Monthly Archives: November 2013

Armistice Day Snow

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I’m the only one that’s going to call yesterday’s snow the Armistice Day Snow of 2013, but I’m peculiar that way. The name echoes the Armistice Day Blizzard of 1940, but of course yesterday’s event wasn’t nearly as severe, or unexpected. The Minnesota Historical Society remembers 1940. So does Ludington, Mich.

Or call it the Veterans Day Snow of 2013. It was strange to watch snowflakes blow by and the ground whiten up this early.

The view from the back door.

The dog didn’t mind the snow.

Thought so. She’s an Illinois hound, after all, and her coat has been noticeably thickening in recent weeks.

Armistice Day 2013

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“The Armistice” by Eugene Savage, on display at the Elks National Veterans Memorial, Chicago.

Posted nearby is the following:

The principal figure near the center is the Madonna, the Mother of Christ, the Prince of Peace. She portrays the bereaved mother with raised hands in a gesture of stopping contending forces from opposite sides. She looks down sorrowfully upon the figure of Hope, now chained to a gun carriage, symbolizing ruthless force. Those who have come to grief and defeat in the trenches are crawling out. An old clock, stopped at the Hour of Eleven, indicates the significant hour of the signing of the Armistice – the 11th Hour of the 11th Day of November, 1918. The idols and gold cloth flung about represent the ruthless destruction of churches and things made by Man. The hands pointing accusing fingers and the expression of horror on the faces of the soldiers on the top right effectively recall the unspeakable Horror of War. Balancing this are the American Soldiers, on the left, with Smiles of Joy, who are beginning the Celebration of the End of the War. They have just heard the news of the Armistice, and are ringing a bell salvaged from the ruins, upon which they carry a French peasant girl. The Dove, Olive Branch and Rainbow fill out the scene, indicating Promise of a New Peace.

Old Tractors & Old Abe

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At the College of the Ozarks is the Ralph Foster Museum, and at the Ralph Foster Museum is a modified 1921 Oldsmobile Model 46 Roadster, the truck used in the Beverly Hillbillies. I didn’t get to see that because the museum was closed the day I visited in early November last year.

Instead we went to the Gaetz Tractor Museum. On display are such marvels of the machine age as the two-cylinder, three-ton Advance Rumely, introduced in 1924.

There’s also a Rumely 6A, vintage 1930, as well as four-cylinder, three-ton Case model K, ca. 1927.

Made by the J.I. Case Threshing Machine Co., which was eventually M&A’d out of existence as a separate entity. Now that’s a corporate name. Beats much of what we have now, such as the Three Initial Corp. or the Random-Syllable Co.

Note the eagle. That was J.I. Case’s corporate symbol, but it isn’t just any eagle. It’s Old Abe.

Old Abe – a living eagle – was the mascot of the 8th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry Regiment from 1861 to ’64. Quite a story. Bonanzaville, an open-air museum in West Fargo, ND, that we visited in ’06, has a striking Case Eagle on display.

Thursday Bits

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In the mid-afternoon, a call center employee called me, pitching an extended service plan for a major appliance I bought about a year ago. That doesn’t count as violating the do-not-call list, I suppose, because of some verbiage in the sales agreement. She was about 15 seconds into her pitch when I offered up a curt “no thanks” and hung up.

My reasoning about most service plans and extended warranties and so on is fairly simple. If it were to my benefit, the company wouldn’t be offering it. The odds are I’d pay them to do nothing, and they know it. I know it too.

I saw about 20 minutes of Geronimo the other day – the latest in a long line of movies I’ve seen bits and pieces of. It’s vintage 1962, so while the Indians were portrayed sympathetically, the title character wasn’t actually played by an Indian. I recognized him at once: Chuck Connors.

His blue eyes weren’t the only Hollywood stretchers in the movie. In 1886, when the story takes place, Geronimo was already in his late 50s. Connors was about 40, and a buff 40 at that. The Apache warrior’s wife was played by an Indian, however. An actress born in Bombay.

Never mind. One of the U.S. cavalry officers looked awfully familiar. The one who wanted to let Geronimo surrender, rather than blow him up with artillery, as his commander seemed eager to do. Who? I thought for a minute. Adam West. A pre-Batman Adam West.

Here’s a lesser-known Geronimo story: as an old man at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904.

I had reason to be out briefly at about 11 p.m. tonight, under a near-cold, clear sky. I had to look for him and he was there, off in the southeast, large and rising over the horizon: Orion. Harbinger of winter in these parts. So are the chill in the air and the increasingly bare trees, but it’s good to have celestial cues, too.

Mommy SEO! Our Limited Supply is Very Nearly Gone

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More rain through the night. It’s a good to be in a dry bed, drifting off to sleep, at times like that. The day was classic November gray.

The following arrived in the in box of an email system one of my clients lets me use. I dislike getting anything in that in box not related to the work I do for them, because the incoming volume’s high and it’s all too easy to lose track of something useful. So this is pretty much the definition of useless clutter, as far as I’m concerned:

I specialize in driving new traffic through Google+1 public backlinks and social network activity. I am a Mommy Blogger with a large Mommy Blogger network. If you have a website or product that fits well with Mommy Bloggers I can drive Mommy Blogger traffic your way in mass.

I would love to work with you and prove the results firsthand. To showcase my work I am glad to offer a one time [sic] package of 20 Google+1 backlinks or 100 new Facebook Likes to a website of your choice FREE of charge. You can visit my Mommy Blogger SEO website here…

Most of the men who went off to the goldfields in California or the Yukon or Australia or wherever didn’t make much, if any, money. The fellow who got rich sold them equipment and provisions.

Wacky Packages Are Definitely Non-Edible

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Gray all day and then rain into the night. Light, steady rain that helps bring down the colorful leaves. On Sunday, under cerulean skies, diligent neighbors were outside collecting leaves. We weren’t so diligent, but I have a rationale (rationalization, perhaps). If you rake leaves on November 2, they’ll be more by November 9, and more still on the 16th. Best to wait.

Maybe in 20 or 30 years, raking leaves will be passé anyway. Leaves are just biomass nutrients for next year’s lawn, after all – which will be left uncut by right-thinking householders to save energy and encourage prairie restoration and wildflower cultivation to keep bees alive. I know I would skip lawn mowing if it meant saving the bees; I’m eco-minded that way.

Speaking of things that are passé, while digging through my desk recently – it often sports stacks of papers waiting for attention, because the only papers that need attention right away are slips payable to me, slips with information about how much I have to pay someone, and occasional personal letters or postcards – I found an early 2013-14 school year letter from Quincy Adams Wagstaff Elementary School.

Dear Parents/Guardians,

Birthdays are important to children and we want our students to be recognized on their special days…. Due to the rise in food allergies nationwide, and to promote healthy dietary choices and dental health, your child will be allowed to bring non-edible [their emphasis] birthday treats only…

The days of buying doughnuts for your kid’s class, in other words, are over. I don’t remember that we were entirely consistent about that, but during Lilly’s time at the school, and at least once for Ann, I remember going to our local doughnut shop early and getting three dozen doughnuts for the class: a mix of glazed and chocolate frosted, I think.

The letter continues —

Some ideas include:

Stickers

Bookmarks

Pencils/erasers

Fun items found at dollar stores

Donating a book to the classroom library in honor of your child

We are confident that these types of fun items will be just as enjoyable for classmates to receive on your child’s birthday…

Signed, the principal and the school nurse.

I’m not confident stickers or pencils or especially a donated book will go down as well as doughnuts, but I’m also slow when it comes to the latest in child psychology. Come to think of it, trading cards might be just the thing if they were along the lines of the perfectly juvenile Wacky Packages. I remember a few of these from junior high, even though I never bought any myself.

My Own Private North America

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The following is an exercise in self-absorption. But then, what’s a blog for? Recently I chanced across a site that would generate color-coded maps not just of states and provinces you’ve visited, but rank them with a five-color scheme (counting no color). The site of origin is the not-very-often-updated defocus-blog.

I’m changing defocus-blog’s suggested definitions of the colors a little to suit myself.

Green: either lived in these places or visited so many times I’ve lost count. Very familiar.

Blue: Numerous visits covering a fair amount of the state or province, or one or two visits of strong intensity and some variety. Fairly familiar.

Orange: Spent the night at least once, saw a relatively limited number of places.

Pink: Passed through (on the ground) but didn’t spend the night.

White (no color): Never visited.

The difference between orange and blue is sometimes a little hazy. For instance, I thought for a while about the color of Alabama and Georgia, places I’ve been more than once, and decided that I haven’t really seen that much of them. (I need to see Mobile and Savannah, I think, and some spots in between). The rest of New England (except for Rhode Island) could be blue, maybe, since I visited more than once — and they aren’t that big — and Louisiana might merit orange, but Louisiana has offered up some intense visits.

I don’t particularly aspire to add any more green states or provinces. But I would like to convert orange and pink to blue, and fill in those pesky white spots, which naturally are all pretty far from each other and me.

The Final Roundup for Woody

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Looks like peak coloration is here. Or least a lot of yellows and reds and browns and even a spot of orange. The skies have been gray much of the weekend, so that adds to the contrast.

Alas, poor Woody. The dog did a little brain surgery on him this weekend. Not sure how he got on the floor. Maybe he was trying to escape while we weren’t watching. I seem to remember some movies along those lines. But the dog seems to have been watching.

I expect we’ll have to take Woody up to Boot Hill and lay him to rest. The dog does exactly the same thing to a number of rubber ducks she’s chewed on. Goes right for the head, she does.