Category Archives: Over the Transom

My Online Encounter With Yabba

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I woke up this morning wondering, is there really a statue of a baseball player in London? I dreamed about it. I made notes in my dream, so that I could write about it. I didn’t think it the least bit odd. Such are dreams.

As far as I can tell, there are no such statues, at least not in a public setting. I didn’t spend a lot of time looking into it, though. But I did come across the Sporting Statues Project, which seems to list sport-themed statues all over the world. I looked at a couple of its maps out of idle curiosity, including the World Cricket Statue Location Map. At a glance, you can see where people care about cricket: the UK, the Indian subcontinent, Australia and the Caribbean.

Look a little further and you can examine curious works like “Yabba.” The web site says: “Sydney Cricket Ground. ‘Yabba’ (Stephen Gascoigne). A tribute by the Sydney Cricket Ground Trust to every spectator who has ever come to these Grounds. Sculptor: Cathy Weiszmann. Benefactor: Basil Sellers.”

“Yabba” was one Stephen Harold Gascoigne, “remembered as a heckler at Sydney Cricket Ground cricket and rugby league games in the early part of the 20th century. Yabba was known for his knowledgeable witticisms shouted loudly from ‘The Hill’, a grassy general admissions area of the SCG.” – Wiki

Good useless fact for the day. You never know where your dreams will lead you.

Little Jet in the Sky

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Last Friday afternoon I was out on my deck – partly to get it ready for the next day’s grilling event, but mostly just to loaf (is that verb disappearing?)  – and I heard an odd whizzing sound from somewhere above. It didn’t sound like a small aircraft, or at least one that was approaching the general aviation airport about a mile from where we live. Or a large insect near my face. Soon I realized it sounded like a jet. A small jet. That’s what it was.

For a moment I thought it was a drone. We’re nearly in the age of drones, after all, and not long ago I read about a drone spotted near one of the highways near where I live. I didn’t see it, but it turned out to be doing surveying work at a construction site.

What I heard and then saw on Friday was a model airplane flying in circles above the park visible from my back yard – a model jet airplane. I could also see the guy in the park controlling the thing. I had no idea there were model jets. All the model planes I’ve ever seen had props.

According to RC Airplane World (RC = radio controlled, I assume), “RC jets, whether gas turbine or electric ducted fan (EDF) powered, can provide the ultimate radio control flying experience if you’re looking to fly faster model aircraft.

“True gas turbine RC jets, however, are not for the beginner. They are very serious model aircraft that you have to work up to after gaining a large amount of radio control flying experience and an equally large amount of cash. They’re serious business!

“But the good news is that if you do like the idea of flying a radio control jet then there are plenty of options available these days; foam RTF (Ready To Fly) electric powered jets have become commonplace in recent years.”

I don’t know what kind of jet this fellow had, but a jet it was, and he made it do various maneuvers over the park and then landed it. Remarkable the things you see in the sky sometimes.

Arms & Armor at Dusk

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How often do you have the chance to wear a chainmail shirt? Not very often, unless you’re an arms and armor enthusiast, like my old friend Scott. He attended our Saturday barbecue and brought some items for us to look at, including a chainmail shirt, a breastplate, and a couple of swords. Here’s me in the mail, and Scott in the breastplate.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAScott said the mail shirt was made in India, in the style of medieval Europe. Getting into the mail took some doing, and so did just standing up in it, so heavy is it.

“No wonder knights needed squires,” Kevin, another barbecue attendee, said during all of the rigmarole involved in me putting the thing on. That meant me getting on my knees, and Scott guiding the shirt down, with my head and arms careful to go through their respective holes. No wonder indeed. Not just to put it on and take it off a living knight, but to loot it from dead knights when the time came. Hard to imagine walking around, or riding a horse, or going into battle wear such weights, but then again I’m a pudgy 21st-century man, not a 13th-century tough.

The swords were very cool, too. This is one of them.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAWe examined them at some length at dusk. Scott told us what kind they were, and where the styles had been popular, and showed us some moves, but my memory for those details is poor.

What I remember is that the longer of the two was quite heavy, while the shorter wasn’t so heavy. Both were serious blades.

Dear Golf Road Tailgater From This Morning:

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Plenty of people tailgate, or at least drive uncomfortably close to the car ahead of them. It’s an intelligence deficit, a failure to grasp the most basic physics that not only risks the offender’s health and property, but someone else’s.

You, however, are a special class of butthole. I could see you well in my rear-view mirror because you were ever so close. I could practically see the steam coming out of your ears, and that scowl on your ugly face.

The tooting of your horn was a nice touch, which you probably believed would inspire me to greater speed. Funny thing about human psychology, though – which you probably grasp as well as basic physics – the noise inspired me only to maintain my speed. I was tempted to slow down.

Speaking of speed, the car next to me and I were both traveling about the speed limit. A little more sometimes, a little less sometimes, but about right for that road. Meaning that you wanted to supplement your recklessness by adding excessive speed to the mix.

Our encounter lasted all of about 30 seconds, since I did eventually move over. You had nothing to do with it. I just wanted to turn left, and needed to stop in the turning lane to yield the right-of-way. Sure enough, you sped off, in a rush to get to the next red light.

But I wish you well, butthole, or at least that you never plow into anyone else. If you must have an accident, make it a solo date with a telephone pole somewhere.

Taraxacum on the Lawn

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Back to posting on Tuesday, in honor of Memorial Day, Observed, dead ahead. It’s a little early this year, owing to the shifting of the calendar. The closer to May 30, the better, but not this year.

An oxymoron for the day: temporary resilience. That’s what dandelions have in May. I mowed a lot of dandelions down on Tuesday afternoon, in both back and front yards, ahead of the wave of thunderstorms that blew through Tuesday evening and late into the night. I don’t have anything against dandelions, since they’re part of the biodiversity of the suburbs. They just happened to be in the way.

By Wednesday about noon, under warm sunny skies, some of the dandelion stalks were back. So they’ve got resilience. But the stalks won’t last through the summer, whether I mow or not. So they’re also temporary.

My daughters don’t stoop over to pick them any more, just as they don’t ask for toys any more, but the other day — when the dandelions were at their fullest — I noticed a couple of little neighborhood kids raiding our front yard for dandelion blooms.

The Hide Vendor of Giddings

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One more item from Central Texas in late April. En route to San Antonio, Jay and I were at a stop light in Giddings, seat of Lee County, when we saw something neither of us had ever seen anywhere else.

It wasn’t the road sign marking the way to Dime Box, which I saw to the right, from the passenger’s seat. I’ve never been to Dime Box, but I remember the peculiar name — and the neighboring town Old Dime Box — from maps and because (I think) it was the capital, or at least the seat of power, in post-nuclear war Texas in the little-remembered SF novel The Texas-Israeli War: 1999.

From the driver’s seat, Jay saw something entirely more remarkable. I handed him my camera and he was able to take a shot just before the light turned green.

Texas4.25.14 067 The van at the gas station is selling Quality Hides, and you can see some hides hanging on display. But that’s not the strange thing, even though I’d never seen van-based hide selling before. This is central Texas, after all. Lots of cattle around. A hide-seller’s no big deal.

Look a little closer, between the Texas flag and the Quality Hides banner.

We Take BitcoinBITCOIN Accepted Here.

Oh, really? What’s the story here? A dealer in hides so libertarian in his sympathies — so anarchist maybe — that he takes, or wants to take, the famed cryptocurrency? What are the odds that someone driving along in Giddings, Texas, on a fine spring day will be in the market for a hide and just happen to have a Bitcoin or two burning a hole in his virtual pocket?

Or is this just the vendor’s idea of a joke? Guess I’ll never know for sure.

Eat Potatoes With Potatoes

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File this under “Learn Something Every Day.” As I was reading a press release today about an environmentally friendly hotel – a green hotel, in commercial real estate parlance – I came across the following: “[It’s the] most environmentally aware hotel that I have ever stayed at – breakfast plates and cutlery made from potatoes…”

Wait, what? Immediately I imagined knives and forks carved out of potatoes. No matter how artfully you did that, I don’t think they would work very well as eating utensils. Of course that’s not what the release meant. PR writers should avoid that kind of unexplained references in passing.

Still, help is only a Googling away, and pretty soon you’re reading about bioplastic cutlery made from potato starch (Spudwear is or was one brand) and other plant-based materials. Been around for the better part of a decade. I had no idea.

The Mean Streets

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Besides being a transitional month between winter and spring – more winter than spring this year – March is also pothole season. Here’s one of the larger ones I’ve seen lately in metro Chicago, looking a couple of feet in diameter and holding plenty of snowmelt.

Pothole, March 2014In some parts of greater Chicago, it’s pothole season all the time. Years ago I used to drive down Ashland Ave., a major north-south street in the city, on a regular basis. I nicknamed one of the persistent potholes “Henry VIII.” Because it was so large.

I never went any further with the idea. Unlike the Mypotholes artists.

Pics for the Day

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Today I happened across something fitting for the centennial year of the beginning of the Great War: a collection of images from that war. But not just any old group of pictures. As the Telegraph puts it, “a former dustman has amassed one of the Britain’s best collections of First World War photographs after spending decades rescuing them from rubbish tips and bins.”

Saved by a garbageman, in more American words. Some of the collection is posted at the Telegraph web site. What I want to know is who – who – who would throw away pictures like these?

Here’s another collection of images, not quite as arresting, but interesting despite the annoying SEO headline, “These 22 Far Away Perspectives Of Famous Places Will Change The Way You See Them Forever.” No, they won’t.

The Stonehenge image well illustrates one of the stranger things about that site. Not that an ancient stone circle survives in Wiltshire, though it’s been reconstructed more than most people probably realize. What boggled my mind when visiting in 1983 was that a road goes right next to it. We drove there, and I expected to park beside the road and walk some distance. Nope – it’s right there. Convenient, but it doesn’t quite sit right.

The second picture of the Pantheon isn’t from far away, but never mind. I also visited that site in 1983, before the first McDonald’s opened in Italy, so this perspective didn’t exist for me to experience. I had to check: the first McDonald’s in that country opened near the Spanish Steps in 1986. More followed. The question that comes to mind, even now, is why do McDonald’s survive in Italy?

Then there’s the Mona Lisa. That’s not a new perspective for anyone who’s been to the Louvre. Even in November, the famed painting packed ’em in.

As for the Alamo, I’ve met people who expected it to be in the middle of nowhere. Or who felt that it should be “bigger.” Maybe because it looked that way when John Wayne died there.

A Loose Exonumic Item

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I looked out this morning to – a yard of white. Sure enough, snow overnight. Just a dusting that didn’t last through the sunny daylight hours. Temps stayed a little below freezing all day and the wind was brisk. All in all, a raw day, even for March. Winter doesn’t want to give up.

It’s a modern illusion that the world is small. But it’s big enough to swallow entire jet airliners occasionally. My house is small in the grand scheme of things, but even so I don’t know everything within. Lately Lilly has taken to clearing debris out of her room – it’s going to take her a while – and I was doing some consulting about the best ways to arrange her closet.

On her cluttered desk I saw a small coin, a bronze color as some coins have, but no U.S. currency. Sometimes coins get loose from my accumulation of cheap foreign specie and wind up at random locations in the house, so I thought that had happened.

But no. It’s a shower token from the Platte River Campground at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. We visited in 2007, and even camped there, but I don’t remember buying, using or leaving with any tokens. But it seems that I did. Which somehow got up into Lilly’s room – which wasn’t Lilly’s room back in 2007. Go figure.

I’ll put it with my other tokens. I don’t have many. Fun word for the day: exonumia, which Merriam-Webster defines as “numismatic items (as tokens, medals, or scrip) other than coins and paper money.” First known use, 1962, so I’m older than the word. Barely.

Just using my memory, I believe I have a subway token from Moscow and one from St. Petersburg; one of the discontinued CTA tokens (maybe); a token of some kind from New York; a car wash token from somewhere; and a Chuck E. Cheese token, though I might be wrong about that. Unlike Russia or New York, I do my best to forget my two or three visits to that place.