Author: David Gorsline

Ready for Maker Faire

Antique Trades Dept.: As A.G. Sulzberger reports, blacksmiths for New York’s parks department still hand-build hoops for the city’s basketball courts. The dare-we-say artisan rims are sturdy, and hence cost-effective.

They have survived endless rounds of slam dunks, and occasionally served as chin-up bars and, for the especially nimble, even as spectator seating. Once, the blacksmiths strung a cable around a rim inside the workshop, which they used to tow a van halfway off the ground.

Aperçu

When he thought of his youth he could scarcely believe that his memories had anything at all to do with the absurd life he was now living, an observation, he knew, that was far from original. Somehow, he had thought that his old age would miraculously produce finer, subtler notions of—what?—life? But he was no better, no cleverer, no more insightful than any shuffling old bastard in the street, absurdly bundled against the slightest breeze.

—Gilbert Sorrentino, The Abyss of Human Illusion, VI (p. 7)

Ellroy decoded

James Ellroy’s editors let him down a few times in the early chapters of American Tabloid. HUAC refers to the House Committee on Un-American Activities, not the “House Committee on Un-American Activists” (ch. 4, p. 42). Chapter 8 is set on 11 December 1958, a couple years before Interstate 95 saw any traffic in Florida, and yet Kemper Boyd drives I-95 out of Miami. And Lenny Sands drives north out of Chicago in chapter 12 (on Sheridan Road? on a yet-to-be-built freeway?) “past Glencoe, Evanston, and Wilmette” (p. 100) on the way to Winnetka. The correct south-to-north ordering of these north shore suburbs (with a few others in between) is Evanston, Wilmette, Winnetka, Glencoe.

Ellroy does use an interesting slang term (twice) whose meaning is not immediately obvious from context.

Pete saw the Chevy’s taillights. Fulo floored the gas and rammed them. The car swerved off the road, clipped some trees and stalled dead.

Fulo brodied in close. His headlights strafed Kirpaski—stumbling through a clearing thick with marsh grass. (ch. 7, p. 64)

Brody (n.) is glossed as “intentionally spinning in circles and sliding in an automobile” with related words doughnut and 360. Unfortunately, it’s a common surname so an online search for other appearances is difficult.

Deanwood

I joined a 90-minute walk along portions of the Greater Deanwood Heritage Trail, led by Kia Chatmon and organized by Cultural Tourism DC. The Deanwood neighborhood lies in that part of Northeast east of the Anacostia River (and now the expressway and railway lines); purists will insist on the tighter boundaries of Sheriff Road and Nannie Helen Burroughs and Division Avenues. Whatever your limits, the close-knit African-American community carries a strong history of self-reliance. Up through mid-century, residents of this suburb-in-the-city had enough land to grow their own vegetables and keep small livestock.

big chessIrving Parker, second-generation businessman and proprietor of Suburban Market, told our tour group some salty stories of clandestine horse races along Eastern Avenue that he participated in—the streets were not all paved yet, and people still kept horses even though Benning Racetrack had closed in the 1930s. Eugene Brown of the Big Chair Chess Club also spoke to the group about his organization’s emphasis on self-discipline and upholding tradition.

planetreeThe heritage trail crosses the troubled waters of Watts Branch, culvertized and subject to dumping, but at least it runs clear under Minnesota Avenue. Indeed, once you step away from Minnesota Avenue and its light-industrial flavor, Deanwood still shows its leafy, suburban soul. Robins and a mockingbird made their presence known during the walk. Planetrees planted along Sheriff Road rise to impressive heights.

Decimate clutter

Steve Offutt dares to challenge the security bollards that have popped up in the last decade all over the city like so many fruiting bodies of concrete fungus. They won’t work, and they’re anti-people.

By now, the totality of those barriers must cover scores of acres of valuable sidewalk real estate. They create an unwelcome atmosphere to pedestrians, forcing them to weave and sometimes wait for others to make room just to walk to and from their destinations. Most of them are unsightly at best and downright ugly at worst. They have degraded the open space and welcoming feel of virtually every outdoor space in the core of DC.

Complexity

Francis Lam takes on the canard of household spice rack turnover:

“Six months?” [Jane Daniels] Lear said, with a genteel indignation. “Some food Nazi probably made that rule up. Or someone from a spice company who just wants you to throw out all your spices twice a year.”

A comeback

Stephen Syphax gave an interesting presentation to the Friends of Dyke Marsh on the wetlands restoration work at Anacostia Park, the first and perhaps most successful being 1993’s 32-acre (13 ha) Kenilworth Marsh project. Syphax is Chief of the Resource Management Division for NPS’s National Capital Parks-East.

Early in the previous century, the tidal lagoons along the slow-moving Anacostia River were viewed as a problem to be rectified: the McMillan Plan captioned an image of the area as “malarial flats to be excavated.” So, wetlands that were home to abundant stands of wild rice (Zizania palustris) were displaced and the river straightened by the Army Corps of Engineers to make way for a golf course, landfill, power plant, and parking lots for RFK Stadium.

Restoration work began in 1991 with pilot-project containments, with the objective of identifying the optimal ground elevation (about 2 meters) for encouraging emergent vegetation. Syphax suggests that too much height promotes the growth of Phragmites australis. Hydraulic dredging (to minimize the suspension of potentially toxic sediments) began shortly thereafter—what Syphax called the arrival of “the big yellow machines.” Novel “water tubes” (think of Godzilla’s garden hose stretched across the marsh) were used as a temporary, low-impact means of containment of dredged-up material as it settled and consolidated. Then came planting of about fifteen species of native plants, 350,000 individuals in all, along with the arrival of another dozen volunteer species—including the invasive Purple Loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria). In retrospect, Syphax says it wasn’t necessary to plant as many different species as they did. Once the plants were established, another machine cut tidal guts into the reclaimed wetland.

A happy result of the restoration work was the sighting of Marsh Wren (Cistothorus palustris) in 1996. And the jewel of the rehab is the reappearance of American Lotus (Nelumbo lutea), which opens its pale yellow blooms over the water each July.

While this phase of the restoration work was quite successful, more recent work in the Kingman Lake area has been hampered by resident populations of Canada Goose (Branta canadensis). The geese saunter over from Langston Golf Course and treat the newly-planted veg as a “salad bar,” in Syphax’s apt phrasing.

As You Like It: an update: 4

with the fool's dialred socksEvery costume has at least one snazzy feature. My costume for Jaques followed the design concept of “things out of joint” in the early 20th century, the era in which Picasso and Braques were inventing Cubism. Other players’ costumes had bits of the wrong linings attached, or even mismatched pants legs (for Adam), but I had just this really fine vest. Alli added a pair of Mike’s socks (“his youthful hose, well-saved”) for the finishing touch.

Acorns

Interesting early buzz in Jim Dwyer’s “About New York” column for Diaspora*, an open-source distributed social networking platform. The project is a reaction against the centralized uniformiarian approach of Facebook. Explains Raphael Sofaer, one of the four NYU student founders,

.”We don’t need to hand our messages to a hub. What Facebook gives you as a user isn’t all that hard to do. All the little games, the little walls, the little chat, aren’t really rare things. The technology already exists.”

As You Like It: an update: 3

Lessons learned: There’s a reason for the no-chocolate-chip-cookies-in-costume rule. Do not try to clean your vest with your hankie and the water from your water bottle. There are some times when an iron backstage is your best friend.

So far, receptive audiences, especially when Kate and Brian’s classmates are in the house. Saturday last was almost full; the Sunday matinee showed signs of life.

I’ve had my usual share of minor lapses in focus or breathing. Still, it’s unnerving when I think that many in the audience know the big monologue, or at last think they do. Richard in the lobby was kind.

Faulkner decoded

Chapter IV of Absalom, Absalom! repeats the word durance several times, as in the passage, “…Henry waited four years, holding the three of them in that abeyance, that durance, waiting, hoping, for Bon to renounce…” It doesn’t quite mean the way it looks. My Compact Oxford glosses it as “archaic imprisonment (in durance vile),” but yet there is an etymologic connection to durable and one of Bill’s favorite words, endure.

Sutpen’s adjunctive (ch. VII, “when he repudiated that first wife and that child when he discovered that they would not be adjunctive to the forwarding of the design”) is also in the desktop dictionaries, but only as a related form to the main entry, and adjectival form of another adjective, not unlike his own attitude to spouse and spawn.

Doggery is clear from context (ch. VII, “doggeries and taverns now become hamlets, hamlets now become villages, villages now towns”), yet only turns up in American Heritage as “dogs, collectively.” Merriam-Webster adds the more apposite slang definition, “cheap saloon.”