Compulsively Aimless

Looking back on my reading for 2023, if I find any themes for the year they would be time, memory, and nostalgia. A few of the quotes and observations I've written down from this year.     Like watches ticking on the wrists of dead soldiers. --Jean Cocteau   If you live long enough, the process of memory ruthless condenses your experiences consigning much to oblivion. --Robert Kaplan, Adriatic: A Concert of Civilizations at the End of the Modern Age   The alleys at night intimate chambers of of just remembered dreams and childhood -- Robert Kaplan, Adriatic: A Concert of Civilizations at the End of the Modern Age   Journey taken in youth inform the rest of our lives -- they are markers of of change in us as well as the rest of the world --WSJ, April ?, 2023   The lifetime that I've been lent in idleness I've spent      --fragment of a poem that I can't recall attribution.  I had become my ancestors --The Growing Seasons, Samuel Hynes ...

  I have several pages of fictional band names and songs. (A project that continues without direction or purpose.) Here's another installment. Awl Da Tyme Cherub Moolah Cake Bakers Band Name or Microbrew? Night Deposit Dying Cloud Saturday on Mars German Haircut Country Killing   Legal Bands   I saw these as actual band names earlier this year posted on a bulletin boards at the George Washington Law School. International Shoe Attractive Nuisance I've not seen them perform but if they're still around I have a couple of song titles for them: Frolic and Detour Writ of Replevin

                        1. Do you ever make a to-go cup of coffee for your drive to get coffee?   2. Have you written more odes than haikus to coffee?   3. Do you ever think about planning a vacation to Java?   4. Do you drink coffee while sitting on the toilet?   5. Have you named any of your children Mocha or Frappuccino?

  Michigan is a modification of the words for "big lake" in Ojibwa and Algonquian languages.     --Indian Names in Michigan, Virgil J. Vogel   Old Michigan steams like a young man's dreams.               --The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, Gordan Lightfoot Michigan is my happy place. I have deep family roots there going back to the early settlers of western Michigan in the 1830s and over 50 summer in Leelenau county.  Even so, I'm still learning more about "the mitten." Most people from the coasts may not think beyond Detroit and not know the state is more sand dunes, forests of pine an birch trees, and fresh water lakes. This summer I ventured to its farthest northern territory, Isle Royale and drove the Keewenau peninsula in the upper peninsula (a peninsula in a peninsula) learning about its rich copper mining history and stories of the Finnish community that settled there. I want to go back. More to explore....

Third in a series of unexpected installments to repurpose archaic terms for the names of Indy Pop Bands or Micro Brew Beers . This time naval terms from the Naval Terms and Definitions by Commander C.C. Soul, U.S.N. (Second Edition, 1926), previously reviewed in an earlier blog.  Jibber the Kibber* Runner and Tackle Spanish Burton Double Bottoms Eyebolt Monkey Gaff Man Ropes Preventer (mistyped and misheard as Perverter and Prefer Her) Rose Lashing Tanner Blish Machine Against the Sun Parbuckle Squilgee Eye-Splice Shaft and Alley Snorter Ice Blink Recognition Signal Keep her so Heave 'round   *the only term not to come out of Naval Terms and Definitions

     What’s your favorite color? This may be the most innocuous ice-breaker to open a conversation with a child or ask on a first date.       A survey of ten countries across four continents shows that one color – blue – is the most popular answer, whether it is in Great Britain, China, or Indonesia. The best selling crayons of all time, Crayola Crayons gives us a choice of 64 colors. Cognitive experts have shown that we can see about 100 levels of red-green and 100 levels of yellow-blue, with thousands more variations for levels of light and dark. They calculate that the total number of colors the human eye can perceive is as much as 10 million.      Color is how we express our moods. I’ve got the blues. Shakespeare coined, green with envy. Color is associated with national identity. Dutch Olympic athletes always wear orange. A patriotic American is said to bleed red, white, and blue. Color influences what we eat. Comedian George Carlin...

An unexpected second installment to repurpose archaic terms for as Indy Pop bands names or Micro brew beers.  This time architecture terms. Acanthus Scroll   Ashyler   Baluster Bargeboard Battlements Blind Arch Broken Pediment Corinthian Order Egg and Dart Fenestration Festoon Hewn and Peg Nulling Splat Stopped Flutes Wattle and Daub  

Humanity App  (Quatrain with a bad rhyme) Go to our website  Or download our app Your call is very important to us We've got a chat bot for that  

                  I've become fixated with names. Names of people, products, places, and companies. Anything that gets a name. This post is a collection of riffs mostly about names of people I like from the books I've read so far this year.  From the second book in Sir Osbert Sitwell's memoir, Great Morning Miss Primrose Miss Figglestone Sir Titus Tittlebyte Lady Viola Tree and her daughters, Iris and Felicity and husband Sir Herbert . They could be depended upon to supply an entertainment of the most delicious personal fantasy based on the flimsiest and most delicate foundation of sense. Lady Tree when offered two kinds of fish at dinner, 'Ye cannot serve both Cod and Salmon.' Another icthyophoagous bon-mot when offered Haddock responded, 'Cry Haddock and let slip my dogs of war!' On her death bed, she referred to her lawyer coming to her bedside to teach her death duties.   More names from another book, Kearny's March Aquilla Gl...

Is there opportunity in this world to repurpose Old Golf club names as Indy Pop bands (plural) or Micro brew beers (singular). The Spade Mashies Pitching Niblicks Wooden Cleeks The Baffie Spoons The Brassies  The Jiggers

15/ Full Metal Jacket. In collecting vintage American Crayons, the packaging is as interesting as the crayons inside. ACC was known for high quality wood boxes but they also devoted the same attention to manufacturing small steel cases to package and protect their crayons. Some of my favorites are the cases for Prang crayons — I especially like the variations on Old Faithful trademark including one in an art deco style that allowed you to see the crayons inside. This and other stories in my book Color Capital of the World. https://blogs.uakron.edu/.../color-capital-of-the-world

14/ Chalk It Up. The story of the American Crayon Company began deep in the holds of 19thC sailing ships coming from England to America. They carried rough hewn blocks of chalk carved from the Cliffs of Dover used as ballast and then repurposed as school chalk. The unrefined chalk crumbled easily and made harsh scrapping sounds on the blackboard. Sandusky’s school superintendent Marcellus Cowdery asked his brother in law William Curtis to create a new refined chalk. His kitchen experiments started the ACC. This and other stories in my book Color Capital of the World available here https://blogs.uakron.edu/.../color-capital-of-the-world/

13/ They Say it’s Your Birthday. The wax formula in children’s color crayons was not far off from the formula used for wax candles. For a time in the 1920s and 30s American Crayon offered birthday candles through its Kroma division including one with reusable holders. This and other stories in my book Color Capital of the World available here https://blogs.uakron.edu/.../color-capital-of-the-world/

Gas fumes turn steel blades Spreading sunshine grass clippings Makes cheep beer taste sweet

12/ A Crayon by Any Other Name. When is a Crayon? in the late 1800s and into the early 1900s when crayon companies were experimenting with chalk and wax there was some confusion as to what was a “crayon.” sometimes colored chalk, was called a crayon, and sometimes colored wax sticks were called crayons. The packaging on the boxes reflected the confusion, specifying either wax crayons or chalk crayons. In time, wax crayons were simply crayons and chalk crayons were simply chalk. Read about this and other stories in my book, Color Capital of the World: Growing Up with the a legacy of Color Crayons. Available from the University of Akron Press , independent book stores or the big book sellers.

My fascination with Central Asia led me to discover the first of several women adventurers. Not only did these women persevere under the harshest of conditions they had to do so in male dominated environments hostile to women.  I have three books by Ella Maillart, born in 1903 in Geneva, Switzerland who was a star athlete competing in the 1924 Olympics as the only female sailor and an international skier. Her occupation is listed in Who's Who as explorer . Turkestan Solo – One Woman's Expedition from the Tien Shan to the Kizil Kum. Maillart details her 1932 trip through the Soviet Union from Moscow to the Central Asian regions of Kyrghizstan and Uzbekistan , shortly before Stalin's Great Terror . The trip required six months of determination during which she encountered food shortages and secret police but she manages to find the world's most delicious melons in Charjew. She completes her adventure with the feeling the life of the nomad is the best life. First publis...

One of my earliest book interests were stories of adventure and exploration. I started pulling books from my shelves to include in this post and after a couple dozen I became overwhelmed about how may I would have to write about so I'm letting the covers do the talking. The only one without a title in the picture has a silhouette of a sailing ship, Darwin and the Beagle , Alan Moorehead. They are roughly grouped around maps, adventures, islands, exploration, a few things in between. I did a small post on adventure in 2013 here . Hope you enjoy the covers.    

Like many 18 year old college freshmen, I discovered the Beat Generation and their culture of coffee houses and writing. Historically, cafes were places where conversations happened and ideas were exchanged. I was in the early 1980s but I envied the 1950s culture of coffee houses as a place to bring people together for impromptu exchanges of ideas and discussion. I imagined sitting in Greenwich Village cafés, holding poetry and book readings, drinking coffee and delving into eastern religion. This past Saturday, as part of my book promotion I was lucky enough to appear in a college town coffee house, named after a famous beat writer. When I walked in the door, I thought I was about to time travel back to the 50s and steal a moment of beat culture. The place had the look and feel of comfy old furniture, dark lighting, used records, and books with Lenard Cohen playing over the sound system. I'd made the arrangements by email with the owner who told me to hold my reading in the room...

11/ American Crayon Company’s water colors were often packaged in metal tins illustrated by well-known children’s artists of the day and taken from scenes from classic stories such as The Pied Piper and Old King Cole. My favorite is impressionist sea scape lower right. The high quality packaging was meant to inspire young artists with their covers. This and other stories from my book Color Capital of the World available here https://blogs.uakron.edu/.../color-capital-of-the-world/ or from your local independent book store and of course Amazon and B&N.  

 10/ Crayons That Stay Put. American Crayon introduced the Kindograph and Kantroll brands especially for children and the patience of parents and teachers. The crayons were thick enough for little hands to grasp with large easy to read labels but the critical element was they wouldn't roll away--instead of being round, they had a flat end to keep them in place. This and other stories in my book Color Capital of the World: https://blogs.uakron.edu/uapress/product/color-capital-of-the-world