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I have been proud to work for the business school at the University of Chicago since I started there not long before September 11, 2001. As an administrator myself, I greatly enjoy watching our leadership—especially our deans—in action. Not only are they superb scholars and teachers, but they are also gifted in the art of human, fiscal, and physical resource management. Yesterday, the school made history because alumnus David Booth (MBA '71) and his young family gave the school an astounding $300 million unrestricted dollars. Not only is this extraordinary because of its scale—three times that of the next largest individual gift to any business school (Standford, $105 million)—and not only because Mr. Booth has already given $10.5 million to our institution, but because he gave it at what may well be the nadir of a global financial crisis. This means that as the monies are invested wisely—and they will be —they stand to grow many-fold as the world rises out of the depths of recession (or depression). Needless to say, this has put all of us, even those whose stake in the school—now, and rightly so, the Chicago Booth School of Business— is unlikely to benefit directly, in a buoyant, optimistic frame of mind. This, combined with Obama's unquestionable victory, makes the future uncommonly bright.
Something one might question about Hillerman’s fiction, however, is the degree to which tribal law officers’ jobs fill their lives with rewarding mental challenges and fulfilling resolutions. Of course, there would be no story if brilliant, danger-tinged mystery-solving were not what his beloved characters, Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn and Officer Jim Chee, did for a living. But I have to admit, I got a good laugh out of my friend LK’s reaction when I asked her last summer what her husband, a tribal policeman in a large pueblo sandwiched between the main Navajo lands and a small bit of additional Navajo territory to the east (To’hajiilee) along old Route 66/Interstate 40, thought of Hillerman’s books. Her dear husband RK, a career cop on their reservation, works the graveyard shift these days, and, between hours of boredom and paperwork, deals mostly with drunk teenagers and vandalism, terrible gun and vehicle accidents, road closures in dangerous weather, and, on a good day, nothing worse than petty theft at the convenience store. It’s one of those reliable, steady livings that can be hard to come by in rural areas like theirs. LK, a modest and wise person, just groaned a little at the thought her husband’s job might be like a Tony Hillerman novel. Well, OK, so her sister, BK (whose husband is not in the police business), let out sound a little more like a snort when the subject came up.
Nonetheless, I greatly treasure Hillerman’s stories and am sad that he moved on to the afterlife last week. Here’s a wonderful (in spite of the insipid native flute soundtrack that doesn’t even match the player’s fingering, yet another of my “pet media peeves” for another blogday) LA Times video about him with a good accompanying article about his lifetime achievements.
The photo is a detail of my Navajo rug, woven by Clara Jim from Rough Rock on the Navajo reservation.
Back about mid-summer of 2006, when gas prices at the pump (seemed to have) hit real highs—around three-and-a-quarter a gallon—for the first time, I distinctly remember commenting to someone filling his tank in the lane opposite mine, that "someday we will think this is a cheap price for gas." A nice guy, he went along for the laugh but it was apparent that he didn't get it, and thought I was nuts for suggesting that gas could get any more expensive. I'm here to tell you, in October of 2008, that day came just about two weeks ago, when gas in Chicago went back down to $3.25 after peaking more than a dollar higher, at $4.39 a gallon for regular. I admit I haven't done my part to slow demand for oil in the form of jet fuel (too many trips in too short a span of time, from every perspective), but I don't use my car much. It's a VW Jetta, more than five years old, and it has just over 17,000 miles on the odometer. Of course I'm lucky, I live in a city where excellent public transportation is abundantly available, and when I do drive, most destinations aren't very far away. I can and do walk lots of places. My heart goes out to friends who live in truly rural areas, who have no options other than to use their car.
3 eggs, separated 1/2 pint whipping cream 1 tsp vanilla 1 TB Knox gelatin 1/2 cup granulated sugar 1 oz brandy 1 oz rum
Beat yolks until light yellow, add sugar gradually and beat until creamy; add brandy and rum. Beat egg whites until stuff; beat cream until firm enough to stand in firm, shiny peaks. Add vanilla. Meanwhile, soak gelatin in 1/4 cup hot water for 5 minutes, then stir over hot water until gelatin dissolves completely. Stir dissolved gelatin into egg yolk mixture, fold in beaten egg whites and whipped cream. Chill. That is, chill the mixture. Eat it, and you, too, shall chill. Pious angel indeed!
I experienced the most wonderful pang of nostalgia today, so delicious I intentionally prolonged it by doing a little online searching. Serendipitously, I came across an image of Elsie the Cow, Borden milk products' long-time mascot, bringing to mind happy hours collecting Borden’s ads from my mother’s Ladies Home Journals and McCall’s in the 1950s. How I wish now those had been kept, as the artistic cartoony images, full of color, motion and frantic humorous activity, were nothing short of glorious.Elsie, ever and always sporting her necklace of fresh black-eyed Susans, her hubby Elmer the bull, and kids (calves?) Beulah, Beauregard, Larabee and Lobelia, were the very epitome of the ideal family from the 1930s at least through the 1950s when I was smitten. Elsie even had very shapely, if slightly hairy, legs. These thoughts make me long to have in hand one those magazine pages again, to inhale its inky fragrance, touch its shiny slickness, and to revel in the lush pictures of happy bovine home life. Searching ebay for “Elsie Borden” turned up 105 hits, including many print ads that I’m tempted to buy, like a drug to soothe an old addiction, and several Elsie dolls, none of which exactly matches my memory of a similar toy I forgot I had ever had to treasure. I’m not the only one who looks back on Elsie’s hayday (no pun intended, of course) as halcyon. Memorabilia in fine condition commands a fine price in the early 21st century. One unspeakably sad thing about having a grown-up perspective on all this is that I now know what goes in to making Elmer’s Glue-All. I wonder if Elmer knew that when he took the job as spokesbull for Borden’s glue products?
I'm sorry I can't credit the source of the image; it appears in many places on the internet.
You know, Natalie Dessay really belongs on this list of best-evers, too. She was the terrific eponymous soprano in Lyric Opera of Chicago's production of Massenet's Manon this season. She was an amazing Morgana in Lyric's 2000 production of Handel's Alcina as well. I think if I had it to do all over again I would come back as a coloratura soprano. Or it would be nice if I were at least able to carry a tune in my next life.
My thanks to Opera Chic for the sensational image.
Here are two avian captures from the Henry's Fork Web cam (Island Park, Idaho); the silhouette heron is from this morning, at a time of day at a time of year when the angle of the sun makes oblivious all fine details, yet the bird is so distinct that it's identifiable, and another caught in late June of this year (the bird is most likely a starling or other member of the black bird family) when the sun reveals all the local glory in the cam's sight. Once in a while someone catches sight of a moose on the cam. I keep trying!
I awakened to the truly sad news this morning that Paul Newman has died at the age of 83. In appearance and in other personality characteristics, he reminded me a lot of my beloved friend and neighbor, Norman Maclean. Norman was known around the world as the author of A River Runs Through It, and a second book, Young Men and Fire that was published posthumously following brilliant editing by University of Chicago Press editor, Alan Thomas. Of course, A River Runs Through It was made into a highly successful Robert Redford movie that was released in 1992, two years after Norman's death at the age of 88. The same year the movie was released, Young Men and Fire was published and soon after Hollywood approached his family (son John Maclean and daughter Jean Maclean Snyder) about optioning it for a movie as well. It got as far as several screen play versions, though none seemed to John and Jean to adequately capture Norman's intent. In conversation with Norman's son-in-law, Joel Snyder, I learned that Clint Eastwood had been proposed to play Norman in the would-be film. While that was not unreasonable, by far the best match in terms of looks, age (at the time of Norman's involvement in the events described in Young Men and Fire), and persona, Paul Newman would have been the ultimate choice. I took this photo of Norman in our Chicago back yard in the fall of 1982, about a year after we visited Yellowstone, the Grand Tetons, and Norman at the Maclean family cabin in Seeley Lake, Montana. That wonderful trip, and what I learned about the world from Norman Maclean through the years I knew him, were to set the course of my life. I loved Norman deeply, and the loss of Paul Newman has opened anew the pain of his passing.
The other afternoon I had the good fortune to have an hour to lie down and vegetate before having to go to my evening exercise class. At such times I like to turn on the radio, usually Chicago Public Radio (all talk at that hour), but I keep it at low volume, especially in open-window weather, to avoid disturbing my next door neighbor. My thoughts drifted away from ceaseless discussion of world financial meltdown, then back to something more interesting, or at least, more meaningful, that came on the radio. I realized I could hardly hear the interviewee, whose voice was soft and accented. Then I tuned in to the problem more sharply. The amount of ambient noise, that I had to this point been oblivious to, was overwhelming. I added up these virtually simultaneous sources and came up with a list to explain why I couldn’t hear the radio without turning up the volume. I should explain that I live several stories up on the back side of a tall building, thus my apartment is a good half a block away from a busy intersection. Nonetheless, the number one sound-drownerwas one CTA bus after the next with some hideous, but miraculously nonfatal disease, that causes them to screech over a low rumble at incredible volume each time the gears engaged, which happens each time they pass northbound or southbound: the stops are right across the street. Note that we have the number 6, the 28, the X28, and the 171 routes to choose from, and this was rush hour. The sick bus noises were, of course, superimposed on the usual grind-and-boom of the big diesel engines and heavy-duty transmissions accelerating from a stop, the squeaky brakes, and the blaring recorded announcements of the stops. Then there is the noise of ordinary auto traffic, plus motorcycles whose riders favor the least effective mufflers they can get away with. In the distance at occasional intervals were the sounds of sirens and klaxons; we’re not far from a tertiary care hospital, a fire house, and two police departments that cover our neighborhood (both of which ignore the illegally-loud motorcycles). On top of that, we are under Midway Airport’s flyway, and though Midway itself is only 8 miles distant, for some reason sometimes noise abatement doesn’t always seem to be in effect, and at just the right altitude and just the right atmospheric conditions, the jet engines can easily blot out a punch line on the radio. Then a low-altitude helicopter pulsed by. Oh, and I live a block and a half from the train tracks, where Metra commuters and heavy freight trains ply all day. When all these decibel-busters happened to coincide it wasn’t possible to even tell that the radio was on. At a brief moment when they didn’t happen to overlap, the recycling truck came by in the alley on the other side of the building and dumped a few loads of glass bottles into its hatch. For a moment then, I could hear above the incessant rush of air through the ventilation system in the bathrooms next to my bedroom the sounds of water moving in the plumbing that I share with everyone who lives above and below me: someone happened to be showering overhead. Then a broken number 6 bus came by…
What’s miraculous about all of this is that it goes on all day and into the night, and all summer long when my windows are open I rarely notice the din. I hear instead its loud absence. The first night or two when I bed down in my cabin in Yellowstone, it’s dark and late, and almost everyone has turned off their lights, and there’s no ambient noise like there is in the city, when I become aware of a strong, steady, high pitched sound in my ears, tinnitus that is totally undetectable in my normal habitat.
In looking over some older posts, I realized that I have neglected to update my own reports on grizzly sow #399 and her three cubs. As of April 16, 2008, it had been confirmed that all three cubs and their mother survived another winter, a very rough one, in fact, their second together. And, as predicted, a month later, 399 was seen aggressively chasing the cubs away at the same time a boar was noted to be hanging around—right on schedule. By the time we got to Grand Teton National Park, in the latter part of May, the kids were still in frequently seen in mom's territory, but apart from her. Here, half way up Pacific Creek Road, in pouring rain, we found two of them, romping and playing as they had when they were little COY's (cubs-of-the-year) in the spring of 2006. They were definitely no longer in their mother's wake, physically nearly mature, healthy bears able to take on the world by themselves. What a testament to their mother's abilities. Maybe again, in the sping of 2009...let us hope!
I have been proud to work for the business school at the University of Chicago since I started there not long before September 11, 2001. As an administrator myself, I greatly enjoy watching our leadership—especially our deans—in action. Not only are they superb scholars and teachers, but they are also gifted in the art of human, fiscal, and physical resource management. Yesterday, the school made history because alumnus David Booth (MBA '71) and his young family gave the school an astounding $300 million unrestricted dollars. Not only is this extraordinary because of its scale—three times that of the next largest individual gift to any business school (Standford, $105 million)—and not only because Mr. Booth has already given $10.5 million to our institution, but because he gave it at what may well be the nadir of a global financial crisis. This means that as the monies are invested wisely—and they will be —they stand to grow many-fold as the world rises out of the depths of recession (or depression). Needless to say, this has put all of us, even those whose stake in the school—now, and rightly so, the Chicago Booth School of Business— is unlikely to benefit directly, in a buoyant, optimistic frame of mind. This, combined with Obama's unquestionable victory, makes the future uncommonly bright.
