One of the background noises of my childhood was the sound my father made when he was practicing bowling in the living room.
Pop came to bowling late in life, not until he was in his forties, and I always suspected that he could have gone professional if he had started earlier. For a long while, he carried a 220 average in a league at Leemark Lanes in Brooklyn, and he once bowled a nearly-perfect 295 game: eleven strikes in a row and five pins on a last ball that he told me "felt so heavy" in that final frame.
Bowling was his passion; he would play twice-weekly when he was working and daily on vacation and after he retired. In between visits to the alley, he would practice in the living room. I could sit and watch him, so focused on his task, and he wouldn't even notice me. He would sit in his rocking chair, reading a dog-eared copy of one of his bowling manuals or one of his clippings of the bowling column from the sports section of the Daily News - "Don't Twist at Target," "Fine Bowlers Study Lanes," or "Bend Knee to Brake." After a while, he would close the book, set it down on the carpet, and pick up his ball.
With a look of concentration on his face, he would step to the center of the room and practice his footwork, making a classic four-step approach in his slippers - swish, swish, swish - and moving through his backswing and downswing, not releasing the ball, of course, but letting it drop into his left hand - slap! - his muscled butcher's arms easily handling the weight as he worked to refine his technique.
After one approach or several, he would set the ball down again, return to his chair, pick the book, and open it once more. My father was not a formally educated man, progressing no further than grade school, but he believed in books and their power, and his bowling manuals were as important to his game as the rasp he used to smooth the finger holes in his ball. I am sure that there were sections of his manuals that he had read dozens of times, reading and experimenting and refining and improving his game. Bowling and reading about bowling; he did a lot of both.
I've bowled a bit in my day, but have never made it the avocation that my father did; and as a fellow who ended up a college English instructor, books and education have been a big part of my life for a long time. In some ways, I am nothing like my father; but sometimes...
We have begun some role-playing games again with a small group of friends, and I have been game-mastering some of the sessions. This requires me to set up a scenario that will provide the players with both an opportunity to create a shared narrative and some sort of challenge for them to overcome, all within the constraints of the game mechanics and rules. So, I sit and write, sketching out the non-player characters and trying to build a believable and engaging world.
And when something doesn't seem to be working out, or I have an idea I think would improve a puzzle, I find myself putting down my stuff, walking over to pick up my game manual, and sitting down to read it again. I am sure that there are sections of the manual that I have read a dozen times. Then I go back to my work, refining and improving it.
My father would not have had any resonance with something like RPGs; he was much more practical and did not have much truck with the world of fantasy. But I think he would have recognized the value of the manual and the relationship between my reading the book and accomplishing my task. And I'd like to flatter myself by thinking that I might look a little bit like him as I sit in my chair, a dog-eared volume in my lap and a look of concentration on my face, trying to get better at doing something I care about.
Better Bowling by Joe Wilman sits in my bookshelf, tape-mended spine, yellowed clippings, and all. The trophy that Leemark Lanes issued for Pop's 295 game went into his casket.
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
The best part of waking up
As I sit in here in the quiet watching the skies lighten, as I have done scores of times in the past, it is time for a confession of sorts. My beverage of choice for times such as this, and for just about any morning, has lately been instant coffee.
I know, I know; in the context of the Pacific Northwest coffee culture, this is heresy. We're supposed to obsess over which side of the hill our beans were grown on, and order our espresso drinks with a stream of qualifiers as long as an Elizabethan sonnet, and know the difference between grande and vente as well as ristretto and lungo, and so on. I can play in that sandbox when I have to, but usually I choose not to. I don't know if it was growing up with burnt percolator coffee ever-present on the stovetop, or coming of age in a New York that only distinguished between "regular" and "black" in coffee ordering, or just having too many graveyard cups of 7-Eleven and Circle-K coffee as a cop, or maybe just having unrefined taste overall, but I've never been able to get too excited over coffee.
Many people out here just don't get instant coffee. Perhaps the kindest thing a friend has said about this penchant of mine was "Well, I guess if you consider it a completely different beverage, you could get used to the taste." So, in an attempt to make instant coffee more relatable to the prevailing attitude, here's a short course in becoming an instant instant coffee snob.
Starbucks: The big green machine has been pushing its little tubular packets of instant coffee furiously of late. I tried a fee sample we picked up and liked it better than the regular brew that the chain serves - it had less of that burnt flavor that many people complain about. And one of the weirdest things I have seen was a commuter cup that had slots to hold several of the little tubes - I guess that no matter where you are, you just cadge some hot water and Bob's your uncle. I could drink this stuff regularly, except I try not to redistribute any of my resources to Starbucks.
Folger's: This is a nice, steady, mainstream instant coffee. It's a little on the thin side when it comes to flavor; it never really gets bitter, but isn't ever that robust. The smaller size still comes in a glass jar, so that's cool.
Trader Joe's: A rare miss for our favorite funky foodstore. Their instant coffee is nondescript in flavor and has an oily film on top, no matter the proportions of milk and water. Give this a pass, even though it is in a cool glass jar.
Kona coffee: Otis has brought me back two types of instant 100% Kona coffee from Hawaii: Ukulele Melody from Hawaiian Brew and Gourmet Blend by Mulvadi. Both of them come in nice little hexagonal glass jars, and each has the nice, round, earthy flavor of Kona. The Ukulele can tend to some bitterness more so than the Mulvadi, and neither mixes as well with cream as the local brands.
Nescafé Clásico: The ne plus ultra of instant coffee. You can tell it's classy because not only are there two diacritical marks in the name, the jar has a really cool shape and the label is written primarily in Spanish, with some English subtitles. It actually has a rich, full flavor, and no bitterness at all, and creates a creamy drink when combined with half-and-half. I guess jillions of people worldwide drink this, even in those fancy European countries that we think we are copying with all this coffee-drink business we have going on. And it's what I'm drinking right now.
So, pick your poison. For some, it's a grande two-pump vanilla non-fat extra-hot latte. For me, it's a cuppa. Just relax and enjoy.
I know, I know; in the context of the Pacific Northwest coffee culture, this is heresy. We're supposed to obsess over which side of the hill our beans were grown on, and order our espresso drinks with a stream of qualifiers as long as an Elizabethan sonnet, and know the difference between grande and vente as well as ristretto and lungo, and so on. I can play in that sandbox when I have to, but usually I choose not to. I don't know if it was growing up with burnt percolator coffee ever-present on the stovetop, or coming of age in a New York that only distinguished between "regular" and "black" in coffee ordering, or just having too many graveyard cups of 7-Eleven and Circle-K coffee as a cop, or maybe just having unrefined taste overall, but I've never been able to get too excited over coffee.
Many people out here just don't get instant coffee. Perhaps the kindest thing a friend has said about this penchant of mine was "Well, I guess if you consider it a completely different beverage, you could get used to the taste." So, in an attempt to make instant coffee more relatable to the prevailing attitude, here's a short course in becoming an instant instant coffee snob.
Starbucks: The big green machine has been pushing its little tubular packets of instant coffee furiously of late. I tried a fee sample we picked up and liked it better than the regular brew that the chain serves - it had less of that burnt flavor that many people complain about. And one of the weirdest things I have seen was a commuter cup that had slots to hold several of the little tubes - I guess that no matter where you are, you just cadge some hot water and Bob's your uncle. I could drink this stuff regularly, except I try not to redistribute any of my resources to Starbucks.
Folger's: This is a nice, steady, mainstream instant coffee. It's a little on the thin side when it comes to flavor; it never really gets bitter, but isn't ever that robust. The smaller size still comes in a glass jar, so that's cool.
Trader Joe's: A rare miss for our favorite funky foodstore. Their instant coffee is nondescript in flavor and has an oily film on top, no matter the proportions of milk and water. Give this a pass, even though it is in a cool glass jar.
Kona coffee: Otis has brought me back two types of instant 100% Kona coffee from Hawaii: Ukulele Melody from Hawaiian Brew and Gourmet Blend by Mulvadi. Both of them come in nice little hexagonal glass jars, and each has the nice, round, earthy flavor of Kona. The Ukulele can tend to some bitterness more so than the Mulvadi, and neither mixes as well with cream as the local brands.
Nescafé Clásico: The ne plus ultra of instant coffee. You can tell it's classy because not only are there two diacritical marks in the name, the jar has a really cool shape and the label is written primarily in Spanish, with some English subtitles. It actually has a rich, full flavor, and no bitterness at all, and creates a creamy drink when combined with half-and-half. I guess jillions of people worldwide drink this, even in those fancy European countries that we think we are copying with all this coffee-drink business we have going on. And it's what I'm drinking right now.
So, pick your poison. For some, it's a grande two-pump vanilla non-fat extra-hot latte. For me, it's a cuppa. Just relax and enjoy.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Whither the blogosphere?
The other day, someone sardonically quipped that "blogging is so 2006." Y'know, I think they might have been right.
What with the rise of Facebook and Twitter, it seems that the practice of starting and maintaining a personal blog has fallen from favor, at least among our circle¹. I had the feeling that this was the case, so I decided to check it out by looking at the blogs from the original League of the Underemployed gang -- we friends who all jumped into blogging in early 2005 -- and compare blogs² from July and August of 2006 to July and August (to date*) of 2009:
Viva! An Experiment: 17-8, 21-3*
Stave It Off, 1,2,3: 14-3, 9-1*
Ned Said: 11-1, 17-0*
Independence Days: No data - shuttered
Life with Jon: No data - shuttered
HKC (vs. WalakaNet): 30-6, 30-1*
Wow. I had expected a decline, but not that much. What's the deal? Have we run out of things to say? Umpossible! Were we bored with the medium? Maybe, widgets or no. Were there other outlets for expression? Definitely.
It's hard to deny that Facebook bleeds posts away from a blog. Here's an example: I rode the brand new Link Light Rail and the not-so-new-anymore South Lake Union Streetcar line, both for the first time, yesterday. Back in the day, I would have spent the time composing a nice little essay about the adventure for the blog. What did I do yesterday? I posted this status update to
Facebook from my phone: "I just got off the light rail and am now on the streetcar - ain't it cool?" Not quite Proustian, that. As an added incongruity, the person I shared the adventure with, Dingo, would never see the post - because she's not on Facebook!
I don't think I am alone in this sort of practice; Facebook does allow for quick and easy updating, and it's hard to beat that convenience. It's also great for sharing photos and links, and it has the added bonus of speaking to a somewhat screened community. Setting privacy issues aside, at least you know you're speaking to people who want to hear what you have to say -- they have chosen to "friend" you and include your posts in their news feed. These characteristics make Facebook an attractive channel for the same expressions that in 2006 would have found their way onto a blog.
In some ways, this bleed-off can work to make a blog healthier; leaner, perhaps, but healthier nonetheless. I know that I think more about a wider audience when I write for this blog - posterity, if you will - and use it as a space for practicing control and writing more structured pieces. I cannot speak to the motives of my blogging colleagues, but their work seems to be a bit more considered as well. There are fewer posts overall, but what's gone are the short blurbs and the offhand remarks; what remains is the developed writing.
Well, if Facebook handles all our socializing and our blogs remain focused on essaying, is there a down side? I think there is. What has gone missing is the place for [links/observation + short commentary] - a form that comprised a considerable portion of 2006 blogging.
Facebook allows links, of course, and you can even comment on them as you post them. But considering that the typical length of discourse on Facebook is about 20 words, and that your full text comment is put behind a cut at about 40, it doesn't encourage or leave a lot of room for an even minimally developed response. But with the current refinement of the blog contents, anything less than a fully-formed text seems depauperate in that context. So where do these mid-range utterances - too long for Facebook and too short for the blog - live?
Twitter is certainly out - the 140-character limit is a step backwards from Facebook limits. It may find its place in the communicative spectrum, but this isn't its role.
We could start another blog just for these medium-sized posts, where they wouldn't look out of place, but then our friends would just have yet another place to have to bookmark.
We could follow the maxim that the middle of the road is the most dangerous place to be and commit to either brevity or magniloquence, eschewing the mid-range post altogether.
Or we could just throw caution to the winds, as I am about to do, and throw a link-farm post onto our blogs every now and again. The interweblogosphere is changing, that's for sure, but the questions till remains: how will you know what I had for lunch unless I blog it?³
One of my technological favorites has always been the pneumatic delivery tube. Seen today only rarely, usually at bank drive-up windows, these cool and steampunky systems were still very common when I was a boy, transporting receipts from cash registers to the main office in big department stores and moving documents around large office buildings. Well, there are two different engineering proposals, documented by the folks over at Wired, which, while not strictly speaking pneumatic, bring back a little of the romance of the almost-forgotten systems.
The first project is The Cargo Tunnel, a dedicated network of four-foot-wide tunnels that would
house a tiny little subway for the delivery of packages to homes and businesses, complete with tiny forklifts at the terminals to handle packages up to 18" x 18". The coolest/scariest part of the proposal is that self-guided TBMs (tunnel-boring machines) would create the network without surface life being any the wiser, like an attack from the cyborg moles. What could go wrong?
The second project is actually called the Urban Mole, and it applies the same principle to an existing network of tubes -- the sewer system. That's right, drop your parcel into a little carrier, seal it up tightly, and let it make it way through the thick and turgid waters of the sewers until it pops out at its destination. The article provides no details on the disinfectant bath that would have to be in place at the receiving terminals, but I am sure they have thought of that.
Y'know, maybe pneumatic tubes weren't such a bad idea after all.
I ran across a little online application called Personas our of MIT that attempts to represent your online presence graphically. You tell it your name and it searches for occurrences, using some kind of algorithm to rate and rank the surrounding words to determine the context of each instance. Then it squishes all the information together into a color bar. Here's mine (click to embiggen):
This looks pretty accurate; at least, there are no big surprises. But my name is extremely rare, if not in fact unique. (I go egosurfing fairly frequently and I have never encountered another me.) For anyone with a more common name, the results can be quite distorted. The Personas group says that this is a feature, not a bug, and that the process "demonstrates the computer's uncanny insights and its inadvertent errors, such as the mischaracterizations caused by the inability to separate data from multiple owners of the same name. It is meant for the viewer to reflect on our current and future world." So, there you go: reflection is the goal, not accuracy. Try your name and reflect away.
1. Special interest blogs, such as Let's Not Talk About Movies and Quiet Girl Gallery, as well as commercial blogs, still seem to be thriving.
2 Lowcoolant came and went as a Blogspot blog during this time, but TormentedbyDemons had been and continues to be active on his MySpace page. Since MySpace is a social networking site, this seems to align with my point, albeit obliquely.
3. I de-cobbed some leftover corn, mixed it with some leftover mashed potatoes, frozen peas, three cut-up veggie link sausages, and some slices of Red Torpedo onion that Dingo gave me to create a sort-of shepherdess pie. Mmm-mmm.
What with the rise of Facebook and Twitter, it seems that the practice of starting and maintaining a personal blog has fallen from favor, at least among our circle¹. I had the feeling that this was the case, so I decided to check it out by looking at the blogs from the original League of the Underemployed gang -- we friends who all jumped into blogging in early 2005 -- and compare blogs² from July and August of 2006 to July and August (to date*) of 2009:
Viva! An Experiment: 17-8, 21-3*
Stave It Off, 1,2,3: 14-3, 9-1*
Ned Said: 11-1, 17-0*
Independence Days: No data - shuttered
Life with Jon: No data - shuttered
HKC (vs. WalakaNet): 30-6, 30-1*
Wow. I had expected a decline, but not that much. What's the deal? Have we run out of things to say? Umpossible! Were we bored with the medium? Maybe, widgets or no. Were there other outlets for expression? Definitely.
It's hard to deny that Facebook bleeds posts away from a blog. Here's an example: I rode the brand new Link Light Rail and the not-so-new-anymore South Lake Union Streetcar line, both for the first time, yesterday. Back in the day, I would have spent the time composing a nice little essay about the adventure for the blog. What did I do yesterday? I posted this status update to
Facebook from my phone: "I just got off the light rail and am now on the streetcar - ain't it cool?" Not quite Proustian, that. As an added incongruity, the person I shared the adventure with, Dingo, would never see the post - because she's not on Facebook!I don't think I am alone in this sort of practice; Facebook does allow for quick and easy updating, and it's hard to beat that convenience. It's also great for sharing photos and links, and it has the added bonus of speaking to a somewhat screened community. Setting privacy issues aside, at least you know you're speaking to people who want to hear what you have to say -- they have chosen to "friend" you and include your posts in their news feed. These characteristics make Facebook an attractive channel for the same expressions that in 2006 would have found their way onto a blog.
In some ways, this bleed-off can work to make a blog healthier; leaner, perhaps, but healthier nonetheless. I know that I think more about a wider audience when I write for this blog - posterity, if you will - and use it as a space for practicing control and writing more structured pieces. I cannot speak to the motives of my blogging colleagues, but their work seems to be a bit more considered as well. There are fewer posts overall, but what's gone are the short blurbs and the offhand remarks; what remains is the developed writing.Well, if Facebook handles all our socializing and our blogs remain focused on essaying, is there a down side? I think there is. What has gone missing is the place for [links/observation + short commentary] - a form that comprised a considerable portion of 2006 blogging.
Facebook allows links, of course, and you can even comment on them as you post them. But considering that the typical length of discourse on Facebook is about 20 words, and that your full text comment is put behind a cut at about 40, it doesn't encourage or leave a lot of room for an even minimally developed response. But with the current refinement of the blog contents, anything less than a fully-formed text seems depauperate in that context. So where do these mid-range utterances - too long for Facebook and too short for the blog - live?
Twitter is certainly out - the 140-character limit is a step backwards from Facebook limits. It may find its place in the communicative spectrum, but this isn't its role.
We could start another blog just for these medium-sized posts, where they wouldn't look out of place, but then our friends would just have yet another place to have to bookmark.
We could follow the maxim that the middle of the road is the most dangerous place to be and commit to either brevity or magniloquence, eschewing the mid-range post altogether.
Or we could just throw caution to the winds, as I am about to do, and throw a link-farm post onto our blogs every now and again. The interweblogosphere is changing, that's for sure, but the questions till remains: how will you know what I had for lunch unless I blog it?³
One of my technological favorites has always been the pneumatic delivery tube. Seen today only rarely, usually at bank drive-up windows, these cool and steampunky systems were still very common when I was a boy, transporting receipts from cash registers to the main office in big department stores and moving documents around large office buildings. Well, there are two different engineering proposals, documented by the folks over at Wired, which, while not strictly speaking pneumatic, bring back a little of the romance of the almost-forgotten systems.
The first project is The Cargo Tunnel, a dedicated network of four-foot-wide tunnels that would
house a tiny little subway for the delivery of packages to homes and businesses, complete with tiny forklifts at the terminals to handle packages up to 18" x 18". The coolest/scariest part of the proposal is that self-guided TBMs (tunnel-boring machines) would create the network without surface life being any the wiser, like an attack from the cyborg moles. What could go wrong?The second project is actually called the Urban Mole, and it applies the same principle to an existing network of tubes -- the sewer system. That's right, drop your parcel into a little carrier, seal it up tightly, and let it make it way through the thick and turgid waters of the sewers until it pops out at its destination. The article provides no details on the disinfectant bath that would have to be in place at the receiving terminals, but I am sure they have thought of that.Y'know, maybe pneumatic tubes weren't such a bad idea after all.
I ran across a little online application called Personas our of MIT that attempts to represent your online presence graphically. You tell it your name and it searches for occurrences, using some kind of algorithm to rate and rank the surrounding words to determine the context of each instance. Then it squishes all the information together into a color bar. Here's mine (click to embiggen):
This looks pretty accurate; at least, there are no big surprises. But my name is extremely rare, if not in fact unique. (I go egosurfing fairly frequently and I have never encountered another me.) For anyone with a more common name, the results can be quite distorted. The Personas group says that this is a feature, not a bug, and that the process "demonstrates the computer's uncanny insights and its inadvertent errors, such as the mischaracterizations caused by the inability to separate data from multiple owners of the same name. It is meant for the viewer to reflect on our current and future world." So, there you go: reflection is the goal, not accuracy. Try your name and reflect away.
1. Special interest blogs, such as Let's Not Talk About Movies and Quiet Girl Gallery, as well as commercial blogs, still seem to be thriving.
2 Lowcoolant came and went as a Blogspot blog during this time, but TormentedbyDemons had been and continues to be active on his MySpace page. Since MySpace is a social networking site, this seems to align with my point, albeit obliquely.
3. I de-cobbed some leftover corn, mixed it with some leftover mashed potatoes, frozen peas, three cut-up veggie link sausages, and some slices of Red Torpedo onion that Dingo gave me to create a sort-of shepherdess pie. Mmm-mmm.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Water wheel turns 'round
One of the endearing characters in the recent heartwarming film Up is Russell, the enthusiastic "Wilderness Explorer" who inadvertently stows away on the flying house. Russell is the quintessential over-achieving, over-equipped Boy Scout (non-trademark-infringing type), just like my friend Davey Callaghan, who made First Class Scout and had twenty merit 
badges while I was still a Tenderfoot (and who one summer collected enough coupons from gathering empty milk cartons to go to a Mets game for free not once, but twice). But despite all his gear, Russell is missing something important. He's got the mess kit, and the flashlight with the 90-degree angle in it, and even a bugle, but there's no canteen.
When I was a kid in the sixties and early seventies, canteens were the most essential piece of wilderness gear (ignoring for the moment that closest I ever got to wilderness was camping on the edges of the vast Rockefeller estate in Pocantico Hills). Some lucky kid might have an old army surplus canteen, the kind that Sgt. Rock had in the comics or that Vic Morrow had on Combat! on TV. Others, like Davey, would have a specially-purchased Boy Scout model. The rest if us had whatever we got from uncles or older brothers, camping store remainders or bargain basement specials. But 
wherever the canteen came from, this silver jug, so cool to the touch on a hot day and infusing the water with a metallic tang, was the first and most important piece of survival gear, and we all knew that no soldier or explorer would be caught without one (we had seen Sahara with Humphrey Bogart).
Of course, this concern with constant hydration confined itself to Boy Scout hikes and our imaginations; I didn't know any kid who carried a canteen on a regular basis, when just hanging out or playing stickball. No, the "civilian" canteen didn't start appearing until the early eighties, contemporaneous with the aerobics craze. Suddenly, all sorts of people, mostly women, were wearing Lycra and legwarmers and flinging themselves about to get their heart rates up. That kind of activity wears a person out, so it became more common to see people carrying plastic water cups around. These started to get more elaborate, with sealed lids, and sippy straws and handles and places to put ice in separate from the drinking water. These "sports bottles" are pretty rare now, mostly because they were too ugly to keep and made of plastic too crappy to last, but at one time they were so popular that the Zippy the Pinhead comic strip blamed them for the infantilization of society because of all the nipple-sucking they required. (I hardly ever see the classic ones anymore, but encountered something like one at Goodwill not too long ago.)
Of course, it wasn't long before the whole drinking-container process got more complicated. On the one hand, the instant-gratification and convenience movements of the nineties begat bottled water in individual disposable bottles, available first in vending machines and eventually in just about every retail establishment on the planet. Gone was the mess and fuss of actually filling your sports bottle 
with water; just buy a new one each time! (I have often thought that if you could go back in time to Atlanta in 1950 and tell the Coca-Cola board that someday they would be selling their stuff without even having to put sugar, color, or carbonation in it, they would all just die from pure avarice.) This trend butted up against the political-statement-making and environmentally-conscious threads always present in our culture, and a significant and growing portion of the population dropped the disposal bottles for the nearly-ubiquitous Nalgene bottle of the oughts.Of course, Nalgene bottles were added to the list of Things That Can Kill Us and all of a sudden sipping from one was tantamount to courting horrible death. Like Superman changing the course of a mighty river, public opinion modified the trend and metal containers became la mode. Silver or colorful, with or without carabiner, as long as it was stainless steel, it was cool. There's one a foot from my elbow as I type. It can feel so cool to the touch on a hot day and infuses the water with a bit of a metallic tang.
So, you can probably guess where this is going: a lament that I didn't keep my old canteen, since that's what we've essentially come back to. In fact, that's how I had planned to end this piece, until I saw this ad and realized that we no longer have to hold onto our memories, since the consumer-industrial complex will be happy to sell them back to us anytime.
That's all, folks. Stay hydrated!
Friday, July 31, 2009
arcane: known to only a few; esoteric [L.>arcanus- hidden] (see holocryptic & recondite)
Alan King was always one of my favorites. Even as a wee lad, I loved his stand-up routines and his appearances on Johnny Carson's couch, even though I had no reason to relate to his put-upon-by-modern-life suburban persona; I even read his books, Anybody Who Owns His Own Home Deserves It and Help! I'm a Prisoner in a Chinese Bakery.
I can recall as clearly as yesterday watching King do one of his routines more than forty years ago, maybe on Ed Sullivan, taking the piss out of the crop of television shows that season. Westerns were still in vogue then, and one of his bits went: "Look at Bonanza. It's Father Knows Best out west. The Big Valley? Mother Knows Best out west. Dundee and the Culhane? Nobody knows best out west!" The line got a big laugh, but I didn't get it.
I had never seen an episode of Dundee and the Culhane, and I still haven't. I can recall seeing subway poster ads for the show; I think they showed a top hat and a cane lying on a table with a cowboy hat and gun, or somesuch still life, with text promising something new in westerns. I was intrigued. I think the hat and cane put me in mind of Bat Masterson, another show that I liked, and I was always a sucker for people referred to with the definite article, so I was all over "The Culhane." I was primed for the show, but I never saw it.
Although these scattered remembrances - a line from a comedian and a poster - have floated in my consciousness since Lyndon Johnson was president, it was only recently that I thought I could use the power of the internets to tie this loose end off once and for all. I imagined I would be able to find a Dundee and the Culhane fan club, a tribute website, and even, if I were lucky, a full episode on YouTube or Hulu or somewhere.
Boy, was I wrong.
Oh, there are some sources out there, to be sure. IMDb catalogs the show, and Wikipedia gives it all of 169 words. It is mentioned ever so briefly on some television mega-sites and baby-boomer nostalgia pages. But there is no love for DatC on the internets: no fan site, no shrines, no clips, and very few stills. This one below repeats the most.
For the record, the show was a lawyer-western hybrid that aired for thirteen episodes in the fall of 1967. Dundee was a British attorney who came to practice in the American old west (how does that work?), establishing an office in Sausalito of all places. The Culhane was his Irish-American --- apprentice? partner? -- I'm not really sure. Apparently, the pair traveled across the west, providing thrills of the Perry Mason meets Have Gun, Will Travel variety. Dundee was played by John Mills, pre-Oscar and long prior to his knighthood; The Culhane was played by Sean Garrison, who seems to have been a working television actor up until 1981 or so. All of the episode titles ended with "Brief" - "The Cat in the Bag Brief," "The Death of a Warrior Brief," and so on. I think I really would like to see an episode or two.
But what is much more interesting to me about this whole affair is that even with the internets, there is still some ephemeral knowledge that is out of easy reach. One of the first websites I ever contributed to years ago was a Tales of the Gold Monkey fan page. I was amazed then that this obscure show, which lasted one season in the early eighties, had so much information available; in the ensuing years, I gradually became accustomed to finding on the web any information I wanted I almost no time, and was amazed at just how much energy was poured into some pretty specific niche interests. But despite to this commodification of popular culture and the incredible networking power of the world wide web, there are still some things that remain known only to a few; the details of the adventures of these two gunslinging lawyers seem to be in the category. If I really want to find out about Dundee and the Culhane, I'm going to have to work a little harder than making a few Google searches. Somehow, that actually feels good.
And maybe I'll even do it. Then I'll know why that Alan King line was so funny.
I can recall as clearly as yesterday watching King do one of his routines more than forty years ago, maybe on Ed Sullivan, taking the piss out of the crop of television shows that season. Westerns were still in vogue then, and one of his bits went: "Look at Bonanza. It's Father Knows Best out west. The Big Valley? Mother Knows Best out west. Dundee and the Culhane? Nobody knows best out west!" The line got a big laugh, but I didn't get it.
I had never seen an episode of Dundee and the Culhane, and I still haven't. I can recall seeing subway poster ads for the show; I think they showed a top hat and a cane lying on a table with a cowboy hat and gun, or somesuch still life, with text promising something new in westerns. I was intrigued. I think the hat and cane put me in mind of Bat Masterson, another show that I liked, and I was always a sucker for people referred to with the definite article, so I was all over "The Culhane." I was primed for the show, but I never saw it.
Although these scattered remembrances - a line from a comedian and a poster - have floated in my consciousness since Lyndon Johnson was president, it was only recently that I thought I could use the power of the internets to tie this loose end off once and for all. I imagined I would be able to find a Dundee and the Culhane fan club, a tribute website, and even, if I were lucky, a full episode on YouTube or Hulu or somewhere.
Boy, was I wrong.
Oh, there are some sources out there, to be sure. IMDb catalogs the show, and Wikipedia gives it all of 169 words. It is mentioned ever so briefly on some television mega-sites and baby-boomer nostalgia pages. But there is no love for DatC on the internets: no fan site, no shrines, no clips, and very few stills. This one below repeats the most.
For the record, the show was a lawyer-western hybrid that aired for thirteen episodes in the fall of 1967. Dundee was a British attorney who came to practice in the American old west (how does that work?), establishing an office in Sausalito of all places. The Culhane was his Irish-American --- apprentice? partner? -- I'm not really sure. Apparently, the pair traveled across the west, providing thrills of the Perry Mason meets Have Gun, Will Travel variety. Dundee was played by John Mills, pre-Oscar and long prior to his knighthood; The Culhane was played by Sean Garrison, who seems to have been a working television actor up until 1981 or so. All of the episode titles ended with "Brief" - "The Cat in the Bag Brief," "The Death of a Warrior Brief," and so on. I think I really would like to see an episode or two.But what is much more interesting to me about this whole affair is that even with the internets, there is still some ephemeral knowledge that is out of easy reach. One of the first websites I ever contributed to years ago was a Tales of the Gold Monkey fan page. I was amazed then that this obscure show, which lasted one season in the early eighties, had so much information available; in the ensuing years, I gradually became accustomed to finding on the web any information I wanted I almost no time, and was amazed at just how much energy was poured into some pretty specific niche interests. But despite to this commodification of popular culture and the incredible networking power of the world wide web, there are still some things that remain known only to a few; the details of the adventures of these two gunslinging lawyers seem to be in the category. If I really want to find out about Dundee and the Culhane, I'm going to have to work a little harder than making a few Google searches. Somehow, that actually feels good.
And maybe I'll even do it. Then I'll know why that Alan King line was so funny.
Friday, July 24, 2009
In all fairness
I remember a conversation with my philosophy teacher, mentor, and pal Joel Goldstein back when dinosaurs ruled the Earth and I was trying out college for the first time. We were discussing fairness, and how in some circumstances it might be determined by the result and in others by the process. For example, if you and I were to split a cookie, a determination of fairness would probably depend on whether we each felt we got an equal share (the result) and the process - I cut and you pick, get a trusted third party to do it, measure/weigh it - wouldn't really be important. However, in an other situation, such as a poker game or Monopoly, fairness would be determined not by an equal distribution of the resources in the end, but only by whether the correct process was followed - the rules were adhered to and no one cheated. Result vs. process.
A recent lunch with my favorite Mad Engineer Dr. Burn, I was reminded of a discussion* we had a few weeks ago about Babylonian fractions, a system whose process seems to have been affected by a particular cultural positioning regarding the fairness of different results.
Let's show this through a word problem. You have seven loaves of bread and eight people. If you were to divide up the bread evenly among the people, how much would each person get?
In most classes discussing fractions, the answer might go something like this: Well, there are 7 loaves of bread that I have to divide among 8 people, so 7 is the numerator and 8 is the denominator, and each person gets 7/8 of a loaf of bread. And that's as good as far as it goes, but it doesn't go very far.
Think about how you would actually make this happen. Presuming all the loaves are the same, you could cut a one-eighth piece from the end of each one and pile them all together. Seven people would get a less-than-full loaf, and one person would get a pile of slices.
But is this really dividing the bread evenly? Is an almost-whole loaf of bread the same as a pile of slices? (Slices that would all be heels, too!) Isn't it really the case that seven people got 7/8 of a loaf a bread and one person got stuck with seven 1/8s? We can try all sorts of variations on this method - take a slice from the middle of some loaves and the ends of others and so on - but it all comes out to same sort of result unless we work at it from a completely different perspective.
The Babylonians had this other perspective. Rather than focusing on trying to make the denominator in fractions equal one, which we really like to do (6/1 is the same as 6, right?) the Babylonians liked keeping the numerator at one.
The bread problem would be solved like this in Babylonia: First we cut each of the seven loaves in half. Now we have fourteen 1/2s. Each person gets one 1/2, leaving six. We cut those 1/2s in half, making twelve 1/4s. Each person gets one 1/4, leaving four. We cut those 1/4s in half, making eight 1/8s. Each person then gets one 1/8, and all the bread is gone. Each person gets a 1/2 and a 1/4 and a 1/8 of a loaf of bread.
(And in case you think this is just one of those math tricks, it does come out the same: 1/2 = 4/8 and 1/4 = 2/8, so 4/8 + 2/8 + 1/8 = 7/8, just like the other way.)
The difference between the Babylonian method (which I am sure I have oversimplified) and just "doing fractions" is that the approach incorporates a sense of the reality of fairness in dividing things up in its very structure. I don't think I'd feel good about getting seven bread heels for my share of the baked goods, even if you showed me how it was mathematically even. In the real world, 7/8 does not necessarily equal seven 1/8s. But 1/2 and 1/4 and 1/8 should be the same as 1/2 and 1/4 and 1/8. In this case, the result and the process work with each other, and fairness comes from their intersection, not from one or the other.
So, perhaps a purely binary view of how fairness is determined is less useful than initially thought. And that might be the most important takeaway from consideration - not a new way of doing math, but a new way of thinking about things and an understanding that as unlikely as it sounds, many coins have more than two sides. These two conversations took place over thirty years apart. My learning may be slow, but it appears to be constant.
A recent lunch with my favorite Mad Engineer Dr. Burn, I was reminded of a discussion* we had a few weeks ago about Babylonian fractions, a system whose process seems to have been affected by a particular cultural positioning regarding the fairness of different results.
Let's show this through a word problem. You have seven loaves of bread and eight people. If you were to divide up the bread evenly among the people, how much would each person get?
In most classes discussing fractions, the answer might go something like this: Well, there are 7 loaves of bread that I have to divide among 8 people, so 7 is the numerator and 8 is the denominator, and each person gets 7/8 of a loaf of bread. And that's as good as far as it goes, but it doesn't go very far.
Think about how you would actually make this happen. Presuming all the loaves are the same, you could cut a one-eighth piece from the end of each one and pile them all together. Seven people would get a less-than-full loaf, and one person would get a pile of slices.
But is this really dividing the bread evenly? Is an almost-whole loaf of bread the same as a pile of slices? (Slices that would all be heels, too!) Isn't it really the case that seven people got 7/8 of a loaf a bread and one person got stuck with seven 1/8s? We can try all sorts of variations on this method - take a slice from the middle of some loaves and the ends of others and so on - but it all comes out to same sort of result unless we work at it from a completely different perspective.
The Babylonians had this other perspective. Rather than focusing on trying to make the denominator in fractions equal one, which we really like to do (6/1 is the same as 6, right?) the Babylonians liked keeping the numerator at one.
The bread problem would be solved like this in Babylonia: First we cut each of the seven loaves in half. Now we have fourteen 1/2s. Each person gets one 1/2, leaving six. We cut those 1/2s in half, making twelve 1/4s. Each person gets one 1/4, leaving four. We cut those 1/4s in half, making eight 1/8s. Each person then gets one 1/8, and all the bread is gone. Each person gets a 1/2 and a 1/4 and a 1/8 of a loaf of bread.
(And in case you think this is just one of those math tricks, it does come out the same: 1/2 = 4/8 and 1/4 = 2/8, so 4/8 + 2/8 + 1/8 = 7/8, just like the other way.)
The difference between the Babylonian method (which I am sure I have oversimplified) and just "doing fractions" is that the approach incorporates a sense of the reality of fairness in dividing things up in its very structure. I don't think I'd feel good about getting seven bread heels for my share of the baked goods, even if you showed me how it was mathematically even. In the real world, 7/8 does not necessarily equal seven 1/8s. But 1/2 and 1/4 and 1/8 should be the same as 1/2 and 1/4 and 1/8. In this case, the result and the process work with each other, and fairness comes from their intersection, not from one or the other.
So, perhaps a purely binary view of how fairness is determined is less useful than initially thought. And that might be the most important takeaway from consideration - not a new way of doing math, but a new way of thinking about things and an understanding that as unlikely as it sounds, many coins have more than two sides. These two conversations took place over thirty years apart. My learning may be slow, but it appears to be constant.
*In calling it a discussion, I flatter myself. Actually, Dr. Burn just told me what for.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Problems solving
Some time ago, I was a supervisor in the circulation department of the main Seattle library. We had two cash registers for overdue fines and other fees, so we had a combination safe in which we kept our change bank and pending deposits. When we closed at night, we would put the two cash drawers in a locked desk drawer, and one of the first supervisor duties in the morning was to retrieve them, complete the reconciliation and deposit, and make the safe right.
One morning, we discovered that the safe had been emptied overnight of about $400 in cash, without having been broken into. The cash drawers locked in the desk were untouched.
We had a meeting of the supervisors to figure thing out; everyone was puzzled as to what happened. In my (very) recent ex-detective voice, I told them: It's very simple. We supervisors use the combination daily; we have it memorized. You (and I pointed at our manager) never use it, but you need to know it just in case. So you have it written down somewhere. Probably on a post-it note. Probably in the back of the center drawer of your desk or under the phone. Some custodian came across it, realized there's only one safe around here, took a shot, and made a quick four hundred bucks. My manager was silent for a moment, and then said, "Well, it wasn't in my drawer. It was on the bottom of it."
After checking with the higher-ups, it was decided that, besides changing the combination of the safe (duh!), we would stop keeping the cash drawers overnight in the desk.
I pointed out that the security of the desk hadn't been compromised and that there was no need to change that practice. I was told that we just wanted to ramp up our overall security by keeping all the cash in a more secure place. I pointed out that were were moving cash from a place that had never had cash stolen from it to a place that had had cash stolen from it and asked how that was increasing security. I was told to stop pointing things out.
The episode has remained close to my heart as I have studied and thought about and taught critical thinking, but it may have been supplanted by a new episode that has recently unfolded on our campus.
There is a busy crosswalk on our campus from our main building to our main parking lot. Ever since I came to at Cascadia, it had been controlled by a stop sign in both directions. Traffic was required to stop at all times, regardless of whether a crossing pedestrian was present.
Recently, construction work began in the crosswalk area, and when it was completed, the stop signs had been removed and a new feature installed at the crosswalk: sensors now react to the presence of a walker by activating in-ground yellow flashing lights along the crosswalk itself, and a recorded voice admonishes pedestrians to "use caution when crossing."
Besides the disembodied voice being a little creepy, the whole rigmarole seems confusing. Apparently, someone may have been struck at or in the crosswalk, and this modification was in response to that incident, but I have yet been able to find hard info on that.
I have been trying to figure out how taking away a stop sign makes the crosswalk safer. I mean, if someone was indeed struck, it was (obviously) by a car that was moving; is taking away the mandatory stop likely to increase or decrease the number of cars moving through the crosswalk without stopping? Are the flashing yellow lights more or less likely than a stop sign to cause a driver to yield right-of-way to a pedestrian? Isn't the voice warning, on some systemic level, moving the responsibility for crosswalk safety from the drivers onto the pedestrians? This whole thing doesn't seem thought through.
I have also heard, but been unable to confirm, that the campus was not allowed to have both the flashing/warning system and the stop sign at the same crosswalk. There may be an RCW that prohibits this on public roads, but the campus is governed by Washington Administrative Code, and neither WAC 132Z-116, for Cascadia, or WAC 478-117, for UW-Bothell, seems to preclude the installation of any combination of traffic signaling devices. Even if the code made such a restriction, it would leave us with the question: if you have to choose between just a stop sign or just a lighted crosswalk, which one intuitively seems safer?
Maybe there is a counter-intuitive aspect to the situation; that can sometimes be the case. I wonder, though, if this wasn't another instance of people solving the problem that wasn't there rather than the one that was.
One morning, we discovered that the safe had been emptied overnight of about $400 in cash, without having been broken into. The cash drawers locked in the desk were untouched.
We had a meeting of the supervisors to figure thing out; everyone was puzzled as to what happened. In my (very) recent ex-detective voice, I told them: It's very simple. We supervisors use the combination daily; we have it memorized. You (and I pointed at our manager) never use it, but you need to know it just in case. So you have it written down somewhere. Probably on a post-it note. Probably in the back of the center drawer of your desk or under the phone. Some custodian came across it, realized there's only one safe around here, took a shot, and made a quick four hundred bucks. My manager was silent for a moment, and then said, "Well, it wasn't in my drawer. It was on the bottom of it."
After checking with the higher-ups, it was decided that, besides changing the combination of the safe (duh!), we would stop keeping the cash drawers overnight in the desk.
I pointed out that the security of the desk hadn't been compromised and that there was no need to change that practice. I was told that we just wanted to ramp up our overall security by keeping all the cash in a more secure place. I pointed out that were were moving cash from a place that had never had cash stolen from it to a place that had had cash stolen from it and asked how that was increasing security. I was told to stop pointing things out.
The episode has remained close to my heart as I have studied and thought about and taught critical thinking, but it may have been supplanted by a new episode that has recently unfolded on our campus.
There is a busy crosswalk on our campus from our main building to our main parking lot. Ever since I came to at Cascadia, it had been controlled by a stop sign in both directions. Traffic was required to stop at all times, regardless of whether a crossing pedestrian was present.
Recently, construction work began in the crosswalk area, and when it was completed, the stop signs had been removed and a new feature installed at the crosswalk: sensors now react to the presence of a walker by activating in-ground yellow flashing lights along the crosswalk itself, and a recorded voice admonishes pedestrians to "use caution when crossing."
Besides the disembodied voice being a little creepy, the whole rigmarole seems confusing. Apparently, someone may have been struck at or in the crosswalk, and this modification was in response to that incident, but I have yet been able to find hard info on that.
I have been trying to figure out how taking away a stop sign makes the crosswalk safer. I mean, if someone was indeed struck, it was (obviously) by a car that was moving; is taking away the mandatory stop likely to increase or decrease the number of cars moving through the crosswalk without stopping? Are the flashing yellow lights more or less likely than a stop sign to cause a driver to yield right-of-way to a pedestrian? Isn't the voice warning, on some systemic level, moving the responsibility for crosswalk safety from the drivers onto the pedestrians? This whole thing doesn't seem thought through.
I have also heard, but been unable to confirm, that the campus was not allowed to have both the flashing/warning system and the stop sign at the same crosswalk. There may be an RCW that prohibits this on public roads, but the campus is governed by Washington Administrative Code, and neither WAC 132Z-116, for Cascadia, or WAC 478-117, for UW-Bothell, seems to preclude the installation of any combination of traffic signaling devices. Even if the code made such a restriction, it would leave us with the question: if you have to choose between just a stop sign or just a lighted crosswalk, which one intuitively seems safer?
Maybe there is a counter-intuitive aspect to the situation; that can sometimes be the case. I wonder, though, if this wasn't another instance of people solving the problem that wasn't there rather than the one that was.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
A day
I read on facebook a note from my childhood pal that he was remembering the death of a parent seven years earlier that day. My thoughts turned to my own father's funeral, perhaps because I think that was the last time I saw my friend, and I realized that I couldn't remember when my father died.
That's not exactly true; I knew it was 1984, because when I got the news I had just been on the police department a year or so and was living in that big apartment in Magnolia. But I couldn't narrow it down much more than that.
I could remember that Pop had been diagnosed in late 1982. I can remember my brother-in-law Gene filling me in on the situation, that Pop had lymphoma.
"So, it looks like this type of cancer has two kinds, the kind that kills you slow, and the kind that kills you quick. And your father don't have the first kind."
That must have been around Christmastime 1982. When I next saw Pop it was when I made a mad cross-country dash back to Brooklyn in June 1983 for his and Ma's 50th wedding anniversary while I was in the middle of the police academy. My then-wife Lisa and I caught a plane on Friday night knowing I had to be back in roll call at 7:00 am Monday morning. My sisters had planned a huge reunion party around the anniversary.
I can remember that during that weekend, there were more of our family's old friends and relatives in my sister's backyard than I have ever seen together before or since. Pop arrived to the surprise party showing the effects of radiation treatment: he was thin, frail, and weak. But his spirits brightened immeasurably as he caught up with his old cronies, these tough old birds from the bowling alleys and racetracks of New York. We made sure he had pictures taken with all of his children.
I guess we figured the end was close, but Pop fooled us. I can remember when he and Ma came out for my graduation from the academy in August 1983. He was his old self - better even, strong and vibrant, having a ball walking all over Seattle with my mother, both of them proud of my accomplishment. They stayed in my Belltown condo and we had a splendid visit.
It was great, but it didn't last too terribly long after they went home; sometime after Lisa and I moved into that apartment in Magnolia in early 1984, my sister called to say that Pop had gotten sick again. I asked her if she wanted me to fly out; she said to wait and see. The "kind that kills you quick" didn't wait for me a second time; Pop died less than two weeks later and my next trip out would be for the funeral.
I can remember finding out that Pop had died. I was at home alone in the afternoon when the phone call came from my sister; after hanging up, I began to make arrangements to go back. A short time later, Lisa came home with our friend Jim; I can't remember where they had been or why Jim's wife Sandy wasn't there. I told them about Pop and they wanted to comfort me; I waved it off and we played Risk.
I can remember the wake; not all of it, but some details. I can remember that George, my sister Monya's widower, seemed have the hardest time of all of us. I remember that he fell on the sidewalk, cutting his head on a metal fixture, and we had to take him to the emergency room. I made him a chicken sandwich when we got back home.
I can remember the funeral; not all of it, but some details. I can remember my brother comforting my mother by handing her handkerchief after handkerchief that he pulled from his pocket as she was crying. I can remember him tucking one of his business cards in Pop's jacket pocket before they closed the casket, a gesture so apt and so loving and so surprising in its tenderness.
I can remember heading to the cemetery on Staten Island. The hearse got a flat, right there on 66th Street under the Gowanus Expressway, and we all waited, a stationary procession.
I can remember Staten Island: green and far away.
I can remember saying goodbye to my father as they lowered the casket into the ground, knowing that there was no unfinished business between us, that he had cared for me as a boy and respected me as a man. He loved me, and although he was a man of few words, he had even said so, once, sort of. During one regular weekly long-distance call from the west coast, after small talk about the weather and before handing the phone over to Ma, he said "Your mother loves you, you know." I said I knew that. "And I do, too," he said. I said I knew that, too.
I can remember all that. But for the life of me, looking down at the computer screen twenty-five years later, I couldn't remember that date.
I got up and walked down to my office, and pawed through some folders in the second drawer of the file cabinet. I knew exactly what I was looking for; a sheaf of yellow five-column accounting paper with handwriting in black ink. I found it in a less than a minute and leafed through the pages of a timeline I had written up back in the day, cataloging major events and transitions: jobs, apartments, and so on. It was right there, two inches down from the top of the 1984 page, in the furthest right column, in tiny lettering. Just Pop's name and the notation 5/19/84. No other explanation.
Twenty-five years, one month, and 26 days.
Now I can remember that date, but I guess it doesn't change much.
That's not exactly true; I knew it was 1984, because when I got the news I had just been on the police department a year or so and was living in that big apartment in Magnolia. But I couldn't narrow it down much more than that.
I could remember that Pop had been diagnosed in late 1982. I can remember my brother-in-law Gene filling me in on the situation, that Pop had lymphoma.
"So, it looks like this type of cancer has two kinds, the kind that kills you slow, and the kind that kills you quick. And your father don't have the first kind."
That must have been around Christmastime 1982. When I next saw Pop it was when I made a mad cross-country dash back to Brooklyn in June 1983 for his and Ma's 50th wedding anniversary while I was in the middle of the police academy. My then-wife Lisa and I caught a plane on Friday night knowing I had to be back in roll call at 7:00 am Monday morning. My sisters had planned a huge reunion party around the anniversary.
I can remember that during that weekend, there were more of our family's old friends and relatives in my sister's backyard than I have ever seen together before or since. Pop arrived to the surprise party showing the effects of radiation treatment: he was thin, frail, and weak. But his spirits brightened immeasurably as he caught up with his old cronies, these tough old birds from the bowling alleys and racetracks of New York. We made sure he had pictures taken with all of his children.
I guess we figured the end was close, but Pop fooled us. I can remember when he and Ma came out for my graduation from the academy in August 1983. He was his old self - better even, strong and vibrant, having a ball walking all over Seattle with my mother, both of them proud of my accomplishment. They stayed in my Belltown condo and we had a splendid visit.
It was great, but it didn't last too terribly long after they went home; sometime after Lisa and I moved into that apartment in Magnolia in early 1984, my sister called to say that Pop had gotten sick again. I asked her if she wanted me to fly out; she said to wait and see. The "kind that kills you quick" didn't wait for me a second time; Pop died less than two weeks later and my next trip out would be for the funeral.
I can remember finding out that Pop had died. I was at home alone in the afternoon when the phone call came from my sister; after hanging up, I began to make arrangements to go back. A short time later, Lisa came home with our friend Jim; I can't remember where they had been or why Jim's wife Sandy wasn't there. I told them about Pop and they wanted to comfort me; I waved it off and we played Risk.
I can remember the wake; not all of it, but some details. I can remember that George, my sister Monya's widower, seemed have the hardest time of all of us. I remember that he fell on the sidewalk, cutting his head on a metal fixture, and we had to take him to the emergency room. I made him a chicken sandwich when we got back home.
I can remember the funeral; not all of it, but some details. I can remember my brother comforting my mother by handing her handkerchief after handkerchief that he pulled from his pocket as she was crying. I can remember him tucking one of his business cards in Pop's jacket pocket before they closed the casket, a gesture so apt and so loving and so surprising in its tenderness.
I can remember heading to the cemetery on Staten Island. The hearse got a flat, right there on 66th Street under the Gowanus Expressway, and we all waited, a stationary procession.
I can remember Staten Island: green and far away.
I can remember saying goodbye to my father as they lowered the casket into the ground, knowing that there was no unfinished business between us, that he had cared for me as a boy and respected me as a man. He loved me, and although he was a man of few words, he had even said so, once, sort of. During one regular weekly long-distance call from the west coast, after small talk about the weather and before handing the phone over to Ma, he said "Your mother loves you, you know." I said I knew that. "And I do, too," he said. I said I knew that, too.
I can remember all that. But for the life of me, looking down at the computer screen twenty-five years later, I couldn't remember that date.
I got up and walked down to my office, and pawed through some folders in the second drawer of the file cabinet. I knew exactly what I was looking for; a sheaf of yellow five-column accounting paper with handwriting in black ink. I found it in a less than a minute and leafed through the pages of a timeline I had written up back in the day, cataloging major events and transitions: jobs, apartments, and so on. It was right there, two inches down from the top of the 1984 page, in the furthest right column, in tiny lettering. Just Pop's name and the notation 5/19/84. No other explanation.
Twenty-five years, one month, and 26 days.
Now I can remember that date, but I guess it doesn't change much.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Running Jogging on empty
So, I have been going around Green Lake just about every morning this summer. It's a nice four-mile loop: a half-mile to the lake path, a three-mile circuit, and a half-mile back. I usually go right after I get up; I'm generally heading out sometime between 6:16 and 6:45. It's been great, physically and spiritually. But it has brought up a semantic issue of how to name what I am doing.
On alternate days, it is easy: I walk. Walking is something that most of do, and we can easily recognize it. Specialized variations of it are usually very distinctive and have specific names : racewalking and silly-walks, for example.
But on alternate days I go around the lake at a faster clip, raising the question: am I jogging or running? The question came up at a recent breakfast with Johnbai, and we explored various distinctions; I later did a bit of Internet research. I eventually wound up with little in the way of a satisfactory answer.
The first consideration was that is had something to do with the stride. Running, we reckoned, had a longer stride, an open stride, and jogging meant using a small stride, with perhaps more knee than hip action; we thought that jogging might be harder on the knees than running. As usual, we didn't even know what we were talking about.
Stride came up first partly because my buddy D.D. had clued me into some research into running form from an anthropological standpoint. To grossly oversimplify, it seems we've been training ourselves to do it all wrong for the past thirty years. The human foot, with the arch acting like a natural leaf spring, is designed to land almost flat-footed, to absorb the shock of impact and then spring back up, transferring the energy to the next step-off. The long-stride, heel-and-roll form (encouraged and abetted by over-designed running shoes) is actually less efficient and is likely increasing the incidence of running injuries, despite all the cushioning and padding. So, "real" running probably involves a stride that looks more like what we have been calling "jogging" - the foot hitting the ground directly beneath the hip, instead of in front of it.
(There is a secondary hypothesis that ancient humans, natural endurance runners and one of the few animals who could run in the heat of the day, would use this skill to run down game, not by catching it, but by exhausting it.)
So, with stride apparently out of the mix to distinguish jogging and running, we turned to speed. A few websites and discussion forums used this as a measure: some arbitrary number - a ten-minute pace, a nine-minute pace, an eight-minute pace, whatever - was selected. Slower than that speed was jogging, faster than that was running.
(As a baseline, the typical walk, exclusive of window-shopping or flower-smelling, ranges from about a 15 to 20-minute pace - 3 or 4 mph. NatDog ran her first marathon at about a nine-and-a-half minute pace - a little better than 6 mph. World class runners can do a marathon and maintain a five-minute pace - 12 mph.)
This result-based method doesn't seem to take into account the observed differences between individual ability levels - we have all seen people whom we would characterize as running all out even if their speeds were under one of these arbitrary levels.
Another theme arose in the research that did address individual differences, that of effort: running was what you did when you were working hard and getting out of your comfort zone, while jogging was moving comfortably and working, but not too hard. This approach seemed way too idiosyncratic to ever become useful in a general application and didn't get much traction in the discussions.
From a completely different angle came the cultural construct method. In this scheme, running is what people do when they are training competitively for timed events; jogging is what people do for general health reasons. In some of the more developed models of this type, this kind of social construction seemed to make the most sense; underlying most of the definitions, however, was some sentiment like "Running is what I do because I am a Serious Athlete; jogging is what the rest of you amateurish rabble do." The unspoken judgmental nature of this model makes its use less appealing than it might otherwise be.
You can see where all this rumination took me: nowhere. I still didn't know what to label my morning locomotion. I was thinking about it, and, in fact, thinking about this blog post, as I made my way around the lake this morning (walking today), when I suddenly realized that I was spending so much time looking for a label for what I was doing that I wasn't paying attention to feeling what it was I was doing. And I thought back to a mediation I wrote last summer, in which I talked about how good it felt to do and not to think about running.
So, we're done with this. Jogging, running, walking, sprinting, racing, tearing, trotting, galloping - whatever we want to call it, I'm just going to keep going around the lake.
On alternate days, it is easy: I walk. Walking is something that most of do, and we can easily recognize it. Specialized variations of it are usually very distinctive and have specific names : racewalking and silly-walks, for example.
But on alternate days I go around the lake at a faster clip, raising the question: am I jogging or running? The question came up at a recent breakfast with Johnbai, and we explored various distinctions; I later did a bit of Internet research. I eventually wound up with little in the way of a satisfactory answer.
The first consideration was that is had something to do with the stride. Running, we reckoned, had a longer stride, an open stride, and jogging meant using a small stride, with perhaps more knee than hip action; we thought that jogging might be harder on the knees than running. As usual, we didn't even know what we were talking about.
Stride came up first partly because my buddy D.D. had clued me into some research into running form from an anthropological standpoint. To grossly oversimplify, it seems we've been training ourselves to do it all wrong for the past thirty years. The human foot, with the arch acting like a natural leaf spring, is designed to land almost flat-footed, to absorb the shock of impact and then spring back up, transferring the energy to the next step-off. The long-stride, heel-and-roll form (encouraged and abetted by over-designed running shoes) is actually less efficient and is likely increasing the incidence of running injuries, despite all the cushioning and padding. So, "real" running probably involves a stride that looks more like what we have been calling "jogging" - the foot hitting the ground directly beneath the hip, instead of in front of it.
(There is a secondary hypothesis that ancient humans, natural endurance runners and one of the few animals who could run in the heat of the day, would use this skill to run down game, not by catching it, but by exhausting it.)
So, with stride apparently out of the mix to distinguish jogging and running, we turned to speed. A few websites and discussion forums used this as a measure: some arbitrary number - a ten-minute pace, a nine-minute pace, an eight-minute pace, whatever - was selected. Slower than that speed was jogging, faster than that was running.
(As a baseline, the typical walk, exclusive of window-shopping or flower-smelling, ranges from about a 15 to 20-minute pace - 3 or 4 mph. NatDog ran her first marathon at about a nine-and-a-half minute pace - a little better than 6 mph. World class runners can do a marathon and maintain a five-minute pace - 12 mph.)
This result-based method doesn't seem to take into account the observed differences between individual ability levels - we have all seen people whom we would characterize as running all out even if their speeds were under one of these arbitrary levels.
Another theme arose in the research that did address individual differences, that of effort: running was what you did when you were working hard and getting out of your comfort zone, while jogging was moving comfortably and working, but not too hard. This approach seemed way too idiosyncratic to ever become useful in a general application and didn't get much traction in the discussions.
From a completely different angle came the cultural construct method. In this scheme, running is what people do when they are training competitively for timed events; jogging is what people do for general health reasons. In some of the more developed models of this type, this kind of social construction seemed to make the most sense; underlying most of the definitions, however, was some sentiment like "Running is what I do because I am a Serious Athlete; jogging is what the rest of you amateurish rabble do." The unspoken judgmental nature of this model makes its use less appealing than it might otherwise be.
You can see where all this rumination took me: nowhere. I still didn't know what to label my morning locomotion. I was thinking about it, and, in fact, thinking about this blog post, as I made my way around the lake this morning (walking today), when I suddenly realized that I was spending so much time looking for a label for what I was doing that I wasn't paying attention to feeling what it was I was doing. And I thought back to a mediation I wrote last summer, in which I talked about how good it felt to do and not to think about running.
So, we're done with this. Jogging, running, walking, sprinting, racing, tearing, trotting, galloping - whatever we want to call it, I'm just going to keep going around the lake.
Monday, July 6, 2009
Apology for taste
So, this past weekend, I came to be at a cabin in the woods in pursuit of a peaceful weekend away from Independence Day festivities and explosions. High in Chinook Pass, I tarried with some pals beside the American River, relaxing in the rusticity.
Of course, bringing a book is part and parcel of such a retreat, and I had in my hands a copy of Jonathan Lethem's The Fortress of Solitude, which had coincidentally been left in my work mailbox just days before by a colleague who thought I would enjoy the story of two seventies-era youths who bond over comic books. Since the seventies were my own coming-of-age decade and since comics are my penchant, it seemed like a sure bet, so much so that I did not even bring a Plan B / backup book.
Alas, it was not to be. I don't know about Lethem's qualities as a storyteller; I never made it that far. I do know that his prosody leans toward the elaborate - in fact, it is positively filigreed. The language was so lyrical and literary that I felt as if I were reading sonnets written on Belgian lace; there were so many grace notes I had a hard time finding the substance.
Take this description of two young girls roller-skating, from the opening of the book:
I soldiered on through more similarly flowery prose and in a few pages was struck by this passage wrapping up a description of the historically dubious naming of a newly-gentrified neighborhood by its sponsor:
I'm not saying any of these language choices are bad, incorrect, or even inappropriate; I just felt when reading it that it was all style and little substance, that Lethem cared more about writing prettily than telling a story, and that I didn't know how much I could get through.
As it turned out, not much. About page twelve or so I gave up on it and wandered into the cabin to see if there was a nice paperback on the small bookshelf in the corner by the fireplace. I pulled out a somewhat worn copy of Agatha Christie's Dead Man's Mirror, one of the Hercule Poirot mysteries. It began
Now, I have wondered about this response I had. An easy explanation is my falling on the spare side of the ol' Fitzgerald-Hemingway divide: possessing a bent for the plain and unadorned as opposed to the mannered and ornate. A specific preference between those two authors may be so in my case, but how does that explain my absolute enthusiasm for Dickens, whose paragraphs seem like dense thickets of forest next to the bare tundra of Papa's sentences?
Perhaps I merely fall in the Animist quadrant of Scott McCloud's Four Tribes theory of creators, concerned mostly with story, while Lethem is a Classicist, focused on beauty.
Or maybe the answer is as prosaic as my commute companion suggested today: I wanted a "beach book," and not a literary novel, in that particular place and time.
But maybe the truth is that I'm just not very "literary" at all. And maybe I can live with that.
Of course, bringing a book is part and parcel of such a retreat, and I had in my hands a copy of Jonathan Lethem's The Fortress of Solitude, which had coincidentally been left in my work mailbox just days before by a colleague who thought I would enjoy the story of two seventies-era youths who bond over comic books. Since the seventies were my own coming-of-age decade and since comics are my penchant, it seemed like a sure bet, so much so that I did not even bring a Plan B / backup book.
Alas, it was not to be. I don't know about Lethem's qualities as a storyteller; I never made it that far. I do know that his prosody leans toward the elaborate - in fact, it is positively filigreed. The language was so lyrical and literary that I felt as if I were reading sonnets written on Belgian lace; there were so many grace notes I had a hard time finding the substance.
Take this description of two young girls roller-skating, from the opening of the book:
The girls murmured rhymes, were murmured rhymes, their gauzy, sky-pink hair streaming like it had never once been cut.Sky-pink hair? I've seen the sky get pinkish at sunset or sunrise; does that make their hair an off-blue? And gauzy? I'm not sure I know what gauzy hair is. I sure didn't know what the girls looked like. And if, in fact, the girls were murmured rhymes, why not edit that sentence down and just say that first? Finally, I have often told my students that italics and boldface for emphasis are marks of weak prose; maybe I was wrong, but I don't think the edited version of that sentence would need them.
I soldiered on through more similarly flowery prose and in a few pages was struck by this passage wrapping up a description of the historically dubious naming of a newly-gentrified neighborhood by its sponsor:
So, Boerum Hill, though there wasn't any hill. Isabel Vendle wrote it and so it was made and so they would come to live in the new place which was inked into reality by her hand, her crabbed hand which scuttled from past to future, Simon Boerum and Gowanus unruly parents giving birth to Boerum Hill, a respectable child.Again we get the in-text edit-by-comma, "hand" gaining a "crabbed" modifier only with repetition, not at the outset. We also get a serial "and," the metaphorical "inked into reality," and a concluding participial clause trying to shoulder the action, all in one rambling sentence.
I'm not saying any of these language choices are bad, incorrect, or even inappropriate; I just felt when reading it that it was all style and little substance, that Lethem cared more about writing prettily than telling a story, and that I didn't know how much I could get through.
As it turned out, not much. About page twelve or so I gave up on it and wandered into the cabin to see if there was a nice paperback on the small bookshelf in the corner by the fireplace. I pulled out a somewhat worn copy of Agatha Christie's Dead Man's Mirror, one of the Hercule Poirot mysteries. It began
The flat was a modern one. The furnishings of the room were modern, too. The armchairs were squarely built, the upright chairs were angular. A modern writing-table was set squarely in front of the widow and at it sat a small elderly man. His head was practically the only round thing in the room. It was egg-shaped.Ah. This room I could see, and this man I could visualize. The weekend's reading agenda was reshaped but salvaged.
Now, I have wondered about this response I had. An easy explanation is my falling on the spare side of the ol' Fitzgerald-Hemingway divide: possessing a bent for the plain and unadorned as opposed to the mannered and ornate. A specific preference between those two authors may be so in my case, but how does that explain my absolute enthusiasm for Dickens, whose paragraphs seem like dense thickets of forest next to the bare tundra of Papa's sentences?
Perhaps I merely fall in the Animist quadrant of Scott McCloud's Four Tribes theory of creators, concerned mostly with story, while Lethem is a Classicist, focused on beauty.
Or maybe the answer is as prosaic as my commute companion suggested today: I wanted a "beach book," and not a literary novel, in that particular place and time.
But maybe the truth is that I'm just not very "literary" at all. And maybe I can live with that.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Links, hold the sausage
I'm sitting here in the Wayward coffeehouse while Otis is out at her book club. About 85% of the twenty or so people here are with a group whose table stand reads Steam Punk, 6:30 to 10:30. There have been a couple of brassy artifacts passed around, but the group actually looks like any generic activities club - no goggles, beaver hats, or spats to be seen. It's a little disappointing actually. I haven't made contact yet, but I am eavesdropping pretty good.
Although none of it is steam-punky, I wanted to share some stuff that has been cluttering up my bookmarks folder. The first is this lovely little movie that was apparently made as a student final project. It is a visual treat as well as a nice little slice of whimsy:
Now, I wasn't kidding when I called this artistic. As stunned as you are by the sheer awesomeness of the juxtaposition, take a look at this side-by-side comparison with the original sequence and see how well the creator, TheCBVee, matched not just the visual feel of the credits, but the thematic and emotional elements as well.
Well played, sir.
As I mentioned in the last post, I spent last week impersonating an art student. Coincidentally, I tripped over this art school blog post while I was there. I have to say that I saw some of those students in the class, but I don't think I was much like this guy:
And finally, something from the wingnut file. While researching something real, I ran across this political commentator's rant against the pernicious influence on our culture of tobacco, alcohol, drugs... and dogs. Yes, the pet industry in its unholy alliance with child-scorning misfit "pet parenting" dog owners is a threat to our society that rivals crack cocaine. Mmmmmmm-kay. Need I say she is member of the GOP?
Finally - just as I finished typing that last sentence - a woman came in wearing a pith helmet with goggles up on the crown, a funky adventuress vest, and long, wide trousers. Yay, hardcore steampunk lady! Time for me to start writing that new GURPS campaign!
Although none of it is steam-punky, I wanted to share some stuff that has been cluttering up my bookmarks folder. The first is this lovely little movie that was apparently made as a student final project. It is a visual treat as well as a nice little slice of whimsy:
Machu Picchu Post from Machu Picchu Post Team on Vimeo.
The next selection is also artistic, but in a completely different idiom. Apparently, there is a new mash-up genre gaining popularity: re-making (usually clip-heavy) credit sequences for one pop culture icon for another pop culture icon. Here, take a look at Han Solo, p.i. to see what I mean:Now, I wasn't kidding when I called this artistic. As stunned as you are by the sheer awesomeness of the juxtaposition, take a look at this side-by-side comparison with the original sequence and see how well the creator, TheCBVee, matched not just the visual feel of the credits, but the thematic and emotional elements as well.
Well played, sir.
As I mentioned in the last post, I spent last week impersonating an art student. Coincidentally, I tripped over this art school blog post while I was there. I have to say that I saw some of those students in the class, but I don't think I was much like this guy:
And finally, something from the wingnut file. While researching something real, I ran across this political commentator's rant against the pernicious influence on our culture of tobacco, alcohol, drugs... and dogs. Yes, the pet industry in its unholy alliance with child-scorning misfit "pet parenting" dog owners is a threat to our society that rivals crack cocaine. Mmmmmmm-kay. Need I say she is member of the GOP?Finally - just as I finished typing that last sentence - a woman came in wearing a pith helmet with goggles up on the crown, a funky adventuress vest, and long, wide trousers. Yay, hardcore steampunk lady! Time for me to start writing that new GURPS campaign!
Friday, June 26, 2009
Traffic refuge/Comics class
So, I left the Pacific Northwest College of Art some time ago, but I haven't made it out of Clark County yet. Traffic is just misery, so I have taken refuge at a Krispy Kreme donut shop to wait out the storm a bit.*(By the way, although I am not all that fond of donuts, KK is a pretty good place to hangout, at least here in The Couv. It is open until 10:00 pm, has a nice strong wi-fi signal, and sells coffee for a dime (some weird "depression-era prices" marketing scheme.)
For those who weren't completely in the loop, I have been attending a week-long class at PNCA called Graphic Novel Intensive. It is both a theory and a studio class; we have been doing readings and having lectures/group discussions, but we have also been producing our own work. In fact, the class work will be collected in an anthology that will be published through one of those Internet just-in-time printing places.
The real draw for me was that the visiting instructor for the course was Ellen Forney, whom I have gone on about before, and she did not disappoint in her high wattage lessons and demonstrations. Dan Duford, the PNCA staff instructor, brought an energetic and playful nature to the heavy lifting of class readings and exercises.
I've been messing about with comics analysis and criticism for some time, and it's starting to show; much of the theoretical material was old news for me, and based on the feedback to my exercises, my grasp of the language of comics is pretty well-developed by now. But as usual, my skill set seems to fill up with writing and, even more so, editing techniques; my actual graphic production still leaves a lot to be desired. But that was part of why I invested so much time (and took on double-duty with my teaching responsibilities) to be a part of the class: I wanted to explore the studio experience and dive into the creative process of comics.
So I played around with my drawing and even experimented a little bit with brushes. Usually, I know what I want to do, but I feel so limited in my talent that I abandon my ideas for something simpler to execute. I know this is chickening out; the wonderful cartoonist Donna Barr supposedly once said if you want to be a comics artist, first make 10,000 drawings. I have seen this in action, even: one of may favorite webcartoonists, Jeph Jacques, started out with stuff looking like this, and now does this. I guess I just have to decide if I really want to do this all myself, or if my destiny is to write and edit.
In any case, I did want to share my final product. I brought this from concept to thumbnails to final pencils to inks and then a bunch of Photoshopping (especially the lettering) in the last 24 hours. I'll post more in a substantive post with other scans, but for now, here's the house ad for a series based on a concept you might remember.
*I'm not going to post this right away because Otis thinks I am coming home tomorrow morning and I am going to surprise her.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Poesy
It was a bit of a game night around the townhouse last night. Johnbai came over with Ticket to Ride and Otis, he, and I spent a nice hour or so building railroads across Europe. Fruitloops came over to observe the tail end, and then we moved into the living room for some competitive poetry.
Y'see, in the relentless search to market every variation of those Magnetic Poetry tiles, which started as a simple novelty and then grew into an amalgamation of all kinds of speciality collections and related products, the public was once treated to the Magnetic Poetry Game. It came with two sets of conditions cards, an extensive set of tiles, a little refrigerator door to put the poetry on, and a set of ill-thought-out rules (score a point for each word in your poem?). In her gentle and non-competitive way*, Otis tossed away the rules and turned the whole deal into a series of writing exercises. Here they are.**
Otis led off, but her warm-up poem is lost to the fog of history. Johnbai went next; the cards said his poem had to be about flowers and had to begin with a word starting with "T":
Tender cat lick boy,
full of dream-time and chocolate,
wish for a
ticklish moon where
blue flowers storm through the sky.
Their ache is thunder and peace.
We all liked it, but didn't think it was about flowers. (So if we had been playing by the rules, Johnbai would have lost!)
Fruitloops went next. She had to do something about holidays and begin with a word starting with "C."
Clean together, soon
Crowded cheek kisses
Celebrate dark chocolate.
Remember life and family,
Blue butter angel.
It's a game,
Leave it
Calm.
I wonder if her own repetition of that initial C was deliberate or unconscious.
I went next; I had to say something about rain, and the first line of the poem had to be an exclamation.
It's too dry!
Clouds,
spread and sex the sky.
Sound of thunder, sing.
Water,
fly,
lick green hill,
clean that mountain,
kiss this ground.
I think I was influenced by our recent dry spell. The board came back to Otis. Her task was a curious concatenation: Begin a poem about "home town" with the word "journey."
The journey is a film
in my skin -- tender, cold
like a dark drive to the dog bed of home.
I leave this prisoner ground
tongue-faced and alone
With, that were done.
Y'see, in the relentless search to market every variation of those Magnetic Poetry tiles, which started as a simple novelty and then grew into an amalgamation of all kinds of speciality collections and related products, the public was once treated to the Magnetic Poetry Game. It came with two sets of conditions cards, an extensive set of tiles, a little refrigerator door to put the poetry on, and a set of ill-thought-out rules (score a point for each word in your poem?). In her gentle and non-competitive way*, Otis tossed away the rules and turned the whole deal into a series of writing exercises. Here they are.**
Otis led off, but her warm-up poem is lost to the fog of history. Johnbai went next; the cards said his poem had to be about flowers and had to begin with a word starting with "T":
Tender cat lick boy,
full of dream-time and chocolate,
wish for a
ticklish moon where
blue flowers storm through the sky.
Their ache is thunder and peace.
We all liked it, but didn't think it was about flowers. (So if we had been playing by the rules, Johnbai would have lost!)
Fruitloops went next. She had to do something about holidays and begin with a word starting with "C."
Clean together, soon
Crowded cheek kisses
Celebrate dark chocolate.
Remember life and family,
Blue butter angel.
It's a game,
Leave it
Calm.
I wonder if her own repetition of that initial C was deliberate or unconscious.
I went next; I had to say something about rain, and the first line of the poem had to be an exclamation.
It's too dry!
Clouds,
spread and sex the sky.
Sound of thunder, sing.
Water,
fly,
lick green hill,
clean that mountain,
kiss this ground.
I think I was influenced by our recent dry spell. The board came back to Otis. Her task was a curious concatenation: Begin a poem about "home town" with the word "journey."
The journey is a film
in my skin -- tender, cold
like a dark drive to the dog bed of home.
I leave this prisoner ground
tongue-faced and alone
With, that were done.
* O showed up during the poetry game, but chose not to participate the non-competition.
** Any editing during transcription is my fault; blame me if it ruins the poem.
** Any editing during transcription is my fault; blame me if it ruins the poem.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Launching into an explanation
The other day, during a conversation with some pals including Johnbai, the subject of catapults came up, as it often does with D&D types and other geeks. The discussion created a bit of a disagreement in fact: I said that catapult properly referred to a device for throwing javelins and that a ballista threw rocks; Johnbai insisted that it was the other way around. (We did both agree that a trebuchet was the large, counter-weighted slinging device.) Since we are both brilliant men, this disconnect bothered me, so I have tracked down its cause: what I am using is more like Roman terminology, while Johnbai is using medieval nomenclature.
Roman artillery came in three major forms: the ballista, the onager, and the catapult, from heaviest to lightest. The onager looks the most like what most people think of when they hear the word catapult.
(click any picture to embiggen)
Notice that the throwing arm gets tension by its position in a twisted skein of cord/ cable / ligaments/ they-apparently-aren't-sure-precisely-what. These engines usually threw rocks at the walls of cities.
The ballista, which Johnbai envisions as a "giant crossbow," was actually the heaviest device in the Roman arsenal, and it usually threw rocks as well, but could reach much farther or hit much harder.
I guess this one was shooting directly at troops, since it has no elevation to speak of. It also uses the twisted-skein method for tension.
The catapult was the smallest siege engine, with perhaps a little more accuracy:
You can see why Johnbai would think of this as a ballista; it does bear a superficial resemblance to a big crossbow, but notice that the arms don't receive tension from being bent: they are also situated in twisted skeins. Anyway, this is the first thing that comes into my mind when I hear the word catapult; somehow this "proper" Roman use of the term has ingrained itself in my consciousness, and that was the source of our terminological discord.
Five hundred years after Rome fell, siege engines were still in use, but some of the names had changed. Catapult had become a more general term for all sort of throwing devices; the mid-range weapon of choice for this type was the mangonel, its equine nickname echoing the Roman weapon named after a wild ass:
Ballista in the medieval period no longer referred to a heavy siege engine for throwing rocks, but to the overgrown crossbow so popular in D&D campaigns:
Notice the change here: this machine gets it tension from bending a bow in the same manner as a standard crossbow, not from the twisted-skein method. This is what really distinguishes it from the Roman catapult.
Of course, when Johnbai was DM for the D&D campaign that ended with the Great Grelsch Insurrection, he was never specific as to whether the siege weapons employed by the Thieves' Guild Navy to attack the fortress were powered by the twisted-skein or bent-bow method, so we'll never know if they were Roman catapults or medieval ballistas.
Credit where credit is due: the information and illustrations for this piece came from this book, which, according to some paperwork inside, has been in my possession for over 37 years. Oy vey.
Roman artillery came in three major forms: the ballista, the onager, and the catapult, from heaviest to lightest. The onager looks the most like what most people think of when they hear the word catapult.
(click any picture to embiggen)Notice that the throwing arm gets tension by its position in a twisted skein of cord/ cable / ligaments/ they-apparently-aren't-sure-precisely-what. These engines usually threw rocks at the walls of cities.
The ballista, which Johnbai envisions as a "giant crossbow," was actually the heaviest device in the Roman arsenal, and it usually threw rocks as well, but could reach much farther or hit much harder.
I guess this one was shooting directly at troops, since it has no elevation to speak of. It also uses the twisted-skein method for tension.The catapult was the smallest siege engine, with perhaps a little more accuracy:
You can see why Johnbai would think of this as a ballista; it does bear a superficial resemblance to a big crossbow, but notice that the arms don't receive tension from being bent: they are also situated in twisted skeins. Anyway, this is the first thing that comes into my mind when I hear the word catapult; somehow this "proper" Roman use of the term has ingrained itself in my consciousness, and that was the source of our terminological discord.
Five hundred years after Rome fell, siege engines were still in use, but some of the names had changed. Catapult had become a more general term for all sort of throwing devices; the mid-range weapon of choice for this type was the mangonel, its equine nickname echoing the Roman weapon named after a wild ass:
Ballista in the medieval period no longer referred to a heavy siege engine for throwing rocks, but to the overgrown crossbow so popular in D&D campaigns:
Notice the change here: this machine gets it tension from bending a bow in the same manner as a standard crossbow, not from the twisted-skein method. This is what really distinguishes it from the Roman catapult.
Of course, when Johnbai was DM for the D&D campaign that ended with the Great Grelsch Insurrection, he was never specific as to whether the siege weapons employed by the Thieves' Guild Navy to attack the fortress were powered by the twisted-skein or bent-bow method, so we'll never know if they were Roman catapults or medieval ballistas.
Credit where credit is due: the information and illustrations for this piece came from this book, which, according to some paperwork inside, has been in my possession for over 37 years. Oy vey.
Monday, June 15, 2009
What if #1
Back in junior year of high school - that would make this 1973 or '74 - we sons of Regis were given the push to start applying to colleges. Lots of letters went out to the Ivy League and to "good, small liberal art colleges" (as our guidance counselor called schools of a certain kind and caliber). I dutifully followed suit, but threw a wild card into the mix: I sent a letter of inquiry (since I could not find an application form) to the University of Iceland at Reykjavik.
I can't now recall what prompted this action. I had always had some fondness for the island nation, with its storied Viking past, its legendary linguistic protectionism, its phone-book-by-first-name, and its oldest currently-seated parliamentary body (the Althing, founded 930 CE). Perhaps we had just been reading the Elder Eddas or something; at any rate, I thought it was a good idea to consider leaving Brooklyn for a course of higher education in an isolated and insular nation-state located on a volcanic island in the North Atlantic.
So, off went the letter, and, a few weeks later, back came the reply. Even in the formal academic English, the message was unmistakable: thanks, but no thanks, and don't call us, we'll call you. There was some explanation of the difference between European and American higher education (they wouldn't consider me for admission until I had completed two years of college) but one other point came through loud and clear: the language of instruction was Icelandic. The first year of admission, I would take Icelandic History and Icelandic; after that, I was on my own. The school clearly had no structured international student program, and displayed little interest in starting one with me.
Despite this warm welcome, I decided not to pursue my admissions process. Or perhaps after a few years, I just forgot. I did complete an associate's degree in 1978, but moved to Portland, Oregon to begin building my ultimately checkered work history instead of sending my transcript to Reykjavik. As it does, life happened, and here I am.*
But I did make it to Iceland, and even to the university. In summer of 2001, I took an extended vacation in Europe, and had the travel agent get me a weekend junket to Reykjavik while I was staying in England; I think I flew in on a Thursday night and stayed until Sunday. While I was enjoying the cosmopolitan delights of the city, I made sure to pay a visit to the university. It seemed very much like any other university, not an especially magical place, and I noticed when I was in the bookstore buying a T-shirt that about 75% of the textbooks were in English. I guess times changed at Háskóli Íslands.
Occasionally, I wonder what would have become of me had I pursued this educational plan, but the variables are so vast that I cannot even begin to reckon how different my life might have been. Perhaps it is enough for me to remember that, as a youth, I was the type of person who thought that initiating such an endeavor was perfectly reasonable and to never lose that sense of what is possible.
*For what it's worth, I did get accepted to a good, small liberal arts college, Reed, but chose instead to go to a crappy, small, private community college, Mercy.
When I so informed him, the guidance counselor looked at me and held one hand high over his head. "This," he said, "is Mount Olympus, and here is Reed." He put his other hand down around his shins. "And here is Mercy."
The Greek myths never grabbed me as much as the Norse, so I wasn't swayed. After getting my associate's, I finished my bachelor's twenty-four years later at the oldest distance education institution in the country and then took a master's from a regional, comprehensive public university. So it goes.
I can't now recall what prompted this action. I had always had some fondness for the island nation, with its storied Viking past, its legendary linguistic protectionism, its phone-book-by-first-name, and its oldest currently-seated parliamentary body (the Althing, founded 930 CE). Perhaps we had just been reading the Elder Eddas or something; at any rate, I thought it was a good idea to consider leaving Brooklyn for a course of higher education in an isolated and insular nation-state located on a volcanic island in the North Atlantic.
So, off went the letter, and, a few weeks later, back came the reply. Even in the formal academic English, the message was unmistakable: thanks, but no thanks, and don't call us, we'll call you. There was some explanation of the difference between European and American higher education (they wouldn't consider me for admission until I had completed two years of college) but one other point came through loud and clear: the language of instruction was Icelandic. The first year of admission, I would take Icelandic History and Icelandic; after that, I was on my own. The school clearly had no structured international student program, and displayed little interest in starting one with me.
Despite this warm welcome, I decided not to pursue my admissions process. Or perhaps after a few years, I just forgot. I did complete an associate's degree in 1978, but moved to Portland, Oregon to begin building my ultimately checkered work history instead of sending my transcript to Reykjavik. As it does, life happened, and here I am.*
But I did make it to Iceland, and even to the university. In summer of 2001, I took an extended vacation in Europe, and had the travel agent get me a weekend junket to Reykjavik while I was staying in England; I think I flew in on a Thursday night and stayed until Sunday. While I was enjoying the cosmopolitan delights of the city, I made sure to pay a visit to the university. It seemed very much like any other university, not an especially magical place, and I noticed when I was in the bookstore buying a T-shirt that about 75% of the textbooks were in English. I guess times changed at Háskóli Íslands.
Occasionally, I wonder what would have become of me had I pursued this educational plan, but the variables are so vast that I cannot even begin to reckon how different my life might have been. Perhaps it is enough for me to remember that, as a youth, I was the type of person who thought that initiating such an endeavor was perfectly reasonable and to never lose that sense of what is possible.
*For what it's worth, I did get accepted to a good, small liberal arts college, Reed, but chose instead to go to a crappy, small, private community college, Mercy.
When I so informed him, the guidance counselor looked at me and held one hand high over his head. "This," he said, "is Mount Olympus, and here is Reed." He put his other hand down around his shins. "And here is Mercy."
The Greek myths never grabbed me as much as the Norse, so I wasn't swayed. After getting my associate's, I finished my bachelor's twenty-four years later at the oldest distance education institution in the country and then took a master's from a regional, comprehensive public university. So it goes.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Report from Client Exile
Otis has a busy morning working, so I have hied myself to one of my favorite spots: The Green Bean.
I love to plug this place - it's a cool little non-profit coffeehouse that supports a bunch of worthwhile local causes. Nice work, even if their parent organization loves the jebus. There's a particularly happy energy in here this morning, with some study group (talking about electricity and cells?) that just left, a bunch of people working on laptops, some kids - just lots of activity and plenty of sunshine streaming through the big windows.
Of course, the big deal right now is that yesterday was the last day of the regular school year, which ended with the Cascadia graduation ceremony at 7:00 last night in beautiful Lynnwood. So, counting today, there are 107 days until the first day of fall quarter. Wow! That's a lot! In point of fact, it is not quite so golden as it might otherwise be. In an attempt to get a handle on my summer, I (of course) made a spreadsheet. Here's the chart (click to embiggen):
Lots of things, small and large, floating around these 15 weeks. For example, I need to post my grades by Tuesday, and I'm luckier than many of my colleagues in that my grading is actually finished; I also have a six-hour planning retreat on Monday. I've picked up two classes for the eight-week summer session, and I will probably have a half-dozen half-day working meetings of the Program Review committee in July and August, plus some report-writing time. The required pre-fall days start two weeks before the quarter, and I'll likely have to go to some meetings to plan those, too.
I'm not complaining at all, mind you; I have a long list of personal projects to work on, and I fully expect to have plenty of time to dig into all of them, as well as enjoying the lake every day and some occasional weekend trips. We may even see the return of Summer Humpday dinners in some form! Let's face it, 107 is a big number no matter how you slice it up.
So here's to a full, full summer!
I love to plug this place - it's a cool little non-profit coffeehouse that supports a bunch of worthwhile local causes. Nice work, even if their parent organization loves the jebus. There's a particularly happy energy in here this morning, with some study group (talking about electricity and cells?) that just left, a bunch of people working on laptops, some kids - just lots of activity and plenty of sunshine streaming through the big windows.Of course, the big deal right now is that yesterday was the last day of the regular school year, which ended with the Cascadia graduation ceremony at 7:00 last night in beautiful Lynnwood. So, counting today, there are 107 days until the first day of fall quarter. Wow! That's a lot! In point of fact, it is not quite so golden as it might otherwise be. In an attempt to get a handle on my summer, I (of course) made a spreadsheet. Here's the chart (click to embiggen):
Lots of things, small and large, floating around these 15 weeks. For example, I need to post my grades by Tuesday, and I'm luckier than many of my colleagues in that my grading is actually finished; I also have a six-hour planning retreat on Monday. I've picked up two classes for the eight-week summer session, and I will probably have a half-dozen half-day working meetings of the Program Review committee in July and August, plus some report-writing time. The required pre-fall days start two weeks before the quarter, and I'll likely have to go to some meetings to plan those, too.I'm not complaining at all, mind you; I have a long list of personal projects to work on, and I fully expect to have plenty of time to dig into all of them, as well as enjoying the lake every day and some occasional weekend trips. We may even see the return of Summer Humpday dinners in some form! Let's face it, 107 is a big number no matter how you slice it up.
So here's to a full, full summer!
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Coffee shop blogging, old style
Now this is the way to do café society when it's all summery like this: outdoors on a busy city street, letting life stream by and around. I'm down the street from the townhouse at Peaks, giving them yet another chance. The wi-fi seems strong today but my iced coffee is more tepid than cool, so it's still a mixed result at best.My days of regularly photoblogging my coffee stops aren't so long ago, but a few times recently I have found myself slipping into reveries of times long past. The most acute was occasioned by my seeing a movie trailer for the remake of The Taking of Pelham 123. This caused me to seek out the some clips from the original on YouTube, and that's what led me in search of lost time.
You see, the original book and movie of Pelham 123 came out at exactly the right period in my life to be deeply influential and important: that is, when I was sixteen or so, immersed in old-school pulp adventures, stumbling-to-maturity comic books, Humphrey Bogart movies, and Raymond Chandler novels. Crime as metaphor, heroes vs. villains, the antihero, battered morality, and flawed ethics were themes I and my like-minded pals grabbed, swallowed, inhaled, and sweat. It was a period of time when traditional narratives were becoming problematized for us, when it seemed the world, like television, was no longer merely black and white.
Compounding Pelham 123's appeal as an example of our chosen genre was its setting: New York City, in the subways. This was my world; my high school years saw me on the BMT and the IRT (transfer at 14th Street/Union Square) for over two hours each weekday, and as much or more on the weekends, looking for diversion. The City was in bad shape in the seventies, a mean drunk in the middle of bender, dirty, dangerous, and broke. Simultaneously thrilled and appalled by our home, we responded to stories that wallowed in its degeneracy. This story, and its contemporary, Report to the Commissioner, captured that fatalistic edge while still providing us with enough "good guy" energy to keep us from spinning off into nihilism.
All this was happening in during a time when I was discovering, sometimes in very indirect ways, who I was, and what I valued, and what was important. And once again encountering The Taking of Pelham 123, while it was only one small piece of that mosaic, puts me in mind of that whole growth experience.
Nostalgia has been commodified along with so much else in our culture; we package and sell the memories of our youth and even those bygone days that we never experienced. But it would do us well to remember that the word nostalgia contains the root form of "pain" as well as that of "home"; it is not an emotion to take lightly, and it brings with it much more than fondness and warmth. For as I remember the young man who was captivated by a certain crime drama, I realize that never again will I be as open to the world, as impressed with new-to-me ideas, and as constantly surprised every day to find out that the world might not be exactly as I thought it was the day before. With age comes a certain amount of weariness and dullness; I can cultivate my wonder and practice my curiosity, but the eyes of a sixteen-year-old have a special quality as magic as X-ray Specs, and as young-at-heart as I remain, I will never see the world through those eyes again.
I am now about the same age as Walter Matthau was when he made the movie.
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