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We’re Back

I’ve neglected this little blog–partly a symptom of neglecting something far more serious: riding. But I won’t go into all that just now. For the next three weeks, anyway, I’m back.

In just a few hours, the lads will start clicking in and another Tour will be under way. There may have been a time earlier this season when I felt I had some idea of the shape of professional cycling this year; I mean, as much an idea as I ever have. I don’t have that sense now, and I haven’t been reading the racing media. In the U.S.A.’s general media–the San Francisco Chronicle, for instance, with its story today from a Hearst reporter somewhere–the Lance Armstrong fog has set in and set in good. Meaning that if you’re following the race from North America, it’ll be hard to see around the Lance legend during the Tour, or at least until it cracks, if it does.

Personally, I find it hard to imagine he’ll win this one. Even getting onto the podium will be tough. The competition on his own team is tough, let alone what the rest of the peloton will throw at him. Still: Contador had a low moment during Paris-Nice. Leipheimer has had some wonderful rides this year, both in California and Italy. But he didn’t produce the sort of indomitable performance in the Giro that might make you think he can break Lance.

No predictions, anyway. Except for maybe a couple non-racing ones:

–Cadel Evans will sulk, throw a memorable tantrum or two, and finish out of the money. Crikey. Even the guy’s Twitter feed sounds whiney and fussy.

–The race will be rocked by news that one of the riders was caught doping. I hope it’s Cadel.

–Paul Sherwen will not announce he’s retiring the “suitcase of courage.”

–No one will “turn themselves inside out” during the prologue Saturday. Sunday, riders might start doing just that during the first long breakaway.

–Untold numbers of riders will “dance on the pedals” shortly before experiencing “a spot of bother.” Phil Liggett says you can count on it.

–Sheryl Crow will knock Lance off his bike just as he’s about to win the Mont Ventoux stage. All she wanted was to have some fun. …

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Sailor’s Tango

Growing up, there were a few musical staples in our house. I mean in my pre-teen years, before I discovered WLS and what was playing there. The station we listened to–the only one, except on snow days when we had a local AM station on to see if our school was closed–was WFMT. I think it’s tag line was “Chicago’s fine arts station.” It carried, and still carries, classical programming, soberly read news headlines, and, on Saturday nights, “The Midnight Special.” That show was a weekly fixture for me for years. It started with a recording of Leadbelly singing the song from which the show took its name and ended with Richard Dyer-Bennett singing “You’ve Got to Walk that Lonesome Valley.”

My parents didn’t have a big record collection, and I don’t remember their LPs including anything at all that would have been considered popular music. Well, maybe there was a Mitch Miller record in there. But mostly the discs included a few of my dad’s classical favorites, including an early ’50s recording of Arturo Toscanini conducting the NBC Symphony Orchestra in Respighi’s “The Pines of Rome” and “The Fountains of Rome” (the only side I ever played was “The Pines,” which ends with a stirring, bombastic passage meant to evoke the march of returning Roman legions; I’ll bet Mussolini just loved it). Others I remember hearing often, and still listen to, featured the Chicago Symphony Orchestra: Fritz Reiner conducting Wagner overtures and Prokofiev’s “Alexander Nevsky.” My mom’s tastes, as I remember them, were more in the vein of classic musicals. I remember hearing “My Fair Lady” a lot when I was little. Hours of “Camelot.” “West Side Story.” “Man of La Mancha.” “Jacques Brel is Alive and Living in Paris.” And my parents seemed to share an enjoyment of recorded comedy and folk music and the way I recall it went out of their way to introduce us to performers like Pete Seeger, The Weavers, Joan Baez, and Burl Ives.

One record they had that got played over and over and over and that my siblings and I adopted as our own was by Will Holt, an interpreter of the Brecht-Weill canon. I can’t say I understood the songs (or that I do now, for that matter), but the music and lyrics were peculiar and fascinating. On a driving trip once, my brother John, about 10, surprised my parents by coming out with the lyrics of “Kanonen Song” from “The Threepenny Opera” (the refrain goes: “Let’s all go balmy, live off the army,/See the world we never saw,/And if we’re feeling down,/We’ll wander into town,/And if the population/Should greet us with indignation/We’ll chop them to bits/Because we like our hamburger raw”). I think the surprise was occasioned by the sudden realization that we actually were listening to and absorbing this music to some degree.

Online, you can still find used copies of the album, “The Exciting Artistry of Will Holt.” I’ve got a copy that I found in a record store out here, though I don’t have the equipment set up to play it. One side consists of original interpretations of standards like Cole Porter’s “I Love Paris.” The other side, with the Brecht-Weill numbers, made a deeper impression. In addition to “Kanonen Song,” they include “Mack the Knife,” “Alabama Song,” “Bilbao Song,” and “Sailor’s Tango.” They all contain a blend of irony, cynicism and world-weariness. Holt translated lyrics for two of the tracks–“Bilbao Song” and “Sailor’s Tango”–and those contain an element of frank sentimentality that seems to be absent in the hard-edged German originals. The Brecht-Weill “Matrosen-Tango,” from the show “Happy End,” is a woman’s observations about the selfishness, arrogance, and machismo of seafaring men; of course, they’re bound for a fall. The Holt “Sailor’s Tango,” is in the voice of the selfish, arrogant sailor. Both versions include an interlude that talks about the sea: in the Brecht-Weill version, the ocean is calm on the surface but ultimately ominous and annihilating. In Holt’s version, the ocean and night are depicted as peaceful and welcoming–but still annihilating.

I started thinking about “Sailor’s Tango” a couple weeks ago and tried to reconstruct all the Holt lyrics. I feel like I missed something, but here’s most of them, anyway.

Hey, there, we’re setting sail for Bremen,
The seamen are loading up with booze because it’s a long way home.
Just bought a box of cigars–Henry Clay–
and I’ve got a dollar saved for one last woman.
So excuse me please but don’t get in my way,
Excuse me please but don’t get in my way.
It’s your last night on shore and you can’t get enough
Of the sight and the sound of the city.
Every bar is crowded with all your friends,
Every moment you hope it never ends.
Then it’s OK, goodbye,
All you feel for those poor slobs is pity.
Because nothing can make you feel more like a man
Than when you’ve got that ocean in the palm of your hand.
Then it’s OK, goodbye.
Don’t get caught praying down on your knees,
Don’t spoil your life being anxious to please,
Because who’s got the need
To beg and to plead
Because if they don’t like it, so what?

Oh, the sea is deep and blue,
And everything is going to be all right,
And when the day is over, then welcome to the night.
Oh, that sea is deep and blue
And when the moon is shining bright,
Oh, the sea is deep and blue,
Oh, the sea is deep and blue,
So deep and blue.

As luck would have it, we hit a bad storm,
The engines stopped, we hit the rocks, and so it ended.
Hey, there, who ever thought we’d end up by drowning
Just a few miles from Bremen but a long way from home?
Yeah, keep on shouting, there’s nobody near–
There’s no one can hear you.
Oh, we only had a few miles to go,
Oh, we only had a few miles to go.
Now the sea’s coming up,
And the ship’s going down,
Gee don’t those harbor lights look pretty?
I’ll bet every bar is crowded with all our friends,
I wonder what they’ll say when they hear how it ends.
They’ll say OK, goodbye.
And you never can tell when that moment will come
When he says up above, here’s your pity.
Where’s my box of cigars–Henry Clay?
Well, I’ve just got to say …
Yeah, we were bragging, our feet on dry land
But standing in water, then you’ll hold out your hand,
And know that you need
To beg and to plead,
Oh, Christ, I’m scared of the dark.

Oh, the sea is deep and blue,
And everything will be all right,
And when the day is over, what happened to the night?
Oh, that sea is deep and blue,
And when the moon is shining bright,
Oh, the sea is deep and blue
Oh, the sea is deep and blue
So deep and blue.

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Another Country

I’m reading “No Ordinary Time,” Doris Kearns Goodwin’s account of how the Roosevelt administration managed the home front during World War II. It’s a good-enough read and well researched, but there’s sort of a rushed feeling to it that makes me wonder how long she had to work on the thing. In any case, I was struck by a brief passage on the nation’s economic situation in the spring of 1940, when Germany’s attack on Western Europe prompted FDR to push for a rapid mobilization of industry and resources in the United States. Goodwin’s point is one often made: how on the eve of war, the American economy was still in the throes of the Depression. What strikes me is the stark difference between the country she describes and the one I grew up in — having been born less than a decade after the end of the war.

“…The economy had not yet recovered; business was still not producing well enough on its own to silence the growing doubts about capitalism and democracy. Almost ten million Americans, 17 percent of the work force, were without jobs; about two and a half million found their only source of income in government programs. Of those who worked, one-half of the men and two-thirds of the women earned less than $1,000 a year. Only forty-eight thousand taxpayers in a population of 132 million earned more than $2,500 a year.

“In his second inaugural [in January 1937], Roosevelt had proclaimed that he saw “one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished. On this spring day three years later, he could still see abundant evidence of serious deprivation. Thirty-one percent of thirty-five million dwelling units did not have running water; 32 percent had no indoor toilet; 39 percent lacked a bathtub or shower; 58 percent had no central heating. Of seventy-four million Americans twenty-five years old or older, only two of five had gone beyond eighth grade; one of four had graduated from high school; one of twenty had completed college.”

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Chrysalides

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The something new I learned this minute: that the preferred plural form of chrysalis offered in the Merriam-Webster’s unabridged dictionary is chrysalides; the main stress is on the second syllable and the last syllable is pronounced “deez.” Me, I would have guessed, and written, chrysalises–and the M-W unabridged lists that second. (The abridged dictionary entry, which is not so different from the unabridged one, is here.)

Anyway, these chrysalides are both of the anise swallowtail variety. The one on the left is probably a couple weeks old and is strapped onto a fairly conspicuous spot on a fennel plant next door. It’s about two weeks old and has started to show that yellow color along its abdomen in just the last couple of days. That little piece of material below it is its last larval skin (see “Mascot Caterpillar” for what these guys look like before they go into the chrysalis).

The chrysalis on the right is also an anise swallowtail. It’s older–but I’m not sure how much older. It attached itself to the rarely visited north side of our house (don’t believe your monitors–the stucco isn’t really pink). When I first saw it back there this afternoon while on a foliage-clearing expedition I thought it was a curled-up leaf stuck to the wall. I’m not coordinated enough to do the “hold you thumb next to it so we get the scale” trick; but like the other chrysalis it’s maybe an inch and a half long. If you click on the picture, you can see the chrysalis looks like it’s cracking. Don’t know whether that’s a sign the adult butterfly is ready to emerge or not.

Maybe we’ll be tweeting its progress.

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The Moon When Chokecherries Are Ripe

June 25, 1876:

“The time was early in the Moon When the Chokecherries Are Ripe, with days hot enough for boys to swim in the melted snow water of the Greasy Grass. Hunting parties were coming and going in the direction of the Bighorns, where they had found a few buffalo as well as antelope. The women were digging wild turnips out in the prairies. Every night one or more of the tribal circles held dances, and some nights the chiefs met in councils. ‘The chiefs of the different tribes met together as equals,’ Wooden Leg said. ‘There was only one who was considered as being above all the others. This was Sitting Bull. He was recognized as the one old man chief of all the camps combined.’

“… The news of Custer’s approach came to the Indians in various ways: ” ‘I and four women were a short distance from the camp digging wild turnips,’ said Red Horse, one of the Sioux Council chiefs. ‘Suddenly one of the women attracted my attention to a cloud of dust rising a short distance from camp. I soon saw the soldiers were charging the camp.’ …

“… Meanwhile Pte-San-Waste-Win and the other women had been anxiously watching the Long Hair’s soldiers across the river. ‘I could hear the music of the bugle and could see the column of soldiers turn to the left to march down to the river where the attack was to be made. … Soon I saw a number of Cheyennes ride into the river, then some young men of my band, then others, until there were hundreds of warriors in the river and running up into the ravine. When some hundreds had passed the river and gone into the ravine, the others who were left, still a very great number, moved back from the river and waited for the attack. And I knew that the fighting men of the Sioux, many hundreds in number, were hidden in the ravine behind the hill upon which Long Hair was marching, and he would be attacked from both sides.’

“Kill Eagle, a Blackfoot Sioux chief, later said that the movement of Indians toward Custer’s column was “like a hurricane … like bees swarming out of a hive.’ “

–Dee Brown, “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee”

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Chenoa, Illinois

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Chenoa’s a town about 25 miles north-northeast of Bloomington and sits at the junction of U.S. 24, which runs east-west, and Interstate 55 (and old U.S. 66). We drove through town in mid-April, headed west on 24 to pick up 55 on our way from Chicago to Berkeley. We detoured through the old downtown business district, a handful of handsome and under-used old brick buildings surrounded by low frame and pre-fab buildings. The sign was no doubt touched up or repainted altogether, since the Chicago-based Selz shoe concern apparently went out of business about 60 years ago. (Here’s a post from a blog on faded signs that talks about the company and has a few examples of old Selz signs.)

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Iron Man

I’m sitting here in Berkeley. It’s a gorgeous solstice/Father’s Day. About 1,000 miles to the north-northeast, my friend Pete is competing in his second Ironman Coeur d’Alene triathlon. I was there for the event last year, and it was extraordinary to see so many committed, focused athletes. And it was extraordinary to see Pete accomplish something he’d set out years ago to do, another in a long line of endurance feats (triathlons of various lengths, half-marathons, marathons, 50-kilometer and 50-mile running races) that I stand in awe of.

It’s 10:35 a.m. here in Berkeley. That means he’s about two hours into the second event of the day, the 112-mile bike segment that goes north out of the town of Coeur d’Alene and winds through the rolling hills near Hayden Lake. A year and a half ago or so, we went up there together to ride the course. Much of the route is characterized by short, sharp climbs and descents, with a more or less flat run into and out of the start/finish in CdA.

Anyway, I’ll be followng the race all day today. The mass start at the swim was at 7 a.m. If he’s close to the 12-hour time he expects–12 hours of really laying it out there!–he’ll finish around 7 tonight. If you want to check in on his progress, look for bib number 1615 on the race tracker page; and, hey, leave a comment on his race-training blog.

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Worst Ever

I note stories this morning calling the state’s 11.5 unemployment rate for May 2009 “a record.” It’s not really true. It can be said for sure it *is* the highest since 1976, when the state’s current record-keeping system began. But the rate was higher–much higher–during the Great Depression right up to the eve of World War II

Only guesses are available for the worst years of the Depression, in the early and mid-1930s, when 25 percent or more of the labor force is believed to have been jobless. That situation improved but only slowly during the late ’30s. State records cited in an April story from the Chronicle’s Tom Abate showed a 14.7 unemployment rate in October 1940. With the nation gearing up for war, the rate fell quickly thereafter. Last month’s figure of 11.5 percent appears to be the highest since January 1941, when the rate stood at 11.7 percent.

None of this is to minimize the enormity of the statistics reported today. The rate now is at the highest point in nearly 70 years and is a sign of an epochal economic failure.

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Today’s Best …

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… News coverage : If you wonder why all the commotion about Twitter, it’s worth checking in on users’ “coverage” of the Iranian election aftermath at http://twitter.com/timeline/search?q=%23iranelection . We need some other word than coverage to describe this; coverage suggests something organized and controlled. What we’re getting from Tehran is chaotic, rumor-filled, repetitive and largely dependent on mainstream news sources. But it’s also immediate, passionate, and encyclopedic, and it brings all of us closer to the scene. The picture above is a case in point, shot and posted today by a Twitter user in Tehran. (The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz has a column today on Twitter and how it’s shifting the way we use media.)

… News analysis: Why does the Iranian opposition denounce the election results. FiveThirtyEight.com breaks down the numbers and shows some striking anomalies in the results. (On Saturday, on the other hand, FiveThirtyEight shot down one purported piece of evidence that the result was rigged.)

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Mascot Caterpillar

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Last year, Kate started using anise swallowtail butterflies as part of the biology unit in her second-grade class. As the name might suggest, the anise swallowtail (Papilio zelicaon) are partial to anise (fennel) plants and their relatives; in some areas, the go for citrus, too. Our neighbor has a healthy stand of fennel in one corner of his yard, and the last two springs the plants have hosted anise swallowtail eggs and larvae (caterpillars). The one pictured here is apparently in its fifth and final “instar” (larval stage) before becoming a pupa (or, as I’ve always thought of it, “going into its chrysalis”). It’s an amazing little street-side biology lab we have here. (Oh, yeah: And you get a dollar if you can tell me what that little brown spheroid at the caterpillar’s posterior end is.)

Further reading:

UC Irvine Butterflies of Orange County: Anise Swallowtail
Berkeley’s Anise Swallowtails
Butterflies and Moths of North America: Anise Swallowtail
Wikipedia: Anise Swallowtail
Wikipedia: Butterflies