Flags

Flags of Our Fathers certainly wasn't the war movie of our fathers. Battlefield gore is a necessary ingredient in any war movie of our time, as well as soldiers' profanity, and understandably so. My own preference in historical fiction runs to verisimilitude, but that isn't to say that I didn't like The Sands of Iwo Jima. (And didn't realize, until I looked it up recently, that the three surviving flag raisers on Mount Suribachi appeared as themselves in that movie.)

Interestingly, the most effective horror-of-war scene in Flags involved off-screen gore. At one point, one of the men (Iggy) goes mysteriously missing from the hillside. Later, his comrades discover that the Japanese pulled him into one of their caves and killed him in a way the American soldier who found him would only describe as, "look what they did to the poor son of a bitch." At that point one of the characters is looking at whatever remains of Iggy, but we don't see it, and it's much more horrible that way.

On the whole, Flags was a worthwhile effort, but it suffered from a jumpy flashback structure and an unnecessary framing device, especially the interview scenes in which some of the old soldiers tell us all What It Means, to establish the movie's stance as a hero-myth-buster. Fine. Bust that hero myth. It's tiresome, though, because movies have been bravely busting the myth for 40 years now.

A straightforward narrative would have been better: the landing, the flag raisings, the deaths of some of the men involved, the nation's reaction to the iconic photo, the survivors on the bond tour, their essentially unhappy experiences after the war (especially Ira Hayes) -- it could have all been chronological without jumping or modern commentary. Then the audience could have made their own conclusions about the story.

Also of interest: lately the Japanese have started using the prewar name for the island. It's their island, and they can call it what they want. But it also belongs to the history of this country, and it should be Iwo Jima as long as histories are being written in English.

Caricatures by Kevin: Order One Today

Got a comment yesterday from Kevin Middleton. Hello, Kevin. I see from the Site Meter that you wasted... that is, spent three-quarters of an hour at the site earlier today. Glad I could be part of your Internet mix.

For both of my other readers, I have to explain that I've known Kevin since junior high, back when the Internet was just two computers talking to each other at Camp Swampy, though for stretches of years between then and now, we were out of touch, and I don't think we've visited in person since sometime during the Reagan administration. But he isn't hard to find -- just as I'm not hard to find -- using the Internet.

Update on the white stuff: It's still out there, mostly, and the NWS says we may get more Thursday or Friday, before some of it melts over the weekend, and then refreezes after that. It's driving us to do strange, primitive rituals within our walls to hasten the return of spring:

More Than 3,000 Words About Snowfall

Lilly was eager to have a snow day this morning, checking for school-closure information both on TV and the Internet. Her school district was much less eager to pull the trigger on yet another snow day, however, maybe because there have been two already this year, and in fact school opened as usual.

It was the correct decision. I happened to be up briefly at about 3 am and took a look outside. The snow had already stopped, leaving maybe four or five more inches. By 10 or so, the Sun came out, and temps stayed in the 20s. Not quite all of the snow was gone from the streets by mid-afternoon, but most of it was. It was an ordinary weekday.

But with a new patina of snow on the trees and bushes and other things, most of which was gone by the end of the day. The object that looks like a shed for a small blimp or flying saucer in this picture is actually the chain-link backstop behind the home plate in the park behind my back yard:

A dandified bush:

And frosted tree branches:

Again

Beginning yesterday, we here in northern Illinois were beginning to see patches of naked ground and ice-free sidewalks. "That will never do," said Winter, who started with rain in mid-afternoon and then took to dumping snow on us in cotton-ball sized units late this afternoon. As I write, it's still coming down. Various weather forecasters say more, more, more. Winter says, how do you like it, how do you like it?

Not much. This year February's been more tiresome than usual. But I will say this about the current snow -- at least it's clinging to the trees. Livens the streetscape up some.

Italian Beef, Birthday Cake and the Sluggish Housing Market

I took Ann to the birthday party of a fellow preschooler today, held at the girl's house early in the afternoon. Since other adults were there, along with some tasty lunch options -- especially Italian beef from Portillo's -- I was persuaded to stay for the length of the party. At age 5, parties don't drag out that long, just over two hours, so it wasn't bad at all.

I'm happy to report that among the adults, and probably the kids too, the subject of the Oscars didn't come up once. I'll take that as the mark of a healthy apathy about the event here in Middle America.

In such situations, one's line of work does come up, and over the years I've discovered (1) people are unaccountably interested in my real estate writing, mostly because (2) they don't make the distinction between residential and commercial real estate. Since I first wrote about real estate more than 20 years ago, I can count quickly -- maybe up to five -- the number of times I've written about the market for single-family houses (apartments count as commercial as well as residential, because as buildings they are usually bought and sold by investors who don't live there; and condos can be partly considered commercial because their development is similar to apartments). The single-family market isn't what I cover, and the same holds true for most commercial real estate journalists.

Of course, residential housing affects commercial markets, sometimes directly (new retail tends to follow new houses) and sometimes indirectly, such as the contagion from the subprime meltdown, which was precipitated by the fact that once upon a time (until about a year ago), anyone who could fog a mirror could get a residential mortgage.

I'm used to this kind of interest in real estate, so I answer questions about the residential market as best as I can, politely. Mainly what I say comes down to this: the market's going to fluctuate.

Cracked Diversions for the Weekend

I'm not in the Cracked demographic. Read enough of the web site of that brand and it's obvious that it's written for people under the erroneous impression that the world began around 1990, rather than when it actually did, around 1970. Also, I seldom looked at Cracked back when it was a paper magazine and imitation Mad, even though I was part of the demographic in those days. Cracked was Hydrox cookies, Mad was Oreos.

Be that as it may, the site has some funny lists. Such as "11 Movies Saved by Historical Inaccuracy," which makes that solid case that hewing too closely to historic fact gets in the way of the cinematic entertainment -- though few moviemakers are tempted to go down that road anyway. Regarding Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: "You will be happy to learn that the Chinese cannot fly, despite what you have seen in every single martial arts movie made in the last 15 years."

This list was fairly interesting. I didn't know that Hugo Boss designed SS uniforms, but then again I'm woefully unschooled in the history of fashion. Regarding later Boss designs, it says: "Even if you're too poor to afford Boss' goods, you can recognize Boss ads from a mile away. They always feature serious-looking men who, despite having enough money for expensive suits, appear to be addicted to heroin."

This one was recommended by my brother Jay. I have to agree with their number-one choice for least-inspiring flag, one created for the Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic: "Simply put, this is not a flag. This is, at best, a letterhead. We don't believe anyone in this short-lived republic understood what a flag was."

Upon the Mock Brine of a Luna Sea

I insisted at about 9:15 this evening that Lilly go out and see the lunar eclipse. That's the kind of dad that I am. She objected that the pit of winter this year has been unusually long and narrow, with clay walls that are making it difficult to scale. Actually, she said, "But it's cold, it's cold!"

And it was. Around about 10° F., but at least it didn't register colder, since there was no wind. From our backyard deck, the full Hunger Moon had been dipped copper-orange and parked slightly above a leafless honey locust, the one overhanging our driveway. It was all very painterly. It could have been a lost canvas of Casper David Freidrich. After a few seconds, we were back inside.

I probably saw one earlier, but the first lunar eclipse that I remember was in May 1975 -- late in the evening of May 24, but according to the records of such things, the eclipse was on the 25th, Greenwich time. It was a Saturday night for me, and what did us 13- (almost 14-) year-olds do for fun in San Antonio on Saturday nights in the mid-70s? Watched repeats of Star Trek that aired (I think) at 10:30, in case we hadn't gotten enough during the weekday airings after school. Before Saturday Night Live, Saturday nights were an underutilized time on TV.

After the episode was over, or maybe during the commercials, I went outside to see the copper Moon. Unlike Illinois in February, Texas in May is warm and lush, encouraging a longer gaze at Luna.

This doesn't have anything to do with the Moon, but the only other thing I remember about wasting mid-70s Saturday nights watching Star Trek was the August 3, 1974, "We Interrupt This Program" report on the bloody conclusion of the Huntsville, Texas, prison siege. Not as famed as Attica (not nearly as many people died, and Al Pacino never used the name in a movie), but it was big news in Texas at the time. We did not live in a 24-hour news world then. Programs were interrupted when the story was violent enough.

This does have something to do with the Moon: I'm glad that the writer's strike is over, but only because it's good that people can carry on with their livelihoods. Otherwise, who cares? It isn't as if there isn't enough entertainment that I haven't seen yet. Even if 90 percent of that total is worthless -- a reasonable rule of thumb when it comes to movies and television -- that still leaves plenty left to see. Taken at a pace that people who have work and other obligations should watch it, enough to last for years.

Take the HBO series From the Earth to the Moon, the final episode of which we saw on DVD last week. It's 10 years old now, but every bit as extraordinary as when new. I especially liked the sometime focus on people other than the astronauts, and the focus on Apollo astronauts other than the usual suspects (the crews of 11, 13 and maybe 8). And who would have thought Dave Foley would do such a good turn as Alan Bean?

Who's alive and well, I'm happy to say, and putting moondust in his artwork.

Thenar

Fun word, thenar. Is it "the fleshy area of the palm at the base of the thumb"?

Or is it from speculative fiction: In the science fiction trilogy Starlight, Starbright by Alex Stallings, the Thenar are a species of beings with highly advanced directional skills, so much so that they often serve interstellar ships as the biological component of the integrated bio-mech navigational system, requiring them to spend long periods in isolation. Many of them are eventually driven mad by the job, but their navigational prowess is one of the few skills their otherwise impoverished species has to offer (theirs is a poor planet), so they continue. The madness of the Thenar is also an important plot point in Stalling's short story, "The Title Search of Albederon IV."

If I make that into a Wiki entry, how long it would last? I won't bother with it. But thenar, which actually has a couple of other palm-related definitions, is indeed that part of the palm under the thumb. It's a word I picked up years ago from The Book of Lists. The list in question was something like "names for things you didn't know had names." I think that was also where I learned "aglet" and "dross" and probably some others.

Why does this come up today? I was chipping ice off the driveway the other day with my shovel. Pounding the shovel into the ice -- the only way to deal with it right now. Since then, my right thenar has been mildly sore. I probably shouldn't be writing at all, to give it a rest, but it's going to take more than that to stop me.

Winter Salmagundi

Back after "Presidents Day," technically known as "Washington's Birthday, Observed."

Till then, see the presidents in song.

I like that word, salmagundi. Don't have the opportunity to use it nearly often enough. According to various sources I consulted, it appears to be from French, as many food-originated words are, or maybe Italian. Not, as it sounds like, a relic in English of the British Raj, like pundit or pajamas. Sounds like the President of India, really. His Excellency, Rashtrapati T.K. Salmagundi.

Actually, these days it's Her Excellency.

Here's another usage I like: bum for butt. Lilly asked about it the other day. I don't remember how she phrased the question exactly, but essentially she wanted to know if the British had another word for butt that sounded something like it. Something she heard on television, certainly, since that's how Americans typically hear about the usage. Good to know that she's (1) paying attention to a nuance like that, and (2) seeking clarification from a trustworthy source. Me, that is.

Right now it would be a silly affectation for an American to say, "I slipped on the ice and fell on me bum." But I'd like to see it imported, and these things do change. All it might take is for some otherwise worthless hip-hop star to use the word that way for the importation to begin.

Actually, on Wednesday, I did slip and fall on my bum. I got off easier than the US Secretary of Defense, who broke a bone last week after an encounter with a Washington DC ice patch. All that happened to me was a sore bum. It was the result recent weather patterns: snow, meltage, a re-freezing, then snow on top of the ice. It's a wicked combination. It brought me down in a parking lot. Luckily no other cars were around to run me over, or witness my spill. It seems to happen to me only once a winter, which is fine for now, but not if I stay in northern Illinois another 30 years.

Here's a sentence I wrote professionally this week: "According to Inland American Lodging, the properties are in markets with strong barriers to entry and which are less sensitive to the slings and arrows of economic misfortune, including Boston, Baltimore, Chicago and Washington, DC." You just never know when that college education is going to pop up. Except that I'm pretty sure I heard "To be or not to be" in high school, and in fact I remember the Fonz discussing the meaning of the soliloquy in an episode of Happy Days.

Speaking of the Fonz, it seems that he's to be a bronze in Milwaukee. Only the humorless would be against such public art. More by serendipity than design, I've managed to see the statues of Ralph Kramden (New York), Mary Richards (Minneapolis) and Bob Hartley (Chicago) in recent years. I'd be more than willing to look up Arthur Fonzarelli when in Milwaukee.

One more ingredient to the salmagundi, also along video lines: this clip. Somehow, rendering this show in German doesn't make the ersatz German characters any less ersatz, especially considering the poor dubbing.

Dennis & the Skull

Something unusual to report: I saw a Dennis the Menace comic panel the other day that was actually a little funny. In it, Dennis and Mr. Wilson are standing on what I take to be Wilson's front porch, looking up at a heavy snow fall. Wilson says, "There seems to be more winter than we need this year."

Never cared much one way or the other about Dennis. His was a comic that was just there, neither very funny most of the time nor particularly stupid. But when I was seven or eight, old enough to read the caption, I had a vivid encounter with a parody of the comic, one that impressed me much more than any of the actual panels. It was in Mad magazine. Dennis was holding a skull. The caption was something like this: "Hey, Dad, look what I found in Mr. Wilson's head!"

I must have had a healthy fear of skulls at the time. The cartoon gave me the creeps so bad that I can visualize the panel even now, though the creepiness has drained away with age.

The Joy of Lex (Misprint Chapter)

The best misprint -- if that's the right word for a mistake in text on a web site -- I've seen in a while: "Buying real estate in Maui is a taunting task."

Which instantly brought to mind a certain movie character: "So, you haole pig-dog, you want real estate in Maui? I fart in your general direction."

Of course, there's really only one thing daunting about buying real estate in Maui, namely the astronomical prices. If that's no object, there won't be much daunt, or probably much taunt either.

Reminds me of an actual paper misprint I saw, or maybe I was just told about it, years ago, about how such-and-such a new tax would be spent on useful activities, such as "paving toads." Ah, the poor toads. The state paved them in jest, and they became highways in earnest.

A Bit of Long-Distance Conversation

I did an interview with a fellow in commercial real estate elsewhere in the country a few days ago. From a few of the things he said, I determined he was roughly my age. At one point he mentioned a bit of real estate terminology I'd never heard, which is unusual, and when on to explain it at some length. Good to learn something each day; trouble is, I probably forget something every day too.

After he'd explained the term, we had the following conversation:

"You learned a new word today," the source said.

"I did. I got out of bed for a reason," I said.

"My grandfather used to say, 'The day you don't learn something new is the day you start to die.' He was an engineer for Penn Railroad."

"Was he?" I asked, still in interviewer mode, though we'd left real estate behind.

"He was a decorated World War I veteran," the source continued. "He joined the Army as an orphan, and was in France in the trenches."

"How about that," I said. "My grandfather was in the Army Corps of Engineers in France."

"Really? How do you like that. That must have been misery, too."

"Must have been. I know he was there after the Armistice. My grandmother told me that he said that a lot of people died touching things they weren't supposed to, after the shooting stopped." [Actually, my mother probably told me that, relating something he'd said to her.]

He agreed that it must have been dangerous work, and then we went back to the subject I'd called about, not nearly as interesting as forefathers Over There. Of course, a lot of men who now have living grandchildren went off to the Great War, but it isn't something that comes up often in a run-of-the-mill phone interview.

Et in Arcadia Ego

I'm not sure when I started scanning the Sunday obituaries. I've been mocked for it, since it's supposed to be the mark of an elderly person. But why not visit mortality at least once a week? -- when I remember to, that is, since I'm not methodical about it. Oddly enough, if there's no such thing as a Sunday paper by the time I'm elderly, provided I last that long, I'll have to give up this little ritual as an old man.

Some people have remarkably long obits, perhaps for remarkable lives not otherwise noted in any way. Or maybe they're just long-winded obits. Hard to know. I scan for age: 74... 86...95...29 (yikes)...84...81...46 (uh-oh)...78...105 (wow)... and sometimes try to suss out cause of death among the younger ones, with the biggest giveaways, if the cause isn't stated, in a final line like this: "In lieu of flowers, please donate to the American [Dreadful Disease] Foundation."

The paper also runs a column of noteworthy deaths of the week, and I noticed that the one of two surviving US WWI veterans, Harry Landis, passed on recently. I didn't know there were any. Now there's one, Frank Woodruff Buckles, aged 107. The very last doughboy. The nation salutes you, sir, or it should.

Actor Barry Morse also died last week. To me, Morse isn't Lt. Philip Gerard, though I'm retrospectively familiar with the part. I even recall, or at least heard about it later, that my elder brother Jay's high school band practice was turned loose early so that members could see the last episode of The Fugitive if they wanted. Anyway, to me Morse is Prof. Victor Bergman. In the end, Space: 1999 was a fairly dopey show, but the introduction has always been one of my favorites. It was usually the best part of the show.

Associations like that are just accidents of the timing of one's birth. Other examples for me include Raymond Burr, not as some unbelievably successful lawyer who can walk, but as Ironside, a cop who cannot; and Guy Williams, not as El Zorro of Alta California, but as the lackluster John Robinson, overshadowed by a poltroon and a robot.

Frozen Chicken

Sure enough, shoveling snow can be deadly. But enough about snow, though we got a little more today. That's no the big weather deal around here anymore anyway. Tom Skilling, weather lord of the Tribune, writes of the Arctic blast that is headed our way (my bold): "Saturday's jarring weather change will develop as 150 m.p.h. jet-stream winds align with the low-level flow to whisk cruelly cold Arctic air into the area. The incoming air mass caused temperatures as low as 72 below in Chicken, Alaska, early Thursday--the coldest to occur in that state in more than eight years."

When you've reached such a low, that's news even in Alaska. More importantly, I've learned of the existence of the town of Chicken (be sure to see the Buy Stuff page at this site). My ignorance of place-names in Alaska is shocking: I never knew about Chicken. There on the Mosquito River, not too far (by Alaska standards) from the town of Eagle. It was worth getting out of bed this morning just to find that out.

White Material

Another Snow Day here. Again short of the blizzard standard, but pretty much a steady downpour of the white material all day, beginning long before dawn and lasting, in a small way, until after dusk. Room Mother Olivia dutifully call at about 6:15 am and said that Lilly's elementary school would be shut for the day, and I was the only one who heard it -- I heard as she recorded the message, since I'm not going to get out of bed at that time for a mere phone call.

No one else heard it. (How can they sleep through a ringing phone?) A little later I got up and turned off Lilly's alarm clock. She woke at about 8, alarmed by not hearing the alarm. Even at that moment, there would be enough time for her to slap herself together and make it to school without being late. But I didn't want to be cruel enough to let her get ready for school in a hurry and then tell her about the school closing as she headed for the door. So I told her right away, and then she did the rational thing. She went back to bed for a few more minutes.

As the snow tapered off to a -- snow drizzle? -- we need a term for the snow equivalent of a drizzle, since "light snow" isn't quite the same, just as "light rain" isn't a drizzle, and "flurry" is too happy a word to compare with "drizzle" -- I spent an hour or so courting certain death shoveling the driveway. Well, maybe the risk is a little exaggerated. I survived. Perhaps it's because when I got tired, I either stood around leaning against the shovel, or went inside, so that hour wasn't without pause. There wasn't much wind, so the time I spent leaning against the shovel was actually enjoyable, giving me a chance to look at the snow-capped bushes and trees and roofs and listen, when no snowblowers active, to the relative quiet.

Zero

Ed reports from the UK of a visit to the Prime Meridian: "I went to Greenwich today. Interesting, but much less impressive than crossing the Arctic Circle. I think we give more weight to latitude than longitude. Maybe that's just because we all hit all the longitudes long ago."

I can't describe crossing the Arctic Circle, though I have an ambition to do so (the ambition is fairly dim in February, however, when the Arctic has come to me). The closest I've come is Vyborg, Russia, latitude about 60° 42' -- roughly six degrees short. I've passed through all of the longitudes, as Ed has, and had before Yuriko and I made it to Greenwich near the end of 1994. Still, I got a kick out of standing on the Prime Meridian, as illustrated here, though I've since read that the zero line used by the Global Positioning System is about 100 meters east of the former line, now the tourist-attraction line, at the Old Royal Observatory.

The sign behind Y is, or was, actually a vending machine. Insert a pound coin and you get a time-stamped souvenir. (As a very small child, Lilly got a hold of this souvenir, causing the damage visible here).

"Some interesting stuff in the maritime museum," Ed continued. "The first actual Franklin relics I've ever gotten to see. Pretty exciting for an Arctic geek like me."

John Franklin relics -- very cool indeed, and I don't mean that as a gag line. I went to the Greenwich Maritime Museum, too, but don't remember seeing anything associated with the famed Arctic explorer. Maybe I was of too ignorant of Franklin at the time to notice, or maybe those items weren't on display. I do remember a fine exhibit on John Harrison and the Longitude Problem, which impressed me, and added to the experience of standing on zero degrees east-west.

Talking Spam

How to describe the day? Drippy. More snow came down late Sunday night, maybe into the morning, and then instead of a gelid blast from Saskatchewan, things warmed up a little, though the sky stayed gray. Some of the foot of snow on the ground started to melt. Then it rained, or drizzled. What was frozen loosened up into a partial liquid. Fog rolled in Monday evening. When I took out the trash, I waded through shush, felt a cold drop of water on my neck from a tree, and couldn't see down the street.

All in all, a good day to say inside. Except for the last-minute rush of pre-primary automated phone calls, which at least will go away -- for a while -- after Tuesday. This isn't the first time machines have called and left messages on my machine, but it is the first time I can remember ones along these idiotic lines: "Hi, I'm Margo, and I'm really concerned about x. Do you know who else is concerned about x? John Doe, that's who. He's running for the Cook County Alligator Control Board, and he cares about x..."

The less I hear about a candidate in this way, the more likely I will be to vote for him or her. Who invented this practice? Who thinks this is a good idea? Who is persuaded by this voice-mail spam? That's what this voter wants to know.

Snow Day, Mr. Butz

All though the early morning hours of Friday, February 1, snow fell on metro Chicago. At about 6:30 am, the phone rang. It was Lilly's room mother -- you know, I'm a little surprised that term is still used -- who left a message: no school. When there's no school, there's no preschool either, just as a matter of policy. And Yuriko has Fridays off. So we were all here for the Snow Day.

At least a foot of snow. Certain bushes near the house were all dressed up by it.

But it didn't evolve into a Snow Weekend. By Saturday morning, the roads were clear. On Sunday, I learned about the death of Earl Butz the old-fashioned way: in the newspaper.

Earl Butz. I would say that I was surprised he was still alive, but I already knew that. At some point last year, I considered a DPD posting about Secretary Butz, but didn't do it. Whatever his impact on ag policy, Earl Butz achieved one thing few, if any, Secretaries of Agriculture ever do: notice. Notoriety, in fact. Quick, who's the current secretary? Turns out that Congress only confirmed someone new to the post last week, Ed Schafer, whose name isn't on the lips of Americans far and wide.

Who remembers Butz' predecessor, Orville Freeman? His successor, John Knebel? Or the first such Secretary, appointed by President Cleveland? Norman Jay Coleman. Not me. Even a presidential buff has to look these things up (but not that Vice President Henry Wallace was once Secretary of Agriculture).

As long as the 1970s remain in living memory, however, Earl Butz will be remembered, and maybe even after that.

The October 18, 1976, issue of Time set the scene:

"En route to help dedicate a screwworm eradication plant in Mexico, Earl Butz took a plane to California just after the Republican National Convention in Kansas City... In the first-class compartment, the Agriculture Secretary spied Singers Pat Boone and Sonny Bono, and John Dean, the former White House counsel who had blown the whistle on Richard Nixon and had just worked the convention as a writer for Rolling Stone. A gregarious man who likes to flaunt his snappy country—and often barnyard—sense of humor, Butz, 67, wandered over to make idle conversation...

"Butz started by telling a dirty joke involving intercourse between a dog and a skunk. When the conversation turned to politics, Boone, a right-wing Republican, asked Butz why the party of Lincoln was not able to attract more blacks. The Secretary responded with a line so obscene and insulting to blacks that it forced him out of the Cabinet last week and jolted the whole Ford campaign."

The following also speaks to the Earl Butz legacy. It is not for children or most places of work. Amazing what turns up on YouTube.