Category Archives: Over the Transom

The Seven Wonders, Overheard

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Today I overheard another conversation, this time in line in an ordinary store in the ordinary suburb I call home. A man and a boy were taking, father and son, I assume. They too were about as ordinary as could be, both wearing sports logo shirts (Backhawks and Cubs).

“There was the Great Pyramid,” the father said.

“And the lighthouse and statue of Zeus,” the son said.

“Yes, and the mausoleum and the hanging garden and the lighthouse, and what else?”

“I already said the lighthouse.”

“Right. Now let’s see…”

They were talking about the Seven Wonders of the World. Maybe the boy, about 10, had been studying them, though I’d be hard-pressed to imagine they come up in school any more. Or in living memory. I didn’t learn about them in school. Maybe the boy had his own interest in them, or maybe the father did. Anyway, it isn’t something you overhear in line every day. Or ever. Until now. It made me smile, though I didn’t say anything.

I’m reminded of them time when some friends and I were in line to see a movie in Nashville, ca. 1986, and somehow the subject of the Frisian languages came up, including the notion that Frisian is as close to English as any language is, without actually being English. We’d heard that was the opinion among linguists.

A fellow behind us in line — this was at the movie theater at Vanderbilt — was visibly astonished. He felt he had to speak up, apparently, and he asked us how we’d heard about Frisian. He was from the Frisian Islands, he said, though at school at VU.

I don’t remember what we told him. I’d heard of Frisian somewhere before, maybe first in my American Heritage College Dictionary, which has a fine family tree diagram of Indo-European languages, with Frisian on it as a close cousin to English. No doubt he’d resigned himself to not bothering to tell Americans he was from the Frisians, but rather from the Netherlands or Germany.

See You Later, Alligator

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While walking the dog during the most recent warm day — a few days ago now — I passed a knot of grade-school kids and their bicycles across the street. I didn’t pay them much attention, but after I’d passed by, I clearly heard one of the boys say, directed at one or more of the others, “See you later, alligator! After a while, crocodile!”

People still say that? Kids still do? It sounded old even when I was young, though I can’t say I heard it much. Later I heard the mid-50s song of that name, recorded by Bill Haley, which seems to have popularized the phrase, but not invented it.

I’d always imagined it was from the ’20s. It sounds like it belongs in the same league as the bees’ knees or 23 skidoo or the like, but after looking around a little, its exact origin and timing remain elusive. One source speculates it started with Swing devotees of the late ’30s, which is plausible, but who knows?

On the other hand, I do know that the phrase lives on in the 2010s. Maybe some celebrity who appeals to kids is saying it now.

The Manliest Vegetable

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Today was one of the days that should be warm, but isn’t. Winter doesn’t want to let go. It even snowed a little, with cold rain predicted for the rest of the week. Bah.

I don’t have what it takes to be a drinking man, but I did visit a large liquor store not long ago, along with my brother Jay. That’s where I learned that potatoes are the manliest of all vegetables. Who knew? That’s a promotion for the humble spud, I think. Jay documented the evidence with his phone.
Total Wine & More San AntonioDeutsch Family Wine & Spirits imports the vodka into the United States, and its web site says: “Luksusowa Vodka (pronounced LOOK-SOO-SO-VAH) was created in 1928 in Poland. Luksusowa means ‘Luxurious’ in Polish… A smooth, rich, high-quality imported vodka that beats the competition in terms of flavor, mouthfeel & price.”

Mouthfeel? I’ve never heard of that before, but it’s one of those words that instantly explains itself.

Man’s Fierce Hand

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Leap Day once again. It’s a Monday, so it should be a holiday, but Congress doesn’t have that kind of imagination.

Does anyone really shoot fish in a barrel? Did anyone ever do that? Was that sport somewhere, say in the 19th century, when firearms and barrels were readily available, and many strange things were done in the name of entertainment?

The saying represents something exceptionally easy, of course, but even so I’m not sure it would be. 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. Here’s the first line:

“When people picture the Appalachian cultural region of the Eastern United States, they envisage a beacon of wonder and natural beauty left untouched by man’s fierce hand.”

There’s certainly still natural beauty in the Appalachians, but as for the “cultural region,” that’s not the first thing that comes to mind. Then there’s the matter of mountaintop removal mining. Among other feats of mineral extraction. I’m fairly sure that counts as man’s fierce hand.

All My Eye and Betty Martin, Thursday Edition

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Sure enough, more snow yesterday. But not much more, and most of it melted today. The snowfall didn’t even mess up the roads very much. Or my driveway. If you don’t have to shovel it, you can’t say it really snowed.

Been reading more by the chattering classes than usual lately, maybe because they’re chattering a lot now. With some reason. There’s also a sizable share of hyperventilating Chicken Little-ism about the political rise the short-fingered vulgarian. He’s going to be the end of Republican party! Of movement conservatism! Of American democracy! Of truth, justice and the American way!

I have to be skeptical on all counts. Of course, I could be wrong, and I’ll be the first to admit it as soon as goons come to take me to one of the detention camps of the new order.

This is some hard candy Yuriko brought back from Japan last month. Or rather, these are images of the Gold Coin of the Meiji Era tin, front and back. We’ve almost finished the candy inside.

Gold Coin of the Meiji EraGold Coin of the Meiji EraThe candy, which is roundish and yellow, is pretty good, but I like the name best of all. The coin pictured on the tin isn’t some fanciful latter-day re-creation, but an image of an actual gold coin of the Meiji era, just like this one, dated 1870 (Meiji 3). Except that the one on the tin is a 20-yen piece, rather than two yen.

Quite a bit of money at the time, and a coin of great beauty, from the looks of the photo. I wouldn’t mind having one, but it isn’t something I want to spend big bucks for. I’ll settle for the Meiji-era copper two-sen coin that I do have, which only cost a few modern dollars.

One more thing along these lines: We cast pearls before swine. The Japanese give gold coins to cats: 猫に小判 (neko ni koban).

And one more coffee cup currently on our shelf.

Oh ShitLilly got that from a friend of hers for Christmas this year. Ha-ha. It reminds me that adults should not use that word. In fact, anyone older than about six or seven should steer clear of it. Certain words should be confined to little children, and that’s one of them. Yet I’ve seen poop used in more-or-less serious writing by people whom I assume are grown. Knock it off.

Coffee Makes Me Crap would be the slogan for short-fingered vulgarians, maybe. Funnier would be Decaf Makes Me Defecate. I don’t drink coffee anyway. Better for me would be Tea Makes Me Pee. True indeed.

The Birds

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Saturday was as un-February-like as a day can be without actually being springlike. Temps were up and the high winds that blew through the area the day before had calmed down. The last vestiges of snow had disappeared from the ground, though a few patches of dirty ice endured here and there, but none on sidewalks.

Walking the dog was a pleasure again that day, except when she spotted a lone squirrel off in someone’s yard. Fortunately, I’m usually able to spot squirrels before she does, using that keen eyesight that seems to be a primate’s only sensory advantage over a canine. So I can anticipate the sudden pull when she does see the squirrel or the rabbit or the other dog.

I even heard a woodpecker as I walked along. An early, early sign of spring. But it isn’t springtime. Cold February was back on Sunday and today, and probably for the rest of the calendar month.

This afternoon a swarm of birds were feasting on something in my front yard. What, I’m not sure. It’s a little early for visible insects. Grubs, maybe.

The BirdsI’m not even sure what kind of birds these are. Natural history isn’t a forte of mine. They aren’t robins. Or cardinals. Or dodos. All birds I’d recognize. Or even crows, who don’t seem any more popular now than ever, despite the We Want to Be Your Only Bird™ campaign that started in the early 2000s.

At Least I Won a Coffee Cup

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By mid-February, looking out at scenes like this is pretty tiresome. But there it is.
Feb 15, 2016Saturday was bitterly cold, even for February, which nixed any notion I had of going to Chinatown to watch the Chinese New Year’s parade. I’ve never been to one of those, so I toyed with the idea. But not when temps are single-digit Fahrenheit.

Sunday, snow. Monday, gloom. But at least we have the option of warm beverages in well-wrought ceramic cups, such as these.

cupsThe black one with the Sam Hurt illustration of a prehistoric creature and his cup — “Early Breakfast” — was a thoughtful Christmas present this year from my nephew Dees and his girlfriend Eden.

The blue one — “Take Time for Fun” — I picked up at a park district facility last week. It was a prize.

A week earlier, two days before the Super Bowl, we’d visited the same facility, and I noticed a contest in progress. Guess the final score of the Big Game and get three months added to your membership. Write your guess down on a slip of paper with your name and address, and put it in a big box (refreshingly low tech, that).

So I guessed Denver 24, Charlotte 17. I was vaguely aware that Charlotte was the favorite, but I still wanted Denver to win. Not because I cared anything about the game, but so I could complete a slide show like this the next week, after having predicted that Denver would win.

As for the numbers themselves, I pulled them out of the air, though I made them football-plausible. 24 = three touchdowns + extra points + one field goal, while 17 = two touchdowns + extra points + one field goal.

I proceeded not to watch the Super Bowl or any of its ridiculously expensive commercials. On Monday, a woman from the park district called to tell me I’d won a coffee cup. Everyone who guessed 24 as the score for Denver got one, it seems — eight or 10 people. Two people, she said, had gotten both scores right and won the membership extension.

One thing people say at this point is that “I’ve never won anything,” but it isn’t so for me. Among other things, in grade school I guessed the number of jelly beans in a jar and won the beans — I picked my house address as the number — and once I was a member of a trivia contest team at a corporate meeting, and won some movie tickets, though that was partly because of my knowledge of obscure facts, not just blind luck.

Over the Transom Thursday

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Got another political robocall yesterday, but it was a first: a fellow running for a seat on the local water reclamation board, bemoaning the condition of the local water system. The subtext of his call: You don’t want to end up like Flint, do you? DO YOU? Vote for me, the clean water candidate.

Next thing I know, someone running for the Northwest Mosquito Abatement District board will call, stressing his mosquito-fighting chops because ZIKA VIRUS is going to ATTACK YOUR BABIES. (Never mind that the species of mosquitoes best able to transmit the virus aren’t found in Illinois.)

No, that won’t happen. The mosquito board is appointed, not elected. Shoot.

I don’t remember where I got this Bernie flier. Maybe when I was downtown last month, someone handed it to me, and I found it in one of my pockets later.
FeeltheBernThe shape isn’t quite rectangular. It has the shape of paper cut quickly, en masse, on a cutting board.

I also found this bookmark recently. There’s a 2011 copyright on the other side, so it’s probably been kicking around the house a while. Published by the Elks, it looks like something that gets handed out in elementary schools.

heroesSure, heroes don’t use drugs and alcohol (but just what’s in Super Chicken’s super sauce?). I don’t know about that Elk on the left, either. Looks a little pixilated to me.

Not Too Cheap to Meter

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On Saturday I got one of ComEd’s periodic notices about our household electricity consumption. “You used 14% less electricity than your efficient neighbors” (the company’s bold), the letter tells me, during the period from November 20 to December 22, 2015. By golly, that’s awfully green of us, but I can’t think what we did any differently last month than any other time.

For the year, however, “You used 7% more electricity than your efficient neighbors. This costs you about $46 extra per year.” Dang.

My neighbors, at least according to ComEd for the purpose of its comparison, are about 100 households whose dwellings are about the same size as ours. Those annoying efficient neighbors are the “most efficient 20 percent” of that group, though at least for last month, we were efficient neighbors for other people, without even trying.

One more datum: From January to November 2015, we used 5,351 kWh, down from 6,125 kWh during the same 11 months in 2014. Also how this happened, I couldn’t say. According to the trove of weather data that’s the Weather Underground, there were 799 cooling degree days in 2014 and 806 in 2015 (as measured at O’Hare, which is close enough).

That means ’15 was a little warmer, but not much, which is an important consideration, since running the AC is the main contributor to high household electric usage over a year. I know that because the handy ComEd graph of our electric usage throughout 2015 (also in the letter) spikes like the Matterhorn in July-August-September.

Never mind flying cars and all that imagined future hooey. The future (that is, now) should have included that business about “too cheap to meter.”

Africa-Dzonga 5c

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One of my small-change-of-the-world coins has words in the Khoisan language on it. That, I’ve discovered, is a modern umbrella term for the peoples once known as the Bushmen and the Hottentots, and their languages. The words on the coin are rendered ǃKE E: ǀXARRA ǁKE, but don’t ask me how that’s pronounced. The English translation is, “diverse people unite.”

That’s the motto found on the South African coat of arms, which happens to be on the observe of the 2003 South African 5-cent piece that I have. A lot of recent SA coinage features the coat of arms, which was adopted by the post-Apartheid government in 2000.

The coat of arms also includes ears of wheat, elephant tusks, a shield, two human figures, a spear and a knobkierie. Over all that is a secretary bird and a rising sun. Around the coat of arms is Africa-Dzonga, which is “South Africa” in Tsonga, one of the 11 official languages of the country.
SAfrica5cOBVApparently the languages take turns each year on the coinage, beginning in 2002. Tsonga’s turn happened to come the next year, at least on the 5-cent pieces (it seems to be different on other denominations).

The reverse of the coin is simpler: a blue crane and the value.
SAfrica5cREVMinting of the copper-plated steel 5-cent piece stopped in 2012, a victim of inflation, but the coins weren’t demonetized, so it’s still technically worth about three-tenths of US cent. The 1- and 2-cent pieces were discontinued ten years earlier.