Iowa Avenue Bronzes

Posted on March 31, 2015 by admin

Near the intersection of Iowa Ave. and Linn St. in Iowa City, you’ll see this bronze fellow, forever waving his hat to passersby.

It’s Irving B. Weber (1900-97). You might ask, Who? I know I did. “Irving B. Weber is remembered for many things,” says the Iowa City Public Library. “He was the University of Iowa’s first All-American [sic] swimmer. He was a founder of Quality Chekd Dairies and served as its president until his retirement in 1966. Irving was an active member of the Iowa City Host Noon Lions Club and was the local school board president in 1952-53. In 1994 Irving B. Weber Elementary School was named in his honor.

“Irving B. Weber may be most remembered for the over 800 articles he wrote for the Iowa City Press-Citizen beginning in 1973. Irving’s view of history was not one of a dull retelling of facts and names. He told what it was like to grow up in Iowa City, the best places to buy penny candy, the joys of cooling off in Melrose Lake in the summer, and of sledding parties on closed-off streets.”

Mr. Iowa City, you might call him. Honored with a bronze by two Iowa artists, Stephen Maxon and Doris Park. Irving was easy to spot. Pretty soon, though, I started to notice bronze plaques mounted in the sidewalk along Iowa Ave. We’d chanced on the Iowa City Literary Walk. The variety was remarkable, and I saw only a dozen or so plaques.

Such as these, which contain quotes from James [Alan] McPherson, W.P. Kinsella, and Ethan Canin, respectively.

According to the City of Iowa City, “The Literary Walk, conceptualized by the Iowa City Public Art Advisory Committee in 1999, celebrates works by 49 writers who have ties to Iowa. [A good many specifically to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, I suspect.] The Literary Walk is comprised of a series of bronze relief panels that feature authors’ words as well as attribution. The panels are visually connected by a series of general quotations about books and writing stamped into the concrete sidewalk. All artwork, by Gregg LeFevre, is set in the pavement along both sides of Iowa Avenue from Clinton Street to Gilbert Street.”

The New Seminary Coop Bookstore

Posted on March 18, 2015 by admin

Last year, I noticed that the Seminary Coop Bookstore isn’t where it used to be, in the basement of the Chicago Theological Seminary at 5757 S. University Ave in Hyde Park. Over the years, I’d popped in now and then to enjoy that cave of books. And I bought a few things there, such as The Greeks and the Irrational (E.R. Dodds, 1951) and Daily Life in Ancient Rome (Jérôme Carcopino, 1940). How could the floor-to-ceiling shelves laden with books on a wild array of subjects, and the twists and turns and nooks, be the same above ground?

Last year, I wrote: “It didn’t seem right. At the basement location, there was no room for anything but books and more books…. the new location still has a ‘maze aspect’ and Stanley Tigerman did the design (himself or Tigerman McCurry Architects staff?), which I guess counts for something.”

On Sunday, we went into the new store and looked around. The new iteration isn’t bad. In fact, it’s a fine store, stocked with the same wild array of subjects. But it also doesn’t have the je ne sais quoi of the old location. The new design is formed by shelves at various angles to each other, so it isn’t a standard bookstore with parallel shelving. Even so, it seems more like an homage to the cramped old shelves than anything else, a little maze-like but also a little too orderly.

I guess they had their reasons for moving. Maybe the store lost its lease, or maybe patrons had a way of wandering into the further reaches of the book cave and were never heard from again.

Prefecture Osaka

Posted on March 15, 2015 by admin

Twenty-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.

The 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.

The 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.

San Antonio Debris

Posted on March 5, 2015 by admin

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.

That 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.

A 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.

Many 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.

Elsewhere 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.

Pet Peeve Opposites

Posted on February 11, 2015 by admin

Time for a winter hiatus. Back to posting on February 22 or so, when there will still be plenty enough winter to go. At least we haven’t had the kind of wall-to-wall snow that Boston’s experienced lately.

Pet peeve for the day: postings, especially those containing business or economic data, that have no date, nor any way to figure out when they were posted. Worse than useless. I ran across two of them yesterday. Want to be cited in an article? Don’t do that.

But I don’t want to rattle on about pet peeves. Is there an opposite term for pet peeve? A small thing that consistently brings pleasure. One of life’s “itty-bitties,” as my Old Testament professor called them, though they could be good or bad. Finding money you didn’t know you had; a doughnut with a bit more cream filling than usual; a new understanding of a lyric or a plot point or a concept that suddenly occurs to you.

There has to be a term for that. Something just as pithy as pet peeve, that is. I haven’t been able to think of one, or spend any time looking. Finding such a phrase would, in fact, be an anti-pet peeve, considering the pleasure a pithy new phrase brings, so I’ll have to work on it. Besides the Internet – not everything is there yet – I’ll take a look in delightful books like They Have a Word for It and Lost Beauties of the English Language. When I have time; that can be the best little pleasure of all.

Divers* Notes on an Ordinary Thursday

Posted on February 5, 2015 by admin

Maybe it’s time to go on another literary bender. Lately I’ve been reading The Dog of the South, which I’m enjoying, so maybe Charles Portis is just the thing. Since I read True Grit not that long ago, that only leaves three more novels of his left to read. The man’s got a gift for understated humor. Sometimes that’s the best kind.

Got one of a mass email from the principal of Quincy Adams Wagstaff Elementary School recently – an email of the times: “In light of the recent news regarding measles at a Palatine child care facility, District π is sharing with all families this Measles Fact Sheet from the Cook County Department of Public Health. At this time there have been no reported cases of measles in District π. Should there be a case of measles at your child’s school; [sic] parents/guardians would be notified.

“Measles is a highly contagious disease. However, more than 99% of our students are vaccinated against this disease and the measles vaccine is highly effective.”

What he didn’t say, but I wouldn’t have minded if he did: “We’re glad there aren’t a lot of anti-vax morons in our district.”

The usual suspects were over to celebrate Ann’s birthday last week.

A close up of the cake. It’s the same kind as seven years ago, at Ann’s request. (She didn’t remember having it before, but was impressed when she saw it, and wanted it.)

To quote myself: “[The cake is] very dark and very round, heavy as a manhole, rich as Bill Gates. Among chocolate cakes, it’s a Union Pacific steam locomotive.”

* For some reason, I’ve long been fond of the archaic form of diverse “divers.” According to Grammarist: “The archaic adjective divers means various or many. Diverse means having great variety. For instance, a group of three can be called diverse if all three elements differ from one another, but we wouldn’t call the group divers because three are not many. Still, divers (usually pronounced DIE-verz) has given way to diverse in the sense meaning various, and in the many sense it gives way to other synonyms. The word has not been widely used in over a century, and even in the 19th century it was mainly a poeticism.”

Lopadotemachoselachogaleokranioleipsanodrimhypotrimmatosilphioparaomelitokatakechymenokichlepikossyphophattoperisteralektryonoptekephalliokigklopeleiolagoiosiraiobaphetraganopterygon

Posted on January 29, 2015 by admin

Just showing off. This week I thumbed through my beaten-up copy of The Book of Lists (1977), and came across its list of long words. Such as Lopadotemachoselachogaleokranioleipsanodrimhypotrimmatosilphioparaomelitokatakechymenokichlepikossyphophattoperisteralektryonoptekephalliokigklopeleiolagoiosiraiobaphetraganopterygon. These days, that word has its own Wiki page. As is probably should.

It’s been years since I looked at the book, but looking again I can see why it was a mammoth bestseller. It’s one of the best browsing books that I know of, and the godfather of the slide show and the listicle. The back cover promises: the 10 worst films of all time; 7 famous men who died virgins; 10 sensational thefts; 15 famous event that happened in a bathtub; 20 famous high school dropouts; 9 breeds of dogs that bite the most; 10 doctors who tried to get away with murder; the 14 worst human fears; and much, much more! That last one’s no hype. The book comes in at 519 pages with fairly dense text.

The male virgins, incidentally, are on page 321, a list based on conjecture (and weaselly calling them “full-time or part-time” virgins). More accurate would be a list of historical figures suspected of long periods of celibacy, but that kind of phasing wouldn’t get enough eyeballs, to put it in modern terms. On the list: Isaac Newton, Immanuel Kant, Louis XVI, John Ruskin, George Bernard Shaw, Havelock Ellis, Adolf Hitler.

Another interesting list, more-or-less at random: Top 10 Air Aces of World War I. Of course, everyone’s heard of the number-one ace, Rittmeister Manfred von Richthofen, one way or another. But what about number 2 and 3 — a Frenchman and Briton, respectively? That would be Capt. René Fonck and Maj. Edward Mannoch. (Though Wiki puts Mannoch at number 5.)

And one more fun one: people who became words. Bloomer, Bowdler, Boycott, Braille, Chauvin, Diesel, Guillotin, Lynch, Nicot, Quisling, Sacher-Masoch, and of course John Montagu, the Earl of Sandwich.

Oz Day ’15

Posted on January 26, 2015 by admin

Early Sunday morning more snow fell here in northern Illinois. About as much as in the pictures of subtropical Texas with snow posted yesterday — which is to say, not much for this part of the country. Not even enough to cover the grass completely. On the whole, it hasn’t been so snowy this winter, unlike last. But there’s still time for that.

Snow doesn’t deter the dog from checking for the sight, sound, and smell of intruders on her domain.

Australia Day’s rolled around again. We could use a bit of that Southern Hemisphere summer about now, but not the aridity. Years ago, I had access to National Lampoon’s Tenth Anniversary Anthology, 1970-1980, which included japery by the young PJ O’Rourke, originally published in the magazine’s May 1976 issue: “Foreigners Around the World,” subhead, “A Brief Survey of the Various Foreign Types, Their Chief Characteristics, Customs, and Manners.”

More than 30 years later, I remember parts of it. So I found it online. The entire thing is linked here. It isn’t for the easily offended. From the section on Australia:

AUSTRALIANS: Violently loud alcoholic roughnecks whose idea of fun is to throw up on your car. The national sport is breaking furniture and the average daily consumption of beer in Sydney is ten and three quarters Imperial gallons for children under the age of nine. “Making a Shambles” is required study in the primary schools and all Australians are bilingual, speaking both English and Sheep…

Proper Forms of Address: Steady there, Cool off, For Christ’s sake, not in the sink, Stay back, I’ve got a gun!

Isaac’s Storm

Posted on January 19, 2015 by admin

Isaac’s Storm by Erik Larson (1999) promises to be a good read. Especially if it’s as well written as The Devil in the White City, by the same author.

Got it the other day at a resale shop, a bit beaten up and miscategorized as fiction. Not so. “A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History,” says the subhead, which doesn’t quite pin it down as nonfiction, but I happen to know it’s about the Hurricane of 1900, which blew through Galveston, killing – no one knows for sure how many, but the usual figure quoted is 6,000 to as many as 12,000.

Isaac is Isaac Cline, resident meteorologist for the U.S. Weather Bureau at Galveston, and survivor of the storm, though not all of his family made it. In the movie version of this story, Isaac would heroically warn the unbelieving residents of Galveston that a bad blow was coming. Unfortunately, he seems not to have done that. No one knew how bad it was going to be. Hurricane science was still fairly primitive, after all.

I peeked ahead, and found that afterwards Cline had a long career with the Weather Bureau, posted in New Orleans. Among other things, he was there for the Flood of 1927, the subject of another book I want to read, Rising Tide (John M. Barry, 1998; I read his book about the Pandemic of 1918, though). In fact, though retired, Cline almost lived long enough to see the first weather satellites, dying in his 90s in 1955.

Thursday Stew

Posted on January 15, 2015 by admin

A bit of meltage today, with temps around freezing, and the sunshine doing the melting where it hit snow directly. Compared with last week, the air felt good. But hard winter will be back, count on it.

Started working my way through Deadwood around New Year’s. When the show was still fairly new, the profanity put me off it. Not the profanity itself, but the fact that I considered it grossly anachronistic. Now I understand it as an intentional anachronism, done for good reasons. The show’s impressive: one that helps make the argument that now is a golden age of television, or at least the 2000s were.

Ann’s been reading Through the Looking-Glass lately, and looking for our copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which has gone missing. Not long ago she read The Wizard of Oz. And she’s asked me to find our copies of The Hobbit and the first Harry Potter book, so she can read them. The kid’s got some kind of bug.

I have an ambition to scan more coins, specifically those I’ve encountered lately that don’t feature any Roman letters or even Arabic numerals. In the old days, it was a chore figuring out the origin of coins like that, so much so that for some time as a youngster I had a 1 yen coin that I thought was a 1 yuan coin. These days, all it usually takes is a focused Google search.

But I’ve alternately been too busy and too indolent to do much coin-scanning. I did get around to this one. Forgot to check the box that would correct for dust (the scanner’s got some impressive features for a cheaper model; guess the tech’s improving).

It’s a well-worn brass 10 santim piece from Ethiopia. 100 santim = 1 birr. The lion, I suppose, is the Lion of Judah.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Books