Enough with the Swooshes, Already!

They're ubiquitous and even gratuitous. I'm not talking about presidential candidates; I'm talking about use of the swoosh.

I don't know if it all started with Nike, but it seems every third company has stuck a swoosh onto or into its logo.  These are examples I've seen in just the past week. Bear with me.

Maybe this is more of an ellipse than a swoosh. It kind of clashes with the angularity of the old Bryant logo. Serves no purpose as far as I can tell.

Among many other products that Ace Supply supplies is air handling equipment from Bryant. Logo theft?

ACT is a mouthwash brand, so one could argue that the swoosh is really a swish. The starburst connotes brightness, I guess. Still, not exactly original.

CHS is a farm service coop in central Minnesota. The coop bought naming rights to the Saint Paul Saints new downtown ballpark, so the swoosh (symbolizing what, exactly?) looms over the skyline. There is no escape!

The swoosh in this logo makes no sense. It's not a stylized "P" for Pioneer. It's not a rainbow to make one feel happy. It's just...there.

This company sells insurance. Does the swoosh in their logo make you want to run right out and buy a whole life policy?

Perhaps if you had dental insurance through the Canopy Group, you could get dentures from Renew. Make them anchored dentures, please!

One of these sister companies happens to be our trash hauler. The city of Northfield surely chose Dick's for the two-color swoosh.

Everybody's swoosh should be a rainbow swoosh! (Or is that the beak of a toucan?)

This one actually makes some sense!

There are more...many, many more...but you are probably a little weary of swooshes by now.  And, yes, that is exactly the point. Come on, logo designers: think outside the swoosh! So weary, I have to lie down...

Prince visits Saint Paul (no, not that Prince)

On this day in 1948, Sweden's Prince Bertil was visiting Minnesota. He took the opportunity to unveil a bronze plaque in downtown St. Paul. The plaque honors Jacob Fahlstrom, allegedly the first Swede in Minnesota. A fur trader who arrived in the 1820s, Fahlstrom settled near Afton (20 miles due east of St. Paul on the banks of the beautiful St. Croix river) where he died in 1859. The plaque should probably be in Afton but convenience (especially for visiting royalty) trumps historical accuracy.

To commemorate the commemoration, here is one of my favorite songs.

Gunpowder through the Ages

Éleuthère Irénée du Pont (usually shortened to I. E. du Pont) was born this day in 1771. He moved from France to the USA after the French Revolution. Before that, he worked for French chemist Antoine Lavoisier, chief of the royal powder works. The powder in question wasn't used to whiten wigs (a popular men's fashion of the day), but to blow things up. Every advanced society needs gunpowder, so du Pont started a gunpowder factory in Wilmington, Delaware. His timing was good because the War of 1812 broke out (in about 1812, I think), making him rich. Du Pont diversified into woolen mills, cotton mills, a tannery, and sundry other businesses. Today, we can thank the company for Kevlar, Tyvek, Styrofoam, and many other things that are slowly choking our planet.

Any excuse to post a Bela Fleck video is a good excuse, to say nothing of Billy Sol Hurok.

Well before Du Pont's commercial success, in 1605, a group of Catholics unhappy with King James I tried to blow him up -- a failed attempt that became known as The Gunpowder Plot. One of the conspirators was the infamous Guy Fawkes, who has come to symbolize the creative use of explosives to bring down tyrants.

And as we all know, Alfred Nobel made his fortune in the same business (he's credited with inventing dynamite in 1867).

The World is so Full of a Number of Things...

Today's the 49th birthday of Yann Tiersen, a composer and pianist from France. I continue to be mystified by most French music. Perhaps when we are in France this October, I can pester some French people about the enigmatic nature of their music.That's sure to help international relations, right?

I strive to link poems and music and historical events into a seamless related pleasing whole. In this instance, I think I failed. That's the reason for the title of this post, taken from "H. Allen Smith's Poor Almanac."

Consistent with the theme of there being no theme, here's an unrelated but still funny poem from Mr. Brautigan.

Attila at The Gates of The Telephone Company
They said that
my telephone
would be fixed
     by 6.
They guaranteed
     it. 

 

Naming things Minnesota-style

On this day in 1806, Alexander Faribault was born in Wisconsin. As a young man, he moved to the wilds of Minnesota and established a fur trading post where the Cannon and the Straight rivers meet. A town grew there and it is named Faribault in his honor. It is the county seat of Rice County, MN.  A bit further to the southwest is Faribault County, named for Alexander's son Jean-Baptiste Faribault, also a fur trader. The county seat of Faribault County is Blue Earth, MN. Just to the north of that is Blue Earth County, the county seat of which is Mankato. Is this confusing enough? No? Well, to bring us full circle, the little town of Rice, MN is not in Rice County.

And the Straight River is not even close to being straight. And the Cannon river has nothing to do with cannons -- the name comes from a mangling of the French word for canoe.

The furs that the Faribault fellows were after were beaver and mink and river otter, which ended up in Europe where they were made into hats.

Speaking of fur hats...

Records were made to be...

On this day in 1948, the first long-playing phonograph records were introduced to the public at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York. Made of vinyl and designed for the new speed of 33-1/3 rpm, the records had been developed by Dr. Peter Goldmark of Columbia Records. The 12 inch record could play 23 minutes per side, compared to 4 minutes on 78 rpm records. The first LP featured violinist Yehudi Menuhin.

It took another decade or so for the first stereo records to appear.

Today, the first day of summer, the staff at Trout Fishing in Minnesota recommend that you dust off some of your LPs. You may play them conventionally, play them backwards to reveal hidden messages, play them at 45 rpm for a cheap laugh, sail them like Frisbees into the neighbor's yard, or just admire the cover art.

Here's another Brautigan verse to fit the theme.

33-1/3 Sized Lions

33-1/3 sized
lions are roaring at the black gates of Fame
with jaws that look like record company courtesans
     brushing their teeth
with would-be rock and roll stars
     in motel bathrooms
with a perfect view of hot car roofs
     in the just-signed-up
          afternoon.

It's a Long Way Home

A couple of regular guys from the sleepy town of Waseca, Minnesota went for a walk on this day in 1970.  But this was no ordinary walk. Dave and John Kunst (and don't forget their their faithful mule, Willie-Make-It) set out from their Waseca home to walk around the world. In Afghanistan, bandits attacked the brothers, killing John. Another brother (Pete) met Dave and walked with him for a few months. Dave (and the mule) kept going. He got back to Waseca on October 5, 1974, becoming the first person to walk around the earth: 14,450 miles.

A few years after that, Dave came to Northfield to visit our son's elementary school and give a speech. Something about perseverance, probably.  I think Dave drove that day.

Here's a somewhat related Poem by Richard Brautigan. It's part 6 of a longer work called "Good Luck, Captain Martin"

Carol the Waitress Remembers Still    
Yes, that's the table where Captain Martin
sat. Yes, that one. By the window.
He would sit there alone for hours at
a time, staring out at the sea. He always
had one plain doughnut and a cup of coffee.
I don't know what he was looking at.

Piracy through the Ages

On this date in 1579, Francis Drake was circumnavigating the globe when he stopped just north of San Francisco, went ashore, planted a flag, and claimed all of California for England.  It's just that easy!

Speaking of flags and pirates, I'm reading "Black Flags, Blue Waters" by Eric Jay Dolin.  It's a history of pirates in the Americas and Mr. Dolan makes clear that Drake was first a pirate, and quite a nasty one, too. But instead of keeping all the booty for himself, Drake was savvy enough to share it with the Queen and some other powerful folks, which gained him a commission as a privateer. In effect, privateers commissioned by the Queen were independent contractors who could pretty much do what they wanted to anybody anywhere except of course the English.

Drake and his men plundered Spanish cities and Spanish ships from the Caribbean all the way around S. America and up the west coast, killing people and taking their stuff (like gold and silver and rum). When he got back to England in 1581, the Queen herself went onto his ship and knighted him.

Sir Francis retired from piracy and lived out his days making delicious snack cakes.

Fugitivity

Remember back in 1974 when Patty Hearst was kidnapped by a rag-tag bunch of revolutionaries calling themselves the Symbionese Liberation Army? It turned out to be one of the most well-known examples of the Stockholm Syndrome, in which the captive comes to identify with and even join the captors. Thus it was that Patty Hearst drove the getaway car for an SLA bank robbery in which a bank customer was killed. One of the SLA robbers, Kathleen Ann Soliah, became a fugitive.

Until this date in 1999, when Sara Jane Olson, living in the Highland Park neighborhood of St. Paul, was arrested.  Turns out Sara Jane  -- wife, mother, well-liked community activist -- was really Kathleen Ann.  So, after 25 years on the lam, she was hauled back to California and put in prison for a decade or so.

Patty Hearst served time, too, at the federal prison in Pleasanton, CA.  I visited there while she was an inmate, but did not meet her.

Coincidentally, today is also the birthday (1947) of Tom "Bones" Malone, a session musician, arranger, producer, and member of the Blues Brothers backing band. The Blues Brothers (at least in the movie) were also fugitives.  Indeed, the fictional Jake Blues had served time in the very real Illinois state prison at Joliet, which I have also visited.

So, please enjoy this old clip from an old movie...

Here's a related poem by Richard Brautigan.

Private Eye Lettuce

Three crates of Private Eye Lettuce,
the name and drawing of a detective
with magnifying glass on the sides
of the crates of lettuce,
form a great cross in man's imagination
and his desire to name
the objects of this world.
I think I'll call this place Golgotha
and have some salad for dinner.

The Republic of California

On this day in 1846, the Republic of California declared its independence from Mexico. Tensions between new immigrants from the United States and the Mexican governors in California had been running high for a few months. The folks who had settled in California from the east favored annexation by the US. The Mexican government didn't especially like that idea.

Onto the scene came General John C. Fremont, sent by the US Army on what was ostensibly a reconnaissance mission but really was intended to bolster the nascent rebellion. So a bunch of angry citizens -- with the Army looking on -- marched to the governor's house in Sonoma.  They told him he wasn't in charge anymore and raised a crude hand-drawn flag that featured a bear, a star, and the inscription "Republic of California."

The event became known as the Bear Flag Rebellion. Three weeks later, the US congress passed a resolution annexing the territory.

Fremont, California, is named for the general. The Fremont Bridge in Seattle (home to the famous Fremont Troll) is not. Well, not exactly.  The Fremont Bridge and Fremont Avenue in Seattle are named for Fremont, Nebraska.  Apparently, a number of early settlers came from Fremont, Nebraska and, not being very clever or creative, named their little settlement -- now a Seattle neighborhood -- after the town they came from.  Ah, but the Nebraska town is indeed named for General John C. Fremont.

Also on this date (1989), also in California, Zsa Zsa Gabor was arrested. She was pulled over by a Beverly Hills cop because her license plates had expired. She didn't like that and slapped the officer in the face. He didn't like that and arrested her. Despite having excellent lawyers, she was convicted of assault.

All of which leads, inevitably it seems, to this very strange number by Weezer (also from California). Enjoy!

Presumably, the leaders of the Bear Flag Rebellion would be pleased to know they had laid the groundwork for Zsa Zsa Gabor and Weezer.

Yeats, W. B.

William Butler Yeats was born near Dublin on this date in 1865. His dad studied law but never practiced, instead founding an art school. Willie's mom home-schooled him and read him a lot of Irish folk tales, many of which are bizarre and frightening but also lyrical and deep. He started writing poetry at a very young age and built a reputation (and a career) as the most Irish of modern Irish poets.

Yeats's poem "The Second Coming" was set to music by Joni Mitchell in a song called Slouching Toward Bethlehem. It is one of my all-time favorites. Joan Didion also wrote a book titled Slouching Toward Bethlehem about the counterculture in San Francisco in the 1960s.

Joni took some liberties with the poem, but this line: "Things fall apart. The canter cannot hold" is chilling in both.

Mississippi

It is my usual practice on this blog to highlight arcane events or people in an effort to broaden my own horizons and entertain myself (and, I hope, visitors hereto). Well, today is a little different because it's the anniversary (1963) of the murder of Medgar Evers in Mississippi.

I've only been to Mississippi once, traveling through on the way to New Orleans. It was hot.

Here are two of my favorite songs about Mississippi -- the state and the river.

The first song is chilling and moving and I hope it helps us remember what people like Medgar Evers were up against and how we owe them. The second is a bit more upbeat. The Cactus Blossoms recently released a new album and I think I'm going to buy it.  I hope they come back to Northfield.

"We live submerged in an ocean of air."

On this day in 1644, Evangelista Torricelli wrote that sentence in a letter. Torricelli's dad was a textile worker who could not afford to send young Evangelista to private school, so the boy was packed off to live with an uncle in Florence. The uncle was a monk, so could get a break on tuition at a Catholic school there. Later, Evangelista went to Rome and became secretary for another monk who got him interested in science (a.k.a. heresy: the teacher had been a student of Galileo). Anyway, in the same 1644 letter Torricelli described an invention of his that he immodestly called the Torricellian tube. Today we know it as the barometer. It measures atmospheric pressure and is still, after all these centuries, a crucial meteorological tool.

For some reason, several submarines in the Italian navy have been named for Torricelli.

Speaking of barometric pressure and the role of science in our everyday lives, here's a poem by Richard Brautigan:

At the California Institute of Technology

I don't care how God-damn smart
these guys are: I'm bored. 

It's been raining like hell all day long
and there's nothing to do. 

               Written January 24, 1967 while poet-in-residence
               at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena

We think that the following Frankie Lee tune is appropriate and we think we do not have to point out the connection because you can surely figure it out for yourself. Enjoy!

The musical universe is vast...

It's the birthday of three outstanding (or at last famous) female musicians.  Frances Gumm (1922) was born in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. She was a precocious and ambitious little girl. At some point, she changed her name to Judy Garland and moved to California and made a strange movie about a tornado and a fake wizard and flying monkeys.

My father always cringed and left the room when Judy Garland was on TV.

A few years later (1961), Kim and Kelly Deal were born in Dayton, OH.  One of them was in The Pixies and then together they formed The Breeders.  In one of the better-known Breeder songs, seen below, the opening phrase is a direct reference to some ominous sounds from The Wizard of Oz.  I do not know if the Deals were aware of their connection to Ms. Gumm, but it's kind of a cool coincidence.  Enjoy!

Guitars are us

It's the birthday of Les Paul (1915), who is credited with inventing the electric guitar.  It is not hyperbole to say that Mr. Paul's invention revolutionized music.  I remember watching Les Paul and Mary Ford sing and play on Perry Como's variety show.  It's a bit of a leap from there to Slash, but I for one am glad old Les tinkered around in his basement.

For some reason, my family is into guitars.  Our son Michael plays guitar quite well.  Nick, married to niece Louise, is a guitar player, builder, and repairer of some repute in North Carolina [follow this link to his shop: NC Guitar Works].  Nephew Jay builds and sells solid-body guitars [visit the JML Guitar site].  Brother-in-law Bill makes guitars and ukuleles.

As for me, I do not even know what a humbucker is.  If you have a few minutes to spare out of your hectic Sunday, you can watch some dude play a Les Paul:

Sentence completion test #1

This is a significant date in musical history because, waaaaayyy back in 1985, the Tears for Fears song "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" reached #1 on the Billboard charts. The original is good, but there have been some cover versions that I like even more.  Seminal jazz trio The Bad Plus recorded my favorite (biased by the fact that we've seen them do this live twice).

Today, the estimable blogger Dr. Caligari featured another version by Weezer.

The song title reminds me of a college writing exercise that backfired.  Prof told us to write a page that completes the sentence phrase "Everybody wants to..."  He should have known better than to pose this question to bunch of horny, hung over sophomores.

Brit punk

The Libertines were a pop-punk band founded by Carl Barat and Pete Doherty.  It's Carl Barat's birthday today. He was born in the quaint village of Basingstoke, Hampshire in 1978.  When you visit Basingstoke, you can stay in this modest cottage.

 

In the music video, Barat and his mates are I believe referencing an older cute British pop group that sometimes wore red uniforms.

It's appropriate that these blokes are singing about the sun. It's a rare sight where they grew up and it has been rare this spring where we live.  Yesterday and today and tomorrow, however: sunny and bright. Yay.

Istanbul

A huge section of the city of  Constantinople, Turkey, was set ablaze on this day in 1870. When the smoke finally cleared, 3,000 homes were destroyed and 900 people were dead.  The story -- which may be apocryphal like Mrs. O'Leary's cow in Chicago -- is that a young girl was carrying a hot piece of charcoal in an iron pan when she tripped, sending the charcoal out the kitchen window and onto the roof of an adjacent home. A fire quickly spread along Feridje Street, one of Constantinople’s main streets.  High winds coming down the Bosporus Strait spread the fire quickly.

We spent a couple of days in Constantinople (for some reason when we were there everybody called it Istanbul) and had a very nice time.  The Blue Mosque (see our photo below) is quite a sight, even though the odor of smelly feet is a little off-putting.

We also stopped at a small port city called Marmaris, Turkey, that reminded me of Santa Barbara.  Eating in a sidewalk cafe there, we asked the waiter if he preferred to be paid in Turkish lira or US dollars or Euros.  He said, "Hey, it's all money."

Oh boy, it's the doughboy!

Happy 150th birthday! The Pillsbury company got its start in Minneapolis on this day in 1869 when John and Charles Pillsbury bought a small flour mill on the banks of the Mississippi. The company grew and so did the town, earning the nickname Mill City. According to a recent story by Eric Roper in the Star-Tribune, the last flour mill in Minneapolis will shut down in August. 

The video by Erik Koskinen is a favorite and (sort of) fits the theme.

We have a very tenuous connection to the Pillsbury dynasty, having purchased our home from a great grandson of Charles (also named Charles Pillsbury but everybody around here calls him Chuck).

Gorby and Goofy

Rudy Perpich, a dentist from Hibbing, was Governor of Minnesota when, on this day in 1990, he hosted a visit from Mikhail Gorbachev, then Premier (or president or czar) of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.   I've looked at several news stories of that event and I'm still not quite sure why Gorby decided to come to Minnesota after his summit meeting with President George Bush. Perpich was positively aglow -- he loved the spotlight and he took the opportunity to rub it in a little bit by not inviting Minnesota's senators (Boschwitz and Durenberger were Republicans and Perpich was very assuredly not.)

Gorbachev met with a bunch of business leaders at Control Data headquarters.  Control Data doesn't exist any more.  For that mater, neither does the USSR.  Just 18 months after the beaming Premier (or president or tzar) left Minnesota, he resigned and the USSR fell apart at the seams.

One article said that, a month before the visit, Gorbachev's advance team came to the Twin Cities and when they left, they loaded a cargo plane with jeans and bicycles -- things that were very rare and valuable in Moscow at the time.  I wonder who's wearing those Levis and riding around on vintage Schwinns.

Some years later, Paul McArtney played a gig in Red Square: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vq1KbYUp8Ac