Wednesday

bespoke / cycling / photo / Wednesday — Comments Off on My jacket pocket will look so great
30
Dec 20

My jacket pocket will look so great

I used my evening wisely. I made some more pocket squares.

Made, he said. Again, I didn’t plant, grow, weave or dye the material. I just bought it and fixed the edges and now I have a rainbow of colors.

Also, I am proud to show you these pocket squares, which are professionally manufactured. They were lovely Christmas gifts. Check these out:

And that one has an entirely different pattern on the back. So it’s essentially a reversible square.

My mother-in-law is incredibly thoughtful like that.

So I’m taken care of on pocket decoration. I have a color for every season and seven more pieces of fabric coming from some far, far off land.

We never really think of that much anymore. Everything is from somewhere else, or it could be. And things are made and shipped in such bulk that even the exotic items have lost some cachet. But at one point, having something shipped from another continent may as well have been the moon. People would probably marvel at the market. Probably because they had no idea where that place even was. Of course people made more things of their own, back then, he said pretentiously. And there were a lot fewer pocket squares. Now, you just get an Amazon email. It’ll get there eventually. You know, when it does. Whenever.

And it was an oversight on my part. Had I realized it had to travel so far I wouldn’t have paid $2.88 plus $.25 shipping for it.

Maybe I should think about silk for the next go-round. Silk! Remember reading about the luxury of silk in the old days? Truly, we live in amazing times, he said while watching a football game in Texas that they beamed to space, perhaps more than once, to get into my living room, where I spent the evening ironing fabric to make pocket squares.

I spent the afternoon on my bicycle.

That’s a painful, and painfully slow ride around Central Park, in Manhattan, and the fictional, futuristic parts of the city. At one point you’re riding on transparent bridges over the city and there are flying taxi cabs and I prefer the realistic courses, myself. But it was fun and slow and demanding. After one more ride tomorrow I will have hit all of those goals I set for myself last month.

Today I realized I had already set a goal for next year. My quads are already protesting.

books / cycling / photo / Wednesday — Comments Off on Lightly browned, but only just barely
23
Dec 20

Lightly browned, but only just barely

I’m going to try something different. Sitting still isn’t getting it done. Maybe moving around will mean something.

So I rode my bicycle through London.

On Zwift, of course. No one is traveling to London right now. People are still trying to get out of there, last I checked. New York is clamping down on visiting Brits, and we’re not allowed anywhere right now either.

But an hour in The Big Smoke gets the heart rate up and loosens all the muscles. It’s a good thing.

I had three little sprints, as you can see in the spikes of the graphic details the watts. Maybe, for a half a second, I could have turned on part of a toaster.

I’m not a big watts guy, because I don’t produce a lot of watts, but maybe I could learn.

Anyway, felt better after an hour on the bike. I’ll have to try that again tomorrow.

Elsewhere, not a lot going on. I am working on a image for Christmas, and I’m looking forward to wrapping up a book this evening. I’ve almost taken a mid-day nap two days in a row. So, that’s the pace of things, which is a lovely, lovely pace of things.

So … look forward to a brief book mention tomorrow. Which reminds me I forget to mention one two back. On Sunday night I finished McCullough’s book on the Wright Brothers, and mentioned it here on Monday. But, before that, at some point last week, I finally finished Richard Hughes’ Reviving The Ancient Faith.

I say finally because I started reading this, according to the traditional receipt bookmark, in 2006. I put it down about a third of the way through. And I never give up on books. It’s also as thorough as can be — and Hughes discusses, effectively and believably, why it isn’t more thorough. It’s an issue of source material, and even still, he churns out a cool 385 pages. The style was the problem. It’s almost a monograph, and it makes for dense reading, but its a serious treatment of serious people and their most serious subject matter.

I wrote a little about one person on Twitter last week.

It’s a good book about the Church of Christ, and it traces its way through the last few hundred years of people trying to figure out the belief system. I got this book wanting to learn about people to compliment what I’ve always learned about the Bible. This book does that, at the broadest level. The top review on Amazon says all the necessary things:

After forty plus years attending the Church of Christ, I am just now hearing the names of Alexander Campbell and Barton Stone. This is a very hard book to read for those of us who were raised Church of Christ and were never told of our origins or early leaders. Your belief that you are a member of the Church founded in 33 AD will be shattered. Here the curtain is pulled back and the leaders, editors, college administrators, who have formed Church of Christ doctrine over the years are exposed. The amount of debate, fighting, and bickering among the leaders through our short history is very disturbing. If you are happy in the Church of Christ and are looking for material to strengthen your faith, this book is not you. If you want to see how the Churches of Christ have developed by reading history that has been hidden away, this book may change you life.

In that light, I suspect it would be a disconcerting read for some. But history isn’t always easily palatable, which is one of the things that can sometimes make it fun.

The human parts are what really make it work. I learned that when I finally got a history teacher in school who made it about those people and emotions, and not just names and dates. And, so, here, one of the most interesting things I read in this book wasn’t even in this book. That Philip Mulkey, Sr. character, the 18th century preacher excommunicated for adultery, perfidy and falsehood, wasn’t in the book. That one description of Nancy Mulkey, near the end of the book, where it finally had the opportunity to talk about women in the church, had the one brief passage, which, in turn, led me to a late-night search which intrigued me. A long family line of preachers. And then Philip Mulkey, Sr. had his difficulties, whatever they really were. A person’s weaknesses and bad choices aren’t automatically amusing, but there’s a personal story there. It’d be worth learning more about, I’d bet.

But Mulkey isn’t in the book I’m wrapping up tonight, which I’ll briefly mention here soon. And he likely won’t be in the one after that, either. I may never know more about him than what a few genealogy websites can tell me.

Makes you think, and wonder, and worry, doesn’t it?

cycling / photo / Wednesday — Comments Off on A most heated debate
16
Dec 20

A most heated debate

We’ve come to the end of the unseasonably nice weather. Now we are down to the seasonably, inexorably normal weather. It isn’t all bad, you get about 15 minutes of sunlight a day, most days. And the tree nearest the back door is still holding on to some of it’s leaves, for some reason. They’re still green, even. The tree doesn’t know what to make of all of this, either.

Anyway, the outdoor riding is probably done until March or April, cruel a notion as that is. Forty degrees seems to be my threshold, and we won’t see a lot of that for a while. So, it’s inside we go, to the bike room!

It is the room with my bike in it. I will pedal furious circles and go nowhere, slowly.

But the windows will get a nice foggy appearance over the course of an hour or so.

There has erupted a minor controversy around here — meaning in the house, meaning only myself — about whether miles on the trainer count as miles. And, finally, after protests and demonstrations and heated debate — meaning I talked about it out loud and my lovely wife had to hear me utter three sentences on the subject — it was agreed that those miles do count.

So 20 miles today, and the annual tally can continue. We’re just setting all sorts of records this year. (Why, yes, there’s a spreadsheet charting these things.)

And these are the sort of updates you can expect for the next few weeks, I hope.

Bloomington / history / Wednesday — Comments Off on Back in time
9
Dec 20

Back in time

Let’s go back in time. Let’s go back 103 years back in time to see what the news was like around here. This is the Bloomington Evening World, which we’ve been reading from time-to-time. We’ve looked back through the contents three times this year — March, May and July — so we’re probably due another examination.

The Bloomington Evening World, went back to 1892 and published under that masthead until 1943. That’s a great run. It merged then with the wonderfully named Bloomington Telephone. A few mergers and name changes later, and what’s left of the current paper, The Herald-Times, will sorta claim the old paper.

This was the front page on December 19, 1917.

One of those stories you saw a lot of back then, and it meant a lot to the readers. These were our boys, after all.

Let’s look at some of those names. The first one listed there, Irvin Alexander, survived the war. He’d teach at West Point. He became an advisor to MacArthur and the Philippine army. In the early fighting in the Pacific he was wounded twice, before being captured and, ultimately, becoming a part of the Bataan Death March. That was a 60+ mile trek that claimed as many as 18,000 lives. He did three years as a Japanese POW, which was a demanding daily existence with little food, minimal fuel and brutal captors. Part of that time was captivity in Korea. That meant time on a boat. The death rates on the Japanese transfer vessels was notoriously high. And there was the risk of simply being on the water. Alexander survived two ship sinkings to even get there. He survived all that. He wrote a memoir a few years later that was published years after his death. It gets great reviews. He died in 1963, on his way to a visit of Mexico, with his wife.

Maurice Parks was a singer before the war, and after he came home he was part of a popular act, the Old Town
Quartette. He died in 1947, and is buried in a cemetery not too far away.

Oscar Dillman came home, and he would be elected commander of the local American Legion. He passed away at 56, in 1946. He’s buried just three miles away.

Leland Highlet was the unlucky lad on the destroyer spotted and sunk by a U-boat between France and Ireland. About 30 of the sailors, on a vessel that had a manifest of 99, survived.

Christmas advertising, front page advertising, it’s all been with us for a while.

There’s a restaurant at that address today.

Charming motorist in the red car. What can I say? Welcome to Bloomington.

This was the first undamaged zeppelin captured in France.

There’s a terrific picture, and more information, here.

It was your decade, so, if you say so …

This is an ad, found on page three. And some ad, huh?

Right next to it was a timeline of the declarations of war from the past three years. And, in no special font or stroke, there was the note reminding you that the US had declared war on Germany eight months earlier, and Austria just three days before.

“So I went down to the drug store and got you this snazzy gift.”

Such was the power of Kodak upon the zeitgeist that simply saying the brand name carried real heft. Wood Wiles bought the place in 1899. He ran it for some 30 years, until he had a heart attack in his store. His son took it over. In 1952 he moved it a block up the street, where it prospered for many years. The company stayed in business until 1985. The original location is today a restaurant, and a nice one. The second location is now a bookstore.

Did you think of the grocery boys? And why have people always been this way? Oh, I know it’s ten below zero, but I want my groceries now!

“We have spared ourselves no pains” … they just don’t write good ad copy these days, do they?

The Harris-Grand was a popular theater for decades. A couple of fires did it in. THere are some small stores and a parking deck there now.

Can you see any of these movies today? Right now? Yes you can.

journalism / links / podcast / Wednesday — Comments Off on The week with bad titles, part three
2
Dec 20

The week with bad titles, part three

I forgot to include this here earlier this week. So, without prelude, give us the fancy old-fashioned banner.

I talked with Dr. Siering a week or so ago about pedagogy and remote learning and all these sorts of things that faculty and students are dealing with just now. It’s a good episode if you’re a faculty member or a student. (And you know they all stop through here.) It might be only for them. But, nevertheless, we’re covering all the bases.

And now I have to go out and find a few more people to interview. Should be fun! What topics should we cover?

We haven’t filled out this space with other stories recently, let’s do that now.

Birmingham woman raising 12 kids after sister, brother-in-law die from COVID

Already raising seven biological children ranging in age from 2 to 17 as a working, single mother, the 40-year-old Birmingham resident’s last conversation with her dying sister in UAB Hospital about the arrangements for their kids was no longer hypothetical.

[…]

And her sister’s children are not without anxieties of their own, she said. On top of the grief of losing both their parents, the children are reluctant to go outside out of fear of catching COVID-19, Francesca McCall said.

But all things considered, she said, “We’re doing OK. They have their [tough] moments at times, processing everything.”

The GoFundMe account has raised $40,000+ since that story was published.

These seem like charming people. Philly’s Four Seasons Total Landscaping dishes the dirt on the news conference heard ’round the world: ‘It was nothing we anticipated’:

The merchandise sales of Four Seasons Total Landscaping have taken on a life of their own. The conference room at their office has become a makeshift fulfillment center, as Siravo and the company’s 28 full-time employees take turns bagging orders and printing labels, starting at 6 a.m and racking up overtime hours working long into the night.

Partnering with half a dozen local vendors (all but one is located in the Philadelphia region), the company has sold over 35,000 orders for T-shirts, ugly Christmas sweaters, face masks — totaling $1.3 million in sales. (Much of the money will be used to pay back vendors, shipping costs, and more, Middleton said, making clear that Four Seasons won’t be putting $1.3 million in its bank account.)

[…]

In hopes of helping others during Four Season’s moment in the sun, Siravo said the company is participating in a Toys for Tots drive with St. Christopher’s Hospital. Through Dec. 11, visitors can drop off unwrapped toys at the office in exchange for a Four Seasons sticker. Separately, Siravo said the company is also collecting coats, hats, socks, and other cold-weather clothing to donate to local charity.

This looks like a nice place to visit. The Munich Atelier where stained glass comes to life:

The Mayers oversee the business from a series of sunny, art-filled rooms on the top two floors of the building. Dozens of warrenlike workshops and ateliers crowd the four floors beneath — here, workmen restore historic stained-glass windows and mosaics, while others make contemporary works. The labyrinthine basement archive houses an extensive collection of vintage stained-glass works.

The only problem is that he’s going to look like Carlton Banks for the rest of his life. The hardest-working man in show business:

Yet as much as the world equates Ribeiro to Carlton, the years following The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air may have revealed more about the man—his persistence, his versatility, and his undeniability. If you let him tell it, for a while the role Ribeiro played so well was the role that held him back. “Imagine for a second you do a role so well that they tell you you’re not allowed to do anything else ever again because they can’t believe that you’re not that guy,” he says. But the ceiling Ribeiro hit as an actor forced him to develop other skills, which helped him emerge as one of the most versatile—albeit underrated—performers in Hollywood.

I’ll never understand. You’d think casting agents and directors would be … imaginative.

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