Monthly Archives: March 2015

The Telephone Pole Faces of E. 57th

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On Sunday, Lilly and I drove to Hyde Park, home to the University of Chicago and neighborhood eateries such as Salonica, a Greek diner on E. 57th St. at Blackstone Ave. Yuriko, Ann and I ate there last year during our visit to see the Robie House and other Hyde Park places.

This time, Lilly and I ate there. It was busy at about noon, but the line wasn’t out of the door. The patrons were a good mix of students and neighborhood residents. At least, I’m fairly sure that the grayhairs and young families were locals; and the young men and women — every jack one of the men with a beard — were students.

Salonica, Hyde ParkLilly had an omelet, I had pancakes. It’s the kind of place that serves tasty breakfasts all day, besides Greek items and sandwiches. In a place like this, breakfast is the thing for me. If I’ve already had breakfast that day, I have another. So it was this time.

A block and half west of Salonica are two telephone poles flanking the spot where the alley between Dorchester Ave. and the small Bixler Park meets E. 57th St. Each of the poles is painted with a green image at about eye level. Facelike, green with a yellow outline and blue and orange details. Maybe it’s not supposed to be a face. Whatever it is, it’s a lively work.

E 57th St ChicagoI remembered seeing them last year, so they’ve been around at least that long. If you go to Google Streetview, you can see them as green splotches.

Nothing like a little local detail. Hyperlocal detail, it is. Not even the most experiential-oriented, don’t-ever-admit-you’re-a-tourist-even-though-you-are guidebooks or web sites can cover that kind of thing.

Pi ’15

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Pi Day 2015 has come and gone. Word was this one was distinctive in that 3.1415 could also be taken to stand for March 14, ’15, something that happens once a century. A Saturday this year, meaning we were mostly at home doing nothing related to pi. Which would have been the case any other day of the week, come to think of it. But it’s one of those days that’s good to note in passing.

Lilly had a shirt for the occasion, sold for a not-too-outrageous cost by the high school math club or some such.

Lilly March 14, 2015An aggressive Pi, that one. Pushy Pi. Here are other representations of everyone’s favorite irrational number. Too bad for e, always second banana to pi. E Day would be Feb 7, but that’ll never catch on.

Prefecture Osaka

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PrefectureOsakaTwenty-five years ago this week, primed by a young man’s sense of adventure, I moved to Japan. Eventually I learned my way around, literally and figuratively, without the assistance of the Internet, since it wasn’t in common use. One of my better investments along those lines — literally getting around, that is — was a paper atlas called Prefecture Osaka.

At least, those were the roman-letter words on the cover. In fact, those were the only roman letters in the entire book. Extracting useful information sometimes took a while but — in that great eventually again — I learned my way around the book, too.

Sometimes I would stare at it, just because I enjoyed looking at it. The lines, the tints, the utterly foreign script — it’s a beautiful group of maps. This is one of the pages. As it happens, the northern part of Sumiyoshi Ward, which is where I lived. My block’s nearly in the fold, so it isn’t displayed here. But a lot of familiar places are.

OsakaMapOldNeighborhoodThe whole-page scan doesn’t really do it justice, though. Even the close-up doesn’t, but imagine a crisp paper version of this image, because digital will never capture the aesthetics of paper.

OsakaMapOldNeighborhood2The bright yellow rectangle is the JR Nagai station (these tracks). The white rectangle is the Nagai subway station on the Midosuji Line. I rarely used JR, but I went to the Nagai subway station just about every day. Urban Japan, as our urban planners say, has high walkability.

The ward was further divided, as marked by different tints on the map. My area was called Nagai-Nishi: West Nagai. That was further subdivided — twice. The smallest divisions are the blocks marked by the small blue numbers. The green space on this map is green space: Nagai Park (Nagai Koen, 長居公園 ). Literally, Long Park.

Spock Makes a Funny

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By chance today I saw about ten minutes of “The Naked Time,” the Star Trek episode in which a pathogen of some kind invades the Enterprise and lowers inhibitions among the crew. At one point, famously, a shirtless Sulu brandishes a sword at various extras, and then shows up on the bridge to point it at the captain. The fiction of Dumas is clearly Sulu’s inspiration.

SULU: Richelieu, at last.

KIRK: Sulu, put that — [discovers that the point is sharp] — put that thing away.

SULU: For honor, Queen, and France! [lunges]

UHURA: Sulu.

SULU: Ah.

UHURA: Sulu, give me that.

SULU: I’ll protect you, fair maiden.

UHURA: Sorry, neither.

SULU: Foul Richelieu! [Distracted by Uhura’s escape, Kirk is able to grab Sulu and Spock does a neck-pinch]

KIRK: I’d like you to teach me that sometime.

SPOCK: Take D’Artagnan here to Sickbay.

Take D’Artagnan here to Sickbay. Nimoy delivered the line as almost an aside, while a lot else was going on, so I thought for a moment: did he really say that? He did. That was worth a chuckle. I must have seen this episode a dozen times — more than 30 years ago, but still — and I don’t think I ever noticed that line. (Or Uhura’s pithy line; think about it.) I wouldn’t have known D’Artagnan in junior high, but later I did. Even so, I missed it.

So the writers gave Spock a joke, or at least a witticism. Not, “Take Mr. Sulu to Sickbay,” or “Take him to Sickbay,” which would be the unadorned, hyperrational thing to say. Nice touch. Nice delivery. RIP, Mr. Nimoy.

The Automatic Readability Assessment

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I needed to know the word count of a story of mine today, so I consulted a site called Word Count Tools. No Word on my machine yet, so I’m making do with primitive word pad programs without automatic word-counting. WCT not only counts the words, but it assesses your writing in terms of “readability level.” I wondered what that meant, aside from a subjective impression you might get reading text. Helpfully, it says at the bottom that it calculates something called a Dale-Chall score.

“[The Dale-Chall] formula is used to assess the readability level of a given text, which is described below:

0.1579 (difficult words/words ) + 0.0496 (words/sentences )

Difficult words do not belong to the list of 3,000 familiar words. The formula adds 3.6365 to the raw score if the percentage of difficult words is greater than 5% to get the adjusted score.”

Sure. I see. Anyway, a score of 4.9 or lower (for example) is “easily understood by an average 4th-grade student or lower.” A score of 10 or more is “easily understood by an average college graduate.”

I couldn’t resist putting yesterday’s post through the count, just for fun. It’s 335 words, 1898 characters, with a readability level of “easily understood by a 11th-12th grade student.” The most used words are “time” and “clock,” four times each, then “yard” and “now,” three times each. Clearly, I was writing about time and space. There were 100 “difficult” words and 211 unique words, with 26 sentences of an average length of 12.9 words.

What about the Gettysburg Address? Famously, it’s short: 271 words, 1462 characters, “easily understood by a 9-10th grade student.” Its top word is “nation,” at five times, or fully 8.3 percent of the total. Other top words are “dedicated,” “great,” and “dead.” There are only 47 “difficult” words. Clearly a speech for the common man, or at least the 19th-century common man.

The Latest in Cuckoo Clocks

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The great melt is under way, at least on my property. The back yard, which is a southern exposure, is mostly a mud flat now, with rims of snow. The dog is happy to explore it, and then report back to us, carrying mud specimens with her for our floor, clothes, etc. Even the front yard, with its northern exposure, is beginning to reveal itself again. I’m curious to see how my exercise in green yard management is going. That is, I didn’t rake leaves last fall. They’ve been decaying in place since then, in theory providing nutrients for the grass this spring.

Some time ago, I wrote about the Batman Express (italics from the original source material): “It’s an HO-scale train set that ‘is powerfully embellished with dramatic full-color artwork by some of DC Comics greatest artists,’ according to the letter. ‘You’ll thrill to each outstanding portrait of Batman as he battles his arch villains including The Joker and Catwoman.’ … That’s the world of collectibles, I figure. Anything goes with anything, if it sells…”

I’m reminded of that again. This time, a print ad that recently wandered into the house informs me that it’s “Time to Celebrate the Chicago Blackhawks® Championship Legacy!” And how so? “Now, you can demonstrate your team pride any time of the day with the Chicago Blackhawks® Cuckoo Clock.” Limited edition (of course), so get yours now. The earliest orders will receive the coveted low edition numbers! (Who indeed would want clock 9995 out of 10,000?) For some reason, the ad emphasizes that the clock is 2 Feet High!

Clearly, it’s a special clock. Done up in red and black, with the Blackhawk mascot painted on it, hockey sticks for weights, and a cuckoo that wears a hockey helmet. It can be yours for only five convenient installments of $39.99, for a total of $199.95.* Asterisk = $23.99 shipping and service. Limit one per order. By golly, who can resist all that?

Rachmaninoff & Tchaikovsky on a March Evening

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Here’s an argument that not everything of historic or archaeological significance should stay in its place of origin: “ISIS destroys ancient site of Khorsabad in northeastern Iraq.” Had the University of Chicago left everything in place, some of the artifacts you can see at the Oriental Museum would be rubble about now, thanks to barbarians.

ESO3.15Yuriko and I made it to far suburban Elgin on Saturday for the Elgin Symphony Orchestra, which offers high-quality performances. The ESO, besides being good at what they do, has a number of other advantages for people who have the temerity to live in the suburbs. It isn’t that far to drive; it’s easy to park there; and tickets don’t cost as much, say, as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. All reasons the ESO sells most of its seats.

On tap this time: Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, and “The Tempest” and “Romeo and Juliet” by Tchaikovsky. A Russian-born American, Natasha Paremski, was the guest pianist, displaying an astonishing amount of skill and energy at it. Unfortunately, we were sitting on the right side of theater, so it was hard to see her (and the conductor) during the performance, because of the bulk of the piano. I have a hard time warming up to Rachmaninoff — I can’t really say I try that much, though — but her rendition kept my attention.

A casual search doesn’t show Paremski playing any Rachmaninoff, but this is her having a go at Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1, displaying a similar intensity at the keyboard.

Speaking of Tchaikovsky (sort of), this early TV clip also has a lot of (maniacal) energy to it. Such was Spike Jones. Stay to the end for an appearance by Jim Backus and an impersonation of a certain well-known figure on the world stage at the time.

Yumura Onsen 1992

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Hard winter insisted on hanging around until Friday — the first week of March was a lot like the last week of January this year — but finally, as of Saturday, air temps were above freezing and patches of ground started emerging from their white covering. In the back yard at least. A few more days of this and I’ll be able to see the front yard again.

Yumura Onsen, the Hyogo Tourism Guide tells us [all sic], “was opened by Jikaku Daishi about 1,150 years ago. In the central part of the hot spring street there is a freshly heated water fountain and since the opening, 470 liters of hot water (98ºC) come gushing out per minute. Taking a rest in the 21m long foot bath along the river in the hot spring town is recommended.”

I’ll go along with that. Hyogo Prefecture includes Kobe, but Yumura’s toward the other side of the mountains, near the coast of the Sea of Japan. I visited Yumura in March 1992, and posted about it before — especially on the local practice of boiling eggs in the hot spring water. None of the pictures I have of the visit include the eggs or the hot springs, but I do have some of us gadding around the small town.

Yumura1992.1I remember the minshuku we stayed at fondly (the basics of minshuku are here). Sleeping on the floor is seldom an issue with me, especially when it involves sleeping on a tatami.
Yumura1992.2The floor at the Yumura minshuku was so comfortable that it was hard to get up in the morning. Harder than usual, that is.

San Antonio Debris

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I come by my packrat nature honestly. While at my mother’s house last month, I found a number of things tucked away, all of them stashed for decades. Such as some old license plates in the garage.

HemisfairPlate68That comes from the former practice by the state of issuing new plates every year, rather than the cheapo modern practice of issuing stickers. Once upon a time, I guess, the state had to keep its prisoners busy. Or at least I always heard that prisoners were the ones making the plates.

For the above plate, the year is special: 1968. Texas hosted a world’s fair that year, the punning HemisFair by name, which I was fortunate enough to attend. So the plates boasted of the fair.

I was astonished to find this tucked away among some papers in a cabinet.

poll tax receiptA poll tax receipt from 1963 for my father’s payment of the tax. Fortunately, that execrable practice was well on its way toward ending by then, but it was still hanging on in Texas and a few other states. The nails in the coffin were the ratification of the 24th Amendment the next year, and the Supreme Court decision in 1966 that the amendment applied to all elections, not just federal. Interestingly, the Texas legislature got around to ratifying the amendment in 2009, no doubt as some kind of symbolic gesture.

I also spent some time in our library. When my mother bought the house, it was a porch covered by the roof, but open to the elements. About 40 years ago, she hired a contractor — who did a terrific job — to add a wall and put bookshelves on every wall, with some cabinets on the lower levels. It’s full of books, as a library should be, though in some disarray.

Library 2015Many are the SF titles that my father and brothers amassed. In high school, I alphabetized most of them, and so they remain. Here’s a row of Poul Anderson novels. The only one I’ve ever read was The High Crusade, during my bus trip to Utah in 1980, though I also read the story “The Man Who Came Early” at one time or other.

Poul Anderson paperbacksElsewhere on the shelves, I found three books I decided to bring home to read eventually. The Man in the High Castle, because I’ve never read any Phillip K. Dick, and I want to read at least one; Metropolis, because I didn’t know it was a book before becoming the famed silent movie; and a collection containing “The Marching Morons,” whose notoriety I’m curious about. All of the editions are 50 years old or more. Cheap to begin with, they’re yellow and falling apart now. I might be the last person to read these particular editions.

A Gazebo and More

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What this country needs is more public gazebos. There, I’ve said it, and I don’t care who knows it. I’m pro-gazebo.

World-Wide Words tells us that the word gazebo “is surrounded by more mystery than an earnest etymologist would like. It appears in 1752 without any warning or antecedent in part four of a book by William and John Halfpenny with the title New Designs for Chinese Temples, an influential work that was aimed at the then new English fashion for the oriental in design and architecture.

“Little is known about William Halfpenny, who called himself an architect and carpenter, not even if this was his real name… The word gazebo is equally mysterious. A lot of people have assumed that — like the temples described in the book — it must be of oriental origin. If it is, nobody has found its source.

“Failing that, etymologists make an educated guess that he named the structure tongue-in-cheek, taking the ending -ebo from the Latin future tense and adding it to gaze, so making a hybrid word that might mean “I will look.” If true, the model was probably videbo, “I shall see,” or perhaps lavabo, literally “I will wash,” taken from the Latin mass of the Roman Catholic Church to refer to the towel or basin used in the ritual washing of the celebrant’s hands.”

If you’re ever in Milam Park (see February 26) in San Antonio, you’re likely to find yourself looking at this fine gazebo.

Milam Park gazebo Feb 2015An attached plaque says, in English and Spanish, “The people and government of the state of Jalisco, Mexico, offer this kiosk to the noble city of San Antonio de Bexar, in tribue to the relationship, tradition, and cultural inheritance of our people. May 1993.” Why Jalisco and San Antonio have a special relationship, I don’t know, but it was good of them to send a gazebo, even if they call it a kiosk.

To the north of the park is Santa Rosa Children’s Hospital. Or at least that’s what I’ve always heard it called — the formal name these days is the Children’s Hospital of San Antonio, which is part of the Christus Santa Rosa Health System, which has five hospitals. Last month workmen were busy adding color to the side of the building, which had previously been a drab structure.

Children's Hospital of San AntonioOn one side of the hospital’s an enormous mural — eight, nine stories tall?

The Spirit of Healing muralOne thing I need to do in the future is look at some of San Antonio’s many building-side murals. This is a start. It’s called “Spirit of Healing.”

According to the San Antonio Express-News, the hospital’s exterior “[is] taking its color cues — purples, oranges and blues — from the adjacent… mural by Jesse Treviño, the façade of Santa Rosa Hospital cheerfully is being transformed… Colorful channel glass panels are being hoisted into place on the hospital’s south side facing Milam Park and El Mercado. Roughly 11 feet by 3 feet, there will be 300 of them when all is said and done.

“Backed with LED lighting, at night they will glow like Christmas lights. During the day, the visually dynamic custom cast panels — lightweight to span large distances yet strong, durable and wind-resistant — mark the building as a special place.”