T. Buckingham Thomas Archive 2014e

It was an unnerving couple of days in Canada last week. First two soldiers in Quebec were deliberately hit by a car. One died, and the driver was killed by police. Then a gunman launched another fatal attack in Ottawa before eventually being shot by Parliament’s sergeant-at-arms.

Around the National Hockey League, teams showed their sympathy and support for the nation where their sport began. They emulated the Pittsburgh Penguins’ example with emotional pre-game performances of O Canada, the Canadian national anthem.

Unfortunately, we can’t completely eliminate all the terrorist madmen who want to make war on the West. The next time a similar incident happens in our own country, I imagine the following ceremony.

“Ladies and gentlemen, would you please rise and remain standing as we pause to remember those who have protected us, these brave first responders.” The audience stands in silence. After half a minute, the voice of a lone vocalist rings out.

The audience thinks, “I know that melody. It’s the national anthem, isn’t it? But what are these words?”

“I’ve never heard them before, but they’re appropriate. Better than asking whether we can see.”

Many in the audience begin to sing along, louder and louder, as the anthem concludes with the time-honored words.

The words are in fact part of our national anthem. They’re the neglected fourth verse of the poem that Francis Scott Key wrote in 1814.

You’re probably familiar with the phrase “eke out a living.” Eke, pronounced “eek,” is a verb that means “to achieve with difficulty.”

There was once a different English word also spelled eke, except it was an adverb and was pronounced “ache.” Like the German auch, this eke meant “also.” William Shakespeare sometimes used it. Geoffrey Chaucer eke employed it two centuries earlier:

Mickey Rooney’s passing earlier this year prompted me to watch his 1935 appearance in the film of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Comic actor Joe E. Brown eke was in the movie, playing the character called Flute. In Act III, he had a punning line describing the young Pyramus: “most brisky jew-venile and eke most lovely Jew.”

“And eke”? There are alternative possibilities like “and also” or “and at the same time” or “as well as.” However, those would not have fit the iambic meter, so Shakespeare chose “and eke” though the word had already begun to fade into obsolescence. (He also spelled the preceding word “juvenal.”)

But Flute must not have been familiar with Middle English vocabulary. He knew not eke (“ache”), but only eke (“eek”) as in “Eek! A mouse!” The actor raised his pitch and squeaked the word as “eek!” The meaning seemed to be “most animated juvenile and — horrors! — most lovely Jew.” I cringed slightly.

Welp, this week is a scary one. We might call it Halloweek. Many will be cringing and shrieking “Eek!” in the Flutish sense, even in Pittsburgh.

Way back in the haunted Victorian era, just three miles down the Allegheny River from where I live now, the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company opened its first factory in 1883 on the sandy banks of Creighton, Pennsylvania.

Their name eventually shriveled to PPG, while their product line swelled to include Pittsburgh Paints.

In 1983 the hundred-year-old manufacturer moved to a new corporate headquarters (right), a complex of buildings in downtown Pittsburgh designed by famed architects Philip Johnson and John Burgee. The office towers are sheathed in PPG glass, of course. A plaza in the center features a 44-foot pink granite obelisk.

From eye level, one’s gaze is drawn to the ominous black balls at the base of the “monument” (above). They inspired local columnist Peter Leo to dub it, unofficially, the Tomb of the Unknown Bowler.

Also in PPG Place until three weeks ago, looming over visitors were two huge dancers modeled after a Renoir painting (right).

And in season, a 60-foot Christmas tree will conceal the Tomb and will be surrounded by a skating rink.

But the really imposing part of the complex is the 40-story office tower (below). During a recent full moon, photographer Dave DiCello captured Pittsburgh’s creepy castle with its spooky glass spires.

With the World Series moving to San Francisco tonight, I’m reminded of my first game at AT&T Park eight years ago.

It was lunchtime for the Pittsburgh Pirates TV crew, a couple of hours before the first pitch. I hadn’t yet visited the press dining area, somewhere under the stands behind home plate, so our director Jeff Mitchell offered to show me the way.

Starting from way out in left field at the TV truck compound (circled), we could have reached home plate via the passageway under the stands. But Mitch decided to take the shorter scenic route through the ballpark itself, walking down the warning track that parallels the left field foul line.

We didn’t realize a couple of Giants pitchers were throwing in the bullpen (red arrows). And the stadium’s designers had located the bullpens on the warning track, squeezed between the foul line and the stands, so they would be close to the fans. That's a throwback to Wrigley Field's arrangment, for example.

We had to follow the yellow arrow, negotiating the narrow space between the flying baseballs and the rolled-up rain tarp. Have you ever been that close to major-league pitches? I could hear them sizzle as they hissed past me at 90 mph, barely six feet from my left ear.

If this ever happens again, I’m wearing a helmet.

Have you ever been unable to read your own writing? There’s a dry-erase board on my wall over the dresser, and on it I keep a to-do list for the next five weeks: hockey telecasts, doctor’s appointments, payments due, and so o

Looking at it yesterday morning, I discovered I was scheduled for something called “Btored.” I had no idea what that meant.

In my defense, writing on the vertically-mounted board is difficult because of the angle, and I was trying to write small. But what did I write? Well, what might I have wanted to remember? Pondering this week’s chores, I finally realized the mystery scrawl was “Bronco.” Only two of the six letters are what they appear to be.

(I’ve heard that archaeologists have similar difficulties deciphering ancient manuscripts. “That letter looks like a dalet but I don’t see a yud, so maybe it’s a reish, which would change the meaning of the entire sentence.”)

“Bronco” refers to the 1974 Bronco League World Series, and my task was to replay to an e-mail from a player in that series, Bob Kruemmel. He’s #9 on the far right of this picture of the Linthicum Ferndale Youth Athletic Association team from Maryland.

Bob happened across my article about televising that Series. “Been trying for years to get pictures and maybe even some video clips of the games. Don't know if you would remember [I don’t] but I hit a home run late in the game against Venezuela that bounced off of the roof of the concession stand in center field. They were showing replays of it when I got back to the Washington-Jefferson College dorm that we stayed at. Also remember being interviewed by the guys running the play by play on radio.” He met league founder Lew Hayes and got a ball signed by him, and he returned to Washington with the same LFYAA team for the Pony League World Series in 1976. “Had a great time,” he writes.

A newspaper could print those tragic headlines every day. Those are the average daily U.S. gun violence statistics, according to this from Tom Begnal.

That’s a major reason I don’t share some people’s love of firearms. Another reason: I’ve watched nature documentaries on TV. They celebrate the lives of the wildlife with which we share the planet.

On one, an English barn swallow literally feathers its nest. There are ducks in the barnyard, and occasionally a downy white feather is shed and the breeze carries it off. In slow motion, we watch a swallow fly toward the feather floating in the sunshine, grab it in its beak, take it to its home in the rafters of the barn, and drop it into the nest. So charming.

Or we’ve all seen scenes of bear cubs playing with each other. Their mother comes by and starts to teach them how to catch fish. So cute.

Once, changing channels, I came across a scene of an adult bear standing up leaning against a tree, scratching his back. Aaah, that feels good. The bear relaxes, contented. Suddenly, BANG! The defenseless animal flinches, stumbles, falls to the ground, and dies. We cut to two hunters with their rifles and sniper scopes, congratulating each other on the ambush murder they’ve just committed. So disgusting.

Ages ago, CBS News introduced a series called 60 Minutes, anchored by Harry Reasoner and Mike Wallace. They needed a graphic design.

The program was described as a “news magazine”: three separate mini-documentaries within a single hour. Therefore, the background simulated a printed news magazine like Time. (The dark border around Harry’s head resulted from the primitive blue-screen Chromakey technique of the time.) And to symbolize the passing of those 60 minutes, they added a ticking stopwatch. The larger hand circled the dial once in a minute, the smaller hand once in 60.

I knew about stopwatches. As a kid, I had one in my box of toys.

Later, as a manager of our high school track team, I used one of the school’s stopwatches to help time races on our cinder oval.

A standard stopwatch could resolve times only to the nearest fifth of a second, because 300 hashmarks were about the most that would fit around the circumference of the dial. The times of horse races were measured this way. Secretariat won the 1973 Kentucky Derby in a record time of 1 minute 59 2/5 seconds.

But in track and field, we needed to measure time to the nearest tenth of a second, so we used a special double-speed stopwatch whose hand circled the dial twice a minute. Now the 300 hashmarks divided 30 seconds into tenths. The red colors denoted Part Two of each rotation, so we could tell 32.7 seconds from 2.7 seconds.

On those occasions when we needed to record an official time for all eight runners in a short race, we had to deploy eight stopwatches operated by at least four volunteer timers (some with a watch in each hand). Some tracks had a little portable staircase to nowhere. They placed it next to the finish line, so all the stopwatch operators and judges could gather there and have a perfect viewpoint angle.

We added one of these unique German models to our collection. It looked very cool in operation, because the “hand” for tenths of a second at the bottom of the watch was actually Y-shaped. It flew across its window once a second.

Five years out of high school, during my brief stint as a graduate student on WAER in Syracuse, I experimented with using a stopwatch to become a smoother disk jockey.

Announcers often talked over the introductory portion of a record, “back-timing” their comments to conclude just before the vocalist started to sing. Ken Levine posted this week, “As a former disc jockey, I still talk-up records in my car. Right up to the vocal. I’m a master at this. It’s maybe my greatest skill ... which is unfortunate since it’s also utterly useless. KHJ Boss Radio is not coming back anytime soon.” Someone named Yekimi commented, “Holy crap! I thought I was the only one that did [that. I only] get embarrassed when at a traffic light with my car windows down and someone pulls up alongside and looks at me like I'm a serial killer.”

To accomplish this trick, DJs need to know the songs rather well. I didn’t. So I used a stopwatch.

I’d start the record playing on an unused turntable and time the intro. For example, suppose it was an unusally long 45 seconds before the vocals kicked in. I then reset the stopwatch to a minute minus 45 seconds, or in this example 15 seconds.

When I actually played the record on the air, I’d start the turntable and the stopwatch simultaneously. I could then make my inane comments, maybe promoting the shows that would be on the air later that night, until just before the second hand reached the top of the dial. Then I’d shut up and turn the airwaves over to the singer.

That’s not me in the picture, by the way. Real radio DJs wear headphones.

During the 1970s, digital stopwatches began to appear. They’re smaller and easier to read, typically to a hundredth of a second. (But can you push the button that precisely?) Also, you don’t have to wind them, and you can more easily measure multiple events.

The old ticking analog stopwatches are obsolete nowadays, except on 60 Minutes.

OCTOBER 4, 2014 SNIDELY TWITLASH 2

Snidely has returned! Hee hee!

As you may recall, I have been monitoring the Twitter and covertly collecting comments posted thereon by one Eric D. Snider, humorist and film critic.

The summer edition appeared three months ago. But now it is autumn, and it is time for Snidely Tweeting 2: Electric Boogaloo.

A mere two days ago William Steven Humphrey, editor of the alternative Portland Mercury, posted this recommendation: "The tweets of Eric D. Snider are a rapid-fire stomp through pop culture brimming with erotic candor and ennui." I'm not sure what that means exactly.

Nevertheless, in my latest compilation you can read Eric’s opinions about noise pollution from leaf blowers and motorcycles, a crime wave in his neighborhood, Ansel Elgort, minding his brother’s kids, and celebrating his 40th birthday. And more.

I used to visit an on-line discussion board for sportswriters where often a comment would begin, “I can’t believe what Le Batard wrote in his Miami Herald column.”

In French, “le bâtard” means “the bastard.” Therefore I first thought the posters were being insulting: “I can’t believe what that bastard said!”

But Dan Le Batard’s family came to this country from Cuba, where (fortunately) the family name has no meaning in Spanish.

Now I don’t watch ESPN’s televised talk shows, but via Sirius XM the other day, I finally caught the Dan Le Batard show on ESPN Radio. Turns out he pronounces it LEBB-it-tarred.

And he does have proper parents, Gonzalo and Lourdes Le Batard. In fact, “Papi” often joins his son on the air.

It was just past seven last Friday evening at Oberlin College in Ohio when I approached Finney Chapel, the largest performance space on campus. As the sun was setting, students with tickets in hand were already gathering on the steps, though the doors would not open for another hour. Eventually more than a thousand people would fill the building.

“Are you pumped?” wrote Ma’ayan Plaut, the college’s social media coordinator. “I am pumped. This is going to sound amazing.”

What were they about to hear? A symphony orchestra concert? A performance by a famous rock group? No, something you probably wouldn’t expect. Something that swelled with pride this physics major who once played with radio at the campus station.

I explain it all, as well as the ensuing football game, in my article about Homecoming Weekend 2014.

When I first went online with this website nearly 14 years ago, it was a collection of articles, some new and some from my archives, typically a couple thousand words in length.

That format didn’t allow brief items of a hundred words or less. So when I wanted to express a short opinion, or when I found a short comment in my archives, I called it a C-Note. (To maintain my self-imposed 100-word limit, I carefully counted words using the computer and deleted the excess.) Once I had a dozen of these C-Notes, I compiled them into an article of respectable length and added it to the site.

The situation changed six years later, when I converted my home page (the one you’re reading now) into something resembling a blog, updated every few days. Now there is a place for shorter items.

The neighbor’s doggie was named Augie. He was familiar with the old song, a novelty record from 1953 in ¾ time. At a pet shop Patti Page sings:

One day, I heard the neighbor sing the first line of the refrain, “How much is that doggie in the window?”

Augie watched intently for his cue. He knew his part well. Right in tempo, he chimed in, “Arf, arf.”

I was impressed by this duet. They proved it wasn’t a fluke by repeating it more than once.

There are more dog stories, and even a cat story, in the second of two articles on what I did this summer. Last month, I told you about my July trip to New York State. This month, I arrive at Syracuse in an article called ’Cuse Tales.

“You claim that people evolved from apes, millions of years ago,” says the creationist. “But if the monkeys turned into humans, why are there still monkeys? Huh? Answer that one. You don’t have an answer, do you?”

“No, I have another question. If our family is descended from Scottish people who emigrated from Scotland to the New World two centuries ago, why are there still Scotsmen today? Huh? You see, some Scots became Americans, but not all of them.

“Some apes developed into humans, but not all of them. Look up 'cladogenesis' in your biology textbook. It's simple.”

Speaking of genesis, there’s a young-earth creationist group called “Answers in Genesis” that denies the facts of evolution. They operate the Creation Museum in Kentucky and are trying to finance a replica of Noah’s Ark nearby. AIG demands that all employees abide by their statement of faith, which among other things requires that employees believe:

Clearly, not only have the people at “Answers in Genesis” not read their biology textbook. The people at “Answers in Genesis” have not even read Genesis! At least they haven’t read it beyond the story of Noah’s flood.

Scripture clearly does not delineate God’s insistence on a single, exclusive union.

Therefore, “Answers in Genesis,” has God commanded his people to restrict their sexual activity according to the standards of 18th-century America? The way you’d prefer?