Watch for gigantic sink-holes to start forming all over the world

Chopping down the world's mountains, one kitchen at a time:
Granite is the most popular material for kitchen counters.

Life in da' Hood

For the last 62 years, the second weekend in June has been reserved for the 57th Street Art Fair here in Hyde Park, where I've lived for the last 42 years. I always go if I'm in town. It's never been the greatest, and in recent years has had trouble attracting high quality artists or high quality buyers (not clear which comes first). Hyde Park's a hard sell: No place to park for visitors from other parts of the city (though there are a couple of inexpensive express buses and the Metra commuter rail to bring you here if you can get yourself to downtown), we're mostly upper middle class but don't part so readily with our money (some of us may be well educated and full of SES potential but don't have much to part with, since a good fraction of the community is made up of students in the college and graduate schools of the University of Chicago and numerous institutions of religious higher learning), and the weather is perfectly capable of being awful at the beginning of summer. I've also often wondered at the selection jury's sanity. For instance, this year there were at least two exhibitors selling beautifully crafted, boringly similar, wood pens. There was a new vendor this year selling laser-cut iron silhouettes, just like the kind made in China and sold in the gift shops in Grand Teton National Park. And there was a lot of work for sale expensive out of proportion to the creativity, materials, and maker's time requirement. However, happily, this morning the weather was spectacular, and the people-watching was good. Here are a few snaps just for fun.

A sunscreen day

Not all the art is fine art

Abs, and everything else, of steel

Art fair health fare. Not.

Her cello case was open and people were dropping in bucks. At least she'll always be able to make a living playing in the subway station.

Urbs in hortis

So I can make plans

I hope you’ve been curious enough to click on John Maclean: FISHING, under “Check out these sites!” and within his richly interesting Web site, lucky enough to have come across his paean to his grandfather, the Reverend John Norman Maclean. The occasion of his memorial was the 100th anniversary of the Reverend’s pastorship of the First Presbyterian Church in Missoula, Montana. If you’ve read Norman Maclean’s A River Runs Through It, then you will understand at least a part of the significance of the elder Maclean’s arrival in Missoula.

The Reverend Maclean assumed his duties in 1909, just one year after my maternal grandfather undertook his own pivotal adventure that was to shape his life and that of his family.

Charles Edwin Lawton was born in 1882 to Lewis and Ella Foley Lawton. He was one among seven boys and two girls raised in Chester, Pennsylvania. In the 1880s, his father worked as a weaver in a cotton mill, and his father, born in England, as a watchman. I am unable to reconstruct anything of my grandad’s education, though quite apparently he was bright, sociable, and a team player. As a side note, it is interesting that in this undated clipping, the younger men, apparently without careers of their own yet, are identified by their closest notable relative, in this case, my great uncle Harold Lawton, who worked for Sun Oil his entire career. And he was a member of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church of Chester. 

 

I catch the first official glimpse of Grandad in the 1900 U.S. census (most 1890 census records, including my family’s, were destroyed in a 1921 fire), just before the basketball team was featured in the paper. At the age of 18 he was still living with his natal family, and his occupation was already listed, propitiously, as “bank clerk.”

 

The next sighting was the crucial one: a photograph, marked in my mother’s handwriting, “Charles E. Lawton - left - on board ship to Puerto Rico 1908.”  He was by now employed by the American Colonial Bank and this could well have been his first journey to his important new assignment. I do not know if he was yet married to my grandmother, Mary Cullin, although he was 26 years old. I often wonder what he, and even more so, my young grandmother, felt about their exportation to such an exotic place, with its ruinous climate, foreign tongue, strange diseases, dark-skinned citizens, and alien foods and customs. These children of such plain upbringings are worthy of admiration for having the gumption to leave their families and raise their own 1,600 miles by slow boat away.

Charlie, as he was known, was first stationed in Arecibo, since 1963 the world-renowned home of the Arecibo Observatory. In those days, however, Arecibo was famous for its pineapple plantations. My mother, born in 1912, spoke often of her young life in rural Puerto Rico. The American Colonial Bank was heavily invested in the agricultural economy of Puerto Rico, which besides pineapple, thrived on sugar, coffee, tobacco, cocoanut, bananas, and other fruits of the earth.  

It is clear from numerous family photos that my grandfather loved life in Puerto Rico.  Here he is on his favorite horse Colonel (from Arecibo days); there he is, with his wife and daughter and the extended family of friends and compatriots at a traditional Puerto Rican pig roast. Well, maybe not entirely traditional. I don’t know if Puerto Rican men typically wore suits and ties to the bar-b-ques, nor if the women all wore white. He fished and sailed Puerto Rico’s beautiful waters, and, it seems, was an admirer of Charlie Chaplin.

In a February 28, 1968 the (probably Chester) “Daily Times” retold in the felicitous style of 1918…

“Do you remember when? 50 YEARS AGO – It will be pleasing to local friends and business associates to learn that Charles Lawton, son of Mr. and Mrs. Lewis C. Lawton of 206 East Twenty-third street, has been elected cashier and director of the American Colonial Bank of Peurto Rico [sic]. Mr. Lawton was formerly connected with the Delaware County Trust Company.

News announcing the advancement of the former Chester young man was received in this city yesterday in a letter written to his parents. In receiving the appointment of cashier, Mr. Lawton was advanced over the heads of five fellow employees which is evidence of his keen ability in the banking world

Herman L. Cochran [left in photo], formerly of this city, is now vice president in charge of the Peurto Rico [sic] interests of the banking company, Mr. Lawton has been associated with Mr. Cochran for the past several years. The new appointment makes Mr. Lawton second chief of the institution.

As testimonial to his ability and excellent citizenship an elaborate farewell banquet was tendered Mr. Lawton by the representative residents of Arecibo. 

Approximately 60 people representing the different business establishments gathered about the festive board. The principal speaker was Attorney Palmer of Arecibo, who after telling of the accomplishments attained by the young banker of his home life and of his citizenship, presented him with a handsome gold watch inscribed with “Homage to Mr. Lawton, Arecibo, P.R, February 1918.”

This was the occasion of the family’s move to San Juan, by which time my mother was old enough to form many more clear memories. The family prospered there; in 1922 they built the house on Carrion’s Court that was my mother’s favorite home throughout her long life; a second daughter, Louise Edwina, had been born.

But things were to change; then, as now, economics were global. In September of 1931, my 19 year old mother was on a ship that would take her to New York, and from there, she went on to Massachusetts to attend Wellesley College. She treasured her year at Wellesley, participating as an alumna until she died nearly 75 years later.  But she was not to graduate from Wellesley; the family fortunes had begun to waver, Mother finished, well-educated nonetheless, at the far less costly University of Puerto Rico. In 1939, my grandfather made explicit in a letter to the New York Times the U.S. trade policies that adversely, and perversely, affected Puerto Rican commerce.

Through these years, details of my grandfather’s life are hard to nail down. The bank changed hands in 1930, his and the family’s ride became rougher. All I can document is that by 1942, he was working as a U.S. postal censor. My grandmother was apparently still in Puerto Rico, as was my 22 year old mother, also working as a censor.

By 1947, my mother was married to my father and living stateside. Around that time, my grandmother also moved back to the United States, where it seems she was awaiting Grandad.  In 1948, she received this letter, dated January 8:

Dear Mother [as he called her],

This will not be very long but so you will know how things are going. I have not been able to go to the SS Comp [?] this week, since Sunday I have had what the doctors call “undulating fever” it is like the “intermittent” we used to have but it seems something new in P.R. I have holed up in this case but hope by tomorrow to be able to get out at least to get some soup. I had to get something last night to put on the sweater sent me. ate  3 soft boiled eggs, toast and coffee got back here about 7:30 & in a short time proceeded to heave and heave the food in the toilet.

      Today have not left the room. This damned fever taken the strength out of the legs & I have stuck here I don’t know if I will try and get out tonight to at least get a little something.

      Answering the question of suits & overcoat. I was able to pick up a very good suit and overcoat this [illegible] when shock our passage morning. If your idea was for you to buy these & have them in the office of the S.S. Comp in [illegible] I know, due to my condition, I will need something heavy on the ship and that is why I got them so if you want to send down the cash it will expedite my trip. I have to get [back to] the cold before I will be right again. This damn fever and the cold sweating chills have about knocked me for a loop. I am still losing weight. am down to about 156 lbs from 190 to 195.

      Had a beautiful letter from Eleanor [my mother]. A sarcastic one from you, and a damned unpleasant one signed by my father but written by Stan. Lovely holiday what can a fellow do.

      Can’t finish this now will try a little later when the fever abates a little

      Well another plane went down in Georgia with a bunch of P.R. people on it dead and wounded. Last night a two passenger plane dropped near the mouth of the bay but both people were saved and plane lost.

      I received the packages from [illegible] and 18^th Street [an apparent reference to the house where Granny was living, with her sister Catharine, at the time]. Please thank them for me. I will try and do it when I get North if I am not taken up in a box.

Love

Charles

Please answer at once so I can make plans.

A matter of days later, he was “taken up in a box.” The maid in San Juan’s Hotel Central, where he had been living until he could repatriate, found his body the morning of

the 11th of January, 1948, just short of his 66^th birthday.

"Dear Folks, After 37 years in the tropics the camera has caught all the wrinkles & a few more. Taken during censorship in 1945 by my English liaison officer. Charlie."

Stay Healthy

Snapped while in line at the grocery today: Woman's Day} THE MAN ISSUE.
I sure hope that man-pleasin' burger is an extra-lean, no mayo turkey burger, with a nice, low-glycemic index, high fiber bun... 

What if...

What if BP channeled all the money it is now going to have to spend to clean up the Gulf coast - whether half-way successfully or not remains to be seen - toward developing clean, sustainable energy sources?

Mr. Obama, if we ban or rigidly restrict off-shore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, BP and other petroleum energy companies would be forced to invest in the rapid development of alternative, more desirable and acceptable energy sources. Please think about it!

Saved from oblivion

Saved from the dump by the not humorless, not unfeeling, street trash crew: 

One Chucky doll, and one chucked Valentine Teddy bear (albeit upside down).

We found Teddy in the oven

Cat-proofing: It's a major effort in this household. Teddy, who is now between 9 and 10 months old, has grown into a sometime holy terror of teenage-ness. He loves attention of any kind, typical adolescent that he is, whether it's positive or negative. The evidence suggests he doesn't cut up much when no one is watching, but when there's a witness, well, look out!

My electric oven has a fan that continues to run after then oven is turned off, presumably to cool it faster. Since the noise of the fan is annoying, I often leave the door ajar to speed the temperature drop. It has a stop at about 35 or 40o, and fortunately, when the door is open the light inside is on. The other night, about an hour after dinner, KLK called me frantically to the kitchen. There, resting happily on the top rack of the oven, was Teddy. When we yanked him out, our hearts in our throats, he was nice and toasty and quite puzzled as to what all the fuss was about. [I did not want to wait the 25 seconds it would have taken to grab the camera. Teddy's ability to get himself into potentially fatal situations is beyond my limited human imagination.  I was very upset.]

Ever since Winston was this age, we've kept the toilet lids down. That's because little Winston so much loved to play in the toilet that he would squeeze himself between the seat and the closed lid so he could reach inside to splash. After a few years we could leave the telephone books off the toilet lids because he finally learned not to even try to lift the weighted lid. We've not abandoned the habit of putting the lids down on the toilets in both bathrooms (his and ours) however, and it's a good thing, because Teddy likes to drop his toys into water too.

Now, you may notice something else a little odd about the bathroom view above. Yes, the tissue box is upside down. That's because it's so much fun to extend your claws into it and dig up the nice, soft, shreddy tissues!

Batting the mini-blind cords is also extremely entertaining. At all windows but one, we've installed, at great price, very nice cord cleats. Of course they're a pain in the buttinsky because the cords are so long (my windows are very tall) that every time I want to lift or lower the blinds it's long, winding chore...

Apparently, used q-tips are temptingly reminiscent of mice and other furry little prey. So to keep Teddy from helping himself in the bathroom waste can, I had to invest in this nice stainless steel lidded version: 

Note that the toilet paper roll above the can is intact. Be assured, that's just a fluke. He has noticed the appeal of the spinning, rocking paper, but for whatever reason, hasn't pursued pulling it all off the roller. Ssssshhhhhh! Don't even suggest it!
But what he does like is clawing certain upholstered furniture pieces. I have heard from several sources that cats don't like to get their paws sticky, so I invested in wide, double-sided tape sold for the express purpose of cat repulsion (note, by the way, what the model cat is doing in the catalog listing of the sticky tape. See how discouraged from clawing the furniture he is?). You will note that, a) there's at least one claw-dislodged thread sticking up over the sticky tape, and b) the tape has been slightly lifted off the fabric. That's because, it turns out, it's fun to chew!

 

And finally, there's my wonderful, reliable clock-radio with all the buttons on the top. Can you guess why it lives in a cage these days? Suffice it to say, if an 8 lb cat sits on the volume button for a minute or two, then steps on the on button in the middle of the night...and it really happened, more than once. 

Boys and their big toys

I took this quick photo of an impressively fast-moving snowplow through the windshield of my car when in Yellowstone this winter. I liked the sunlight on the snow-laden trees and the contrast of the big-mouthed yellow machinery against the white snow. It's been posted on my Flickr site in a set called Yellowstone, Winter 2010 where it's sat, more or less unnoticed, until suddenly today, when I got the two "invites" comments above, one from someone known as PublicServiceEquipmentFan, to add the photo to a group called SnowPlows and Snow Removal Equipment, and another from zamboni-man to join the Snow Plows group! Click on any of the links to see what makes some people so happy. I was truly flattered, and humored, to be asked to add my snowplow photo to what I suspect are overwhelmingly boys' (mens') clubs .  And who knows what further fame and fortune it might lead me to?

Help me out here

Am I the only one who had to look at this two or three times to get it? Does that make it good, or bad advertising?

I must be too old to know what A Bare-Knuckled Bucket of Does is. I read it, A Bare-Knuckled Bucket of Doze. Female deer. 

I think it's supposed to be Does, as in Duz, and perhaps the hint is that it is more nimble and useful than an I-phone. Or something. I dunno.

Life in the City That Works. Or maybe not.

A couple of weeks ago I took my VW Jetta (born in 2003, but with fewer than 26,000 miles on it still) to the dealer for a oil change. For only $100 more than the cost of an oil change, the service rep pointed out, I could have my "34,000 mile check-up" and since that timely offering included checking transmission fluid (mine's a stick) I said, yeah, okay, what's another hundred bucks..."

So along with topping off the fluids, they pulled off my tires (new less than a month ago) to check the brakes, and lo! I got the news that BOTH FRONT STRUT MOUNTS/BEARINGS COLLAPSED (in capital letters, just like that, on my service statement).

So why would that happen in such a low-mileage car, you ask?

Check out these photos of the street where my office is, for example. Chicago, the City That Works, the City of Big Shoulders. No, wait, that would be, City of Potholes on a scale that would trip Godzilla. In fact I almost always ride the bus. Along this stretch (60th Street, as it happens) the ride is like something you would otherwise pay a lot of money for at Disney World.

 

Spying on the Past, from the Future

The 2010, and every, decennial census is extremely important. Period. Apparently, some people are tempted––or even compelled––to ignore it as a little act of rebellion against what, Authority? Government Intrusiveness? But heavens, if you got the standard form, as I did, please enlighten me as to what information is being requested of you that is not already readily accessible to the government, and a whole lot of other people. Every year you give more intimate information to the government in your tax return than you will in the 2010 census. The fact is, at least in the context of the census, the government has little interest in its citizens as individuals, given that there are approximately 308,910,559 of us as of this writing. Yet every individual has to be accounted for, and the only way for the ever-changing data to be usable is to collect them as a “snapshot in time,” in this case, between March and the beginning of April, 2010.

Commonly made, and valid, civic arguments to encourage participation include things you may not personally care about: accurate populations counts are necessary to determine the number of delegates to the House of Representatives; the number and ages of children in a household help local governments anticipate what school resources will be needed in years to come; the age structure of a population in any given locale allows projections for allocating services for seniors, for instance. How about roads and access? That may not matter much to you either.

But there are other good reasons to answer the census. Academic researchers, such as demographers, sociologists, historians and economic historians, scholars of social service administration, political scientists, and many others, will soon have access to aggregate, de-identified data to examine myriad scientific questions. Here’s a partial list of area studies that depend on good census data: age and gender structures; aging; business demography; ethnicity/race and cultural pluralism; emigration/immigration; economic mobility; geographic mobility; poverty/welfare; labor force participation and employment; marriage, divorce and family; ecology and environmental studies. The list goes on. Without accurate information, inquiries into current and historical human processes can’t be accurately conducted. Since science informs (or should inform) public policy, why would anyone want to intentionally subvert the census?

But finally, there are highly gratifying personal reasons for responding promptly and truthfully to the census. Although the privacy of individual respondents is guaranteed now, in 72 years, by law, all information from the 2010 census will be made publicly available. I personally am not worried that 72 years from now it will be possible to look back and see that as of the date of the 2010 census, I was 59 years old. What in fact disconcerts me is that in the 2010 standard form, which appears obsessed with race/ethnic self-identification and little else, that information of great potential value to our heirs as well as to scientists, and in turn to policy-makers, is not being universally collected.

After my mother died and, coincidentally a few years later after reconnecting with some members of my father’s family, I became much more curious about my parents’ personal histories. I delved into the historic U.S. censuses meticulously digitized by Ancestry.com, a for-profit business rooted in the teachings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormons) that makes genealogy and other historic research extremely easy.

What I found was a treasure trove for verifying what my mother had told me about her life––at least through 1930, the most recently-released historic census––and in documenting things she herself did not know about her own parents and grandparents. Since my father and his father, about whom I am especially curious, did not arrive in the U.S. until 1936, I have to wait until 2012 to spy on their lives. Where did they live at the time? Who did they live with? Was my paternal grandfather, who divorced my father’s mother, remarried already, or will I have to wait until 2022 to answer that question?

So what else did and will these late-19th and early 20th century people-counts reveal to me? I have been able to pin down much more detail about Eliette Adonicam, the beloved cook in my grandparents’ home in Puerto Rico. I have been able to narrow down the years during which my mother’s little sister, Louise Edwina, must have died, something my mother had not been able to recall, a child herself when it happened. Louise was there, with the rest of the family, in 1920. In 1930, the little girl was missing from the list of household residents. I learned who my mother’s maternal great-grandfather was, and confirmed he was born in England. In 1900, my mother’s paternal grandfather, at the age of only 48, was “invalid” or disabled for work.*  The list of details in the 1880–1930 censuses that are greatly revealing goes on and on. Here they are, in 1930; of course the form was in Spanish as they were living in Puerto Rico at the time:

It turns out that many of the things of personal interest to me are also of importance, in far larger samples,  of course,  to scientists. For example, censuses of the past recorded the occupation of each resident in a home. This year’s does not do that. So how will economists of the future reconstruct relationships between household composition, geographical location, and employment, for example? Of course the developers of the census are not oblivious to the need for this kind of data, and have developed a more complex and broadly meaningful set of questions to be administered in separate waves of questionnaires, the American Community Survey (that will also have a version for Puerto Rico, incidentally). But these questions are being asked of a much smaller, and a selected, sample of the population, and thus will omit millions of important answers. Here’s an example: The work of the Center for Population Economics, under direction of Nobel-laureate Robert Fogel, involves linking individual Union Army veterans to their particular records in the U.S. census from 1840 through 1930 (except for 1890, the paper schedules of which went up in flames in 1921), to answer questions such as how does the environment, (easy to characterize even historically), in which one spends various stages of life, impact later-life health? (Read more about the project here.) What about occupations, from which we can ask, what long-term impacts on health, labor force participation, and longevity, did categories like "laborer" versus "banker" have? How about home value, as a proxy for household wealth? Without being able to access such information, collected in censuses of the past, for the 40-thousand-plus individual Union Army veterans in the CPE's sample, these questions and many more couldn’t even be asked.

*Here are the details from my mother's mother's natal household in 1900:

My grandmother is identified as "Mamie C" (Mary Christine) with her father John Cullin and her sisters, Anne, Elizabeth, and Catharine.  So now I know mother's grandmother was deceased by that time. And here are the sisters in more corporal form, at just about that same time. My grandmother, who remained close to her sisters throughout their lives, is on the left:

The perils of "responsibility"

When I returned from Yellowstone a few weeks ago, I posted a short summary of my trip on a chat page, (hosted by John Uhler of Rexburg, ID), where virtual friends waited for stories and photos from those of us lucky enough to visit the park. One of my comments was: “[I am] majorly bummed by the condition of the Druids…mange is killing them slowly and painfully.” The Druids, named for Druid Peak that overlooks their territory, were at one time the largest and most robust of wolf pack following very successful restoration in 1995. Many interesting phenomena, some beneficial, others controversial, but always complicated and thought-provoking, have resulted from the return of wolves to Yellowstone, and the mange story is one of them. Watching these once robustly healthy animals in the distance, visibly stressed and debilitated, in some cases almost hairless, unable to lie down on the cold winter ground and trying to sleep standing up, was excruciating. As of this writing, only one wolf of Druid heritage remains alive. And the Druids are not the only pack suffering this winter.

Another chatter responded to my comment thus:  Mange killing them? Any talk about possible treatment?  Yes, effective treatment for sarcoptic mange is available, so yes, fellow chatter, while there is plenty of talk about possible treatment, talk is cheap.

Although wildlife management policies have continually evolved throughout the history of Yellowstone and our other national parks, it is not the policy to render aid or take measures to salvage sick, injured, or dying animals, but rather, to let Nature take its course.  Exceptions are made when human welfare is threatened, as when a grizzly bear sow,  known as “264”, lay paralyzed by the roadside after being struck by a truck. The bear was quickly removed while still alive to obviate the huge crowds and traffic issues that would have ensued, then euthanized after determining that there was no hope of recovery.

It happens a lot. I have stood at a bridge at Cache Creek in Grand Teton National Park in early summer, when the creek was a cold, full onrush of snowmelt, watching a mother moose across the river, impatiently expecting her very tiny calf to follow. But the calf was too little, too undeveloped, up to its belly in the water, to be willing to step into the deepness ahead, resisting the force threatening to sweep it away, too afraid to turn back to the near shore. Its trembling legs were on the verge of buckling. It would have been so easy for humans to rescue it; we could have put a rope around someone’s waist, he or she could have waded into the foot-and-a-half deep water, scooped up the calf, wrapped it in blankets, and perhaps left it safely on the near shore for its inexperienced mother to come back to nurse and nurture. But we did not, we honored the Laws of Nature, which say: baby animals shall not — cannot —all survive. I left, I could not be an observer any longer.

Now please consider this. What is the observer’s responsibility when the suffering is human, and it is within their power to do something? Please watch this entire discussion, and give it some serious thought. Not considered in this piece: What are the social implications of removing this woman from her home, taking her to a place where she has no family to assure her welfare, no way to pay for her care, and perhaps little chance of survival or rehabilitation?

Is this sufficient food for thought for you today?

Department of Self-Evident Labeling

Call me "irresponsible"

I'd love to be blogging, but I'm processing, (still) processing, photos from my winter Yellowstone sojourn that I returned from on February 2. That's the good news: lots of interesting photos evocative of the exquisite experience. For now, will you settle for a couple of teasers, beyond those of Mr. Elk, who got the last laugh on the photographer? 
I promise to post more, with commentary, sometime soon. (The hinge of course, is how you define soon. I leave that to you.)

 

 

Mother Nature, always full of surprises

Vote for your favorite (as always, CLICK to appreciate the subtle difference).

Version A:

Or Version B: