Author: Dan Brekke

Posted on

Same Store, New Location

For years, this blog has been hosted on Typepad. The virtue of publishing it there has been I could pretty much write my text and slap my pictures into a post editor, hit a button, and forget about everything. The service has always worked reasonably well and in recent years seems to have had far fewer of the outages and hiccups that once afflicted it.

And I’m not sure why I’m going away from it now, except for the monthly bill of 13 dollars and something. Do I  really need to spend that money, or could I do better?  Especially when I, like so many people, have moved to other platforms for sharing our favorite links, insights, bons mots and car-crash videos. I’ve thought about going to WordPress, and today and tonight, that’s what’s happened. I opened a web hosting account, installed WordPress there, and am in the process of importing my Typepad files there.

And speaking of those files: I am hardly the most prolific of diarists or bloggers, but the posts go back to November 2003, and there are 2,600 of them, along with 3,600 comments. If nothing else, a pretty significant chunk of history. For a while, anyway, I plan to keep it going. Maybe this will just be an archive, or maybe I’ll figure out some other direction to take this long, long project.

Thanks for still reading.

Posted on

Heat

“There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.”

— Raymond Chandler, “Red Wind”

***

“It was past noon, and very hot. The bar was full of reflected river light, with dancing veins of gold. … The light was the light of the very early afternoon — everything stoked up, the blaze got truly going, but with a hint of the blaze about to consume itself.”

— V.S. Naipaul, “A Bend in the River”

***

“Gimme Swelter”

— New York Daily News

***

BERGEN-EASTERN PASSAIC-ESSEX-HUDSON-UNION-

1142 AM EDT TUE JUL 18 2006

AN EXCESSIVE HEAT WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 7 PM EDT THIS EVENING.

HIGH TEMPERATURES WILL TOP OUT IN THE UPPER 90S TO AROUND 100 DEGREES TODAY…WITH HEAT INDICES REACHING 105 TO 107 DEGREES DURING THE AFTERNOON. MAKE PLANS TO CHECK ON THOSE MOST SUSCEPTIBLE TO THE HEAT SUCH AS THE ELDERLY AND VERY YOUNG. PETS WILL ALSO NEED YOUR SPECIAL ATTENTION DURING THIS TIME.

AN EXCESSIVE HEAT WARNING IS ISSUED WHEN HIGH HUMIDITIES ARE EXPECTED TO COMBINE WITH HOT TEMPERATURES TO MAKE IT FEEL LIKE IT IS 105 DEGREES OR GREATER. DRINK PLENTY OF FLUIDS…STAY IN AN

AIR-CONDITIONED ROOM…STAY OUT OF THE SUN…AND CHECK UP ON RELATIVES AND NEIGHBORS.

— Excessive Heat Warning for northeastern New Jersey

***

URGENT – WEATHER MESSAGE

NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE MOUNT HOLLY NJ

342 PM EDT TUE JUL 18 2006

…EXCESSIVE HEAT WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 9 PM EDT THIS EVENING…

A VERY HOT AND HUMID AIR MASS WILL REMAIN OVER OUR REGION EARLY THIS EVENING. THE COMBINATION OF THE HEAT AND HUMIDITY WILL RESULT IN DANGEROUS CONDITIONS. THE HEAT WILL DIMINISH AFTER SUNSET. HOWEVER, HUMIDITY WILL STILL REMAIN UNCOMFORTABLE. …

STAY PREPARED FOR THE HEAT. WEAR LOOSE FITTING AND LIGHT COLORED CLOTHING. DRINK PLENTY OF NON-ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES TO PREVENT DEHYDRATION. IF POSSIBLE, AVOID STRENUOUS ACTIVITY DURING THE

HOTTEST PART OF THE DAY, WHICH IS TYPICALLY BETWEEN 1:00 AND 6:00 PM.

REMEMBER THAT THE ELDERLY, THE INFIRM AND THE VERY YOUNG ARE MOST SUSCEPTIBLE TO HEAT RELATED HEALTH PROBLEMS. BE SURE TO CHECK ON YOUR ELDERLY NEIGHBORS AND RELATIVES.

MAKE PROVISIONS FOR PETS AND ANIMALS BY INSURING THAT THEY HAVE PLENTY OF COOL WATER TO DRINK AND SHADE IN WHICH TO REST.

— Excessive Heat Warning, Philadelphia Area

***

URGENT – WEATHER MESSAGE

NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE BALTIMORE MD/WASHINGTON DC

334 PM EDT TUE JUL 18 2006

… THE MOST IMPORTANT THING TO REMEMBER WHEN THE WEATHER TURNS HOT IS TO DRINK PLENTY OF FLUIDS. WATER IS YOUR BEST CHOICE AS IT PREVENTS DEHYDRATION. IF YOU ARE WORKING OR EXERCISING OUTSIDE AND FEEL DIZZY OR ARE GETTING MUSCLE CRAMPS…STOP IMMEDIATELY AND SEEK MEDICAL HELP. THE ELDERLY AND YOUNG ARE MOST SUSCEPTIBLE TO HEAT RELATED INJURIES…CHECK ON THEM OFTEN. NEVER LEAVE PETS UNATTENDED IN AUTOMOBILES – TEMPERATURES CAN SOAR TO 130 DEGREES IN A MATTER OF MINUTES.

–Heat Advisory for Washington, D.C.-Baltimore area

***

URGENT – WEATHER MESSAGE

NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE WAKEFIELD VA

1136 AM EDT TUE JUL 18 2006

… A HEAT ADVISORY MEANS THAT A PERIOD OF HOT TEMPERATURES IS EXPECTED. THE COMBINATION OF HOT TEMPERATURES AND HIGH HUMIDITY WILL COMBINE TO CREATE A SITUATION IN WHICH HEAT ILLNESSES ARE POSSIBLE. DRINK PLENTY OF FLUIDS…STAY IN AN AIR-CONDITIONED ROOM…STAY OUT OF THE DIRECT SUNLIGHT…AND CHECK UP ON RELATIVES AND NEIGHBORS.

THE ELDERLY…YOUNG CHILDREN…PETS…AND LIVESTOCK ARE THE MOST LIKELY TO BE IMPACTED BY HEAT RELATED ILLNESSES AND DEHYDRATION. CAUTION SHOULD BE EXERCISED IF YOU PLAN TO BE OUTSIDE. DRINK PLENTY OF WATER. LIMIT YOUR EXPOSURE TO DIRECT SUNLIGHT…USE SUNSCREEN AND WEAR LIGHT COLORED CLOTHING.

Heat Advisory for central and southern Virginia and North Carolina

***

URGENT – WEATHER MESSAGE

NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE KANSAS CITY/PLEASANT HILL MO

118 PM CDT TUE JUL 18 2006

.HIGH TEMPERATURES HAVE BEEN IN THE 90S SINCE LAST WEDNESDAY… AND VERY HOT AND HUMID CONDITIONS WILL PERSIST THROUGH TOMORROW AND THURSDAY. THE LAST TWO DAYS HAVE BEEN ESPECIALLY BRUTAL… WITH MANY LOCATIONS IN KANSAS AND MISSOURI REPORTING 100 DEGREE TEMPERATURES WITH HIGH LEVELS OF HUMIDITY. WITH DAY AFTER DAY OF EXCESSIVE HEAT… THE CUMULATIVE EFFECT OF THE OPPRESSIVE CONDITIONS WILL TAKE ITS TOLL ON THE ELDERLY AND PEOPLE WITH POOR HEALTH. …

AN EXCESSIVE HEAT WARNING IS ISSUED WHEN THE COMBINATION OF HOT TEMPERATURES AND HIGH HUMIDITY IS EXPECTED TO RESULT IN HEAT INDICES EXCEEDING 105 DEGREES FOR AT LEAST 3 HOURS…FOR THREE OR MORE CONSECUTIVE DAYS. AVOID PROLONGED EXPOSURE TO THE HEAT…AND BE SURE TO DRINK PLENTY OF WATER. ALSO AVOID ANY STRENUOUS OUTDOOR PHYSICAL ACTIVITY…PARTICULARLY DURING THE HOTTEST AFTERNOON HOURS.

CHILDREN…THE ELDERLY…AND PEOPLE WITH CHRONIC ILLNESSES…ARE USUALLY THE FIRST TO SUFFER FROM THE HEAT. HEAT EXHAUSTION…OR IN EXTREME CASES HEAT STROKE…MAY RESULT FROM PROLONGED EXPOSURE TO THESE CONDITIONS. BE SURE TO PERIODICALLY CHECK ON PEOPLE WHO ARE MOST AT RISK. SEEK OUT AN AIR CONDITIONED LOCATION DURING THE HOTTEST PART OF THE DAY. IF YOU OR SOMEONE YOU KNOW DOES NOT HAVE ACCESS TO AIR CONDITIONING…CONTACT YOUR LOCAL OFFICIALS TO INQUIRE ABOUT THE AVAILABILITY OF COOLING CENTERS IN YOUR AREA.

Excessive Heat Warning, Kansas City area

***

URGENT – WEATHER MESSAGE

NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE ST LOUIS MO

457 AM CDT TUE JUL 18 2006

… FOR THOSE LIVING IN NON-AIR CONDITIONED BUILDINGS…THE DANGERS OF HEAT RELATED ILLNESSES WILL BE INCREASING DRAMATICALLY OVER THE NEXT FEW DAYS BECAUSE OF THE PERSISTENT HOT AND HUMID CONDITIONS. FROM TIME TO TIME…BE SURE TO CHECK ON FRIENDS AND RELATIVES THAT DO NOT HAVE AIR CONDITIONING…ESPECIALLY IF THEY LIVE ALONE. OPEN WINDOWS AND USE FANS TO MOVE THE AIR…AND IF POSSIBLE TRY TO GO TO AN AIR CONDITIONED LOCATION FOR A FEW HOURS EACH DAY TO GIVE YOUR BODY A BREAK FROM THE HEAT. …

IF YOU HAVE AIR-CONDITIONING…USE IT! IF COST IS A CONCERN…UTILITIES AND OTHER LOCAL AGENCIES WILL BE ABLE TO HELP WITH THE ADDED EXPENSE. FOR PEOPLE IN THE ST. LOUIS METROPOLITAN AREA NEEDING INFORMATION ON COOLING CENTERS OR ENERGY ASSISTANCE RELATED TO THE EXCESSIVE HEAT…YOU CAN CALL OPERATION WEATHER SURVIVAL AT THE UNITED WAY OF GREATER ST. LOUIS. THE NUMBER IS 800-427-4626.

Excessive Heat Warning for east-central Missouri and west-central Illinois

Posted on

A Teacher (2)

A few years ago, another former teacher of mine, Mort Castle — also a longtime friend of G.E. Smith — helped G.E. pull together the hundreds of poems he had written since he was a boy in central Illinois and select some to be self-published in what turned out to be a pretty hefty volume called “Long Trails from Pleasant Hill.”

Longtrails
At various times, G.E. talked about his youthful ambition to be a writer. Most of the time he was dismissive of his own efforts, though occasionally he would talk about the factors that led him in other directions. For instance, that other writers had already said what he wanted to say, except better (published writers are the ones who realize this and keep going anyway). More significantly: His teaching absorbed so much of his time, intellectual energy and creative attention he didn’t really have the resources to follow his writing seriously. That was not an excuse: He poured all of himself into his classes and students, to the point where the demands he placed on himself brought him to and beyond the point of exhaustion. As Mort remembered in his little introduction to “Long Trails”:

“In 1968, I was Smith’s student teacher. I saw him in action, ‘grading papers,’ and it was not a quick-scrawl ‘Nice figure of speech’ here and ‘comma splice’ there. Not infrequently, a student who handed in a two-page paper received four pages of comment, comment not limited to correcting apostrophe goofs and refining expression, but personal commentary, a Smithian response to what was said and how it was said.”

Still, G.E. had the 800 or so poems, maybe in a picturesque heap that he thought of as organization, probably piled in the post-World War II semi-finished concrete-shell basement of his co-op apartment unit at 134 Dogwood in Park Forest. They probably would have stayed that way except for Mort and a change in G.E.’s own thinking about what his writing represented. “After I left college, I had no interest in publishing my poetry,” he wrote in his book’s preface. “It wasn’t until I began to think, as a genealogist, about how anything written by ancient relatives — even in signature — was (or could have been) so extraordinarily precious that I decided to consider publishing. I realized that I, too, someday, would likely be a long-ago ancient relative to someone who was pursuing my family history.”

So he and Mort brought out the book. I’d like to say that when it arrived here in Berkeley a few years back, I dove into it. But I didn’t. G.E. wrote a long inscription that thanked me, for among other things tracking down a copy of an obscure futurist novel that he had read while sailing from Europe to the Pacific as a Navy Seabee during World War II. I flipped through the book and stopped at a few of the poems. I probably found the project of reading more than a little overwhelming; and I’m sure I also had a tinge of envy and regret that I was holding yet another book by someone I knew while I myself had produced — what, exactly? (If I had ever said anything like that to G.E., he would have had something reassuring to say, then maybe started a conversation about why exactly I thought writing a book was important. Mort would have just said to sit down and start writing if I wanted to publish a book.)

G.E.’s funeral is tomorrow, down in the town where he went to and first taught in high school, Lexington. Afterward, I imagine there will be a long, long procession out to the tiny cemetery in his real hometown, Pleasant Hill, about three miles away. It will be by far the biggest event that would-be city, which started withering when the railroads bypassed it in the 1850s, has ever seen. G.E. and his grandfather and probably many others to whom he unearthed family ties have been cemetery caretakers there; we visited the spot together a couple of times a good 30 years ago; I think I was aware even then, when he was younger than I am now, that this was where G.E. hoped to come back to; not a patch of dirt in a swath of farm and prairie, but a place where his people were.

Feeling sad about the prospect of missing G.E.’s funeral, I picked up his book of poems. I thought, there’s got to be something in there where he talks about his own passing. I turned to the back of the book, to the section whimsically titled “Fear, Aging and Death.” And found this, dated 1990:

Grave Notes from the Underground

When I am dead,
who will enter this quiet sanctuary
and, speaking softly,
(Don’t shout!
I’m not deaf, you know.)
tell me the news I want to know?

Did the Cardinals win last night–
and who was the winning pitcher?

Did the bluebirds sing this spring
on the trail along Bluebird Lane?

Has the Big One ever struck
San Andreas or New Madrid faults?
(And am I safe in Pleasant Hill?)

Have politicos on Capitol Hill
yet understood the limits …
… and limitations … of capitalism?

Do my friends I loved so much
… just once in a while, perhaps …
call or visit each other?

From the knoll and the gnarl of Old Flat-top,
does anyone ever watch, as I once did,
the sunsets west of the sanctuary?
Or the April sunrise on the trail
as it enters Canary Clearing?

Does a cool breeze still stir the air
under the sinuous branches of Old Flat-top?

Do Browns and Boggs still gather
for reunions in July?
(Or do they go their separate ways,
ignorant of the roots that nourished them?)

Is warmth still there at one-three-four
on Dogwood Drive?
Is someone nurturing those
in need of nurturing?

Who came to say goodbye
as I lay freshly dead?

I know, I know.
I can’t reply.
Nothing has really changed.
I rarely had a chance,
when lifeblood-flowed and tongue was ripe,
to sneak a word in edge-wise.

Hey, take it easy there.
Your clomp’s so hard it’s apt to wake the dead.

More on G.E. Smith
Happy 80.5, G.E.
A Teacher
In Which We Gather by the River

Technorati Tags: ,

Posted on

24 Jones Street

“24” is back. Despite past seasons of carping about it, I spent two hours in front of the tube tonight watching (well, less than two since we recorded it and blasted through the commercials). No less august a chronicler of important stuff than The New York Times saw fit to run three — three! — features on the new season since Friday. (The considerably less august San Francisco Chronicle had a big season-opener on Friday. The reviewer, TV critic Tim Goodman, botched one detail. He suggested episode one took 10 minutes before it headed off into unhinged crisis mode; in fact, it took much less time: The opening credits were still rolling when the first high-profile character — “former President David Palmer” — was dispatched by an assassin.)

The Times ran a piece today on Carlos Bernard (aka north suburban Chicagoland native Carlos Bernard Papierski), who plays Tony Almeida, the durable and always-dependable sidekick to Kiefer Sutherland’s Jack Bauer. What he’s loved for best in these parts, of course, is his display of a Cubs mug every season; he even drank beer out of it last season to dramatize how depressed he was with life as a disgraced counterterrorism agent. The mug showed up tonight in his very first scene in episode one, an hour that was kind of rough on him (13 minutes into the new season, mere minutes after brandishing the Cubs mug, his wife was killed by a car bomb. Tony/Carlos was badly injured in the blast).

Cubsmug

(Carlos Bernard/Tony Almeida in intimate Cubs mug moment.)

In other “24” news, the bad guys got things rolling in a big way. As usual, they’re omnipotent. As usual, they love L.A. The terrorist scenario this year involves some pissed-off Russians who look to be staging a Beslan-style hostage incident at the airport in Ontario. It’ll get really ridiculous soon — maybe even during the second two episodes, to be aired Monday. Thank goodness for the Cubs mug.

Technorati Tags:

Posted on

Luminaria ’05: Maps

Lummap

Last Christmas, I printed out a topographic map from a piece of software I have and traced out a map of the North Berkeley luminaria neighborhoods; I used different color inks to show the various years different blocks joined in. It’s not a presentation that translates to a digital format, so I’ve been thinking about how to do a map I could put online this year. There’s got to be something a semi-literate hack like myself can use to make a beautiful souvenir luminaria map; while I have faith that such a product exists, I haven’t found it yet. So back to the drawing board.

The map above is from the same software, Topo, that I used for my printouts last year. The streets that do the luminaria are traced in red using the software’s route tool. The big drawback to using the USGS maps for this purpose is that few streets are labeled. The resulting maps only make sense if you have an idea what you’re looking at to begin with.

My second option was to figure out how to present the luminaria using Google Maps. The maps are clear and easy to use and users can toggle back and forth between a regular street map and satellite pictures, or view a hybrid version. But making a Google Map from scratch using the available development tool would require more time to waste than even I have. So I decided to try to use an already-existing tool, the excellent Gmaps Pedometer, to trace out the luminaria street. As with the Topo versiion, that requires a lot of retracing to include every one of the contiguous blocks. But the result is pretty clear and you have the advantages of zooming in or out on the resulting map, and you have a very clear idea of what street is what. (Holly is in the northwest corner of the outlined luminaria streets). The biggest drawback is that the Pedometer doesn’t let you stop tracing in one spot and begin again in an unconnected spot. That means that I’ve left out several streets (shown in red on at the top of the Topo map above). This Gmaps tool also lacks any capacity (yet) for marking routes in different colors or for adding labels, so there’s no way of doing color-coding

So I’m playing with one more option: A site called MapBuilder.net that lets you build your own Google Map without recourse to any JavaScript or XML coding or access to a Web server to use the Google development resources. So what I came up with there is a Luminaria map (see if this link works: that highlights the chronology of the event (click on the arrow); and gives some idea of the geographic extent without showing all the streets involved. This is just a first try.

More later.

Posted on

‘Spectator Patriotism’

By way of my brother John:

Christopher Dickey, a Newsweek columnist and thoughtful critic of the Iraq war (translation: I agree with him) has a good piece this week reflecting on John Gregory Dunne and Dunne’s interest in patriotism:

“John was interested in patriotism. He was fascinated by the real substance of it, which he saw as diametrically opposed to what he called “the spectator patriotism” exploited by the Bush administration as it went looking for wars. There was something (it took a while for John to put his finger on it) in the fact that several people he knew had children on active duty: historian Doris Kearns had a son, John himself had a nephew, I had a son. We had people we loved in uniform doing what they saw, and we understood, imperfectly perhaps, as their duty to defend the values and the dreams that are the United States of America. But why were there so few from this circle of acquaintances if the cause was so great?

“John would rage. He was articulate and funny then and always, but such was his passion that I remember him as almost inchoate when he talked about the bastards who wouldn’t end their Global War on Terror, which was conceived in rhetoric and dedicated to their re-election, yet would send America’s sons and daughters on futile errands of suffering and slaughter.

From past experience, I’ve seen evidence that Dickey actually reads the responses to his columns. So I spent some time writing one. The inequity of sending our military volunteers to suffer the consequences of their leaders’ ineptitude and dishonesty is an unresolved problem for the entire society and one we’ll be living with for decades (just as we’re still living with the legacy of having sacrificed so many conscripted soldiers in Vietnam). My “answer” to Dickey:

“I think Dunne’s sense of this issue, and yours, is spot on as far as it goes. Sacrifices must be shared. We must not fight wars to which we’re not fully committed (though bear in mind that that standard kept us out of World War I for nearly three years and, absent Pearl Harbor, probably would have kept us out of World War II indefinitely).

“But what do we do with that knowledge? Do we get behind people like John Conyers and Charles Rangel and demand the draft be reinstated? There’s an attractive school of thought that a universal draft — if one were started, I’d hope that women would be conscripted, too — would give everyone a personal stake in the war in Iraq and make the civilians who launched this thing more accountable. I’m not sure I buy that — more than half the Americans who died in Vietnam were killed *after* the Tet offensive, when the anti-war movement was already rolling along. Yet, a fair draft, perhaps with a national service alternative, *could* democratize the war and perhaps counter a tendency, which Bush encourages with no shame or sense of irony, to lionize the warriors, cozen up to them, and cast those who don’t support his military adventure as fifth columnists.

“Here’s the thing: I have two draft-age sons. I don’t know how I’d sleep if they and their friends were under arms now and their commanders were as casually deceitful and incompetent as the crew we have in charge now. For me, the principle of the thing — that it’s unfair and undemocratic to impose the war sacrifice on a small slice of society, even if they volunteered for service — is at war with my personal horror at the further ruin of young lives to so little apparent purpose. I also wonder about the equity of codgers like me (my draft number was supposed to come up in 1972, but it was never called) sending the young ones off to kill and be killed. If there’s going to be a national sacrifice, all the non-retired generations should be made to play a part beyond our penchant for uttering fine phrases.”

Posted on

The Lint Giver

Kate, upon inspecting some nice black slacks of hers that I had helpfully jammed into the washing machine with a bunch of other stuff, exclaimed, “What’s this?” She was referring to the profusion of white lint on the black slacks. It was clear that I had committed a laundry misdemeanor (laundry felonies almost always involve bleach or melting things in the dryer; or pens), and she set out to solve it. She sorted through the damp clothes until she came to her white fleece pullover.

“Here — this is what did it,” she said. “This is a lint giver. You can’t put lint givers and lint takers in the same load.”

Say again? This is someone I’ve known for more than 20 years. Thousands of baskets of dirty laundry have churned, spun, and tumbled through their cycles since we first commingled loads. We’ve used inscrutable top-loaders and mesmerizing front-loaders, both. Liquid and powder. Cold, warm and hot. Normal and delicate. A lot has come out in the wash. But this is the first I’ve heard of a guideline, rule, ordinance, statute or proposed physical law concerning “lint givers” and “lint takers.”

“Look it up online. I’m sure you’ll find something about it,” Kate said as she deployed a lint roller to defuzz the damp slacks. (She’s living right. It worked.)

Sure enough: A site called “How to Clean Stuff” features a graduate-level discourse on various lint topics, including lint givers and lint takers.

Updated July 2018.

Posted on

Slainte, Brian/Flann/Myles

A day late and almost moreso, let me say "happy birthday" to one of the billions of our fellow earthlings who can no longer appreciate it. But unlike nearly all of those, this one — Brian O’Nolan/Flann O’Brien/Myles na gCopaleen (note to judy b: that gC combo is, for once, not a typo) — has occasioned uncounted hours of literary fun and amazement to uncounted masses, but most importantly to me and my friends.

He — Brian O’Nolan, who later became those other fellows — was born 94 years ago yesterday in Ireland somewhere. Through the usual peculiar circumstances of genius and screwed-up upbringing and abusive strait-laced education, he produced many thousands, or hundreds of thousands of pleasing words. In his mid-20s, he produced a novel that was a send-up of Joyce, modernist fiction and literary experimentation, Irish mythology and classic poetry, and, probably, people like me. The novel is called "At Swim-Two-Birds," and has gained enough currency that, well, it’s still in print. His second novel, "The Third Policeman," has built enough of a reputation that no less than the University of California at Berkeley, my current and no doubt temporary paycheck provider, has placed it more than once on its unofficial summer reading list. (For O’Nolan/O’Brien’s part, he reportedly became so upset by early rejection of this manuscript that, in reflecting on the nature of his story, he attempted to destroy it as sacrilegious).

There will be a centennial in six years’ time, with many tributes to one of the half- (or two-thirds-) recognized geniuses of 20th century letters. Until then, you might entertain yourself with — with what? With this short passage from "At Swim-Two-Birds":

"… The stout was of superior quality, soft against the tongue but sharp upon the orifice of the throat, softly efficient in its magical circulation through the conduits of the body. Half to myself, I said:

Do not let us forget that I have to buy “Die Harzreise.” Do not let us forget that.

“Harzreise,” said Brinsley. There is a house in Dalkey called Heartrise.

Brinsley then put his dark chin on the cup of a palm and leaned in thought on the counter, overlooking his drink, gazing beyond the frontier of the world.

What about another jar? said Kelly.

Ah, Lesbia, said Brinsley. The finest thing I ever wrote, How many kisses, Lesbia, you ask would serve to sate this hungry love of mine?–As many as the Libyan sands that bask along Cyrene’s shore where pine-trees wave, where burning Jupiter’s untended shrine lies near to old King Battus’ sacred grave:

Three stouts, called Kelly.

Let them be endless as the stars at night, that stare upon the lovers in a ditch–so often would love-crazed Catullus bite your burning lips, that prying eyes should not have power to count, nor evil tongues bewitch, the frenzied kisses that you gave and got.

Before we die of thirst, called Kelly, will you bring us three more stouts. God, he said to me, it’s in the desert you’d think we were.

That’s good stuff, you know, I said to Brinsley. A picture came before my mind of the lovers at their hedge-pleasure in the pale starlight, no sound from them, his fierce mouth burying into hers.

Bloody good stuff, I said.

Kelly, invisible to my left, made a slapping noise.

The best I ever drank, he said.

As I exchanged an eye-message with Brinsley, a wheezing beggar inserted his person at my side and said:

Buy a scapular or a stud, Sir.

This interruption I did not understand. Afterwards, near Lad Lane police station a small man in black fell in with us and tapping me often about the chest, talked to me earnestly on the subject of Rousseau, a member of the French nation. He was animated, his pale features striking in the starlight and his voice going up and falling in the lilt of his argumentum. I did not understand his talk and was personally unacquainted with him. But Kelly was taking in all he said, for he stood near him, his taller head inclined in an attitude of close attention. Kelly then made a low noise and opened his mouth and covered the small man from shoulder to knee with a coating of unpleasant buff-colored puke. Many other things happened on that night now imperfectly recorded in my memory but that incident is still very clear to me in my mind. Afterwards the small man was some distance from us in the lane, shaking his divested coat and rubbing it along the wall. He is a little man that the name of Rousseau will always recall to me. …"

Posted on

Death of an Army Blogger

One of the latest U.S. casualties in Iraq: Army Specialist Michael J. Smith of Media, Pennsylvania, was killed in action last Tuesday. He was 24. (And he was not the first Michael J. Smith to die in Iraq.)

The Defense Department issued the usual antiseptic press release. The news has created a little more buzz online, because Specialist Smith maintained an infrequently updated blog that hinted at how he felt about some of his experiences (“so i think i might have made a mistake,” a November post started; it concluded “this place sucks”) without elaborating). The blog itself is simple to the point of poignancy. Smith’s last post, titled “regrets, i’ve had a few,” is dated eight days before his death:

“so i’ve been thinking a lot lately.

that time at the college… nope…

those countless times in the car… nope…

the party? you guessed it… NOPE

i know i’ve always said i don’t regret anything i’ve done in my life, but i think i found one.

——————————————–

it’s time to call my dad. it’s his birthday today

——————————————–

beauty and the beast is such a great movie

——————————————–

i need a day off

that is all…

missing you

and all of you too

-Mike”

Some of Smith’s fellow LiveJournal bloggers have posted about his death (here and here, for instance). Several papers in eastern Pennsylvania and his hometown paper, the Daily Times in Delaware County, ran a feature on him last week:

“James Smith, who lives in Coatesville, Chester County, learned of his son’s death Tuesday night. Smith said the officers who delivered the news were professional and supportive.

” ‘I don’t know that I could do that job,’ he said.

“Smith said his son did not show any interest in the military as a child.

” ‘It was a couple of years ago he came to me and said, ‘Dad, I’m going to join the Army.’

“Smith said the terrorist attacks of 9/11 probably influenced his son’s decision to join the Army in November 2002. Whatever the reason, it was supported by the family.

” ‘He believed in the liberation of Iraq, and so do I,’ Smith said. ‘He died doing what he believed.’ ”

Stories along the same lines appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News.

Posted on

Road Blog: Tolono 09.11.04

Dad and I headed south from Chicago, leaving the North Side about 9:30 a.m., going down Lake Shore Drive and the Dan Ryan before peeling off to the southwest on Interstate 57 with a destination of Cairo, all the way at the southern tip of the state. We stayed on that all the way down to Tolono, a small town that’s the subject of a railroad song by Utah Phillips (I wrote briefly about the song earlier this year).

The old Illinois Central (now Illinois Central Gulf) and Wabash (now Norfolk Southern) lines come together in town. In his song, Phillips describes the place as a flag stop — a place too small to have regular service. That looks like it was probably true, though there are so few passenger trains now that I’m sure it’s been decades since even a flag stop was made.

We got off the interstate just northwest of Tolono and drove into town on U.S. 45. I noticed while we were heading through that there was a sign for a historical marker. But as we passed the spot indicated — the entrance to a gas station — I didn’t see a marker. We drove out the south end of town, turned around, and tried again. We turned in at the gravel entrance to the gas station, but still didn’t see anything historic looking. But we did see a local constable parked in his Tolono squad car, apparently waiting for speeders . He lowered his passenger-side window as we rolled up.

“We were looking for that historical marker,” I said.

“What?” he answered.

“Do you know anything about the historical marker that’s supposed to be here?”

“A drunk took it down last winter. State still hasn’t put it back up.”

“Do you know what it was for? What the marker was for?

“I don’t know. State’s supposed to put it back up again.”

I had my camera out, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask whether I could take the officer’s picture. I also didn’t ask how long he’d been living in the area that he had no idea what this marker was about. Inquiries like that could be a threat to homeland security and speed-zone enforcement. Instead, Dad and I drove off to see Tolono; I was hoping there’d been an old station or stop of some kind I could photograph so I can send a shot to my old friend Gerry, who used to play the song so well. But there’s not a whole lot happening in town, certainly no evidence of a rail-passenger platform anywhere. I shot a couple scenes along the Norfolk tracks anyway. Then we headed back to U.S. 45 to go south for a few miles and get back on I-57.

We passed the historical marker sign again, and going by the gas station I finally saw the monument. It was a tablet set into a boulder in among some sort of ever-greenery. The bushes kind of looked like landscaping for the gas station, and the boulder hadn’t been visible when we were consulting local law enforcement about markers of historical significance. The police officer had been parked no more than 100 feet from the spot.

We halted again, and it turned out to be worth it this time. The marker commemorates what is said to be Lincoln’s last speech in Illinois, on February 11, 1861, during a brief stop on his journey east to be inaugurated. One site notes that Lincoln stopped further east, too, in Danville, and spoke to a crowd there. A railroad-centric account of the journey mentions Tolono, but not Danville.)

Lincoln’s brief Tolono speech is on the marker:

“I am leaving you on an errand of national importance, attended as you are aware with considerable difficulties. Let us believe as some poet has expressed it, ‘Behind the cloud the sun is still shining.’ I bid you an affectionate farewell.”

Monument commemorating Lincoln’s stop in Tolono, Illinois, (just south of Champaign) in February 1861.