Author: Dan Brekke

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Blog Billiards

A few days ago, before this last blog mini-hiatus, I posted a 108-year-old item from The New York Times (“Forced to Drink Beer“). The story describes a couple of bar denizens as “laughing immoderately.” That phrase prompted Marie, a regular reader from Springfield, Illinois, to search for it in the Times archives and link to the search in a comment. I’m not sure what period she searched, but “laughed immoderately” appears 59 times. Looking through the list of those who expressed mirth or amusement in this rather unrestrained manner, I saw that one of those whose guffaws are memorialized forever in the Times archives is Governor John P. Altgeld (see the clip below).

In responding on Marie’s comment, I mentioned the governor’s 1893 cameo in the search results. I referred to him as John P. “Eagle Forgotten” Altgeld, the second-greatest man who ever lived in Springfield (OK — your mileage may vary). “Eagle Forgotten” is the title of a biography of Altgeld first published (I think) in 1938. The book takes its title from a Vachel Lindsay poem about Altgeld, “The Eagle That Is Forgotten.” After reading my comment, Marie posted the poem.

OK, now: Rob, a blogger near New Orleans who reads both Marie’s posts and mine, read the poem. He’s in the habit of citing a blog of the day, and after reading “The Eagle That Is Forgotten,” linked to a Vachel Lindsay site.

I just like the serendipitous nature of this exchange. To keep it going, here’s another item to check out: the sculpture “Eagle Columns,” by Richard Hunt, at the southwestern corner of Sheffield, Lincoln, and Wrightwood, about a mile south of Wrigley Field. I happened across it one day on a long walk up to my parent’s place. Weirdly, I can’t find a single decent image of this installation online. Anyway, here’s what The New York Times had to say about it recently:

“The inspiration for … ‘Eagle Columns’ (1989) …was Mr. Hunt’s interest in two Chicagoans of the 1890’s, the liberal Illinois Governor John Peter Altgeld and the poet Vachel Lindsay. An ensemble of three soaring bronze towers, each surmounted by a fantastical eagle, commemorates the two: Altgeld, who pardoned three anarchists convicted of inciting violence during the Haymarket Square riot of 1886 on the ground that their trial was unfair, and Lindsay, who eulogized Altgeld in a paean titled ‘The Eagle That Is Forgotten.’ The monument is in a park across the street from Mr. Hunt’s Chicago studio.”

The park is Jonquil Park, and it’s in Altgeld’s old neighborhood. Also in the vicinity: his grave in Chicago’s Graceland Cemetery. (And if you’re really in a mood to get out and see Altgeld-related sites in Chicago, try here and here.)

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Local Business News Flash

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Cedar Market, exclusive dealer of Ipto s Tea, has reopened after about five months of closed doors. Or “grand opened,” if the banners outside the front door are to be taken at their word. I’m not convinced the “grand” is deserved. The store looks pretty bare right now. I talked to one of the owners. He says he doesn’t know what happened to the last crew. The best-stocked part of the store tonight is the beer refrigerator. To paraphrase the Lillian Gish character in “The Night of the Hunter,” it’s a hard world for little businesses.

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Forced to Drink Beer

From my continued researches in The New York Times archives, this little snippet from October 23, 1900 (to put the item in context just a little, the country’s male voters were getting ready to re-elect William McKinley; who was running against … William Jennings Bryan, a son of Salem, Illinois, I believe; how many elections have pitted major candidates with the same first name?).

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Tomales Point

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Sunday’s family outing (posted Monday the 17th but dated the 16th, when it happened), was up to Point Reyes. A favorite destination: The Tomales Point trail, which rambles and rolls for nearly 5 miles miles from a place called Pierce Point Ranch up to the very northern tip of Point Reyes. The trail is in the middle of some of the most beautiful countryside anywhere on the West Coast. And as a bonus you’ll likely get to see the herd of tule elk that have been reintroduced up at that northern end of the point.

In attendance yesterday: the visiting contingent of Chicago Brekkes; Eamon and Sakura, who drove up from Mountain View; and the Berkeleyites. (The picture above: looking northeast across poppies and rocks to Mount St. Helena).

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Boat Ride

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On the ferry to San Francisco from Oakland today, with Kate and out-of-town Brekkes. Yes, it really was that windy.

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Guest Weather

It’s a rule of thumb, for me anyway, that whatever benign weather we might be having here, in the world capital of benign weather, will take a turn for the worse if you have guests visit. On one famous occasion in the early ’90s, most of my family came out from Chicago for Christmas. They were thinking: what a lovely break from the onset of winter. When they landed in San Francisco though, we were at the start of a historic cold snap. The temperature was in the low 20s, and puddles on the roof of the parking garage outside the terminals had frozen solid enough that you could slide across them (and at least one of us did). The disembarking Chicagoans found they had come to a California that was colder than their hometown; at least for that week, anyway.

We have guests arriving tomorrow. My sister and brother-in-law and their two kids. Since our January-early February, when we got about a foot of rain in a month, it’s been mostly dry here. And warm. Last weekend it got close to 70. Now, of course, the weather has changed. Over the last day or so, we’ve had our first real rain in weeks; this morning was the hardest rain of the winter, maybe, though the really heavy part lasted for just a few minutes. Ann and Dan and Soren and Ingrid will be here for five days; I’m hoping we get to see the sun before they get back on the plane to go back to Chicago.

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A Thought for Wednesday

“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”

–Douglas Adams, quoted In yesterday’s Writer’s Almanac

Not that I’m thinking about any particular deadline.

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Undergraduate Notes

A couple of things I see in class that I didn’t see the last time I was in school (I think our president then was a cardigan-wearing Georgian):

Students who spend entire lecture hours on Facebook: Not to be anachronistic. There was no such thing as Facebook when I was at Cal in 1980. There was no such thing as a laptop. There was no such thing as a wireless network. But all that stuff is here today, and I frequently find myself seated behind students who sit through lecture checking on Facebook, or maybe toggling back and forth between some online entertainment and the notes they are taking. I’ve seen one student repeatedly spend an entire 90-minute session designing some sort of graphics. One young woman spent an entire class period texting on her cellphone; in fact, I wish I could have shot video of her because she was so fast. At least I think she was texting; she might have been playing a game.

Back in the olden days, you could be in class without being there, too: you brought a book or magazine or newspaper to read, or you wrote or doodled or daydreamed or snoozed (I’ve also been impressed by how ostentatiously some of my fellow students are about sleeping in class. Maybe all the instructors understand they are overworked).

Classroom meals: One of my classes has an hourlong discussion section at 1 p.m. every Thursday afternoon. There are about 15 of us in there. One student usually brings in a big takeout meal to tuck into while we ponder the subject of the day. The graduate student instructor who leads the section has never said anything, so I guess it’s an accepted part of the culture.

Classroom swilling: In another class, there’s a very fit-looking guy who sits in the front of the room. He will punctuate the professors lectures by bringing out a plastic gallon jug of water and taking a few good long pulls on it. I’m impressed at his commitment to slake his personal drought; a gallon of water weights 8 pounds, and that’s on top of whatever else he’s bringing to class. He’s obviously serious about his thirst.

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‘Over the Top’

If you’re a dedicated, long-time Northern California bicyclist, you might remember the name Henry Kingman. In fact, in days of yore he wrote for a monthly called Northern California Bicyclist. He is a good writer, is interested in everything, it seems, and is a hell of an imaginative and tough rider. I emailed him once and asked him to have lunch with me so I could ask advice about Paris-Brest-Paris–Henry rode it one year, unsupported, in 49-plus hours. Before we met, I found an account he had written of a ride he had done once from Chico, on the edge of the northern Sacramento Valley, across the mountains to Nevada. In the winter. On back roads. I haven’t read it in a long time; but with the tragic news yesterday of two cyclists dying down near San Jose when they were struck by a car, I think I was looking for something to lift my spirits a little. So I hunted down the piece, which wasn’t completely easy to find.

Excerpt:

“…Down to Crescent Mills, and stocked up at the store there: big jar of peanut butter, 4-pack of Premium crackers, chunk o’ cheese, cookies, pies, big can of corned beef, a couple of ramen noodles, etc, etc. Then headed up to Taylorsville, asking about the various dirt roads over the Sierras there, whether any would be passable. ‘Not a chance you’ll make it in the world,’ was the general reply, ‘but maybe you could get over the paved road to Antelope Lake if someone has taken a plow up there.’

“Meanwhile, though, a tremendous cold snap was on, with highs below freezing, so I had other ideas.

“Monte the stone mason could tell I was going to go for it. He was full of drama. ‘People get into trouble up there,” and so forth. I must have looked at him like he was completely naive. And he was, in a kind of wonderful way. To think for a second that the dangers of being out-witted by nature could come anywhere close to the danger of being fucked over by other people. Only someone living in a place so idyllic as Genessee, doing something as wholesome as stone masonry, only someone like that would worry about you heading off into the woods. The rest of the world knows its when you come out of the woods that the trouble starts.

I’d ridden about five miles up towards Genessee when Monte’s Bronco hauling a trailer scattered with stones leapfrogged me and came to a stop on the shoulder. ‘You okay?’ I asked, thinking maybe he’d broken down. ‘Here’s my card, it has an 800 number on it, call me when you get through. If I don’t hear from you, I’ll send help. I’ll be your backup.’

The link: ‘Impossible Birthday.’

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Stand Up Woman

Just wondering: The New York Times turned up quite a story on the governor out there. It was solid enough that the governor, a former lawman who prosecuted his way into high office, came out and all but confirmed it in a meeting with reporters. That’s all swell, and if one were to bet on the outcome, the governor will resign, and soon.

But there’s one thing I don’t get. When he went before the cameras, his wife went with him. She looked sad and somber but not shattered, which meant she was putting on a good show. But still: How does a guy who’s admitting to hiring a call girl persuade his wife to stand up with him for the rite of public exposure?

Maybe she’s demonstrating a love and commitment that is ready to endure the worst as well as the best of her marriage. That’s what we who have married all vow in some form; though a vow of facing up to a theoretical future trial is one thing and dealing with an ugly fact in the here and now is another. Maybe something else is at work: the wife having the responsibility to fulfill the public role to the end.

Either way, standing up with someone who had wounded me so deeply is more than I think I could do. I’d be tempted to say, hey, you didn’t need me when you were setting up your dates; you’re going to have to deal with this one by yourself.

(I will add, though, that the governor in question does score a point by not subjecting the electorate to an “I did not have sex with that woman” drama.)