Stump No Mo'

Sept 17, 2012

More rain tonight, and at one point this evening I drove through it, and saw some vigorous lightning in the sky ahead. Cool air is said to be on its way, a first day of fall to remind us of what's ahead. I don't believe for a moment we'll have two mild winters in a row.

I’m not sure what this machine is called, but a village worker came by last week and used it to grind up the stump of the tree that used to be next to the street in front of my house.

And that was all. The work of the dread emerald ash borer was done.

My Fine New Map

What better (besides a check) to get in the mail but a spanking-new map of the world? A little while ago National Geographic Traveler wanted me to renew my lapsed subscription for a small sum, and sweetened the pot with an offer of a spanking-new map of the world, no extra change. My esteem for Nat'l Geo maps is high; I've been perusing them since I can't remember when; and so I subscribed.

One side is the world, the other the United States. It's a fine, fine map, complete with the latest nations (e.g., Kosovo, South Sudan) and the land done all in earth colors, even the purples and oranges somehow. The oceans are white, with grays for undersea ranges and other formations, and the lettering for the oceanic features is brown. Interesting choice, especially considering that the water features on land, such as rivers, lakes and glaciation, are lettered in blue. All the typefaces are the standard Nat'l Geo ones that the organization seems to have been using forever, and which they never should change.

The map easily contains as much information as a paper book or an electronic map, without the worry that it will crash without warning. Also I can -- when I clear everything else away -- spread it majestically across my desk. Try that with an iPad.

Though I don't have time for a complete inventory, I find myself looking on the map for alternate names, which appear in parentheses on Nat'l Geo maps (as they always have). The Chagos Archipelago, for instance, is alternatively the Oil Islands. I didn't know that, but my knowledge of the BIOT is shockingly meager. Others are no surprise: the Falklands is also Islas Malvinas; Greenland and its towns have their alternate names listed; Burma has its official name listed, though we can all hope it will be Burma again someday; and Bombay and Calcutta and Madras have their officially sanctioned names, too. But really, if we must use Mumbai, Kolkata and Chenai, shouldn't we call the country Bharat Ganarajya?

None of the Wade-Giles romanizations of Chinese names are still on the map, which I suppose is to be expected, though Dongbei has the better-known Manchuria next to it in parentheses. My own favorite place name (sort of) in China remains Ürümqi.

Oddly, Ho Chi Minh City has no parentheses next to it containing "Saigon" next to it. Also oddly, the island generally called Sulawesi these days is called Celebes on the Nat'l Geo map -- no hint of any other name. The good old name I learned when I first learned about this island and its excellent shape. What's up with that? I might have to send an email to Nat'l Geo to ask.

Business Card?

A business card came to my attention today, by way of an emailed image. It was good for laugh only because Lilly turns on the radio in the car sometimes, and the song that the card draws its inspiration from happens to be in heavy rotation on some stations at the moment.

Context, that's the thing in comedy. That and timing. Under the lyric-inspired text is a name and phone number, now greened-out. Not too many people would hear the song and think, "Business card," but I guess the person who created the card did.

Damned Bugs

Intense heat today, nearly 100° F., and after a brief rainstorm in the late afternoon, tropical humidity. August has arrived early. Yesterday I got a handwritten note near my front door from the village engineering department. The tree next to the street in front of my house -- on village land -- is going to be removed. As in, cut down. The problem: the dread emerald ash borer.

Damn. It isn't a favorite tree of mine, but it's a tree in a spot where there needs to be a tree. The note added that a replacement would be "discussed at a later time."

Damn again. Fine, a little tree is going to go there. Will I even be here long enough to enjoy it as a full, shady tree? Probably not.

But the note did make me take a closer look at the tree that will be destroyed. It looks ill. Here in the fullness of June, it doesn't have nearly as many leaves as it should. The village has more about the problem here, including the awful lines that "... history and research has indicated that the village can expect a vast increase in mortality rates this summer. The EAB Management Plan assumes the loss of the majority of ash trees from this infestation..."

Yuriko and I took a walk late yesterday afternoon and noted the mark of death, a red spot painted on the trees, facing the street. At least a half-dozen trees on our street are slated for removal (but not all of them). I lost count of the other red spots on other streets; the infestation must be bad. I also came to think that decades ago, when this subdivision was new, someone planted a lot of ash trees. Maybe they were cheap, and the concept of biodiversity hadn't been invented, or at least popularized, yet.

Creating Permanence in a Specific Location

Press releases include many kinds of information, from complete pabulum to surprisingly useful nuggets of information. Rarely anything I see in one surprises me any more, but today I found one that made me think: this can't be for real.

It concerned a residential development. The quality of the release, I hope, isn't a reflection on the property, though very likely the development will be a fine place to live. This following are the first two sentences of the release, verbatim.

The uprise of building projects in general always show a good sign that the market is turning around for the better. The specs of this listed project while as a whole is impressive, it is not what makes this project the standout in Florida, but instead the standout project in all of the U.S and that is something to be excited about."

Mind you, this went out on PRWeb, so someone paid to have it published. Even though, as you continue to read, you can't help feeling that the writer isn't a native speaker of English.

With the housing market being in the current state of turmoil, consumers are seeking alternative options. The other options include luxury residences such as renting, which do not necessarily involve a mortgage payment or creating permanence in a specific location.

The buildings will be an amazing two to three stories high featuring single flats around 800 square feet to 3 bedroom units including parking garages. There will be a mixed population of occupants including families to singles. With 456 units, this green project will touch many different groups.

There are several individuals that will experience building green and others that will be lucky enough to live green. This is the future for building and we are spreading the message of sustainable building and healthy living.

I can see the writer's giving it the old college try in that weird language, English. But it's a slog for us native speakers to get through, and I can imagine releases of this kind being ignored by members of the media, something you don't want if you're paying to get your message across. The takeaway? Hire a writer from within your language group.

(This, on the other hand, is an example of a well-written press release.)

Objectivist Spam

Second windy day in a row, but at least warm. Genuinely warm, too, not the usual faux warm of early spring. Warm enough to take lunch on the deck, but the wind would have been distracting, so no leftovers al fresco just yet. It isn't really spring until I can do that.

Got an e-mail message from the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights the other day. How did I get on that mailing list? I thought the erosion of privacy in the Internet age was supposed to earn me solicitations tailored to my mindset and inclinations. A related question: how come I never get unsolicited coupons for things I actually buy? You know, to encourage me to visit my usual grocery stores more often? It's not like the grocery stores I frequent can't keep track of what I buy.

Still, I was amused by the e-mail, which is an invitation to a "debate" later this month. The debate topic is Is Government the Problem or the Solution? Gee, I wonder how the minions of Ayn Rand are going to come down on that question.

A Parked Wienermobile

There I was today, driving along Higgins Road in Rosemont, Ill. I had an event to go to, starting soon, but then I saw a Wienermobile. I had to stop for that.

I'd seen one before, but never in the wild. Sources tell me that there are eight of them active on the nation's roads at any one time -- including one today, license plates BIG BUN, parked near a hotel in Rosemont. No driver (hotdoggers, they're called) was in or near the vehicle, or I would have gotten his or her picture, too.

Among the Bills and Circulars

This postcard arrived from the poet Geof Huth last week.

28 January 2012

"Dees ----------------

The reverse of this card... I used to practice three poems that were physical in nature, three poems that I could not start over because I was creating each onto surfaces that I had only one copy of, so this is colorful, messy, exact, crayoned, inked & impressed onto & tomorrow I may begin another one of these. Geof.

Car Meets Tree

Icy roads this morning. And ice has its consequences. Today I noticed evidence of a recent car-tree encounter (in the morning, probably) in my neighborhood and decided to document it. I saw tire tracks, made by one side of a vehicle, running from the street straight into a tree. A fainter, parallel track runs the same direction. I assume that that side of the car didn't gouge the ground very much.

This shot gives a better idea of the size of the tree -- fairly large -- and that the car must have glanced off it back toward the road. The car must have been damaged, but maybe not so much that it couldn't drive away. As the next photo shows, other tire tracks led away from the tree.

I took a pic of the base of the tree, but it's hard to see anything that in the image. It looked like the tree suffered some chipping near its base, but otherwise it didn't look too badly damaged. No evidence of paint flecks or the like, but then again it was too cold for me to linger. Still, it's an example of speeding car + patch of ice = bad day for someone.

Let Your LOVE Lights Shine

Cold over most of the weekend, enough to keep the snow on the ground, but then we had an MLK Day warmup today with partial meltage. A random survey of suburban houses, also today -- that is, what I saw as I drove along -- revealed only one set of holiday lights still glowing, some small strings on a few bushes near the house.

But I also saw some Valentine’s lights. That was a first. Fairly modest by Christmas standards, but outdoor decorative lights all the same: white and pink, one heart-shaped, one Cupid, and one that spelled out LOVE. Are companies that specialize in holiday lighting are looking for the next market-expander?

Maybe in a few centuries, people will be astonished that no one lit up for Valentine’s Day before the mid-21st century. After all, marketing is sometimes astonishingly effective in inventing romantic notions (e.g., diamond engagement rings). Or it could be that the notion of romantic love as a basis for marriage will have been discarded, replaced by a psycho-genetic compatibility algorithm.

Car in the Drink

At about 5:30 this afternoon, I left my usual grocery store, and in the major thoroughfare beyond the large parking lot was a collection of emergency vehicles, lit up and ready for action. A ladder truck, a pumper, an ambulance (or two?), cops and more. One of the store employees, out for a cigarette, said there'd been a two-car crash, and that the Jaws of Life had been involved. Also, something about a car driving into a pond.

On the other side of the thoroughfare is a large pond ringed by a footpath. I put away my groceries and walked across the parking lot to the thoroughfare. A knot of people stood there, looking across the street. So I did too. All of the emergency vehicles and first responders were on the other side of the street, and two lanes (out of four) were still occupied with traffic -- slow moving traffic, but moving -- so I decided it was wise to stay on my side of the street to see what I could see.

At first I couldn't see it, but then the outline emerged: the top of a small blue car, halfway submerged in the pond. Its emergency lights flashed. I couldn't see anyone by the car, either occupants or rescuers, but a sizable crowd of onlookers stood on the far side of the pond. The car was smack in the middle of the pond. How did it get there, assuming it came from the thoroughfare? Did it run off the road and then float there by its momentum? Well, maybe. At least it wasn't upside down, which would have made escaping the car harder.

Bad day for someone. But at least the car ran into merely cold water, rather than icy cold water, as would have been the case in almost every other January.

Go Greater Prairie Chickens!

Our village's quarterly publication, The Cracker Barrel, arrived today. From it I learn a number of things of local import, including the fact that the name of the new local minor league baseball team will be the Schaumburg Boomers. That puzzled me for a moment -- wouldn't that be better for an Oklahoma team? -- but the article helpfully explains that the team is named after the "male greater prairie chicken."

Those birds sound like this. Isn't the Internet great?

The new team will be in the Frontier League, which also includes the Beach Bums, the CornBelters, the Crushers, the Freedom, the Grizzlies, the Miners, the Otters, the Rascals, the Rippers, the RiverHawks, the Slammers, the ThunderBolts and the Wild Things, so I guess Boomers will fit right in. The old team, the Schaumburg Flyers, went kaput after the end of the 2010 season, and so no ball was played this summer at Alexian Field (often called Flyers Stadium, but no more). We attended a few enjoyable games there back in the '00s. Games featuring the new team will begin on May 25, 2012.

The water tower closest to the stadium is painted to look like a baseball. Until recently, it still had the Flyers logo on it, too. I knew the logo was going away, and toyed with the idea of taking a picture to document it, but one thing or another (sloth, for instance) kept me from doing so.

In late October, I was driving by with Lilly in the front seat with her camera, and I pulled into the median and told her to take a picture of the thing. It's not a high-traffic area, but I still didn't want to dawdle in the median, so I didn't change the car's position even when she said, "A telephone pole is in the way." I told her to take the shot anyway.

Of course, other people have taken better shots. But I'm still glad I bothered. Last week I noticed that the logo -- but not the seams of the baseball -- had been painted over, presumably pending a new logo featuring a greater prairie chicken.

It isn't the only sports-themed water tower I've seen. About 10 years ago we drove through the small town of Hebron, Illinois, up in McHenry County very near the Wisconsin border. You can't help but notice its water tower.

It commemorates the fact that Alden-Hebron High School won the state basketball championship in 1952, despite the fact that fewer than 100 students attended the school. Wiki asserts that it's the smallest Illinois school ever to win the title, and I believe it. There's a feel-good sports movie in there somewhere.

The Code for Efik is 144

I have on my desk a "Student Master Enrollment Form" that I need to complete to register Lilly for high school next year. In fact, I've already completed it. I just need to return it to the school, which I'll call Schleswig-Holstein High.

Some of the answer boxes require codes, including for language spoken at home. A helpful list of the three-numeral codes is on a separate sheet, listing 165 human languages out of the what -- 6,000? -- that are still in use worldwide (a dwindling number, I understand). The English code is 000, for example. Japanese is 011. Esperanto isn't on the list, but that's expecting eccentricity from a standard form, and that isn't going to happen.

I ran down the list to see how many languages I'd heard of. That is, the number I could associate with some part of the world or some group of speakers. That number is 112, including only those I'm completely sure of, though there were others I could guess at. Not bad, but I'm shockingly ignorant of many -- I'm guessing here -- African languages, the lesser-known languages of China, and maybe some stray Filipino tongues, with something from the diverse language stock of Papua New Guinea thrown in.

Efik, for instance, which is spoken by people who "inhabit the coastal area of South Eastern Nigeria and are very well known nationally and internationally partly because of the prominence of Calabar in Nigerian history and also due to their rich cultural heritage," according to the web site of Nka Ikem Esit, which says it's "dedicated to the provision of services that contribute to the socio-economic development of the peoples of Calabar (Nigeria), and minorities in the Washington DC Metropolitan Area."

I think "well known.. internationally" is a bit of a stretch, but then again part of the art of self-promotion is claiming you're already well known. From that web site, I also learn that "the Obong of Calabar is a democratic monarch, the paramount traditional head of the Efiks and the protector of the Efik tradition." Now that's a title, the Obong of Calabar. Apparently there was some kind of crisis in the mid-2000s regarding who would be obong, though the current title-holder seems to be Edidem Ekpo Okon Abasi Otu V.

I could pursue more information about that subject by going down the rabbit-hole of the Internet, but there's only so far I want to take this tangent. Still, it's remarkable where a standard form can lead you, if you're inclined to follow.

Teeth & Bones

There will come a time when I see very little children's TV programming, maybe none if I play my cards right. Even now I don't see all that much, but enough to be amazed occasionally at some toy or other I'd never heard of. Such as Dr. Drill & Fill, a Play-Doh-based toy that simulates dentistry. That's a real toy? People really buy that for their children, even those who haven't expressed a desire to grow up and practice dentistry?

Maybe there's a market for this toy among the most demented kids, who like to re-enact scenes like this.

Ann brought home some mouse bones today. This was unexpected. She told me that the bones were created when an owl swallowed a mouse whole, digesting the good-and-soft parts, but later bringing the bones and fur up again. I'm not sure exactly where the school got these bones and pellets -- I like to imagine that the process involves a friendly farmer who owns a large barn staffed with hungry owls, and who cleans the residue and brings it to Ann's school for science class.

Ann's share is in a small clear-plastic Solo cup with a lid. Honestly, the pellets aren't that much to look at -- like fuzzballs that a vacuum picks up. But the bones are interesting. She picked them out of the cup and showed them to me: a skull, a jaw bone, some leg bones. "It's interesting and particular," she said.

Some Useless Information to Fire My Imagination

Got a message from the friendly folks at Facebook recently. And one from some spammers in a non-English speaking nation. First, the Facebook message.

Hi Dees,
We're trying out a new feature to reduce the amount of email you receive from Facebook. Starting today, we are turning off most individual email notifications and instead, we'll send you a summary only if there are popular stories you may have missed.
You can turn individual emails back on and restore all your original settings at any time.
Thanks,
The Facebook Team

Suits me. I get too much in my in box anyway. This was, of course, a day when the social media site annoyed many millions of -- I suspect -- its middle-aged users by changing something suddenly. Seems like this has happened before, but I can't remember now. The main thing Facebook does to annoy me is forget to republish BTST to my Notes section, which has been happening this week. Guess the Facebook servers have been too busy gearing up for the Next Big Thing to attend to routine business.

Got a chuckle out of this in the New York Times today: "Facebook, the Web’s biggest social network, is where you go to see what your friends are up to. Now it wants to be a force that shapes what you watch, hear, read and buy."

Don't we already have an entity like that? You know, television.

Here's the spam. Of the two messages, I preferred the spam. I get so little quality spam these days. "Septimus Obama"? I have to like that.

Howdy Septimus Obama is without a doubt giving Gov Grants that can help family members locally to help stimulate the particular financial state. Investigate for yourself N7Gov . com tend not to pass up. It's not going to last lengthy!!

Will Not Go There, See That

Got a peculiar press release the other day (because I'm on some peculiar lists): "So-and-So Travel Co. announces its 2012 group tour packages to North Korea... Highlights include:

The April 2012 tour coinciding with the 100th birthday celebrations of North Korea's Eternal President and founder, Kim Il Sung;

New visits to beautiful Kumgang, the "Diamond Mountains," open to tourists for the first time since 2008;

New visits to several pristine remote DRPK mountain ranges for intrepid travelers."

Yep, a starving population does have a way of keeping those mountain ranges pristine.

As It Happens, the Moon is Full Tonight

And a fine silver moon it is, rising from behind my neighbor's honey locust, if I stand on my deck. It's a breezy, warmish evening, so I did that just now.

I should know better than to read comments posted at any web site (except here), but sometimes I do it anyway. Such as the comments at a short article accompanying photos of the Apollo landing sites taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Here's a good one -- entirely sic:

These “pictures” prove nothing. I could do that in photoshop.
The moon landings were faked. All the facts show this without doubt. Anyone with a bit of knowledge knows this. For one thing the moon isnt a planet and so doesnt have any gravity. The “landers” should be floating in space. And why are there “tracks” on the moon? After 40 years they should have vanished. Outside my home a car track doesnt last 1 month. LOL!
Also look at the picture of the “flag” on the moon. It’s WAVING! But there is no wind on the Moon!
Don’t be fooled by the great scientific conspiracy. They use these things to control us to take away our freedoms. Put your faith in God not “science”.

I can see that guy's last point. He'd best put his faith in God, since he knows no science. Besides, God is famous for protecting fools, besides drunks and children.

The Brookfield Zoo

The following showed up in a box on my Google News page late last week. I read it and then read it again, to make sure I hadn't missed anything, such as why I would be remotely interested in participating.

Welcome to Google News Badges

Collect private badges for your favorite topics. The more you read, the more your badges level up: you can reach Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, and finally Ultimate. Keep your badges to yourself -- or show them off to your friends!

For example, if you keep reading articles about Politics, it will earn you a Bronze badge.

A bronze badge I can show to my friends? Maybe Google thinks I'm ten years old. But if so, why would I want to earn badges in politics? I deleted the box, muttering we don't need no...

We went to the Brookfield Zoo on Friday afternoon, just ahead of the heat wave that's settled over northern Illinois. I wasn't exactly sure the last time we went there, but it's been a few years. Around this time last year we started to go to the zoo, but became mired in a fierce traffic jam on Illinois 83 in DuPage County, and also discovered that our car's air conditioner had decided to break that very day. Things got a mite testy inside the car, so we only got as far as the Oakbook Center, shrugging off the zoo for a mall.

We had better luck this time, arriving in the early afternoon and returning home in time for dinner, thus avoiding overpriced zoo food. Not only that, we had free admission passes that we'd received as a gift a while ago. So for the price of parking ($9), we had access to the Brookfield Zoo, which is formally known as the Chicago Zoological Park but never called that, on 216 acres of Cook County Forest Preserve land in the western suburb of Brookfield.

Why are zoos considered children's attractions? They are, of course, good places to take your children, but a good zoo offers a lot to older visitors. I've been to North American, European and Asian zoos, and you won't persuade me, for instance, that the marvels of Night Safari in Singapore, which is a nocturnal zoo, are best reserved for kids. Even more modest zoos are usually worth a look.

As for the Brookfield Zoo, living relatively close by has made me blasé about it. I shouldn't be. It's one of the country's great zoos, expansive and park-like, full of well-designed exhibits that are home to a wide variety of animals. During our visit, we managed to see (among other animals), addax, African wild dogs, alligator snapping turtles, alligators, Amur leopards and tigers, an Andean condor, Bactrian camels, a bald eagle, bats, black-footed cats, a boa constrictor, buffalo, a cassowary, dolphins, giraffes, golden lion tamarin, a green moray eel, a grizzly bear, Humboldt penguins, ibex, klipspriners, meerkats, Mexican gray wolves, moon jellies, naked mole rats, North American river otters, polar bears, sea lions, sloth bears, wombats and zebras.

Now is the Perfect Time to Panic

Someone with a nom de net "blackton" posted this in the comments section of a New Republic article yesterday. How often are online comments so literate? (Even though I had to fix a few bits of punctuation.)

Into the shadow of default rode the 242

Half a government half a government,
Half a government onward,
All in the valley of Default
Rode the 242:
"Forward, the Tea Brigade!
"Charge for the Dems!" he said:
Into the valley of Default
Rode the 242.

Tax cuts to right of them,
Tax cuts to left of them,
Tax cuts in front of them
Cantor'd & Boehner'd;
Limbaugh'd at with snot and smell,
Crazy they rode, not well,
Into the jaws of Default,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the 242.

Apologies to Lord Tennyson

With any luck this will soon be just an amusing comment from an uncertain period in U.S. history, not a bitter reminder of the cheerful summer days before the Panic of 2011.

How to Buy a Can of Shaving Cream

Not long ago I got an e-mail from a site that publishes short how-to articles, among other things. It's a fine site, full of useful information. But I wasn't especially persuaded by the article the message linked to, "How to Make Aloe Shaving Cream." It began, "Moisturizing aloe and peppermint shaving cream is a simple, natural alternative to the expensive store-bought shaving creams that are often loaded with unnecessary and potentially harmful additives and preservatives."

No kidding. I've been shaving my face more than 30 years now with expensive store-bought shaving creams and one of these days I'm going to wake up dead because of potentially harmful additives and preservatives. Cheerful news. So how do I concoct a simple, natural alternative, one probably used by the Indians of the Orinoco?

According to the article, use distilled water, borax powder, coconut oil, liquid lanolin, some grated beeswax, almond oil, peppermint essential oil, and finally aloe vera gel. Then there are five steps involving two different sauce pans and some mixing. That isn't my idea of simple. Or inexpensive, come to think of it, since obtaining all those ingredients is bound to cost a bit, and I suspect some of it would go to waste, once I got tired of the sauce pans and the mixing.

Call it the Real Simple syndrome. I only have a passing familiarity with that magazine/web site -- I'm way out of its demographic -- but it strikes me as devoted to ways to keep busy doing things that don't need to be done. Such as mixing up my own shaving cream.

I suppose there are shaving cream enthusiasts who enjoy the process of making their own, like beer hobbyists or the like, and I wish them well. As for me, I can't remember what I paid for my most recent can of shaving cream, but it wasn't much (or I'd remember it). The thing lasts for months. It smells pretty good. I don't have to think about it or do anything about it while it sits in the bathroom, waiting for me to shave.

That's my idea of real simple. As for the scary chemicals, I'll just have to live with the risk that my jaw will drop off someday.