Cactus Watcher Strikes Again

I heard this piece played exactly once before today. It was in person (when I was in junior high) in Kansas City at a recital in a religious auditorium many decades ago. The even name of the religion has changed. I'm not sure if the organ still exists. But as soon as I heard the opening notes, I remembered it as if it was this afternoon. As wild as this piece sounds, it sounded like something greater there. The piece (the finale of Vidor's 5th organ symphony, I learned this evening) starts off in the treble, then thunders into the bass. At that place in KC one set of pipes was beyond keyboard and the organist, another was behind the audience. When the bass came in from behind us, it was stunning. We all knew the pipes were there, but everyone in the audience turned to look. The balance between treble and bass was much better in person than any of the YouTube versions I can find, but I hope you will enjoy this version.

Via shadowkat

12. Do you have a range of different glasses for different types of drinks or just one type?

I have beer steins, shot glasses, a couple snifters, juice glasses and everyday 12 oz. milk/water glasses.

13. When you open your front door to a guest, what is the first item (apart from you!) that they see when they come inside?

Probably my library table, since the front door opens into my library.

14. What’s your favorite type of biscuit/cookie? Ever made biscuits/cookies at home from scratch (for example at Christmas)?

Chocolate chip. Yes, I've made chocolate chip and sugar cookies. Probably made others back when my mother was showing me what to do.

15. Do you have any maple syrup? What’s your favorite way to use it?

Yes. Pancakes.

16. Do you still use post-it notes to remind you of things?

Never did, really.

17. Do you use a tablecloth on your dinner table?

Yes, and I have one on my library table (see above).

18. Have you ever been ice skating?

Exactly once, in grad school. Ohio State had a rink for the hockey team that students could use some nights. I did quite a bit of roller skating when I was young up to teenage. So I caught on to ice skating fairly quickly. Didn't go again mostly because we went as a group, and didn't do it again.

19. What’s the last thing that made you laugh out loud?

A YouTube video (https://youtu.be/1ixL0G6t3sQ?si=-FCLkA0R4f1rKMN8) of a couple of chefs, James Mackinson/MrNigelUng (aka. Uncle Roger), critiquing Jamie Oliver making "Korean" fried rice. I'm not a chef, but goodness, does Jamie Oliver make anything that isn't actually weird "Refrigerator Surprise?" Nothing identifiably Korean in it. Some stuff I sure wouldn't think of as material for fried rice.

20. Have you ever had to wear a neck tie?

Being a guy, by the time I was a teen I was wearing a regular tie to most formal events, weddings, funerals, dances, etc.

Via shadowkat

12. Are there any natural red heads in your family?

No one in my immediate family. One or two of my grandnieces and grandnephews have red hair coming from their father's family.

13. Have you ever played card games? Do you have a favorite?

I've played many. I like "I doubt it" and "10 point pitch" both of which may be known only in the Midwest.

14. It’s National American Teddy Bear Day! Do you have any teddy bears?

I loved my teddy bears when I was very small, but left them in my past by the time I was six.

15. Do you give names to inanimate objects such as your car, your computer or other items?

I named my first car the Navaho word for "my horse" (I don't have a font to type it out here!). You are (or were at one time) supposed to name your PC compatible computers. I usually named mine after old girlfriends.

12. Do you like doing puzzles (crosswords, wordle, sudoku or something else)? Do you do something that tests your brain every day?

I like the puzzles known as Cross Sums (for a time also known as Kakuro). I was never a huge fan of crosswords or word search. I liked a puzzle type called Kriss Crosses, but I don't see them as often as I used to. I can do easy to medium sudoku. The hardest ones are a little beyond me. As I've gotten older, 'logic problems' have gotten more difficult for me. It's harder to juggle everything I read in my head, and get it all written down in the right places. I like another puzzle type, trigons, which is another puzzle of fitting numbers into a grid. I've never actually finished a trigon, but still like working on them!

13. Are there things you ate as a child that you would never eat now?

Yes. Plain bologna, beef liver and my mother's eggplant. The bologna because it's my money now and I'd rather have something less boring in sandwiches. Beef liver because I only ate it when I was a kid under duress. Not fond of chicken liver either, but I can't remember being forced to eat it. My mother did not know how to prepare eggplant so when she served it, it was horrible! After she passed away my brother learned how to prepare it correctly, so I no longer gag at the very thought of eggplant.

14. It’s Ada Lovelace Day - daughter of the poet Lord Byron, she worked with Charles Babbage to create the ‘Analytical Engine’. This is considered to be the first computer and she is considered the first computer programmer. Have you ever learned any computer code such as html to create programs?

Yes. I know BASIC and Forth, I've written programs in Fortran, and C, but I only know them at a minimal level. Before I retired, I often programed a particular piece of computer-controlled heavy machinery in the manufacturer's own language. The machine properly programmed then made metal parts for aircraft, experimental projects and test equipment.

15. Have you ever owned a leather coat or jacket? Do you still have it?

I never actually owned it, but I wore my father's World War II leather jacket for several years. It was warm and rugged. (It may have been a 'pilot's jacket,' but he wasn't a pilot till many years later. He was an officer in the war and may have bought it from someone else or from the PX.) The seams gave out eventually, and I don't know if any of it exists anymore.

16. Do you own many things that need to be recharged rather than having a battery you change when it’s stopped working?

A phone, and other things with rechargeable batteries that can be exchanged for others rather than sitting around waiting for them to recharge including an answering machine, a computer mouse, XBOX controllers and my TV remote.

I walked out of the house about noon today, and found a delivery of food from two different restaurants on my doorstep. Weird because I've never ordered delivery from one let alone two restaurants at once. A quick look at the receipts said the delivery came last evening, so the food, however good it was, is garbage now. There was no knock on the door last evening or ring of the doorbell. I have no idea who the food was supposed to go to, or what they did to complain about lack of delivery.

Via shadowkat

22. Are you good at managing your time, or would you love to be better organized?

Yes, reasonably good. I used to procrastinate a lot, but eventually found that things went better if I didn't.

23. Do you know how to perform the ‘Heimlich manoeuvre’?

Yes, but I don't know anyone personally who actually needed to use it.

24. Have you ever seen a comet in the sky?

Yes, I have a nice telescope, and I've seen comets. I saw Halley's comet, but it wasn't very impressive that pass through the solar system.

25. ‘Rotomontade’ is a bragging speech or rant. When was the last time you had a really good rant about something?

I rant all the time about things to my cat. He understands enough to ignore it.

26. Have you ever been fruit-picking? What kind of fruit did you pick, and what did you do with them?

Yes. We had apples, peaches and pears in the yard, strawberries in the garden, raspberries and blackberries along the edges of and in woods, and grapes a mini-vineyard. And far from the house we had persimmon trees in the yard, whose fruit was ripe after the first frost. We ate fresh picked fruit all summer, the berries often with ice cream. It depended on how short of funds we were, how diligently we sought out the fruit. By the time the persimmons were ripe, we were a little bored of fresh fruit, but my mother made apple pie this time of the year, which we looked forward to.

27. Do you know how to change a tire on a car? Have you ever had to do it?

Yes, I've changed tires. Back in the day it was a lot more common to have to change flats. I've even rotated tires on a car. These days I let the mechanics do it for me.

28. Have you ever eaten caviar?

Oh, yes. When I visited the Soviet Union they were very interested in letting us try it in hopes we would buy a large can of it to take home with us. Black caviar from sturgeon, the good stuff. It was interesting to have a generous amount with our lunch one day. Nice to say I had several spoonfuls of the stuff. But I can't say I fell in love with it. Nothing wrong with it. Perfectly edible, but nothing I'd care to pay a lot of money to have again!

I happen to be translating a novel by Agatha Christie for my own benefit. There is a line in the middle spoken by a character as if were a literary quote from someone else. I tried to use Google to find where it came from. The first things it came up with were explanations of what the line means, explanations that are totally unnecessary for anyone with a good grasp of the English language. True, it is a bit mysterious in context, but the reader isn't supposed to know what it means in context yet. With a some digging through entries I was able to learn that it wasn't a quote at all, but a kind of summary of a poem written hundreds of years ago.

The disturbing thing was that the first entry in Google returns was from an AI generated article on the "quote" from Wikipedia. The AI result was complete crap. Beyond getting her name correct, it totally misidentified the character who spoke the line. I can imagine some poor high school student using the article for a source in a high school theme paper and getting giant red marks all over it, for not having read the book. Do we really need to go back to the bad old days when so many Wikipedia articles were so filled with garbage that it was often only those who knew something specific about a topic that could separate the valuable from the crap? I sure as hell am not going to help Wikipedia sort out blatant AI problems so that less obvious and more insidious mistakes can slip through into their articles.

via shadowkat

16. It’s National Roller Coaster Day – are you a fan of roller coasters?

Decades ago I liked them, but I don't have a lot of interest in them now. Being acrophobic, I hated the slow clanking climb up the first hill, but the feeling of weightlessness during the rest of the ride was worth it. I haven't been on one since I used to go to Six Flags, St. Louis with my niece and nephews for their school picnics in the spring. I wasn't as thrilled about the roller coasters that went upside down, but I did it for the kids. My niece spent some of her college vacations with her future husband hunting exciting roller coasters in the Mid-West.

17. Do you make your bed every day?

No. I don't even have a cover or comforter on it this time of year and my cat uses it for his naps several times a day. He also uses the bed in the guest bedroom. I try to keep that one made, but he likes to pull down the cover on that one so he can sleep either directly on or between the pillows.

18. When you are thirsty what is your beverage of choice?

With meals, milk. Otherwise, just about anything including plain water. I don't like any form of coffee, though.

19. Do people shorten your given name, and if they do, do you mind?

Yes, I have a very common name and it would be a tad weird if people didn't use the standard nickname for me a lot.

20. Are you left-handed or right-handed? Would you like to be ambidextrous?

Right handed, but my sister assured me that I was born left handed and was trained to be right handed. It wrecked me trying to throw balls in sports as a kid, but actually having a surprisingly good left hand gave me an advantage starting to play the mandolin. Lefties make a big mistake buying left-handed guitars and mandolins instead of the standard.

21. Do you live near any trees? What’s the tallest tree nearby?

Yes, but fewer trees than near my house in Phoenix, and certainly no woods like my yard in MO. There is a tree called a Jacaranda, that is popular in central and southern AZ. They are covered with blue flowers in the spring. There were several in my old neighborhood near Phoenix, and my neighbors behind me have one near our mutual wall here in Tucson. As you might guess the tallest trees in the neighborhood are palms. I have a tree-sized saguaro cactus in the front yard and two tree-sized prickly-pears in the back.

Bonus question:

Are you a forest or the trees type of person? Macro or micro? Big picture or details?

I used to be a forest kind of person. But my grad school training emphasized paying attention to the trees. Don't know if I've had a good balance since.

27. Do you like honey?

Yes, but it's a little much for my taste. I don't buy it because it turns to crystal before I'd use it up.

28. Jigsaws were invented in the mid-18th century by a cartographer called John Spilsbury, who thought that mounting a map on wood and cutting it into interlocking shapes would make an informative game for children and students. When was the last time you made a jigsaw (how many pieces did it have)?

Oh, this is such a bad question. First of all a jigsaw is not a jigsaw puzzle, and making a jigsaw puzzle by hand is a lot of work. I presume this person wanted to know about putting together factory produced jigsaw puzzles not the first two things. I usually do a jigsaw puzzle or two around Christmas time. I think the most recent one was 1500 pieces.

And yes, I have operated a jigsaw to cut small wooden shapes, but not to make a puzzle!

29. Do you know anyone who is a twin?

Yes, lots of twins. My mother's father and father's mother were both fraternal twins. So were my mother's two sisters. I think we had six pairs of twins in my high school graduating class, and one of my pals from my grad school days was a twin (never met his brother so I don't know if they were identical).

This is the best general tourist info I've seen on my part of the world.

Re Mexican food: Mexican blends into local fairly seamlessly here. But there are different styles. It aggravates me to no end that people from elsewhere, even elsewhere in the U.S. tend to call any blend of true Mexican and U.S. food "Tex-Mex." Tex-Mex is it's own thing, and you aren't likely to get it far west of the Texas border. Here in Arizona we have more Sonoran style. In Southern California, they have more Baja style. In my opinion the best flavor is in New Mexican style, with New Mexico grown chilis. It can be very hot, but isn't always. Genuine Tex-Mex tends to be hot, but with less depth of flavor. Sonoran style traditionally isn't very hot, but recent immigrants from Mexico as cooks tend to make the sauces, the key to Sonoran Style, hotter than in decades past. California/Baja style has a lot more seafood influence if you like fish. It used to be the best "Mexican food" in the southwest was served at places with Native American cooks. With more Mexican immigrants there are fewer Native Americans hired for cooks. That means some hotter food, and some less variety in food. Near or on the reservation try a Navaho taco, a fried flat bread with local toppings, simple, but always surprisingly good.

Sadly, there are still Mexican themed restaurants in the southwest that think tomato soup is the same thing as salsa... And there is one of those not too far away from my house.