 

Here’s another recent “Ask Amy” inquiry:

Dear Amy: 

I was dating a 45-year-old man.  He was married for 20 years, had been legally separated for four years and divorced now for six months.

He seems to think it is normal for him and his ex-wife to sleep together naked when they visit each other, which they do almost every month.  He told me that my objections reflected my narrow American view, and he said their relationship was not sexual.

He is Canadian.

Sexy Canadian dude

Call me crazy, but that just did not seem to be normal behavior, regardless of cultural differences.

Your thoughts?

Not Crazy?

Here’s Amy’s response:

Dear Not Crazy: 

Your guy was accusing you of “narrow American values.”  So let’s say he’s telling the truth.  Perhaps he really is merely resting his eyes while naked.  Whatever they are up to, I would say it’s highly irregular.

This dude may have been Canadian, but regardless of his nationality (or his religion, or his occupation, or the color of his hair – assuming he still has his hair) he is first and foremost a male.  Given that, I can guaran-damn-tee you that he was not “merely resting his eyes.”

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Amy seems to have overlooked the elephant in the room, which was how in the hell did “Not Crazy” find out that the Canadian dude was sleeping naked with his ex-wife?

Even sexier Canadian dude

It’s possible that she followed him, peeked in the bedroom window, and caught them in flagrante delicto.  But I doubt it.  

My guess is that our Canadian friend up and told her what he was doing with his ex. 

In which case, he might actually be telling the truth.  (Otherwise, he would surely have kept his big Canadian piehole shut.)

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Michel Pagliaro – his full name is Michel Armand Guy Pagliaro – was a sexy beast back in the day:

Today, not so much:

“Some Sing, Some Dance” – parts of which sound exactly like an early Lennon-McCartney song – was a hit for Pagliaro in 1971.  I first heard it in the summer of 1980 on Steven Lorber’s “Mystic Eyes” radio show.

Click here to listen to “Some Sing, Some Dance.”

Click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon:

Holly and the Italians – "Tell That Girl to Shut Up" (1979)

You better tell that girl to shut up

You better tell that girl I’m gonna beat her up

I’m not sure why I still subscribe to the Washington Post.

There’s no sports section to speak of any more (because there’s no sports).  

It’s not for the comic strips.  The Post has no fewer than 83, but I only read one of them (Dilbert).

And there’s nothing of real value in the front section – just a lot of opinion and Monday-morning quarterbacking. 

That leaves the advice columns. 

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Amy Dickinson succeeded Ann Landers as the Chicago Tribune’s advice columnist.  Today her “Ask Amy” column is carried by 150 newspapers, including the Post.

Here’s a recent inquiry from one of her readers:

Dear Amy: 

I live within one of the most extremist liberal bastions in the country.  Men here are minimized, ordered to the rear and, even more often, told precisely what we should think and do.

I am an active 63-year-old guy and have worked hard to get where I am.  I wish to enjoy my life to the fullest by riding motorcycles up and down the coast and sea kayaking in open water.

Amy Dickinson of "Ask Amy" fame

Fortunately, I often am joined by much younger “Barbie doll” types.  I have invited many women my age to join me, but I am hatefully told that I am an old fool to be seen with these much younger women.

Why do I have to live my life at the speed of smell just to satisfy these old, progressive, blue-haired biddies marching toward the end of their lives by becoming bingo captains at their church?

Is acting young and refusing to slow down to please the liberal slug-masters of my community wrong?

Living My Life

(“Speed of smell”?  I have never heard that term before – have you?  I assume he’s saying that the speed of smell is quite slow compared to the speed of sound or the speed of light, and that he has no desire to live his life at such a slow speed.)

Here’s Amy’s reply:

Dear Living My Life: 

As long as you stereotype people the way you do, you’re going to get stereotyped, too.

You are way too invested in and angry about other people’s opinions about you.  In fact, due to the volume and pitch of your protest, I can only assume that on some level you fear you wouldn’t be able to keep up with the social and intellectual challenges of being with a woman in your age group.

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Speaking of stereotyping, Amy clearly believes that younger women are the intellectual inferiors of older women.  So she’s just as guilty of stereotypical thinking as “Living My Life” is.

This is a clear case of the pot calling the kettle black.  Which, by the way, is one of my three favorite old-timey expressions.  (The other two are “Six of one, half a dozen of the other” and “It’s every man for himself, and the devil take the hindmost.”)

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If “Living My Life” had written to me instead of to Amy, I might have asked him who was paying the bills on these motorcycle adventures, etc.  My guess is that these “Barbie doll” types who are hanging out with his sorry old ass would head for the hills if he ever suggested that they split the dinner tab.  Of course, the same would likely be true if he was dating women closer to his own age.

In a recent survey conducted by Money magazine, a whopping 72% of women said they think men should pay for the first date.  (Most of the 28% who answered otherwise aren’t really telling the truth – they may believe in going Dutch in theory, but I guarantee you that most of them would be offended if the man didn’t at least offer to pay the whole bill.)  

Even after the first date, men tend to pick up the majority of expenses because they feel guilty taking money from women. 

Here’s what one woman had to say about this issue:

It’s not fair that straight men feel obligated to pay for their female dates, but it’s ultimately worse for the women.  Social scientists label chivalrous behavior like treating women to dinner, “benevolent sexism.”  Benevolent sexism is the notion that women should be adored and cherished, along with the paternalistic notion that they need men’s protection.  It reinforces stereotypes that women are both fabulous and fragile, and that they need men’s help. 

So you’ve got two choices, fellas.  You can go Dutch and be viewed as a cheapskate.  Or you can pick up the tab and be perceived as a sexist – albeit a benevolent one.

You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t – it’s six of one, half a dozen of the other.

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Holly Beth Vincent formed Holly and the Italians in Los Angeles in 1978.  The next year, the group moved to London so Vincent could live with her boyfriend, Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits.

“Tell That Girl to Shut Up” was released in December 1979, when Holly and the Italians were still in London.  The band moved back to the U.S. to record their first and only album, The Right to Be Italian, which was released in early 1981.

I heard “Tell That Girl to Shut Up” on Steven Lorber’s “Mystic Eyes” radio show in the summer of 1980.  I bought the album shortly after it was released, and sold it to Steven last year after schlepping it around for 40 years.

Click here to listen to “Tell That Girl to Shut Up.”

Click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon:

Stranglers – "Straighten Out" (1977)

I’ll tell you things

That’ll make your curls

Straighten out

[NOTE: This post started out as one thing, and ended up as something very different.  

I took a long bike ride on Sunday, and planned to write a post about the history of the rail trail I rode – including photos of flowers, old buildings, and train cars that I took while on the ride.  But I stumbled upon something that took me in a very different direction.  

What this post ultimately ended up becoming is interesting, I think, but also very sad.  So if you’re not in the mood for something like that today, feel free just to skip to the end and listen to today’s featured song.]

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On November 18, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln took a Northern Central Railway train from Baltimore to Hanover Junction, Pennsylvania, where he connected to a Hanover Branch Railroad train that took him and his party to Gettysburg:

Lincoln’s Gettysburg train
at Hanover Junction in 1863

The next day, Lincoln attended the dedication of the Gettysburg National Cemetery, and delivered the most famous speech in American history – the 271-word Gettysburg Address. 

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Lincoln passed through Hanover Junction one other time.  On April 21, 1865, a Northern Central Railway train carrying the martyred president’s coffin left Baltimore and passed through Hanover Junction on the way to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

There it was carried by hearse to the State Capitol, where approximately 10,000 mourners filed past the coffin that night.

The next day, the coffin was placed on a train that carried it to Philadelphia.  Lincoln’s train eventually passed through New York City, Albany, Buffalo, Cleveland, Columbus, Indianapolis, and Chicago before arriving at Springfield, Illinois on May 3.

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The Northern Central Railway ceased operations in 1972, and the 41-mile stretch of its right-of-way that ran from Baltimore to York, Pennsylvania, eventually became a rail trail.

A replica of a Lincoln-era train
at Hanover Junction

The Pennsylvania portion of that rail trail is officially known as the York County Heritage Rail Trail.  On Mother’s Day, I rode the southern half of that trail from New Freedom – which sits just above the Mason-Dixon Line – to Hanover Junction and back.  

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There are quite a few benches along the rail trail where tired hikers or bikers can stop and rest.  Nearly all those benches have small plaques commemorating a friend or family member who has passed away.

I happened to notice one such plaque that was a little different:

“End of watch” has two meanings when used by law enforcement personnel.  It usually refers to the end of a police officer’s shift, or “watch.”  But it can also refer to the date of the death of an officer who was killed in the line of duty.

Here’s an account of Officer David Tome’s death from a local newspaper:

David Tome died doing what he loved – being a police officer.

Those who knew Tome said he was a dedicated officer with Northern York County Regional Police, a great husband and father of two and an all-around likeable guy. . . .

While re-creating a fatal crash from earlier in the week, Tome was struck and killed Tuesday by a vehicle on Route 15, near Clear Springs Road in Franklin Township.  Tome and two other officers had set up orange warning cones in the middle of the right southbound lane of Route 15 about 9 a.m. when he was struck.

York County Coroner Barry Bloss said Tome's family is struggling to understand the death.

"They are absolutely devastated," he said.

Tome, 31, graduated from Spring Grove Area High School in 1996. His wife of seven years, Dody, was his classmate. The couple has a son and a daughter.

Tome became a police officer after graduating from Harrisburg Area Community College's 83rd Police Academy in 2003. He served as a regional officer for the past five years.

[Police chief Carl] Segatti said Tome was a good officer with a strong work ethic.  He loved and enjoyed his job in the uniformed patrol division, where he specialized as an accident reconstructionist, Segatti said.

Officer David Tome

The two other officers who were there at the time of the crash are doing as well as can be expected, Segatti said.  The police department closed Wednesday to mourn the loss of a fellow officer, he said. . . .

Fellow police officers have taken the death rather hard, a reality check that the job is often dangerous and deadly, several law enforcement representatives said.

"We like to think we are tougher than the average citizen out there," Segatti said. "We are when we have work to do.  But we have the same emotions as everyone.  We just don't have the luxury to show them."

Tome was struck by a 2006 Saturn Vue driven by Joanna Seibert of Dillsburg.  Seibert was shaken up by the crash and taken to Gettysburg Hospital for observation, police said.

Through a family member, Seibert declined to comment Tuesday.

Based on a preliminary investigation, Seibert hit the brakes and tried to stop before hitting Tome.  The impact sent Tome's body over a guardrail and down an embankment, killing him instantly.

An autopsy conducted Tuesday at Lehigh Valley Hospital determined Tome died of multiple blunt force trauma.

 Officer Tome's fellow officers pay tribute to him 

Based on the location of the injuries, it appears Tome was hit from the back or the side, indicating he either did not see the car coming or saw it at the last second, Bloss said.

By the time Tome heard Seibert skidding on the highway, it was too late to get out of the way, he said.

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Joanna Seibert was convicted of vehicular homicide in the death of Officer Tome.  This account of her November 30, 2011, sentencing is from another local newspaper article:

A Dillsburg woman convicted in a crash that killed a police officer was sentenced today to . . . 1 year minus a day to 5 years minus a day in York County Prison.

The judge rejected a request for house arrest for Seibert, who is pregnant.  She's due to deliver in mid-February, so Kelly ordered her to begin serving on March 14.

Seibert, 40, was convicted Oct. 12 of homicide by vehicle and tampering with evidence in the 2008 accident on Route 15 near Dillsburg in which Northern York County Regional Police Officer David Tome, 31, was hit and killed by Seibert’s SUV.

The sentencing came after two hours of emotional testimony from Tome’’ and Seibert’s families this afternoon.

Jamie Bell, Tome's sister, said there are mementos and monuments to Tome in York County, “but they're all we have. There's no David.”

She said she hadn't heard from Seibert since the crash and didn't care to hear from her today. “I am not going to forgive you,” Bell said. “As far as I'm concerned, you can go to hell.”

Seibert said she thinks about Tome every day and that if it would ease the family's grief she would trade places with him.  “But that cannot happen,” she said.

Tome was starting work on an accident reconstruction on Route 15 south near Clear Spring Road in Franklin Township south of Dillsburg when he was hit and killed on Oct, 21, 2008.  Seibert was speeding and tailgating the vehicle ahead of her and had been using her iPhone and applying makeup.  [NOTE: Seibert maintained she was distracted by something in her eye.]  

Prosecutor Tim Barker has called those three factors, speeding, tailgating and not paying attention, “the trifecta of death.”

In court documents, Seibert said she is pregnant and had asked the court to sentence her to house arrest.  Defense lawyer Ed Spreha said house arrest is appropriate because of a serious medical condition discovered in the fetus.  Spreha said the baby has been diagnosed with a potentially life-threatening condition that will require Seibert to relocate to the Philadelphia area for monitoring during the rest of her pregnancy. . . .

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You might suspect Seibert and her lawyer of exaggerating the seriousness of her unborn baby’s condition in hopes of persuading the judge not to send her to prison.  But you would be wrong.  

Seibert gave birth to a daughter with a congenital diaphragmatic hernia, or CDH – the “potentially life-threatening condition” mentioned in there article above – in February 2012.  

The little girl died six weeks later, on March 15.

Seibert had originally been scheduled to start her prison term on March 14.  But after her baby was born, a judge delayed her reporting date until May 9.

She eventually served ten months in prison. 

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Most of the comments that were posted in response to a newspaper article announcing her early release expressed outrage:

– A wife without a husband, two children without a father for s lifetime, and the person who robbed them of him serves less than a year.  This disgusts me. . . . This punishment in no way fits the crime. 

– This is bullshit!!!!!  This wasn’t even her first offense of reckless driving!!!!!  She should have had to do life in prison . . . . Just sickening.

– This worthless bitch needs to rot in hell.

A few – very few – of the comments were more forgiving:

–It would be interesting to see how all those quick to judge (of course you have never made a mistake, needed a second chance, driven distracted . . . you’re all saints) would feel if the killer was your family member as opposed to the victim.  There are always two perspectives.  You could be changing a radio station tomorrow and hit someone . . . does that mean you deserve to fry, rot in hell, etc.?

– Pray for her, her family and Officer Tome’s family.  If you judge, you will be judged!  We all are guilty of something!  Let ye who have not sinned cast stones!

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I had no idea what I was getting into when I decided to post a photo of the rail-trail bench with the plaque commemorating Officer Tone.

But once I started telling the story, I didn’t feel that I could stop in the middle of it.

The deeper I got into it, the worse things got.  Unfortunately, that’s the way life goes sometimes.

There’s really no good way to end this post, is there?

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Today’s featured song was a non-album B-side released by the Stranglers in 1977.  (If a song as good as “Straighten Out” wasn’t good enough to be included on one of the Stranglers’ albums, imagine how good the songs that did make the cut were.)

The Stranglers in 1978

I first heard “Straighten Out” on  Steven Lorber’s legendary “Mystic Eyes” radio show in the summer of 1980.

Click here to listen to “Straighten Out.”

Click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon: