I love concept cars. I don’t care how impractical they are, they fire the imagination. I remember going to a car show at the New York coliseum in 1962 or thereabouts and seeing one of these:
1963 Chrysler turbine car
It’s a crime that experimental runs of cars like this and the EV1 have been recalled and scrapped. I think it’s a gross disservice to the industry and the public. For an informative experience, watch “Who Killed the Electric Car.”
The Old Wolf has spoken.
Found at L.A. Taco
The Zep Diner was located at 515 W. Florence Avenue in Los Angeles near Figueroa. The Zep was open “all night” and was the “Home of the Hinden Burger”.
Operated from 1928 to 1980, originally conceived as an eye-catcher. More at Wikipedia.
The Theme Building is synonymous with Los Angeles, and particularly LAX. It was opened in 1961, and after multiple renovations, one by Walt Disney Imagineering, continues to operate today.
In 1949, Sidney Hoedemaker founded Hody’s Restaurant Inc. (Hody – as in Hoedemaker). Hoedemaker’s restaurants were all about service, efficiency, cheerfulness and courtesy. One was always greeted with a smile. The Hody’s at 3553 La Brea (at Rodeo) featured expanded service, circular drive-in and a sign pylon rising from the roof was designed by Wayne McCallister.
This restaurant was not so odd, but I include it because it’s where my father met his third and final wife, to whom he was married for 20 years. She was a car-hop in the drive-in section; I remember eating there a number of times and it was fun to have the girls come around on roller skates with our orders.
(And wish I still had… some of these suckers are worth real money.)
Mr. Machine
This was the grand-daddy of cool toys – for its era. You really could take him apart and put him together, and lo and behold, he still worked!
The Great Garloo (1961)
Garloo was awesome to a 10-year-old. He would bend over and pick stuff up, and you could steer him around with the wheel. Of course, the commercials made stuff like this look a lot neater than they were, but I remember this toy well, and he lasted quite a long time.
Ideal Astro Base
This one was tragic. What a cool toy… and I had one. But apparently mine was defective, and so back it went, to be exchanged for something else.
Remco’s Fighting Lady
The Fighting Lady was one awesome toy. To a kid my age, it was big. It had a plane launcher, a runabout, primary gun, depth charge launchers, and other stuff. I loved this one. More pictures here.
The Petal Camera
This one breaks my heart. If I had only known… this is exactly how mine looked, I think I paid $25.00 for it, and now they can be worth up to $5,000. *sob*
Wff ‘n Proof
This game of symbolic logic was first produced in 1961, I think – I acquired my copy at the NYC World’s Fair in 1964. I had it until the foam packaging that held the cubes crumbled into dust. I’m working on acquiring another copy one way or another.
The Digicomp I
This binary flip-flop computer kit was popular enough that one enterprising engineer has replicated it. It’s on my list of things to get. Again.
The Chemistry Set
This is not the exact set I had, but darn close. I don’t think mine had a radiation detector, but I know it contained a small glass jar of powdered uranium ore. It had glassware, small Erlenmeyer flasks, boiling flasks, beakers, the test tube rack, the alcohol lamp, measuring spoons, a scales, pipettes that you had to heat and draw yourself, and yes, I burned the living piss out of my fingers on more than one occasion – and no one got sued. Today’s chemistry sets have been castrated by lawyers until they barely have any chemicals worth sneezing at, or none at all.
This kit causes us to lament the general state of affairs we have come to thanks to litigiousness, chemophobia, and flagging scientific literacy.”
How pathetic is that? Another interesting article here.
Found at Retronaut
“I took these photographs in August 2010 in the Dolomites — a section of the Alps located in northeastern Italy. The Dolomites are named for a type of carbonate rock that has a distinct pale rosy-orange hue. I have tried to capture the specific grandeur of this range, as well as present a document of the myriad ways in which people interact with and experience it for themselves.”
Visit Kevin Kunstadt’s home page.
Found at Techno Geek Toys, the Hymnotron: a device that looks like it could have been invented by George Ives (father of composer Charles), or Satan after a night of drinking Absinthe, whichever seems better to you.
“This instrument is designed to appeal to the devotée of spiritual music who is also familiar with binary math. In other words, it’s a niche product. The chords and inversions are selected by using combinations of the eight keys. When you select a chord the Hymnotron changes each note in the chord into just temperament to create intervals that are always perfectly in tune.”
A video demonstration found below. Contains some language, so be careful if you’re watching this in the parish office.
The Old Wolf has spoken.
In 2009, during a 3-week sojourn to New South Wales, one of my “must-see” stops was the radio telescope in Parkes. The movie is an odd bit of cinematography which took certain liberties with its rôle in the Apollo 11 moon mission, but participate it did, and in a very significant manner. More at Wikipedia.
The Void has always fascinated me. I can remember being 11 or 12 years old, lying on my back with a friend on Fire Island, holding flashlights we had acquired at Ringling Brothers’ Barnum and Bailey Circus at Madison Square Garden, and shining our beams up into the sky, wondering if the light would go on forever and ever. Assuming nothing got in the way, anyone with sensors strong enough on a planet circling 31 Aquilae (49.5 light years away) might detect a few of our photons right about now.
Stars within 50 light years of Earth. Found at Atlas of the Universe.
As a result, being within driving distance of Parkes made this an absolute necessity.
The thing is big, and dominates the landscape as you approach it.
It’s even bigger up close, and in some ways more impressive than the large telescope at the NRAO in Virginia, because you can get closer to it.
Being a working telescope, it moved quite a bit during my visit.
They have a very nice visitors center with lots of things to learn about, some hands-on displays, and an AV presentation.
But this was my favorite part of the visit:
Beef and burgundy pie, at the Dish café: exquisite – I have never tasted better, although a friend of mine in Dubbo tells me there’s a pie shop I missed that does them one up. Next trip for sure.
And the scenery while dining was overpowering.
Still working hard, in 2012 the Observatory received special signals from the Mars rover Opportunity, to simulate the Curiosity rover UHF radio. This helped prepare for the then upcoming Curiosity landing on August 6, 2012.
If I had another lifetime and a brain that was not math challenged, working with a device like this would be a wonderful way to spend a career.
The Old Wolf has spoken.
“West 23rd Street.” Home to Best & Co’s “Lilliputian Bazaar,” Bonwit Teller (“Women’s Outer Garments”), Waterbury Dental Parlors and Eden Musee. 8×10 glass negative, Detroit Publishing Co.
Found at Shorpy.
While walking in the streets of New York, something I did daily for years while growing up there, I passed a brass placard on the right side of a doorway that said “Bonwit Teller.”
That’s a name I was familiar with, and gave it no thought. On the left side of the door, however, in the same very distinctive font, was another brass plaque that said “Gunther-Jaeckel.”
What was that all about, I wondered. Were they seldom used first names? I had never heard them before in conjunction with Bonwit. Long before the days of digital photography and smartphones, and without my trusty Brownie in my hand, I was unable to capture an image, but it remains seared in my memory because it was peculiar. I never passed that particular spot again, at least not knowingly. And, given the absence of the internet, there was no way of ferreting out the story; as time went on, I began to wonder if I had imagined it. Had I been wealthy enough to be purchasing furs, I might have found out – but thanks to the infinite capacity of the intertubez, I at last have my answer.
1954 ad for Gunther-Jaeckel furs, 5 years before its acquisition by Bonwit Teller.
“In a gilded age when sables were a princess’ best friend, the nation’s best place to buy sables was Manhattan’s C. G. Gunther’s Sons. Founded in 1820 by a German immigrant associated with Fur Trader John Jacob Astor, Gunther’s not only combed Siberia for the finest sables, but bid in the London market for the finest ermine, sent its agents across Canada on the lookout for mink. Even men coveted the Gunther’s label. Gunther’s long operated the only men’s fur department in Manhattan, offering coats made of every kind of fur, from buffalo, favored by post-Civil War tycoons, to collegiate raccoon. But sables for the ladies inspired the legends. On Black Friday of the 1929 crash, Gunther’s delivered a $70,000 sable coat to a customer, needlessly worried about payment (the customer settled in 60 days). Later it sold a shopper two sable coats, one for herself and one for her sister. As a token of esteem, the shopper bought her maid a mink. The bill: $107,000. In 1949 Gunther’s merged with an other old-line furrier, Jaeckel, Inc., founded in 1863.
Last week Manhattan’s oldest fur store had a new owner. Walter Hoving’s Hoving Corp., which already operates 60-year-old Bonwit Teller next door and nearby 121-year-old Tiffany & Co., added Gunther-Jaeckel, Inc. to its string. In taking control of Gunther-Jaeckel, Hoving got more of the kind of elegant tradition he likes, also a challenge to his merchandising skill (Gunther-Jaeckel last paid a dividend in 1945). But fellow merchants figured he would soon figure out a way to fit Gunther-Jaeckel into his spreading operation. Pursuing a policy of aggressive expansion, his Bonwit Teller already has two suburban branches operating in Manhasset, L.I. and White Plains, N.Y., a third projected (in Millburn, N.J.), plus stores in Chicago, Cleveland and Boston. For the present, Hoving will double up on some advertising and promotional costs, knock out a wall or two to throw the main Bonwit store and Gunther-Jaeckel together.” (Description found at Bis Repetita Placet.)
Interestingly enough, Gunther-Jaeckel still shows up in random Yellow Pages business searches with an address of 10 East 57th Street, as listed on the advert above. That matches precisely with my memory – the fact that it’s right next to Tiffany’s, another Hoving Corp. property cements the image in my head. Sadly, the building where the plaques appeared is now gone, replaced by another new skyscraper.
This is where 10 East would have sat.
But in retrospect, it’s nice to know I wasn’t crazy, all those years when I wondered if I had just seen something that wasn’t there.
The Old Wolf has spoken.
In 2004, I had the chance to attend Dragon Con in Atlanta. I picked this up and brought it back to my office
It was perfect.
As it turns out, things had become so frustrating that I ended up retiring early, two years later. After I announced my decision, I put this on my file cabinet, and still have it at home:
There are times I miss the regular paycheck instead of the entrepreneurial uncertainty, but only about 10% of me feels that way. The other nine voices in my head never look back.
Edit, 11/10/2021
“Retirement comes on little HR feet. It sits looking over the wreckage of corporate folly, and then moves on, never to look back.” (With apologies to Carl Sandburg.)
For some it comes, summoned and welcome, and those who call greet it as an old friend, and depart the world of corporate bullshit gladly, as equals. For others, it arrives quietly and suddenly carries an unprepared soul across the river Styx to a land of unexpected unemployment, yet those who dwell there come to appreciate a sense of freedom and self-determination that was denied them for decades.
I thank the Universe and whatever gods there may be that I no longer have to deal with power-crazed bastards who wield power over my life by raising their little finger.
The Old Wolf has spoken.
Over on Facebook, I got a pointer to a blog post in Norwegian. Now, my Norwegian is hqiz; I studied intensively for 3 months before staffing a seminar for Klemmer and Associates in Asker, Norway, in November of 2008, and it helped me get around and interact with the students, but we’re talking survival. But it’s enough that I could understand the article, and with the help of online resources I worked my way through it enough to determine that it needs to be shared. What follows is my own effort at putting this moving post into English. It’s not perfect by any means, but I think it captures the spirit of what was said.
Tonight my daughter [1], age 7, told me that one of the seventh graders at her school had been bothering her. He pushed her and said something that made her sad.
– Well, what did he say? I asked.
– He called me …n … he called me … a nigger,‘ [2] said my daughter, with downcast eyes.
My daughter never has downcast eyes. She tends to face the world with clenched fists and a huge smile, but now it looked as though she were ashamed of something. Something in me sank, not particularly because of the n-word, but because of my daughter’s uncharacteristic body language. But I replied in the same tone as I usually do when she talks about things that have happened; I tried to get all the facts on the table before I reacted.
– Do you know what “nigger” means? I asked.
– No, admitted my daughter. Then she took a breath and looked up at me:
– But I knew it meant something bad!
– How did you know that?
– Because he said it in such a mean, teasing way. And because I was completely empty inside.
That description of being subjected to derogatory remarks was so spot-on that I felt pretty empty inside, too. But my daughter sat there and waited for an answer and an explanation. I took a deep breath and tried to explain. That “nigger” is a word that gets used on people with brown skin, who come from Africa or look like they come from Africa.
– Like me? So he can SAY that? She widened her eyes and I felt like I had drowned a sack of kittens. I went on to say that word was common in the old days, but it is not used very often anymore. I explained that many people, especially adults and old people, use it without meaning anything bad by it, and without wanting to hurt anyone. They just have not kept up with the times.
But I told her that there are some people who use the word on purpose, to be mean, and that she probably was right, that this particular boy belongs to the latter group. These people tend to stand out.
And I said that no one has the right to call someone something that makes them completely empty inside, whatever that word means. But still, there are many people that say things just to make others sad. And sometimes people say things without wanting to make others sad, but they feel sad anyway.
We had a pretty long chat on the sofa, and another after that evening’s bedtime story session was finished. We discussed what is okay to say to others and what is not okay, and why. We talked about what we should say if we have accidentally made someone else feel empty inside, and what we should say if others are doing it to us. And whether it’s worse if someone we like and love says insensitive things to us. For this unknown boy was, after all, no one of consequence in my daughter’s life, but still, Mommy.
Actually, I had plans to use to use my personal development time this evening watching the zombie series and other fun things, but I ended up pondering a bit instead. Pretty loose and fragmented, I must confess, for mentally I’m dangerously close to zombie level right now. But let me think out loud anyway (after all it is my blog, so I can do what I want): Everyone agrees in principle that saying things to be mean is not allowed. The specific episode my daughter told me about obviously falls into that category. But people who say such things – where do they get this from? And where does one draw the line? There is no agreement.
Not so long ago I had a chat with some of my students at school. They have a pretty rough tone in the classroom, and several have responded that put-downs run pretty freely in the group. Among other things, it happens too often that something is characterized by derogatory prefixes such as Paki, whore- and homo- (for example, “homo music”, i.e. music that any talented guy with normal gender identity would consider worth listening to). The students themselves couldn’t get it through their heads that there was a problem here. We’re just kidding! We only say it to people who can take it, who are in on the joke!
It’s clear that kidding around with friends is fine. But the boundaries of humor are delicate and indistinct. The words we use have so many fine distinctions. One man’s fun banter can be another man’s nightmare. I didn’t mean any harm by it, we pout, as though that should make everything all better. By no means do we want to descend into an “I feel insulted” tyranny, where anyone’s negative feelings about some experience should determine the norm for everyone else’s behavior. But we do need to be crystal clear that every time we choose to say something hurtful (or refrain from saying something nice) to or about someone, we make a choice that affects everyone around us.
What about the person who is not in on the joke? The one who laughs uncomfortably, because he or she doesn’t want to be labeled killjoy or a first-class whiner? And what about the guy who happens to share the same classroom (or break room or dinner table) with two others “jokingly” using derogatory names for each other? He is not a direct recipient of Jesus Christ, you are so fucking gay, man! He’s not really involved at all, but sitting in the same room, he suddenly becomes completely empty inside. And no one says anything about it. So he’s completely empty, all alone.
It is never okay for anyone to be completely empty inside.
Notes
[1] The original Norwegian is “Lillesøster” (Little Sister)
[2] Nigger is the best translation available here. The original Norwegian is neger (negro), in this case used as a derogatory term, but it should be clearly stated here that the word doesn’t carry the immense cultural weight that it does here in the United States.
The Old Wolf has spoken.
Playing in the World Game 