Divers Content on a Freezing Cold Thursday

Posted on January 12, 2017 by admin

Inspired by yesterday’s natterings, I stopped at the library and checked out River of Doubt (2006) by Candice Millard. Subtitled “Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey,” it’s about TR’s expedition into darkest Amazonia in 1913-14. As the book makes clear from the get-go, the journey nearly killed him. Even he-man action presidents have their limits, after all.

I didn’t know until today that Andrew Sachs died not long ago. There are many clips available of him in fine form as Manuel, such as this one or this one or this one.

I’ve had these glasses for a few years now. Bought them at a garage sale for (I think) a quarter each.

They were clearly some kind of promotional item from Coca-cola but also McDonald’s, because three of them have McDonald’s arches on the bottom. The interesting thing to me is that they’re precisely the same size and shape as a 12 oz. soft drink can.

While writing about a hotel today, I encountered something in the hotel biz known as a “spiritual menu.” The concept isn’t exactly new, but I’d never heard of it. The following is from the Christian Post in 2008.

“A hotel in Nashville will be the first known in the nation to remove the standard Holy Bible from its rooms and replace it with a ‘spiritual menu’ that includes other religious books… Hotel Preston, a boutique owned by Oregon-based Provenance Hotels, will require guests to call room service to order their religious book of choice…

“The religious book list includes the Book of Mormon, the Qur’an, the Torah, the Tao Te Ching, The Four Noble Truths of Buddhism, Bhagavad Gita (a Hindu text), books on Scientology, as well as the King James and New American Bible versions.” @#$%&! Scientology?

Hm. The Gideons can’t be too happy about being replaced. And the following lyric just doesn’t have the same ring: Rocky Raccoon/Checked into his room/Only to find a spiritual menu.

Twelve Pictures ’16

Posted on December 22, 2016 by admin

Back to posting around January 2, 2017, after I’ve said good riddance to this regrettable year in which a family member and two old friends departed.

I ought to publish pictures at a site for pictures, since I take a lot more than I ever use here, a few of them tolerably good. The following are photos from each month of 2016. No overriding theme, just pictures.

Schaumburg, January 2016

Libertyville, Ill. February 2016

San Antonio, March 2016

Rockford, Ill. April 2016

Dayton, May 2016

Nashville, June 2016

Austin, July 2016

Chicago, August 2016

Glencoe, Ill., September 2016

Philadelphia, October 2016

Schaumburg, November 2016

Westmont, Ill., December 2016

Merry Christmas to all.

Nata de Coco Thursday

Posted on December 15, 2016 by admin

Picked up Lilly last night where the bus from UIUC dropped her off, near a northwest suburban mall. Fortunately I was there more-or-less on time, so she didn’t have to spend much time out in the bitter wind, because the drop-off point is simply a parking lot. Not a good night to be outside.

Driving home, we did have the pleasure of hearing “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” by chance on the radio. I like to hear that exactly once every Christmas season. No more than that.

Here’s the packaging from Jubes brand nata de coco. Jubes, we figure, is a portmanteau of “juicy cubes.”

To save a trip to Wiki: “Nata de coco is a chewy, translucent, jelly-like food produced by the fermentation of coconut water, which gels through the production of microbial cellulose by Acetobacter xylinum. Originating in the Philippines, nata de coco is most commonly sweetened as a candy or dessert, and can accompany a variety of foods, including pickles, drinks, ice cream, puddings, and fruit mixes.”

It’s a product of Pt. Keong Nusantara Abadi, located in Lampung Selatan, Indonesia. I had to look that up. It’s on the southern end of Sumatra. I can’t think of anything else imported from Sumatra, at least in my house.

The marketing text, especially the last line, has a Japlish flavor. This Grape flavored JUBES is for those who favour gentle & refreshing taste. But for all I know, that’s Bahasa-lish as well.

Nata de coco is popular in Japan. Some years ago, Yuriko was eating some and Ann wanted to try it. Then she wanted the whole bowl. She’s been fond of it since. At some point I tried it too. It isn’t bad, but it’s probably one of those foods best discovered as a child for a deep appreciation.

Now I Know Who Verne Troyer Is

Posted on December 13, 2016 by admin

Ah, Wikipedia. Your charms are endless. I really should give you that $3. Today I was looking at the entry on Seaport Boston Hotel & World Trade Center, a property in the Seaport District of Boston. Among other things, it lists “notable stays,” which looked like a list on a standardized test question — which of these is not like the others?

President Barack Obama
President Bill Clinton
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
President George H. W. Bush
President George W. Bush
Vern Troyer

I didn’t know “Vern Troyer,” so naturally I looked him up. Must be this fellow, Verne Troyer. An actor of diminutive stature, he’s best known for playing Mini-Me in the Austin Powers movies, which I’ve managed to avoid since the very first one nearly 20 years ago. And yet I’ve heard of Mini-Me. Some things just burrow their way into the wider culture.

The Global Fastener News Calendar (Or, More Calendar Oddities)

Posted on December 7, 2016 by admin

Strangely enough, this morning another calendar crossed my desk, but not a cheapo publication. Rather, it’s the four-color, glossy-paper Global Fastener News Calendar for 2017. Published by Global Fastener News, or to be exact, Global Fastener News.com, based in Portland, Ore. If you want to know nuts and bolts, that’s your place.

Not to mock such a trade publication, as people sometimes do. I remember, for example, seeing clueless amusement in print that fire chiefs had their own magazine, as if managing a fire service operation weren’t a complicated task best done by informed management. Besides, I’ve made my living largely among trade publications. If there’s a trade, there’s a publication, because there are people who care deeply about their trade.

As for fasteners, you could almost say, literally, that the world would fall apart without them.

The Global Fastener News Calendar is an excellent calendar. It includes many standard religious and secular holidays — and not just American ones — as well as dates for fastener industry events, major sporting events, and dates you might not otherwise expect.

For instance: Save the Eagles Day (Jan. 10), National Freedom Day (Feb. 1), Candlemas (Feb. 2), World Cancer Day (Feb. 4), Pi Day (March 14), National Health Care Decision Day (April 16), Earth Day (April 22), World Press Freedom Day (May 3), National Day of Prayer (May 4), National Defense Transportation Day and then Armed Forces Day (May 19 and 20), National Donut Day (June 2), World Environment Day (June 5), World Accreditation Day (June 9), Juneteenth (June 19), Take Your Dog to Work Day (June 23), Stonewall Rebellion (June 28), World Population Day (July 11), System Administrators’ Appreciation Day (July 29), Friendship Day (Aug. 6), Left Hander’s Day (Aug. 13), UN International Day of Peace (Sept. 21), World Heart Day (Sept. 29), National Manufacturing Day (Oct.6), World Standards Day (Oct. 14), American Indian Heritage Day (Nov. 24), AIDS Awareness Day (Dec. 1), and Pan American Aviation Day and Wright Brothers Day (Dec. 17).

A few of these I hadn’t heard of and couldn’t quite guess by context. National Health Care Decision Day is for “emphasizing the spotlight on the importance of advance directives,” and World Accreditation Day as a “global initiative, jointly established by the International Accreditation Forum (IAF) and the International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation (ILAC), to raise awareness of the importance of accreditation,” according to the IAF itself.

National Defense Transportation Day goes back further than you’d think. According to timeanddate.com: “On May 16, 1957, Congress approved for the third Friday of May each year to be designated as National Defense Transportation Day. In 1962 Congress updated their request to include the whole week within which the Friday falls as National Transportation Week.”

So I guess if you want to honor half-tracks or troop carriers or the original jeeps, that would be your day.

You’d think American Indian Heritage Day (aka Native American Heritage Day) would take the place of Columbus Day, but apparently not. That’s Indigenous Peoples’ Day, which isn’t on this particular calendar. To complicate matters, according to Wiki, “[Besides Berkeley], several other California cities, including Richmond, Santa Cruz, and Sebastopol, now celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

“At least four states do not celebrate Columbus Day (Alaska, Hawaii, Oregon, and South Dakota); South Dakota officially celebrates Native American Day instead. Various tribal governments in Oklahoma designate the day as “Native American Day,” or have renamed the day after their own tribes. In 2013, the California state legislature considered a bill, AB55, to formally replace Columbus Day with Native American Day but did not pass it.” Ah, well. People’s Front of Judea, Judean People’s Front.

I’m also amused by, but not mocking, some of the industry events on the calendar. Such as Comedy Night, North Coast Fastener Association; Hydrogen Embrittlement in Fasteners, FTI, Detroit; Fastener Fair India, Mumbai; Xmas in July, North Coast Fastener Association; ASME B1 Committee on Screw Threads, Scottsdale, AZ; Wire Russia, Moscow; Indo Fastener, Jakarta; Young Fastener Professionals, Las Vegas; and Screw Open, North Coast Fastener Association (sounds like a fun bunch of guys, that North Coast).

Dec. 6 — just missed it — is the anniversary of the implementation of the U.S. Fastener Quality Act of 1999, a fact that’s duly noted on the calendar. A signal achievement of the Clinton administration, no doubt, but I’m not going to do anything more than glance at “10 of the Most Frequently Asked Questions About the Final FQA.”

Such as: Are inch hex socket products really exempt from the FQA?

Answer: Yes. Even though all inch alloy steel socket products are through hardened as required by consensus standards, they are not required by those same standards to be grade marked and are therefore, NOT COVERED.

The next day, a year from today, is called Pearl Harbor Day and not some other formulation. Fitting.

One more thing, a fine detail. Phases of the moon are marked, new and full, as on many calendars, though not halves. But there are also two special symbols for the annular eclipse of Feb. 26, 2017 and the full eclipse of Aug. 21, 2017. Cool.

Calendar Oddities Are Back

Posted on December 6, 2016 by admin

A cheap calendar crossed my desk the other day, and I thought, that looks familiar. For a good reason: it’s the 2017 version of a cheap calendar I got four years ago. I don’t remember getting one last year or the year before that. I didn’t keep the ’14 version because, after all, it’s a cheap calendar. I expect I’ll throw away the new one soon enough. Got enough stuff around here without it.

I did check, and the parade of U.S. presidential birthdays is exactly the same oddball procession as on the earlier calendar: McKinley, FDR, Lincoln, Washington, Jackson, Madison, Jefferson, Grant, Kennedy, J.Q. Adams, Hoover, Benjamin Harrison, Eisenhower, TR, and Wilson.

Perhaps the other birthdays are the same, too, but I didn’t take notes on them: Alexander Hamilton, MLK, Ben Franklin, Stonewall Jackson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Jefferson Davis. Interesting selection, that. The other events noted on the calendar are exactly the same as before.

One thing that might be different this time, besides the normal shifting of dates, is that Memorial Day is marked twice. Once, May 29, is simply marked Memorial Day; May 30 is marked Memorial Day (True). Also, Columbus Day is likewise two different days, one True (Oct. 12) and the other presumably false. Or fake. Or bogus. (Oct. 9 next year, as it happens.)

An aside: the day the President Benjamin Harrison proclaimed to be the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ landing in the Americas was Oct. 21, 1892. He had his reasons. Oct. 12, 1492 was reckoned using the Julian calendar. To correct for the Gregorian, nine days were added. Presumably now we’d need to add 10 — or 11, I’m not sure how the fact that 2000 was a leap year affects things — to be mathematically correct. So arguably, if you really wanted to argue such a ridiculous thing, neither Oct. 9th or 12th would be the true Columbus Day.

Anyway, Memorial Day and Decoration Day might be worth distinguishing, but Columbus Day? The day we barely honor a sea captain from Genoa in the pay of Spain traveling to the Bahamas half a millennium ago. I might not live to see the change, but I suspect that holiday isn’t long for the calendar.

A Bum Pressure Switch

Posted on November 22, 2016 by admin

Back again on November 27. A good Thanksgiving to all.

As predicted, the unusual warm days of November came to an end recently, replaced by lower temps. Time, it turned out, for a gizmo known as a pressure switch on our furnace to give up the ghost.

Doityourself.com tells us that “a gas furnace pressure switch closes to allow current to pass through and start the ignition of the furnace. If the pressure switch is stuck, it does not send enough power to the inducer, and therefore, the ignition sequence does not begin.”

Sure enough, there was no ignition, so the heater blew unheated air through the system, which is no good when it’s just above freezing outside the house. The problem started Sunday evening, so we spent the night without heat, since I’m not qualified to doitmyself. Once double-time rates were over, on Monday morning that is, a technician came to install a new pressure switch that cost a little less than $200. Could have been worse, as in more expensive. Has been worse.

The house holds its heat fairly well. Small electric heaters were able to raise the living room temps to about 65 F Sunday night. Since I didn’t want to run those overnight, the house then cooled. Inside temps were just over 50 F by Monday morning.

Sleeping under two thick comforters wasn’t bad at all. Except the inevitable wee-hour moment when my bladder reminded me that I’m thoroughly middle-aged.

November Get-Together 1987

Posted on November 20, 2016 by admin

For a little while in the later ’80s, I took an interest in making black-and-white pictures. But not enough of an interest to pay for a higher-quality camera, so the results were usually mediocre.

Still, I documented a few moments I might have otherwise forgotten. Such as a get-together in my Chicago apartment on November 21, 1987, attended by a small knot of my friends. Such as Wendy and Susie, with Wendy blowing bubbles.

Barbara and Lee. The Period Clothing sign I found thrown away in Nashville after a resale shop near my apartment had closed. I brought it with me to Chicago.

Becky. The door led to the back stairwell. People who wanted to smoke went out there. But I don’t think anyone there that day smoked.

And Nate near one of my bookcases. I probably still have all those books, or almost all of them.

I imagine we had a good time, but I don’t remember anything about the event. Seems like a long time ago. Because it was.

Photoshop Nightmare Election Leftover

Posted on November 10, 2016 by admin

Remarkably windy this afternoon, though not particularly cold. Yet winter is coming, as they say on a TV show I haven’t gotten around to seeing.

The influx — flow — torrent — of election season postcards has, of course, come to a sudden stop. I didn’t count the number that passed from campaigns, through to USPS, to our mailbox. And then into the recycle bin or, if I were in a less sustainable mood, the regular trash.

Most of them weren’t that memorable. Then there was this Photoshop nightmare.

It might not have changed my vote, but it did get my attention.

Open House Chicago 2016

Posted on October 16, 2016 by admin

Turns out there are two kinds of building-visiting events in the world, Open House and Doors Open, and a good many cities in a lot of countries participate in one or the other. (Shucks, missed Milwaukee’s — next year, maybe). As far as I can tell, the idea is exactly the same in both cases: one weekend out of the year, various buildings are open — maybe a little more open than they’d usually be — and you can wander in and look around. A really good idea, if you asked me.

I was out of town last year, but participated in Open House Chicago in 2013. Yuriko and I went in ’14, and again this year, on Saturday. This time our focus was Evanston and some sites on the North Side of Chicago. All are parts of metro Chicago that we know well, but no matter how well you know a place, there’s always more to it. First we drove to Evanston, and then on foot and by El train, we managed to visit more than a dozen places new to us.

Including, in Evanston: the Francis Willard House Museum, Sigma Alpha Epsilon National Headquarters (Levere Memorial Temple), Northwestern University’s Charles Deering Library and its Dearborn Observatory, Stone Terrace (an elegant B&B near Lake Michigan), the First Presbyterian Church of Evanston, and the Lake Street Church of Evanston.

In the Uptown neighborhood of Chicago, we had lunch at a good Vietnamese restaurant — there are many around Broadway and Argyle — and then went to the Bridgeview Bank Building, the Buddhist Temple of Chicago, the ICA GreenRise and the Preston Bradley Center (the Peoples Church).

In the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago, just as our energy flagged, we managed to make it to the International Society for Krishna Consciousness building and then, practically across the street, St. Jerome’s, a Catholic church just about to start one of its Saturday masses, in Spanish.

With Evanston as target for the morning, we naturally spent a while walking around the still-leafy campus of Northwestern. The university, we saw, was quick to honor faculty member and recent Nobel laureate, Sir Fraser Stoddart.

Among other things, Sir Fraser is known for his work on mechanically interlocked molecular architectures. How it’s possible to understand such things, besides what they are in the first place, is a source of puzzled wonderment to me. But I’m glad there are people who do understand such things.

Sir Fraser’s banner was on Sheridan Road, near the southern edge of the school. From there we went further north, into the heart of the campus, where we chanced on Sir Fraser’s parking space.

This amused me for no good reason. Maybe it’s because Sir Fraser drives a Camry too (and does have a license plate, which I’ve blocked). His looks in better shape than mine.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Over the Transom