The Information Super-Frog

Dream: Honey importer journalist spy tv actor

Tue, 05 May 2026 17:34:52 GMT

Last night I dreamed I was one of 3 people from the US who went to Ukraine to get some honey. That we were in the honey business was actually a cover for that we were journalists investigating irregularities in the international honey trade. And really it was all part of a television show.

I was the youngest of the 3 US honey traders, I think we were supposed to be brothers, the other two did most of the talking I mostly just stood and watched, but secretly I was the one in charge of all the machinery which was secretly recording everything.

We were inside a large tall room in a building somewhere in Ukraine (no evidence of a war going on in my dream). It was a commercial establishment and office, and there were lots of shelves crowded with things, some of which had clearly been sitting there for decades if not more than a century.

The leader of our group went to the owner of the business with a jar of honey, complaining "We paid for top quality honey, but you gave us bottom quality honey! Taste this!" The business head tried to brush us off, until the leader of our group told him, "Look, I have a market for top quality honey in the US, and if you can get it for us, we can both make lots of money. If you can't get top quality honey, I'll look elsewhere." So then we were trying to work things out.

Then a group of Russian spies came in with guns, and took us upstairs and were going to kill us, but somehow we escaped.

Back in the States, my character only had a few minor scenes to film. It turned out our whole adventure was just a subplot and we were minor characters in the tv series. However the tv series turned out to be very successful, the biggest hit series. I hadn't known until we were in a car on the freeway, and when the show came on everyone pulled over and stopped their cars to watch the show on their smart-phones.

The most famous episode was one where Brad Pitt and Elly May Clampett had explicit and vigorous sex on live tv (!) which became the most talked about tv episode ever. I hadn't known any of this while I was busy filming in Ukraine, but now that I was in a hit tv series, even as a minor character I was getting some good residuals as payments for all the reruns.

comments

Slavery was not "dying out" in the Confederacy

Tue, 05 May 2026 17:10:36 GMT

I wrote this elsewhere a while back. As this seems a better place for things I wrote that I might wish to find again later, copying it here.

----

Today's "Lost Cause" myth to expose: That slavery in the US South was supposedly "fading out" or a "dying institution" before the American Civil War.
(For those not up on it, the "Lost Cause" movement was a romanticization of the Confederacy in the US South decades after the Civil War was over, including major rewrites of history, especially in constructing counter narratives to deny that the war was about slavery, even though when the original Confederate leaders were actually seceding and fighting the war they clearly and repeatedly announced that was exactly what it was about.)
One of the "Lost Cause" myths still sometimes heard is that slavery was slowly fading away thanks to industrialization, so it would have been gone soon anyways even if there were no Civil War.
On a global scale, that slavery was diminishing by 1860 was certainly true. In the US slave states, however, this was certainly untrue! (The Southern slave owning political elite did however fear it might start to fade eventually, which is a reason they favored expanding their institution into new territory to help it thrive. ) Humans as commodities to be owned, bought and sold was not only thriving, it was bigger business than ever.
Perhaps the best way to show slavery was NOT "fading away" in the US South is simple economics: quantity and price. 1830 census showed about 2 million slaves; by 1860 that had almost doubled. But despite much increased supply, price per slave continued to rise. Here's a nice chart of average price of a slave over time from the site linked below. Note that on the eve of the Civil War, far from being in decline, both supply and price per unit were at all time highs.
(The dips in price are interesting, if tangential, stories in themselves: for example the Panic of 1837 was triggered by something much like subprime mortgage crisis of a decade ago, except that instead of investors buying dubious overvalued bundled mortgages on houses they bought dubious overvalued bundled mortgages on slaves.)

https://www.measuringworth.com/slavery.php

comments

Frank Lloyd Wrong

Sun, 03 May 2026 19:15:48 GMT

YouTube video "The Lies We've Been Told About Frank Lloyd Wright"

https://youtu.be/zji7Zc-AYxA

I believe I've discussed Wright online previously, and my opinion got some dramatic pushback, but I couldn't find in in a search - perhaps it was on Usenet or some lost forum of yesteryear.

I acknowledge his brilliance as an artist, creating buildings that are interesting to look at. But if one considers part of the job of an architect is to design structurally sound buildings useful for people, he was not even competent.

My opinions developed from visiting some of his buildings on road trips in the US Midwest in the 1980s.
One in particular was the Neils House in Minneapolis, a private home at the time, and I got not only a tour but a good bit of family backstory. I first noticed the open carport which needed a short walk to the front door - Minneapolis has very cold winters and lots of snow, so almost every other house has garages with garage doors that can close and an interior door into the house. Inside, there were multiple levels requiring regularly going up and down a few steps, and otherwise open space separated by walls that went up 6 feet but left space before reaching the ceiling, and separated living spaces without any evident usefulness and just made going from one part of the house to another more awkward. There was also the maid's quarters, designed for the family maid, a short woman of 4 foot something - the ceilings were 5 feet tall, so the rooms unusable for many people of average height. When the water-heater had to be replaced, it necessitated hiring a crane and dismantling (and later reconstructing) part of the chimney and fireplace to remove the old water heater and lower a new one in - the only other option would have been to demolish multiple interior walls. The Neils family found the house impractical to live in, but maintained ownership because, hey, it was by the famous Frank Lloyd Wright - it was irregularly occupied by various young relatives as their first place out of their parents' house while going to college.

Uncyclopedia: https://en.uncyclopedia.co/wiki/Frank_Lloyd_Wright

The intro seems basically the same as the snark I put there in my brief time on uncyclopedia some 20 years ago:

"Frank "Lloyd" Wright (b. horse & buggy era – d. hula hoop era) was the world's most famous incompetent architect.

Known for creating improbable buildings out of untested materials, he inflicted hundreds of unlivable houses, unusable office buildings, and frighteningly ugly landmarks on the gullible public. The hallmarks of Wright's architectural style are the leaking roof, the broken window, and the crumbling foundation. Along with Le Corbusier, he was key in changing the discipline of architecture from providing basic shelter for people into a series of passive-aggressive pranks."

comments

Dream: Space Moose eats our asteroids

Sat, 02 May 2026 16:27:42 GMT

Last night I dreamed an intelligent alien entity visited Earth. Not landing *on* Earth, but the space nearby - it was huge and nebulous. No one knew what it was nor where it came from. It's transparent shape kept shifting; it was nicknamed "the Space Moose" because one of the first photos showed it in a shape vaguely resembling a moose head with antlers.

Space Moose spoke to Earth, carried on all electronic communication devices, and somehow people without devices heard it too. Space Moose said: "Hello, sentient beings planet! I'm hungry and need to eat. I see your system has a bunch of planets you're not using. So, I wanted to check with you as to which ones it would be ok for me to eat."

A panicked conclave of scientists and leaders decided tell Space Moose that they needed more time to work out an answer, but meanwhile Space Moose could snack on the astroid belt.

Space Moose replied, clearly somewhat annoyed and disappointed, "Very well. Try not to be long."

A giant mouth opened up in space, and over the next couple of days consumed all the asteroids in the asteroid belt. Scientists couldn't figure out what exactly was happening; measuring gravity they didn't detect any mass of Space Moose; the astroids and their mass just seemed to disappear. Scientists were trying to figure out what to ask Space Moose - what was it, where did it come from? How could it be appeased, what part of the Solar System could we sacrifice?

Space Moose came back to above Earth, and said, "The asteroids weren't very much, but some of them were tasty, thanks for the little snack. But really, I need to eat a meal. What have you decided?"

*end of that dream*

I remember part of another dream, I was with some musicians friends with our instruments waiting to play in a parade. Then a horn player friend and I became little boys. But we were still getting ready to play in a parade as child musicians. We went into an ice cream shop, and had vanilla ice cream, because any other flavor might risk messing up our embouchure.

comments

Best radio

Fri, 01 May 2026 23:19:18 GMT

Top radio shows IMO that I've been familiar enough with to have an opinion, no order except for the first one which is my #1, one of the most amazing things ever done with the medium.

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Happy Station Show
In Our Time
The Jack Benny Program
Le Show
The Hep Cat's Ball
Von Turk's Oriental Foxtrot Museum
Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me
The Goon Show
Stoopnagle and Budd
Schickele Mix

comments

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:15:56 GMT

While my my dreams suggest that my subconscious doesn't quite understand how personal names generally work, last night I found out it does understand the basics of New Orleans directional geography.

I was at a parade line up, I asked the route, and a musician friend said "we start at this corner and go down Esplanade."
I replied "'Down Esplanade' doesn't mean anything. Towards the river, or back from it?"

comments

Family lore - Dutch side

Sun, 12 Apr 2026 16:55:41 GMT

Mother's mother's father died before I was born. I was told his ancestors were Dutch. In the USA in the 19th century "Dutch" was often used not just for the Netherlands, but for countries speaking Germanic languages in general, but the family was specifically from the Netherlands.

Sometime in my tweens I looked over a copy of a family history which my grandmother was loaned by one of her aunts. It was a rather extensive and sometimes chatty 400 year amateur family tree with stories short and long about various persons on it. Some details I recall were that the family came to America as early settlers in New Netherlands, what later became New York State.

One doesn't get to pick one's ancestors. I'm rather glad however that I've never found any involved in the slave trade. There was no mention of such in the account, though I've sometimes wondered if I knew full stories, early New Amsterdam colonists might have been more likely to have some involvement in the wrong side.

Some settled to farm "upstate" (where would "upstate" have been in 16--? Albany? The Bronx?). An "Indian raid" kidnapped the women from the settlement. They were successfully ransomed 6 months later for some barrels of whiskey. With a little simple arithmetic concerning birth date and gestation, this was the only bit of Native American ancestry I found any documented confirmation of in my family tree, though there are stories of some on 3 different ancestral branches.

The American Revolution split the family, with some on the Loyalist and some on the Patriot side. A fair number of detailed incidents were recounted. One Patriot great-g uncle was hung by the British as a spy. One Loyalist ancestor left an extensive account of running from and hiding from gangs of Patriots, including hiding under hay in a barn - I wondered why that account was considered worthy of preserving. The Loyalists moved to Canada.

Some of the family were named "Defoe". My grandmother liked to claim that side of the family were related to writer Daniel Defoe, but I saw no trace of it in the tree, and I rather doubt it as Daniel Defoe's actual birth name was "Foe".

comments

Wash-rat Washout! Human Victory, Raccoon Sent Packing!

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 21:49:40 GMT

( pic of raccoon in live catch cage )

comments

Score: Wash-rat 1, Trap 0

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 17:06:44 GMT

We've had an uninvited visitor for the past month here at Villa Ranocchio, New Orleans. Some scratching and thumping in the wall space leading from under the house to the attic by Ms. H's office. From the noises, something larger than the the mouse problem we had a few years ago (and we've had mouse traps and poison around the property since). At first I thought it likely a possum, as I've seen 2 dead ones nearby over the past decade. But it started to make skittering sounds, which Ms H recorded on her phone; we compared it, and it was clearly raccoon. A few days later I saw it climbing up an oak tree, then a couple days after that running across the street, confirming the identification (though it went too fast for me to get a photo). Both were daytime sightings, somewhat unusual as they're mostly nocturnal.

As my previous entry noted, at first my subconscious conflated the raccoon with Shia LaBeouf, obnoxious unwelcome celebrity in New Orleans. In Cajun country, raccoons are often called "chaoui", from the Choctaw word. In the city the slang term "trash panda" is fairly common. Ms H's other language is French, and she noted that in conventional French the term for raccoon is "raton laveur" which can roughly be translated to English as "wash-rat". We both found that amusing, and we've found ourselves referring to it as "the wash-rat".

Raccoons and opossums are still found in parts of the city urbanized for more than 150 years, what with the old trees, bits of area along the riverfront batture where there aren't wharves often left wild, and the creatures adaptability to scavenging human garbage. I have nothing against them, but when they decide to set up camp in a house frame it can be harmful to the house and potentially dangerous to the animal (don't claw or bite the wiring!). I sprayed "Critter Ridder" and sprinkled cayenne pepper, but wash-rat didn't seem to get the message they were unwelcome.

So I put out a message on community chat. Someone in the neighborhood loaned me a live catch trap. My plan was to catch wash-rat and relocate it to the forest at the back of City Park. (I watched some raccoon trapping videos on YouTube to get the procedure, and it seemed doable.)

I set up the trap a couple of days ago. I ate most of an apple, poked a hole in the core and ran a string through it, and hung it in the back of the set trap. Night before last we had a rainstorm pass through, so I wasn't surprised the wash-rat hadn't ventured out. When I checked this morning, however, the apple core was gone but the trap unsprung. Victory to wash-rat! However this is just round one. I plan to rebait the trap and see if I can reset it to spring at a more sensitive setting.

comments

Dreams: Raccoon, pesky celebrity, dubious Valentine

Thu, 05 Mar 2026 00:50:56 GMT

New Orleans conversations included service people's encounters with celebrity asshole Shia LaBeouf (who has been repeatedly arrested in the city), and account of account of a raccoon in the crawl-space under a house getting into a fight with a neighborhood cat.

So in a dream, pest control workers were setting up catch traps to capture Shia LaBeouf.

That one sort of makes sense.

----

In another dream, I wrote a Valentines Day card for a greeting card company, and it unexpectedly became very popular, and there was demand for reproductions on t-shirts, mugs, etc.

It was a cartoon drawing of a skeleton, with the caption "Eye candy in your brain, Brain candy in your heart".

That one makes less sense. Complain to my subconscious; awake I don't understand it either.

comments

The Movies We Watch

Mon, 09 Feb 2026 16:27:22 GMT

Entertainment recently borrowed from library includes "The Secrets We Keep". Rather dark film about a Holocaust survivor who encounters a Nazi criminal living under an assumed identity in their home town. I saw some of the set filming in suburbs of New Orleans, and one of my pix is in the Wikipedia article.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secrets_We_Keep#Production

This was at Rio Vista Park in Old Jefferson, used as the home of the protagonist - for exterior shots only. Inside, the house has a basement, clearly not set in South Louisiana.

Other locations I recognized included McDonough Park in Algiers and along Lafayette Street in the old part of Gretna.

While well acted, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone not interested in the film locations - pretty dark and IMO not satisfying.

In other entertainment set in post-WWII US, we've also been watching "Masters of Sex", lightly based Masters & Johnson. I've previously expressed being somewhat frustrated by how commonly real life good historical stories are adapted into entertainment with little fidelity to facts. This certainly applies here. Entertaining, mix of comedy, soap opera, and sex, with soap opera of largely fictional characters becoming more dominant as it progresses.

That and our usual Saturday night watching Svengoolie - most recently "The Gorgon", if one likes Hammer Horror films, it was one of those.

comments

Be Good

Wed, 14 Jan 2026 19:43:44 GMT

An older colleague comments:

The rage I've felt following the murder of Renee Good has stirred up many memories. Especially, my first confirmed kill in Vietnam. I fired, at point blank range, at a pregnant woman who was running by in fear. She wasn't armed and truly represented no threat. But we had been told to "go in hot". That meant we were authorized to shoot anyone in the village b/c they supported our enemy. The memory will haunt me until I close my eyes for the last time. I've wanted to join the protest in my area. Unfortunately, I believe I'll try to kill any ICE agent who lays hands on me. That's what I was trained to do by the US Army. Maybe in a few more days, the rage will lessen, and I can attend a protest safely. RESIST!

-----

Writer Adam-Troy Castro wrote:

Even at a remove, I don't want to step on the grief of Renee Good's father.
He is a grieving parent, who incidentally happens to be a Trump supporter.
And since the senseless killing of his daughter, he asked a reasonable question where it could be heard, and taken down. Why are they lying about my daughter? Why are they saying things about her that I know not to be true?
And this question was relayed to Trump, during televised questions, and Trump merely repeated that she was an agitator, that she escalated a confrontation, that she attacked the ICE guy and tried to run him over. All lies.
Renee Good's Dad, a man for whom I have no end of sympathy, seems to me to be a tragic figure in the Shakespearean sense. He is probably just baffled and hurt, at this response from a man he believed in, and probably still follows. Still.
What I want for him, what I want for all the Trumpers who simply had a political position and stood by their man, is that a very reasonable series of questions penetrate.
This man who lies about Renee Good, what else has he lied about?
It probably isn't just her, right?
This woman who got in the way and was killed, is she the only one?
What about all the other people, hundreds and thousands of them, who Trump demonizes, the cities where he has sent his thugs, the innocents who has had tossed into vans, the masked bullies he has roaming the streets and brutalizing teenagers and women and pillars of the community?
Is it possible, just possible, sir, that he's lying about them?
That he's lying as easily as he breathes?
That he and his collaborators have fed you nonsense assumptions that have enabled his savagery, and made you part of them?
Will you just swallow your hurt and rationalize that he's wrong about your daughter, but right about everyone else he's hurt? Or will you realize who the problem is?
Have you learned, sir?

comments

Froggy says Happy New Year!

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 18:38:36 GMT

A Happy New Year!

1878 New Year card engraved by J. H. Bufford's Sons, Boston.

comments

Dreams: Chocolate rats, Schrödinger's McGuffin

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 18:15:55 GMT

I dreamed a reporter and I were on assignment posing as a young couple (I guess I was still young in my dream or could pass for it?) who were looking for an apartment, as part of a project to expose bad landlords.

We were looking at a run-down apartment and the landlord was trying to talk up all the bad things as if they were good to get us to make a payment and move in. He pointed to a hole in the wall where a rat was coming out and said, "You look like a nice young couple. By the time you're ready to have kids, there'll be a whole new generation of fresh rats, and you can catch them, and dip them in chocolate, and roll them in cocaine for a treat!"

----

I woke up this morning repeating a dream phrase "Schrödinger's McGuffin". I wondered if the phrase has been used in real life, and did a quick websearch. Yes, but only a few results, blog posts about movies. Since I'd recently rewatched "Repo Man", possibly relevant.

comments

Thoughts on the Felon in Chief

Mon, 29 Dec 2025 16:39:54 GMT

He's a con man, skilled at fleecing suckers. Not at the level of cleverness of Ponzi or Madoff. But good enough. I've long thought that was one of Trump's only real skills.

The other is ability to draw attention to himself. He has a real extraordinary knack for that. That's his top skill. It took Trump a long time to work out that his talent for puffery and kayfabe could take him further in politics than it ever did in real estate or business.

He never was good at making money, unlike his slumlord father. As those who remember him in the last century know, after he could no longer skate on his fathers millions, he frequently teetered on the edge of bankruptcy and ruin, until finally everyone stopped extending him credit - and the Russians bailed him out.

For someone who spent so much time lying, as an outside observer, he didn't seem to be particularly good at it. His lies often made no sense, and were regularly self-contradictory. But he learned to just spew them out like a fire-hose.

I suppose I need to acknowledge that Trump had a third skill - the ability to pick up on the absolute worst in people, and get them to see him as an ally for their basest instincts.

comments

Some recent films watched

Fri, 26 Dec 2025 17:11:31 GMT

Ms H and I often watch the "Svengoolie" (comic horror host) broadcast Saturday night. They sometimes do double features, unless the 2nd film is of particular interest we seldom stay up late for it. We made an exception for "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane" back in October, which neither of us had seen.

This past weekend the Svengoolie main feature was "Brides of Frankenstein" - decent Hammer Horror film, if one like that sort of thing. The second feature was "Sharktopus", about a part shark part octopus creature genetically engineered as a secret weapon that gets loose and has to be hunted down. Bad low budget film, but entertainingly cheesy.

We borrowed some DVDs from the Library to watch over the holiday season.

One was "Repo Man", 1984 comedy/sci-fi social satire. I saw it (at the Prytania Theater) in the original run and once more late in the decade on VHS. Hollie had never seen it and wanted to. We laughed lots and enjoyed it. Well crafted. While it is certainly in part a 1980s period piece, it was much less dated than I expected and held up well.

We never saw the curious popular double feature in the theaters of 2023, so we picked up "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer". Barbie was fun enough fluff - a bit too long by maybe 15 minutes I think. Oppenheimer was much longer film, but well done and powerful. I'm somewhat ambivalent about the whole genera of fictionalized movies about real history. Hollywood has been playing fast & loose with history since the silent days, always feeling obligated to take any good true story and add a bunch of fiction they think is somehow required.

comments

John Leonard Riddell - First New Orleanian to the Moon

Tue, 23 Dec 2025 20:44:58 GMT

My rabbit-hole subject of the day is John Leonard Riddell, mid-19th century chair of the chemistry department at New Orleans University (ancestral to Tulane University). Also esteemed botanist, inventor of the binocular microscope, advocate of the germ theory of disease when most medial profession still believed in miasma, geologist, general polymath who also found time to improve the coinage system at the New Orleans Mint and be postmaster...and science fiction writer.

The more I found out about him, the more I wondered why he wasn't better known. Then I read...
"Succession is worse than a crime, it is a blunder!" - John Leonard Riddell.

Ah, a Unionist in the Deep South - not uncommon in New Orleans of the time, but a position likely to get one marginalized or ignored in the next generation dominated by "Lost Causers".

The text of Riddell's 1847 science fiction story "Orrin Lindsey’s Plan of Aerial Navigation" is online. It seems to me that H. G. Wells 1901 "Cavorite" sphere spaceship in "First Men in the Moon" owes more than a little to Riddell's craft! Interesting how Riddell calculates atmospheric pressure and methods needed to provide oxygen for the space trip - is this one of the very first examples of "hard science fiction"?

* Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Leonard_Riddell

* Orrin Lindsey’s Plan of Aerial Navigation https://louisiana-anthology.org/303_download/texts/riddell--orrin_lindsay_flight/riddell-orrin_lindsays_aerial_navigation..html

* 2012 NecessaryFacts blogspot post: From Texas to the Moon with John Leonard Riddell https://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/2012/12/from-texas-to-moon-with-john-leonard.html

comments

Titanic Dream

Tue, 23 Dec 2025 20:37:11 GMT

I dreamed I was a survivor of the sinking of the Titanic - not the one from 1912, but somehow from another Titanic that met the same tragic fate this year.

I and other survivors were rescued from a small life boat, brought to a large modern airport along the coast, and given some food. Then we were separated and sent to different parts of the airport.

I was on my own in a gate terminal for hours, then a full day; I asked agents at gate desks for information as to what next but none of them had any information. I became worried I'd been forgotten and lost. Then I found someone working at the airport who was an old acquaintance, and at first things to be going better. We talked briefly and pleasantly about events we'd both been to in New Orleans 25 years earlier. He put some effort into making a couple of phone calls to his superiors to try to find out where I should go next, but without luck.
All I had was the clothes I was wearing and a blanket. I'd lost all my paperwork which had gotten waterlogged and disintegrated. So I worried I was in danger because I had no documentation. So I asked the fellow at the desk if he could vouch that when we were in New Orleans I was presumed to be a citizen. He said he couldn't swear that was so. I said I'm not asking you to swear certain knowledge, as you never examined my papers, just that when we were there people were acting like they presumed I was a local. He said "I wouldn't go that far" and his eyes narrowed as he looked at me. I became worried that he was going to turn me in to ICE for a reward since I was undocumented, and I'd be disappeared in some horrible concentration camp.
I backed away from him, and looking around the airport found another acquaintance, a musician from France who often visited New Orleans. I said I survived the sinking of the Titanic, I had nothing and nowhere to go. He said he was about to fly back to Paris, and happened to have a pass for an extra so he could bring me along, and could put me up in his apartment in Paris for a couple of days. I said, yes please, I'd very much appreciate that.
So we flew to Paris, then took the train to where he lived. I was slightly disappointed to find it was in one of the outer arrondissements, far from the historic city center, and the architecture and streets looked to be rather generic modern urbanized suburb. But that was secondary to relief, as I knew at last I was safe.

comments

Radio station turn tables dream

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 16:19:51 GMT

I dreamed I was doing a show at the radio station. It had a different new studio in some sort of transition or rebuilding. There were 8 turntables laid out in an "L" shape on big long desks, and all the music was played from LPs. (In real life the station does still have 3 turntables - probably quite rare for radio stations now, but we have a number of record collector programmers. However it is not the dominant medium, and was never the exclusive medium for the station; even in the early '80s before CDs became common much programming from on reel-to-reel and cassette audio tape.) Anyways, the situation was frustratingly awkward, as I was doing a live show, while at the same time 2 other people were making a prerecorded show (what were they recording on? I guess digital, as no tape machine in my dream, which seemed to be intended to be current rather than '80s.) in the same studio. They were alternating using some of the same turntables, with different microphones sitting on the opposite side of the desks. There were also disordered stacks of LPs all around. I thought this was a sub-optimal way to try to do radio shows, but I plowed on doing my best.

comments

Dream: Back to class in the big blue building

Fri, 14 Nov 2025 18:01:48 GMT

In my dream last night I was enrolled to start taking some sort of classes at the University of New Orleans.

In real life, I've never taken any classes at UNO. I've visited the campus for special events and to do research in the library/archives. It's a rather spread-out post-WWII campus with lots of 1960s and 1970s modern architecture.

In my dream the campus also had a large rectangular 4 story concrete building painted dark blue, that included dorms, classrooms, offices, cafeteria, auditorium, library and bookstore. So I was going to spend pretty much all my time in that building. The building seemed older than the rest of the campus, with elements similar to real-life high schools around New Orleans - early Art Deco auditorium in somewhat worn state like McMain before it was renovated, old hardwood staircases with ruts from wear of generations of feet like the old Ben Franklin school when it was in a repurposed early 19th century town hall.

I didn't know what I'd be studying nor why, just that I was enrolled and this was what I was going to be doing. I was headed into the auditorium for orientation. An acquaintance stopped me and told me "Did you hear about the explorers who went to the Sun? They got burned up, but the Sun cooled down because the heat was all transferred to them when they burned up!" We both knew this was absurd, but he thought it was a funny joke but I just thought it was stupid. I just said "Later - I got to go" and continued to find my seat.

----

Tangential bonus: When I first saw an "UNO" game deck in the 1970s, I assumed it was a University of New Orleans card deck.

comments

Darth Cheney becomes one with the Dark Side

Tue, 04 Nov 2025 22:04:43 GMT

I complained about Dick Cheney here often enough her back in the day that I suppose his death merits a post.

A friend comments "I’m not gonna lie. There was a time that when Dick Cheney died that I would’ve been dancing in the streets, but Trump messed that up for me."

Cheney lived long enough to see the tactics he mainstreamed used against his own daughter.

This from The Onion 2 years ago explains Cheney better than the news site obits.
https://theonion.com/what-i-got-right-about-the-iraq-war-1850249194/

Unaccountable unitary executive theory of government: Nixon crime'd so Cheney could coup so Trump could shamble dementedly into full fascism.

comments

Family lore - Swiss side

Sat, 25 Oct 2025 21:36:47 GMT

According to family oral history/lore on my Swiss ancestry side.

Switzerland formerly wasn't a rich country. Back in the day if a family had too many boys who survived, the extras would be sent as mercenaries for foreign kings. Then there was America, which was another option.

Great grandfather had a foot in both traditions for extra sons - he came to America, but initially as a mercenary. In the Civil War, if a rich man was drafted, they could instead of fighting pay a fee, or have a substitute go for them. It was usually less expensive to hire an immigrant as a substitute. So that's how he got in the Union Army, but once he was there fighting became devoted to the cause.

He saved up his pay, and after the War moved to St. Louis and set up as a shopkeeper. He did well and after a couple years he wrote to his little brother, the youngest extra son, to come join him.

Great Uncle sailed across to New York, and found someone at the port who spoke some German or French, and told them he was going to join his brother in St. Louis. The man took a big sheet of paper, wrote something in English in big letters, and pinned it to the front of Great Uncle's coat, and told him just point to the paper and he'd get there.

So about a week later he arrived in St. Louis where Great Grandfather was waiting. Great Grandfather took one look at the paper on his brother's coat and tore it off. He'd crossed half the country wearing a sign reading "THIS DAMN FOOL WANTS TO GO TO ST. LOUIS".

comments

No Kings 18 October 2025

Sun, 19 Oct 2025 19:46:34 GMT

First let me say how very pleased I am that frogs are now a symbol of resistance to tyranny.

And not just because it's convenient for my existing wardrobe and props.

The main No Kings rally for New Orleans was on Lafitte Greenway Great Lawn. I saw a smaller rally was scheduled for St. Charles Avenue in front of Audubon Park. Ms H and I planned to go to that one, mostly as it looked much easier with our partial disabilities; it was much closer as well. Shortly before we were to go out Ms H said she was not really feeling up to going out today, so I drove there on my own.

This satellite rally was even smaller than I expected, with about 20 people when I arrived (including 2 inflatable unicorn costumes), gradually growing to about 30 by the time I left half an hour later.

Still it was good that it was there, as passing cars honked approval, people waved and thumbs-upped from tour buses, and streetcar riders erupted into cheers while passing. The more No Kings in more places, the better!

Since I was on my own, I then drove out to the main rally, as expected no places to park right near by, but I watched from various places around the periphery in my car (and at a couple places where I could stop for a good while elevating my frog umbrella out the window).

NOLA com (aka the Picayune Paper) gave an estimate of the main rally as 12,000 people. Impressive! While that's good in "blue" New Orleans, I'm even more heartened by news of smaller but significant rallies in deep "red" areas, including Steve Scalise and Magat Mike Johnson's districts. Reportedly over 7 million nation wide!

Meanwhile, the Felon-in-Chief, or whoever is running his social media, posted an AI video (no, I'm not going to link it, you can find it if you really must) depicting Trump wearing a royal crown piloting a military jet labeled "King Trump" bombing crowds of Americans in cities with feces. Really. In anything close to normal times, that sort of depiction would be considered a rather vicious editorial attack *against* the POTUS. Somehow they think this is positive? Another example of how far gone over the edge they have become - along with those repeating the talking point that opposition to Trump is "paid protesters". They can't even conceive of people voluntarily standing up for the USA and freedom. Their minds can't comprehend that other people might want to do good without being bribed.

This called to mind something from WH Auden’s review of Lord of the Rings:
"Evil, that is, has every advantage but one—it is inferior in imagination. Good can imagine the possibility of becoming evil [...] but Evil, defiantly chosen, can no longer imagine anything but itself."

comments

20 years ago tonight I was told a hurricane was headed our way.

Tue, 26 Aug 2025 20:19:58 GMT

Personal retrospective anniversary post - adapted from my old LiveJournal (migrated to Dreamwidth) post on the 1st anniversary, as I was too busy experiencing it to post about it at the time, with a few slight edits and some relevant photos added.

----

To backtrack just before...

Beverly, an old friend and former New Orleanian, and her sweetie, Girgl, the professor of physics from Germany, were staying at my place. The previous day other old friends were passing through town, Nancy & Harrison, moving out of Bay St. Louis on the Mississippi coast up to Arkansas. We and some other acquaintances all went to lunch at Sid-Mar's, on the Bucktown peninsula where the 17th Street Canal meets Lake Pontchartrain. (Spoiler, I mention this place specifically as less than a week later everything in the area would be gone.)

Photo by Infrogmation: What was left of Bucktown after we got back to town from evacuation.

My car brakes were sticking, I said maybe I should take it by a mechanic in the morning. Girgl said he'd take a look at it. He jammed the brake pedal hard and it stopped sticking. He said it was likely just a pebble caught in the mechanism, but it was fine now.

The tv news reported a category 1 hurricane named Katrina was heading towards the Florida Panhandle.

At night we had dinner at Mandina's in Mid City. (Spoiler, in a few days Mid-City New Orleans would be inundated in the Federal Flood when the levee system failed in the biggest engineering disaster in US history.)

Friday morning, 26 August 2005, I'd listened to the news on the radio this morning and not heard of any change about the hurricane.

I picked up my new business cards, the first ever with my just acquired self-phone number. I'd be leading my new band at the Miss Crescent City pageant the following day. I stopped by the Unitarian Church on Claiborne where the pageant would be. Ms Hollie was one of the organizers, and I checked out the venue and looked in on some of the rehearsal.

Photos by Ms Hollie: Interior of the Unitarian Universalist Church after we got back from evacuation.

Friday night I was playing trombone as a substitute with a jazz band on Decatur Street in the Quarter.

On break, a tourist remarked how much fun they were having, and they'd managed to change their flight to leave early the next day. Why's that, I asked. The hurricane is coming! Hurricane? Others who'd heard more recent news confirmed that Katrina had changed course and strengthened and was a potential threat to New Orleans. Might come here sometime after the weekend.

Saturday the 27th Ms Hollie and I were both in a bit of a tizzy. The morning news showed the storm looking even worse. Hollie was taking care of Pageant details, and I was taking care of things regarding the band, while contemplating that we may need to evacuate. I picked up the sandwiches for the band, unsuccessfully looking to fill my gas tank on the way-- stations either had long lines or had signs announcing they were out of gas. The band's drummer, Sue, called to say she couldn't make it as she'd been called to the State Museum to do their hurricane battoning down the hatches procedure. I unsuccessfully tried to get a sub, calling around thinking, "Oh no! A hurricane is coming, and I have to find a drummer!"

The band members -- sans drummer-- met at the trumpeter's house in Broadmoor, a short distance from the venue. (Spoiler, Broadmoor would soon be under deep water.) We'd planned to do a quick rehearsal, as the musicians I'd gathered had never played together as a group. We did no rehearsing, instead staring at the tv screen with a satellite image of a monster that seemed more than half the size of the whole Gulf of Mexico barrelling towards us.

On to the pageant. The band played some to fill time before anything else got started; Ms Hollie revealed that the MC didn't come into town from the North Shore due to the hurricane, and things had to be rearranged. The turn out was light but things went well considering the improvised nature. Fortunately the guitar and tuba were such good rhythm players that we overcame the lack of a drummer.

Before and after playing, the sax player, who managed a convenience store in the 7th Ward, was on his phone trying to finagle or bribe a gasoline tanker truck to make a run into town as the store had emptied their gas tanks early that morning. He was also instructing the staff to turn the freezer to maximum setting and put the perishables in it, as there might be a power outage. (Spoiler, this area of the 7th Ward would soon be in deep water.)

Photo by Jocelyn Augustino/FEMA, Aerial photo over the 7th Ward area 30 August 2005

After the pageant the co-organizer Margaret was going to drive straight to Dallas, and tried to foist off a whole pile of perishable food on Hollie and me. As I was trying to empty the refrigerator of perishables, most went right into a trash bag and the trash can. (Alas, the emptying of the fridge was not nearly complete enough, as would be revealed over 5 weeks later.)

Sue phoned to say the museum staff had made quick work of things and she was already in her car on the road to Texas.

I finally found an open gas station with not too terrible a line (they only had super; my car takes regular, but this wasn't the time to be too picky.)

Bev & Girgl were off somewhere (I later found another friend was taking them on a driving tour all around town-- in retrospect, very fitting). I closed up the house's storm shutters and packed up suitcases-- what we needed, then extra space filled with local collectables like jazzfest and art opening shirts.

Hollie and I then tried to unwind with a splash in the back yard inflatable pool and lying in the sun a bit-- it was a very beautiful late afternoon. Somehow, however, it seemed strangely quiet. I didn't realize until hearing other folks accounts later that most of the birds had already left town.

The Krewe of OAK Midsummer Mardi Gras Parade was in my neighborhood that night. Hollie and I were throwing together costumes when Bev & Girgl came back. I told them a major hurricane was coming, and they needed to pack up-- I'd check the weather service website at dawn, and if the storm hadn't changed course, they needed to get out. Girgl said, "This hurricane sounds very interesting. I have never seen one. I think I would like to stay and watch it."

".... No." I replied. "No, you don't. Nancy and Harrison want you to visit them in Arkansas; this is the time to go there."

We all went to OAK. The turn out was lighter than usual; many folks had already left town. We heard Mayor Nagin had issued a call for a voluntary evacuation. Some friends said they'd spent the day boarding up their house and packing, and planned to drive out after the party. One costumer had "KATRINA STAY AWAY" painted on them. It was a good parade party.

Beverly and Girgl at Krewe of OAK Mid-Summer 2005

Hollie and reveler at Krewe of OAK Mid-Summer 2005

Dancing in the streets of New Orleans, maybe for the last time, before evacuating.

Krewe of OAK Mid-Summer Mardi Gras 2005 photos by Infrogmation

Back home. Hollie needed to pick up her cell phone charger on the West Bank before leaving town. I said I didn't want to fight traffic in the morning; let's do it now. Traffic was light after midnight. Along Claiborne and Fountainebleau hundreds of cars were already parked up on the raised neutral grounds in hopes that the half foot of added elevation would protect them if there was flooding. (Spoiler, it wouldn't. )

We all got up before dawn on Sunday 28 August. Bev and Girgl drove out of town just before dawn. Hollie and I headed out about 40 minutes later, after I spent some time anxiously pacing around the house, double checking things, and throwing a few more possessions into the car.

Between the speed of the arrival of the storm and being busy, unlike evacuations for Andrew and Ivan I had no reservations nor definite destination. Maybe to my Brother in Gainesville, my parents who were staying in Jacksonville, or see if we can get a room somewhere beyond Tallahassee... just bug out. We headed east on I-10, on the high rise across the open water of the Rigoletts. Traffic was heavy but moving through Slidell, then pretty good thereafter. My car radio didn't work, but Hollie brought a portable. Somewhere in Mississippi we heard Mayor Nagin had made the evacuation mandatory, the first in the city's history. I was having a problem with my car's brakes-- every time I'd use them, they'd stick worse. It wasn't just a pebble, clearly. I had to jam on them repeatedly to get them unstuck. I tried to not worry Hollie by talking about the problem as an amusing minor annoyance, but she was not fooled.

At Tallahassee we stopped to eat and make some calls. My mother had already made us reservations in Jacksonville! She said she saw an ad in the paper with a good rate at the local Quality Inn, so she booked it. Peachy, thanks!

We made it to Jacksonville. I followed the directions-- it turns out it wasn't a Quality Inn as my mother thought, it was the "OK Quality Motel" or some such-- we looked at the room and the Quality was low indeed as fleas bit our ankles. We succeeded in finding a vacancy at a better motel nearby, and used one of the obvious defects of the room as an excuse to cancel the reservation at the first place.

The next morning, Monday the 29th, at the complementary motel breakfast the lobby tv was on showing satellite images of the hurricane coming ashore at South East Louisiana. One fellow evacuee from the area was for some reason insisting that the storm wasn't going to be hitting shore until that evening (I think that had been the prediction a day or so earlier, but the tv was clearly showing otherwise). I was trying to find a brake repair place when my parents arranged to move us to a better hotel-- with internet access (Yay). We repacked and moved to the other hotel. As we were unpacking the car Hollie got a call from Tal, who said he heard a report of those dreaded words: a levee break. A bit later, a report mentioned flooding somewhere in the 9th Ward. "Sounds like a rerun of Betsy", I sighed.

I took the car to get the brakes fixed. When it was ready, the mechanics wanted to joke at length that the Superdome now had a new skylight.

And so began my evacuation.

comments

Local News

Fri, 22 Aug 2025 19:46:19 GMT

This morning's news, very local news.

An expected package was seen on front porch and brought inside.

In a related story, while the front door was open a lizard ran inside. Authorities describe the lizard as small, brown, and cute. The lizard is still at large, and should be considered mostly harmless.

In other very local news, coffee has been brewed and is hot and tasty.

comments