I’m still alive. I worked all night. It was a night of the living dead, now today, it is the dawn of the dead. Sleep deprived, it is time to do it all over again.

Copper Cowboy Coffee Pots

What’s up, Doc? I fly to Albuquerque tomorrow morning. It is a business trip. I am uncertain as to its duration. It could be as long as a week, or it could be for only a day. I am at the mercy of schedule. Up until the close of business today, I was uncertain whether or not I would be going at all, but short of a last-minute cancellation, I should be good to go.

This is the time of year to go to New Mexico. It is cool, but hopefully not too cold. This will make any encounters with rattle-snakes and scorpions less likely. I will be working long hours, so future postings could be somewhat sparse. I could miss Dave, when he comes to town. Heck, I could even miss the Super Bowl, but life is an adventure.

Last night, Michigan State lost at Illinois, in basketball. State was rated nine, nationally, but has assuredly dropped precipitously since this game. I don’t know if Illinois was even rated? This begs the question of which team Val was rooting for, but I think that I already know this answer. I’ll “only” be a few hundred miles from her this week, I could just drop in, unannounced, and ask her.

It was a low scoring game, 42-41, and even though it was an upset, Illinois came under some criticism for this. One excuse that was floated, was that ball was over inflated. I think that State losing one of its better players to injury and the Illini’s “ugly” game strategy had more to do with the final score. Except, in a similar low scoring basketball game last year, it was discovered that Illinois had substituted a women’s basketball. The women’s basketball is smaller than the men’s, which in theory should have led to a higher scoring game, carnival games employ an opposite strategy, but I guess that it just threw the players of their game.

MAGNAT-DEBON

Miscommunications, garbled conversations, unintelligible blog posts, these are all products of the digital age, or rather its unintentional by-products. Sometimes though, pains are taken to purposely confuse a message and this can lead to unintended consequences. The case of the phrase, “The world wonders”, is a famous example of this.

“The world wonders” was a phrase used as security padding in an encrypted message sent to Admiral Halsey, during WWII. The full message was, “Where is Task Force 34? The world wonders.” The padding words were intended to be without meaning, and were added to hinder Japanese attempts at cryptanalysis, but were mistakenly included in the decoded message handed to Halsey and interpreted by him as a harsh and sarcastic rebuke. Halsey dropped his pursuit of a Japanese carrier task force and turned back.

Growing up, there were various techniques that could be employed to obfuscate the message. If you were old enough, you could hide your meaning from younger siblings, by spelling out the words. This method had a limited shelf life, but on the other hand, it helped to encourage your younger brothers and sisters to learn to spell. Next up was pig Latin.

Ownay oughthay, erethay areway automatedway igpay Atinlay anslatorstray atthay areway availableway orfay eefray onway ethay ebway.

Immigrant parents could wield their native tongue, in front of their Americanized children, but this could also result in the unintended consequence of immersing the children even deeper into American pop culture and there by obtaining an analogous level of unintelligibility. Come to think of it, even native born American parents can suffer from this problem.

Finally, there is the technique of pronouncing the words backwards. I remember doing this with Anne and her cousins. I was Kram and she was Enna. I was never as good at this as Anne was, but I don’t think that she ever held a candle to the above YouTube video girl’s talent.

Sed lacus. Donec lectus. Nullam pretium nibh ut turpis. Nam bibendum. In nulla tortor, elementum vel, tempor at, varius non, purus. Mauris vitae nisl nec metus placerat consectetuer. Donec ipsum. Proin imperdiet est. Phasellus dapibus semper urna. Pellentesque ornare, orci in consectetuer hendrerit, urna elit eleifend nunc, ut consectetuer nisl felis ac diam.

In publishing, lorem ipsum is filler text commonly used to demonstrate the graphics elements, such as font and layout. The lorem ipsum text is typically a section of a Latin text by Cicero with words altered, added and removed that make it nonsensical in meaning and not proper Latin.

I guess that you could say that the underlying theme of this post is talking nonsense. This is what you get, when there is no news to report and I haven’t spun out on to one of my rants. I’ll try to come to my senses by tomorrow, but anyway, the reader should always beware.

Cabin '89

I broached the topic of summer vacation plans in yesterday’s post and I would like to follow-up on this subject. First up, would be our trip to LA, to watch Dan graduate from college. While there we would like to see Anne’s Uncle Lou and Aunt Pearl. There is also our friend Cooper that we want to see and that is just LA. Anne has never seen Yosemite and it has 45+ years since I have visited this park. I called about lodging and the only beds left on the valley floor are in a tent camp. This would be fine, except when Anne’s sister Jane stayed there last, what she thought was a night of heavy rain, was actually 10” of snow, but hey, life is an adventure, right? We would then head north, almost to Sacramento, to the Gold Country, where Frank and Kathy live. Turning south, we would swing by Monterey and visit Chris and my Dad, and then sprint back to LAX. These are our plans for this trip. We still have to figure out is either of the boys will join us on this Tour de California. Dan will be there, but I don’t know his schedule. Dave could be returning from Hong Kong and could hook up with us. I also have to figure out how long this itinerary will take and this is just the first vacation.

Later in the summer, we will reprise last summer’s Michigan vacation. This year though, we’ll bike the UP, instead of the Lake Michigan shoreline. Any leftover time will be spent at the Cabin. There is still a lot of planning left to do, reservations to be made and people to be contacted. This vacationing biz is beginning to sound like work.

I thought that I was doing pretty well in the Luv-boat department, until yesterday, when Kubie pointed out that I owed Anne a dinner, or rather an all caps, DINNER. Anne bicycled 2K miles last year and that deserves recognition. Last time we did one of these recognition dinners it was at Tony’s, four stars Tony’s. Tony’s also happens to be the restaurant where I proposed to Anne, some thirty plus years ago. Finally, this last week was the fortieth anniversary of our first date. We attended a high-school concert of Bob Seger and the MC-5 together in our senior high-school year. So, instead of doing “pretty well”, I now seem to be floundering in the Luv-boat department. Amends must be made. Thank you, Kubie, for resetting me on this. Stay tuned folks! Valentines Day is lurking in the near future.

Anne is knitting Dave a Rams style hat. She hopes that it will look, just like one of their helmets. Yesterday, she was concerned that she had a twist in her knitting and was afraid that she could be making a Möbius strip cap. To wit, I had to ask, “How to you get your head around that problem, let alone get your head in it?” As it turns out, she thought that she had made a mistake, but she was mistaken.

The two main topics at the swap meet, at least among our friends, seemed be knees and summer bicycling plans. Our ages, as that of our bike friends, is such that many of our friends are either contemplating knee surgery or recovering from it. I am fortunate to be in neither camp, so the subject of summer vacations was much more interesting.

Anne is planning on doing the UP tour, run by the same group that organized last summer’s Michigan Shoreline tour. Some of our friends are planing on riding RAGBRAI, the Alleghany Trail and one is even going to Alaska. Anne and I are going to California, but not really to bicycle. After I scope out how many vacation days I will spend on that trip, I can figure out what to do for the rest of the summer.

Dave Bikes Mackinac Island

The following is the gist of the phone convo between me, her wyrd brother-in-law, and Jane. Convo is a synonym of conversation, but also conveys a certain hipness. Yeah, right. I tried being funny (ha-ha not looking), when the first thing I said was, “Did he feel like a Muslim?” Silence. Anne then exclaimed, “Tell her who you are!” I did and we were off and rolling, so much for me being funny. Jane’s answer was, “He felt like a Hawaiian.” Naturally, we were speaking of President Obama.

Jane attended Mr. Obama’s speech in Ann Arbor last week and got to shake his hand. News reports showed U of M students standing out in the cold all night to snag a ticket. Jane has friends and got special Whitehouse tickets to the event and spent most of her wait inside in the warmth.

The photo is from a few year’s back. Dave is obviously having a great time. Mackinac Island is a great place for family bicycling. I hear the fudge is pretty good too.

Rolling Thunder

More than any other city that I know, Saint Louis loves a parade. It should be no surprise then that today, Saint Louis became the first major American city to hold a welcome home parade for our returning Iraq war veterans. The last American troops left Iraq, at the end of last year.

January is a risky month for parade weather, but other than a cold west wind, you couldn’t ask for a better day for a parade. After a week of rain and grey, today’s sky was brilliantly blue. Even at noontime, it was still cold enough for ice to linger on frozen rain puddles. Anne and I biked downtown. While, not as crowded, not even by half, as last fall’s Cardinal World Championship parade, there was still a respectable turnout.

We bounced around in the crowd, alternating to and fro, between the sun and the shade. Standing in the sun was much warmer, but there was better viewing in the shade. Go figure! Everyone was extra polite to everyone else. The crowd thanked the soldiers for their service and the soldiers thanked the crowd for turning out. In addition to the returning veterans, veterans of American wars dating back to WWII were also represented. There were some of the usual Saint Louisan paraders, like the Moolah go-kart guys, but not near as many as in most parades. I especially loved seeing the service people with their families. One of the largest demographic was bikers.

There was a large contingent of bicycle cops. There were also wounded veterans riding hand-cycles, with prosthetics proudly displayed. Most of the bikers though were riding Harley’s. Sporting American flags galore, there must have been literally hundreds of motorcyclists in the parade, and nary was a one wearing a helmet. In Illinois helmets are optional, but the parade was in Missouri where they are not. It was a parade though, so maybe the regular rules didn’t apply. Each wave of bikers would rev their engines for effect and in the meantime push their bikes forward, Fred Flintstone style with their feet. All this sound and fury, signifying nothing, was fine. It was part of the spectacle. All save one A-hole who had no muffler and delighted in creating an ear-splitting roar. Still, it was a parade, so none of the rules seemed to apply.

Sorry for this rant against bikers. I should be more conciliatory, because they are brother two-wheelers. It is just that I don’t see the connection between middle-age men, wearing leather and making a racket and military service. Maybe it is the demographic, or maybe it is just about the noise. Years ago, when I use to rub shoulders with the local National Guard pilots, Lindbergh’s Own, they would tell stories of Saint Louisans calling up to complain about the noise made whenever they flew their fighter jets, “The noise made by your airplane woke-up my baby!” Their answer was always the same, “That’s the sound of freedom, Mam.”

Seurat's A Sunday on La Grande Jatte - Photo by UGArdener, Flickr Creative Commons

Date night! Dinner and a show with my Honey, dinner at CJ Muggs and a show at The Rep, Stephen Sondheim’s “Sunday in the Park With George”. The point of departure for this Sondheim musical is Georges Seurat’s most famous painting, “A Sunday Afternoon the Island of La Grande Jatte”, pictured above.

A 19th century, French painter, Seurat, pioneered the painting technique called Pointillism. He created his paintings by dabbing just the tip of his paintbrush onto the canvas. You might call this a quiet, but absorbing painting technique. Up close Seurat’s painting looks abstract, atomized color into thousands of dots. Step back though and the painting resolves itself into a picture of the artist’s vision. The engineer in me likens this technique to an early analog version of digitization. Unfortunately, Seurat never sold a painting in his lifetime and died at the age of 31.

Seurat, a modernist artist, is the perfect inspiration for this contemplative modernist musical. George, like his play, which thinks as much about itself as the rest of the world is too self-absorbed to even see his female lead, the aptly named Dot. His art is more important and if she cannot realize this, well then. The first act ends with a tour-de-theater on-stage recreation of Seurat’s famous painting.

Flash forward a hundred years and through intermission to the second act. George is now Seurat’s great-grandson. His grandmother, Seurat’s and Dot’s daughter is still on hand. George is still wrestling with the complexities of art and love, but this time around his art is just all sound and fury, signifying nothing.

This play about an artist that failed in love, in life, struck close to home. Our son, Dan is an artist and we worry about him. Art is a tough profession, as Seurat’s life testifies.

Pointillism is art composed of a thousand dots, nay a million, anyway quiet and absorbing work. So is making a thousand squirrels. Is making a thousand squirrels as lucky as making a thousand origami cranes? Only time will tell. No one, save Seurat, realized the greatness of his work, at the time. Dot realized the greatness of Seurat, the man, but her love was unrequited. His love of art, love of self, overshadowed her love, but, at least in the play, they both endured. I wonder it there will be any black squirrels?