Category Archives: Over the Transom

Dwarfs on Parade

Posted on by

How is it that I didn’t know until yesterday that Belmopan is the capital of Belize, and has been since before that country’s independence? If you’d asked before yesterday, I would have said Belize City. But I was looking at a globe and chanced to see Belmopan starred as the capital. Has Belize moved its capital? I thought. (The globe was new.)

The answer is yes: in 1970. I’m shocked at my ignorance sometimes. A new capital was built in the late ’60s, as Brazil built a new capital for itself in the late ’50s. Apparently, Belmopan isn’t known as a hotbed of modernism like Brasilia, at least to judge by the kind of buildings featured in the Wiki article.

On Saturday Ann and I went to downtown Chicago. As we headed eastward on Jackson, we came across a sparsely attended parade along Dearborn. One of the cops on duty told us we could go ahead and cross the street – the next part of the parade was still off in the distance – and I asked her what kind of parade it was. The 10th Annual Disability Pride Parade, it turned out. (She just called it the “Disability Parade”; I had to look up the rest.)

I think we missed most of it. We did happen to see the marchers – or rather riders, since they all seemed to be in vehicles – for Little People of America, the “nonprofit organization that provides support and information to people of short stature and their families,” to quote the little people themselves. I’m glad to know that they embrace the terms “dwarf” and “dwarfism,” a fine old word reaching back into the mists of Anglo-Saxon to maybe proto-Indo-European.

Other things I didn’t know: the organization was founded by actor Billy Barty, whom I’m certain I’ve seen on old TV or movies. Also, October is Dwarfism Awareness Month, at least in Arizona, California, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, New Mexico, New York, New Jersey, Oklahoma, and Puerto Rico. The org seems to be working on having the federal government so designate it.

And there’s this: the strange story of the Ovitzes and Josef Mengele. The things you find out if you’re paying attention never cease to amaze.

The Mighty F-1 Laid Low

Posted on by

I hadn’t heard until today about the expedition that found some Saturn V first stage engines – the mighty F-1 — on the bottom of the Atlantic. The Bezos Expedition site is careful to note that “many of the original serial numbers are missing or partially missing, which is going to make mission identification difficult. We might see more during restoration,” so they could be from any of the missions that used the engines, though I believe they were looking for Apollo 11 relics.

There might be less headline glory in finding something from (say) Apollo 16, but I think it would be just as cool. The expedition site goes on to say that whatever their origin, “the objects themselves are gorgeous.” Bet they are. They’ve gone to the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center for stabilization, so maybe they’ll stay there for display. That place would be worth going to that corner of Kansas to see, F-1s or not.

Seems that Amazon boss Jeff Bezos paid for the expedition, or at least much of it. Good for him. It’s the kind of thing that billionaires should spend some of their money on. That and the 10,000-Year Clock.

Still Life With Lawnmower

Posted on by

Temps were cool today, but it was a fine day all around. I went out to mow the yard, and did the front but not the back. Maybe tomorrow. In the meantime, I composed “Still Life With Lawnmower.”

Of course I didn’t invent that title. Here’s a painting from more than 20 years ago that not only features a lawn mower, but also a more traditional vase & flowers motif.

RIP, Kevin Norton

Posted on by

I’ve learned a number of things since the last post, including unfortunate news about a high school friend of mine, Kevin Norton. He died last August, but only I found out about his passing about a week ago. The news traveled at 18th-century speed, but that’s because I had little communication with Kevin in the last 20 years or so. Just one of those things.

From the Sept. 2, 2012, San Antonio Express-News: “Kevin Charles Norton, age 50, passed away in Dallas August 16, 2012. He was born September 18, 1961 and grew up in San Antonio, graduating from Alamo Heights High School in 1979. He attended college at the University of Texas at Austin in the Plan II Honors Program and graduated in 1987. He went on to the University of Texas School of Law and earned his Juris Doctor in 1990. He practiced appellate law with the firm of Cantey & Hanger in Fort Worth and Dallas for many years and later was briefing attorney for the Fifth District Court of Appeals at Dallas.

“He had many intellectual and artistic interests studying languages, literature, philosophy, history, religions, art and music. He is survived by his parents, Doris and Donald Norton, sisters: Lucy Norton and partner Maggi Joseph, Deborah Norton all of San Antonio, and Nancy Norton of Dallas; a paternal aunt, Geraldine Koch of Richmond, Virginia; and numerous first and second cousins from all around the country… In lieu of flowers contributions in Kevin’s name may be made to Dallas Symphony Foundation Endowment… or It Gets Better Project …”

I met Kevin sometime in junior high, but I remember him best as my debate partner throughout much of high school. That meant long hours with him sometimes, preparing index cards and other pre-electronic materials for speech tourneys both in town but also in Austin, Houston, Corpus Christi, and one time even as far afield as Midland – the only time, in fact, that I’ve ever been to that place. He was the first person I knew who drank coffee to stay awake, and if I’d had any taste for it, I would have started drinking it then too.

After high school, I hung out with Kevin some in the summer of ’81 in Austin. Among other things, introduced me to Eyebeam – which was still running in the Daily Texan at that time – and ragtime, specifically Scott Joplin, which he had a talent for playing. He spent a longish period traveling in the ’80s, mainly in the Middle East and India, which he told me about later. His travels didn’t inspire me to go to the Middle East or India, but they did help inspire me to take my own leave of the country for a while.

All in all, the obit is right: Kevin had a keen mind and a lot of interests, and I was better for knowing him. RIP, Kevin.

Cockta Cola

Posted on by

The ease that goods move around the world is a marvel of the age — an everyday marvel. No small infrastructure was necessary to bring a frosted bottle of Cockta brand soda from Central Europe to the shelf of a grocery store far inland in North America, where I bought it not long ago for a small sum.

An impulse purchase, of course. Why? Because it was bottled in Slovenia. I don’t ever remember buying anything made in Slovenia, and that was enough to sell me. The label tells me that a company called Droga Kolinska of Ljubljana makes Cockta. It is a regional food conglomerate with other brands that include Argeta, Grand Kafa and Smoki, according to this site, though a lot of the links are broken, including the Cockta one.

It’s a cola. It isn’t bad. With sugar instead of corn syrup. It reminded me a bit of the cola made in Vietnam as a domestic alternative to imperialist running-dog Coca-cola, and maybe Cockta was originally created as a Yugoslav version of such. I know from watching One, Two, Three long ago that the quest for a drinkable socialist cola was once an important concern behind the Iron Curtain.

Borodenko: We do not need you! If we want Coca-cola, we invent it ourselves!

C.R. MacNamara (James Cagney): Oh, yeah? In 1956 you flew a bottle of Coke to a secret laboratory in Sverdlosk. A dozen of your top chemists went nuts trying to analyze the ingredients. Right?

Mishkin: No comment!

C.R. MacNamara: And in 1958, you planted two undercover agents in Atlanta to steal the formula. And what happened? They both defected! And now they’re successful businessmen in Florida packaging instant borscht. Right?

Peripetchikoff: No comment!

C.R. MacNamara: Last year you put out a cockamamie imitation “Kremlin-kola!” You tried it out in the satellite countries, but even the Albanians wouldn’t drink it. They used it for sheep dip! Right?

Juvenile Amusements

Posted on by

Not long ago I was getting rid of debris on one of my computers, the main one I use now for my work since the older one is bronze age in computer terms, and I found the scan on the right. A pizza delivery receipt. We rarely have pizza delivered, so I’m pretty sure it didn’t originate with us. I suspect it’s something Lilly put in the system, sent to her by a friend.

Probably the name “Bonquiqui Butts” had something to do with it. Turns out that refers to a character I’d never heard of, but which Lilly and her friends must know about.

Also found on my computer taking up space: a video made by Lilly and a couple of her friends in our back yard. I don’t think it was last summer, since the grass is much too green; probably the summer before last. Which would make them junior high antics.

It only goes to show that kids aren’t spending all of their time with electronic entertainment.

Animals in the Back Yard

Posted on by

A recent visitor to the back yard, captured in black & white. At least it didn’t show an interest in making a nest inside the garage, as one squirrel did a few years ago. That creature was discouraged from returning by closing up the hole it had clawed near the roof, as well as an application of cayenne-pepper solution to nearby surfaces.

We thought of using the cayenne solution to discourage the dog from digging holes in the back yard, but so far we’ve taken a simpler tack — dumping a cup of water on her when we catch her doing it. So far that seems to work.

The Forgotten Cosmonaut

Posted on by

Got a packet in the mail recently telling me about the Vanderbilt 2013 Reunion and Fundraising Opportunity. Actually, those last three words aren’t in the title of the event, but they’re more than implied. One of the “class goals” is fundraising to the tune of $1,000,000 “with 32 percent class participation.”

I don’t think 32 percent is necessary. Between the right four or five alumni of my class, that much could be raised right away. But the school might have to name something after them.

Anyway, in an effort to drum up some nostalgia for the early ’80s, the invite includes the following verbage: Motorola debuts mobile phones; Who’s at Exit/In tonight?; Sally Ride is 1st woman in space; Meat sticks at Rand; Campus computer use up 100%; Housing lottery equals stress.

Some of those are self-explanatory, and others are enigmatic if you didn’t attend VU, such as “meat sticks at Rand,” which I will leave to the readers’ imagination. But I kick into copy editor mode at that business about Sally Ride, first American woman into space.

Is it too much to ask someone with a Vanderbilt education know who the first woman in space was? Valentina Tereshkova, forgotten again here in North America. But I expect she’s honored enough at home, even without the Soviet Union. Remarkably — I just checked — she’s still alive, and not even that old (76). I guess spacefaring in the early days was a young woman’s game.

New Zealand in my Pocket

Posted on by

Maybe here or in Texas recently, I got what I thought was a Canadian five-cent piece in change. It was nickel-sized and had Queen Elizabeth on it. Nothing too unusual about getting such a coin, even in Texas.

Yesterday I was picking through my change for quarters and took a closer look at the presumed Canadian nickel. It was no such thing. Instead, somehow or other I’d gotten a New Zealand 20-cent piece in change. I’d never seen one before, not even in Australia, where surely some kiwi coins must end up. A coin’s trip from New Zealand to the U.S. isn’t inconceivable, but it sure is unusual.

The Queen, of course, is on the obverse (seen below at 150 percent). Nothing odd in that. (Unless Yuriko sees the coin. That Elizabeth is the sovereign of New Zealand she finds a little strange.)

The reverse, on the other hand, has something no other coin has: Pukaki. My scan hardly does it justice.

The Reserve Bank of New Zealand says: “New Zealand’s 20 cent coins issued since 1990 feature a remarkable Maori carving, as illustrated above. This is no generic image. Rather it is a reproduction of a specific carving of an 18th century Maori warrior leader called Pukaki, who was a Rangatira (Chief) of the Ngati Whakaue iwi of Te Arawa in the Rotorua district. The carving was made in 1836 and today it can be viewed in the entrance of the Rotorua District Council…

“Pukaki came to the attention of the Reserve Bank as a result of the 1984-87 Te Maori exhibition and the use of Pukaki’s image on a particularly striking Maori Language Commission publicity poster. At the time the Reserve Bank was looking for a new image to put on the 20 cent coin, given that the kiwi was being moved to the new $1 coin. The first Pukaki 20 cent coins were issued in 1990. More recently, a gold $10 collectors’ coin featuring Pukaki has been minted.”

The entire article about Pukaki is here. Also interesting to note: the coin is plated steel, which is more common than I realized, and has even been suggested for U.S. 1 cent and 5 cent coins. (And even though advocated by former Rep. Ron Paul in the same breath he hyperventilated about the boogeyman Fed, it seemed to be a serious proposal.)

The NZ 20c edge is also novel: a treatment called Spanish flower, which is seven indents evenly spaced. Why “Spanish” flower? I wondered. Wiki to the rescue (almost): “The 50 Spanish peseta coin issued between 1990 and 2000 were the first [citation needed]  that featured the Spanish flower.” Presumably for benefit of the blind, though it also makes differentiating the coins easier for the sighted.

Anyway, the NZ 20c piece a nice little design. And who knows that the United States minted a 20c piece, once upon a time? Not for long, though. It was one of the great coinage failures of the ’70s. The 1870s, that is.

U.S. Coin Values speculates that “perhaps the coin might have gained a foothold in American society had it not been so easily confused with the quarter of that era.” In other words, it suffered the Susan B. Anthony effect long before that coin ever did.

The Slow Decline of the Yellow Pages

Posted on by

A book of yellow pages showed up at our door the other day. Fewer of those arrive with each passing year, but arrive they do. It’s a little hard to remember when they were essential reference works for the house, but so they were.

And like any good reference work, it was good to browse through them occasionally. Almost 30 years ago, in Nashville, I remember thumbing through one edition – it must have been an “official” one by one of the Baby Bells – and coming across a quarter-page ad for a roofing contractor that promised DEATH TO ROOF LEAKS, complete with skull-and-cross illustrations. Who knows, maybe the Republican Guard was getting into the roofing business in those days.

The edition we just got covers a big chunk of the Northwest suburbs. It has some standard reference information in the front, including a map of North American area codes. The metro New York and Los Angeles insets are very crowded with numbers, and metro Chicago could probably stand its own inset, too, but doesn’t get one. Are there still any states with one area code? Yes. Quite a few, actually: Alaska, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Maine, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming.

Next are “City, County, State and U.S. government offices” pages, which were blue in some yellow pages, but white in this one. These are always good for finding some oddities, such as a toll-free number for information on adopting wild horses and burros, a number of the inspector general of the Peace Corps, and a general information number for St. Lawrence Seaway Lock Operations.

My packratish nature won’t let me throw it away for a while. But I doubt that I’ll need it to use it to call the St. Lawrence Seaway or anywhere else.