Category Archives: Over the Transom

What Kind of Passport Does Tinker Bell Carry?

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Lilly took this picture on Sunday, September 1. “Dog on Deck,” or “My Nose in Your Business.” (To give it a dual title like Bullwinkle episodes.)

Lately we’ve been throwing away, or donating, a fair number of unwanted items.  It’s astonishing how many there are around the house. Things have been turning up that we’d forgotten we had — or at least I’d forgotten. Yesterday the flow of debris included a girl’s purse with a Disney label on it. We might have bought it for Lilly at Disneyland in ’01 or Disneyworld in ’05, but it’s always possible we picked it up elsewhere. More recently it’s been with Ann’s things.

Anyway, I noticed something odd about it. It’s a Tinker Bell purse, and it says Tink America. Tink is holding a small U.S. flag, her dress imitates the Stars and Stripes, and the background pixie dust is red, white and blue. “Isn’t that strange?” I asked Lilly, pretty much rhetorically. “I mean, Tinker Bell usually isn’t associated with America, right? I think she’s a citizen of Never Land.” Or, come to think of it, the realm of fairies, but not the United States.

Then again, what about Never Land? I told Lilly I didn’t think it was claimed by any nation, but considering that Capt. Hook, the Lost Boys, et al. seem to be British, maybe Britain did claim sovereignty at one point. Could be that it was even harder to claim than Pitcairn Is., what with Never Land not quite being in the material world all the time. Still, I bet Capt. Cook visited at least once; he went everywhere.

On the other hand, perhaps American whalers visited too, so lost in the annals of U.S. exploration and commerce is a claim to Never Land. Could be that it was the subject of negotiation in the same treaty that fixed the border between Canada and the United States, as part of one of the lesser-known codicils added later. By this time, Lilly had expressed her usual mild bewilderment at my oddball train of thought.

Protest at Adams & Clark

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Back again on September 3 or so. Hard to believe the summer’s dwindling down, but at least it’s still as warm and dry as a real summer.

I was downtown late yesterday morning, and spotted a protest at the northeast corner of Adams and Clark. I heard it first, and then went closer to take a look. People filled the sidewalk in front of the building at that corner, and with them were a speaker on a small platform, some cameramen, and a few bored-looking cops, watching.

At first I thought it might be fast-food workers out on strike, but no. That was scheduled for today, and besides, no fast food is available at that corner. Instead, the building is home to the Chicago Board of Education, and it wasn’t long before I figured out that the protestors were being vocal about the recent closings of a large number of public schools in the city.

The speaker, despite his microphone, was a little hard to hear. Across the street, a fellow let us know his displeasure with Mayor Emanuel.

I haven’t followed the mayor’s time in office closely enough to form much of an opinion, but I know the protestor is hardly alone.

Dog v. Skunk

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We usually let the dog out in the back yard one more time before we go to bed, and usually she isn’t very noisy. There isn’t much to stimulate her barking – nobody walking their dogs in the park behind our fence, no active squirrels or birds, no kids playing. But one recent night she cut loose and made a lot of noise.

Barking isn’t something that should come from your yard at 11 p.m. or midnight, so I went to bring her in. She was focused on the edge of the deck, snout down, pawing the ground. Something was under the deck. At first I thought the raccoon – a raccoon – had returned, since one seemed to live there for a little while a few years ago. Then I smelled skunk.

I really wanted to get her in. It wasn’t easy, but I did it. By then the reek of skunk was pretty strong. It turned out the dog hadn’t been sprayed directly, or at least the understructure of the deck caught most of it. Good thing, since the dog smells like dog and needs to smell no worse. Soon the stink wafted faintly into the house. It was gone by morning, except for the deck, which still smells of skunk, though not that much (the rest of family feels that it’s more powerful that I do, though).

About 20 minutes later, as I was in bed reading, I heard barking from elsewhere. As I’ve said, that’s fairly rare, but I think it was the dogs a couple of houses down from us, having their own encounter with the skunk.

Lost Words

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Strange day, outside and in. Not strange outside, exactly, but cooler than it ought to be in early August. Cool and wet.

By inside, I mean my computer — the one I mostly use for work. My Word program was corrupted, or elves came and messed up some of my Word documents, or something happened over the weekend. A handful of files I remember working on a saving on Friday and Saturday were not saved when I opened them on Monday. At least, not saved as of the last time I worked on them, but as of an earlier, less useful version. Some hours of work swallowed up — where? why? I don’t ever remember anything like this happening before.

And then, I was supposed to do an 11 Pacific/1 Central interview, which somehow I’d written down on my paper calender — I’m old-fashioned that way — as 12/2. I missed the interview. So much for old-fashioned paper being more reliable than, say, a Word program. GIGO doesn’t just apply to computers.

Grindelwald Graffiti

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In early August 1983, I made my way to Grindelwald, Switzerland. I could describe the majestic alpine scenery to be enjoyed there, or the memorable walk up to the Blue Cave, which is carved in a glacier, or the stunning cable-car ride. Instead, I’m going to relay the graffiti I found in the men’s room of the Grindelwald Youth Hostel all those years ago, which I recorded in my travel diary.

All of it was English, oddly enough. I bet it’s a unique array of information, even in the petabyte – exabyte? — realms of the Internet, even though I’ve seen a few of the lines elsewhere.

Time flies when you’re unconscious.

Sprio Agnew is an anagram for “Grow a penis.”

Spitoon rules the cosmos.

Stamp out quicksand.

Beware of limbo dancers.

Six months ago I couldn’t spell El Salvador. Now I’m going to die there.

Why does everyone scream when I say Waffen SS?

Toto, have we found the hostel yet?

The wall also featured a cartoon of the man in charge of the hostel, who was known as the “warden.” I knew it was the warden because the figure was labeled that. I never had any run-ins with the warden. I don’t even remember meeting him.

Speech balloons from his mouth said:

Bring up some f—king firewood!!! Or we’ll burn your f—king passports!!! If there’s not a s—tload of firewood up here by 12:00 we’ll kick everyone’s ass!!!

Under the cartoon were comments about the warden.

Who says Himmler’s dead?

He makes me vomit.

Nazis got to live, too.

This is the best hostel I’ve been in in 15 months, all due to the warden.

There was also a long rant that I didn’t record word-for-word, the gist of which was that the Australians should be glad that the Americans “saved them in WWII.” It concluded, “If it weren’t for us, you Aussies would be speaking Japanese.”

Under that, someone else had written: Then at least someone could understand them. 

The quality of bathroom graffiti, never very high, is probably down these days, and it might even be a fading phenomenon. Why write there when you can use web site comment sections?

Up in the Air, Junior Birdmen

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Today I know more about “Up in the Air, Junior Birdmen,” than I ever have before. I read the Wiki page, of course, but that isn’t very meaty. A page on a site devoted to aviator Walter Lees is better, including bits of primary source material, or at least reprinting some.

Yesterday I wrote a short item about a trio of volunteers who helped build bicycle-powered pedal planes for an aviation museum. Non-flying planes, that is, the kind that kids tool around in for amusement and edification. I needed a headline. That request went to my synaptic warehouse, that sprawling place with an idiosyncratic and often infuriating filing system, overflowing with jumbles of memories, images, and logical reconstructions — or is it big ideas, images, and distorted facts? — and out popped “Up in the Air, Junior Birdmen.”

Perfect. I’m rarely so good at headline writing. But where did that come from? I wasn’t in the Junior Birdmen demographic, considering it was aimed at boys of the 1930s.

Later it occurred to me. I might have heard about it earlier, but I definitely remember Tom Lehrer mentioning it as a gag on one of his records, before he sang “It Makes a Fellow Proud to be a Soldier.” The early 1960s audience clearly understood the reference, because it got a laugh.

“Some of you may recall the publicity a few years ago about the Army’s search for an official Army song to be the counterpart of the Navy’s ‘Anchors Away’ and the Air Force’s ‘Up in the Air, Junior Birdmen’ songs. I was in basic training at the time…”

So today I did a small amount of checking on line about the Junior Birdmen phenomenon. Added a bit of information to the otherwise incredibly minor Junior Birdmen file somewhere in my synaptic warehouse. And no visit to the Internet for useless information is complete without a stop at YouTube, in this case to hear the song itself – which I don’t think I’d ever heard before.

Well, I can’t say completely useless information. I got a headline for a paid piece of writing out of it – one that the editors kept.

Skeletons in the Big Box

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Yesterday I was wandering the aisles of a major warehouse store when I noticed a life-sized model of a human skeleton hanging at one of the endcaps. I had to investigate further. Turns out it was a bit of Halloween decoration for sale, along with some other items. Halloween?

I took a closer look. The quality was high, or so I imagined, not having spent much time with actual human bones, other than the ones hidden within our fleshy selves. Lilly was with me, and I said it was too good just to take out on Halloween. Better yet, we could get one and put it in a closet most of the year. That’s where skeletons should be, right?

— Or, I continued as we walked away, we can take one with us on our next road trip, and hang it in the motel closet. That should give the cleaning staff something to talk about.

— Are you really considering that? she asked.

— No, they might freak out and call the cops. Anyway, I forgot to check the price. But it’s probably too much just to spend on a joke. And we don’t have enough closet space.

Later I wondered, do other languages have a similar idiom to a skeleton in the closet, or is it peculiar to English? I was going to look into that, but I didn’t get any further than Skeletons in the Closet, the LA County Coroner’s Office Online Store. I found myself looking at it and thinking, is this for real? Does the LA County Coroner actually sell – or benefit from the sale of — clothing, cups, hats, key chains, magnets and the like? Looks like it.

 

Giant Planter Heads on a Major Metro Thoroughfare

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The July 2 edition of the Chicago Tribune had this to say about the giant planter heads on Michigan Ave.: “Fifteen giant heads, filled with various plants, have taken up residency on Michigan Avenue for the summer. The Plant Green Ideas sculptural heads are the brainchild of Plant Green Ideas RRR, a Chicago not-for-profit committed to sustainability and are in conjunction with the Chicago Cultural Mile.”

We saw a few of them on Saturday. This is one sponsored by Italian Village, a downtown restaurant.

Better pictures are, for now, at the Tribune photo essay.

Dwarfs on Parade

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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

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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.