Excellent advice not to "future-trip"

There is a very interesting article in the September issue of The Atlantic.  "My Father, Guitar Guru to the Rock Gods" is written by the daughter of Fred Walecki, who crafted instruments and provided advice to the greatest musicians of 1960s California.  Here are the introductory paragraphs:

In August 2000, when I was 2 years old, my mother put me in a maroon velvet dress and stuck foam earplugs in my ears. She carried me through the backstage corridors of the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium... My mother remembers the night in flashes. David Crosby—walrus mustache, smiling eyes—telling jokes. Bonnie Raitt’s aura of red hair. In the distance, the sound of Linda Ronstadt warming up. Sitting in a dressing room with Michael McKean and Christopher Guest, already in costume as Spinal Tap’s front men.

That night, the auditorium was hosting the Friends of Fred Walecki benefit concert. These friends included Crosby, Raitt, and Ronstadt. Also Jackson Browne, Graham Nash, Emmylou Harris, and Warren Zevon. Three of the four original Eagles, who in this room in 1973 had performed their new album, Desperado, were there too.

One of the Eagles, Bernie Leadon, had helped put the event together. He had known Fred Walecki, my father, since they were teenagers, when Leadon started coming into Westwood Music, Dad’s musical-instrument shop in Los Angeles....

I'm not posting this for the music of the 1960s, which I love (please go to the link to continue reading, if you share that interest).  I'm posting this to share one bit of advice that Fred Walecki offered his grown-up daughter:

"When I was 18, I got a bad concussion that took me out of college for my first semester. My doctor didn’t want me to fly home for a while, so I called Dad one night from the other side of the country, panicked that my brain would never return to normal. 

“What are you looking at right now?” he asked. Pine trees, I said. Some shrubs. I’m sitting on a bench outside. “What’s the temperature like where you are?” It’s nice. Cool but not cold. It was early fall in the Northeast, a new sensation for a Californian. “What does the air smell like?” Wood chips. 

“I know it’s hard, but your only job right now is to stay in this moment and not future-trip. In this moment right now, the one God is giving you, the air smells nice, the temperature is good, you’re somewhere beautiful.”"

Excellent advice, in my opinion, and worth sharing via the blog.

Word for the day: lagniappe

“We picked up one excellent word – a word worth traveling to New Orleans to get; a nice limber, expressive, handy word – ‘Lagniappe.’ They pronounce it lanny-yap. […] When a child or a servant buys something in a shop – or even the mayor or governor, for aught I know – he finishes the operation by saying, – ‘Give me something for lagniappe.’ The shopman always responds; gives the child a bit of liquorice-root; […]”: Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi (1883)

I recently sent an incidental small gift to a friend in New Orleans.  He replied with thanks for the "lagniappe," so of course I had to look that up.  Here are the essentials, courtesy of Wiktionary:

Definition: (chiefly Louisiana, Mississippi, Trinidad and Tobago) An extra or unexpected gift or benefit, such as that given to customers when they purchase something. 

Synonyms: (chiefly Southern US) brotus, (South Africa) pasella, (Ireland) tilly

Etymology: From Cajun French lagniappe, from Spanish la ñapa, a variant of yapa (“small gift or additional quantity given to a valued customer”), from Quechua yapa (“addition, increase, supplement; lagniappe”), yapay (“to add, to increase”).

I thought that might be my first English word of Quechua origin, but a quick check reveals there are many more, including ayahuasca, cocaine, guano, jerk/jerky, pampas, pique, poncho, puma, quinine, quinoa, vicuna, and the place names Andes, Chile, Cuzco, Machu Picchu, and Peru.

A video review of the butterflies of Wisconsin

Wisconsin Butterflies is the definitive online resource for reporting sightings across the state.

Last year's video is here.

The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

 

Those interested can read more about the event and the song.  Reposted again from 2015 to add illustrations of some of the ways ships sink in the Great Lakes -

Three more examples are illustrated here.

Reposted for the third time to add this video recording of a similar ship (a Ukranian freighter) actually splitting in the Black Sea:

The relevant action occurs in the first minute; there is a second segment showing the ship sinking.

Addendum:  PBS Wisconsin has a video presentation of a public lecture on The Storm that sank the Edmund Fitzgerald.

And reposted for the final time because today marks the 50th anniversary of the sinking.  Somewhere I hae seen a discussion of the phrase "The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead" being scientifically true because at depth the water is too cold for bacteria to generate decomposition gases to lift the corpse and/or because the hydrostatic pressure at depth prevents the bubble formation.

And I'll add a link to the lyrics, because they are hard to discern in the embedded video.

Holes in the pillars of this bridge

I saw this image in the WhatIsIt subreddit, where readers were asked to provide an explanation for their intended function.   I thought perhaps they were for stringing communication etc cables across the river  and was delighted to read this postulated explanation, which rendered the image blogworthy:

"To plant explosives. In some countries bridges are designed to be easily blown up in case of war. Don't know if this is the case."

It wasn't long before the true explanation was provided, which I'll put "below the fold" so you can ponder for a moment...

Brazilian sand dunes

"In a land still soaked from the rainy season, a river stained with tannin from a nearby forest marbles the sand."

From a set of ten photos at National Geographic, via La Muse Verte.  I have previously written a post about the remarkable Lençóis Maranhenses National Park.

Reposted from ten years ago to add this recent photo of flooded sand dunes at this location, via.

Reposted from 2021 to add this rather nice PBS video on the subject:

Wasp nests for home decor

Here's one way I'm well ahead of the curve on fashion and design.  I've been bringing wasp nests and other natural curiosities into my apartments and home all of my adult life.   The New York Times reports that items like the above now retail for "up to $250 per specimen."  Several photos at the link.

I don't believe inflation is "under control" in the U.S.

All of the recently published charts, and most of the headlines, indicate that monetary inflation is "not a problem" at time in the United States.  Based on personal experience and our family finances and my doomscrolling of the internet, I flat out don't believe those data.

There is some justification to being skeptical, because the federal entities that monitor and report such data have been subject to the government shutdown.  This opinion from a NYT article:

The United States is a month into a government shutdown that has hobbled the nation’s statistical agencies and created the longest economic data blackout in history. The normally steady flow of government data on hiring, spending, wages, prices and other areas has slowed to a trickle, leaving economists to try to fill in the gaps using anecdotes and a mélange of incomplete and often contradictory indicators from private sources.

There is no good time to go without reliable data. But this might be a uniquely bad one. Job growth slowed sharply over the summer, leading to fears that the labor market could be taking a rapid turn for the worse. Such a development would most likely draw a swift response from officials at the Federal Reserve, who are responsible for maximizing employment while keeping inflation stable. But policymakers have no reliable way of knowing whether those trends continued into the fall, or perhaps reversed.

Tara Sinclair, an economist at George Washington University, likened the situation to driving down a road in a heavy fog... But the fog will get thicker from here. The statistical agency was able to release the September inflation report because the underlying data had been collected before the government shut down on Oct. 1. But it hasn’t collected any new data since then. The White House said last week that the government might not be able to release an October inflation report at all. Reports on the job market, consumer spending, manufacturing and other topics are also in jeopardy.

I can see no rational justification for the equity markets to be consistently hitting new all-time highs, largely based on expectations that artificial intelligence is going to supercharge the profitability of major corporations (NYSE chart; NASDAQ not dissimilar).

Full disclosure: I tend to be a "perma-bear" skeptical of rosy scenarios.  I have moved the majority of my savings out of equities into CDs etc, but that in part also reflects my advanced age.  YMMV.

James Garfield - president for only 200 days

I have a new favorite president. Before reading this book, literally the only things I knew about James Garfield were that he was featured on the 20c prexie stamp (because he was the 20th president) and that he was assassinated while in office. Now I can add the following...

He grew up in Ohio in abject poverty – a one-room log cabin with a plank floor and windowpanes made of oiled paper. When he was two years old, his father died at age 33, leaving his mother with four children to feed. She farmed the land with the aid of his 11-year-old brother and saved money so that by age four James was able to get a pair of shoes. At age sixteen he began working on the Erie and Ohio Canal, but returned home after contracting malaria. By then his mother had saved $17, which was used to send him to Western Reserve Eclectic Institute, a one-building prep school. During his first year he worked as a janitor in exchange for receiving an education.

So vigorously did Garfield apply himself during his first year at the Eclectic that, by his second year, the school had promoted him from janitor to assistant professor. Along with the subjects he was taking as a student, he was given a full roster of classes to teach, including literature, mathematics, and ancient languages. He taught six classes, which were so popular that he was asked to add two more – one on penmanship and the other on Virgil. (p. 23) 

From there he moved to Williams College in Massachusetts and graduated in two years. He entered state politics in Ohio, then served in the Civil War in the Union Army, after which he was elected to Congress. He did NOT want to be president. He attended a nominating convention which was hopelessly deadlocked. On the 34th ballot, some electors voted for him. He rose to protest and was told to sit down.  On the 36th ballot, he became the Republican nominee – against his will. He was described as shocked, sickened, and pale as death during the proceedings. (pp 40-46).

He never participated in the campaign which was conducted on his behalf, preferring to work and receive visitors on his 160-acre farm.

He built a barn, moved a large shed, planted an orchard, and even shopped for curtains for the house…. he added an entire story, a front porch, and a library. Even with the new library, Garfield’s books filled every room. “You can go nowhere in the general’s home without coming face to face with books,” one reporter marveled. “They confront you in the hall when you enter, in the parlor and the sitting room, in the dining-room and even in the bath-room…” (p. 58) 

His campaign platform as a Republican emphasized civil rights and the welfare of the freed slaves, in which endeavor he was supported by Frederick Douglass. Voter turnout for the election was 78%, and he was elected by a narrow margin.

In the days that followed… Garfield could not shake the feeling that the presidency would bring hi only loneliness and sorrow. As he watched everything he treasured – his time with his children, his books, and his farm – abruptly disappear, he understood that the life he had known was gone. The presidency seemed to him not a great accomplishment but a “bleak mountain” that he was obliged to ascend. (p. 64) 

The assassin, Charles Guiteau, was a religious fanatic who was delusional to the point of frank psychosis. He borrowed $10 to buy a gun, used it to shoot the president not for any political or philosophical reason, but because he believed God wanted him to do it.

His first and primary defense was “Insanity, in that it was God’s act and not mine. The Divine pressure on me to remove the president was so enormous that it destroyed my free agency and therefore I am not legally responsible for my act.” (p. 237) 

The “insanity defense” was well established at the time. Interestingly, everyone at the time agreed that Guiteau was insane and that insane people were not liable for their actions. Everyone on the jury knew this also, but they were so angry that they basically said “he’s guilty – hang him anyway.”

Other interesting tidbits from the book: After Garfield was shot, the second physician who responded to the event was Charles Purvis, surgeon in chief of the Freedmen’s Hospital, 39 years old, one of the first black men in the U.S. to receive medical training at a university, and obviously the first ever to treat a president. (p. 140)

The White House of that era was like a slum residence, perpetually damp with rotting wood and vermin-infested walls and the odor of raw untreated sewage, situated next to a malarial tidal marsh. (p. 176)

Garfield was a Republican who embodied the party’s enthusiasm for helping immigrants, freed slaves, and impoverished people. He believed the key to improving the country lay in educating those people. (182)

It has been said that Guiteau did not kill the President – he shot him, but the doctors killed him by repeatedly probing the wound with ungloved, unwashed fingers. Guiteau used this argument in his own futile defense (“General Garfield died from malpractice.”). The bullet had lodged on the left side of his body behind the pancreas, but the attempts to find it on the right side resulted in profound septic sequelae:

One cavity in particular, which began at the site of the wound, would eventually burrow a tunnel that stretched past Garfield’s right kidney, along the outer lining of his stomach, and down nearly to his groin. An enormous cavity, six inches by four inches, would form under his liver, filling with a greenish-yellow mixture of pus and bile. (p. 196) 

He apparently developed septic emboli:

Just two weeks after the surgery, another abscess formed, this one on Garfield’s right parotid gland… the abscess had become so filled with pus that it caused his eye and cheek to swell and paralyzed his face. Finally, it ruptured, flooding Garfield’s ear canal and mouth with so much pus… that it nearly drowned him. (p. 216) 

The woefully incompetent Dr. Bliss treating him [“Ignorance is Bliss”] tried to cope with the president's rapid cachexia by feeding him intrarectally. The eventual cause of death (determined by autopsy) was hypovolemic shock following a rupture of the splenic artery (probably from a septic aneurysm).

Garfield does not get credit for any particular legislative achievements, because his time in office was too brief. Rather, his legacy is reflected in how his illness and death united the people of the country during the fractious time in the aftermath of the Civil War. And since Guiteau’s act had arisen in connection with the corrupt “spoils system” for giving out lucrative government job contracts, the popular revolt after the death led to the establishment of the civil service system. After his death, Garfield’s widow assembled his books and papers in a wing of their farmhouse, establishing the nation’s first-ever presidential library. 

The book is Destiny of the Republic. A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President, by Candice Millard, published by Doubleday in 2011. I'm pleased to add it to my list of recommended books.

Addendum 2016:
I am delighted to report that the superb television series American Experience has just released a program entitled "Murder of a President," about President Garfield; it is based on the book I reviewed above in 2012.  The two-hour program is playing on PBS stations around the country, and it can be viewed online here.

Reposted from 2016 because of the upcoming Netflix series Death by Lightning, which is scheduled to drop later this year.

Reposted from June because the Netflix series drops in two days.  Watched the first two episodes tonight.  They follow the history quite faithfully; it was a bit sad to watch because I know what's going to happen next.

The Lincoln Project creates some incisive videos

"Vertigo: The Rise and Fall of Weimar Germany"

This is an interesting longread about the Weimar Republic (Germany from the end of WWI until the mid-1930s).  It is a richly detailed book, and thus TMI for my personal needs, so I alternately browsed and read in depth various sections.

After WWI Germany entered a state of turbulent politics and economics.  There was civic turmoil because of internal dissension re the defeat in the war, combined with frankly chaotic economics leading to the famous hyperinflation.  Yet during this period there were major developments in lifestyle, employment (invention of typists and secretaries), fashion, sexual mores, architecture, automobiles, and design (Bauhaus). This book tries to cover as much of that as possible.  Herewith some excerpts and thoughts:

The Charleston dance was a life-changer for social interactions.  "The fact that one could dance the Charleston alone had consequences for the self-empowerment of the individual; to be able to join in solo on the dancefloor was nothing less than revolutionary." (xvii) (discussed in depth in Chapter 7)

Filmmaker Billy Wilder started his adult life as a gigolo in the dance halls of Berlin. (176)  After the war ended, Germans were crazed with the need to dance:

"Here and there two young girls dance together, sometimes even two young men; it's all the same to them.  They do it to the exotic sounds of the gramophone, which is fitted with robust needles to make it as loud as possible, and it rings out its shimmies, foxtrots and one-steps, its double foxtrots, African shimmies, java dances and polka creolas..." (180)

"The shimmy brought an unimagined freedom to the parquet.  Now people danced almost on the spot to whipped-up rhythms without touching one another... Where in the old days it would have been unthinkable to step on a dance floor without having first taken dancing classes, the new dances could only be learned by imitation..." (180) [followed by several pages of discussion of the shimmy]

"The rapturous experience of community in the ballroom grew even more intense in 1925 when the Charleston conquered the dance floors...  The Charleston turned dancers into acrobatic marionettes... The gramophone allowed people to dance at home and in the countryside... The Charleston was an uplifting dance.  It fired up the ego and inspired people to express their own emotions through dance.... The Charleston was particularly enjoyable for women.  They didn't have to be led, and were usually the more active, exuberant participants..." (186)

It was during this time period that "the weekend" was invented.  Two days off from work was revolutionary.

The cinema presented Charlie Chaplin and Marlene Dietrich, and was the top paid-for leisure activity.  "In the early 1920s most people didn't go to see a particular film, they just went to the cinema.  For that reason, many cinema owners didn't think it necessary to set a particular time for the screening to start.  Films were just shown one after the other, in any order.  People came and went... and watched for as long as they felt like it.  If the projectionist wanted to go home early he just played the film speeded up; silent films can take that.  More importantly there was no need for the audience to listen, so they made any amount of noise, chatted, applauded or commented bawdily on the action." (210)

Several chapters in the book discuss the great depression of the 1930s, when the country owed "reparations" to the West.  There were runs on the banks when hyperinflation went out of control.  Unemployment reached 30 to 40 percent of the population.  Then came the rise of the Nazis and of antisemitism.  Also major rifts developed between urban and rural populations.  There were calls for "an uprising by the countryside against the city... 

"...what one saw in the city was nothing but libertinism, women's emancipation, coarse language, and disrespectful irony...  Until the beginning of the depression these ingredients had constituted the charm of the liberal-left-wing Berlin cultural and media scene... but since optimism had fled from public life, the modernity of Berlin's cultural life seemed to have become more exclusive.  For those threatened by decline, the modern age felt less like freedom for all and more like pleasure for a few.  That intensified into the delusional claim that the modern arts were the destructive work of a corrupt elite that wanted to drive the soul out of the people  Hitler's campaign against 'degenerate art' would later be of prime importance for his success, because it included an assurance that the future volksstaat would be geared towards the taste of the people..." (316)

"... listening and looking more closely one could discern the gulfs of silence dividing society.  People liked to be among their own kind and held the rest in contempt,  Given the muddled state of things, even fewer people than usual were in a position to take anything meaningful from a discussion with people of a different opinion.  'Unity' and 'unanimity' were yearning words on everyone's lips, although there were only two ways of achieving either: through determined silence or brutal violence."  (330)

Most Germans had never learned to argue constructively.  They had been raised under the control of a Kaiser, and had done whatever they were told to do.  "When they jumped into freedom, few understood what it meant to take responsibility for oneself and consult with others in the abstract framework of democratic representation." (330)

"Opponents of the Berlin cultural scene had long asserted that it was indeed an island, but every milieu, every newspaper formed an island in itself, with its own opinion makers, whistleblowers and regular readers - an island where the opinions of outsiders were unwelcome.  Every political trend, every little party, the tiniest intellectual village had its own newspaper..  A form of the infamous 'filter bubble' or 'echo chamber' through which people can become intellectually isolated on digital networks in the present day also existed in Weimar Germany.  Reader and newspaper existed in a mutual relationship of confirmation bias; the newspaper wrote what the reader wanted to hear, and the reader stayed loyal as long as the paper didn't trouble him with unwelcome news." (332)

Three weeks after the 1933 election the members of the new Reichstag held their second meeting.  "On the agenda was Hitler's 'Law to Remedy the Distress of the People and Reich', also known as the Enabling Act.  This was intended to give the government the right to make laws independent of parliament and without regard for the constitution and constitutional rights..."  After a period of violence in the streets "the Enabling Act was passed with the necessary two-thirds majority, and democracy was abolished in an apparently democratic way."  (372)

The parallels between Weimar Germany and modern America are uncanny and deeply disturbing.  John Farrier, if you are on the acquisitions committee at your library, please advise them to consider this one.

The surprising etymology of "giddy"

"Giddy" is a familiar word, typically used to convey that the speaker is "joyfully elated; overcome with excitement or happiness," but it began life meaning possessed by a demon.  I'll let Wiktionary explain:

The adjective is derived from Middle English gidi, gedy, gydy (“demonically controlled or possessed; crazy, insane; foolish, idiotic, ridiculous, unwise; unsure; (rare) dizzy, shaky; (rare) of an animal: crazed, out of control; a fool”) [and other forms], from Old English gidiġ, gydiġ (“possessed by a demon or spirit, insane, mad”), from Proto-West Germanic *gudīg (“ghostly, spirited”, literally “possessed by a god or spirit”), from *god (“god”) + *-ig, *-g (suffix forming adjectives with the senses of being, doing, or having). The English word is analysable as god +‎ -y (suffix meaning ‘having the quality of’, forming adjectives).

You learn something every day.

Tilted-room sketches by Shaun Micallef

YouTube link.

A sketch from The Micallef P(r)ogram(me).  And if you like that one, here's more:

YouTube link.

Second repost (originally posted 2013) because after checking all the news online, I needed a laugh.  And this never gets old.

Watching the World Series... from a hotel bed

"The only hotel in North America to be found in a major league sports and entertainment venue, the Toronto Marriott City Centre has 348 pet-friendly guest rooms, including 68 that look right out into the stadium."

A recent Bloomberg article offered some observations regarding the monetary aspects of baseball'w World Series:

Sam McDadi, a real estate agent and holder of three tickets behind home plate  [will] attend Game 6 himself and bring two friends, despite receiving offers of as much as C$30,000 ($21,415) per seat. But he admitted to being tempted by that amount, especially when he bought his tickets for about C$3,000 each...

For those with smaller budgets, the cheapest available ticket for Friday’s game on the resale site StubHub was around $1,280 as of late Thursday night Toronto time...

Other businesses are also cashing in. The Blue Jays’ home stadium has an unusual feature: a Marriott hotel with 55 field-view rooms. Those went on sale Tuesday morning starting at C$8,500 per night for Games 6 and 7 and sold out immediately, according to a hotel executive. As of Thursday evening, Marriott’s booking site showed rooms available — because of canceled reservations — for around C$12,000 for Friday night...

...financial firms that have corporate boxes at the stadium will use access as a reward system. For anyone lucky enough to get an invitation, “it means you’re a good client, a good customer.”

There are all sorts of lines of commentary I could offer, depending on whether I'm wearing my sports-fan cap or my "elderly grumpy woke person" hat.  With regard to both of those hats, I'll note that every player on the field is not only a millionaire, but earns several million dollars every year, and they are battling to decide who will become the bigger multimillionaires.  

But the big transfer of wealth goes from the general public to the corporate overlords who control the business.  It's generally agreed that everyone is entitled to spend their money any way they please, and if someone chooses the World Series rather than sending funds to World Central Kitchen, they can do so.  But it feels oddly disturbing that this is what our world is evolving into.

Embedded mage and excerpted text from Adventures All Around, where there are more details about these rooms.

Halloween greetings to my neighbors

Ghosts rising from tombs...

A pumpkin patch...

... and a hybrid "cat-witch"

Brought to you by the same neighborhood chalk artists who created a butterfly garden on the driveway last month.