Last Night

It was daylight when I went in the hospital and I had a sense that I'd left my suv behind someplace about halfway there but no sense of how I got the rest of the way.  Or where the hospital was.  I was watching the TV in the waiting room, completely entranced by a movie that was an adventure interspersed with scenes of aliens in gray and red uniforms.  Comments from others watching the movie indicated that the alien part didn't seem to fit with the rest of the movie.  People kept annoying me by being noisy and getting between me and the TV and at one point a woman I seemed to know tried to talk to me but I was too involved in the movie and she left.  Then I tried to use a restroom and it was appalling - clogged and overflowing toilets and really nasty.  And every last toilet in the hospital was like that.  It also seemed to involve something that looked like algae.  So I went back out to watch the movie some more but the girl was dead and the movie over and now it was dark and I didn't know how to get back to my suv because I didn't know where my suv was.

And that was the point where I sat up with a gasp, just like dreamers do in the movies. 

I wonder what caliber it takes to deal with aliens in grey and red uniforms?  They seemed to be invading.

I'll Be Down To Get You in a Taxi, Honey...

Yesterday's post got me feeling nostalgic and sent me cruising around YouTube to see if any Amberola aficionados had some uploads.  And this is how "Darktown Strutter's Ball" looks and sounds when all is well in Edison phonograph world.

I'll be down to get you in a taxi, Honey,
You better be ready about half past eight,
Now dearie, don't be late,
I want to be there when the band starts playing,
Remember when we get there, Honey,
The two-steps, I'm goin' to have 'em all,
Goin' to dance out both my shoes,
When they play the "Jelly Roll Blues,"
Tomorrow night at the Darktown Strutters' Ball. 

Written by Shelton Brooks and published in 1917, a version recorded that same year by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2006.

Things Most of Us Don't Think About

“Imagine trying to learn biology without ever using the word “organism.” Or studying to become a botanist when the only way of referring to photosynthesis is to spell the word out, letter by painstaking letter.”

I've been asked to write an article about deaf scientists for my agency.  I have to say that I never thought about the communication issue in science fields.  There was just a vague sense of sign language without thought to how tedious and/or difficult lectures could be for both the lecturer and those in the audience.

I don't want the article to be just a listing of deaf scientists, so I've been poking around the web and trying to condense some history as well as reading biographies.  I don't recognize most of the names, of course, but one did surprise me - Thomas Edison. He wasn't totally deaf, but very hard of hearing.  The Q&A at the website of the Thomas Edison National Historical Park says this:

Was Edison deaf?
That is how Edison described himself, but in fact he was not totally deaf. It is more accurate to say he was very hard of hearing. He once wrote, "I have not heard a bird sing since I was twelve years old."

So, why didn't Edison invent a hearing aid? He often told reporters that he was working on one; sometimes he tested hearing aids designed by others. But it seems that Edison saw advantages to being deaf. For example, he said that it helped him concentrate on his work. In 1927 he told a group of 300 hard-of-hearing adults, "Deaf people [like himself] should take to reading. It beats the babble of ordinary conversation."

I guess that surprised me because I associate Edison with music, particularly with record players.  And that would be because I own one of these:

A part of my fond memories of Grandma's house, it's an Edison Amberola 30, and until fairly recently it still played.  This series was built between 1915 and 1929 - I think I traced the serial number to a manufacture date of 1918.  There's more than 100 "records" with it:  celluloid cylinders around a plaster core.  Some are in rough condition - my Dad and uncles knew that if you knocked the plaster out the right way they could play them backwards.

 

I really ought to catalog the cylinders properly.  And I really ought to figure out how to get it back in working order.  There's some great stuff in there - the one shown is "Alexander's Rag Time Band".  Lot's of Hawaiian - apparently that was real big in the early 20s.  A speech by Teddy Roosevelt.  "Darktown Strutter's Ball" would probably get me into trouble with the PC crowd.  

Novelty songs were popular, as well. My favorite of the ones I have has always been "Barney Google",  written for  Eddie Cantor in 1923 and based on a comic by the same name.  (Although "Yes We Have No Bananas" runs a close second.)

You can probably see why the song was written for Cantor.  My version is the Billy Jones and Ernest Hare one, I think.  You can give a listen here because I'm too lazy to try to attach it to the comic image.

Hours of listening, limited only by how often I want to crank it.  Yeah, I'd really like to be able to do that again.  Time for some more web surfing. 

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Note - I know about Beethoven going deaf, but Edison still surprised me.  As did the fact that a mathematician whose major contribution was to acoustics, including giving us the word for the science, Joseph Sauveur (1653 - 1716), appears to have been either born deaf or so seriously impaired that he didn't speech until he was 7.

Murphy's Law Needs to Buy This

Well, not this exact one.  I was drooling so much I forgot to take pics of the one I'm referring to.

Since I had to wait on Blu all afternoon Saturday, I chose to go over to the old section of Leesburg and poke around the antique malls.  Having already paid the lower of the estimated costs for his tests I was feeling broke on a stunned level, but it was still more interesting that making a 50 mile round trip twice.  And I could have lunch in town, which in Leesburg is a yummy and comforting idea.

So I hit the Leesburg Antiques Emporium.  Lots of good stuff there.  Including antique guns.  This one caught my eye simply because I liked the way it looked. A lot of nice wood.  A stocky carbine - my short arms could probably handle it.  It's a Springfield "Krag", which replaced the Springfield single shot trap-door models and served as the Army's primary rifle from 1893 to 1904.

From Wikipedia:

 According to contemporary, perhaps sensationalized accounts, the Krag's complex design was outclassed by the Spanish Mauser during the Spanish American War, and proved ill-suited for use in tropical locales such as Cuba and the Philippines. American soldiers found themselves unable to match the volume of fire displayed by the Spanish 1893 Mauser rifle, with its box magazine that could be fully reloaded with clips, and a high-velocity, flat-shooting 7mm cartridge which was quickly dubbed the 'Spanish Hornet'. During the American assault on the strategic Cuban city of Santiago, a small force of 750 Spanish troops armed with Model 1893 Mauser rifles defended positions on San Juan and Kettle hills. The attacking force consisted of approximately 6,600 American soldiers, most of them regulars, armed with the then-new smokeless-powder Krag-Jorgensen rifle and supported by artillery and Gatling gun fire. Though the assault was successful, the Americans soon realized that they had suffered more than 1,400 casualties in the assault. A U.S board of investigation pinned the blame on the superior firepower of the Spanish Model 1893 Mauser rifles, although modern analysis has determined that many of the casualties were due to superior Spanish fortifications on the high ground. With the Krag's replacement with the Mauser-derived M1903, the rifle is tied for the shortest service life of any standard-issue firearm in US military history (1892–1903).

According to the seller, this particular one was actually issued to TR's Rough Riders.  Oh.  Want.  Don't care if it didn't work well in tropical climates. Don't care if Mauser's outclassed it.

The price tag is only $8,500, Murph.  You're a collector - you've got that much laying around, right?

$ 3259 And An Entire Day At The Neurologist...

...and all we know is that Blu's MRI pics are really funny.  But the disk they gave me is bad so I can't post any.  Dang.

The good news - it's not cancer and there's no inflammation they can find anywhere.   Neurologist says it just sometimes happens and he'll go on anti-seizure meds.

And I left my book there.  I was only 100 pages from the end.  It's a 50 mile round trip.  I wonder if the library has it...

Ah, Memories

You know how your mind wanders from one thing to another.  I was thinking about the Maryland weather post while doing the office commute, with certain memories standing out.

First, there was Hurricane Agnes in 1972.  It was a tropical storm by the time it got to us, but it dropped a boatload of rain.  We didn't have any streams around but clogged culverts, the topography, and railroad tracks on a raised bed that bordered one side of the community turned us into a lake.  Somewhere I have pictures of folks canoeing between the trees in the park.  And of a mostly submerged "No Parking" sign on Railroad Street.

For years we had visited Great Falls NP on Sunday afternoons, enjoying the walk as a family and finding the woods and river a relief from sultry D.C. area summer days.  The gullies and gaps on the trail to the Falls were bridged by old wooden walkways that had been there for goodness how long.  Finally, the NPS spent a gazillion dollars worth of tax money to replace the old wooden walks with concrete bridges with iron railings.  Spiffy.

And within months, Agnes arrived and demonstrated that whoever designed and OKed those new bridges had failed to take into account a very important characteristic of rivers - hydrology.  It rained and rained and the feeder streams poured more and more water into the Potomac drainage basin and that water headed downstream just loaded with tons and tons of debris.

When it got to those nice new bridges in the gorge the debris was pushed up against the railings and the force of the water behind it just scoured those new bridges out, tossing them aside as it rampaged to the Bay.  It was  a decade before the Maryland side of the Falls was accessible again.  This time, they built bridges with removable iron railings. 

Then there was the President's Day snow of 1979.  Major weather model fail.  I woke up in a dark bedroom. Looked at my clock - way too late to still be so dark.  Went to the window.  It was dark because nearly 2 feet of unexpected snow was piled on the roof, blocking the windows.

February, 1983.  Another doozy around 2 feet.  Somebody had gotten out with 4WD and that night I took a walk, following the track.  It was eery - dark, nobody out, no traffic sounds.  Just the hiss of snow blowing across the drifts.  I walked down to the main road, which was littered with lumps with aerials sticking out, buried cars abandoned in the road  and scattered every which way.  It started niggling at me that I was hearing a "tick".  Then silence.  Then "tick".  Took a minute for me to realize that what I was hearing was the traffic light that was still cycling through the signals despite it looking like the end of the world and my being the only human being out as far as I could see.  For some reason that freaked me - I turned around and hustled home.

Then there was the Blizzard of '96.  The government had just reopened after a prolonged furlough when this one nailed us and shut us down for another couple weeks.  I hadn't been paying attention, just knew that some snow was predicted on Sunday.  Decided to go to Mass Saturday night so that I wouldn't have to deal with bad roads on Sunday.  Mass was crowded and began with the celebrant saying "So who here really wants 2 feet of snow tomorrow?" What?! TWO FEET?!  Miserable grocery and video store experiances followed Mass.  Except the part where I spotted the chocolate cake that none of the other locusts noticed.  Ha! Mine!  It was great fun for a few days.  The east was paralyzed but we had groceries so we'd get up in the morning, pull the sleep sofa out, crawl into it, and watch TV and videos. And just as the area was beginning to dig out another big snow hit.  Eventually I started putting on a back pack and trudging to a grocery store that was about a half mile away, although it took a while before they had much to select from.

The last serious snow memory is 2009-2010.  The Winter of Never Ending Snow. I invited family to have Christmas at my house that year because, in my words, "we never really get Winter until February".  Yeah.  December 18.  Nor'easter.  Fortunately, I didn't park in my garage - I parked in the front yard and tied a tarp over the suv.  I didn't get back into my driveway until mid-way through March.  That first snow was a 2 footer and it just went from there.  The normal approach up here is that the ATVers often have plow blades and they plow us out.  It was too deep.  My neighbor hired someone with a front end loader to clear his driveway and cut an acess path in my yard for my suv, using the top of my driveway to pile the snow.  Blizzard One - February 5-6.  Blizzard Two - February 9 - 10.  I had at least 6 feet of snow fall in my yard that season.  They finally sent the National Guard up with earth moving equipment to dig us out.  I ran out of places to shovel snow to - I couldn't toss it any higher and had to walk each shovelfull down the street to get rid of it.

I think I may finally be getting over that Winter now.  I didn't have a nervous breakdown when patterns earlier in the season reminded me of those of 2009.

So God Made a Liberal