Tag: Smiles

Among the advances in human society, don’t overlook toilets

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Ever wonder how they work? No electricity, motors, or anything like that? Flush toilets are taken for granted by half of the world’s population, except when there’s a malfunction.

For perspective, check this roll. Well, actually two rolls today – it’s a Double Tendrils occasion.

  1. You visit a toilet about 2,500 times a year. And that’s under normal conditions.
  2. The bathroom is a leading cause of arguments among couples. As for other family members or housemates?
  3. In a public restroom, the first toilet cubicle in a row is the least used and thus the cleanest of all. Not the last one?
  4. The more features your smart phone has, the longer you sit on the can.
  5. More than 7 million people in the U.S. admit to dropping their cell phones in the bowl.
  6. The average kitchen chopping board has twice as the fecal bacteria than a toilet seat. And mobile phones have 18 times more bacteria than do toilet handles.
  7. When it comes to replacing the toilet paper, three out of four people put the flap in front, away from the wall.
  8. For the latest in modern comforts, high-tech toilets can lift their lids when they sense you approaching or instantly warm the seat to your body temperature. Some will wash your rear and blow warm air to dry it, a feature of note for mobility-limited people.
  9. Some high-tech toilets even clean themselves. I assume that would ease some of those arguments back in item 2.
  10. Much of the other half of the world population relies on dry privies such as outhouses, pit latrines, port-a-potties, composting or incinerating toilets, and “treebogs” surrounded by nutrient-absorbing plants.

Now, for some historical and global angles.

  1. The ancestor of the modern porcelain john was created by Sir John Harington, a godson of Queen Elizabeth I. Banished from the court on account of his bawdy verses and humor (how appropriate), he wound up in Bath in southwest England and devised a flushing toilet in 1596. Its system of handles emptied water from a tank at the same time the user opened levers to flush the toilet contents down the drain to who knows where. Allegedly, the contraption brought him back into the queen’s good graces.
  2. The modern household throne typically relies on two developments. The first is the ballcock, the bobbing mechanism inside a toilet tank, which prevents water from overflowing in a storage tank. Invented by Mexican priest and scientist Jose Antonio de Alzate y Ramirez around 1790 and early applied to steam engines, it eventually provided toilets with the flush of water that generates a siphon that sucks the toilet bowl contents up and over a trap and then away. Thus, the second breakthrough development, the S trap by Scottish mechanic Alexander Cumming in 1775, collects water in the bowl and prevents sewer gases from escaping into the bathroom. Further advances soon followed, largely in England.
  3. Contrary to legend, plumber and businessman Thomas Crapper did not invent the flush toilet. Versions of that were already widespread in water-closets in middle-class homes, especially in London once a sewage system was constructed. He did refine the throne and obtained appropriate patents but is best known for popularizing toilets in Victorian England. In 1870, he opened the first showroom and even allowed customers to try out the merchandise before purchase. With his name emblazoned on the overhead tanks, he soon became synonymous with the product. For the record, though, the slang term “crap” traces back to Middle English.
  4. Flushing toilets appear as early as settlements in the Indus Valley of 2,500 B.C.E., though antecedents have been found back to the Neolithic period. For that matter, the oldest toilet is still functioning about 4,000 years after it was built. It’s Knossos, Greece, in a small castle.
  5. Toilet paper may have been invented in China in the 6th Other early wipes included pebbles carried in a sponge on a stick common among ancient Romans; a small bag of pebbles carried by Jews; wool, lace, or hemp for the wealthy or – catch your breath – rags, wood shavings, leaves, dry grass, moss, sand, ferns, plant husks, seashells, corncobs, and, of course, water, by the general populace.
  6. Modern commercial toilet paper originated in the 1800s, although Joseph Gayetty is widely credited with introducing the product in the United States in 1857 Gayetty’s Medicated Paper was sold in packages of flat sheets, watermarked with the inventor’s name.
  7. A patent for roll-based dispensers was awarded in 1883, and its application extended to toilet paper in 1890 the Scot Paper Company was the first to manufacture what would become the long strips of perforated paper wrapped around a paperboard core found within reach of the majority of toilets.
  8. Toilet paper also comes folded as interleaved sheets in boxes, or in bulk for use in dispensers.
  9. Colored toilet paper, popular from the 1960s, has largely faded from the marketplace, replaced largely by embossed patterns or color designs. And, as a selling point, “softness” or “fluffiness” is a bonus.
  10. The average American uses 141 rolls a year, double the rate in other Western countries or Japan. One factor for the difference is that folks elsewhere use bidets or spray hoses to clean themselves.

Slatkins and the Hollywood String Quartet

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

From what I saw of the classical music scene in America when I was growing up, the West Coast in general and Los Angeles, in particular as its primary metropolis, were seen as something of a backwater, despite some of the city’s celebrity musicians such as violinist Jascha Heifetz, pianist/composer Sergei Rachmaninoff, and serialist composer Arnold Schoenberg.

In the classical field, the city’s music-making was dismissed as subservient to the film industry. There wasn’t even any opera, in contrast to San Francisco.

That perception has changed, especially since the opening of the Walt Disney Concert Hall along with the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s rise under Esa-Pekka Salonen and Gustavo Dudamel to what prominent critics have deemed the most important orchestra in the nation.

Meanwhile, LA’s earlier life is getting reconsideration these days, thanks to the Slatkin family and its history that centers, especially, on the Hollywood String Quartet.

Here’s why.

  1. The quartet, drawn from film industry musicians but known largely through its recordings on Capitol Records, was critically acclaimed as the best string quartet ever in America. But because of conflicting schedule demands among its four members, it was unable to tour outside of California except on rare occasion. That did dampen their awareness in the larger artistic world. Listen to their recordings, though, or view their only video performance on YouTube, and the case is compelling. We can argue about the amazing American ensembles that have come since. These days, I’ll say simply the Hollywood Four remain unsurpassed but are now rivalled, which I see as a blessing. And here I had dismissed their name as somehow celebrity gloss.
  2. Let’s start with the first violinist, Felix Slatkin. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, to a Jewish family from Ukraine, he studied violin under Efrem Zimbalist and conducting under Fritz Reiner at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. It doesn’t get any better than that. At age 17 he joined the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra as assistant principal violinist before becoming concertmaster for Twentieth Century Fox Studios, where he soloed in several acclaimed soundtracks. He and his new wife also cofounded the quartet in 1939. As a conductor, he founded the Concert Arts Orchestra, comprised largely of studio musicians, and led the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, local professionals in the summer season. He recorded widely on the Capitol label with both the quartet and the two orchestras. He was also Frank Sinatra’s concertmaster and conductor of choice. He died of a heart attack at age 47.
  3. His wife was a New York native of Russian Jewish extraction, Eleanor Aller, the principal cellist of the Warner Bros. Studio Orchestra. Not only was she the first woman to hold a principal chair in a studio orchestra, hers was a position no woman held in any of the major orchestras of Europe or America, due to her sex. Kudos on the breakthrough. Oh, yes, she did make her mark as a soloist on major soundtracks as well as on the concert stage. Shortly after their marriage, the couple established the Grammy-winning quartet while continuing to work as studio musicians.
  4. Today, their son Leonard is the best-known family member. American conductors have faced an uphill battle against Europeans when it comes to prestigious positions, but this Slatkin has earned a well-placed distinction. At the early age of 33, he was offered the music directorship of three fine American orchestras and chose St. Louis over Minnesota and Cincinnati, in part because of the support the management offered in his development. As he led St. Louis to world-class recognition, many highly acclaimed recordings followed. Later appointments had him heading the National Symphony of Washington and those of Detroit, Nashville, and Lyon, France, as well as the BBC Symphony. He also had significant roles in Chicago, at the Aspin festival in Colorado and Blossom festival in Ohio, and even in Las Vegas. It’s quite a resume, even before getting to opera.
  5. Over its 22-year span, the quartet had two second fiddles and two violists. The original second violinist was Joachim Chassman, joined by violist Paul Robyn. With the outbreak of World War II, the quartet disbanded when the three males enlisted in the military. When the quartet resumed in 1947, Paul Shure replaced Chassman. Alvin Dinkin took over the viola chair in 1955.
  6. All of the members were leading studio musicians during a period noted for its vibrant, lush movie scores. How could that not influence their chamber music as well? They were all Jewish, trained at either Juilliard or Curtis, and of relatively the same age.
  7. Frank Sinatra, yes, Ol’ Blue Eyes, was accompanied by the quartet on several acclaimed records during the ‘50s. He even became a close professional and personal family friend of the Slatkins. For perspective, listen to Chuck Granata’s contention that “In Slatkin, Sinatra found a kindred spirit, as the violinist’s immaculate playing paralleled what Sinatra sought to achieve with his voice; serious listeners will note many similarities comparing Sinatra’s and Slatkin’s individual approaches to musical interpretation. One hallmark of the HSQ was its long, smooth phrasing which was accomplished through controlled bowing techniques; Sinatra utilized breath control to realize the same effect. Likewise, where Felix would frequently add slight upward portamento to a critical note and neatly strike an emotional chord, the singer would often inflect a note upward or downward or seamlessly glide from one key to another.” Friends, that’s real music-making.
  8. Capitol Records played a supportive role. Based in Hollywood, the label recorded not just Sinatra during this period but also most of the quartet’s albums and Felix’s Hollywood Bowl and Concert Arts Orchestra vinyl disks. It’s an impressive list.
  9. The parents did have a rivalry. Son Leonard was awed by his father’s being able to pick up the violin after three or four weeks of neglect (due to conducting demands) and still polish off the Tchaikovsky concerto or some other demanding solo work in contrast to his mother, who practiced up to five hours a day just to maintain level. He said it was a cause of resentment. Understandably. He also pointed out that his father’s bowing arm control was unsurpassed, something the video confirms.
  10. Victor Aller, Eleanor’s brother, appeared with the quartet as pianist. He studied at Juilliard under Josef Lhevinne and became a distinguished film industry pianist and manager.

My first encounter with the quartet was, I vaguely remember, on a Contemporary Records release I found at the Dayton Public Library, perhaps with a very young Andre Previn on piano. Alas, I find no reference to it now. Son Leonard’s rise as a conductor would have come much later.

When you’re lost in a fog, listen to this

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Lighthouses do stir the hearts of many coastal residents and tourists, though foghorns have long provided at least as much foul weather warning for seafarers along the coasts. These horns do get overlooked, though.

Do note:

  1. The earliest known form of a fog signal comes from ancient China around 250 B.C.E., where bamboo pipes produced sound warnings in foggy weather. The concept was later adopted by other early civilizations such as the Greeks and Romans, who used trumpets made from animal horns or bronze. It was one way to keep musicians employed.
  2. Small cannons or other explosives were later used, though they were labor-intensive and time-consuming. Not much bang for the buck, ultimately.
  3. In 1851, a powerful steam whistle in Liverpool was first used, according to one version. As Emma Sullivan’s account at Working-the-Sails.com goes, “Its thunderous blast cut across thick curtains of fog with astonishing clarity.”
  4. Scotsman Robert Foulis apparently kept tinkering. While walking home one foggy night, he heard his daughter practicing piano and realized the lower notes she was playing came through most clearly. That led him to create what would become the first automatic, steam-powered foghorn in 1859 in New Brunswick, Canada, though the credit long went to others. The one in Canada, generally considered the first foghorn, remained in position on Partridge Island and in use until 1998.
  5. Crucially, lower notes have longer wavelengths, which allow them to pass around obstacles better than high notes do. As a result, the water droplets of fog do not diffuse the low notes as much as they do the upper ones. So the explanation goes.
  6. More common designs have relied on compressed air to create the booming alarm. Each of these horns requires a clever interplay of air pressure, diaphragms, and acoustic amplifiers. Other horns have used vibrating plates or metal reeds, somewhat akin to a modern electric car horn. Others forced air through holes in a rotating cylinder or disk, much like a siren. That may be why I’ve been unable to find much in the way of illustrations.
  7. More recent versions include electronic sirens and acoustic transducers. I’ll save the technical mechanics and their history for discussion in a museum setting or the like.
  8. A horn typically has a “sound signal” or frequency pattern, say an initial blast of about four seconds followed by a pause of a minute or so. This originated with a semi-automatic operation achieved by using a coder, or clockwork mechanism, to open valves for the air, giving each horn a timing characteristic to help mariners identify them. Today it’s probably computerized.
  9. They come in different sizes and shapes, depending on their mission and situation. Many but not all are associated with lighthouses, where the beacon of light can be obscured by heavy rain as well as fog. Many others, though, are on ships to warn others of their presence or even under bridges.
  10. Some foghorns can be heard up to eight miles away. Maybe not in a storm.
That little pillar at the right, sitting at the base of the Cherry Island Light in New Brunswick, Canada, is likely the foghorn we hear 2½ miles away in Maine. For anyone interested, it seems to be pitched at G on the musical scale.

You don’t say, Charlie Brown

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

How about ten memorable quotes from the popular Peanuts comic strip character created by Charles “Sparky” Schultz? That kid really was a master of angst.

  1. “A friend is someone who knows all your faults, but likes you anyway.”
  2. “Absence makes the heart grow fonder, but it sure makes the rest of you lonely.”
  3. “Keep looking up … that’s the secret of life.”
  4. “My anxieties have anxieties.”
  5. “I’m already tired tomorrow.”
  6. “Be yourself. Nobody can say you’re doing it wrong.”
  7. “In the book of life, the answers aren’t in the back.”
  8. “What can you do when you don’t fit in?”
  9. “Whenever I feel really alone, I just sit and stare into the night sky. I’ve always thought that one of those stars is my star, and I know that my star will always be there for me. Like a comforting voice saying, ‘Don’t give up, kid.’”
  10. “Good grief.”

And here I had long dismissed him as somehow shallow, coming up with sappy lines like “Happiness is a warm puppy.”

Do kids today even know what a comic strip was?

When’s the last time you went bowling?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Well, the sport does figure prominently in the movie The Big Lebowski and the TV series Surreal Estate, a device that slyly dates the both stories.

That said, here are ten factors to consider.

  1. A realization that parking lots outside bowling centers were largely empty in sharp contrast to their crowded condition only a few years earlier prompted a landmark study by Harvard political scientist Robert D. Putnam. His 2000 nonfiction book, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, expanded on his 1995 essay, “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital,” examining the steep decline of in-person participation in group activities pf all kinds by adults across the nation. It wasn’t just bowling but civic clubs, social lodges, churches and synagogues, labor unions, political meetings and campaigns, even neighborhood parties.
  2. In America, the sport usually refers to indoor ten-pin bowling on polished wooden lanes, although lawn bowling is popular in across much of the rest of the world. Think of the places named Bowling Green as a referent. Bocce and curling are close relatives.
  3. The pins themselves come in differing sizes, which then have matching balls to be rolled at the targets. The most common in the eastern United States and Canada are ten-pins – tall, fat, and the heaviest, matched with a large ball about 8.59 inches in diameter, weighing between six and 16 pounds, and having two or three finger holes. Duckpins, invented in Boston in the early 1890s, are shorter and like candlepins, invented in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1880, are played with balls that fit in the palm of the hand and have no holes. Other varieties include nine-pin and five-pin.
  4. At its height of popularity in the United States in the years after World War II, hoards of players – men and women – participated in weekly leagues, wearing customized team shirts and their own bowling shoes and playing with their own balls. Non-league players could, of course, on a lark rent the shoes and balls, if they could find an open lane. For many, it wasn’t a bad date-night option.
  5. I won’t get into the intricacies of scoring – I never did figure that out, much less those for tennis. But I can admit that candlepins are tricky.
  6. Traditionally, the balls are constructed of blocks of maple glued together and then lathed into shape and covered with plastic, paint, and a glossy layer. Synthetics are now also allowed, depending, and rubber pins were once even in use.
  7. The sport has a long history in antiquity before some action moved indoors, as best as I can tell, in the mid-1800s. In 1875 in the U.S., rules for ten-pin play were standardized by the National Bowling Association in New York City, superseded in 1895 by the new American Bowling Congress.
  8. Chicago-based Brunswick Corporation was already well established as a maker of billiard tables when it began making bowling balls, pins, and wooden lanes to sell to taverns installing bowling alleys in the 1880s. The company became synonymous with bowling.
  9. The arrival of automatic pinsetter machines in 1952 eliminated the need for pin boys, a precarious and dangerous job for males who sat unseen above the pins to clear them and reposition new ones after each frame of play. (As I was saying about scoring?) The machines made by American Machine and Foundry of Brooklyn, New York, speeded the game and sent the sport’s popularity rocketing.
  10. The Golden Age of Ten-Pin Bowling took off around 1950, including weekly television coverage. Some professional bowlers earned as much as their colleagues in baseball, football, and hockey. The era ended in the late 1970s.