West Tennessee Dash

Posted on April 20, 2021 by admin

On April 10, after leaving Illinois via a white-knuckle, two-lane bridge across the Mississippi into the state of Missouri, I headed south to catch the ferry back across the river at Hickman, Kentucky (green arrow). The point of this exercise was to continue from Hickman on small roads to the Kentucky Bend, marked here with a pink arrow.

There’s nothing distinctive about the Kentucky Bend except its odd status as an exclave of the commonwealth of Kentucky. I’d planned to snap a picture of whatever sign was at the Tennessee-Kentucky border at that point, and maybe visit the small cemetery just inside the bend.

It wasn’t to be. When I got to the ferry, the Mississippi looked a mite testy, swollen from the storms the night before, and probably other spring rains. A phone call confirmed that the ferry wasn’t running.

Without the ferry crossing, visiting the Kentucky Bend would have meant considerable backtracking, so I blew it off, and continued southward in Missouri. I got a glimpse of the bend from the riverfront at New Madrid, but I didn’t linger because I needed to find a bathroom.

Later I crossed into Tennessee on I-155 and soon connected with U.S. 51, which goes straight into Memphis. Despite the years I lived in Tennessee once upon a time, it was a part of the state I’d never seen, except for Memphis itself.

I didn’t quite make the straight shot into the city. Not far from U.S. 51 is Fort Pillow State Historic Park, site of the Battle of Fort Pillow, also known as the Fort Pillow Massacre, on bluffs overlooking the Mississippi. It’s been a state park for 50 years now. The day was as brilliant and warm as a spring day could be by that time, a contrast from the cool rain and less lush conditions further north.

I only spent a little while at the museum and visitor center, but got the impression that the bloody history of Fort Pillow isn’t emphasized. Be that as it may, I was keen to see whatever was left of the fort, or what had been rebuilt. Signs pointed the way.

An longer interpretive sign at this clearing said Nathan Bedford Forrest set up his command there.

On the trail went.

It would have been nice had the FORT –> signs said how far was left to go. Also, I couldn’t quite follow the track I was taking, as compared to the map I acquired at the visitors center, which was a little unusual. Anyway, I climbed another couple of rises and came to a spot where I could just barely see the river.

I figured surely there must be earthworks or something at such a high point, but I didn’t see anything. Then I noticed another FORT –> sign pointing me down another staircase. That meant I’d have to go up again somewhere, because forts aren’t built in lower places. Then to return, I’d have go down and then up again. I didn’t have the energy for all that, I decided, so I made my way back. Still, I had a good walk. By the end of the day, I’d walked about two and a half miles.

Besides, I wanted to get to Memphis. When I arrived about an hour later, I found a spot in Mud Island Park with a view of the skyline.

The Hernando de Soto Bridge. More bridges ought to be named after explorers.

Back on the mainland, I found the Memphis Pyramid. It wasn’t hard to spot.

Or more formally, Bass Pro Shops at the Pyramid.

Taller than the Pyramid of the Sun in Mexico, according to this source, but somehow that ancient Mesoamerican structure has much more of a presence. The Memphis Pyramid has been standing for 30 years now, and seems to be making it as a retail store, after failing as a municipal arena.

The blue-lit structure is an elevator to a view from the top of the pyramid.

Probably worth the price, but the line was long, so I headed for the exit. But I couldn’t leave without buying something to support the Memphis Pyramid, so I bought a box of Moon Pies.

Red Gate Woods, The Dawn of the Atomic Age & Ray Cats

Posted on March 16, 2021 by admin

At about 15,000 acres, the Palos Preserves form the largest concentration of land in the Forest Preserve District of Cook County. Names pour out from the map, if you bother to look: Willow Springs Woods, Paw Paw Woods Nature Preserve, Wolf Road Woods, Saganashkee Slough Woods, McMahon Woods, Spears Woods, White Oak Woods, Crooked Creek Woods, Cap Sauers Holding Nature Preserve, and Swallow Cliff Woods North.

The preserves include Camp Bullfrog Lake, Tomahawk Slough, Maple Lake, Longjohn Slough, Crawdad Slough, Joe’s Pond, Horsetail Lake, Laughing Squaw Sloughs, Camp Kiwanis Equestrian Staging Area, and the Little Red Schoolhouse Nature Center. About 50 miles of trails cross this arboreal kingdom in southwest Cook County.

Red Gate Woods is much like the other sections, but with a singular distinction. It includes the burial site of the world’s first nuclear reactor, the famed CP-1, which was originally at the University of Chicago but soon rebuilt at Red Gate as CP-2 since, you know, nuclear research in a densely populated urban area was understood to be a risky proposition even in the early 1940s.

I’d known about Red Gate for a while, but never gotten around to visiting the site. Pleasantly warm Saturday was the time to do so, I decided.

The entrance to Red Gate is on Archer Avenue very near St. James at Sag Bridge. A sign at the edge of the Red Gate parking lot describes how to get to the burial site, so off I went along an unpaved and still somewhat muddy trail. Soon that connects with a paved trail, which made the going easier.

The hills weren’t that steep, but there were slopes along the way.

I almost missed the site. It’s actually on a spur off the main trail, out in an open field. It is the open field.

The stone includes some informal editing. Do I believe the area is dangerous? No, I do not. Not to someone who spends five minutes there.

The burial area, the stone says, is marked by six corner markers 100 feet from the stone (presumably, in six directions). So I went looking for one of the markers. It wasn’t hard to find. I spotted most of the rest of them as well.

Saw this as well. A well.

Maybe it is dangerous to dig there, but I couldn’t say for how long. Another century? A thousand years? More? Does Red Gate need a long-time nuclear waste warning? I’m not smart enough to know, but it would be interesting if the forest preserve district installed one.

And turn a few special cats loose in the area. Eh? Mental Floss mentions a plan — who knows how serious — to warn distant posterity of radioactive hazards using specially bred cats.

“But the strangest suggestion by far came from two German linguists. They argued that governments around the world should breed cats that turn colors when exposed to radiation. These so-called ‘ray cats’ could then be immortalized in song and legend, so that even after the scientific knowledge of radiation had been lost to the sands of time, folklore would tell of their supernatural power to change their fur in the presence of extreme danger.”

In song and legend. Someone has already written the song.

St. James at Sag Bridge Catholic Church and Cemetery

Posted on March 15, 2021 by admin

Saturday was warm and pleasant, Sunday raw and unpleasant, and today — Ides of March Snow. If Rome had had a few inches that day, Caesar might have stayed home, since the rarity of snow would surely have been a warning not to do any official business. Oh, well.

Except for scattered dirty piles in parking lots, all of the massive February snows had melted by March 14. The March 15 snow will last a few days at most, due to a warming trend predicted for later in the week.

Illinois has a few hills, typically relics of ancient glacial movements. Built on top of one of them, in the village of Lemont, is St. James at Sag Bridge Catholic Church, which got its start in historic times — but still quite a while ago, in the 1830s.

On the slope of the hill is the church cemetery. One side of the hill — maybe better to call it a ridge — is quite steep, yet still sports stones.

The rest of the family had other things to do during the day on Saturday, which as mentioned turned out to be clear and warm, so I headed south for a look around the suburban stretch of Archer Avenue (Illinois 171) between Lemont and the village of Justice.

The urban section of Archer Avenue, “Archey Road,” was the haunt of Mr. Dooley once upon a time, but that’s a matter best left for others to describe (if you feel like paying for access).

In our time, suburban Archer Avenue is a thoroughfare featuring independent and chain restaurants, small office buildings, auto repair shops, liquor stores, churches, schools, municipal facilities, and vast cemeteries. The surrounding forest preserve lands are even larger, the further out you go.

St. James at Sag Bridge is near the junction of Archer Avenue and the north-south Illinois 83, which (to the north) is one of the main transit spines of DuPage County. St. James’ hill also rises near the triple waterways of the Des Plaines River, the manmade Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, and an older manmade leftover of the 19th-century canal-building boom, the tiny-by-comparison Illinois & Michigan Canal.

To the south of the church and cemetery is yet another artificial waterway, the early 20th century Calumet Sag Channel, which gives the area its name, Sag Bridge, for a predecessor bridge of the one that now carries 171/83 across the channel. The Calumet Sag connects the Calumet River system with the Sanitary and Ship Canal, which it joins just to the west of the church. It’s a complicated bit of geography that I was only vaguely aware of before I decided to examine this part of Archer Avenue.

Sag? I wondered about that as well. The full name of the canal is the Calumet-Saganashkee Channel. I didn’t know that either, but learning it generated another question, as is often the case. Saganashkee?

Named after a local feature with a modified Indian name, it seems: Saganashkee Slough, which is a lake on forest preserve land in the area.

“A case in point is Saganashkee Slough,” the Chicago Tribune reported in 1994. “It was formerly a huge swamp that extended from west of 104th Avenue to the limits of Blue Island, and its original name, Ausaganashkee, is a Potawatomi Indian word that means ‘slush of the earth,’ wrote former Forest Preserve District general superintendent Cap Sauer in a historical account written in the late 1940s.

“During the construction of the I&M Canal in the 1830s, a feeder ditch was dug in the swamp that helped supply additional water to the canal. The slough was almost destroyed in the 1920s by blasting during the construction of the Cal-Sag Channel. Saganashkee was reconstructed by the forest preserve district, although in much smaller form, Berg said. At 325 acres, it is still, however, one of the largest bodies of water in the district.”

As for St. James, the church was founded to serve workers, mostly Irishmen, who were building the Illinois and Michigan Canal, with the current structure completed in the 1850s. A place to go Sunday morning after Saturday night revels, and sometimes donnybrooks, at least according to Irish stereotypes. I suspect the congregation is a good deal more diverse these days.

It’s a handsome limestone building, built from material from nearby Lemont-Sag quarries, which provided stone for Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago and the Chicago Water Tower besides. I understand the St. James interior is quite beautiful, but it was locked when I visited.

The Our Lady of the Forest grotto on the grounds was, of course, open for a look.

Compared with the church building, the grotto is new, built in 1998 for the for the 165th anniversary of the parish. See grottos when you can.

Thursday Chaff

Posted on March 11, 2021 by admin

It’s been a warm week for March so far, even warm enough last night before bed to crack the window a bit and listen to the strong winds and occasional rain showers. Did that account for the occurrence of one of my semiannual phantasmagoria dreams early this morning? Maybe.

Great Fortune, subtitled “The Epic of Rockefeller Center,” by Daniel Okrent (2003) is a delightful book so far, and I’m only a chapter in. Certainly the most delightful thing I’ve ever read about a major urban mixed-use redevelopment project.

The first chapter sets up the story nicely, telling a short history of the Manhattan land that would be Rockefeller Center up until the time that John D. Rockefeller Jr. got involved in the project in the late 1920s. I didn’t know that the parcel had belonged to Columbia University for many years, and the scheme to redevelop the land (known as the Upper Estate) was ultimately driven by the university’s need to pay for its stately campus in Morningside Heights.

“… this meant that expansion on the grand scale of McKim, Mead & White’s Olympian campus on Morningside Heights had somehow to be financed, and the Upper Estate was the only cash cow in sight,” Okrent writes. “The milking commenced in 1904…”

An important person at the beginning of the story is Otto Kahn, multimillionaire financier and patron of the arts (an American Maecenas, back when educated people would have known that reference), who was president and chairman of the board of directors of the Metropolitan Opera. I didn’t know that he was well enough known that the Marx Brothers parodied him as Roscoe W. Chandler in Animal Crackers.

A digression. Apparently, for $200, one can own an original Otto Kahn letter. Then again, they aren’t rare. Okrent called his correspondence “oceanic.”

Okrent also writes some good standalone lines: “His [architect Ben Morris] neo-Georgian Union League Club on 37th and Park is probably as close as one can get to the architectural equivalent of a stuffed shirt.”

The other day, I was driving along with Ann and playing with the radio dial as we went. On came “Copacabana.” Hadn’t heard that song a good while, but as I mentioned to Ann, it seemed to be on the radio all the time in 1978.

I thought a bit about it, and it seems remarkable that such a downer of a song was so popular. As a ballad, the entire story is, a woman’s boyfriend is killed in front of her, and psychologically she never recovers.

“Yeah,” Ann said. “But the music is so peppy.”

True enough. There’s also a derivative short story in there somewhere. Maybe the incident and the aftermath from the point of view of Rico. Maybe he was the playboy son of a Fulgencio Batista crony. In his highly publicized murder trial in New York in 1949, his lawyers argued self-defense and he was acquitted.

While walking the dog at Fabbrini Park this week, I noticed a memorial plaque on a bench honoring a man named William “Mr. Bill” X (I forget the last name). Nicknamed Mr. Bill, eh? And what were his last words? Oh Noooooooooooooo!

Of course, like Wile E. Coyote, Mr. Bill couldn’t actually die, just suffer endlessly, which seems a lot more hellish. Still, we celebrate the likes of Mr. Bill. I used to have a Mr. Bill t-shirt, and have photographic evidence to prove it, in as much as photographs prove anything anymore. It’s among the t-shirts I’ve lost over the years, which also includes the Kill ‘Em All, Let God Sort It Out shirt that sported a black beret-wearing skull.

Joliet Iron Works Historic Site

Posted on March 8, 2021 by admin

For early March, and especially considering the snows and bitter days of February, Sunday felt gloriously warm. Temps were in the mid-50s by the early afternoon, and we needed no further encouragement to go find a place to walk, though it took some driving to get there.

We went south. There are lots of places to see in southern metro Chicago, including the Joliet Iron Works Historic Site.

Industrial ruins, that is. Unfortunately not the towering metal husks you might see in Pittsburgh or Birmingham, Alabama, but worth a look all the same.

A path runs through the ruins about a half mile, roughly parallel to RR tracks to the east, and the Illinois & Michigan Canal to the west, though those aren’t always visible.

Toward the southern end of the site, it’s mostly rubble, and not always much at that. Further north, there are the stubs of the sizable structures that used to be there.

Including some dark holes.

This pit is the foundation of a once mighty, and mighty dangerous, blast furnace.

Once I was reminded of some of the images of Knossos that I’ve seen. Like this one.
“The factory opened in 1869 and was a massive facility for the time….” notes Atlas Obscura. “Employing four huge blast furnaces and a few thousand employees, the metal works produced around 2,000 tons of raw pig iron each day.”

Not sure where that figure came from. On site, one of the signs said that soon after the plant opened, the total was 50 tons of pig iron a day. By 1910, production was 400 tons a day.

“The plant kept putting out metals until 1936 when it closed for a short time before being reopened [for the war effort]. However, its new life was not to last that long either, as the works became unprofitable and were abandoned in the 1980s.”

Surprisingly little graffiti marks the ruins, though there are places where it’s clear it has been painted over. Such as here.

But new graffiti is probably added regularly.

The Forest Preserve District of Will County acquired the site in the 1990s, and stabilization efforts have been enough to allow it to be open to the public. Parts of the site, anyway.

You can’t say you haven’t been warned.

1950s MPCs

Posted on February 11, 2021 by admin

Back again on February 16. I do not, in fact, have Presidents’ Day-Washington’s Birthday off, but never mind. I will still be honoring the immortal deeds of William Henry Harrison, Millard Fillmore, Rutherford B. Hayes, et al.

I have an example of U.S. Army scrip, picked up by my parents in Germany in the mid-50s but obviously never spent. At some point, I annexed it to my collection of cheapo banknotes.

Scrip, maybe, but officially Military Payment Certificates, or to (of course) use their initialism, MPCs. Also roughly the size of Monopoly money.
MPCs lasted from from 1946 until 1973. Postwar occupation to the near-end in Vietnam, in other words. Paying dollars to soldiers stationed in the likes of postwar Germany or Korea or Vietnam did wonky things to those local economies, the thinking went. Maybe so. I suspect locals found a way to trade in MPCs as well, though it must have been harder.

Thirteen series were released, with a total of 94 different notes. I’ve got a Series 521 5-cent note, including the standard admonition: For use only in United States military establishments — by United States authorized personnel in accordance with applicable rules and regulations.

I guess that meant my mother could use them at the PX.

“Series 521 MPCs were used in 19 different countries between May 25th, 1954 and May 27th, 1958,” says Antique Money. “Almost 317 million dollars worth of currency was issued across all seven denominations during that time period. For that reason, most 521 notes are very common.”

Figures. It wouldn’t be like me to end up with the Inverted Jenny of MPCs, if such a thing exists.
About 27.2 million 5-cent notes of this series were manufactured. Value in perfect condition, according to Antique Money, which my note is not, $15.

Sinclair Dinosaur, Eastern Iowa, 2001

Posted on February 7, 2021 by admin

Here we are in the Mariana Trench of winter. A little later than usual, but well within the scope of a normal winter.

The headline above pretty much says it all. Twenty years ago this month, when we visited eastern Iowa for a long weekend, I spotted a Sinclair dinosaur in that part of the state.

I’d have said at the time that as advertising, the heyday of the Sinclair dinosaur was long over. But I would have been wrong. It’s just that I didn’t see them around much in the Chicago area, so that when I spotted one out of town, it struck me as a novelty, or maybe something left over from an earlier decade. That’s probably why I bothered to take a picture.

Just do a Google image search and plenty of fairly recent green fiberglass dinosaurs appear. Wiki asserts that many of the dinosaur-sporting Sinclair stations are along I-80 in our time, and while I’m not quite sure where in Iowa I took the picture, we weren’t far from that road.

“Sinclair Oil began using an Apatosaurus (then called a Brontosaurus) in its advertising, sales promotions and product labels in 1930. Children loved it,” the blog of the American Oil & Gas Historic Society says, also noting the popular notion at the time that dinosaurs decayed into the oil that mankind had found.

Of course, Sinclair Oil itself has a lot to say about its brontosaurus. I particularly recommend the short video at the Sinclair site about Sinclair at the World’s Fair in 1964.

As a small child, I had a green plastic brontosaurus bank, into whose slot I put pennies, nickels and less frequently other coins. I suspect my mother got it as a premium for buying gas from Sinclair.

The coins in that bank taught me, among other things, that some of the older ones were silver, while the newer ones — not nearly as satisfying as coins — were some weird mix of copper and nickel. I’m fairly sure I actually learned about silver and non-silver coinage from one of my brothers. But having the coins probably promoted me to ask them questions in the first place, such as, why are these different from the others?

Thursday Kibble & Bits

Posted on January 28, 2021 by admin

Sunny day, but not much meltage. Bitter cold night ahead, and another half-foot of snow forecast for the weekend. Before that, we’ll get Thai takeout at Ann’s request on Friday, and a birthday pie, to make staying at home more pleasant.

Earlier this month, when we were in Naperville, we came across a small park: Central Park. Among other things, there’s a weatherworn obelisk to memorialize local soldiers from the Black Hawk War, the Mexican War, the Civil War and the Spanish-American War. It looked like new wars had been chiseled in as time passed.

Not far from that was a Civil War cannon, looking pretty new, because it was refurbished in this century.
It’s a Confederate cannon.
A prize of war, in other words, formerly shot off by the people of Naperville for “Independence Day, parades and other civic activities” in a less safety-conscious (-obsessed?) time. That’s what we could use a little more of in our time, though I suppose in some places edgy folks might mistake it for hostile gunfire, and maybe they’d be right to.

Willard Scott Jr. was this fellow, no relation to the weatherman, it seems. Among other things, this Willard Scott marched through Georgia, doing his bit to invent modern total war.

Shucks. No evidence of life in the clouds of Venus.

Google “Venus floating platform” and one of the first hits is about the Venus Atmospheric Maneuverable Platform (VAMP) at the Northrop Grumman web site. My estimation of that company just went up a notch. It’s at least thinking about flying a plane over Venus.

“The Venus Atmospheric Maneuverable Platform (VAMP) air vehicle is an aeroshell-less hypersonic entry vehicle that transitions to a semi-buoyant, maneuverable, solar-powered air vehicle for flight in Venus’ atmosphere,” NG says. “VAMP AV will be transported to Venus by a carrier/orbiter spacecraft… It is then released and enters the atmosphere, floating down toward the planet almost like a falling leaf.

“During the flight phase, the AV flies in the Venus upper- and mid-cloud layers and collects science data for transmission to Earth. VAMP AV will be capable of orbiting the planet for a long duration — up to a year.”

Of course, the company is no stranger to space, having built the Lunar Module and Pioneer 10, just to name two marquee projects. These days its marquee project is the James Webb Space Telescope, which can’t get into space fast enough, as far as I’m concerned.

Recently I’ve been getting press releases that say these sorts of things:

X will teach you how to:
Reframe your life experiences as growth opportunities
Rewire your mind-set and embrace spirituality as a lifestyle
Connect to your higher self and integrate healthy lifestyle practices
Tap into universal energy and transmute pain into power
Manifest your new reality and claim your authenticity
Change the world!

***
For your upcoming stories on female disruptors, please consider Y, Founder of Z, helping visionaries reconnect to SOUL, and Live FREE to become their most successful, influential and positively impactful versions. Y teaches women to embody the energy of money and become a vibrational match so it flows consistently and predictably.

Hm. My name seems to be drifting onto all sorts of lists, at some distance from commercial real estate. Though I do like that phrase, “energy of money,” and the idea of it flowing “consistently and predictably” certainly has appeal.

Who Knows, I Might Live to See the 50th President

Posted on January 20, 2021 by admin

Time to dip into the well of presidential significa — don’t call it trivia — for obvious reasons. Much has been made of Joe Biden’s age, for example, and he is indeed the oldest person ever to be sworn into the office, besting his immediate predecessor in that regard as well.

Also, Biden was born before four of his predecessors, as was Ronald Reagan. I recall that once upon a time, Reagan was considered an old man for the job, taking the oath as he did at 69. Time flies, the gerontocracy becomes more robust. Kennedy was born after four of his successors, to look at the other extreme.

Then again, presidents are living longer than ever, along with the general population (well, until very recently). Jimmy Carter has made it to 96, topping that long-time champion of presidential longevity, John Adams, a good while ago now. Biden was just a young pup Senator when Carter was in office.

As of today, Carter has been out of office precisely 40 years, the longest post-presidential span. Herbert Hoover is still number two at 31 years. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama might make it to 40 years: to Jan. 20, 2041 for the former and Jan. 20, 2057 for the latter, but they would be very old men by those dates, 94 for Clinton and 95 for Obama.

Biden’s the first president from Delaware. That state had to wait a long time, considering that it was first state to ratify the Constitution. So far 19 states have been home to various presidents at the time of their election. Twenty-one states have been birthplaces of presidents. Florida Man has never been elected president.

Thus far, 14 presidents were born in the 18th century (ending Dec. 31, 1800, so Millard Fillmore counts), with James Buchanan as the last one; 20 were born in the 19th century, with Dwight Eisenhower the last of those; and 12 so far were born in the 20th century. According to the Constitution, that string has to continue at least until the 2036 election. Still, assuming the office continues as it has, and I certainly hope it does, the first president born in the 21st century may be out there somewhere even now.

And what was it about 1946? Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Donald Trump were all born that year. There have been a number of other years in which two presidents were born, but that’s the only triple year so far.

I didn’t think it very likely, and sure enough it didn’t happen, but it would have been interesting had Donald Trump resigned in the aftermath of the Capitol Hill insurrection. Just so Mike Pence could beat William Henry Harrison’s record for short time in the office. Also, so that Trump’s term wouldn’t be exactly four years. Eight years, four years, eight years, etc. That’s just not very interesting.

There have never been four presidents in a row who were in office for eight years each. Three in a row, yes. Most recently Clinton-Bush-Obama. Before that, Jefferson-Madison-Monroe. Trump’s loss means four in a row might not happen for quite a while, if ever.

I could go on and on about this. But I’ll end by adding that we’re back up to five living former presidents again, the fifth time that has happened. Because of improved longevity, four of those periods have been recent.

A friend sent me a link to this.

Seems fitting.

Thursday Dust in the Wind

Posted on January 14, 2021 by admin

Much work these days. Lots going on. Will post again on January 19. The more holidays the better, and I’ll bet — considering the inclinations of the incoming administration — Juneteenth will be a federal holiday before long. Or at least the closest Monday.

Ice crystals on our deck. They didn’t last long. Later came snow, which mostly melted.
To follow Sink the Bismarck!, a taut 1960 British war movie, for contrast I recently watched Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Portrait de la jeune fille en feu, 2019), an engaging French love story set just before the Revolution. I haven’t seen many movies as painterly Portrait of a Lady on Fire.

A few weeks ago, before the violent national scrum, we started watching the short series The People vs. OJ Simpson. Top-quality historical fiction. Doesn’t feel historic, just like a good while ago. An increasingly long time ago, more in feeling than strict chronology. When the trial was actually happening, I remember thinking, do I have to hear about that again? Enough time has now passed for the subject to be of some interest.

That said, do I ever feel nostalgic for the ’90s? No. The underappreciated ’70s is more my flavor, and for the exact same uninteresting reason as most people. Nostalgia for one’s youth.

I didn’t know until I read about it a little while ago, but The Great Gatsby is in the public domain now. I could publish 100 words from that book, in order, or maybe reverse order, until I’d gone through the entire book, with the time needed to put the text in my only real cost. I don’t think I’ll do that, but it’s nice to know I could.

The immortal Ella.

A much later version. Recent, in fact, by the highly talented Hot Sardines.

The Hot Sardines’ singing is top notch, but I’m really taken with the animation in the video.

Another recent version by the Speakeasy Three.

Fine harmonies. The video is so stylized that it approaches parody, but doesn’t quite get there. Somehow, that works. Also, am I right in thinking there are celebrity lookalikes in this video? Recent celebrities, not swing-era ones. I don’t care enough about celebrities to find out, but I get that sense.

A site that visit every few months: The Comics Curmudgeon. On Jan 13, he mocks the comic strip Crock, which isn’t hard, but it is hard to be funny while doing it. The writer of the site, Joshua Fruhlinger, pulls it off.

One the characters says to another one, “I can’t wait to meet the blind date you got me. When can I call her?”

“Anytime but the weekends,” the other character says. “That’s the busiest time for blacksmiths.”

Fruhlinger comments: “I was going to go all in on ‘Why is it funny that this woman is a blacksmith,’ but we all know the reason why it’s supposed to be funny: blacksmithery is not a traditional feminine job so can you even imagine going on a date with a woman who would engage in it? What would you even call her? A blacksmithrix? Haw haw! Anyway, that’s stupid, so instead I’m going to focus on something actually puzzling: the assertion that weekends are ‘the busiest time for blacksmiths.’ I guess that’s when most Renn Faires are? Are we dealing with a universe where blacksmiths are a vital part of the everyday economy, making horseshoes and tools and such, or are we in a more modern environment where mass manufactured goods are omnipresent and easy to get, and the only people who go to blacksmiths are weirdos who are obsessed with swords? This is the Crock worldbuilding background that I have a million times more in interest in than I do in Poulet’s love life.”

I’ve started reading American Slavery, American Freedom, subtitled “The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia,” by Edmund S. Morgan (1975). I’m not far along, but enough to know he’s a good writer. The first chapter is unexpectedly about of Sir Francis Drake in Panama in 1572, but I think I can see where he seems to be going with the narrative, which will get to colonial Virginia before long.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: US History