Daytripper

Quotating

noreply@blogger.com (Lee) — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 15:38:00 +0000

"I sometimes feel as if I would like to scream out to the American public that they are squirting gasoline on the fire. The prison system is now manufacturing offenders, it is increasing the amount of transgression, it is multiplying crimes, it is compounding evil."

Psychiatrist Karl Menninger, from testimony before Congress in 1971.

Seedy

noreply@blogger.com (Lee) — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 16:37:00 +0000

You can call it summer if you want. I call it watermelon season.

And this year, add seedless watermelon to the long list of Innovations I Have Initially Denounced (online banking, pay-at-the-pump, caller ID, etc.) and Later Wholeheartedly Embraced.

Last weekend I was buying groceries and noticed that the seeded watermelon was 10 cents a pound cheaper. Having now made it through the first quarter of my enormous seedy friend, I'm selling out again.

Seeded watermelon is fine if you're sitting on my dad's porch in South Dakota and spitting the seeds into the bushes. Not so nice in the new third-floor condo, where the seeds require you to transform blameless household articles into spittoons or hover over an open trashcan. So after this ten-pounder is gone, it's back to The Island of Dr Moreau.

Seen from the El

noreply@blogger.com (Lee) — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 20:15:00 +0000

One of the many advantages of our recent move from Oak Park to the Edgewater neighborhood in Chicago proper has been the accompanying switch from the Blue Line to the Red Line for the bulk of my public transportation. The Blue Line runs along the Eisenhower Expressway before going underground as you hit downtown and the Loop. The result is you have a view of cars racing (or often inching) along on the surrounding lanes. It's like riding in a ditch.

Much of the Red Line is truly elevated, allowing for some treetop views and world-class eavesdropping on lives near the tracks. But near the Fullerton stop, as you're passing through DePaul University's Lincoln Park campus, you might get the feeling that someone is looking back at you...

That's Frances X McCabe Hall which (literally) overlooks DePaul's Wish Field and Cacciatore Stadium, and nosy subway riders.

www.transitchicago.com/

The Good Wordle

noreply@blogger.com (Lee) — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 14:42:00 +0000

Here's a cool time waster: Wordle. I used it to create this here word cloud for Oddment of Sandwiches.

And now back to your regularly scheduled life, already in progress.

(Tip from Good Evening)

What Though The Way May Be Long

noreply@blogger.com (Lee) — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 18:51:00 +0000

This delightfully odd little film, set to the song "What Though The Way May Be Long" by Sweden's Esbjorn Svensson Trio, shows how much can be done with very little, on a number of levels. Today it takes on an additional melancholy layer of meaning with the news that pianist Esbjorn Svensson died over the weekend.

More over at The New Low Down.

Who's Watching

noreply@blogger.com (Lee) — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 17:21:00 +0000

Here's an update on activity in my other blogs.

The New Low Down

KISS and Condoleeza Rice

An Oddment of Sandwiches
This purposely un-bloggy thing has turned into a story collector, of all things, thanks to a writing exercise I came up with back in November. I take the Word of the Day from two word-of-the-day services and try to sketch out a scene that makes use of both words, for example "garboil" and "lacuna". One time what came out was a poem. I try to keep this to a single page in a 7x5 notebook, so most of them come out pretty short. Initially, I tried to use both words in the story which was fine at first, but quickly began to feel forced.

It's been a profitable exercise, artistically speaking, although being in control of all these characters can be a burden. Bumping off a talking penguin is one thing, but with one poor sap I needed two edits to make sure he was dead.

So we'll see where this goes. Most of the pieces I've sketched are still in the notebook, where they will remain. No use crying over spilled ink. But there are several characters who keep turning up asking me for fresh scenes. I get the feeling that two of them are going bound to meet sometime.

Preposition trouble

noreply@blogger.com (Lee) — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 16:47:00 +0000

A little something for the Word Dorks from this morning's Chicago Tribune Daywatch:
So many questions: Is the governor's desk on wheels now? Can he raise and lower it like a bus? Are free rides the only way to get the disabled off his desk? What are they doing up there to begin with?

(And yes, the title of this post is a reference to this classic cartoon. Money line at ~3:06)

Reunited

noreply@blogger.com (Lee) — Thu, 15 May 2008 16:09:00 +0000

Sometimes it's the little things.

We just spent six months camping out in a rented place in Oak Park. It was less than half the size of our place in Kansas City but had a full basement. The idea was to put most of our stuff down there and unpack minimally so as not to get too comfortable there while we learned our way around Chicago. The plan worked, almost too well. (I'd forgotten how much I hate camping.)

So now, more than six months after packing them, most of the boxes are coming open and it's like Christmas everyday. Pictured above is some of the beloved crap that will once again clutter my workspace:

A rubber Snoopy, prone (acquired in grade school)
A Mr Creosote action figure (when you squeeze him a green goo protrudes from his mouth)
A weird ceramic kangaroo caddy that used to sit in my dad's office
A rubber chicken Tootsie Pop holder (still, for some reason, in its original packaging)
An Abe Lincoln beanie doll, purchased at Mount Rushmore
And behind them a yard stick from Jay Egge's service shop on East Highway 38 in Sioux Falls (now the site of a Wal-Mart, I believe).

I also moved some dumb stuff...

So long, Spindle

noreply@blogger.com (Lee) — Tue, 06 May 2008 17:08:00 +0000

I've seen Stonehenge and the Eiffel Tower. I've been to the top of the Empire State Building and I used to spend part of every summer near Mount Rushmore. Now I'd never suggest that "Spindle" (a.k.a., The Car Kabob) in Berwyn, Illinois, was on a par with any of these monumental structures, but I will confess to feeling a thrill when I discovered we were living a short hop away in Oak Park.

I'll also confess that I owe much of that thrill to Spindle's appearance in Wayne's World. Not a great film but WW did rise above its SNL spin-off cohort thanks to the ridiculous, pneumatic optimism of Mike Meyers' character and to some fine second unit photography of Spindle and other bits of suburban Americana. The two reverberated against each other, elevating the end result clear of the realm of cornball sketch mishagas. (The less said about Wayne's World 2, the better.)

When news of Spindle's demise surfaced last year, a local group tried to save it. They raised donations but not enough. Last week, the mall owner tried to sell it on eBay but there were no bids. So last Friday night, Spindle came down. Instead, the Cermak Plaza shopping center will get a new Walgreens. Doesn't seem like much of a trade.

And now the Chicago Tribune reports that Spindle may return, somewhere, some day. We shall see. All I know is that I'm even more motivated than ever to see Carhenge - before it gets replaced by a Bass Pro Shop.

Tiny hamlet

noreply@blogger.com (Lee) — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 23:15:00 +0000

One more post before I disappear into a pile of packing paper.

I haven't even been paying attention to the Pennsylvania primary coverage. Yet somehow the phrase "hardscrabble town in western Pennsylvania" has popped out of the media cloud enough in the past few days that I now have Bill Murray's rant from Groundhog Day running on a loop in my mind. I consider this a blessing, so I thought I'd share.

Once again the eyes of the world turn to this "tiny hamlet in western Pennsylvania," blah blah blah... There is no way this winter is ever going to end as long as that groundhog keeps seeing his shadow. I don't see any way out of it. He’s got to be stopped. And I have to stop him.

Not for nothing (as they say further east), but don't look for any relief come Wednesday. The Groundhog Day we're all in looks to last all summer. To quote Phil Connors, again, "You wanna throw up here, or you wanna throw up in the car?"

Here come the boxes

noreply@blogger.com (Lee) — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 16:25:00 +0000

At long last, we're finally going to be moving into our new place next week. I'm psyched.

Of course with all the packing, shuffling and settling there's going to be even less time to blog. See you in a couple of weeks.

Suess speaks (sort of)

noreply@blogger.com (Lee) — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 15:24:00 +0000

Stop Making Movies About My Books

On the fourteenth of March, in towns nationwide / In every cinema, multiplex, on every barnside / Gleamed another adapting of one of my books / CGI-ed and digitized by another sly crook...

I have a VHS copy of How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Someday I'll get around to buying a digital copy from iTunes or something. But as for adaptations of books by the good Doctor, that's as far as I'm prepared to go. As such, I haven't seen any of the bloated big screen adaptations to come out since Theodor Seuss Geisel was translated to a less corporeal format.

So with glee I recommend reading the Onion op-ed above.

"Why it's simply an outrage—a crime, you must judge!—
To crap on my books with this big-budget sludge.
My books are for children to learn ones and twos in,
Not commercialous slop for Jim Carrey to ruin."

Geisel's widow Audrey gets roughed up near the end, but else what's a First Amendment for? Besides, April is supposedly "the cruelest month" and National Poetry Month, to boot.

Then I recommend buying one of the actual books.

City folk

noreply@blogger.com (Lee) — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 16:20:00 +0000

I've heard it said that Chicago is like New York but with nicer people. Having lived in both places and approaching the six month mark of my Chicagoland residence, I'd say that in general the description fits. (There are assholes everywhere, after all, and, yes, I am talking about the pituitary case who manages that motel just off I-80 in Youngstown, Ohio).

As an illustration, take the image above, the snapping of which required me to stand in the middle of a busy sidewalk in the Loop and strike a number of modern dance poses. Most of the passersby gave me what felt like a polite berth and kept moving. In New York (by which I mean Manhattan), I would have expected to get an aggrieved berth accompanied by an annoyed grunt or possibly a remark.

I loved living in New York, but I always suspected that people occasionally stepped in front of cabs so they could let loose with a Ratzo Rizzo "I'm walkin' here!" My own crackpot theory about this is that there's something about the crush of humanity on the island combined with the awareness that so many people want your space (despite the fact that their space is probably so much better than yours ever will be) that results in a kind of neurotic territoriality.

One time I took a date to a movie on the Upper West Side. The place wasn't even a quarter full when my companion and I arrived and we were standing near the back trying to decide how close to the screen to sit when a woman in her 60s approached us and barked, "Excuse me!" I moved aside so she could enter the empty row I had been unintentionally blocking. We watched her shuffle along that empty row (one of at least a dozen on that side of the theater) until she got to the center aisle, which she then followed to the treasured and magical seat down front, the one she had earned by asserting hierarchy over me and my date. We shrugged. The movie looked fine from where we sat.

Whereabouts

noreply@blogger.com (Lee) — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 11:49:00 +0000

The decent fellow who poses as the crusty blogger XO recently posted a post about the lessons he's learned in two years of blogging. They're worth reading, as is XO, generally. So go ahead and do that some time.

My point in posting today (and I purposely waited a day so this wouldn't come off as an April Fool's post) is to fess up to breaking Lesson #9:

Lesson #9 - POST! To paraphrase an old axiom "Bloggers blog." No one is going to add you to their Google Reader if you only post a couple of times a year. WRITE GODDAMNIT! Nobody is going to read a blog that only gets updated when the seasons change.

This brings up several issues:

I don't know if you can "break" a lesson, but I respect your pedantry.
It hadn't occurred to me that I might be on anyone's Google Reader.
Spellcheck notwithstanding, I support the presence of the N in "GODDAMNIT!" I also support pronouncing the N sound which results in a satisfying Yosemite Sam impersonation if you say the word with sufficient vim.
I wholeheartedly support Yosemite Sam impersonations. And adverbs.
I actually have been writing quite a bit recently, although most of it has been on paper, which seems deliberately obscurantist but wasn't intended as such. It's just that I still have a thing for pens and paper. I'd take an hour in a good stationers over a museum anytime.
There have been numerous things posted over at Oddment of Sandwiches, but let's face it that thing really isn't technically a blog, but more of a sheep in blog's clothing.

Still, it would have been considerate of me to inform all five of my readers when I felt this most recent hiatus coming on.

So, sorry about that. And as they used to say on the Carson show: More to come.

Hope for the future

noreply@blogger.com (Lee) — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 17:32:00 +0000

Watch as rude camera-shoving on the streets of L.A. develops into a serious discussion of the future of healthcare in the U.S. Simply awesome.

Tip from the Hodg-man.

Snow crazy

noreply@blogger.com (Lee) — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 21:02:00 +0000

Today's big dump of snow made Cyrus very happy. It always does. Little Lady, the dog next door, did not approve.

Amazon makes strange bedfellows

noreply@blogger.com (Lee) — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 16:31:00 +0000

... or, more accurately, shelf fellows:

Dear Amazon.com Customer,

As someone who has purchased or rated books by William Shakespeare, you might like to know that "Outlaws of Poplar Creek / Bowdrie Follows a Cold Trail / His Brother's Debt" will be released on February 12, 2008. You can pre-order yours at a savings of $4.80 by following the link below.

Outlaws of Poplar Creek / Bowdrie Follows a Cold Trail / His Brother's Debt
Louis L'Amour

List Price: $14.99
Price: $10.19
You Save: $4.80 (32%)

Release Date: February 12, 2008

> Extra credit link for ~~word dorks~~ cultural literacy: Shakespearean origins of the expression "Politics make strange bedfellows."

Wrecking Ball Blues

noreply@blogger.com (Lee) — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 16:26:00 +0000

The ice house is melting.
Originally uploaded by maltoodle.

On my most recent trip back to Kansas City, I noticed that one of my favorite Kansas City landmarks is coming down. I forgot to pack the camera, but fortunately Maltoodle braved the snow recently to capture the dramatic image here.

The American Ice building hasn't held any actual ice for many years. Word has it barbecue baron Ollie Gates who owns the land has plans for commercial development in the area. And Bog knows that's much needed and long overdue in a part of town that has long been overlooked by developers. (Further scuttlebutt and some fine pictures here.)

All the same, I'm having trouble fending off nostalgia for the old brick pile. The American Ice building used to greet me every morning just after the 6:06 newscast when I'd step outside to grab the Kansas City Star from the loading dock. At least every other month I'd make a trip to the community recycling center that sat on the west side to drop off a load of gin bottles, egg cartons and cardboard boxes. A snap I took of it in '04 has also served as the wallpaper on every computer I've used over the last four years, a kind of anchor in the whirl of digital flotsam in which I seem all too often to abide.

The American Ice building was also reminder of the turn-of-the-20th, corrupt-expansive, meat-packing-City-Beautiful Kansas City that has been slowly crumbling away, as these things often do, especially in a city as demolition-happy as is the City of Fountains. It's probably a sign of my age but I realize that I've come to associate Kansas City with demolished architecture: the Mill Creek Viaduct, the Trolley Barn Neighborhood, Twin Oaks, the Mission Center Mall. If the paranoids are right, they may even aim the ball at Union Station some day.

There is a new crop of turn-of-the-21st, hocked-to-the-eyeballs, glass-euphoric new architecture sprouting in Kansas City (the Sprint Center, the Nelson's Bloch addition) but so far I'm having trouble warming to it the way I did to the old ice house.

Radio: Malling and Un-Malling

noreply@blogger.com (Lee) — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 16:37:00 +0000

My first freelance piece for Chicago Public Radio aired last Friday. It's about a Chicago suburb of Oak Park (and the place were I currently live), returning a pedestrian-only shopping mall to car traffic after more than 30 years.

You can listen to (or read) the piece on Chicago Public Radio's website.

As is usually the case, there was more information than would fit in the alotted time (five minutes), so here are a few follow-up notes.

-----
Ped Malls is the US - past and future
Several hundred pedestrian-only malls were built in cities around the US, starting in the late 1950s with Burdick Street in downtown Kalamazoo, Michigan, in 1959. According to Robert Bruegmann, the urban planning professor (and author) quoted in the report, all but about 20 or 30 of these have been torn out. The pedestrian mall movement in the US was a response to a trend that started in Europe after WWII. Bruegmann says that in Europe more of the malls have remained, in part because many of the streets that have gone pedestrian-only were already too narrow for motor vehicles. In the less dense, car-dependent US, the pedestrianized malls faced greater challenges, not least among them the convenience of the suburban shopping centers with their free parking lots. Two pedestrian-only malls in the US that are doing well are the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica and the 16th Street Transit Mall in Denver.

Bruegmann also had this to say: "I think this is the end of a particular chapter in the pedestrian mall story, but my guess is that we're going to come back to it. As cities become more and more complex organisms and there's a lot more revival in inner cities, my guess is that we'll see further generations of pedestrian malls."

-----
The Density Factor
Another planning expert I spoke to is Daniel Lauber, who formerly worked for the Village of Oak Park as a city planner. He opposed re-streeting Lake Street back in the 80s and Marion Street in 2007, but now that the streets are all open again the Oak Park should be concentrating on raising the density of housing in its downtown.

Lauber: "Any downtown, a suburban downtown in particular, really needs high-density housing to thrive. It produces a captive market for your retailers and restaurants in your downtown. That will help them thrive and produces more sales tax for the village."

Oak Park's Village President David Pope says that where density is concerned the town headed in the opposite direction. The Village Board plans to actually lower height restrictions in the area from 125 feet to 45 feet. This is to help preserve the intimacy of the space and to ensure that it doesn't become, "a row of condo towers."

This is in contrast to Evanston, another Chicago suburb, which has pretty much gone hog-wild for density in its downtown. In fact, Evanston has taken the first steps toward a plan to build a 49-story skyscraper downtown. As an admitted newcomer, it seems to me Oak Park and Evanston are in an unspoken contest to be the area's "most enlightened suburb" so it should be interesting to see how this works out for both.

-----
Further Reading
Here's what the Project for Public Spaces has to say about downtown Oak Park:

Great Public Spaces: Lake Street - why the 1988 re-streeting worked
Hall of Shame Nominee: Marion St. Pedestrian Mall - a call for revamping the mall and keeping it ped-only

Word Dork alert

noreply@blogger.com (Lee) — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 15:25:00 +0000

Ever had a phrase pop out of the media ether and slap you on the noggin? Call me an English major, but that's what happened in this report on NPR's Morning Edition last week. At about 1:38, a political analyst named Denise Strasser lays the blame for former Mexican President Vicente Fox's recent troubles on his -- wait for it -- "unbridled protagonism" [insert noggin slap here].

I think one part of the problem is translation. "Protagonismo" means a lot more in Spanish than "protagonism" does in English, where it sounds ever so slightly artificial. But as is often the case, the noggin problem lies in the adjective: Are there bridled forms of protagonism, and if so are they more acceptable? Where on the protagonist (protagonizer?) would this bridle fit and who would hold the reins? And sadly it's a short step from tall men with mustaches and horse tack to bondage porn and who needs that during breakfast?

The lesson is this: If your noun is sound, resist the urge to goose it with an adjective.

Speaking of head-scratch-inducing modifiers, check out this online ad from L.L. Bean featuring three words I never expected to see chain-ganged together in the service of commerce.

Awarded

noreply@blogger.com (Lee) — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 22:56:00 +0000

I made a brief trip back to Kansas City last weekend (by train - more on that later), to tie up a few loose ends from our recent move and also to collect an award. The Kansas City Association of Black Journalists selected a piece I produced about urban farmer Joe Jennings as best radio feature.

As is so often the case, it came down to luck. I was lucky to have come across Mr. Jennings during my brief-candle stint as producer of the Walt Bodine Show in the summer of 2006. I didn't have room for him on an urban agriculture show, but he was such a great talker that I kept him in my mental reminder file. Then last June, I spent part of day trying to keep up with him at his place in Wyandotte County. When it came time to put the piece together, the trick was staying out of his way. I was pleased with the results and apparently so was the KCABJ.

Have a listen for yourself:

Mr. Jennings is an award winner himself. The Pitch named him Best Urban Farmer in this year's Best of KC issue. Congrats, Mr. J!

Extra linkage:
KC Star story about the KCABJ awards (which featured a KCUR sweep of the radio category)

Autumn Leaves (and what to do with them)

noreply@blogger.com (Lee) — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 19:37:00 +0000

Greetings from "Chicagoland" (gag) where the autumn leaves have begun to fall, avec gusto. Two thoughts entered my head when I saw the stately maple in front of our rented bungalow in Oak Park.

- "Ooo, fall colors. Pretty..."
- "God I hate raking leaves."

Actually the raking part isn't so bad. It's the bagging and disposing part that frosts my tomato blossoms. At least it was in Kansas City, where I would invariably not get everything bagged by the time curbside collection (literally) rolled around.

Not a problem around here, where they invite you to just rake your leaves into the street (within certain guidelines). Then throughout October and November the diesel equivalent of a broom and dust pan roam the side streets looking for piles (see above).

This is thanks not only to the sheer volume of deciduous leaves dropping hereabouts but also a level of municipal services that no doubt boils the blood of guys over at Americans for Limited Government. But then I'm not sure the Sierra Club is thrilled about the exhaust either.

DT Archive: KC Street Names

noreply@blogger.com (Lee) — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 20:11:00 +0000

By request, we return once again to the dusty, shallow confines of the Daytripper archives. The following column demonstrates that you can indeed spend four-plus hours poking around aimlessly in the library's local history collection and still have something to show for it. Photo at right: Petticoat Lane circa 1990 (by LI).

_____
It's all in a name (or was)
Kansas City View - November 1990

A breeze of controversy buffeted Kansas City in 1966 when the City Council announced its intention to officially rename the section of 11th Street between Main and Grand Petticoat Lane. All the change amounted to was making a customary title legal. Nevertheless, Hartzfeld's, a local clothier who operated on the street in question, objected. Hartzfeld's made a line of clothing called Petticoat Lane and claimed that its trademark rights would be diluted.

The name change went through, but as years passed and shoppers went elsewhere, the two blocks eventually went back to plain old 11th Street. These days, Petticoat lane, like Hartzfeld's, exists only in Kansas City's memory. Not a comforting thought since Kansas City has the collective memory of a flea.

Memory, though, is an odd thing. Take for example the 1988 controversy over naming a section of Maple Street in Independence Higashimurayama Avenue. Higashimurayama, a suburb of Tokyo, is Independence's sister city in Japan. The good folks of Higashimurayama had already renamed a major street in their town Truman Boulevard as part of the tenth anniversary of the sisterhood and the good folks in Independence were trying to do their part.

A group of about 50 veterans showed up at a council meeting to protest the change and, to read the Times account of it (May 3, 1988), the debate centered on whether Harry Truman was rolling over in his grave for or against the change.

"I believe Harry Truman would turn over in his grave if he knew something like this was going on behind his back," said former VFW Post 1000 Commander Buck Stodtman, mixing a sweet metaphor against the change.

The Times apparently couldn't reach the former president for comment. Suffice it to say, the forces of love and world harmony won out over xenophobia, and Higashimurayama is still in the family.

Most of the street name changes in Kansas City's history have been for the benefit of mail carriers and street car conductors. East-west streets were changed to numbers in 1869, which resulted in the loss of many feminine street names: Emily (6th street), Gertrude (17th), Catherine (18th), Amelia (l9th) and Adeline (20th), among others, were banished in one fell bureaucratic swoop, their long hair whipping in the wind.

In 1910, the Post Office, in a fit of excessive practicality, asked that all street names in Kansas City be changed to numbers. City Hall ignored the Post Office until the issue went away.

As the city continued to grow through annexation and other kinds of expansion, street names had to be changed. Many streets in town have had several names. 11th Street, for instance, was first called Chestnut east of Main. West of Main, it was Chouteau. Main Street used to be Eleanore. Grand used to be Market Street. Walnut Street, named for a walnut grove which stood at its north end, has always been Walnut.

A re-survey in 1931 eliminated many duplications in Street names, but was only a warm-up for the nomenclatural lalapolooza the city pulled of in 1947. As part of the Ten Year plan, 149 street names were changed overnight. City Hall explained that this was being done to avoid confusion.

Many streets which had names before became numbered terraces. Hence such names as Loma Linda Road, Bel Airy Place, Reservoir Place and Steptoe Street were gone, taking their music and rhythm with them.

The City Planning Department's escapades continued north of the river in the 1950s, but not without incident. The same system was adopted as south of the river: east-west streets numbered, with eight streets to a mile. A problem cropped up in 1951 when a two-block stretch of pavement was named Crane street because it fell between 45th Terrace and 46th Street. L.D. Klein, who lived at 608 Crane, took exception. The name didn't mean a thing to him. As it turns out, it didn't mean much to anyone else.

As an unnamed Kansas City Star reporter explained (Feb. 18, l95l): "Crane is a small town in Stone County down on the Arkansas line. The city employee that chose the name never lived there, has no friends or relatives there and no love for the place. It was just a short name so he put it on the city map."

So what's in a name? Plenty, if it's where you live.

___
Postscript: A companion to this column dealt with Petticoat Lane more extensively and elicited my only written response. I quoted from local history writer Mrs. Sam Ray, who wrote for the Star for many years, and a week or so later got a letter from some Poindexter there asking me not to quote from the late Mrs. Ray in the future, as her heirs found some of the advertising in the View unseemly. Massage parlor ads positively give some folks the vapors.

Concerted efforts on my part to find something else of Mrs. R's to incorporate ended in sad defeat.

SWAK

noreply@blogger.com (Lee) — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 15:03:00 +0000

Bye bye, Lee!
Originally uploaded by DBasci.

My last day of work at KCUR was last Friday. It was also the last day of the fall membership drive and I'm pleased to say I helped to raise around 15 grand on my way out the door. Apparently some persons were so moved by my fundraising prowess that this picture of my head was defaced (a pun, at last!). If memory serves, the pink is a favorite shade of Program Director Bill Anderson's. Thanks, big guy! And thanks to Danielle Basci for snapping the image.

Anyhoo... I cleaned out my desk and headed for home around 3 PM. About 18 hours later, two sleep-deprived people and two frazzled dogs arrived in Chicagoland.

And so I promise more pictures, more posts and puns. In the meantime, there's unpacking and laundry and other fun things to do. See you (here) soon!

The Mesopotamians

noreply@blogger.com (Lee) — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 10:04:00 +0000

The original gods of geek rock are back with this cracking-good bit of animated musicality. From their latest album "The Else" on Rounder. Also available on - get this - vinyl.

By the way, it's true, as reported here and here: I'm moving to Chicago.