Archive for June, 2014
Today’s fun fact (suitable for use in schools)
Saturday, June 14th, 2014Obit watch: June 14, 2014.
Saturday, June 14th, 2014By way of Lawrence: Chuck Noll, legendary coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Huh. History is a funny thing, isn’t it?
Edited to add: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette obit.
Yeah, yeah, yeah…
Friday, June 13th, 2014I beg you to give money to people, and then stop writing. I know, I suck.
There just hasn’t been anything I wanted to write about in the past couple of days. I am working on what I thought would be a major post, but looks like it will actually turn into two major posts; however, those need to wait for me to do more research and take some photos, which probably won’t be before Sunday.
If I have a chance tomorrow, I may put up the Columbus after-action report, and possibly a list of some books I’ve read and enjoyed recently. We’ll see how things go. Watch this space.
Good men need help.
Wednesday, June 11th, 2014Yeah. I’m going to ask you to give money to a cause again. Actually, two causes.
I can’t say that I know Erik, who blogs at Live From the Alamo City, that well. That is mostly my fault. We’ve had several friendly exchanges on my blog and on his blog, and we’ve been talking about getting a group of bloggers together for barbecue. (San Antonio isn’t that far.) But life events keep getting in the way.
Anyway, Erik and his wife are going through a whole bunch of shit that nobody should have to go through. Car troubles, having to find a new place to live…
But the biggest thing is that Erik’s wife is pregnant, and their child is not going to survive. This sucks so horribly that I have trouble coming up with words for it without getting all choked up, so I’ll direct you over to this post at the great and good Erin Palette’s site. I’m pretty sure Erin got choked up as well, but since she’s already written a post, I can be lazy leverage her choke-up-ness.
There’s a YouCaring page set up for donations to help Erik and his wife with expenses. I’d like to ask you to consider donating if you can. I wouldn’t ask you to do this if I hadn’t already done so; I just wish I could donate more.
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You’ll notice that Erin’s post is a twofer. I don’t know TinCan Assassin at all, either, but he’s going through a messy personal situation right now, and could also use help with lawyers and money to pay for lawyers. If you can spare some funds for him as well, I’d really appreciate it. Again, I wouldn’t ask you to do this if I had not already done so.
More random photos from the road.
Sunday, June 8th, 2014In retrospect, it would have been better if I had uploaded these on Friday, but I’ve been busier than the proverbial one-legged man in a butt-kicking contest since Friday night. This is the first chance I’ve had to settle down and post photos.
Peace statue, Ohio Statehouse, Columbus, Ohio.
Ohio Veterans Plaza, Ohio Statehouse, Columbus, Ohio.
The Veterans Plaza does something I haven’t seen before, and that I kind of like. The writing on that wall isn’t names; those are excerpts from letters by veterans. You can read the complete text here.
Noted for the historical record.
Friday, June 6th, 2014
Charles Myers was my mother’s uncle, which would make him my grand-uncle. Not mentioned in his obituary, but told to me by my mother: he was on the beach at Normandy.
Remember…
Random notes: June 6, 2014.
Friday, June 6th, 2014The NYT obit for Chester Nez clarifies a point I was confused on:
…
This should not be taken as an attempt to diminish the accomplishments of Mr. Nez, the other 28 original code talkers, or the ones who followed the first 29; I’m just trying to make sure the historical record is clear. (I felt some of the other media coverage confused this point.)
This goes out to our great and good friend RoadRich: Whiskey 7 made it back to Normandy. Briefly: Whiskey 7 is a restored C-47 transport that originally dropped troops over Normandy. It was in a museum in New York, but was invited back to Normandy for the 70th anniversary. So a crew from the museum flew it across the Atlantic…
(One of these days, I want to ride in a C-47. Or a DC-3. I’m not picky.)
Fun feature piece by John Marchese in the NYT:
Things I didn’t know:
- I was not aware of the Louis Armstrong House Museum.
- “The archive is housed in the library of Queens College in Flushing and is open to anyone who calls ahead to arrange an appointment. And if you bring your own mouthpiece, you can play one of five Armstrong trumpets kept there.” Not that I would ever do that, since I can’t carry a tune in a bucket (much less play the trumpet), but I can imagine this would be incredibly cool if you were a trumpet player.
- “… he spent much of his time in his wood-paneled second-floor den, making mixtapes on his two reel-to-reel recorders and decorating the tape boxes with elaborate and often humorous collages.”
- The Armstrong red beans and rice recipe.
Obit watch: June 5, 2014.
Thursday, June 5th, 2014Lady Mary Soames passed away last Saturday. Mrs. Soames was the last surviving child of Winston Churchill, and wrote extensively (and, by all the accounts I’ve seen, well) about her family.
And we are obligated to note the passing of Chester Nez, Navajo code talker.
Nez, a painter, earned a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from the University in Kansas in 2012.
Almost missed it…
Wednesday, June 4th, 2014…but yes, today is the day.
What day is it? The 40th anniversary of Ten Cent Beer Night.
Also coming up this year: the 35th anniversary of Disco Demolition Night.
I’ve previously made note of the strange career of Rusty Torres, who was on the field for three forfeited games. What I did not know, until I stumbled across it in Wikipedia, is that Nestor Chylak was also involved in both Ten Cent Beer Night (as crew chief of the umpires that night) and Disco Demolition Night (as “assistant league supervisor of umpires”; he was in the umpires’ dressing room at Comiskey Park that night, and ordered the forfeit).
Here’s a couple of links to coverage from the paper of record: Link one. Link two. Please leave a comment if those don’t work for you.
And here’s your obligatory 40th anniversary interview from the Cleveland Plain Dealer, complete with a reprint of the original coverage from 1974.
Noted for the historical record.
Wednesday, June 4th, 2014Indicted California Democratic State Senator Leland “Uncle” Yee finished third out of a field of eight candidates for the post of California secretary of state, collecting “more than a quarter-million votes“.
Obit watch.
Wednesday, June 4th, 2014I missed this while I was on the road: Robert W. Sallee died last week.
Mr. Sallee was the last survivor of the 1949 Mann Gulch fire, which killed 12 out of 15 smoke jumpers (and one non-smoke jumper). Mr. Sallee and another man, Walter Rumsey, managed to run uphill and escape the fire: R. Wagner Dodge, the leader of the group, escaped by lighting a backfire and lying in the embers.
I know I’ve said this before, but Young Men and Fire
Experiments in composition.
Tuesday, June 3rd, 2014My great and good friend Marty recommended a Chinese restaurant named Moy’s to me. This is just a tiny hole-in-the-wall place near the Ohio State campus, but Marty was right; it was pretty darn good, and the people were very friendly. If you’re in Columbus, I urge you to give it a try.
It turns out that Moy’s was also just straight up High Street from my hotel. Waze had it at about two and a half miles; I took a cab up to the restaurant. I was going to flag one down when I left, but it was a nice night, so I decided to walk back to the hotel. The walk down High Street takes you along the fringe of Ohio State. I almost want to say High Street is to Ohio State what Guadalupe is to the University of Texas.
I didn’t bring the Nikon with me, but I did take a couple of photos with the iPhone that I thought were compositionally interesting. You might not agree, which is fine with me. I’m just messing around, trying to get better.
Wexner Center for the Arts
Those black spaces actually have quotes on them; if you zoom in far enough, you should be able to read them. I can’t find a site that transcribes them, or I’d link it here. But I do like this one from Edmund Burke: “Law and arbitrary power are at eternal enmity.”
Edited to add: I cropped the Wexner Center photo some, but the law school photo is untouched. I didn’t do anything to the exposure on either of those.
Flames, hyena, etc. (#13 in a series).
Tuesday, June 3rd, 2014Patrick D. Cannon, the former mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina, has pled guilty to one count of “honest services wire fraud”. (Previously.)
Strippers. Always with the strippers.
And this has the potential to be epic for more than one reason:
There’s the whole “prosecutor going to jail and being disbarred” thing. There’s the whole circus surrounding any NYC political figure being charged with a crime. And then there’s the whole “misuse of asset forfeiture funds” aspect, about which Radley Balko and others have written so eloquently.
On the road again…
Monday, June 2nd, 2014Heading home. Travel day. In the meantime:
1. Go read this post by Tam. There are echos in it of something some less smart person wrote a couple of years ago.
2. I didn’t realize until the middle of last week that this year is the 50th anniversary of the .41 Magnum. (Ask me about my Model 57.)
3. I took a fair number of photos yesterday while running around with my aunt and uncle (who graciously drove the two hours each way from Cleveland to spend part of the day with me; thanks again, guys!). I’m waiting until I get back to do the post-processing and uploading, but I thought I’d throw one up here that I played with last night.
I took this with the D40X and the 18-55 kit zoom. It was cropped and the exposure adjusted slightly using Shotwell on Project e. I’m actually pretty happy with the end product, though I may make a second pass over it once I’m in front of iPhoto.
If it weren’t for bad luck…
Sunday, June 1st, 2014I’ve briefly touched on, but never discussed in detail, Philadelphia’s two troubled daily newspapers (the Daily News and the Inquirer). In brief, they’ve gone through bankruptcy, ownership changes, ownership conflicts, and more ownership changes.
Early last week, the papers were bought by a group of investors led by Lewis Katz.
Last night, Lewis Katz and six other people were killed in a private jet crash.
This is sad and awful and I don’t intend to mock anyone’s death. I note it here because it seems like the Philly papers are just one hard luck story after another. Mr. Katz’s son is apparently going to take his place on the board that manages the papers; if you read the linked article about the purchase, though, it doesn’t seem clear that the late Mr. Katz or his partners had a turn-around plan for the papers, or that they even expected to win the bidding war for them. With Mr. Katz gone, I suspect that’s going to complicate things even more.
(Hattip: Jimbo.)