Pontiac-Oakland Museum and Resource Center

Posted on November 30, 2023 by admin

Not something you see very often: a wall of motor oil.

I’d never seen such a thing until I came across it just a few doors down from the Museum of the Gilding Arts, in the Pontiac-Oakland Museum and Resource Center, which also faces the elegant Livingston County courthouse in Pontiac, Illinois. In the case of the museum, Pontiac refers to the car brand of that name, and Oakland does as well, as the predecessor of Pontiacs. Both brands are defunct now, but not in the hearts of enthusiasts.

The many cans of motor oil happen to be a backdrop for one of the cars on display: a 1960 Pontiac Venture.

Nearby are other cars of roughly the same era.

A 1964 LeMans Convertible and a 1970 Pontiac GTO Judge, respectively. Not sure if that counts as a Little GTO.

The collection on display isn’t that large – not compared to Fairbanks or Reno, say – but it was well worth a look. Before its absorption into GM, and in fact before horseless carriages, Pontiac got its start as a carriage maker.

An 1890s product of the Pontiac Buggy Co. “One of a handful known to exist,” its sign said.

Soon enough, Pontiac Buggy founder Edward Murphy began building 2-cylinder runabouts called Oaklands, and later built more successful 4-cylindar models, as products of the Oakland Motor Car Co. GM bought Murphy out in 1909, and focused on Oaklands for some decades. The GM Pontiac model didn’t exist until 1926, and then the Depression killed off the higher-priced Oaklands.

A 1929 Oakland.

A Pontiac sedan of the same model year.

Also on display: marketing odds and ends that emphasize the Native roots of the name.

Some might object these days, but I can’t help suspect that Pontiac – Obwandiyag – able 18th-century leader of the Odawa – might have liked being associated, however tenuously, with such a solid object of commerce.

Wiki, citing a 2002 academic work, notes: “Their neighbors applied the ‘Trader’ name to the Odawa because in early traditional times, and also during the early European contact period, they were noted as intertribal traders and barterers.”

Museum of the Gilding Arts

Posted on November 29, 2023 by admin

The docent at the Museum of the Gilding Arts, a neatly dressed woman about 10 years my senior, wasn’t sure why the museum is in Pontiac – Pontiac, Illinois, that is, where I stopped on Sunday specifically to visit the diminutive two-room museum.

“I’m going to ask about that, because I’ve wondered as well,” she said. “I’ve only been here three weeks.”

Before that, she said, she hadn’t known much about gilding, but had been reading about it and spending time with the exhibits. For a while, I had a personal tour of the place, as she suggested things to look at, such as the various items that had been gilded, including decorative pieces but also machines.

Visit Pontiac is succinct about the place: “The focus of the Museum of the Gilding Arts is the history, craft, and use of gold and silver leaf in architecture and in decoration throughout a history that dates back to the days of ancient Egypt.

“There are examples of gold and silver leaf, artifacts used in the application of the precious metal leaf, and displays showing how leaf was manufactured.

“The exhibit features items from the Society of Gilders’ Swift Collection. The M. Swift and Sons company manufactured gold leaf in Hartford, Connecticut, and began its operations in 1887.”

The docent seemed most impressed by the story of M. Allen Swift, the last owner of M. Swift & Sons, who died at a very advanced age in 2005. The business died with him, having been founded by his grandfather, Matthew Swift, who emigrated as a youth from the UK in 1864. Before he died, Allen Swift had the foresight to preserve old-time elements of his family’s gold leaf factory, including an array of wooden work benches – which are now on display in the back room of the two-room museum.

Each bench sports one of the heavy hammers that late 19th-century workmen used to beat gold.

The 19th century was full of jobs that required great upper-body strength, and gold beater was surely one of them.

“The process of making gold leaf began with quarter-inch-thick gold bars, 12 inches long by 1.5 inches wide,” notes an article in Connecticut Explored about the redevelopment of the Smith factory in our time. “The bars were rolled to a thickness of 1/1000 of an inch and cut into squares. The squares were then dusted with calcium carbonate applied with a brush — often a hare’s foot — and placed between a thin membrane made of the outer layer of an ox intestine.

“These were then stacked, in as many as 300 layers, and repeatedly struck with a 16-pound hammer. The squares were cut again into smaller squares and the process repeated with a 10-pound hammer; the squares were then placed in a mold and struck with a 6-pound hammer. When finished, a layer of 280,000 leaves stood just an inch high.”

What happened to the residue of the ox intestine? Maybe I don’t want to know. Not only a tough job, then, but probably a dirty one as well, and ill-paying unless you were a Swift. Machines took over most of the heavy beating in the 20th century, but I expect it still was a tedious job. More about the museum, which opened in 2015, is at the Society of Gilders web site.

Before I left, the docent told me that I had been the only visitor that day. I was glad to hear it. I hadn’t gone too far out of my way, stopping after I’d dropped Ann off in Normal, and it was worth the small effort to get a glimpse of an entire industry I knew nothing about.

Boop!

Posted on November 28, 2023 by admin

Boop! = much fun. I know that because I remember enjoying myself during the new musical of that name, despite my uncomfortable seat there in the dress circle at the theater formerly known as the Sam Shubert, now named for a bank, in downtown Chicago. We popped in for the show on Friday evening.

Even now, only four days after the performance, whatever detail I took in about the jazzy score or entertaining lyrics or the vivacious dance moves or the intensely colorful costumes – which were sometimes monochromatic yet colorful somehow – or the peppy dialogue or the remarkable sets, is all a kinetic blur.

That’s the way it should be with a musical, I figure. A little razzle, a little dazzle, something to enjoy in the moment. Still, Boop! wasn’t just a musical, it was a staged musical cartoon with a star character nearly 100 years old, singing and dancing her way through an appropriately gossamer plot.

A young woman named Jasmine Amy Rogers brought Betty to life with astonishing vitality and, often enough, a hot red dress, once Betty leaves monochrome behind. The supporting cast, up to and including a marionette dog, likewise filled the stage with song, dance and antics. The cast was first rate in every way.

Pudgy, Betty’s dog, a more-or-less life-sized marionette, did some astonishing moves himself, as guided by Phillip Huber, who once upon a time did some puppet work in the extreme oddity that was Being John Malkovich.

I am, I confess, mostly indifferent about Betty Boop. Or was, until I married a fan. Capt. Gus on KENS-TV Channel 5 didn’t show her cartoons on weekday afternoons after school; his thing was Popeye, though maybe he screened the Betty Boop short in which Popeye made his cinematic debut. In those pre-Internet, pre-You Tube days, the cartoons simply weren’t available. Betty, for me, was stuck in the amber of the 1930s, and while pop culture of the time has considerable interest, somehow she didn’t resonate.

So I grew to adulthood without giving her much thought, though I did see her brief appearance in Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

“Work’s been kinda slow since cartoons went to color, but I’ve still got it, Eddie!”

– Betty Boop, voiced by Mae Questel (d. 1998), who managed to live long enough to do so.

In Boop!, a monochromic-ish Betty, tired of being a cartoon celebrity, manages to transport herself to the “real world” via a machine concocted by Grampy, the inventor character from the shorts who is explicitly her grandfather in this show. She figures no one will know her in the real world, but she lands at New York Comic-Con in our time, in living color, and of course everyone knows her, especially the spunky little sister of her soon-to-be love interest, a modern jazzman. He provided the story’s shout-out to Cab Calloway, and I was glad to hear it.

Luckily, the story didn’t make too much out of Betty being a fish out of water, though that provided a little amusement. To her eventual dismay, she realizes she’s famous here, too.

Grampy, realizing that Betty needs to return to the cartoon world, comes to the real world to look for her, but also manages to spend the night with a real-world woman he had a dalliance with decades earlier. (The Hays Code doesn’t apply to this show, though it’s mostly wholesome.) There’s also a sleazeball running for mayor of real-world New York and it is he, in the fullness of time, who chases Betty around a desk, only to get clocked by her with a blunt object.

The sprinkling of serious elements – most musicals have a few – mostly involve female empowerment, though there was a dig at modern-day plutocrats. Betty is known for resisting sexual harassment and, after returning to the cartoon world, tells her director that she won’t be chased around desks by lecherous men any more in her cartoons.

I believe we saw the only the fourth performance of Boop! Not the fourth of this particular run, but the fourth ever in the history of the theater. I don’t think I’ve ever seen any big production that soon after its premiere. It was a fluke of marketing, and my experience with the character, that made that happen: a few weeks ago, a theater ticket website that sends me email once a week suggested Boop! I figured Yuriko, who has a longstanding fondness for Betty, would like it, so I got some tickets for something to do on the day after Thanksgiving. She did like it. Ann did too. We all did. Boop! is a crowd pleaser, and we were happy to be in the crowd.

Apparently the show has been in the works a long time and eventually was brought to fruition by director and choreographer Jerry Mitchell, who is very much a known quantity in the American theater. Its run at the Shubert serves essentially the same shakedown-cruise function as pre-Broadway runs in New England towns used to do – may still do, for all I know, but I expect Chicago offers a much larger pool of potential theatergoers.

Eventually, probably soon, Boop! will be on Broadway. As a crowd pleaser, I’ll bet it will do well there.

Millennium Park ’23

Posted on November 27, 2023 by admin

On the day after Thanksgiving, we went downtown for the afternoon and into the evening. Michigan Avenue is coloring up for the season, such as at the magnificent Railway Exchange Building (224 S. Michigan Ave.).

But no seasonal colors at 150 N. Michigan, which because of the rows of lights on its roof rim, is a glowing rhombus in the sky. Still all white lights as of Friday. Maybe management decided to ax the expense of changing the lights.

The city of Chicago’s Christmas tree rises over Millennium Park, as it does every year. Chicago hasn’t shied away from calling it a Christmas tree.

We thought it looked a little unfinished, at least in the daylight. Lights, but no ornaments.

Then again, in previous years the tree has looked about as spare. But I’ve only seen a few of them. Bet their décor has changed across the decades since 1913, when the city put up the first one. For all I know, spare might be the current trend among municipal Christmas trees.

When we returned after dark, it was a different story. Lights up dandily at night, it does.

We didn’t spend a lot of time in Millennium Park that afternoon, but we did walk around the site of the Bean, a.k.a. Cloud Gate, which is surrounded by a sizable temporary fence and closed to the public. The plaza is being renovated, and the Bean stands aloof over the construction site, unable to attract visitors – multitudes of them – to its mirrored fascinations.

This fellow was celebrating something. Some accomplishment of his. Or possibly mocking George W. Bush some 20 years after the fact. If so, what would be the point of that? If it had been a summer day, I might have paused to ask him about it.

But no. The chilly air drove us on, even as he did a few different poses with the banner.

Pre-Thanksgiving Assortment

Posted on November 21, 2023 by admin

Regards for Thanksgiving, back to posting November 27 or so. In the meantime, eat, drink and be indolent.

I woke up this morning from some sort of dream, trying to remember these three kinds of to-dos: shindigs, hullabaloos and hootenannies. I’m pretty sure I could call Full Moon Bluegrass a hootenanny. Otherwise, my experience with them is thin. Also, I forgot about hoedowns. The unconscious is a funny place.

Gentle rain last night, and all through the early morning. I cracked the window very slightly to listen as I drifted off. Still raining when I went to the bathroom not long before dawn. Maybe that put me to mind of folk music parties.

A couple of recent flags, including one that I saw in full flutter after I entered Tennessee just north of Nashville.

A distinctive design. The three stars represent, of course, the Grand Divisions of Tennessee, a thing unique to the state. Distinct legal entities, but also acknowledging historical and cultural distinctions.

I remember when Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander joined Garrison Keillor on stage during the pre-broadcast warmup for A Prairie Home Companion when the show came to Nashville in 1985. The governor played a little on the piano – he was really good, as I recall – and bantered with Keillor.

When it came up that Alexander had grown up in East Tennessee, Keillor said, “You guys were on our side during the war, weren’t you?”

In Texas, I saw a Space Force flag on a pole. First time ever.

That arrowhead design looks suspiciously familiar. Can’t quite put my finger on it.

Heard some blatherskite on the radio recently about planning one’s “celebration of life.” There’s that absurd euphemism again, standing in for funeral. Apparently it’s caught on. I suspect that undertakers and their marketing people are behind this.

I insist that my survivors, if they want to have some kind of formal event to mark my shuffling off this mortal coil, call it a funeral. It doesn’t need to have any of the trappings of a conventional funeral here in North America, just the term.

That got me to thinking, “mortal coil”? Sure, it’s Shakespeare, Hamlet in particular, but why coil? First place to look: my copy of Onions, which I haven’t opened in entirely too long. That is, a volume called A Shakespeare Glossary by C.T. Onions. I have a revised edition published in 1986.

Coil, n.

1. Noisy disturbance, tumult. Comedy of Errors: What a coil is there, Dromio?

2. Fuss, ado. Much Ado About Nothing: yonder’s old coil at home. Hamlet: When we have shuffled off this mortal coil.

So a coil’s a noisy bit of business. An Elizabethan meaning worth bringing back, but I doubt that’s going to happen. Thus your mortal coil would be the fuss of being alive, of which there’s a fair amount, including sound and fury and signifying… a different play, one that I won’t name.

Spring Valley Animal Farm

Posted on November 20, 2023 by admin

On Saturday we took a walk on the grounds of Spring Valley, where we find ourselves fairly often. In every season. Less often we make it all the way to the part called Volkening Heritage Farm, a small open-air museum that evokes farms of the late 19th century in this part of Illinois, but we did this time. To visit the pigs, for one thing.

I seem to remember seeing a sign posted at the farm once upon a time, something along the lines of All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

Maybe I’m thinking of somewhere else. Anyway, the pigs were doing what I assume are pig things, mostly rutting around in the dirt, oblivious (again, I assume) to their ultimate fate as meat.

Some of them, at least. The pigs we saw must have survived this year’s “From Hog House to Smokehouse” event, which was earlier this month. I figure it’s only a temporary reprieve.

The pigs weren’t the only animals around. A couple of cows made an appearance as well.

And some deer.

I figure they roam Spring Valley as a whole, and don’t reside on the farm.

Charcoal Inferno

Posted on November 19, 2023 by admin

Warmish by day, chilly at night, though not quite freezing most of the time. Today was clear and, since our deck has a southern exposure, it was warm enough out there to eat lunch in some comfort.

On Friday, which wasn’t quite as warm, I got started on building a back-yard fire a little later than planned, as the daylight ebbed away. At first it didn’t catch, but eventually it did. I’ve documented fires out back before, but not the charcoal chimney in use.

Doing my (very) little bit to release carbon into the atmosphere.

Eventually, all the charcoal caught fire.

A small inferno? Can infernos be small?

It was hot enough to cook brats, at least, once I tumped over the charcoal chimney (carefully) and put on the grill. The last outdoor cooking this year, and probably the last until April or May.

More Manhole Covers

Posted on November 16, 2023 by admin

Almost warm today, except in the house, where I maintain temps at a skinflinty 68° F. in the colder months. It wasn’t warm enough outside to raise the inside temps, and it was so windy I decided not to built the possible last back-yard fire of the year. Maybe tomorrow.

One thing leads to another online, and from Hello Kitty I eventually made my way to the Atlas Obscura article on Japanese manhole covers.

“In Japan, many manhole covers are works of urban art — elaborate, curious, distinctive, even colorful,” AO notes. “They have become a tourist destination unto themselves, and attract a legion of dedicated manhole enthusiasts who travel the country to visit some of the thousands of unique designs.”

This seems to be a thing that has happened in the about 30 years since I lived there, so I’d never heard of it. At least, the article puts the origin of the covers as a local initiative in 1985, and it probably took a while to become a mass phenomenon.

“Typically, ‘local manholes’ or ‘design manholes’ feature elements special to a particular location: a town emblem, landmark, event, or official bird or flower,” the article says. “While there is some logic to the placement of the covers… [some] appear to have been placed without rhyme or reason.”

The last image in the article, depicting Osaka Castle, would hew to its place even without the kanji for Fukushima Ward, Osaka – it has the miotsukushi.

That’s something to look for, should I make it back to Japan. In the meantime, I sometimes look down at manhole covers in other places. Such as in Ireland and Spain, and in San Antonio more recently. Here’s one weathered by many decades, probably.

At least the lettering is barely visible. A much newer cover reminds us to protect the downstream fish.

East Jordan Iron Works are headquartered in Michigan, and the company these days is known by the less specific moniker, EJ Group. No substance to that name, if you asked me.

Simple, but with a certain style.

Not a manhole cover, but sharing a similar shape, and displaying an intricate design, at Lake Plaza in Elmendorf Lake Park in San Antonio.

Best visibility would be with a drone, looks like, but the edge-on view isn’t bad.

Hello Kitty at 50

Posted on November 15, 2023 by admin

Yet another press release that isn’t in my professional bailiwick appeared in my flooded in box the other day, except maybe you could call Hello Kitty, in some cases, part of experiential retail. Anyway, the cover letter for the release begins (all sic):

Happy Anniversary Hello Kitty!

The loveable character from SANRIO® has inspired generations with her message of friendship, kindness and inclusivity for 50 years. In celebration of this milestone, fans old and new will be introduced to several new digital and virtual opportunities to engage with Hello Kitty online, including an AR (Augmented Reality) app, short animations on TikTok, monthly promotions in My Hello Kitty Cafe on Roblox and a presence in the digital world of Zepeto. Hello Kitty is also receiving the Cultural Ambassador Award from the Japan Society of Northern California, recognizing her as an international symbol of peace and friendship.

For me, Hello Kitty falls into that category of distinctly Japanese creations, along with the likes of pachinko, most manga and tea ceremony, that flutter off in the distance, visible in passing, but which has never has excited much interest. Just a matter of personal taste. As Sanrio would tell you – is trying to tell the world – the curious anodyne feline does excite interest among many.

Also, I had to look up Roblox and Zepeto, which are an online gaming platform and an app to create avatars, respectively. I don’t expect to interact with them in any way. Sounds like something from the golden age of pulp SF: Zepeto of the planet Roblox, terror of the galaxy.

Desiderata, Revised

Posted on November 14, 2023 by admin

When I was young, I used to write parodies of all sorts of things — songs, as you might expect, but also such items as job applications and income tax forms. I came up with a parody of the first few chapters of the Book of Genesis that got some traction once at a high school speech tournament in the humorous reading category or some such. I made it to the semifinals, but was disqualified when the judges found out I’d written it myself; we weren’t supposed to be reading original material.

Juvenile works, but I was a juvenile. And juvenile silliness beats juvenile delinquency anytime.

Not long ago, I happened across an online mention of “Desiderata,” something I hadn’t thought about in years, and in re-reading it, my old instinct for parody woke up and yawned and stretched. Now that needs to be made fun of, I thought.

Further investigation revealed that the text is in the public domain now. Of course, you ought to be able to parody anything, regardless of its copyright status, but even so it was nice to know that I can play with the thing, no questions askable.

This is what I came up with.

Go placidly amid the noise and haste,

and turn off that damned phone.

As far as possible without surrender

be on good terms with all persons, since that is less trouble.

Speak your truth quietly

and clearly; but remember people rarely listen anyway.

Listen to others,

since you never know what weird things you’ll hear.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons, because

they are assholes, and who needs that?

If you compare yourself

with others, you’ll be upset, but you’ll do it all the same.

But at least you’ll be glad there are

lesser persons than yourself; that will make you feel better.

Enjoy your achievements as well

as your plans. Might as well.

Keep interested in your own career, however humble;

it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time,

except when you are laid off and

find that your skills are obsolete.

Exercise caution in your business affairs; full stop.

Most people are actually honest,

but no one ever got rich being honest.

Many persons strive for high ideals,

and there is heroism, but mostly people just watch those things on TV and in movies.

Be yourself. Unless you’re an asshole, though you probably wouldn’t be self-aware enough to know that.

Especially, do not feign affection. Your partner will figure it out soon enough.

Neither be cynical about love;

it is as perennial as the grass. And dandelions.

Don’t expect love to be the same in middle age as in your youth.

Take kindly the counsel of the years, and act your age, for crying out loud.

Surrender the things of youth, or you’ll be ridiculous.

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. Also, have some money in the bank.

But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.

Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness, or watching TV news that’s out to scare you for ratings.

Beyond a wholesome discipline,

be gentle with yourself. Perfection is a delusion.

You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. Keep telling yourself that.

And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Keep telling yourself that, too.

Therefore be at peace with God, or you’ll regret it, big time.

Whatever your labors and aspirations,

in the noisy confusion of life

keep peace with your soul. Again, turn off the phone. It really helps.

With all its sham, drudgery,

and broken dreams,

it is still a beautiful world. Especially on Friday afternoons.

Be cheerful.

Strive to be happy.