The Speaking Stone

A friend of mine recommended taking in The Speaking Stone: Stories Cemeteries Tell by Michael Griffith, a collection of essays ruminating about obituaries and strolls through a fair size garden graveyard in Cincinnati, apparently the nation's fourth largest, measured I'm guessing by acreage.

Mr. Griffith's book is not an easy read, with a lot of parenthetical thoughts and long—but grammatically correct sentences. But it is a great literary improvement over the book I just finished, Holmes, Marple and Poe—the first (and surely last) I ever read by James Patterson and his sidekick of the moment. Compared to anything else, Patterson's book is only a slight advancement over Dick and Jane. It should be on the first grade best seller list.

Mr. Griffith takes many strolls through the Spring Grove Cemetery and Arboretum as he is writing a book (fiction) about a dead obituary writer. He takes in the names, dates and inscriptions, if any, on the headstones. He's not looking for anyone in particular, but does find a lot of people, people who he of course never met when they were alive.

The advantage to being dead and buried is that when someone comes looking for you you're always in the same place. Your spot may not always be easy to find, but sure as hell if someone comes to visit again the deceased will not have moved. Guaranteed.

A well written obituary will always tell you something you didn't know. And even a book about obituaries will tell you something you didn't know.

Take the assassination of President Kennedy on November 22, 1963, a date Mr. Griffith readily admits he wasn't alive for. (I was 14 them.) Because of Mr. Griffith's ties to Cincinnati he is able to tell us of how the limousine the Kennedy party was riding in was delivered to Hess and Eisenhardt, an armored car company, after the assassination to be redesigned and refurbished. The car lived on to carry Presidents Johnson, Nixon, and Ford before being retired in 1977. 

Mr. Griffith tells of a cluster of mourners at Hess and Eisenhardt "gazing forlornly at the company's Plexiglas bubble top—a safety feature designed and manufactured, but not used that day in Dallas—which sat under a tarp behind the company's offices."

Something always happens because something else didn't happen. Would the outcome of the shots being fired that day be the same if there was a bullet-proof bubble installed over the top down convertible? I never knew there might have been a bubble used to shield the car's occupants. I never remember seeing one used, before or after.

Are there any more JFK references in the book? There is an index. Yes.

Within a chapter titled Death's Taxicab there is a highly detailed narrative of the construction of the limousine that was put into service in 1961. Talk about military grade. There was a committee of 30 that included members of the military that had input into the specifications that would be used to build the car, including, but not limited to a rear seat that could be raised nearly 11" so that Kennedy could be more visible; a balustrade that he could hold onto if he wanted to stand and wave to the crowd more visibly.

As Mr. Griffith points out, all these touches, and more, were not meant to provide extra safety, they were meant to provide greater visibility. The potential target was being made easier to see.

As with anything good or bad that happens, there are a lot of "ifs" that could have changed things, but didn't.

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Jonny Cat

The Friday Mansion section of the Wall Street Journal can be fun to look through. It is filled with color photos of impossibly priced houses for sale all over the country.  None of the homes featured are next door to us—on either side—or across the street. Not even behind us, or anywhere near us for that matter.

Take the house featured on the second page of Friday's section: $88 million, 11 acres, pool, poolhouse, available in Santa Barbara, California.

The headline for this offering, described over 6 columns with two color photos, is: The House That Kitty Litter Built. Holy shit. Edward Lowe made such a fortune inventing kitty litter that his heirs are looking to reap a $88 million price tag for his digs? Well, no.

Anyone who is a fan of obituaries knows that Edward Lowe is forever immortalized in a Robert McG. Thomas Jr, New York Times obit of October 6, 1995, titled Cat Owners' Best Friend. It is the sine qua non of  all obituaries. 

In 1947, Mr. Lowe, who was Navy veteran, accidently discovered what would turn out to be the basis for a best selling mixture of sawdust and kiln-dried granulated clay to pour into cat litter boxes and absorb he scent of their urine that Mr. Thomas describes in the obituary as, "one of the most noxious effluences of the animal kingdom."

Mr. Lowe went from selling so many sacks of his mixture that he was calling Kitty Litter—that he loaded into his 1943 Chevy coupe—to pet stores and cat shows that it would became a booming million dollar business.  Fast forward to 1990 when he sold his Kitty Litter operation to Ralston Purina for $200 million.

Mr. Lowe started in Michigan, and there is no mention of his ever having a home in California, although the obit tells us "he spent lavishly and had 22 homes, a 72' yacht, a stable of quarter horses, a private railroad and an entire Michigan town." Given that, who needs California?

The $88 million property is for sale from the estate of Betty and John Stephens, who was the founder of the company that launched Jonny Cat. The heiress daughter of the two, Joi, is listing the home.

We've never used Jonny Cat for our litter boxes. We use Fresh Step manufactured by Clorox. The obituary for Mr. Lowe makes no mention of patents, so it is more than likely that eventually several companies reverse engineered his mixture and eventually made fortunes distributing and selling the product. Jonny Cat is made by Oil-Dri Corporation. Ralston Purina makes Tidy Cats, using the formula purchased from Edward Lowe in 1990.

There is no mention that John, Betty or their daughter Joi ever had any cats.

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No, No Never

I will never be on Jeopardy. I am too old.

Every evening when I watch the show I don't think there are any contestants near, or over 55 years old. They are all fairly youthful, skewing to 30 or 40-years-old—no doubt living with at least one teenager. 

The woman who won last night—advancing in the just started Tournament of Champions—was likely only near 40. She shredded the other contestants to the point that the poor guy in the middle had no money when the Final Jeopardy round was set to begin. As is the custom, he had to leave the stage and could not compete in Final Jeopardy with no money.

Emily Sands was so far ahead that unless she made an incredibly stupid bet, she was going to win. In horse racing, this is called a walkover when for any number of reasons there is only one horse entered in the race. All they have to do is bound out of the gate, gallop the prescribed distance, and accept the spoils of first place. 

The contestants in the Tournament of Champions are all winners of prior competitions. It's like a stakes race in horse racing. They are all at least three plus day winners. It's like the Westminster Dog show. All the dogs are Ch. champions from prior competitions. The best of the best.

I don't know how they create and grade the questions for their value. The lower amounts are easier, but not by much. Increased difficulty  goes with the higher amounts.

Of the 60 questions/clues last might I knew only about maybe 20 of them, and not the Final Jeopardy answer. If I was a contestant, my buzzer would be useless. I'd never get to use it.

I once took the Anytime Jeopardy online test to see if I could be a contestant. They don't grade it, so you only know if you did well if they call you. If the phone don't ring, I knew it was Jeopardy calling someone else. 

I don't remember if Emily mentioned living with any offspring that would know Taylor Swift lyrics by heart and any TV shows on cable, network or streaming. Having someone around 13 years old in the house can't hurt any contestant.

To advance on any show you need to be versed in hip-hop, rap, Greek and Roman mythology, astronomy, opera, the Bible, popular music after 1990, movies and TV shows after 1990, books published after 1990, history from all eras, science and geography. Only polymaths need apply.

Those are all the reasons I will never be a Jeopardy contestant.

I am too old and remember too many presidents.

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An Espionage Flap

The A-Hed piece in yesterday's WSJ tells the story of a pigeon who has been thought to be a spy. Turns out it isn't, wasn't, but merely a racing pigeon who flew considerably off course, say from Taiwan to India.

It is a fairly typical A-Hed piece in that there are puns, maybe more puns that usual. The ink drawing of a pigeon that graces the front page in the center of the story is captioned, "Speculation flew." And that's only the beginning.

Other puns sprinkled throughout:
...convinced he had committed a crime most fowl.
...officials flocked to the scene
...it [the pigeon] was, by nature after all, a flight risk.
...was no stool pigeon.
...didn't want to ruffle any feathers...
...accidentally booked a passage to India.
...Even if the pigeon was a mole.

Attention was drawn to the bird because it had been flying near the docks where there was good deal of international shipping. Additionally, the bird had some kind of writing on its feathers, and there were rings attached to its feet, one of which turned out to hold a microchip with an alphanumeric code: 776912 CTPRA 2023. Certainly suspicious since even ChatGPT couldn't decipher it. 

Tensions between India and China have been strained since there had been a bloody clash between the nations' soldiers in 2020 leaving fatalities on both sides. No one used the phrase Red Alert, but both nations are now even more leery of each other.

After eight month's of trying to figure out what to do, forensic testing and just plain detention, the police gave the green light to release the bird from the veterinary hospital where it was being made to stay, well taken care of, but a POF—prisoner of flight— nonetheless. PETA had been repeatedly calling for the bird's release claiming the authorities were violating the bird's fundamental right to fly.

On the bird's release, India's Assistant Police Inspector Patil said , "the entire Indian sky now belongs to the pigeon." (The bird remained unnamed.)

Anyone who has been following the news here in New York and social media knows there is an orange-eyed Eurasian eagle owl named Flaco that has escaped its vandalized enclosure in the Central Park Zoo and been flying uptown and downtown throughout Manhattan.

Flaco has been spotted on top of water towers, on fire escapes and window ledges looking through apartment windows. No one has thought of Flaco as being a spy bird, but certainly a case can be made.

Casing out water supplies, methods of escape and being nosy in search of empty apartments could easily put Flaco on a "bird of interest" list.

Flaco shows no inclination to come in from the cold. And like any good spy, he shows the ability to be turned. His head turns in more angles than Kim Philby's did.

That Flaco might be an agent of a real estate firm looking for empty apartments doesn't yet seem to be speculated on, but it certainly is a possibility.

If spotted, approach cautiously.

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The New Christy Minstrels

Usually when a musical personality passes away that I haven't heard of I read the obituary, see what music they've recorded, and then I sample it from iTunes. If it sounds good, I purchase a few selections and add the track to my iTunes library and queue it up for copying to one of my Nanos. I have downloaded a lot of selections from deceased musical artists over the years.

But not this time. The news that Randy Sparks, founder of the New Christy Minstrels has passed away left me with two reactions. The first was that I haven't been thinking about him at all, and quite honestly didn't know if he was alive or dead. I did know of him, however and the group.

The second was that there was no need to download, purchase, or in any way acquire some of the New Christy Minstrels' output. I already have it, and have been enjoying their songs for maybe 60 years.

I had a friend who used to tell me his roommate in college in the 60s drove him nuts by his love of their music. When I told him I liked/loved their music as well he made me promise never to play it when he was around. I complied.

I know one aspect of their music that I loved was the banjo. I didn't know Randy Sparks got Steve Martin started. Steve Martin aside from being an actor and a comedian is of course first a banjo player—a good one—who would drive late night host Johnny Carson bonkers with his banjo playing.

My love of the banjo probably started on a trip with my mother back to her hometown of Tampico, Illinois in the mid-1950s. I've written about Tampico before. (https://onofframp.blogspot.com/2009/04/my-midwestern-roots.html; https://onofframp.blogspot.com/2012/04/small-town.html; https://onofframp.blogspot.com/2016/03/nancy-reagan.html) 

I will forever remember one evening when I must have been five or six and the adults gathered on the front porch one evening after dinner and listened to my mother's oldest brother, Howard, play the banjo. There was singing, of course. Growing up in New York City with my father's Greek relatives I had never before been part of such a family gathering. I loved the spontaneity of it.

Uncle Howard was famously a schoolmate of Ronald Reagan in Tampico as seen in the 1919 third grade photo in front of the Tampico schoolhouse. Reagan is in the second row, left with his hand to his chin, and my uncle Howard Cook is in the third row, third from the left in the white shirt and tie. When my uncle wasn't working in his father's restaurant he had a band, "Cookie and the somethings," probably playing the banjo.

New Christy Minstrel music is lively, upbeat, and sentimental, even a tear jerker (Today).  Many of their songs are my favorite, but I'll single one out, The Cat Came Back, one because we have a stray cat that has adopted us since 2017 that we could no more get rid of short of stealing away into the night and getting in the Witness Protection Plan. Even the, I'm not sure.

I marvel at how loyal Socks is, a neutered Tuxedo female (she showed up that way) who rarely strays off the property and will follow me across the street if need be. We don't see her much at all during the day and night, but she certainly doesn't miss any meals. She doesn't want to come in beyond the vestibule, and only when it is extremely cold out can we mange to fool her and get her in the garage where's it's warmer. Other than that, she's ours. She's an outdoor cat with no collar, and no chip in her ear. She won't stay still long enough for any of that. 

Lyrics to the ditty go:

But the cat came back,
It just couldn't stay away.
Meow kitty, meow such a pity.
Meow such a pity,
But the cat came back.

If the capable Clay Risen of the NYT hadn't written such a comprehensive obituary of Randy Sparks, the world might not have ever heard about the New Christy Minstrels ever again, unless they stopped by the house and I was in a New Christy Minstrel mood.

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Sentenced to Life

Want to do something different? Get married in a prison.

No, not as an inmate convicted of a crime with a conjugal visit from your spouse-to-be. But as in using a unused prison as a venue that you rent for the occasion.

Yesterday's WSJ A-Hed piece appeared a day before Valentine's Day, but that doesn't matter. It seems for couples seeking wedding venues that are decidedly not some catering hall likely operated by the Mafia, there is the option of renting a decommissioned prison as a venue for holding the ceremony—perhaps a place where they once incarcerated some organized crime figures. There is an air of authenticity in these places.

Eastern States Penitentiary outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania has been rented out for weddings. It is proving popular, with a discount for weekday dates and for those who live in the neighborhood.

Tax deductibility is not mentioned in the story, but weddings have been held in museums with a portion of the expense considered tax deductible as a contribution to a charitable institution. Or, at least that was once true. Tax laws change

Eastern State Penitentiary, a maximum security prison, opened in 1829 when Andrew Jackson was president and there were only 15 stars on Old Glory. It was where Al Capone was famously held, before getting a view of San Francisco Bay from "The Rock" in Alcatraz. Eastern State closed in 1971.

It was also where the famous bank robber Willie "The Actor" Sutton escaped from when he found his way out through the sewer system. Willie is thought to have offered his justification for a career of robbing banks to be that he did it because, "that's where the money is." Or was, after he left.

Other prisons have been offering their venues for weddings. Freemantle Prison in Western Australia has been tapped for nuptials.   

Shrewsbury Prison across the pond in England is available, as is Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield, Ohio, the setting for the movie Shawshank Redemption.

There is little mention of catering food in these venues. One couple arranged for a food truck to appear,  offering wraps and scallion pancakes. But it seems the prison venues most often take the place of a church, with the other festivities moving to more traditional settings.

As usual, The A-Hed piece is filled with puns. The advantage to the online story and the print edition is that the editors get more opportunities to stuff them in.

Take the online edition that adds the sub-heading that doesn't appear in the print edition. 
Former Clinks...are renting space for your special event. Get the band to play a few bars.

Take the couple that are looking forward to celebrating their fifth wedding anniversary in Eastern State Prison. They are not solitary in their pursuit.

One couple wove in the theme of "till death do us part" and "sentenced to life" into their wedding vows. Unlike more people in prison who will tell anyone who listens that they didn't do, these couples tell you they did do it.

Part of the prison attractions is that the wedding guests get a tour of the prison while the happy couple are having their photos taken. This has proved to be very popular.

New York State has an active prison, Sing, Sing in Ossining, New York, a Westchester County suburb. Over the years there have been plans to empty Sing Sing out because the value of the real estate overlooking the Hudson River is astronomical.

There are developers who would kill to get the rights to build there. But then you'd have to put them in prison.

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Super, Super, Super Bowl

If I were getting paid to write these postings I probably would have an employer and editor who will have given me the assignment to write something about last night's Super Bowl. I'm here to tell you I'm not employed by anyone, only really watched the game up to halftime, and a little after. So, writing about the game is optional for me, but even with that incomplete viewing I feel there is still a lot to write about. 

Does anyone think like I do that there were waaaaay too many commercials? I don't have a numerical tally, but I suspect there were more commercials than plays from scrimmage. And they were shown so  many times back-to-back-to-back that at one point when the viewer was released from the commercial blitz and they came back to show you the field no one was there. Did they all go home for the evening?

I know it's commercial television, but there should be a limit. Years ago those juke boxes in diners attached to the booths had to play the tune in full, not just 30-60 seconds of it. You had to get your money's worth.

But since we don't actually pay to see the game in a financial transaction sense, I guess the network—in this case CBS— feels they can flood the viewer with commercials for which they collected millions of dollars from advertisers who felt they had to pay through the nose be there. 

I suspect there are two models brewing for televising games—with and without commercials. They've already done this with an NBC Peacock game telecast that you could watch without commercials, provided of course you had the streaming service Peacock. 

But there was no way to watch that same game with commercials on regular broadcast television. It was an offer to sign up for Peacock streaming, and of course pay for that.

So I have to believe there will be a time when you can have the option to pay to watch the game via streaming without commercials, or just suffer through all of them with broadcast TV.

It might be a hard sell since the commercials are touted to be as entertaining as the game itself, so why wouldn't you want to watch both?

But there is an advertising adage that you can't sell anything to anyone through advertising who is over 50, like myself, significantly over many hills.

Maybe the commercials themselves can be additionally packaged in a bundle that you pay to see all on their own without having to watch them unfold during the game. Might make a good historical DVD to watch after many years elapse. See Steve Jobs with a tie on.

No matter. I'm here to tell anyone who will listen that unless the Giants are in the Super Bowl that after watching 58 Super Bowls I won't be there, with our without commercials under any pay or free package.

Going to bed at a decent hour with a good book is proving more appealing. Goodbye Super Bowl. I knew you well.

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Almost Finished with "C" Titles

It's been a few months now, so I thought it might be time to update everyone on where I am playing my bathroom Nano playlist back in alphabetical order by song title. I'm almost through the letter "C".

Note:
The prior postings on this alphabetical journey through recorded songs can be found with the following links:

https://onofframp.blogspot.com/2023/10/give-me-a.html
https://onofframp.blogspot.com/2023/11/a-to-z.html

And just as I was taken by how many of my recorded songs started with Baby, I've been equally somewhat startled to find how many songs start with either the word Cotton, or the word Crazy. I wouldn't have predicted that.

There are 7 song titles on my Nano that start with the word Cotton. I have Cotton twice from two Nanci Griffith recordings, and two Cotton-Eyed Joes from two different artists, The Chieftains and Rickey Skaggs. Add to those titles Cotton Pickin' Hands ( Johnny Cash), Cotton Mill Man, and Cotton Patch Blues. For at least two mornings in the bathroom, I was neck high in cotton.

And just when I thought the string was out with Cotton song titles, I became aware of those that either were the single word Crazy (Patsy Cline and Willie Nelson, Don McLean, Linda Ronstadt, and The Ukulele Orchestra) ) and all the others that started with the word Crazy. In all, there were 22 of these, and it went on for a few days. The final entry was Crazyman Michael by Alyth McCormick.

I don't know how many songs are on the Nano. My desktop computer is holding 7,191 under iTunes that I've either downloaded from my own sources, or from an Apple purchase.

As of this writing I' haven't yet finished with the C titles. I've quipped that on my demise I will have hoped that the alert obituary writer might make mention that I made it all the way to U.

Maybe beyond.

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Now Batting, No. 21...

It was quite a few years ago when I read Molly O'Neill's valentine to her brother Paul and all things growing up O'Neill. 

The cover of the book depicted all the young O'Neill's sitting in the shovel portion of a parked front loader that was part of their father's construction business in Columbus, Ohio. All gangling arms and legs. Molly's is the oldest, and the only girl.

I think Paul is seen in the striped shirt to Molly's left. Molly has since passed away but she made her mark as a food critic in the New York Times and as restaurant owner. Paul of course made his mark as a star right fielder for championship New York Yankee teams in the 1990s. Paul does Yankee broadcasts these days, and he is always worth listening to.

When the book came out, or just before it came out, I think the NYT excepted a portion of the book about Paul growing up and playing on their field of dreams that his father had carved out of their fairly large Columbus property.

The excerpt was so well received that I remember at least one letter to the editor saying that Molly should be writing sports for the NYT. She never go the job doing that, but should have.

I will never forget the excerpt where Molly describers her brother Paul belting so many long balls onto the family property—and beyond—that the adjacent neighbor grew tired of throwing the balls back that landed on his land and just plain kept them.

Whether the O'Neill boys had plenty of balls of all kinds, or the neighbor was so unapproachable that they just let the balls land where they did and not ask for them back, the boys just played on with replacement balls from their supply.

This went on for years, and Molly finishes the story by telling us that when the O'Neills moved from their field of dreams because father's business went south, the neighbor came over with a box filled with the all the balls he had collected and presented them to Paul. If only he asked Paul to sign them.

My neighbor's son was very much into baseball growing up. He was always going off to Little League games on the weekends, carrying an array of bats on his back.

Our property and theirs, and that of all my neighbors, is a cookie cutter 60'x100'.  All yards are fenced in, usually with 6' vinyl fencing. The father put up a pitching cage in their backyard. I don't know what position young Thomas played (He's now Junior in college.) but balls every so often came into our yard.

For the most part I always threw them back over their fence. But I would often find balls nestled in the shrubs weeks, or months after, and I would just keep them. So sense throwing them back if they don't seem to be missing them or playing anymore. Out of sight and out of mind.

We've always been on friendly terms with these neighbors and I never made a stink about the balls landing in the yard. Nothing was ever broken.

On a shelf in our garage I might have about 12 balls, softballs, hardballs or tennis balls I've collected from Thomas sending something over the fence, either batted, or thrown. As he got bigger he was powerful enough to put a hole in his father's vinyl fencing when his pitching missed the pitching cage. The father never fixed the circular hole. I have no idea if I added the ball to the pile after I found it days after it rocketed it through the fence. I wasn't aware of it when it first happened. 

No one seems ready to be moving—myself or my neighbor. But knowing the O'Neill story as told by Molly, I think I'm  going to be tempted to present then with a box of retrieved balls when the time comes.

I just hope they let me tell them this story.

Comment:

When I sent a link to the this posting to my Pleasantville son-in-law Tim, he replied that the next ball to land in our yard will be a pickleball.

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