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Monthly Archives: May 2015

Remember to Bike Your Walk

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And Beware of Xinging and Peds

Reading from Bottom to Top? Or Top to Bottom?

California is perhaps the best state in the Union when it comes to road signs. I remember driving down I-80 from Truckee, Califonia to Reno, Nevada and suddenly becoming confused by the state’s failure to provide advance warning of exceptional road conditions. I found the same confusion in parts of Canada, Arizona, and New Mexico.

Perhaps the oddest Califonia signage practice is assuming the pedestrians, motorists, and bicycle riders read from bottom to top. Does any peoples on earth do this? On the Venice Boardwalk (above), I am told to Bike My Walk. Does that mean I should give up walking and get a bicycle instead? Should I install kickstands in the vicinity of my ankles? It’s just so confusing.

Is This Some Sort of Advertisement?

Is This Some Sort of Advertisement?

The other sign in this category is Xing Ped (or is it Ped Xing?) shown above. Perhaps if I bought some Xing Ped at my local pharmacy, I would have more of a spring in my step. I wonder, do I take it with meals?

Cabulco, Calbuco—Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off!

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Okay, So I Misspelled It!

Okay, So I Misspelled It!

It appears that I have been applying alternate spellings to the name of the Chilean volcano which is threatening the itinerary for my next vacation. No sooner did I decide to cross over the Andes between Bariloche, Argentina, and Puerto Varas, Chile, than the volcano Calbuco, which hadn’t erupted for decades, decided to erupt three times.

Above is a map from Chile’s Servicio Nacional de Geología y Minería (Sernageomin) showing the zone affected by Calbuco as of yesterday. The diagonally striped red lines show the dispersion of ash. The solid black area right around the rim of the volcano shows evidence of being changed by the eruptions, and the solid red areas are considered danger zones for any future eruptions.

I plan to go by bus from Petrohué to Puerto Varas (at the left edge of the map).

My hope is that the volcanic activity abates, allowing me to sneak by without getting caught up in the mess. Keep your fingers crossed!

 

Motor Mouth

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My 1,000-Post Anniversary

My 1,000-Post Anniversary

This is my thousandth post on WordPress since I joined in 2012. That amounts to a little less than one post a day for almost three years. It amazes me that I had that much to say.

And—you know what?—I’m by no means done with all the things I mean to say. So look to this pot for a strange potpourri of the things I’ve read, thoughts that flitted through my brains, my Internet experiences, movies I’ve seen, places I’ve visited as well as those I hope to visit, scientific conundrums, humor, and God knows what else.

Tomorrow, for instance, I plan to write about my problems with the Chilean volcano Cabulco. (I plan to skirt the danger zone on my way between San Carlos Bariloche, Argentina, and Puerto Varas, Chile.)

 

The King in the Parking Lot

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Portrait of Richard III Hanging in he National Portrait Gallery

Portrait of Richard III Hanging in he National Portrait Gallery

In Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time, Inspector Alan Grant of Scotland Yard is laid up in the hospital for a stretch, during which time he decides to investigate whether Richard III was really the villain painted by Shakespeare in his play of the same name. After examining the evidence, Grant decides in favor of the monarch killed at Bosworth Field on August 22, 1485. His successor, Henry VII, had Sir Thomas More write a biography blackening his name.

The portrait above also figured in Grant’s reasoning. Although it was painted over a century after Richard’s death, the subject’s face is not that of a vile murderer as described by Queen Margaret (widow of Henry VI) in the play:

From forth the kennel of thy womb hath crept
A hellhound that doth hunt us all to death:
That dog, that had his teeth before his eyes,
To worry lambs and lap their gentle blood,
That foul defacer of God’s handiwork,
That excellent grand tyrant of the earth
That reigns in gallèd eyes of weeping souls,
Thy womb let loose to chase us to our graves.

These lines are addressed to the old Duchess of York, Richard’s mother.

I was interested to hear that the body of Richard has finally been located, under the asphalt of a parking lot in Leicester. If you missed the story, you can find it, with photos, by clicking here.

An Improving Broken Shoulder

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How I Looked Before Physical Therapy

How I Looked Before Physical Therapy

Well, it looks as if I no longer qualify for that bellringer’s job. Before showing up at UCLA Rehab last week, I looked like the character above. But thanks to the skill of my physical therapists. aided and abetted by blasting caps and a jackhammer, I am able to move my arms almost as well a monkey in the trees.

This is hardly new to me. In 2002, when I had a left hip replacement, I had my first experience with physical therapy—with such success that my surgeon had to check his records to see which hip he had operated on, so natural was my walk. Then, in 2006, I slipped and fell on the ice during a blizzard in Tierra Del Fuego and cracked my humerus against a high concrete curb. Again, the PTs brought the affected limb back to life. Now, I broke the other shoulder on Saturday, March 14.

I am almost convinced that there is little that physical therapists cannot do. Well, not quite. They weren’t able to do much for the right arm of the guy in the picture below.

A Really Challenging Case for Recovering Full Range of Motion

A Really Challenging Case for Recovering Full Range of Motion

So my hearty thanks to Lynn and Prachi and their colleagues at UCLA Outpatient Rehabilitation and the miracles they accomplish.

 

A New Mascot for the GOP

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Don’t You Think It’s Appropriate?

Don’t You Think It’s Appropriate?

This is reprinted from a January 2012 posting to the late Multiply.Com:

While the donkey is not a bad mascot for the Democrats, I never thought of the elephant as the truest representation for the GOP. Elephants are actually fairly intelligent: Their brains are larger than those of any other land mammal. And whale brains, though they could be larger, are still smaller proportionately to the elephant’s brain. A whale twenty times as big an as elephant still has a brain that is only twice as large as the pachyderm’s. What is more, elephant brains are strikingly similar to human brains in structure and complexity.

No, what I propose for the Republicans as a symbol is the rhinoceros. Their thick hides do not allow facts to penetrate, and they are likely to launch an attack for no good reason at all. The rhino pictured above is from a 1550 German document and looks ideal for the party of Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, Rich Santorum, and Ron Paul.

What is the rhino’s message? “We don’t like your looks; we don’t care about what you have to say; and we are going to attack your ass until it’s hyena chow.”

Also, it is appropriate that the word rhino is British slang for money; and we all know the GOP is the party that stands for big money. (It’s interesting how that came into the language: rhino- is the Greek root for nose, and the word has come to mean cash money for paying through the nose.)

Smoky Nectar of the Gods

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Some People Dream of Fine Wines, But Not Me!

Some People Dream of Fine Wines, But Not Me!

I suppose this means I have no right to claim to be sophisticated, or even cosmopolitan. The fact of the matter is that I do not really care that much for wine. I would prefer a fine cognac or a full-bodied dark Jamaican rum—but most of all, I would prefer a fine Islay single malt Scotch.

During Prohibition, one Islay malt called Laphraoig (la-FROIG) was allowed through U.S. customs because it was thought to be a medicine. Oh, it is that to be sure! Like all single malts distilled on the island of Islay (pronounced EYE-lah), it is characterized by a smoky flavor, somewhat like Lapsang Souchong in the world of tea. It owes that smokiness to the peat on the island that is used to in the distilling process. According to Whisky.Com:

The level of smokiness of a whisky is determined by the time the barley grain is exposed to the pungent peat smoke during drying. Damp malt is usually dried for approximately 30 hours. Laphroaig dries its malt over peat fire for about 18 of these 30 hours, while Glengoyne uses only unpeated fire. Thus you get a broad variety ranging from extremely smoky whisky to almost completely smokeless whisky. Malt grains are peculiar in that they lend a hint of smokiness to the whisky even without a peat fire.

By the way, in Scotland, it is always spelled whisky. Only the more inferior products from furriners are referred to as whiskey.

About fifteen years ago, Martine and I spent several days at Bowmore, including a visit to the distillery (pictured above). We had been introduced to Bowmore  (bow-MORE) eight-year-old Scotch by Trader Joe’s stores, which tended to sell it at a steep discount around the holidays. I remember tasting the toasted Bowmore malt and finding it to be so delicious that I thought it would make a great breakfast cereal on its own. We also saw a fantastically aged barrel of the stuff worth thousands of pounds sterling and reserved for H.M. the Queen.

On their website, CBS news has an interesting website about the smoky Scotches of Islay which was started by the late Bob Simon and finished by Steve Kroft. It aired yesterday on “60 Minutes.”

During the early Middle Ages, Islay was the headquarters of the Lords of the Isles, who ruled from a small island on Loch Finlaggan. Their empire stretched across the Hebrides and whatever parts of Ireland and mainland Scotland they could hold. If you are interested in the period, you might try hunting up a copy of Nigel Tranter’s The Lord of the Isles, best enjoyed while sipping a fine Islay single malt whisky.

 

Majális

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Celebrating May Day and Mothers’ Day Together

Celebrating May Day and Mothers’ Day Together

On the first Sunday in May, the Grace Hungarian Reformed Church in Tarzana celebrates May Day and Mothers’ Day together. Although we are not members of the church, we regularly show up for some good Hungarian home cooking and some cute children’s singing and recitations.

Available were not only the world-class Magyar pastries, including ground walnut rolls and a lethal type of cream pastry called crémes (pronounced CRAY-mesh), but two kinds of soups—including Hungarian goulash—sausages, flekken, and assorted beverages. You can see the menu in Hungarian below:

Program (and Menu) for the Fesztivál

Program (and Menu) for the Fesztivál

The only unfortunate event is that, toward the middle of he afternoon, I saw one elderly lady trip over a concrete parking stop and break her right shoulder. She was scared and didn’t know what to do, but one of the parishioners drove her to a the hospital. It was eerie actually seeing the same sort of thing that happened to me happen to someone else. Except that I was in the company of a friend who is a nurse for the county and who knew exactly what to do. It’s no picnic, especially at her advanced age.

 

 

Deep, Deep in the Heart of Dixie

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The Stars and Bars Still Flies in a Corner of ... Brazil?

The Stars and Bars Still Flies in a Corner of … Brazil?

The Civil War ended a century and a half ago, but it is still being celebrated—strictly on the Rebel side, however—by descendants of the Southerners who emigrated to Brazil rather than submit to the indignation of Yankee Carpetbaggers. I was amused by a story on the NBC News website entitled “Confederate Roots Extend Far South … of the Equator.”

In an area near a place called Americana in the State of São Paulo, there is an annual Festa Confederada by descendants of the 10,000 Secessionists who were lured further south by Emperor Dom Pedro II to establish a successful cotton growing economy. Apparently, it worked.

Apparently Brazil was the last country in the Western World to abolish slavery, as late as 1888. So the first Confederados in Brazil were able to hold on to their slaves for some twenty years. As one can see from pictures taken at the Festa in Santa Barbara D’Oeste, the same symbols that would raise controversy in North America are celebrated openly in Brazil.

Although I am an enemy of all manifestations of the Confederacy in the United States, where the wounds of the Civil War are still bleeding, I find the South American recrudescence to be innocuous, as it appears to be unconnected with the type of race hatred which still rages in our country.

 

 

The Problem With Our Super Heroes

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There’s a Reason for Ferguson and Baltimore

There’s a Reason for Ferguson and Baltimore

Violence is woven into the warp and woof of American life. When we are young, it takes over our dreams and make us imagine a super self that can take revenge on the bullies that steal our lunch money and slam us into the hallway lockers. Even when we grow up and become strong, we want to have an edge over all the people we imagine could harm us. Perhaps these people are Black or Mexicans; they’re not our kind of people. Hence, they represent a threat to us.

Perhaps we don’t get into our superhero uniform and cosplay our way out of trouble. Instead, we get guns and use them when we are threatened. We go in for such nonsense as “open carry” and claim that we, in the spirit of the Second Amendment, constitute a militia. But we really don’t. Instead, perhaps our wives yell at us or make eyes at Ralph next door. We pull out our guns and blast away. Or Junior gets upset that Little Bobby stole his tricycle. He knows where Daddy keeps his loaded gun. He find it, and before you know it he’s on the evening news.

Notice that our superheroes are not interested in getting along with people, in negotiating calmly with them. It’s either blood, or you’re a wuss. We make fun of Europeans for being more civilized than us, but down which mean street would you prefer to walk? Laugavegur in Iceland’s Reykjavik? or Hough Avenue in Cleveland?

In his novel The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon depicted the cartoonists who created America’s superheroes as transferring the Jewish Ghetto hero that was the Golem to American streets. The problem is, things got out of hand. The translation went awry.

I’m not saying the superheroes are to blame: It’s just that they represent one of the elements in American life that symbolize the mess that we’re in.