On This Day: The Saxophone and Tchaikovsky
Dinant, Belgium, November 6, 1814: Adolphe Sax is born, and will eventually invent the saxophone. The saxophone never became popular during his lifetime, as it was considered an illegitimate instrument, and not fitten to be played. Then along came that no-account jazz music, and musicians who thought differently. Without Mr. Sax, what would have become of Paul Desmond, Stan Getz, and Jim Grantham?
St. Petersburg, November 6, 1893: Composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky died after drinking unboiled water during a cholera epidemic. His last work was Symphony No. 6, the Pathetique. (For the exclusive benefit of Sir Ola, I’d like to add that Tchikovsky was also famous for the beautiful Le Sacre du Printeps.)
Leap Up, Fall Down – the Daylight Savings Scam
Medford, Oregon – Daylight Savies Day, 2017 — Before I share my handy tip with you, I gotta say that in my opinion, William Willett has a lot to answer for, because best I can tell he was the scurvy dog — not Benjamin Franklin — who actually “invented” what is now Daylight Savings Time. Or maybe I should say he was the scurvy dog who unleashed the Daylight Savings Scam upon an unsuspecting populace.
‘Only a white man would believe that you could cut a foot off the top of a blanket and sew it to the bottom of a blanket and have a longer blanket.’ — Indian Saying
Ain’t it just the truth!
And right here, right now I want to put to rest the scurrilous rumors that [Read more…]
A Report on Chinese Christmas Eve
Marin County, July 16, 2017 — For her birthday, Adrienne came down from her Oregon home to visit with her daughters and grandchildren. Her whole family was there: Layla, Celina, Jessica, Dameon, and even Rhiannon and her puppy “Penny,” who flew in from Germany. All of them remembered …
Marin County, December 24, 2007 –– In our house on Scenic Avenue in San Anselmo, I made up a Christmas Eve Tradition. Because the previous month at Thanksgiving, due to Layla’s insistence, we had enjoyed a wonderful dinner of Tofurky. Ha! Enjoyed? Who am I kidding?
The Tofurky Experience
We agreed unilaterally that we would NEVER have Tofurky again. Maybe it’s ok for some things, but as a substitute for a proper Thanksgiving dinner … thank you, but no. So here we are coming up on Christmass Eve, and dinner was a problem. Because Adrienne doesn’t cook; it’s against her religion. And franky I don’t know how to do a turkey, and it’s a lot of work, and so invention being the mother of necessity … I made up [Read more…]
Margaret Ellen Hurn, a Birthday
8 Miles North of Henrietta Texas, July 28, 2017 — My mother would be one hunded years old today, born in 1917.
In this photo near the end of her life, she leans on the front fence before the farmhouse on the farm where she grew up. She (and my two brothers David and Paul) had moved back to the farm after the death of my stepfather. She’d been born Margaret Ellen Hurn, became Margaret French as my mother, and later remarried to Dr. Strickland in Henrietta.
Two Friends
Around the base of that tree on the left, you can just make out a dark metal band. Once upon a time, long before I was born, the tree was planted inside what must have been a wheel part. A metal band about a foot tall, and maybe four feet diameter. The tree grew and grew and grew, until the band was quite snug, about 20 years before Margaret Strickland was photographed here at the front fence.
In a recent photo from google earth, the tree is gone. I wonder what became [Read more…]
Tutti-Fruity
When my mother told me this story it touched my heart, because in a way, it was part of who she was for the rest of her life …
Henrietta, Texas, Summer 1922: My mother, Margaret Hurn, known as Maggie, was six years old, and very excited that Saturday. For the first time, riding down the dirt road in the wagon with her mother and father, Maggie was going to town.
She had a nickel in her hand. She held it tight.
Eight miles seems so little now, for any car can cruise the paved road in just a few minutes. But on that day, on the dirt road in the wagon behind the horse, it took several hours, with the sun high above and dust rising to float in the air behind them, and she was holding that nickel all the way.
She had a plan.
Tutti-Fruity ice cream. That was the plan. A nickel would buy a big double-dip ice-cream cone at the Henrietta drugstore. The soda fountain there had a marble top, and fancy stools that spun around with shiny red seats. Behind the counter, lined up before the huge mirror, was a shelf of colored bottles. Every kind of delight, in town, right there at the soda fountain.
Maggie wanted Tutti-Fruity.
She was shy about going in, but her father said, “Go on,” and gave her a nudge, so she edged slowly through the door. Instantly dismayed because everything was so fancy, she waited, holding her nickel, and before long, the big man behind the counter noticed her and leaned over.
“What would you like, little girl?” he said. Perhaps a bit deaf, he spoke loudly, and it startled Maggie. She cast her eyes down.
“Tutti-Fruity,” she said softly.
“What’s that?” he said. “What would you like?” Maggie felt suddenly dismayed, embarrassed, as if scolded.
“Tutti-Fruity,” she said softly.
“I can’t hear you!” the man said loudly, “What do you want?” A well of tears blurred her vision.
“Tutti-Fruity,” she whispered.
“What?!!” he demanded. “Speak up!”
But now it was too late. Confused, ashamed, she ran crying from the store.
All the way home, on the long journey up the dirt road as the late shadows grew longer across the road, sitting in the wagon, she held the nickel in her hand.
A Voice From the Past
ghost in the machine
nameless, timeless … speed of light
and when is a loss?
July 1, 2003, San Jose, California: Although I am seated at my desk in San Anselmo, right now in San Jose hundreds of my 800-numbers are being fitted into a seven-foot cabinet inside the switching room of a long distance company.
It has been a very techno day; and to my shock I have just heard from my very techno friend Harvey, who died several years ago.
Moving those telephone lines was the final step of the Bloggard Migration Strategy (BMS).
Why migrate? Marin County, where we live, is perhaps the most expensive place in California. To buy the modest house we rent would cost over $700,000. In Montana or even a hundred miles north of here, this house would cost perhaps $150,000. So we decided to move.
In preparation, I consolidated all my local voicemail and 800-number voicemail lines into one place. Because their machine-support will no longer require my personal touch, Adrienne and I are now free to relocate, because I can operate my voicemail office, and my megatar workshop, anywhere.
As I tested telephone lines, I found one I’d forgotten. Some years previously, shortly before he died, my techno friend Harvey Warnke got a voicemail account from me.
Harvey was a unique spirit. Self-educated, he’d learned electronics working in the planetarium, then learned to design the light shows that appeared in the early days of Haight Ashbury psychedelic rock shows. He worked on movies, too.
If you’ve seen the remake of Invasion of the Body-Snatchers, in one of the later scenes there is the meow of a cat; that was Harvey’s cat, whom he named Shi*ty Kitty.
If you saw the movie War Games, in the final war-room scene you saw the huge screens that show missiles launching all over the world; It was Harvey who made those huge screens with their flashing images.
Long ago, he and I traded a project. He designed relays and sensors for the Line Seizer device I built for Network Answering Service, and I in turn did the software programming his Counter Intelligence device, which counted frames of film on a film-editing table for splicing movies. It was a grand time. Harvey was a brilliant engineer, who drove a turbo-charged motorcycle at vast speeds. He was always laughing, always fun.
He was a part of life, a part of my life, and it was a good time.
But his death came suddenly.
He’d contracted some kind of virus, and the virus, invading his heart, made his heart very large and very weak. And then one day, his heart stopped.
At the time, I couldn’t bring myself to delete the voice mailbox with the recording of his voice. I forgot it was there, until now.
Sitting here at my desk in San Anselmo, calling into the machine, suddenly I hear my friend talking.
“Hi, this is Harvey,” he says, “I’m not here right now. Leave me a message, and I’ll call you as soon as I can.”
His voice has survived the years and the equipment changes. He promises to return calls, but he will not.
His voice remains, in the machine.
And you know what?
I still can’t erase it.
This Newfangled Daylight-Savings Time
Dallas, Texas, Spring 1966: Living in Dunia Bean’s apartment on Gillespie street, I worked at the Cabana Hotel. The Cabana is a clone of Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, complete with over-sized statues of Venus, David, and the rest of the crew. Inside, a vast two-story lobby with greenish marble floor and a round sunken area with sofas enough for a football team.
Overlooking this magnificance, our front desk where I worked with Dick and Earl, dignified alcoholics. Dick taught me how to get big tips at crowded times, and Earl as a young actor fought swords with Errol Flynn in the movie Captain Blood. That was a while back.
But this was in the spring, and for the first time since the war, Texas was going to have Daylight Savings Time. We were all abuzz.
Paul the Bellman was a portly fellow, balding and gabby. He made big tips because he knew about health food and horoscopes. This was years before such things were popular. His most popular health food remedy was honey and vinegar; he’d recommend it for almost anything.
On the way to the elevators with the guests, he’d ask about their birth-date and provide predictions and prescriptions all the way to the room. Then I suppose it just seemed wrong, to the guest, to tip miserly to the fellow who’d taken such an interest in their fortunes and their health.
Paul the Bellman was very opinionated, and also had an annoying habit of slapping his hand down on the bellman’s marble-topped desk when he was about to speak. This made a loud pop. I think it was his version of banging the Judge’s gavel before pronouncing sentence.
So, while we were all discussing this radical new change, Daylight Savings Time, and how we would set our clocks before we went to bed, Paul returned to the bell desk.
Slap! went his open palm on the marble desk. “Well,” he said, “I know what I’m going to do.” We all stopped talking. He continued. “I’m going to set my clock for one a.m., and then I’m going to wake up, and set it ahead to two a.m.”
We all stared in incomprehension. “Why, Paul?” I asked.
“That way,” he crowed, “I won’t lose an hour’s sleep!”
I grinned. “But Paul,” I said, “If you’re awake when you move it forward, won’t you lose an hour’s wake?”
He pondered this. “Naw,” he said, “You can’t lose an hour’s wake.” We all nodded.
Slap! went his palm on the desk. He scowled. “But those guys better watch out,” he said.
We looked at each other. He went on.
“Because when they’re changing the time, they’re messing with the sun,” he said. “And they’d better not go messing with the sun!”
Thus came Daylight Savings Time to Texas.
