As always, it’s good to get oriented before you set out on a journey. In this case, the final destination was close at hand.
It was a gray day on Malibu beach. That’s not a bad thing, nor unusual around here. While the Valley swelters, the coast is protected from extreme heat by a marine layer that sometimes burns off by early afternoon – and sometimes not. Today, it did not. That meant temps all day stayed in the lower 70s, with an offshore breeze that made the RealFeel index somewhere in the mid-60s. I always swear I’m going to remember to bring a sweater when visiting California’s coastline. Invariably, I forget. Silly me. It’s so easy to get faked out by triple digits just over that first set of mountains.
Surfers abounding. Swimmers, not so much.
Marine layer: It’s a good thing. Rocks? Meh.
Lest you think there was no color at all besides gray this day… think again.
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Today’s story begins with a relaxed pose, the tide coming in…
…this woman sitting on rocks above the surf…… and a lifeguard who walks up and tells her to come down before she gets swept out to sea.
I asked the lifeguard how long he’d been on the job.
He told me he started in 1989.
Talk about job satisfaction!
Lifeguard transportation provided by Toyota. Surfboard rack is optional. But the surfboard itself? Mandatory, most definitely.
More pictures of Topanga State Beach in Malibu located here. Many of them include surfboards. None of them were taken on a gray day.
And now for something completely different: I haven’t done a Roxhikes post in a while. It’s high time I got out there on the trail and reported back to you on something new. Well, today that’s exactly what I did. My pix with captions are below. A relatively encyclopedic write-up of the same, with more and better pix, can be found here but you’ll need Adobe Flash Player to view their pix. Their text is a worthwhile read if you plan to visit in person or if you’re just insatiably curious. Either way, it’s all fine by me. Well, as long as you enjoy yourself. The uninterested can stop right here and just go home. (Isn’t that the correct phrase, Kate?) In any case, without further ado… Mt. Pinos.
Always good to get oriented before you start.
Also good to have Search & Rescue nearby.
The Searchers & Rescuers were out in force, traveling in pairs, like Mormons on a mission. But there was one key difference: They wore fluorescent orange tops instead of starched white shirts. Other than that? Same-same.
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At trail’s end, you don’t need a fancy steak dinner on a linen tablecloth to appreciate the finer things in life. The hood of a car will do just fine for cold cuts, chips, and a bottle of Jacuzzi’s best red. It really hit the hungry spot!
New moon brings out the serious astronomy geeks – with serious stargazing equipment – up here at 8800′ elevation. This guy’s getting set up for tonight.
Flora-lovers: The red ones are ubiquitous on Mt. Pinos. So are the pastel lavender lovelies. C’mon, botany buffs, what ARE those things?
“Nordic” refers to cross country skiing. Apparently it snows here and the trail sign confirms it. My suspicion is that part of what makes the North Ridge trail “more difficult” are the biathlon competitors plinking .22 caliber holes, hopefully not also through their fellow skiers!
Nearing the summit, I wondered why I still had such kick-ass cell service. Usually, in the back country, reception dwindles to zero. That’s when it hit me…
Selfie-time! I forgot how different the SoCal forest smells compared to the Rockies: The pines have none of that butterscotch Ponderosa scent. It’s much more of a scorched Jeffrey and pinyon aroma. I also forgot how much the sun reflects off my head when I’m not wearing a hat, a mistake I won’t make twice!
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Assorted vistas: Bakersfield’s definitely visible to the north in the Central Valley. The Coast Range and Ventura county lie to the south and west, I think – but don’t quote me on that. Hey, gimme a break. I just got here!
Trail dedication: Hey Vince, which way is Ojai?
Tough, Gnarly, Still Upright: Not a bad way to be remembered, come the last.
Lost-and-found etiquette on Mt. Pinos trail: Somebody will come back for it eventually!
I love English words derived from German because they are so zany.
Today’s Word of the Day is no exception.
“Bildungsroman” is the combination of two German words: Bildung, meaning “education,” and Roman, meaning “novel.” Fittingly, a “bildungsroman” is a novel that deals with the formative years of the main character. In particular, it traces his/her psychological development and moral education. The bildungsroman usually ends on a positive note. The hero’s foolish mistakes and painful disappointments are over and a life of usefulness lies ahead. The term is primarily applied to novels. But in recent years, some have begun to apply the term to films that deal with a youthful character’s coming-of-age.
I especially love the examples Merriam Webster provides. An especially zany disclaimer follows.
“Science fiction, fantasy is a youth-loving tradition, the bildungsroman, the origin story of the young farm boy or farm girl who’s finding their way.”
— Chaim Gartenberg, The Verge, “Author Myke Cole talks writing hard science fiction in his space-set Coast Guard novel Sixteenth Watch.”
“This lesbian bildungsroman alternates with the larger tale of James Bond derring-do set in 1966 in Buenos Aires, where a grown-up Vera is spying for the CIA.”
— Maureen Corrigan, chicagotribune.com, “Forget about 007. This heroine has her own brand of spycraft.”
Disclaimer: These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word. Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors.
The longest German word?
The other thing I reallyReallyREALLY love about German words is how they just keep gluing things together until they get the desired degree of specificity. Not so easy on the tongue however. Consider the following:
“Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän” clocks in with 42 letters. In English, it becomes 4 words: “Danube steamship company captain.”
“Betäubungsmittelverschreibungsverordnung” is a mesmerizing word that’s difficult to read. It refers to a “regulation requiring a prescription for an anesthetic.”
“Rechtsschutzversicherungsgesellschaften” is one you might actually be able to pronounce if you take it one syllable at a time. It means, “legal protection insurance companies.” According to Guinness, this is the longest German dictionary word in everyday usage.
And the winner is…
“Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz” references a “beef labeling regulation and delegation of supervision law.” This was a 1999 German Word of the Year and also won a special award as the longest German word for 1999.
And for all the other years?
Guess you’ll just have to stay tuned – or read my zany bildungsroman – to find out. But remember: Always best to end on a positive note. You been warned.
Today’s Word of the Day is “whinge,” a British-ism meaning to whine or to complain. History and Etymology: Middle English *whingen, from Old English hwinsian. Akin to Old High German winsōn meaning to moan.
Also, just because, please don’t whinge as you read the following review from today’s NYTimes, about changing etymology in an Internet Age.
No whinging allowed: Why? Because Internet.
There.
Yer welcome.
Bonus musical content: “Whinge” used in a sentence:
“For those who whinged that the Freddie Mercury biopic ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ played fast and loose with the facts — and I was one — it must be said that director Dexter Fletcher’s Elton John movie ‘Rocketman’ takes even more liberties with truth.”
— Jim Sullivan, WBUR.org, 31 May 2019
Freddie Mercury: Bohemian Rhapsody.
Elton John: Rocketman.
Photo credit: Twentieth Century Fox (i.e. “The Competition”). Those of you in the know will know why music has become much more important to me lately. But, never fear: Linguistics still makes my Top 10. Some things never change.
I say Jacuzzi, you say ________? Hot tub, right? Well, yes, that… and much, much more. Other correct answers include “WW1 airplane propellers,” “California crop irrigation,” and best of all, “mighty fine wine.” Intrigued? Visit the website here for a full account of one Italian immigrant family’s journey from the rolling hills of Tuscany to the Carneros Wine Region of Northern California. Or, follow along below with Clyde as your guide. Take a stroll with him through the Jacuzzi Family Vineyards. That’s what we did today, tasting and touring, during our visit to Sonoma.
Guess which quote(s) go with which picture(s):
Kate: “This is MY cab, I’m going to drink it, and I’m NOT sharing!”
Hey girl! Where are those fancy new sunglasses you just bought?
Don’t think she used a selfie-stick for this one.
Water? Or mirage: You make the call.
<Photo credits: Kate & Anne Wolf>
Full disclosure:
Though I’ve been through here before, I wasn’t along on this trip.
Beautiful, yes. But not actually sand.
Sand is silica. That’s silicone dioxide, a relatively inert material ground out of quartz and other rock flowing down from snow melt streams above. This stuff here? It’s pure salt, sodium and magnesium chloride. It’s precipitated from what once was seawater evaporated up from below. Get it on your skin and it will suck all the moisture straight out of you. There’s close to a hundred empty miles from the Great Salt Lake to the Nevada border. Most of that desolate expanse is filled with the stuff. There is nothing (I mean NOTHING) survives out here for very long. Well, except for a few hardy microbes. And maybe a few drag racers swilling Bud Lite. You know, guys with greasy gray pony tails and beer bellies. Each of them sports an oil-stained STP-logo t-shirt. And each of them aims to set the world land speed record. Hmmmm…. 400 mph and a nice little buzz on? Yikes! You enter this unearthly landscape at your own risk, folks: All’s I’m sayin’.
My local library has a display up front called “Read the Book – Watch the Movie.” As the name implies, literary works are paired with their cinematic cousins. Prompted by a friend’s comment that John Travolta had been mis-cast as Chili Palmer in the movie version of “Get Shorty,” also by the fact I’d never read the book, I’m now a man on a mission. After re-watching the DeVito/Hackman/Travolta DVD, then reading Elmore Leonard’s story for the first time, I can now say with confidence that I got no problem with the casting. Maybe if I’d read the book first, I’d balk. But as it stands? “Look at me,” is a classic line, expertly delivered. Hey Chili, I’m all good with it.
Alas, once you start down a path, momentum sometimes tends to keep you going further than originally intended. Or at least for me it does. Thus it came to pass that I recently re-read Annie Proulx’s novella, Brokeback Mountain. Then I also re-watched Ang Lee’s movie version. Now as good as the movie was (nominated for Best Picture, it didn’t win, but should have, IMHO) Proulx’s prose is even better. And not just the flat-dialect Wyoming dialogue either. But also the gorgeous descriptions of desolate landscapes, violent weather, and – well, among all the other mammalian comforts – sheep. But I digress.
The collection contains “Brokeback Mountain.”
In the course of my 64-page journey with Proulx to Brokeback and back, I stumbled across another little literary gem, only 4 pages long. Originally published in the New Yorker’s December 28, 1998 edition, it’s titled “The Blood Bay,” and it is one of the finest examples of micro-fiction out there, maybe since O. Henry. If I still had my subscription, it’s short enough I could post the whole thing right here. Then you could get the same surprise kick out of the ending as I did. Alas, my subscription has lapsed. So, all you’re gonna get here is a review of Proulx’s Wyoming Stories, also from the New Yorker, titled “Don’t Fence Me In.” It won’t spoil the stories to quote at length.
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In two brief stories, gotcha is the point. The best is ”The Blood Bay,” a tall tale with a comic reverse, followed by a last line of drawled deadpan. Mark Twain used to do them that way. In another piece, ”The Half-Skinned Steer,” a seemingly garish ending works well enough. It is an old man’s dying hallucination, and caps a life story of bitter and futile escape from Wyoming harshness.
It is life stories, in fact – without need of climax – that provide the two prize pieces of this collection. There is ”Brokeback Mountain,” of course. But to my mind the finest is the patiently accumulating account of Diamond Felts, a rodeo performer, in ”The Mud Below.” He rides bulls, something like riding a tornado. To stay on eight seconds is remarkable. The fall is a twisting horror, halfway between being caught in a spin-dry cycle and pounded by a pile driver.
Diamond has a huge spirit caught in a puny body. He’s mangled by his father’s abandonment, his mother’s lofty contempt, and a seeming future of monotonous physical labor… After his first <bull-riding> attempt, he bathes in a hot spring, replaying ”the feeling his life had doubled in size.” In years to come – there will not be many – he clings to the memory of this doubling while his maltreated body shrinks and disintegrates.
”Well,” says an acquaintance, ”you rodeo, you’re a rooster on Tuesday, a feather duster on Wednesday.” On that line, Proulx gains the crossroads of great writing. It’s the intersection of the specific and the universal, of the fate offered by her upland Wyoming, and by the human condition writ large.
Yup, Mark Twain’s another not-half-bad teller of tall tales, complete with comic reverse and drawled deadpan, straight out of the American West. You could do worse, I reckon.
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With this post I’m finally gonna have to bite the bullet and add a category for “literary.” No sense calling it “miscellaneous” any longer. Specificity rules.
Today’s a double feature day. That means you get both Word of the Day AND This Day in History. First, Word Of The Day: “Nosegay.” This means “posies,” or a small bunch of flowers.
Fresh posies: Farmer’s Market.
Nosegay is a homegrown word originating in 15th c. Middle English. It joins “nose” (i.e. “schnoz”) with “gay” (then meaning “ornament”) – thus, “nosegay.” A bunch of flowers, or an ornament appealing to the nose. Today the word is common in the bridal business. It refers specifically to a round, tight bunch as opposed to a cascading bouquet. Occasionally it’s used metaphorically for things that resemble a bouquet. For example, a compact collection of enjoyably lighthearted short stories might be called “a nosegay of a book.”
I think I can honestly say I have never once read a book review containing the word “nosegay.” Or, for that matter, “posies.” Nevertheless, moving on…
This Day In History
On this day in 2006, the San Francisco-based podcasting company Odeo officially releases Twttr, its short messaging service (SMS) for groups. The free application allowed users to share short status updates by sending one text message to a single number (“40404”). Over the next few years, the simple “microblogging” service would explode in popularity. Today Twitter is one of the world’s leading social networking platforms.
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Evan Williams first made his name in the Silicon Valley tech world with the Web diary-publishing service Blogger which was sold to Google in 2003. Two years later he co-founded Odeo with Noah Glass. That fall, Odeo’s main service became obsolete when Apple launched iTunes which included a built-in podcasting platform.
After Williams asked his team of 14 employees to brainstorm ideas for the flailing startup, one of the company’s engineers came up with the concept of a service allowing users to share SMS personal status updates to groups. Soon they had a working prototype, and a name inspired by bird sounds. “Twttr” was adopted after some other choices (i.e. “FriendStalker”) were rejected.
At the time Twttr launched as a side project, Odeo’s primary podcasting platform was going nowhere. That fall Williams bought out the company’s investors, changed Odeo’s name to Obvious Corporation and fired Glass. Within 6 months, Twttr had become Twitter. Once it went public, the founders imposed a 140-character limit based on the maximum length of text messages at the time. This was later expanded to 280.
Twitter’s usage exploded in 2007 at the South by Southwest convention in Austin where more than 60,000 daily tweets were sent. By 2013 the company had more than 2,000 employees and more than 200 million users. That November, when it went public, Twitter was valued at $31 billion.
Increasingly, Twitter has become a source of breaking news. President Trump has often tweeted policy decisions and other announcements during his administration. Like other social media, Twitter faces pressure to police site content more closely to prevent bullying, harassment and hate speech, and to protect user privacy.
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With its abbreviated, tightly-bunched format, I guess you could call Twitter “the nosegay of social media?” Me personally, I wish they had stuck with the name “FriendStalker.” Or, as my daughter likes to say… “I think the Internet is a great big mistake.” Ah well. At least we still have posies. Carry on, friends.
Always fresh flowers on the table at the 392 Midstream Airbnb.
And never any tweets – or stalking – at dewconsulting.net/blog
I was gonna go on summer hiatus. You know, put the blog down for a while, give everybody a much needed rest. Then along comes a story I just can’t pass up – and you are the beneficiaries. Honestly, I don’t know how I overlooked this one last year: “Disco Dealt Death Blow By Fans of Chicago White Sox” is not a headline easily ignored. I mean, it’s got all the key elements of a classic: Mayhem, music, and America’s favorite pastime. Not to mention Bill Veeck’s midget, of course. The fact that it’s set on the South Side doesn’t hurt either.
But hey, no worries: We here at dewconsulting.net/blog work tirelessly to bring you only the best blogging the Internet has to offer. And this one? Well, you won’t find anything finer anywhere. At least, you won’t find it anywhere this side of old Comiskey Park I guess.
Disco will never die. Even if old Comiskey (since torn down) did.
On This Day in History, 1979…
As the ’70s came to an end, the age of disco was also nearing its grand finale. But for all of its decadence and overexposure, disco didn’t quite die a natural death, collapsing under its own weight. Instead, it was killed by a public backlash that reached its peak on this day in 1979 with the infamous “Disco Demolition” night at Chicago’s Comiskey Park. The incident led to at least 9 injuries, 39 arrests and the cancellation and forfeit of a Major League Baseball game. It is also widely credited — or, depending on your perspective, blamed — with dealing disco its death blow.
Gotta admit:
The folks @ History.com usually are not quite this hilarious.
The event was the brainchild of Steve Dahl and Garry Meier, popular disk jockeys on Chicago’s WLUP “The Loop” FM. Dahl had only recently moved to WLUP from rival station WDAI when that station switched to an all-disco format — a relatively common reformatting trend in American radio in 1979. But however many other rock DJs were displaced by disco, only Dahl was inspired to launch a semi-comic vendetta aimed at “the eradication and elimination of the dreaded musical disease.”
…. <with> a doubleheader scheduled on July 12, Dahl and Meier approached the White Sox with a rather unorthodox idea for an attendance-boosting promotion: Declare July 12 “Disco Demolition” night. Allow Dahl to blow up a dumpster full of disco records between games of the doubleheader. White Sox executive Mike Veeck embraced the idea in the same spirit with which his father, legendary team-owner Bill Veeck, had once sent a midget to the plate in a major league ballgame in order to amuse the fans and draw a walk.
Two key mistakes…
The first mistake organizers made was grossly underestimating the appeal of the 98-cent discount tickets offered to anyone who brought a disco record to the park to add to the explosive-rigged dumpster. The White Sox expected perhaps 5,000 more fans than the average draw of 15,000 or so. What they got instead was a raucous sellout crowd of 40,000-plus. Also, an even more raucous overflow crowd of as many as 40,000 more outside on Shields Avenue. The second mistake was failing to actually collect those disco records. These would become dangerous projectiles in the hands of a crowd that was already out of control by the time Dahl detonated his dumpster in center field during warm-ups for the evening’s second game.
What followed was utter chaos. Fans by the thousands stormed the field and began to wreak havoc, shimmying up the foul poles, tearing up the grass and lighting vinyl bonfires on the diamond. The stadium scoreboard implored them to return to their seats, but to no avail. Conditions were judged too dangerous for the scheduled game to begin. The Detroit Tigers were awarded a win by forfeit.
Man Oh Man Oh Man.
It just doesn’t get much better than that, folks.
Well, at least this side of Saturday Night Fever it doesn’t.
