The Very Early ’70s

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Of the five group photos of my elementary school classes, I only put the exact date of the picture on one of them — the third grade shot. Why I did that, I can’t remember. But there it is: March 17, 1970. Forty-five years ago.

March17.1970Not the first time I dated an image from that grade, either. I also wrote everyone’s name, though I did that every year. Glad I did. Among other things, it preserves a sample of mid-century children’s names, most of them common, but not all. I always had the least common name.

Top row: Lester, Dees, David, Jerry, David, Ellen.

Next row down: Susan, Jack, Karen, Tom, Cole.

Next row down: Marie, Ruth Ann, Gary, Luis, Renee, Leslie.

Bottom row: Shirley, Mariann, Art, Maura, Steven, David.

Few surprises there. For example, according to the Social Security Administration, David was the no. 2 popular boys’ name for the 1960s. Everyone in the picture except for Mrs. Bigelow would have been born in 1960 or ’61.

The Yeomen of the Guard

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The Gilbert & Sullivan Opera Co. drew a solid crowd for the matinee of The Yeomen of the Guard on Sunday afternoon. Not a full house, but a decent turnout, including a small busload of seniors from somewhere or other. But unlike at some events, I wasn’t one of the younger members of the crowd. There was a good mix of ages.

Yeomen of the Guard 2015Mandel Hall was the venue. A handsome place on the University of Chicago campus — I’d like to see it in this light — and almost as old as Yeomen, since it was originally designed in 1903 by Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge. Not the Savoy, but what is?

Though done at a college, the show wasn’t collegiate. The highly accomplished company goes back to 1960, and, according to the program notes, “has a policy of alternating the signature operas with the obscure, taking into consideration anniversary years and programming by other local companies.” This was its seventh production of Yeomen, with HMS Pinafore, The Mikado, and The Gondoliers also done that many times over the years. (At the other end of the spectrum, Utopia, Limited and The Grand Duke have been done once each in 55 years.)

Good fun, as G&S should be, but also not quite as much levity as you’d expect in a romantic romp of switched identities, instant attractions, and lines like this: “These allusions to my professional duties are in doubtful taste. I didn’t become a head-jailer because I like head-jailing. I didn’t become an assistant-tormentor because I like assistant-tormenting. We can’t all be sorcerers, you know.”

Spoken by Wilfred, the head jailer and assistant tormentor of the Tower, portrayed by Brad Jungwirth, a bald slab of a baritone, whose voice and character I enjoyed the most. The rest of the cast turned in fine performances as well, in as much as I’m qualified to judge, as did the University of Chicago Chamber Orchestra.

Maybe there should be more romantic comedies in which love doesn’t quite conquer all, as in Yeomen. After all, it ends with three couples paired up, two of which involve less-than-enthusiastic participants, and one of which leaves a sympathetic character (the merryman Jack Point) as the odd man out, much to his anguish. Then again, I guess a movie that ended that way wouldn’t test very well among focus groups.

The New Seminary Coop Bookstore

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Last year, I noticed that the Seminary Coop Bookstore isn’t where it used to be, in the basement of the Chicago Theological Seminary at 5757 S. University Ave in Hyde Park. Over the years, I’d popped in now and then to enjoy that cave of books. And I bought a few things there, such as The Greeks and the Irrational (E.R. Dodds, 1951) and Daily Life in Ancient Rome (Jérôme Carcopino, 1940). How could the floor-to-ceiling shelves laden with books on a wild array of subjects, and the twists and turns and nooks, be the same above ground?

Last year, I wrote: “It didn’t seem right. At the basement location, there was no room for anything but books and more books…. the new location still has a ‘maze aspect’ and Stanley Tigerman did the design (himself or Tigerman McCurry Architects staff?), which I guess counts for something.”

On Sunday, we went into the new store and looked around. The new iteration isn’t bad. In fact, it’s a fine store, stocked with the same wild array of subjects. But it also doesn’t have the je ne sais quoi of the old location. The new design is formed by shelves at various angles to each other, so it isn’t a standard bookstore with parallel shelving. Even so, it seems more like an homage to the cramped old shelves than anything else, a little maze-like but also a little too orderly.

I guess they had their reasons for moving. Maybe the store lost its lease, or maybe patrons had a way of wandering into the further reaches of the book cave and were never heard from again.

The Telephone Pole Faces of E. 57th

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On Sunday, Lilly and I drove to Hyde Park, home to the University of Chicago and neighborhood eateries such as Salonica, a Greek diner on E. 57th St. at Blackstone Ave. Yuriko, Ann and I ate there last year during our visit to see the Robie House and other Hyde Park places.

This time, Lilly and I ate there. It was busy at about noon, but the line wasn’t out of the door. The patrons were a good mix of students and neighborhood residents. At least, I’m fairly sure that the grayhairs and young families were locals; and the young men and women — every jack one of the men with a beard — were students.

Salonica, Hyde ParkLilly had an omelet, I had pancakes. It’s the kind of place that serves tasty breakfasts all day, besides Greek items and sandwiches. In a place like this, breakfast is the thing for me. If I’ve already had breakfast that day, I have another. So it was this time.

A block and half west of Salonica are two telephone poles flanking the spot where the alley between Dorchester Ave. and the small Bixler Park meets E. 57th St. Each of the poles is painted with a green image at about eye level. Facelike, green with a yellow outline and blue and orange details. Maybe it’s not supposed to be a face. Whatever it is, it’s a lively work.

E 57th St ChicagoI remembered seeing them last year, so they’ve been around at least that long. If you go to Google Streetview, you can see them as green splotches.

Nothing like a little local detail. Hyperlocal detail, it is. Not even the most experiential-oriented, don’t-ever-admit-you’re-a-tourist-even-though-you-are guidebooks or web sites can cover that kind of thing.

Pi ’15

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Pi Day 2015 has come and gone. Word was this one was distinctive in that 3.1415 could also be taken to stand for March 14, ’15, something that happens once a century. A Saturday this year, meaning we were mostly at home doing nothing related to pi. Which would have been the case any other day of the week, come to think of it. But it’s one of those days that’s good to note in passing.

Lilly had a shirt for the occasion, sold for a not-too-outrageous cost by the high school math club or some such.

Lilly March 14, 2015An aggressive Pi, that one. Pushy Pi. Here are other representations of everyone’s favorite irrational number. Too bad for e, always second banana to pi. E Day would be Feb 7, but that’ll never catch on.

Prefecture Osaka

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PrefectureOsakaTwenty-five years ago this week, primed by a young man’s sense of adventure, I moved to Japan. Eventually I learned my way around, literally and figuratively, without the assistance of the Internet, since it wasn’t in common use. One of my better investments along those lines — literally getting around, that is — was a paper atlas called Prefecture Osaka.

At least, those were the roman-letter words on the cover. In fact, those were the only roman letters in the entire book. Extracting useful information sometimes took a while but — in that great eventually again — I learned my way around the book, too.

Sometimes I would stare at it, just because I enjoyed looking at it. The lines, the tints, the utterly foreign script — it’s a beautiful group of maps. This is one of the pages. As it happens, the northern part of Sumiyoshi Ward, which is where I lived. My block’s nearly in the fold, so it isn’t displayed here. But a lot of familiar places are.

OsakaMapOldNeighborhoodThe whole-page scan doesn’t really do it justice, though. Even the close-up doesn’t, but imagine a crisp paper version of this image, because digital will never capture the aesthetics of paper.

OsakaMapOldNeighborhood2The bright yellow rectangle is the JR Nagai station (these tracks). The white rectangle is the Nagai subway station on the Midosuji Line. I rarely used JR, but I went to the Nagai subway station just about every day. Urban Japan, as our urban planners say, has high walkability.

The ward was further divided, as marked by different tints on the map. My area was called Nagai-Nishi: West Nagai. That was further subdivided — twice. The smallest divisions are the blocks marked by the small blue numbers. The green space on this map is green space: Nagai Park (Nagai Koen, 長居公園 ). Literally, Long Park.

Spock Makes a Funny

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By chance today I saw about ten minutes of “The Naked Time,” the Star Trek episode in which a pathogen of some kind invades the Enterprise and lowers inhibitions among the crew. At one point, famously, a shirtless Sulu brandishes a sword at various extras, and then shows up on the bridge to point it at the captain. The fiction of Dumas is clearly Sulu’s inspiration.

SULU: Richelieu, at last.

KIRK: Sulu, put that — [discovers that the point is sharp] — put that thing away.

SULU: For honor, Queen, and France! [lunges]

UHURA: Sulu.

SULU: Ah.

UHURA: Sulu, give me that.

SULU: I’ll protect you, fair maiden.

UHURA: Sorry, neither.

SULU: Foul Richelieu! [Distracted by Uhura’s escape, Kirk is able to grab Sulu and Spock does a neck-pinch]

KIRK: I’d like you to teach me that sometime.

SPOCK: Take D’Artagnan here to Sickbay.

Take D’Artagnan here to Sickbay. Nimoy delivered the line as almost an aside, while a lot else was going on, so I thought for a moment: did he really say that? He did. That was worth a chuckle. I must have seen this episode a dozen times — more than 30 years ago, but still — and I don’t think I ever noticed that line. (Or Uhura’s pithy line; think about it.) I wouldn’t have known D’Artagnan in junior high, but later I did. Even so, I missed it.

So the writers gave Spock a joke, or at least a witticism. Not, “Take Mr. Sulu to Sickbay,” or “Take him to Sickbay,” which would be the unadorned, hyperrational thing to say. Nice touch. Nice delivery. RIP, Mr. Nimoy.

The Automatic Readability Assessment

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I needed to know the word count of a story of mine today, so I consulted a site called Word Count Tools. No Word on my machine yet, so I’m making do with primitive word pad programs without automatic word-counting. WCT not only counts the words, but it assesses your writing in terms of “readability level.” I wondered what that meant, aside from a subjective impression you might get reading text. Helpfully, it says at the bottom that it calculates something called a Dale-Chall score.

“[The Dale-Chall] formula is used to assess the readability level of a given text, which is described below:

0.1579 (difficult words/words ) + 0.0496 (words/sentences )

Difficult words do not belong to the list of 3,000 familiar words. The formula adds 3.6365 to the raw score if the percentage of difficult words is greater than 5% to get the adjusted score.”

Sure. I see. Anyway, a score of 4.9 or lower (for example) is “easily understood by an average 4th-grade student or lower.” A score of 10 or more is “easily understood by an average college graduate.”

I couldn’t resist putting yesterday’s post through the count, just for fun. It’s 335 words, 1898 characters, with a readability level of “easily understood by a 11th-12th grade student.” The most used words are “time” and “clock,” four times each, then “yard” and “now,” three times each. Clearly, I was writing about time and space. There were 100 “difficult” words and 211 unique words, with 26 sentences of an average length of 12.9 words.

What about the Gettysburg Address? Famously, it’s short: 271 words, 1462 characters, “easily understood by a 9-10th grade student.” Its top word is “nation,” at five times, or fully 8.3 percent of the total. Other top words are “dedicated,” “great,” and “dead.” There are only 47 “difficult” words. Clearly a speech for the common man, or at least the 19th-century common man.

The Latest in Cuckoo Clocks

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The great melt is under way, at least on my property. The back yard, which is a southern exposure, is mostly a mud flat now, with rims of snow. The dog is happy to explore it, and then report back to us, carrying mud specimens with her for our floor, clothes, etc. Even the front yard, with its northern exposure, is beginning to reveal itself again. I’m curious to see how my exercise in green yard management is going. That is, I didn’t rake leaves last fall. They’ve been decaying in place since then, in theory providing nutrients for the grass this spring.

Some time ago, I wrote about the Batman Express (italics from the original source material): “It’s an HO-scale train set that ‘is powerfully embellished with dramatic full-color artwork by some of DC Comics greatest artists,’ according to the letter. ‘You’ll thrill to each outstanding portrait of Batman as he battles his arch villains including The Joker and Catwoman.’ … That’s the world of collectibles, I figure. Anything goes with anything, if it sells…”

I’m reminded of that again. This time, a print ad that recently wandered into the house informs me that it’s “Time to Celebrate the Chicago Blackhawks® Championship Legacy!” And how so? “Now, you can demonstrate your team pride any time of the day with the Chicago Blackhawks® Cuckoo Clock.” Limited edition (of course), so get yours now. The earliest orders will receive the coveted low edition numbers! (Who indeed would want clock 9995 out of 10,000?) For some reason, the ad emphasizes that the clock is 2 Feet High!

Clearly, it’s a special clock. Done up in red and black, with the Blackhawk mascot painted on it, hockey sticks for weights, and a cuckoo that wears a hockey helmet. It can be yours for only five convenient installments of $39.99, for a total of $199.95.* Asterisk = $23.99 shipping and service. Limit one per order. By golly, who can resist all that?

Rachmaninoff & Tchaikovsky on a March Evening

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Here’s an argument that not everything of historic or archaeological significance should stay in its place of origin: “ISIS destroys ancient site of Khorsabad in northeastern Iraq.” Had the University of Chicago left everything in place, some of the artifacts you can see at the Oriental Museum would be rubble about now, thanks to barbarians.

ESO3.15Yuriko and I made it to far suburban Elgin on Saturday for the Elgin Symphony Orchestra, which offers high-quality performances. The ESO, besides being good at what they do, has a number of other advantages for people who have the temerity to live in the suburbs. It isn’t that far to drive; it’s easy to park there; and tickets don’t cost as much, say, as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. All reasons the ESO sells most of its seats.

On tap this time: Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, and “The Tempest” and “Romeo and Juliet” by Tchaikovsky. A Russian-born American, Natasha Paremski, was the guest pianist, displaying an astonishing amount of skill and energy at it. Unfortunately, we were sitting on the right side of theater, so it was hard to see her (and the conductor) during the performance, because of the bulk of the piano. I have a hard time warming up to Rachmaninoff — I can’t really say I try that much, though — but her rendition kept my attention.

A casual search doesn’t show Paremski playing any Rachmaninoff, but this is her having a go at Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1, displaying a similar intensity at the keyboard.

Speaking of Tchaikovsky (sort of), this early TV clip also has a lot of (maniacal) energy to it. Such was Spike Jones. Stay to the end for an appearance by Jim Backus and an impersonation of a certain well-known figure on the world stage at the time.