Saturday, December 16, 2023

2023 THEME: TIME, MEMORY, AND NOSTALGIA...ALSO NONSENSE

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 watches 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
 
Man, if he is ever any good never gets over being a boy.
--Sherwood Anderson

Memories lengthen the land
--Walter Havighurst

When considering new innovations, the Supreme. Court must tread carefully so as not to embarrass the future.
--NW Airlines v. Minnesota,  322 U.S. 292, 300 (1949) 

A library without members is a like a cemetery books. Books are like people. Without contact they cease to exist.
--can't remember attribution but I'd like to say Jorge Luis Broges

...at times there came a startled sense of wonder and unrealized opportunity.
--Sherwood Anderson

...time is not cool...
   --NPR interview with a Chanda Prescod-Weinstein (ok, I cheated on this one, it was aired in December 2022)

My observations
 
The right to be forgotten is a formula of truth verses time.

Time is the highway that memory travel down after the journey has been made.
 
Memory is more a poem than a transcript.

These quotes don't fit into my themes but I'm adding anyway because I liked them enough to write down. 

 
Everyone is ignorant only on different subjects.
--Will Rogers

There is nothing as easy as denouncing...it doesn't take much to see something is wrong but it takes some eyesight to see what will put it right.
--Will Rogers
 
Courtesy is the very basis for all mutual respect and concord.
--Erasmus
 
The hoi poloi's hobledihoi poo-pooed the hub-bub.
--My best homemade nonsense sentence of 2023 

 

Saturday, December 9, 2023

BAND NAMES


 

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

Monday, December 4, 2023

Quiz: How Devoted to Coffee are you?

 


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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?

Sunday, August 20, 2023

Michigan

 

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. 

A summary of some of my Michigan books:

 Indian Names in Michigan, Virgil J. Vogel, (The University of Michigan Press, 1986). Vogel traces the origin of hundreds of Indian place names. He traces names from the Ojibwa, Ottawa, and Potowatomi as well as names from literature and legend ("Leelenau") and artificial "Indian" names ("Allegan"). You'll learn a lot of history while reading the origins of the names.

Michigan: A Guide to the Wolverine State, (American Guide Series, 1956). Wonderful collection of history and travel guide produced out of the WPA series on American states. 

When Michigan was Young, Ethel Rowan Fasquelle, (WM. B. Eerdman's Publishing Co., 1950).  Stories of the first French explorers of Ottawa and Ojibwa customs, stories, and legends.

Michigan: A History, Bruce Cotton, (W.W. Norton, 1984). Originally part of series of state histories published for America's bicentennial.  

Finns in Michigan, Gary Kaunonen (Michigan State University Press, 2009). Part of a series, Disovering the Peoples of Michigan. I bought this book after a drive through the Keweenaw Peninsula and learned about the large population of Finns that emigrated to the UP in the late 1800s, many of whom worked in the copper mines. We had just driven through Hancock, where Findlandia University had just closed its doors at the end of the 2023 Spring semester.

Michigan's Upper Peninsula, Josh Bishop, Moon Handbooks (Avalon Travel, year?). The upper peninsula deserves its own guide. I found this one used in Dog Eared Books, Northport, MI.  






  

Sunday, July 9, 2023

Nautical Terms, Indy Pop Bands, and Microbrews

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

Saturday, July 1, 2023

WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE COLOR?*

    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 once did a comedy routine asking where is the blue food? We use color for short hand expressions of political parties. Is that a red state or blue state? Or a symbol of a revolution. Better Red than dead. And of course sports teams have their colors, the most popular being red. In some cases, universities like Cornell or Denison are simply known on the athletic field as Big Red.

    Color is introduced to stimulate children’s creativity. There are subject matter experts who are called upon to select the right calming colors for hotels, public buildings, and our homes. Color therapy is used to help unsettled patients work through their issues. Painters would not exist with color. And even writers and poets could not do their work without color. The counterculture celebrates the intense colors of a psychedelic experience. Television network NBC adopted a peacock  fanning its tail as its mascot to market their innovation of living color. Likewise, Motels in the 1960s specially advertised on their signs, All Rooms with Color TV. Four percent of the population has synesthesia, a cognitive condition where letters and numbers are perceived to have inherent colors.      

    Color is so embedded in our cognitive process we may even forget when we are using it in our everyday language: green thumb, pink slip, blue collar job, white collar crime, yellow bellied, golden opportunity, white elephant, red tape, and silver screen.      

    Color is deeply rooted in daily associations. Americans want their paper money green. School buses and pencils should be yellow. Fire engines must be engines red. The first rule of driving school is green means go, red means stop. Traditional colors at baby showers have been blue for boys, pink for girls. Pink also goes with fantasy as in seeing a pink elephant. Orange life vests are universally recognized as a signal for safety and rescue. White in western cultures means purity and the traditional color of a wedding dress, while in eastern cultures, it is associated with death.

    And the world of color continues to grow with the help of scientists. A team of chemists at Oregon State University, was experimenting with rare earth elements while developing materials for use in electronics in 2009 accidentally created the pigment YInMn Blue. Named after its components — Yttrium, Indium, and Manganese  -- it was the first new chemically-made pigment in two centuries.

    In talking about my book Color Capital of the World, I even got to play a fun color association game on Inner Loop Radio [link] with founders Rachel Coonce and Courtney Sexton.

    In researching my book, here are a couple of books I came across that tell the stories of color, its symbolism in culture and importance in history. 


The Secret Lives of Color
, Kassia St. Clair (2016). St.Clair uses stories to describes 75 various shades of color families such as Lead Whit to Beige, Blonde, Baker-Miller pink to Amaranth. Her stories have strong historical connections such as white protected against the plague, charcoal on the cave walls at Lascaux, scarlet women to imperial purple. Bought new online. 

 

 

The World According to Colour: A Cultural History, James Fox (2021). British author, James Fox ("Colour" is the giveaway) takes seven primary colors—black, red, yellow, blue, white, purple, and green—and explores the origins of each their symbolism throughout history. 25 beautiful color pictures from a red hand painted in the Chauvet Cave in France to Hollywood's use of Black and White in westerns. Bought second-hand on a Sunday afternoon at an open air flea market in London's Southbank neighborhood. 

 

 

Paint Chip Poetry: A Game of Color and Wordplay, Lea Redmond. Not a book but a game with 400 paint chip cards and prompt cards meant to inspire impromptu poetry and wordplay. Bought new at Potter's House books in Washington, DC. 

=========================================

*If you're reading this in the U.K, What's Your Favourite Colour?

Sunday, June 11, 2023

Archetectural Terms, Indy Pop Bands, and Microbrews


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
 

Thursday, June 8, 2023

Humanity App



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

 

Sunday, June 4, 2023

In Name Only

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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 Glover, helped rescue the Donner Party
  • Androsh Riedlemeyer
  • Karl Klopenhoof

From Memoir: A History, Ben Yagoda

The extremely minor writer Augustus Hare produced a staggering six volumes of memoir between 1896 and 1900, consisting in the words of critic A.O.J. Cockshutt, 'immense prolixity and innumerable boring anecdotes

Were the Trails Run Out by Blashford Snell. Snell founded the Scientific Exploration Society. and Amongst his expeditions were the first descent of the Blue Nile, during which he invented white-water rafting 'by accident' (in 1968); crossing of the Darién Gap (1971 to 1972) and overseeing the first north–south vehicular journey from Alaska to Cape Horn; and a complete navigation of the Congo River (in 1974 to 1975).

Bonus Riffs

Part 14 in My Never-ending Series of Fictional Band Names

  • Incineration, Heavy Metal Band 
  • Rat Abatement, post-punk band debuting in the Seattle club scene with their song Memory Yoda
  • Awl da Tymme, retro English folk trio with hit song, Amorous Lather

Company Names

At the end of April, I was in Columbus Ohio for a book festival. Walking thorugh downtown noticing company names on the buildings such as Hexia and Encoving. I have not a clue what they do. It could be some very important work. Thinking back to early 1900s when a company name told you what it did, National Cash Register, Ford Motor Company, American Crayon Company. 

 ###

Saturday, June 3, 2023

Old Golf Clubs, Indy Pop Bands, and Microbrews


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



Monday, May 29, 2023

Full Metal Jacket




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

Chalk It Up




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/

They Say it’s Your Birthday.


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/



Sunday, May 21, 2023

MY MIDWEST HAIKU


Gas fumes turn steel blades

Spreading sunshine grass clippings

Makes cheep beer taste sweet

Wednesday, March 29, 2023

12/ A Crayon by Any Other Name


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.

Sunday, March 12, 2023

WOMEN ADVENTURERS


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 published in 1934; my edition is part of The Century Travelers series published 1985 in the UK and Canada. Bought used in a book store, possibly Second Story in Washington, DC.
  • Forbidden Journey – From Peking to Kashmir, Introduction by Dervla Murphy. In 1935, Maillart was reporting from regarding the Japanese occupation where she met Peter Fleming (brother of Ian Flemming, author of the James Bond books). the two teamed up to travel from Peking to Kashmir (3,500 miles) exploring hostile deserts and Himalayan passes. They were often tempestuous traveling companions improvising at each stage on trains, trucks, on foot, horse, and camel. She describes Fleming's behavior as erratic. Peter Fleming wrote his own account of the trip in News from Tartary (mentioned in an earlier entry Two Views of Central Asian Journeys). First published in 1937; my edition is part of The Century Travelers series published 1983 in the UK and Canada. Bought used in a book store, possibly Second Story in Washington, DC. 
  • The Cruel Way. In 1939, Maillart she undertook a trip from Geneva to Kabul in a two-door Ford Coupe, in the company of fellow Swiss writer. Her companion is battling drug addition during the journey, which created difficulties for their already arduous trek. Their adventure is cut short by the outbreak of WWII. First published in 1947, reprinted in 1986 as part of the British Verago Travellers series.  Contains Maillart's black and white photos. Bought used but forgot where.


Freya Stark
, born in the UK in 1893, she wrote more more than two dozen books on her travels in the Middle East and Afghanistan. Stark was one of the first non-Arabs known to travel through the southern Arabian Desert in modern times. Freya Stark books on my shelf:
 

  • The Valleys of the Assassins: and Other Persian Travels, (Modern Library, 2001). Bought used.
  • Baghdad Sketches, (Marlboro Press, 1992). Bought Used
  • Freya Stark, Caroline Moorehead (Penguin Series Lives of Modern Women, 1985). Bought used. 
  •  

Full Tilt, Derlva Murphy (Century Travelers edition, 1991). Born in Dublin in 1932, Murphy bicycled from England to India traveling through some of the most rugged terrain carrying a small pistol (which she only use once in a difficult situation). Her determination and perseverance is jaw-dropping. 

A Traveller on Horseback: In Eastern Turkey and Iran, Christina Dodwell (Walker and Company, 1989). Dodwell embarked on a series of adventures including treks on horseback around Turkey, Iran, Africa, and China.

 

 

 

 

I realize I'm missing many others such as the Middle East adventurer, Gertrude Bell, but as I mention up top, the lists are not exhaustive and usually what I have at hand without turning my house upside down. 

 

 

Saturday, March 4, 2023

Adventure, Exploration, Old Maps, and Lost Islands

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.



 





 

Tuesday, February 28, 2023

BEAT GENERATION MEET THE DIGITAL GENERATION

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 next-door to the bar. It had a small stage with lighting. I looked in and every table was occupied by students with laptops with a few in pairs. Even this stage had a table on it with a student engaged on his laptop. The owner had said just make an announcement when you’re ready to read, and the students will move off the stage. I’m thinking this is a good start--the room was full and this being a cafe with coffee infused with the spirit of the beats I’d have some fellow writers and readers in the audience.

About 10 minutes before I was going to do the reading, I spoke to the room and said I'll be doing a book reading and I encouraged everyone to stay and listen. By the time I was ready to read most, everyone had closed their laptops and shuffled out of the room. At this point, my audience consisted of four people, one high school friend and a couple that had been encouraged to attend by a second high school who couldn't make it in person. With an audience of three I stepped down off of the small stage, opened the folding chair, and read to my audience.  The whole discussion and reading lasted about an hour, but as I did the reading, some students filtered back into the room, pulled out their laptops, and began working again, oblivious to the book talk. One student began quietly talking to someone on his device located somewhere else in the world. I wanted to jump up and down a yell, "Hey, a live person over here reading from a book I created" but somehow this probably would have been going in the wrong direction.

When it was all over I wondered what Lawrence Ferlinghetti or Jack Kerouac might have thought of the event. They gravitated to cafes as places where spirited conversations could stretch for hours into the night. Things had changed in the decades. Now this was a cafe but now it was a place to be alone with your device or connected to others in other places while sitting next to strangers.

Before I sound like a total cultural Luddite, there is a plus I need to mention. For the high school friend who couldn't attend in person, the couple she encouraged to see me set up their phone for live streaming so she could participate virtually.  Her virtual attendance increased my audience by 25 percent.

Beat Generation meet Digital Generation.

Thursday, February 9, 2023

11/ ART IMITATES ART

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.


 

Tuesday, January 17, 2023

Crayons That Stay Put.

 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