200 Days – Happy Birthday America!

Bush's Last Day, Travel

Peoria R25Greetings from Glasford, Illinois! We’re here visiting my in-laws over the holiday weekend, and really enjoying the summertime change of pace. I’ve just returned from a nice 5.43 mile long morning run along country roads like the one shown here (without any stopping!), and now after some muffins for breakfast and helping Dad with some yardwork, I expect we’ll visit the old family farm this afternoon and find some fireworks to watch tonight. I have also done some good family hunting this week, tracking down many distant relatives of my wife’s in Glendale Cemetery in Washington, Illinois, and posting the results online at Find-a-Grave.

But the best part of all?? We only have to endure 200 more days of Bush!

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OP Shorts

Diversions
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At some point, when I wasn’t paying attention, the meaning of ‘shorts’ changed, and I mean ‘shorts’ in the context of pants without leg coverings, hence the name ‘shorts’. Today ‘shorts’ instead describes something more like a pair of small baggy pants with legs that reach to or beyond the knee. You’ll often see them worn hung low, with boxer shorts hanging out above. Ridiculous.

In my day, shorts meant one thing. OP (short for Ocean Pacific, who produced a fine line of real shorts, usually corduroy, and in a wide variety of colors).

Search for ‘OP Shorts’ online today, and you’ll find they’re now hard to find. Sport It sells OP, but has a limited supply. For someone of my waist size, orange seems to be the only option. Essential Apparel teasingly offers the color ‘royal’ in sizes 30 and 32… but, NOT. Each is unavailable, and then instead suggest their own knockoffs as an alternative. You might then turn to Ebay, where you’ll find plenty of listings for new and used OP shorts, and always with the adjective ‘vintage’ attached (I guess ‘antique’ just doesn’t work well for clothing, it is instead ‘vintage’).

And in today’s Washington Post, another like-minded fellow ask whence went the shorts, and got knocked down pretty hard. Well, I’m sorry, but I’m sticking with my OPs. Style is for snobs who will order you what to wear. Laugh all you like, I’ll stick with what I like, and what I am comfortable in.

Three Wise Guys on Short Shorts for Men
The Washington Post, June 15, 2008

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‘It’ Songs

Diversions, Music

it.jpgI love iTunes, it really brings out my OCD side.. I love making playlists, paying attention to play counts, and searching out themes in my music library. And it can be fun to mess around building random ‘smart playlists’, just to see what turns up. Tonight, the subject of my latest such list was to pull every song from my library that contained the word ‘it‘ in the title. Read through this list, and ask yourself, what is ‘it’ and how does it get so much attention? Do we love it? We obviously want to do it. Or do we hate it? Why do we want to smash, lick, kick, spin, throw and whip ‘it’? I don’t know. ‘It’ just ‘is’. Here’s my it playlist…

Add It Up
And So It Goes
Baby Don’t You Do It
Bang A Gong (Get It On)
Bring It On Home To Me
Call It Quits
Can’t Keep It In
Check It Out
Could It Be Magic
Cut It Down
Did It In A Minute
Do It Again
Do It Clean
Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is
Doesn’t Make It Alright
Even It Up
Everything About It Is a Love Song
Explain It To Me
The First Time it Happens
Give It Up or Turnit a Loose
Have You Ever Had It Blue
Here It Goes Again
Hold It Baby
Hold It Deep
How Does It Feel
How It Ends
How She Threw It All Away
How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)
I Can’t Help It (If I’m Still In Love With You)
I Had It Made
I Heard It Through The Grapevine
I LIke It Like That
I Like It There
I Must Have Lost It On the Wind
I Wanna Make It Alright
I Want It All Now
I’m Finding It Harder To Be A Gentleman
If I Had It All
If It Happens Again
(If You’re Not In It For Love) I’m Outta Here!
Interlude No.1 /Play It All Night Long
Is It My Body
Isn’t It Grand, Boys
It Ain’t Easy
It Ain’t Gonna Be Easy
It Amazes Me
It Coulda Been Me
It Didn’t Matter
It Doesn’t Matter To Me
It Don’t Come Easy
It Don’t Matter To Me
It Had To Be You
It I Had Possession Over Judgment Day
It Is You (I Have Loved)
It Must Be Love
It Must Be Tough
It Never Entered My Mind
It Started All Over Again
It Takes A Worried Man
It Takes Two
It Won’t Be Long
It Would Be So Nice
It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)
Keep It Comin’ Love
Kick It In
Kick It Out
Knock It Right Out
Let It Be
Let It Be Me
Let It Grow
Let It Rain
Let It Shine
Let’s Get It On
Lick It Up
Make It Go Away
Make It Happen
Make It With You
Mash It Up Harry
Maybe I’m Doing It Wrong
Move It On Over
Nobody Does It Better
Operator (That’s Not The Way It Feels)
Paint It Black
Prove It All Night
Pump It Up
Rip It Up
Rock It (Prime Jive)
Rub It Better
Save It For Later
Say It Isn’t So
Say It Loud — I’m Black and I’m Proud
Shake It Up
Shout It Out Loud
Sisters Are Doin’ It For Themselves
Smash It Up (Parts 1 & 2)
So It Goes
Sock It To Me
Spin It On
Start It Over
Stir It Up
Take It As It Comes
Take It Easy
Take It Easy On Me
Take It from Me
Take It Off
Take It To The Limit
Takin’ It To The Streets
Tell It Like It Is
That’s The Way To Do It (Aka Odd Job Man)
This Time It Must Be Love
Throw It Away
Tojo (Never Made It To Darwin)
Underneath It All
We’re Not Gonna Take It
What It Is
What It Takes
Whatcha Gonna Do About It
When It Began
Whip it Out
Why Don’t We Do It In The Road?
Will It Play In Peoria?
Wouldn’t It Be Nice
Wrap It Up
Yes It Is

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MT Upgrade

Technology

So, I’ve just upgraded my blog to Movable Type 4.01 Open Source, and this is my first test entry. Will it screw up my site very badly? These things are never painless. We’ll see.

UPDATE: So far so good, very good in fact. This has definitely been the smoothest upgrade experience I’ve had with MT. In the past, you could count on having to do all kinds of cleanup work on templates that broke as a result of upgrading. But so far, none of that this time. Very nice.

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Marion Dedera Casey (1913/Chicago, IL – 2008/Newport Beach, CA)

Family, Genealogy

casey_gram.jpgToday is my grandmother’s birthday. She would have been 95 years old, but sadly did not reach that milestone having passed away two months ago. She was the oldest of five children of Victor and Rose Dedera, and is survived by her sister Jean, her son William, three grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. Twice married to John Casey (and twice divorced), Grandma Casey lived a very independent life, raising my father as a single working mother during a time when that was nowhere near a common as it is today.

In recent years my interest in genealogy led to many wonderful hours visiting with ‘Gram’, looking at old family photos, and appreciating her is a way that could only come in adulthood. She laughed when sharing photos of her and friends at the beach, and was proud to show off memorabilia from her career at Amphenol which included company Christmas cards on which hers was the only female presence among the crowd of male executives. Late last year my brother discovered another interesting tale from Grandma’s working past. As a young woman she worked for the Mars candy company in it’s early days. She was one of the staff who was flown out to attend the founder Franklin Mars’s funeral in Tennessee in 1934. When I asked her when she stopped working for Mars, she responded, “When I got married. They told me there were plenty of young single women who would be happy to take my job, and that a married woman had no place in the workplace.” She said this with no bitterness or resentment, just acceptance that it was how things were. Another good story was finding out that she did not learn to drive a car until my teenage father was also just learning.

Gram was an active letter-writer who was always caring and curious about the lives of others. A postcard from 1988, when I had been married and lived in Virginia for less than a year is typical…

Good morning – It’s Fri. 3/25 – 10am and would you believe 88 degrees already – we’re having a heate wave – anyone for a nice cold dip? – I’m ready for work and looking forward to the week end as I’m sure you are – what do you do week-ends? – where do ya go? – what do ya see? – For me, Sat is a clean house, food shop day and Sunday a day of rest, with the O.C. Register spread all over the d.r. table or maybe a matinee movie. Luv ya, Gram C

I would like to send Gram a similar postcard now. Where do ya go and what do ya see? And I’d like to wish her a very Happy Birthday, and let her know she is missed.

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Goodbye Mole!

Humor

Media_httpcaseycomblo_aejagAs a kid, I was introduced to Mad Magazine by my older brothers. It was outrageous and funny in a way you knew your parents would not approve, which made it somehow even more enjoyable. From time to time, MAD would re-cycle old material, by including a reprint of one of their earlier issues from the 50’s, and it is from those reissues that I was introduced to the work of one of Mad’s original artists, Will Elder.

It was in the second issue of MAD that Elder’s comic ‘MOLE!’, in which criminal Melvin Mole has a talent for digging with whatever he has at hand (a spoon, a toothpick, a nosehair), and when arrested and re-arrested after digging his way out of jail, he is tossed into his cell with the line, “In-side Mole!”.

Mole was just one of Elder’s many creations. He also created a hilarious parody of the Archie comics with this take titled ‘Starchie’, and his comic ‘Shermlock Holmes’ pariodied, well, you figure it out. It was not until reading his obituary in the Washington Post yesterday that I was aware that Elder was also the creator of ‘Little Annie Fanny‘, a comic found in Playboy magazine that I never ever saw before, ever (because I was reading the articles of course).

From the same obit, comes this tidbit of Mr. Elder’s sense of humor:

Among the pranks that earned the young Mr. Elder renown: putting clothes on cattle carcasses from a meat-processing factory, placing them at railroad crossings and screaming to horrified passersby that his friend “Moshe” had been killed.

Wow. R.I.P. Will Elder, and thanks for the laughs.

Will Elder, 86; Zany Cartoonist for Mad and Playboy
The Washington Post, 5/17/08

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Chris Continues to Rise

Diversions

Each year, the Social Security Administration releases a list of the most popular baby names in America. I’m happy to report that since I began paying attention to the trend for my own name, Christopher, back in 2005, it’s dropping trend as reversed. In 2004, Christopher was #10. In 2005, it had risen to #9. In 2006, it jumped to #7. And now I’m happy to tell you that for the year 2007, Christopher was the #6 most popular name for boys.To all of my fellow new Christophers out there, I bid you a fond welcome to the world. We’re a good bunch of guys, and we’re on our way to claim our rightful place in the #1 spot.

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Game Ball

Baseball, Guide to Life
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While digging among our sports gear to find my daughter a frisbee, I found a baseball that took me back in time, 31 years and 5 days, to a Thursday night little league game, when I was 11, at which it was given to me.

 

I was no stand-out as a little leaguer. I had my moments in the outfield, catching a pop-up here and there. But my greatest defensive contribution was probably my effective chatter (hey-batta-batta, schWING!), while on offense my Eddie Gaedel size strike zone put me on base with a walk much more often than my bat ever did.

 

But on this particular Thursday night, I had a fine sports moment. My team, the Orioles, had a one run lead going into the final inning. There were two outs and the Phillies had a runner on third. The batter hit a fast grounder that might have been an easy game-ender, had it not got past our first basemen. But it did, and it instead rolled to me in right field (the traditional position for the most skilled little leaguers, naturally).

 

It would have been understandable to hear a few sighs from our meager crowd of parents, looking at the prospect of extra innings should the runner on third score and tie the game (were there more runners on base? I don’t remember, let’s say there were and two runs would have meant a loss). The play was at home, and I made the throw to our catcher ‘Tank’, and it somehow got there in time and on target. The runner was out at home, game over, Orioles win 11-10.

 

In the dugout, the coach asked the team, “Who gets the game ball?”, to which they responded in unison, “Casey!”. In recent years I’ve re-discovered a love of baseball that I haven’t had since those days as a little leaguer. From my five or six years of little league baseball, there are only a few such memories. This was one of the best.

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Work Day Memorial Jog

Diversions, Running
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It had been a little over four hours since Colleen and I had said our farewells at the bus stop this morning, but it felt like an eternity. But her class had a field trip to the FDR Memorial and she asked if I would come meet them. What Dad could refuse? So I jogged/walked (let’s call them intervals) the couple of miles from my office building, around the tidal basin, past the Jefferson Memorial, and to the FDR Memorial. I didn’t see her right away, and walked the whole memorial without finding her, but then I spotted my girl walking with friends on their way to eat their lunches. Our fortuitous reunion at the FDR Memorial got me through the day.

I took some pictures on the way (a good excuse to stop and catch some badly needed breath). On the return trip, I was able to make a quick, but long awaited visit to the World War II Memorial.

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