Not bothering nobody

 Well see, that is the whole point of the walking man, he didn't bother nobody.  As you walk the streets of downtown there is a gauntlet of panhandlers.  There are knots of fine young men and women espousing some cause such as Peta or Doctors Without Borders who hail you cheerily and ask something innocuous, and if you are foolish enough to answer that will lead to another question and eventually it will end up with the pitch and money leaving your pocket, you know, because they are so young and earnest and kind of charming because they have honed their lines, and generally it is a pretty good cause.  There are street preachers who are easy enough to walk brusquely by, but then maybe they plant doubts about the destination of your immortal soul, and all you wanted to do was get some kitty yummies from Target and take them home to kitty, who will look at you like what took you so long.

But the walking man didn't bother nobody, you didn't have to even give him one of those short little city nods, you just had to glance at him to make sure you didn't walk into him and he would do the same. Thankyouverymuch and you never had to worry if that panhandler needed or deserved the money, or whether the money was going to the good cause or into the pocket of this slick tongued young gentleman or lady, or whether you would be playing the harp or shoveling coal for eternity.  You were one step closer to Target or home to kitty with no muss and no fuss and thank god for that.

They have caught the guy that did it, he said that he was angry and that he thought it was just a pile of blankets he was setting on fire but nobody is believing the last part.  The walking man is not dead yet, but there are no signs that he is improving,

That kid in Buffalo likely was hyped up by Tucker and the shadowy causes and characters he espouses, that replacement theory (which sounds a lot like Beagles' claiming that the minorities are taking over) and since he is a law abiding citizen was able to arm himself to the teeth and kill eight people.  A week later the guy in Uvalde who thought the world was not treating him right and because he was a well-ordered militia was able to buy a couple super guns because he was a mature eighteen years old and kill about twenty people.  And maybe the fate of the walking man does not seem like such a big deal beside those massacres.

But he was OUR walking man and he never bothered any of us.  And that fuck, that suburban fuck, had to take a bus and a train to come downtown and bother somebody who never bothered nobody and take the train and the bus back home because, you know, he was angry.

Old Mitt

 Old Mitt wasn't like our Walking Man at all.  He mostly sat on a bench in Washington Park and watched the world go by, except when he was washing store front windows on Main Street.  I don't think he was homeless, but he looked like a bum, which is what we used to call homeless people back in those days.  From the first time I laid eyes on him, I supposed that he had an interesting story to tell about how he came to be a bum.  You know, like he used to be a successful stockbroker until he was led astray by fast living and loose women and lost his ambition, or something like that.  I did see him walking one day, and since it was raining, I offered him a ride.  He didn't have far to go, so I only got to talk with him for a few minutes.  He spoke with a child-like simplicity, which led me to believe that, if he indeed did have a story to tell, he wasn't about to tell it to me. 

Somebody told me years later that Old Mitt had money from an inheritance or something, but it was metered out to him from a trust fund that his relatives had set up for him because they didn't believe he was competent to manage his own financial affairs.  I suppose he washed store front windows on Main Street to get a little extra spending money, although it was hard to see what he had to spend it on.  I speculated that, when he died, they would find his mattress stuffed with money or something like that, but as far as I know, they never did.  Old Mitt seemed to be content with his lifestyle.  He wasn't particularly friendly, but he wasn't unfriendly either.  He minded his own business and didn't bother anybody, which is more than I can say about a lot of people I have known.

Cheboygan's Walking Man

 We had our own Walking Man in Cheboygan you know.  I say "had" because I haven't seen him in 30 years, and I think he was at least as old as me, so he's probably dead by now, but I don't know that for an absolute fact.  I watched this guy age over the years, just like Uncle Ken watched Chicago's Walking Man age.  The last time I saw him, which was the first and only time we ever spoke to each other, his hair had turned gray, and his shoulders had developed a stoop, but he still walked with the same confident stride that he had always displayed, like he knew where he was going.  I had never spoken to him before because I was always driving when I saw him walking, and it was none of my business anyway.  

One day, back in '91 or '92, when I was tending the State Street Drawbridge, and he was walking across it, with his characteristic tote sack slung over his shoulder, I stopped him and asked where he had been walking to for all these years.  He told me that he lived on Bois Blanc Island (Bob-a-lo to us locals) and had friends in Cheboygan that he liked to party with.  They lived within a mile or two of the ferry dock, so it wasn't worth loading his car onto the boat, it was easier to just walk over there.  By the time the party wound down, the ferry was docked for the night, so he would stay overnight with his friends and catch the boat home the next day, wearing a fresh change of clothes, which was what he carried in his tote sack.  I haven't seen him since, but then I don't get around much anymore.  

Bois Blanc Island is kind of a suburb of Cheboygan.  Wiki says there were only 71 people living there in 2000, but that probably means year-round residents.  I'm pretty sure the seasonal and weekend population is higher than that.  

Bois Blanc Island (Michigan) - Wikipedia

The Walking Man

When I first moved downtown it was hard to miss this guy, walking, always walking, talking, never talking. never bothering nobody.  

That was thirty years ago, and his hair was raven black, down to his shoulders, a big drooping moustache, a clean sportscoat of some kind, maybe a sweater or t shirt underneath, clean and unwrinkled.  Oh and handsome.  His gaze was serene and his step was purposeful even though he never seemed to reach any destination.

Like I said he was here, he was there, mostly downtown.  You know how it is like maybe the guy who sits across the aisle on the bus to work every morning, and you see the guy everyday and it seems like you maybe should acknowledge him, so after you sit down you look right at him and give him a little nod, little enough so that it would maybe look like you never did it, and maybe after a couple times the guy nods back and so you get into doing that every morning.  You don't try to have a conversation, just the acknowledge is enough.

And after running into the guy maybe a dozen times I felt like maybe I should give him a nod. but no. just looking at him you could tell he didn't want a nod. didn't want anybody bothering him, just as he never bothered anybody. Well alright then, fair enough. 

Like I said he cut an imposing figure, tall, handsome, well-dressed, and you thought maybe he owned a chain of restaurants and was looking for a spot for a new one, or more likely he was connected to showbiz and was scouting a location.  But like I said he was always walking, like that was all he had in mind, he just wanted to walk and not bother anybody.

One of the local columnists wrote a column on the unusual things downtown that you take for granted, and the walking man was one of them.  There wasn't a photo of him but it wasn't necessary, I knew who he was talking about.  And so did everybody else so that you could just say the walking man and everybody knew who you were talking about, not that you mentioned him that often because he never bothered anybody.

The years went by, his hair turned grey, than white, he became a little stooped, his pace was slowed, but he was still walking, doggedly walking the streets of downtown.

People wondered about him, he didn't seem like a bum, his clothes were always clean and unwrinkled, he never seemed to be drunk or high in any way.  Who was he?  Where did he come from?  But who do you ask?  You couldn't ask him because you knew he didn't want to talk, he didn't want to bother anybody and you had to respect that and not bother him.

Six years ago he got attacked with a bat as he slept.  They caught the guy but I believe he was homeless also, and deranged, and didn't know what he was doing, except that he wasn't not bothering anybody.  He was in the hospital for a couple weeks and they thought he was going to lose an eye, but that never happened.  His family came forward, nice folks it seemed.  At some point in his youth he was selling jewelry on the street and that entailed a lot of walking and he got to like the walking and let the jewelry slide and just walked.  He was happy enough doing that, that is how we wanted to spend his life.

And he was back on the sidewalk not long afterwards and both his eyes were fine, and everybody was fine with that. it was good to have him back walking purposefully down the sidewalk, not bothering anybody.

And then just a few days ago as he was sleeping in the underground street just a block or two east of where I live somebody set him on fire.  He's not dead yet but he probably will be.  There are surveillance photos of the attacker getting on the train afterwards and riding it to the end of the line.  Nobody knows he was, and maybe he will be caught and maybe he won't.

Everybody in the city feels bad.  How could this happen to somebody who never bothered nobody?

https://abc7chicago.com/man-set-on-fire-chicago-loop-police/11892674/  

Days of old

 I have posted about the Orange Garden before.  I came across it when idly wandering through Old Dog's hood and was gobsmacked.  Basically just the appearance of it because it was Monday and the joint was closed.  It was like being in some 1930's movie, back when they were called Chop Suey Joints.  Back when men wore fedoras and dames were tough tomatoes, and likely guys wearing white ties and black shirts spooned up their chow mein while looking around suspiciously for coppers.

I guess that crime connection always gets attention,  I remember being in some Czech joint on Cermak in Berwyn and against the wall there were these cases with Czech mementos like dolls wearing Moravian dresses and one more item down there was Al Capone grinning out of a photograph at me.  Seems like he used to hang out in some upstairs room hiding from the cops or plotting some criminal act.  Nothing really to be proud of, but you know, maybe a little, just for the authenticity.

And Dillinger kind of an everyman compared to Big Al, and good at what he did, and I guess a bit of a hero to the depression era folk who felt betrayed by the banks.  And polite, just like Elvis Presley.

And now the sign is going to hang over a vegan tea house in Highland Park.  So it goes, so it goes.

WTF?

Is it just me, or does the site appear all fucked up to my esteemed colleagues as well? The published posts that the general public sees are all right, it's just the page that we use to write our posts. The titles are okay, but the body of the texts seems to have reverted to HTML code.............Never mind, I seem to have fixed it, although I have no idea how it got fucked up in the first place.  I noticed that there was an icon in the upper left-hand corner of the screen that was never there before.  I clicked on it, and it gave me the choice of HTML code or "compose".  I clicked on "compose" and the whole page straightened out.  Then I checked out some of the old posts, and they were still fucked up, so I started fixing them all the same way, one by one.  After I fixed four or five of them, the rest of them straightened out spontaneously.

Go figure!

Neighborhood news

I know the dawgs are besotted with news from the top of the country, but shit happens here way down south too.

Sorry for the mess.  Because the page needed a subscription I just copied and pasted the whole article because I didn't have a lot of time and wanted to get something up.  I didn't realize what a mess I had made of it.  And now hopefully I have cleared it up.

Orange Garden

 Orange Garden, the oldest Chinese restaurant in Chicago, which recently sold its iconic neon sign, and was reportedly selling next year, may not be for sale after all.

“I don’t want to sell,” said owner Hui Ruan. He spoke in Cantonese, seated in a booth at the historic dining room in the North Center neighborhood. “I’m 72 years old this year. Before, I didn’t want to work anymore, because of my age, and because I’m tired. But now my kids say they really like this restaurant, so I can’t bear to sell it.”

The kids, an adult son and daughter, now manage the business, perhaps best known for Chinese American classics including egg foo young and Chicago-style peanut butter egg rolls.

“If I can move, if I can walk, if I’m healthy,” Ruan said. “Then I’ll absolutely help them.”

His children, however, don’t want to take over the family restaurant.

“I could take over, or my sister, or the both of us,” said son Ben Ruan. “But the thing is, for my dad to mentally get away from Orange Garden, we need to have closure. Because if our family owns it, he’ll still think about coming to work, and then worry.”

His sister agrees.

“I want someone to take over who will care about this restaurant and keep this place as it is,” Julie Ruan said. “Or make it even better if they can.”

It’s a new wrinkle in the long disputed history of Orange Garden. The Ruans believe the restaurant opened in 1932. Daughters of a previous owner, George Chen, believe their father founded the restaurant.

Orange Garden was, in fact, open at least by 1927, with an owner unknown to descendants of both families. The 1928-1929 city directory is the first to list the restaurant, and it was put together in late 1927, according to Matt Rutherford, Newberry Library curator of genealogy and local history.

The listing names Chan Woods as the proprietor, who likely lived above or behind the restaurant, Rutherford said in an email.

Even though phones weren’t commonplace back then, a restaurant would have been most likely to have one, and many were listed in 1925 and 1926.

“My hunch is that the restaurant started about 1927,” he added.

That’s the same year Won Kow, once the oldest restaurant in Chinatown, was built. Legend has it that Al Capone was a regular customer, with a table overlooking Wentworth Avenue.

Orange Garden had another gangster connection.

“Many people came to George Chen’s restaurants,” wrote Tribune columnist Anne Keegan in a profile. “One of his best customers was a good looking man who was always polite. … It was not until he was killed and his pictures were all over the newspapers that George Chen realized his best customer had been John Dillinger.”

Chen bought Orange Garden in the early 1930s. He already owned Jade Cafe in the Old Irving Park neighborhood.

n 1932 or 1933, Chen hired an artist, who came to Chicago to work at the Century of Progress World’s Fair, to paint murals at both restaurants.

“That detail was told to me by my father,” said Phillip Chen. His father, Alfred Chen, was one of George Chen’s younger brothers. “He actually told me the name of the Russian Jewish artist, but I have forgotten it.”

Phillip Chen, the family historian and an art professor at Drake University, was born and raised in Chicago at Jade Cafe, which his father eventually took over.

“Much of my work is about family history,” Chen said. He did an exhibition at the Museum of Chinese in America in New York City about the Chinese American experience with images about immigration, marginalization and labor.

By 1938, the Chens helped a third brother open a third family restaurant, Oriental Garden in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where celebrated jazz singer and bandleader Cab Calloway was a customer. There was a striking similarity between the facades of Oriental Garden and Orange Garden, with the same silver-fluted features.

Six years later, the probable founder of Orange Garden seemed to have still listed his address at the restaurant’s location. A 1942 draft registration for “Chan Woot” listed the man as a restaurant owner residing at 1942 ½ W. Irving Park Road, Rutherford said.

In the 1950s or ’60s, George Chen’s middle daughter, Julie, helped out at Orange Garden as a teenager. Her younger sister, Donna, never worked at the restaurant, but remembers going there to eat and putting money in the jukeboxes.

“There were jukeboxes in each of the booths,” said Donna Chen, a retired French teacher who taught at Lake View High School. “I was little, running back and forth. I would make my father crazy.”

It remains unclear who commissioned the iconic neon sign and when it was installed over the sidewalk out front. The curvaceous sign — which reads on three lines, “Orange Garden. Chop Suey. Chow Mein” — was made by Flashtric, one of the oldest sign companies in Chicago.

“I have the original signed contract for $9 to maintain it from Feb. 16, 1961,” said Angela Demir, owner of Flashtric. Her father, Alexander Demir, purchased the business in the early ’70s from Fred Parker, who founded the company in 1911. She acquired the business about five years ago.

In 1970, a popular, offbeat restaurant column in the Tribune, “The Motley Crew” by John R. Thomson, may be the earliest mention of Orange Garden in the paper: “We had an order of chicken chow mein ($1.95); two orders of subgum chow mein ($1.95 each); an order of mushroom fried rice ($1.30); and an order of sweet-sour pork ($1.80).”

By the mid-1970s George Chen had retired, according to the profile by Tribune columnist Keegan. The front-page headline in 1982 read: “Chinese family finds real meaning in Fourth of July.”

In 1983, Charn Yuen, older brother by eight years of the current owner, bought Orange Garden.

Ten years later, he ordered new neon signs from Flashtric to hang in the windows on either side of the double front doors.

“My father made the neon window signs,” Demir said. “And back then they were $475.”

Yuen’s niece and nephew began helping their uncle, while they were in high school, at the restaurant they would someday run.

“I never really encountered Chinese food like that before,” said Julie Ruan. She was born in Taishan, China, as was the rest of her family. “The old-fashioned egg foo young and shrimp lobster sauce, I didn’t know what that was all about until I came over here and tasted it. And the process for the pressed duck is so long.”

At that point, her father was working as the kitchen manager at Young’s, the Chinese restaurant in Glenview owned by his uncle.

In 2008, when his older brother was ready to retire, Hui Ruan took over.

“Managing the kitchen was not a new thing for him,” said his son. “But managing the restaurant was, so that’s when my sister and I came in.”

Two years later, they started requesting estimates from Flashtric to fix the famous sign.

“We were trying to see how we could refurbish it to keep its original aesthetic,” Demir said. The last proposal in 2013, to fix falling rust and to get the neon back to fully working order, was for $4,100.

In 2016, it was Hui Ruan’s turn to retire, more or less.

“I went back to China for about a month and a half,” he said in Cantonese. “People didn’t even know me anymore. It’s been decades since I left.”

Despite the vintage murals on the walls, and the air of another era’s glamour, takeout has become the main business at Orange Garden.

“Even pre-pandemic, dining in was basically second,” Ben Ruan said. “Of course, business was a little bit slower than before, because of the pandemic, but overall, we retained about the same amount of business.”

On April 30, they sold the so-called blade neon sign for $17,000 by auction to Chloe Mendel, owner of Madame Zuzu’s, a vegan tea cafe in Highland Park, where she plans to display it. Mendel bought the sign as a gift for her husband and business partner, Billy Corgan, lead singer of the rock band the Smashing Pumpkins.

“At least we found somebody who really appreciates the sign,” Ben Ruan said. “It’s in good hands.”

[ Iconic neon sign at Orange Garden restaurant winds up in surprising hands after auction ]

Now Orange Garden may or may not be up for sale, but not the building, which the Ruans do not own.

“We’re hoping the new owner will keep our current employees,” Ben Ruan said. “We have three cooks and two part-time servers.”

They’re looking for a potential buyer to continue the tradition of the restaurant.

“We have clients from many, many years ago,” Ruan said. “I’ve heard they’ve been here in the ’30s, ‘40s, ‘50s. Their first date. They proposed here. They came back with their firstborn. Anniversaries, birthdays, a lot of birthdays, have been held at Orange Garden.”

Price doesn’t really make a big difference, he said, declining to publicly disclose their selling price.

"When I get old, I would like to sit down and bring back memories for my grandkids like other people did,” Ruan said. “That’s what we want.”

Meanwhile, Orange Garden still serves Chinese American cuisine.

“We have egg foo young and orange chicken,” Ruan said. “Those are the popular entrees.”

Peanut butter is an essential ingredient in their egg rolls, he added.

“It’s almost like cheese in a hamburger,” Ruan said. “Without the peanut butter, they’re not, people say, authentic egg rolls.”

Big News Near Beaglesonia

An EF3 tornado with 150 MPH wind struck nearby Gaylord on Friday afternoon.   Gaylord is about 50 highway miles south of Cheboygan, maybe 40 as the crow flies.  Tornadoes are rare in Michigan and almost unheard of this far north.  As far as I know, this is only the third one, and the only one with fatalities and extensive property damage, in my lifetime.  We had some rain that day, but hardly a breath of wind.  If I hadn't turned my TV on to watch the evening news, I wouldn't have suspected that anything was amiss. 

 Tornado hits Gaylord, extensive damage reported | WPBN (upnorthlive.com) 

no Lake Isle Innisfree here

 I like the solids, but better than that I like the story behind them.  Reminds me of those Friday seminars and the 3d printer and the cad/cam machine, and the Asian roaches. Oh and the castor beans.  Was afraid he was going to end up in the pokey over that one.

But this one is more mathematical than the gentleman scientist studies of yore.  In science you know you can have any number of mammals or stars or minerals, but in math only so many platonic solids.  Just because.

What of the construction?  How is the skin split to construct the solid?

Downtown is no Lake Isle Innisfree.  When I first moved here I was like this will be pretty nice when they finish up that construction, but of course construction is never done.  And then there are the firetrucks.  When I first moved in and a dozen trucks were clanging and roaring down the streets I thought what the hell is going on but it turned out that what was going on was Tuesday.

And the motorcycles and especially since the covid the hot rods.  It's loud as fuck, and twenty one stories up is not nearly far away enough.

I wrote this early last night and then just before turning in, I took another look and there was Beagles talking about lumpsuckers.  I had come across that article earlier on in fb I think, but had been unable to read it because it was behind a USA Today firewall.  But somehow it was available because MSN took it up.  The author, Rex Huppke was one of my favorite reads when he wrote for the Trib before it was boarded by pirates and he was the victim of cost cutting.

Who would have known that the Russkie army would be so lousy?  Well I have been reading that for years.  New draftees are the prey of the guys who have been in longer, have their stuff stolen and get beaten up until they have been there awhile and then they are doing the stealing and beating up.  Corruption is rampant.  

Beyond that Putin is widely reported to be sick, puffy and not eating at dinners and isolated.  I read another report that many of the civilians are against the war.  But not because they think it is wrong, but because they think it is not being prosecuted strongly enough, that some mysterious internal forces are keeping their boys from victory.  I remember that going around here during the dwindling of that crazy Asian war.

No Lumpsuckers in Beaglesonia

One of the many things that Chicago has and Beaglesonia doesn't have is lumpsuckers.  (I am not making this up!)  I came across this story last night and thought it might be of interest to my esteemed colleagues.

 https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/the-world-feels-angry-and-chaotic-so-let-s-all-take-a-minute-to-stare-at-this-weird-fish/ar-AAXpSa5?rt=0&ocid=Win10NewsApp&referrerID=InAppShare

Funny thing about traffic noise, and noise in general, is that you get used to it and don't notice it as long as it is constant.  It's when there's a sudden change in the noise level that you notice it.  That's not just human nature, it's animal nature as well.  You can drive right up to a deer in a motor vehicle that is idling along at a steady speed, but if you rev up the engine or shut it off, the deer will spook. 

We saw the first half of the eclipse the other night, right up to totality, before the clouds rolled in and obscured the second act.  We didn't use any magnification equipment or take any photos, but it was clearly visible right out our front door.

I don't know what to think about the recent turn of events in Mariupol.  The first report I heard was that those guys were being evacuated, but it soon became apparent that they were surrendering and are now in Russian custody.  They might have fought to the last man if they hadn't been ordered to surrender, but it was probably for the best.  Their heroic sacrifice wouldn't have accomplished much except to provide a rallying cry like "Remember the Alamo!"  This way there is at least a chance that they might live to fight another day.  The good news is that the Russians are getting their asses kicked on the northern end of the front, and the Ukrainians have actually retaken some of their previously lost ground.  

Idit ebat sebe!

Scratch & Sniff

Goodness, how the time does fly!  The treetops in the neighborhood are nearly in full leaf so the views out the windows are a nice shade of green, none of the bleak grayness that I've been dealing with.  And it's nearly a year since I signed the lease on the new digs even if I didn't get fully moved out of the old place until early September.  The process of winnowing crap is ongoing but I don't mind; there's no rush.  The place is functional enough so that I can get a little work done and still enjoy the new experience.

-----

I'm still impressed by the lack of noise around here.  Cars and trucks are audible but not intrusive and the sounds of people talking and children playing are also audible but you can't hear what they're saying.  Mostly it's silent, except for the birds chirping.  Uncle Ken's aerie is twenty stories up, I think, and I wonder if there are any ambient sounds that are always in the background.  With all the buildings I expect that the echoing sounds of sirens and loud vehicles would be entertaining, sitting on the balcony with your eyes closed and visualizing where the traffic is going.  

From what I can tell from Google Earth it looks like Beaglesonia enjoys a lot of peace and quiet except for traffic going to the recycling center.  But it can be deceiving, sound can carry a lot further than people think.  Oh, did Mr. Beagles get a good view of the Blood Eclipse the other night?  I couldn't see diddly because of the cloud cover; my efforts with protractors to determine elevation and direction were for naught.  Tripod and camera were ready, too.  I'll refine my gizmos in time for the next lunar eclipse which I think will be this coming November 8th.

-----

I'm not keeping up with the Cheboygan news as much as I'd like but I read about the forest fire at the south end of the county.  I'm surprised at how many trees are still standing despite the fire.  The program to monitor the spawning sturgeon in the local rivers looks like a good chance for local community involvement.  It's almost surreal to think of folks gathering outside, 24/7, to make sure the sturgeon can get along with their lives without being disturbed.  The local Fish Police are on the job!  When I read about the temporary vacancy in the Cheboygan city council I immediately thought of Mr. Beagles and what an asset he would be, the voice of reasonable experience, don'cha know.  But I'm not sure if he would meet the residency requirement; he may have mentioned that Beaglesonia is just outside the city limits.  And maybe his old pal Clarence would throw a monkey wrench into the works, who knows?

-----

There's an artsy-fartsy lifestyle publication that comes out of Traverse City, The Northern Express, and I'm not sure if Mr. Beagles is aware of it.  It looks good to me, they had a fine article on the timber industry and the economy of northern Michigan so when the shit hits the fan I think Beaglesonia will be safe and secure.  Also, a recent issue mentions the return of BlissFest this summer, something I know Mr. Beagles was involved with years ago.  

-----

I generally try to keep images of my goofball endeavors to a minimum lest I add more noise and nonsense to the Institute's proceedings but I need to make an exception today.  Remember Mr. Lemon, the googly-eyed citrus fellow, and how he got blinded in his transition to a tetrahedron?  He was the initial step in my project of making Platonic solids out of citrus peels.  I learned two things: it's possible, and a lemon is not the shape you need to start with but something more spherical will do nicely.  So I switched to oranges for the first three solids, and grapefruit for the final two.  I'm almost there; holding off on the icosahedron until I figure out a good approach.  These were all eye-balled, more or less, and not a lot of precision is evident.  It takes a couple of weeks for them to dry out and harden completely and the encased seeds and beans make a nice, maracas-like rattle.

The only reason I'm posting these is that when I went to Google to see if anybody else has played with this kind of thing I got zilch.  Nada.  Searching by image and key words gave me nothing; citrus, platonic solid, peel, rind, orange, grapefruit...nothing came up.  The closest I got was some images of nasty mandarin orange peels and a book on decorative Japanese food carving.

Now I'm thinking, these can't possibly be original, not in this day and age.  It never occurred to anyone else to glue orange peels back together?  This is not art and can't possibly be original; it's an amusing trifle at best but kind of cool, I think.  The textures and edges feel weird in the hand, and depending on the insides, they all make different sounds.  Too bad the Gorilla Glue is not food safe, otherwise it could be a nice toy for a toddler.

So, I'm posting these images just to establish proof of prior art, just in case this becomes the next big thing or object of ridicule.  I make no claims for originality, only for first posted images.  Copycats are welcome and I encourage one and all to steal these ideas.  An added bonus is that if you scratch them you can still smell the citrus.

 

TETRAHEDRON

 

 

CUBE

 

 

 OCTAHEDRON

DODECAHEDRON

 

3931

I have heard the story of Old Dog's relationship to the numbers on the door but I had forgotten it.  Firstly I want to say what a graceful rendition of simple digits that Old Dog has done.  Art Nouveau I believe, the style of my hero Louis Sullivan, before this graceful style was replaced by that stripped down streak of lightning cars deco style.

And beyond the style of Old Dog and the pitiful rendition on my part, beyond style there are the numerals themselves.  39 is 3x13, and 31 is 13 reversed.  All digits are powers of 3; 1.2.0.1, which is, well I don't know, clearly I am making this all up at this point.

But as long as we are talking about me I want to announce my upcoming and likely last Ten Cat show, Bugs and Stuff, and here is a preview.  http://www.bckat.us/KenSchadt/2022show/index.htm

Just because I am a kitchen drudge making the same simple stuff day after day for my simple and mundane palette. does not mean that I am not thrilled, much as the couch potato watching a tale of mountain climbing, reading of the derring do of the Old Dog having fun in the kitchen.

I know Old Dog doesn't care for that political stuff, but I also know that it gets Beagles' heart a pumping, and I do what I can to keep the Institute popping along because there is nothing I like better. even than the smell of napalm in the morning and that is a new post to ponder upon.  

In January of 2017 I went on a rant about ice cream machines because both dawgs had been going on about them for some time and I was bored to death with it.

That was a grievous error on my part and I have regretted it ever since.  If reasonable people find ice cream machines a worthy subject of reasonable discussion well, is that not what The Institute is all about?   

Let a thousand flowers bloom.

Who da Man?

Well you know, Old Dog, it says on the box, right on the goldern Jiffy box itself...

Exactly.  Even the manufacturer makes a distinction between corn muffins and cornbread.

So you see it's all the same dadgum thing  The only difference is what you put the gunk into.

Here we differ.  You can use the same ingredients but depending on preparation, proportions, and cooking method you can end up with bread, cookies, cake, waffles, and more.  Perhaps the subtle differences between these products elude Uncle Ken.

I will speak of fun in the kitchen no longer since cooking is too much work,  too involved, and too dangerous for certain individuals.  If you're happy eating the same thing, day after day for more than twenty years, well, as they say down South, "Bless your heart!"

-----

I'm not getting much out of the "standing up to the man" thread except that it seems to me that it's a lot of talk and little action.  More thought is required on my part but the bit about "dope insights" was funny to me.  In college, a lot of my cohorts got high and they just assumed I was high all the time, too.  I wasn't, never went near the stuff until my third year.  Same thing overseas in the army.  The "hostesses" in the clubs all thought I was on heroin, just sitting quietly and listening to the music.  It's good to have an imagination, I think, because you are seldom bored but the casual observer may think you are a bit "tetched in the head."  And perhaps they're right.

-----

Interesting local news, Uncle Ken.  I'll miss that bright spot of color that the Orange Garden brings to Irving Park, but little else.  I don't think of it as my neighborhood anymore since it's a half mile away or so, but it's still walking distance and I've been living in the area off and on for more than 65 years; the memories go way back.  A lot has changed but a surprising amount of things have stayed the same.  No more Army/Navy Surplus Stores though, they used to be all over the place.

The sale of the Ten Cat is inevitable, I suppose.  This is the first bar that I've been to from the beginning to the end; I shopped at Connie's vintage clothing store before they made it the Ten Cat, and I'll see it close.  I even have something that I can leave behind, the white vinyl numbers above the front door.  The "3931?"  I did that, thankyouverymuch.

Liquor licenses stay with the property but the Ten Cat has a highly coveted Tavern License, which means they don't have to serve food.  Such license are tough to come by these days but it's a lot easier when you don't have to deal with a kitchen and the food licensing required.  A quick Googling revealed a number of bars for sale on the north side, many have kitchens and it takes less to buy a bar than I thought.  But they all rent, and many thousands of bucks a month is a heavy nut to make.  But buy the Ten Cat and the building is included, such a deal!  Wouldn't it be great if a bunch of the regulars got together, formed an LLC, and bought the place?  It might go downhill in a hurry but it would be a hell of a ride.

big changes south of geezer chateau

 We boomers like to pat ourselves on the back for everything, and certainly ending the unpopular war is one of them, but there has been some speculation that the war would have come to an end just a soon without our hullabaloo.  It was the folly of youth.  We thought we were in the right and therefore had a right to do anything to advance our cause.

Like burning the flag.  You don't hear about it much these days but back then it was a big deal.  The courts upheld the right and in response the hawks tried to add an amendment to the constitution to make it illegal, which never happened.

Of course burning the flag is protected by the first amendment and all, but the question is why would you want to do it?  How does this advance the cause of ending the war?  As Beagles points out, it just pisses people off.  That is not the way to change minds. 

 Traditionally politicians tone down their rhetoric and extend an olive branch to their former political opponents when they win because they want to get them on their side, but what the sixties guys and the January six guys have in common is they make no such attempt.  

And two sad changes are coming to Old Dog's hood.  The Orange Garden has sold its magnificent sign and now is trying to sell the whole kaboodle.   They are hoping that the new owner will continue the tradition of a Chinese restaurant but I imagine it will go for top dollar.  Not too big a deal, I never ate there, and Old Dog found the food so so at best. but I loved the thirties look of the joint.

But the big deal is that the Ten Cat is up for sale.  "Our bodies are telling us it's time," as Connie relates.  My understanding is that the liquor license is attached to the place and cannot be transferred. so hopefully it will remain a bar but there are no guarantees.  And what of my fifteen years of having shows there?  The answer my friends is blowing in the wind.  

We're Not Communicating

" I think Putin is more of a uniter than Trump the divider is that he is ruling over the Russkies who are a very different people than the Americans."

I was being sarcastic.  What I meant was that Putin has succeeded in uniting people all over  the world against Russia.  Trump, on the other hand, has not succeeded in uniting the U.S. electorate against Trumpism.  He still has his cult following even after all the shit he has pulled since he lost the election.  

About that other thing:  What the Hippies and the January Sixers had in common is that they both gathered together in a mob and worked themselves up into a frenzy over their ideology.  This likely induced the illusion that they represented a solid majority of the general public.  When you're surrounded by thousands of people all screaming the same slogans, it tends to give you the impression that everybody is of the same mind.  The thing is, everybody is not participating, just a relatively few people compared to the country as a whole.  While it's true that the Vietnam War eventually became unpopular, that probably would have happened anyway.  Indeed, it might have happened sooner than it did if those protesters hadn't pissed so many people off by obstructing traffic and otherwise making a nuisance of themselves.

standing up to the man 3

 Youth are idealistic.  They have yet to make those morally compromising decisions that life calls for, their souls are yet to be besmirched, and they don't have much so they don't have much to lose and it feels so right to be on the straight and narrow and rising road.  

And it is as plain as the noses on their faces that there is plenty wrong with this world.  Plenty wrong with this world run by adults who have all the money and all the guns and seem just fine with this.  Are they blind?  Are they corrupt?  Well either way, something has to be done about it, the Youth will have to lead the world,  Wasn't there something in the credo of the children's crusade where the pure of heart have a power that evil cannot defeat?

And then there was the war, and wars are terrible things, all that blood and treasure disappear into the chasm.  Men are killed by their fellow men, guys who would have been swell pals if they had been born in the same country are killing each other.  And then, of course, they wanted us to do the fighting,

But what of the Trumpists then?  I am at a distinct disadvantage here because I don't know any Trumpists.  I have my improv group, and my watercolorists, and the gang at the Ten Cat, and my neighbors here in the condo, and not a Trumpist among them,  At any given moment one of us will make a crack about Trump and everybody will laugh.  Oh there is likely one or two who, like my friends living in red states, know it is easier to say nothing and get along, but I am not going to be able to talk to them,

And I am not talking about Trumpists so much as I am talking about the horde of January Sixth.  The one thing I think they had in common with the protesters of the sixties is that they thought they were doing the right thing.

But what first sticks out about them right away is how old they are.  Not many idealistic youth in that crowd, and the second thing is how many couples there were among them, so many wives and seemingly just as fervent as their hubbies.  And what a mish mash, all those Q anon patches and flags, all those militant military groups like the proud boys, and a lot of them just thrill-seeking tourists, "Oh look Martha, we can walk right into Nancy Pelosi's office, let's get a selfie of ourselves behind her desk for the grands, they will get such a kick out of that.

Well I don't know.  This is one of those things that I thought as I wrote about it things would become clear but they have not, so I don't know what to say.

I think Putin is more of a uniter than Trump the divider is that he is ruling over the Russkies who are a very different people than the Americans.

Putin the Uniter

We have discussed Switzerland's neutrality before.  I thought it was just a tradition, but according to this, it has been guaranteed by international treaty since 1815.  Now it seems that Putin is such a dick head that even the Swiss are turning against him.  Then there's Norway and Finland, two other mostly neutral countries that are now planning to join NATO because of the war in Ukraine.  One thing you can say about Putin, he sure knows how to unite people in a common cause.

 https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/ukraine-war-raises-hard-questions-for-neutral-swiss/ar-AAX0hY5?rt=0&ocid=Win10NewsApp&referrerID=InAppShare

I wonder why Trump, who openly admires Putin, seems to have the opposite effect on people.  If Putin is the Great Uniter, Trump is surely the Great Polarizer.  Although I had mixed feelings about Trump and his followers in the past, they crossed the line and went too far on January 6, 2021.  I plan on voting against them in the primary and will still vote for any non-Trumpist Republicans that are on the ballot in November, but what am I supposed to do about the Trumpists that are on the ballot.  I suppose it's safe to vote for the Libertarians because they will never win, but what this country really needs is a party for normal regular Americans like me.  

standing up to the man 2

 I don't intend to get into the usual political squabble with Beagles.

I agree that it is not all that useful to bandy around words like lefty and righty and communist because they mean different things to different people at different times.  What I think is interesting about the Trumpist and hippie protestors are their similarities in that they are both sticking it to The Man.

The Man was not so bad growing up in Gage Park in the fifties, he would maybe filch an apple from the immigrant's fruit wagon now and then, but you knew he'd keep the Beagle Boys out of the money vault.  The US was riding high, having defeated the nastiest characters to come along since the Huns.  Well they were actually called that back then.  The living was easy, everything was fine on tree-lined Homan Avenue and everybody fought to keep those impudent dandelions out of their well trimmed lawns.  The American flag was the most beautiful of all flags and our country was the apple of God's eye.

But when you rode the bus downtown somewhere between Western and Ashland things changed.  Suddenly there were colored people, which is what we called them when we were being nice about it, who well, looked kind of shabby, and their neighborhood also.  We were told by our parents that these had once been perfectly nice neighborhoods like on Homan Avenue, but then they had moved in and they were bad people who ruined neighborhoods and watch out because they were moving steadily west towards Homan Avenue.

And you know that just didn't sound right, there was something wrong here.  But if you listened to the guys on the radio and the tv, there was nothing wrong with America and anybody who said anything otherwise, there was something wrong with that person.  

See that's the thing.  If the guys on the radio and the tv had said something like America is a pretty good place but it has its flaws and we should work to change them, maybe things would have been different in the sixties.  Maybe not, that is just speculation, just my personal impression.

My intention is to compare the my people of the sixties with the Trumpists of today, and I have not gotten very far, but it is getting late and the newspaper is waiting outside my door and my cat is looking for her morning lap, so I am going to give it a rest until Monday when the forecasters all agree summer will be here at last, no really.

A Fine Topic

 "My impression is that the dawgs are not fond of this sort of thing, and I have been avoiding it so as not to discourage them from posting."

Au Contraire mon ami, I think this is a fine topic for discussion.  I have not been posting lately because I have run out if things to write about that haven't already been beaten into the ground.  This is just what we need, some fresh fodder for our cannons.

"The next item on my dope insights list has to do with the protestors of the sixties (because we were young and we thought what we were doing what's right) and the mob of January 6 (they thought what they were doing was right, but they weren't young).  What is the difference, what is going on here?"

My knee jerk response is that the Hippies were left wing nuts while the January Sixers were right wing nuts, but I'm not sure those labels apply anymore.  Back in the day, it was generally understood that the lefties were pro-communist while the righties were anti-communist.  Now it seems that they have both switched sides, with the lefties supporting the Ukrainians and the righties leaning towards Russia.  This wouldn't be the first time in history that has happened.  Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican, called himself a "progressive" you know.  Then there was William Jennings Bryan, who was central to the Progressive Party that was subsequently assimilated by the Democrats.  Abe Lincoln was a Republican who opposed slavery, while the Democrats defended it.  Now it's the Democrats who favor the colored people while the Republicans tend to distance themselves from their causes.  

Myself, I feel like a man without a party anymore.  The Republicans are mostly Trumpists and the Democrats still want to raise my taxes and take away my guns.  The Libertarians don't want to do that, but they seem intent on turning the country over to queers and colored people just like the Democrats.  Michigan's primary isn't till August, but a number of statewide candidates are nominated by party convention instead of the primary election.  The Republican choice for Attorney General is a Trumpist, while the Democratic incumbent is queer as a three-dollar bill.  What kind of a choice is that?

Meanwhile, I haven't just been killing time during my posting hiatus.  Among other things, I have learned the Ukrainian Battle Cry:  "Idit ebat sebe!"  The Google Translator not only translated and transliterated it for me but taught me how to pronounce it as well.  This goes to show that you are never too old to learn something new and useful.

standing up to the man 1

 Saturday night I was watching The Magnificent Ambersons.  Pretty good the first time through, and then, as is my habit, I smoked some dope and watched it again.  I always enjoy the second time around more than the first because I notice all these things going on that I hadn't picked up on earlier.  And the dope puts me into more of a speculative mood and what I call dope insights occur.

Sometimes they seem so important that I pause the movie and write them down  I wrote down a dozen things Saturday night, and here is one: Americans' independent feelings.

I remember the scene well. George, the spoiled scion of a wealthy family, now down at the heels, is driving his lady love down Main Street in a horse drawn carriage, asking her to marry him, but she is demurring.  The problem is that George has no job and no plans on getting one.  

There was an earlier scene when they first met, and she was questioning him about his plans for the future and he tells her, quite seriously, that he is thinking about becoming a yachtsman.  It wasn't so disturbing then because his family was not so down at its heels then.

Anyway she is telling George about how Father, a pioneer in the field of automobiles, thinks George should be doing something.  Like what, he scoffs, become a lawyer or a businessman and dirty his hands with commerce?  And here he is getting on his high horse, your father, he tells his lady love, is trying to tell him how to live his life, and he wouldn't let any man tell him that.

And there it was.  This is how the founding fathers felt about King George, the way Dan'l Boone felt about those city fathers telling him he couldn't shoot squirrels from his front porch. The way Uncle Ken, with that fat state job, running afoul of office politics, told those stuffy bureaucrats to take that job and shove it.  

See, that's the thing.  It's not so much that we did the smart thing by going to war with the British, taking the path in the wilderness, not letting the door hit us on the butt on the way out of the office, but we were doing the right thing.  The morally correct thing, we were standing up to The Man.

The next item on my dope insights list has to do with the protestors of the sixties (because we were young and we thought what we were doing what's right) and the mob of January 6 (they thought what they were doing was right, but they weren't young).  What is the difference, what is going on here?

Well I don't know.  My intention is just to amble on because maybe I will come across something (maybe not).  My impression is that the dawgs are not fond of this sort of thing and I have been avoiding it so as not to discourage them from posting.  But clearly that is not working and the stage is empty so I am using it now. 

eating

 Well you know, Old Dog, it says on the box, right on the goldern Jiffy box itself, is that if you want to make cornbread instead of muffins you:

Prepare as directed for Corn Muffins except pour batter into a greased 8" square pan.  Bake 15-20 minutes.

So you see it's all the same dadgum thing  The only difference is what you put the gunk into.  

Not that I expect a gentleman scientist turned mad gourmet chef to give any credit to what is written on a Jiffy box, I expect his scoff at the thought of making something from a premixed box has echoed throughout The Chateau and possibly to the ears of those on the sidewalk.  For myself adding eggs, and milk, and melted butter, and things like corn from the can and chopped jalapenos and sun dried tomatoes and melted cheddar cheese and black olives is trouble enough without grinding corn for which I don't even have one of those mortar and pestle things, and I worry enough about burning my fingertips in that electric oven, that I am not going to risk cast iron.

Those breakfast platters of Old Dog's are very attractive and I am sure that they are plenty tasty, but they just look like so much work, which I know it is not work if you do what you love, but I do not love all that messing around.

In the winter I buy some vegetables at the Jewel, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, string beans, asparagus, zucchini, turnips, and I take them home and chop them up.  I fill one of those disposable microwave containers with half of one vegetable and half of another, add some garlic, soy sauce, black pepper, and butter and zap it.

In the summer I chop up a couple bell peppers and zap them with a can of Jewel brand fire roasted salsa style tomatoes with jalapenos, then add a big can of kidney beans in hot chili sauce and a smaller can of corn or garbanzos.  

And I eat that every day, well Monday through Thursday, the same damn thing.

I have been eating like this for maybe twenty years and I have never gotten tired of it.  I look forward to it with relish, pulling it out of the microwave as its heady aroma turns my head and when I scoop up the last little chunk of turnip, I am saddened that I will have to wait almost twenty-four hours before I can once again set the dainty dish before myself.

It was nice reading about how Old Dog prepares his own dainty dishes, and the photos are nice, but I lack the zeal.  I yam what I yam.  And I yam not a fan of yams either, don't know the difference between them and sweet potatoes and don't care because I don't like sweet potatoes either.