Thursday Tidbits

Posted on October 1, 2015 by admin

Cool air to begin October. Fitting.

I saw part of The Iron Giant on TV a few years after its 1999 release, coming away with the impression that I ought to see all of it someday. That day was Saturday: Yuriko, Ann and I watched it on DVD. Upon its theatrical release, apparently the studio dropped the ball in marketing it, so the movie didn’t do well, but it caught the attention of critics. I can see why. Not flawless, but high-quality animation and a fun story.

Occasionally we still discover another food that the dog will eat. This week it was refried beans. She was pretty enthusiastic about them, in fact.

NASA has just published remarkable images of Charon, moon of Pluto. Or are they considered twins these days? I haven’t kept up with those definitions. Anyway, how often do we see something that’s absolutely, for sure never been seen by humans before? Not often.

Around 30 years ago, when I bought my first car, I remember pricing some Volkswagens. As usual for a young man, I was looking for an inexpensive car. Volkswagens of the time weren’t as inexpensive as I thought they would be.

A decade earlier, when you wanted an inexpensive car, they would have been the thing. They were People’s Cars, after all. But somehow the brand had strayed away from the entry level by the early 1980s, and before long I owned an entry-level Toyota, a company that remembered to make models at a variety of price points. I’ve bought a number of other Toyotas since then, too, above entry level.

Now that Volkswagen’s been caught committing mass fraud, I imagine the talk a few years ago between two upper-level company managers (in cartoon German accents). After all, imagined conspiracy scenes can be fun.

Hans: Can we really get away with this?

Fritz: Ja, the Americans are too stupid to catch on.

Obviously they learned nothing from the history of the 20th century.

July Back Yard Flowers &c.

Posted on July 8, 2015 by admin

Time for a summer interlude. Back to posting around July 19.

What this country needs is another summer holiday, sometime between Independence Day and Labor Day, and I nominate July 20, to honor the Moon landing. Or the fourth Monday in July, since the 20th is a little close to July 4 — a Monday holiday to honor the astronauts’ return on July 24, recalling the bit about “returning safely to the Earth,” since the lunar mission wouldn’t have been complete without that.

To keep the accounting snits happy (we can’t afford another holiday!), Columbus Day can be de-holidayed. It’s truly the most insignificant of federal holidays anyway, whatever you think of the Admiral of the Ocean Sea.

New Horizons will fly by Pluto during my interlude. This week’s “glitch” was alarming, but the craft seems to have recovered. (I like the Wired caption: “Among with gobs of planetary science, New Horizons is capturing pictures of Pluto that are increasingly less crappy.”) I will be watching the news closely. Yesterday I came across theses proposed names for geographic features on the Ninth Planet and its moons. Interesting lists. The IAU might not be so keen on fictional explorers and their vessels, however.

Chanced recently across another musical act that I’d pay money to see (and there aren’t that many), namely the Ukulele Band of Great Britain. Pretty much on the strength of their version of the theme from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Too bad the closest they’ll be to me this year is Muncie, Ind., and that isn’t close enough.

Here’s some speculation: Treasury Secretary Jack Lew’s playing a deep game with the $10 and $20 bills. He proposed making Alexander Hamilton second banana on his note to elicit a wave of support for the first Treasury secretary — at the expense of Andrew Jackson. A common notion now seems to be, “Go ahead, get rid of Jackson, but not Hamilton!” Previously, the idea of tossing Jackson in favor of a woman wasn’t so warmly received. But now…

This is a recent headline that amused me: Google Self-Driving Cars Head to Austin, from PC Magazine, which further says that “the company has selected the city to be the next testing location for its autonomous Lexus SUVs…” Austin’s a very safe choice, I figure, especially if you turn the vehicle loose on I-35, where it won’t move very fast, if at all.

Just ahead of rain earlier this week, I went out to take some pictures of flowers. I went no further than my back yard.
O Summer,
Oft pitched’st here thy goldent tent, and oft
Beneath our oaks hast slept, while we beheld
With joy thy ruddy limbs and flourishing hair.

Lilly in Ecuador

Posted on June 29, 2015 by admin

I don’t have any comments to offer here on the jurisprudence of Justice Scalia, but I do crack a smile at his florid prose, as pointed out again recently by endless commentators (and wags who have fun with him). Such writing comes from having no editor to answer to, and a taste for it. I’ve run across most of his terms before — everyone ought to know “argle-bargle” and “applesauce” (in the way he meant it) for instance — but “jiggery-pokery” was a new one on me.

Or rather, an old-sounding new one. It’s a term of abuse that sounds like it might have come up in a London coffee shop argument about the Bangorian Controversy. I was glad to learn it.

Earlier this month, Lilly went to Ecuador and Panama on a Spanish Club trip. It was a big wheel, little wheel trip — one major destination (Ecuador for a week), one lesser one (Panama for three days).

That’s further than I ever got to go on any school trips, though taking a bus to Stevens Point, Wis., from San Antonio for the Mu Alpha Theta National Convention was its own kind of epic, and Amarillo seemed almost as far (Latin Club trip). It was the luck of the draw for her; some years the club goes to Spain, others Costa Rica. All those sound good to me, but Ecuador especially. South America. I’ve never even been close.

Most of her pictures weren’t selfies. She’s outgrowing a need for excessive self-images, I think. Here’s a view overlooking Quito.

The next pics illustrate her taking after her father, unconsciously I bet, in taking pictures of statues and public art. This particular figure is Francisco de Orellana, explorer of the Amazon. As Wiki puts it, “in one of the most improbably successful voyages in known history, Orellana managed to sail the length of the Amazon, arriving at the river’s mouth on 24 August 1542.”
Some roadside art.
Plaza de la Independencia.

She was also impressed by the fact that she could see a volcano from Quito, which I believe is Pichincha. Alexander von Humboldt was the first European to climb it. I hear tell it’s still active.
Of course there were many more places. She visited the tourist Equator — how could you not? — Plaza Santa Domingo, a couple of art museums, open markets, grocery stores, churches, a school (technically they took a few Spanish lessons), the neighborhood in which she stayed with an Ecuadorean family, even the outside of the Ecuadorean presidential palace. All in all, it sounded like a fine trip. I’d need no persuasion to go myself.

Waterloo and All That

Posted on June 18, 2015 by admin

Been quite a week for multi-centenary anniversaries. After Magna Carta earlier this week came Waterloo today, so famous you don’t even need to call it the Battle of Waterloo. It was the occasion for a lot of showy commemorations in the UK and Belgium (and what are they doing in France? Calling it jeudi, probably).

I guess everyone was busy with other things during the centennial, so the bicentennial got star treatment. The Daily Mail has a fine collection of photos for the commemorations. The pics made me wonder: will the fellow who’s playing Napoleon, according to the caption a French lawyer named Franck Samson, be sent to St. Helena for a while now? You know, to buttress the re-enactment’s authenticity.

The Daily Mail again (man, they know how to use the Internet): pictures of St. Helena. Apparently the island’s going to get a real airport soon, so that the not-so-frequent royal mail ship from Cape Town will be a thing of the past.

One more thing about Waterloo re-enactments: I wonder who played Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher? That’s a pretty important part, after all. An elderly German with a taste for re-enactment, no doubt, made up to look like his horse had fallen on him.

As I look around, I find more things inspired by Waterloo. That’s one of the time-eating dangers of the Internet, but also its prime joy. The song that helped propel Abba to a higher income than the GDP of Sweden (or something like that) was named “Waterloo,” of course, but there’s also a song lost to time of the same title, recorded by Stonewall Jackson in 1959, which hit the country charts just after Johnny Horton’s “The Battle of New Orleans.” It was the golden age of battle-themed honky-tonk music, clearly.

Stonewall Jackson’s song includes the following deathless lyrics. Punctuated as I hear it.

Little general, Napoleon of France
Tried to conquer, the world but lost his pants.
Met defeat, known as Bonaparte’s retreat.
And that’s when Napoleon met his Waterloo.

Incidentally, at 82, Stonewall Jackson — reportedly not a stage name, and I believe it — is still with us. That’s good to know.

Pre-Victory Parade Chicago

Posted on June 17, 2015 by admin

Business took me downtown today. The Blackhawks victory parade is tomorrow, I hear, and I’m glad I’m going to miss that mess. Braving a crowd like that might be worth it to see the first astronauts to return from Mars, but other than that, no.

According to a parking lot sign on W. Madison St., today was very hot.

Or maybe that’s reporting a cold snap on Venus, as long as we’re talking about other planets.

No parade today, but Metra — the commuter rail I took into town — is getting ready.

A wise precaution, even if it’s going to be ignored by some riders. Or technically honored by riders who’re loaded when they get on board. I always disliked riding trains the night of a Cubs or Sox game; the later the train, the louder the drunks.

Also, just outside Union Station, I spied one of those post-championship souvenir vendors that pop up like toadstools after a rain. They were doing a brisk business in t-shirts, hats and maybe other gewgaws and gimcracks. It was too crowded to get a close look.

I didn’t see any Hawks banners hanging from lampposts — maybe I wasn’t looking on the right streets — but I did see other team totems. It seemed like more people than usual were wearing team shirts, for one thing, and then there was this:

The good tourist ship Lila plying the Chicago River, flying a Hawks flag.

Heavy Rain, Then Sudden Fireworks

Posted on June 16, 2015 by admin

After posting yesterday, we had more fierce rain, until it finally petered out around 9 pm. At about 9:50, I started hearing pop-pop-pop-BOOM-pop-crackle-bang-pop-pop. As in, fireworks. Private fireworks, not a large public display, as people shoot off on the Fourth of July or New Year’s, neither of which was yesterday. Is that really fireworks, I wondered, or some kind of bizarre thunder? What’s going here?

Soon I figured out that the Blackhawks must have won the Stanley Cup. Pull up Google News and sure enough, they had. Then I heard some yelling in the street by some happy knuckleheads, something that almost never happens in the suburbs. I don’t remember that happening the last time Hawks won, or the time before, but maybe I wasn’t paying attention.

I do remember fireworks and — possibly — distant gunshots when the Bulls won one of their championships in 1997. I figured it was a good time to stay home, which we did. Anyway, it’s been a long time since I got news via fireworks. Odd how things come to one’s attention sometimes.

Or not. I didn’t hear until yesterday that Ronnie Gilbert had died. Time to look at the Weavers’ 1951 videos, made for Snader Telescriptions. Been a while since I’d seen them, and before the age of YouTube, I never had.

Oddly enough, I found out that Blaze Starr — a different sort of entertainer — had died almost as soon as the news was out, by a mention in an email, of all things. That was a case of, she was still alive? (But I knew Ronnie Gilbert was; now there’s only one original Weaver left.)

Maybe I need to pay more attention to this constantly updated Roll of Death, which could also be called the Death Never Takes a Holiday List. If I had, I’d have known about not only Ronnie Gilbert, but also Tiffany Two.

The Lincoln Park Conservatory

Posted on April 9, 2015 by admin

The Lincoln Park Conservatory dates from the 1890s, when Gilded Age Chicago wanted a splashy new Crystal Palace-like conservatory. Architect Joseph Lyman Silsbee designed the structure in collaboration with architect M.E. Bell, and their work still stands in the early 21st century.

It’s one of the city’s two great conservatories, with the other in Garfield Park. Somehow I feel that Garfield Park’s the greater of the two, though not by much. I can’t argue that position very thoroughly, since I’m no authority on plant diversity or glass-and-iron construction or conservatory aesthetics, but never mind. I’m always glad to stroll through the Lincoln Park Conservatory, as we did on Easter Saturday. It’s luxuriant.

It also sports some odd plants. How is it that I visit conservatories periodically and always manage to see plants I’m certain I’ve never seen nor even heard of? For instance, the aptly named Sausage Tree (Kigelia africana), native of tropical Africa. Granted, it’s been a few years since I was at the Lincoln Park Conservatory, but you’d think I’d remember the Sausage Tree. But no.

The plants have also made themselves at home even on the conservatory structure.

There’s also a fern room. Ever conservatory worth its salt has one of those.

And a place for orchids. A Vanda orchid (Vanda orchidaceae).

One more thing. We took a 151 Sheridan bus from Lincoln Park to Union Station for our return home, and at a Michigan Ave. bus shelter, I saw this from the bus window.
Anti-Rahm bills plastered on an ad. He won the runoff election on Tuesday, but at least the electorate made him work for it, by obliging him to win a runoff. No Daley ever had to do that.

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.”

-gate

Posted on January 21, 2015 by admin

I read the term “deflategate” for the first time today. Peculiar, but not funny enough to laugh at. Even better when referring to that incredibly, absolutely minor flap about deflated footballs — and it did make me laugh — is “ballghazi.”

Which made me wonder: just how many incredibly, absolutely minor flaps have had that -gate suffix attached to them in the last 40 years? Wiki, as usual, makes a stab at such a list, but there’s probably no way to know them all. I’d never heard of many of those on the list, and for good reason, since it includes the likes of “Flakegate”:

Photographs of the wedding reception of TV presenter Anthea Turner were used to promote Cadbury’s then new Snowflake chocolate bar, bringing scorn from the tabloid press and causing Turner to claim this was not part of the £450,000 by OK! magazine paid her for exclusive access to her wedding.

The article also credits, or blames, columnist William Safire (whom I didn’t realize has been dead for five years until I looked him up) with getting the ball rolling on -gate. Could be. But it might have been more spontaneous than that, as language tends to be.

I also wonder: in another 40 years (say), is anyone going to remember that the construction started with Watergate? The suffix has legs enough to survive that long, but historical amnesia being what it is, I can imagine some as-yet unborn person thinking, “Gate? That’s strange. Where did that come from?” And then either forgetting about it, or finding out by tapping the gizmo that pulls up whatever information ocean is sloshing around in the future.

Who’s Next in Line?

Posted on January 20, 2015 by admin

Question for the day: What’s The Onion going to do after Joe Biden leaves office? The paper’s been mining him extensively for low comedy for a while now, but there’s only two more years to go. It seems unlikely that any successor to that colorless office will make such a fine target.

Skipped watching the State of the Union this evening, which I usually do. President Jefferson might have had the right idea: just send a written message to Congress and be done with it. President Wilson, with his pedagogic urges, revived the spoken address. In any case, the president says x, and the opposition then says, liar, liar pants on fire.

I was interested to learn that this year’s “designated survivor” – a Cabinet member who’s out of town during the speech, in case Cylons attack – was Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx. Not particularly a household name, but I remember him as the former mayor of Charlotte, a market I used to write about regularly.

Under the normal, fully hypothetical scheme of succession, Secretary Foxx is 13th in line to be president (with the vice president being first). Bringing up the caboose is Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, at 17th. The postmaster general hasn’t been on the list since the USPS was organized in 1971.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: News