Monthly Archives: February 2024

21st-Century Leaps

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Another February 29. If I counted right, my 16th. That got me to thinking, just how many February 29ths have there been? As in, ever? Not as simple a question as all that, first of all because the day Caesar inserted into the calendar was an extra one after the equivalent of our February 24, a situation that persisted for a long time. So a different question might be how many intercalary days have there been since the Julian calendar’s first (let’s say first one after the extra days tacked on 46 BC, the longest year in history).

I feel like I’m staring into a pretty extensive rabbit hole. So, I’m backing away.

2020

Last time around on February 29, no entry. I attended an exceptionally pleasant dinner party at an exurban San Antonio ranch house, on flat land in the direction of the Hill Country. Six of us, I think, eating and drinking a few glasses of wine and conversing. People wonder whether the art of conversation is dying, and I doubt it. But it might go underground.

Also, that was the last social gathering I attended until April ’21 counting ones with family members, and June that year that for groups of friends.

2016

“The saying represents something exceptionally easy, of course, but even so I’m not sure it would be.” I wrote. ”Let’s assume the barrel is full of water as well as fish. Unless we’re talking about really large carp or some such, you might disturb the water and scare the fish, but I’m not sure how many small fish would actually be hit. Also, you’d think that shooting would soon destroy a wooden barrel and cause a dangerous amount of flying debris. Or if it were a metal barrel, such as a steel oil drum, the danger of ricochets might be high.

“This is something for the Mythbusters fellows to investigate, but I suspect that shooting fish in a barrel never was anything but a metaphor, and by now a hackneyed one at that. So I’m reluctant to say that making fun of a press release I received recently — especially the first line — is like shooting fish in a barrel. But it cries out to be mocked.”

2012

“I’m sure that I learned about Leap Year at an early age, like most people. But I never knew the details — Caesar and Sosigenes, the longest year in history (46 BC), Julian and Gregorian calendars, etc. — until I read The Clock We Live On. [I forgot to mention that Isaac Asimov wrote it? I’m rectifying that now.]

“The inside cover has an example of my father’s handwriting, something I don’t have too much of, so I wanted to save that too. Apparently he bought it in 1963, the year before he died.” [Sixty years and a day ago. RIP, dad]

“I first read it in 1977. Besides the story of the western calendar, there was plenty of other interesting topics — why days have 24 hours and hours 60 minutes, the development of clocks and chronometers, the establishment of meridians and time zones, and so on. The calendar chapter formed the basis of an oral report I did in high school Latin class.”

2008

“Battlefield gore is a necessary ingredient in any war movie of our time, as well as soldiers’ profanity, and understandably so. My own preference in historical fiction runs to verisimilitude, but that isn’t to say that I didn’t like The Sands of Iwo Jima.

“The most effective horror-of-war scene in Flags involved off-screen gore. At one point, one of the men (Iggy) goes mysteriously missing from the hillside. Later, his comrades discover that the Japanese pulled him into one of their caves and killed him in a way the American soldier who found him would only describe as, ‘look what they did to the poor son of a bitch.’ At that point one of the characters is looking at whatever remains of Iggy, but we don’t see it, and it’s much more horrible that way.”

2004

“Leap Year brings to mind the lore of King Numa reforming the early Roman calendar, Julius Caesar (and Sosigenes) replacing lunar with solar, Caligula trying to name a month after Germanicus (at least according to Robert Graves), Pope Gregory ordering his change but the Protestant parts of Europe ignoring it, and so on.

“When I was a kid I was fascinated by calendars, and would draw my own sometimes. In high school, I read about the history of the calendar on my own time, because it wasn’t part of any class. Even now I have some interest, though not as much as a fellow I know who spent time calculating the dates of Easter in the far distant future — thousands of years further than the standard Easter tables. I think he even wrote a computer program to do that for him.”

Bob Link Arboretum

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Bob Link died just over 20 years ago, and I never met him. But I’ve walked in his arboretum.Bob Link Arboretum

Scant information about Bob Link is readily online: an obituary and a mention at a local history web site, the local in that case being Schaumburg Township. But I can surmise that he started planting woody plants on his family’s property in the township, as a hobby. Later the park district acquired the site, incorporating it into Spring Valley – off in a corner, near a major road, only accessible by footpath.

We arrived on Sunday afternoon. Not many other people were around, though there was a young woman in a bright blue coat who had climbed a sizable tree away from the arboretum and was resting where a large branch parted from the main trunk. Didn’t look that comfortable to me, but she looked relaxed, at least at a distance. She’s not in my pics.Bob Link Arboretum Bob Link Arboretum

Most first-page search engine hits about the arboretum are limited to detailing its short trail and location in a corner of Spring Valley. An obscure place, and better for it. Winter, and not bad for that. A brown-gray-yellow mix, thick with plants who haven’t been fooled by faux spring this year. Signs identify species at Bob Link. A selection: Purple-leaved Sand Cherry, Dwarf Bush Honeysuckle, Hackberry, White Pine, Gingko, Wahoo.

The gingko in silhouette.Bob Link Arboretum

The species has seen ’em, and seen ’em go, at least according to the sign. Fossil gingko leaves 150 million years old are known to science.

Evergreens.Bob Link Arboretum Bob Link Arboretum

The White Pine and Colorado Spruce, respectively. The spruce is native to Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming, notes Wiki, and has wider fame as Christmas trees. My impulse was to put a few decorations on this tree, but not cut it down or anything. No go. I hadn’t brought any Christmas ornaments with me for some reason.

Spring Valley Farm Oddities

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Sunday wasn’t quite as warm as yesterday, or today, whose unseasonably high temps came to a crashing end amid thunder and lightning and wind. The condition at about 7:30 pm. Sirens wailed from before then till 7:45.

A very spring-like event. Glad it’s over.

But it was warm enough Sunday to stroll a while at one of our default walking places, Spring Valley. We made it to the former farm, where no animals were to be seen. Pigs, cows, chickens, nowhere, though the barnyard odor lingered. No oinks or moos or the flapping of chickens. On vacation? I mused out loud. Off to a meat processing facility? I mused to myself. Kidding, but best not vocalized.

But my quest to see new things, even in very familiar places, and on a granular level, kept me busy. Or if not new things, a new look a them. Such as the wagons.Spring Valley

These look like work wagons. That can lead to a number of musings, such as, what a damn lot of work was involved in running a 19th-century farm. The vehicles are labor-saving devices in their own way, of course, but only so much labor.

It’s not so remarkable that the elderly in our time are in better shape than previous generations, a fact noted from AARP to ZDNET. Nutrition and healthcare are decidedly better now, but the long and short of it is that much work wore people out.

I’m sure I’d seen this bit of farm equipment before. But I’m not sure I’d looked at it. The more I looked, the odder it got.Spring Valley Spring Valley

Someone knows what that is. Locally, maybe someone at the park district. Further away, farmers. Or maybe it’s obvious, and I’m dense. Maybe, but it’s still a puzzler.

I fed the image into TinEye, a reserve image search engine. The results: TinEye searched over 65.7 billion images but didn’t find any matches for your search image. That’s probably because we have yet to crawl any pages where this image appears.

I also took a look at the windmill. Their artistry underappreciated, I believe.Spring Valley

Something was different. Whatever you call that part – the blades? They’d vanished. I was sure of it, and sure enough, when I looked at the picture I took of it in 2012, the difference was clear.

Out for repairs? Stolen for scrap or by a slightly demented collector? Blown down on windy day and wrecked beyond repair? We get those gusts sometimes, see above.

This is February?

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This doesn’t happen often, at least at the tail end of February.

That was the local temp today at 3 pm. Alas, it is also a Monday, meaning I couldn’t sit outside as much as I wanted during the warm hours, though I was able to sip tea on the deck for a few warmth-on-my-face minutes. Out of idle curiosity, I checked the temps at about the same time in Miami.

Huh. What about Fairbanks?

Well, at least that’s seasonal.

Subtle Journal of Raw Coinage No. 66

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More from the physical files: something I’d forgotten I’d participated in, The Subtle Journal of Raw Coinage, which Geof Huth used to publish. It’s on a slip of paper – one of 100 copies – that I received in 1993 while in Osaka, publication date February 28. Looks pretty good for paper that’s now over 30 years old.

The actual size of the slip is about 8.5 x 3.5 inches, and the back is blank. Geof sent me more than one. I gave a few away, but I still have perhaps three or four.

I also don’t remember exactly how I came to create the words. Geof must have asked me to contribute some words; asked by letter or postcard, since this was pre-email, and I never spoke to him over the phone in those days. Then I must have sat down one day, whipped up the neologisms, and then put them in the mail.

The goal, as I vaguely remember, was to come up with words that could have some conventional meaning, but did not. Also, they had to evoke Japan somehow or other. I’m not sure whether the latter was my idea or not, but I believe I succeeded.

Japanease = Japan, ease (easy enough; easy days in Japan).

Tofun = tofu, fun. I knew about tofu long before living in Japan, since the food’s North American popularity had come of age in the 1980s. The very first time I heard of it, maybe, was at the New Guild Coop in Austin in the UT summer of ’81, where a health food enthusiast posted his verse in the communal kitchen:

Tofu/

is good/

for you.

Salarymaniac = Salaryman, maniac. Not too many actual maniacs among salarymen, I bet, but there must have been a few. We gaijin had a term for the vomit one would sometimes see on the sidewalks of Osaka, which looked like the result of a sudden projection straight down from a few feet up, if that. The sort of mess you’d expect from a salaryman who’d drank too much too fast with colleagues, and who managed to make it outside in time. The pattern somehow always included diced carrots. Anyway, that was a salaryman’s hanko.

Yenen = Yen, en. Yen is what we call the currency. En is what the Japanese call it.

Tokyosaka = Tokyo and Osaka, of course. The foreign press, at least in the those days, tended to be in Tokyo, and seemed not to get out of town much, so Tokyo = Japan in a lot of coverage, which was off-putting for those of us in Osaka. Or maybe I felt that way because I’ve long had an affinity for second cities.

Barely Winter Thursday Assortment

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Another warmish day and a not-so-cold evening. We walked the usual path around Lake V. well after dark, taking in the Moon in the cloudless sky now and then. It’s nearly full. Then I remembered that an unmanned American spaceship was due to land near its south pole; Odysseus, which might not be the most auspicious name for a traveler, but at least a noble one from classical antiquity. Maybe the next one will be Penelope or Telemachus.

When I got home, I learned that the landing was successful. Good to know.

A leftover image from “Presidents Day.”

Recently Jay sent me two of those buttons: McGovern and Carter. The others have been hanging there a while.

The Hoover button was created for a Halloween party that a company down the hall from us in the Civic Opera Building used to throw many moons ago. The event wasn’t in that building, but rather the Rookery, whose common areas are excellent for a corporate events. The Harding one I picked up at the Harding Museum in Ohio last year, and the Grillmaster button has nothing to do with U.S. presidents. It was a souvenir of St. Petersburg, Russia.

Spotted at the Schaumburg Township Library not long ago.Schaumburg Time Capsule

It used to say 2023.

“On Saturday, Sept. 23 [2023], more than 850 people gathered at our Central Library (with another 300 joining us online) to watch as we unveiled the contents of a time capsule that was placed in the cornerstone of our Library when it was built in 1998,” the library’s web site says.

I wasn’t one of them. I went to Milwaukee that day instead for Doors Open. The  contents of the ’98 capsule are mildly interesting, but one of the Westinghouse Time Capsules, it isn’t. (And no horny toads or cartoon frogs.)

Still, I like the idea of time capsules, enough to bury a few myself once upon a time, including one late in the summer of 1974 in our back yard, which I wasn’t able to retrieve five years later as planned. I dug a few holes in an effort to do so, damaging some grass, which annoyed my mother, if I remember right.

Blue Marble, Green Shoots

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When I had a few moments today, which weren’t that many, I sat under the blue-marble skies out on the deck.Mr Blue Sky

In some comfort, since temps nearly, or did, reach 60° F., and the air was still. Another oddly mild day in this oddly mild February.

In a few places, spots of green underfoot.

The dog sat outside with me for a while as well. That must have been a tonic for her weakness, since her appetite, gone for about a day, returned shortly afterward. That might count as post hoc ergo propter hoc, but I doubt the dog knows anything about logic.

Jack, Ray & Lewis

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At the corner of N. Genesee Street and W. Clayton Street in Waukegan, catercornered across the intersection from the Genesee Theatre, stands a man and his violin in bronze.Waukegan Jack Benny statue Waukegan Jack Benny statue

It took me a while to figure out the alligators. Nice touch.Waukegan Jack Benny statue

Jack Benny, favorite son of Waukegan, has stood there waiting to regale an audience since 2002, in a work by Illinois artist Erik Blome.

People my age only caught the tail end of Benny’s career, and it was years before I realized he could actually play the violin. Or maybe my mother told me that, and I forgot. The radio clips I heard de-emphasized his skill in favor of comedy. Now, of course, it’s easy enough to find clips showing just how talented he was.

A block west of Benny is a newer work, one depicting another Waukegan favorite son: Ray Bradbury, in a work called “Fantastical Traveler” by Zachary Oxman. It’s newer than Benny, erected in front of the Waukegan Public Library only in 2019, on Bradbury’s 99th birthday (he didn’t live to see it, having died in 2012).Waukegan Ray Bradbury statue Waukegan Ray Bradbury statue

I’d come to town to see Lewis Black, playing at the Genesee on Sunday evening, who channels profane rants into comedy that makes me laugh, which is all I ask of comedy. A lot of people feel the same way about him. But he’s an acquired taste, and not for the easily offended: during the show, I saw at least two couples leaving. One person might just be going to the bathroom, but when two leave together in the middle of the act, I guess they feel offended.Genesee Theatre

Some of his rants are political, but you could hardly call him partisan. I saw two audience members leave soon after he had the temerity to point out that the 2020 presidential election was not, in fact, stolen. Because, he said, no one as disorganized as the Democrats could pull off such a thing.

I wonder how those people didn’t know what they were going to see. A large number of Lewis Black clips are available on YouTube and, indeed, that’s how I heard of him at all. Even better, they’re old man rants, which he has aged into (he’s 75). Seeing him rant as a younger man – a few of those are on YouTube as well – just isn’t the same.

Before the show, and before sunset, I got a look at the Genesee, another former movie palace, dating from 1927, that survived the perils of the later 20th century and is now live theater.Genesee Theatre

Many nostalgia acts come there. Peter Frampton, for instance, is scheduled to play the Genesee on March 30. I know that because he was prominently advertised in the lobby. Man, he’s lost almost all of his hair since 1976.

Some years ago, I saw Al Stewart at the theater, as the opening act – the only time I’ve ever seen him as an opener – for the band America. That time I spoke with Al’s sometime sideman Dave Nachmanoff, who was in the lobby, and told him that America was fine, but I’d come to see Al. I hope he relayed that to Al.

After Lewis Black, I was able to look around the interior.Genesee Theatre Genesee Theatre

Not as unbelievably posh as the Rialto Square – few are – but a fine space.

Waukegan Ramble

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I spent part of Sunday afternoon in Waukegan, a sizable far north Chicago suburb and in fact county seat of Lake County, Illinois. Not my first visit, but a bit out my usual orbit, halfway through that county on the way to Wisconsin and along the shore of Lake Michigan. The day was chilly, but not bad for February, so I set out on foot downtown for a few minutes.

The Lake County Courthouse & Administrative Building isn’t from the classic period of courthouse development, which would be more than 100 years ago now. It’s from the classic period of brutalism (1969), at least in this country.Lake County Courthouse, Waukegan

The Civil War memorial in front (?) is an echo from an earlier time.Lake County Courthouse, Waukegan

I took a drive too, looking for steeples. I knew most any church would be closed already, so I went looking for beautiful or interesting exteriors, and I found one tucked away in a neighborhood not far from downtown. While beauty isn’t quite the word for it, it certainly caught and held my attention.St. Anastasia Church, Waukegan

Completed in 1964 as St. Anastasia Church, since 2020 the building has been home to St. Anastasia and St. Dismas Church, which combined are known as Little Flower Catholic Parish – part of the wave of ecclesiastical consolidation in our time.St. Anastasia Church, Waukegan St. Anastasia Church, Waukegan St. Anastasia Church, Waukegan

The unusual design – at least, I’d never see the likes of it – was by mid-century modernist I.W. Colburn (d. 1992).

“This church… is a simple brick rectangle with arch motifs embracing in a succession of domed tiers on the corners and sides of the building,” reported the Chicago Tribune in 2016. “There are two larger versions of this form extended above the flat roof, which appear as towers. The rear domed tier rises over the main alter and carries an enormous cross on its crown.

“The walls of the building have a patterned surface due to the fact that some of the bricks protrude one half of their length from the flat wall. A portion of the wall is constructed of multicolored glass bricks and is most noticeable from the interior when the sun’s light shines through them filling the church with radiant color. The light thus becomes part of the service.”

Closed, as I thought, but maybe during a future Waukegan Tour of Homes, it will be open. Here’s a picture of the interior, decked out for Christmas.

“The interior repeats the motif of the exterior arches,” according to the Tribune. “The red brick, slate floor, glass and wood, mosaics representing the Stations of the Cross, illuminating skylight, and bronze crucifix over the altar give the worshipper the feeling of having entered a medieval monastery.”

My wanderings took me to a few other Waukegan churches, such as an older Catholic church on the edge of downtown. It says Church of the Immaculate Conception, carved over the entrance in stone, but these days it’s Most Blessed Trinity Catholic Church, the creation of a consolidation of six historic parishes.Waukegan Waukegan

Christ Episcopal Church, completed in 1888 and designed by Willoughby Edbrooke and Franklin Burnham of Chicago, who also did the Georgia State Capitol and the Milwaukee Federal Building.Waukegan

Redeemer Lutheran Church.Waukegan Waukegan

The was enough churches for the day. The sun was going down, for one thing, but also once you’ve seen the Alpha and Omega, that’s enough for any day.

First in War, First in Peace, and First in the Heart of Generative AI

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The “Presidents Day” weekend has rolled around again, but it’s an ordinary weekend for some of us followed by an ordinary Monday. Including me. Still, I can’t let it pass without a mention. If it were up to me, it would still be widely known as Washington’s Birthday, as it was when I was young.

The state of Illinois, for its part, calls it Washington’s Birthday, and has separate holidays for Lincoln and MLK. It has not, as yet, changed Columbus Day to anything else, which surprises me a little, but I’ll chalk it up to legislative inertia and a still distinct Italian-American population.

With Washington on my mind, I went to the first free AI image generator I could find and had it spit out some images of the Father of Our Country in various art styles. Such as – and these are my exact prompts – “George Washington Manga.”

“George Washington Cubist”

“George Washington Dadaist”

That last one has a tinge of nightmare to it. Come to think of it, they all do. Still, while I’m not art expert, I don’t think these quite fit the bill.