Just the 2nd Sunday in February for Me

Posted on February 14, 2022 by admin

Shucks, I forgot to miss the Super Bowl on purpose. I just forgot about it, period. Outside at dusk on Sunday I caught a nice view of the near-full moon over bare trees, though.

Pleasant to see, not so pleasant to stand around outside to see it. But the days are getting longer, the very first harbinger of spring. Otherwise, no hint of that season yet. We’re in winter stasis.

Am I right in thinking that this year’s Super Bowl is later than usual? I couldn’t let a question like that go unanswered, not when the uber-almanac that is the Internet is available.

This year is in fact the latest ever, and a major jump further into the new year from last year’s February 7. In fact, any game in February is historically late. Back in the early days of the contest, mid-January was more likely, and January was the norm for the 20th-century games. The earliest the Super Bowl has ever been was January 9, 1977.

According to this handy table from ESPN, the first February Super Bowl was only in 2002, when it was on the 3rd.

That season the league’s schedule was pushed back a week by the September 11, 2001 attacks. Wiki puts it this way: “Rescheduling Super Bowl XXXVI from January 27 to February 3 [2002] proved extraordinarily difficult. In addition to rescheduling the game itself, all related events and activities had to be accommodated.

“This marked the first time in NFL history that the Super Bowl was played in February; all subsequent Super Bowls (excluding Super Bowl XXXVII in 2003) after that have been played in February.”

The games from 2004 to 2021 were played on the first Sunday in February, after which the NFL expanded its season from 16 to 17 regular season games. So this year’s became the first to be played on the second Sunday of the month, which looks to be the schedule for the foreseeable future.

Nice to know, I guess. Maybe someday it’ll drift into early spring. I don’t think I’ll be watching, whatever day it is.

Noises Off ’99 & ’20

Posted on February 13, 2022 by admin

It’s been two years since I’ve been to the theater. In February 2020, just before I went to California late that month, I took Ann to see Noises Off at the Metropolis Performing Arts Centre in Arlington Heights, where we go periodically. Logistically, it’s more convenient than theaters in Chicago, though of course that didn’t stop us from going into the city in ’19 a number of times.

Noises Off is a British farce first staged in London in 1982. It was at the Savoy until 1987, but I wasn’t fortunate enough to see it during my ’83 visit. Rather, my friends and I went to see The Real Thing at the Strand, a Tom Stoppard play also from 1982, which I remember being amusing.

Noises Off is really amusing. I didn’t see it until ca. 1999 in Chicago, and it was the funniest thing I’d ever seen on stage. Actually, it still is. Laugh out loud funny, along with the rest of the audience.

The 2020 staging was also funny, but not quite as much as the first time around. Maybe because I was older; or the cast wasn’t quite as good (though they were good); or that I knew what to expect. Still, Ann seemed to enjoy it, and I certainly did, even if it didn’t quite have the same punch as my memory of it.

It occurs to me now that I need to start going to the theater again. Health concerns haven’t been stopping me for a while now. It’s just that I got out of the habit. So I’ll soon do my bit to support regional theater, as part of that pent-up demand.

Frog in the Snow & Other February Sights

Posted on February 10, 2022 by admin

Here we are, partway through paradoxical February, which is the shortest and yet the longest month.

Much of the snow has melted, but it will be back. Out in the front yard, near the front door, our metal frog peeps further out of the snow cover.

Elsewhere in the northwest suburbs, machines stand ready to deal with more frozen precipitation.

I’ve seen flags to warn, or assure, passersby about the solidity of ice, usually green or red for go or no go. But I’ve never seen one that hedges its bets. Red = no ice use. Yellow = own risk.

It’s theoretical for me anyway. I’m not about to walk out on any ice.

Stray Quiz

Posted on February 9, 2022 by admin

The other day I happened across an online geography quiz that was more challenging than most, since most seem to be aimed at grade schoolers (e.g., What’s the country north of the USA?). It was multiple choice, and included such questions as:

Which volcano is located astride the border between Bolivia and Chile?

Mat Ala
Pago
Surtla
Olca

Which valley is one of the richest cactus sites in the world?

Valley of Tehuacan
Valley of Baïgorry
Valley of Joux
Valley of Usines

Which village of Savoy is today famous for its devils carved in the wood?

Bramans
Bonneval
Bessans
Modane

Of those three, I only knew about the cacti-rich Tehuacan Valley in Mexico. But the quiz had the benefit of inspiring me to look up the ones I got wrong, and now I know where that Andean volcano is and those wooden devils are.

One question was oddly worded — a editorial slip, probably. It read:

How often is China’s area larger than Japan’s?

The correct answer, of course, is always.

Mother & Child, Adjusted

Posted on February 8, 2022 by admin

Last week at the antique mall I came across a wad of mostly unlabeled photos, some probably as old as 100 years, but most looked like they were taken from the 1940s to the 1960s. I’d seen that kind of offering before, but always passed them up, often in favor of postcards.

The few with names or locations written on the back, I noticed, sometimes sold for as much as a dollar each, which is too much just for a picture of a long-ago stranger. But many of the anonymous photos were 25 cents each, so that encouraged me to buy a handful at that price.

Of those I bought, I like this one best. Hard to go wrong with a mother and child.

Of course, that’s just an assumption. Could be an aunt and niece, for example, or unrelated people, though that doesn’t seem likely. From the looks of them, I’d put the image sometime in the ’40s, perhaps the late ’40s.

An unidentified image of this kind makes me wonder. What were their names? Where did they live? How is it that their picture ended up in a for-sale bin in an antique mall in greater Chicago in the third decade of the 21st century?

If I’m right about the date, the child was on the cutting edge of the baby boom, assuming they are Americans. After all, the baby boom started about then with actual babies being born, and so there’s a fairly good chance the child is still alive, and even a very slender chance the woman is. But if so, why don’t they have their picture?

Unanswerable questions. All I really know is that I have the picture now, and ran it through my image-editing software, as I’ve done with more familiar images before. Add a little color, for instance.

Interesting how recognizable the figures are in the next one, even if you’d never seen the unretouched image, though I suppose we’re all primed to look for patterns that look like faces and bodies.

Kaleidoscope-style is next. It occurred to me I didn’t know who invented the kaleidoscope, so I looked it up. Though there were antecedents, it seems that Scottish inventor David Brewster devised its modern form in the mid-1810s, and coined the word. (Greek, beautiful + shape + look).

Much more abstract.

Yet we still see human figures, more or less, especially at a distance.

February Stroll

Posted on February 7, 2022 by admin

Sunday afternoon temps were just a little below freezing, so the snow cover didn’t melt. There wasn’t much ice underfoot either. We went to the partly trod trail behind the Robert O. Atcher Municipal Center.

Dog included.

The path runs through an open field to a small patch of wooded land.

The path also meanders through the Chicago Athenaeum International Sculpture Park, which Google Maps simply calls The Sculpture Park.

The park’s most recent bit of work, Thiruvalluvar, has been adorned recently.

Not a bad day for a walk, but the conditions that made it so lasted only a few hours. The Romans had a right idea about February: make it the shortest month.

Sledding of Yore

Posted on February 6, 2022 by admin

Today would have been a good day for sledding down small hills here in the suburbs: a coating of snow is on the ground, with temps up, just around freezing. Also, the sun was out.

We didn’t do any sledding. On a similar day in February 2013 — except from the look of the pictures, it was overcast — the I took Lilly (15) and Ann (10) out to go sledding at a slope that’s part of a unnamed patch of land that’s part of a catchment.

Off to the slope, through a small playground familiar to both of them.

Up the slope.

Getting ready.

Even though they both had sleds, cheapo plastic ones that are still hanging in the garage, apparently they wanted to slide down together sometimes. An action shot, somewhat blurry.

I don’t remember for absolute sure, but I’d say they had a good time. The stuff of youth without being attached to a particular exact month and year, unless dad was around trying to get his mind off the cold by taking pictures.

Spouting Off Thursday

Posted on February 3, 2022 by admin

Compare and contrast, as my English teachers used to say.

Dusk on February 1.

Dusk on February 2.

For comparison, about the same framing — the view from my back door — but a whole lot of contrast. We caught the edge of the aforementioned winter storm on Wednesday morning. Not a huge amount of snow, just enough to be the usual pain in the ass.

Speaking of which, wankers are on the loose. They always are. Taken at a NW suburban gas station recently. No doubt posted by a true believer, unwittingly on behalf of the listed grifters.

One objection to the Covid-19 vaccine I find particularly irksome — one quasi-rational objection, that is, as opposed to the microchip ‘n’ such crackpot ones — is that it was developed too quickly.

True enough, it was developed much more quickly than any vaccine in history. Know what I’d call that? Progress. You’d be mistaken in believing Progress can cure all of mankind’s many ills, but it does a pretty good job in treating a lot of literal ills.

The other day I read about a woman who favored certain famous quack treatments for a relative dying of Covid-19, and who pestered his no doubt overburdened health care workers about it. One commentator on the situation said that the woman had attended the Dunning-Kruger School of Advanced Medicine.

Next, something a little lighter. Some time ago I was watching a video of “Puff the Magic Dragon,” sung in by Peter, Paul and Mary in 1986. At 2:53, the camera points toward a fellow in the audience, the one with dark curly hair — and instantly I recognized him.

That’s Dave, an old friend of mine I met in in the mid-80s Nashville, where he was from. Later we hung out in Chicago, since he went to graduate school there. These days he lives in Minnesota and teaches art. According to his Facebook page, he’s also a fellow at the Center for Residual Knowledge, Division of Other Things.

Bet I could get a fellowship there.

I didn’t realize the Winter Olympics were starting today until I saw it mentioned online. Upcoming events, according to the site, include figure skating, freestyle skiing, ice hockey, snowboarding, curling, bobsled and Uyghur internment, which is special to these Games.

Genocide aside, and that’s a big aside, I can’t muster much interest in the Games, except maybe for luge and skeleton, the events most likely to inspire spectacular accidents.

Modern Antiques

Posted on February 2, 2022 by admin

The other part of Ann’s birthday present from her parents consisted of purchases at an antique mall in Arlington Heights, Illinois, on Saturday afternoon. It had been a while since we’d been there — the last time might have been when I spotted Billy Beer for sale — but we figured she might find some beads or bead-adjacent materials there. She did.

“On the whole it’s a likable place stuffed to the gills with debris from across the decades. I like looking around, just to remind myself how much stuff there is in the manmade world,” I wrote five years ago. Still apt. I also mentioned that place used to discourage photography.

If that’s still the case, I didn’t see any signs to tell me so this time. Maybe the proprietors gave that rule up as hopeless, since every single person who wanders in will have a high-quality, very easy to use camera in pocket or purse. Besides, how is the place going to be on social media if it disallows pictures?

So I took a few pictures. Such as of the plentiful reading material, including good old Mad, font of juvenile wisdom as surely as Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang before it.

Other objects. Many other objects.

Husman’s of Cincinnati is no more — as of only last year.

I didn’t take any kind of rigorous inventory, naturally, but I can’t shake the feeling that the mall’s stock is on a bell curve in terms of item-age, with the bulge being from the 1950s through the 1970s, and tapering off at each end. That is to say, nostalgia for people just about my age.

With some older items in the mix, of course.

Along with objects that look fairly new.

The games entertained me most of all, without me having to play them.

Some standards: Operation, Scrabble, Twister, Yahtzee. Some tie-ins: Family Feud, Green Eggs and Ham, Cat in the Hat, Jeopardy. Others: Pass Out, Rummikub, Super Master Mind.

When I looked at that image today I also noticed the Talking, Feeling, And Doing Game, which I’d never heard of. “A psychotherapeutic game for children,” the box says. Copyright date 1973 by an outfit called Creative Therapeutics in New Jersey, and one groovy typeface for the name.

A relic of the much-maligned ’70s, I figured, a rep only slightly deserved, though that’s a discussion for another time. In any case, an echo of that half century ago, now forgotten, right?

Wrong, at least according to Amazon, which asserts that the game is “one of the most popular tools used in child psychotherapy.”

Turns out there’s an entire subspecies of board games that are used in child therapy, as I discovered looking at the Amazon page: Better Me, Emotional Roller Coaster, The Mindfulness Game and Together Point Family, to name just a few. I’m a little glad that I’d never heard of any of them before.

Of all the antique mall games, however, this one amused me most.

Could it be that the real prize among board game collectors, and there must be such, is finding a mint copy of the Fish board game, only a few hundred of which were ever sold?

Almost as good.

My family were clearly stick-in-the-muds when it came to tie-in board games. I don’t remember that we had a single one in our collection of a dozen or so games, and no one (including me) ever expressed any interest in them. I don’t even remember my friends having any. Did I miss out on a delightful childhood experience? Nah.

More Winter

Posted on February 1, 2022 by admin

Kicked off February with a day above freezing. Two observations: The only thing good about February is that January is over. Also, winter hasn’t abated. It’s just lulling us with a temporary moment of ease.

The map below is lifted from the NWS, which of course puts it in the public domain. Looks like we’ll get at least a few inches tomorrow, while the real wintertime action is some distance away. Ann will probably experience some heavy snow. I’m glad that didn’t happen on Sunday. Rather, a bomb cyclone had just hit the Northeast. There’s a term I enjoy: bomb cyclone. But it’s not so much fun to be visited by one.

Train of thought for the day, inspired by a Google doodle. Today’s doodle connects you to an page labeled Lunar Calendar, which is a discussion of that kind of calendar, not the specific Chinese calendar whose new year is always around now in the Georgian calendar. That might give people the idea that all lunar calendars begin around now.

Then again, there are vanishingly few people who care about the subject at all. There aren’t any ardent U.S. calendar factions, such as those pushing for a restoration of the Western lunar calendar, asserting that the pointy-headed solar calendar is just an interloper and Sosigenes of Alexandria was a con man, or communities of Julian calendar users in pockets of Appalachia who quarrel with the federal government every year about when Tax Day is. It’s just a fact that most people’s entire concern with the calendar is what day is it now, and how far in the future is this planned event?

Then again again, I don’t know much myself about the Chinese lunar calendar, except that it’s a lunar calendar, it’s Chinese, and new year comes around the beginning of February. And that each year has one of five elements and 12 animals, making for a cycle of 60 years, though that’s actually an aspect of Chinese astrology, which I hold in exactly the same regard as any other astrology.

What calendar knowledge I have is fairly Gregorian and Julian, and some about liturgical calendars, and a bit about the Jewish and Muslim calendars. So maybe I should learn myself some Chinese calendar facts. The remarkable thing is how easy that would be to do in our time, sitting right here at my desk.

Which can easily become a rabbit hole. When I was reading about calendars today, I found a page about Lunar Calendar and Standard Time, which as far as I can tell was made up by some Swedes because they perceived a lack of standard units of time to be used on the Moon.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Monthly Archives: February 2022