Growing Apples

Going back to 1990, the purchase of a just released Macintosh Classic computer began my long-running love affair with Apple products. Before that time computers in my experience were all ugly boxes with black screens of lime green text, possessing no characteristics or features that held any interest for me. A suitcase heavy black Sanyo word processor with an inside roll of paper for printing, and capable of producing English and Japanese served well enough. The Mac Classic though was a whole new ballgame and with its sidekick StyleWriter printer sent the word processor straight into hibernation.

New Mac models were released, I upgraded to something a little bigger each time, and in 1994 got a Newton Message Pad 120, representing a whole new direction in personal data management. It was the first of the PDA devices, and while the core idea was sound, the hardware was clunky and the operating system full of holes. An earlier Scriblets post explained this device in more detail, but to shorten the story let’s just say the Newton didn’t live up to Apple expectations and by 1998 was history.

In 2007 Apple did the expected, carrying vastly improved Newton Message Pad technology into the design and operating system of the iPhone. That was quickly followed by the iPod Touch release, more of the same technology. Didn’t take me long to buy an iPhone when it was first released in Japan, and once again I was Apple-dazzled. The next big thrill came with the purchase of an iMac, a design that deserved all the awards that eventually came its way. Sleek, classy, smart and beautiful—Apple could do no wrong.

Then came April 2010 and the ultimate device, another one that owed it’s initial development to the old Newton. Enter the iPad. But for all the whiz-bang fireworks and glamour this one didn’t grab me, didn’t leave me with tongue hanging out. No sale. I chose to watch the iPad for a while, to wait and see what would happen in a year or so with a later model. From its unveiling and the press releases that followed, the iPad impressed more as a toy than a device that would increase, speed up or improve productivity. The first thought was that it had a “get more-spend more” idea built into it, a concept that would have users regularly feeding Apple and the App Store with a desire for more apps, more games, more ‘cool’ stuff. That notion left me resistant to the idea of owning an iPad.

On March 2, 2011 Apple unveiled the iPad 2. After almost a year of looking, reading and thinking about the the iPad I was ready to take a hard look at the iPad 2 with an eye toward buying one if it impressed me as having usefulness above and beyond playing games, checking Facebook and watching YouTube. At the end of May I placed an order for the iPad 2.

It arrived five days ago and slightly disappointed is the verdict. Compare the photos here of the iPhone and the old Newton Message Pad. The iPhone photo was taken with the iPad, the Newton photo with the iPhone. The camera on the iPad 2 isn’t even close to the iPhone camera. For me the biggest attraction on the iPad 2 was the email, offering a fourth option for checking, writing and sending email apart from the iPhone, laptop and iMac. Basically, the email works just fine; fast and dependable. I also like the way I can slant the iPad by folding the cover, making typing very easy on its large keyboard. Definitely a big plus. On the other hand, the spellcheck is clunky, there is no option for bold, italic or underlined type in email—or if there is, I have not found it in five days of searching. There is also no option for colorizing text, sometimes a useful function. Most troublesome was having to input all my contacts manually, since syncing the iPad with the iMac skipped the address book. Is that really supposed to happen? What does sync mean, if not copying and aligning data on two separate devices?

Using Safari on the iPad is also less than smooth. Here there is a good possibility that I will come to understand it all better in time and find moving between websites easier. With Safari the iPad doesn’t impress me as being as intuitive as what I’ve come to expect from Apple. The hope is that more practice and experience will open a few doors, reveal a few shortcuts.

The iBooks app and the downloaded books are beautiful, much more so than eBooks on the Kindle, and I do like most of the features, but miss the dictionary that is a part of the Kindle. I also miss the lightness of the Amazon eReader. The iPad 2 is a whopping 1.33 lbs (608 grams) and feels like reading text off a brick. The Kindle is also clear and easy to read in bright sunshine, a quality missing in the iPad. The search text feature is good, the page numbering much better than Kindle, a choice of fonts and sizes is available and the brightness of the page is adjustable, but there is no one-tap dictionary like that in the Kindle.

Am I sorry that I bought the iPad 2? Mmm…probably not. I depend upon Apple’s superior technology to either show me the way or to fix the clumsy bits in future iOS system upgrades. Meanwhile, I will give the new iPad a run for the money and hope that Apple is not holding its breath waiting for me to begin purchasing apps in their humongous profit generating App Store.

Cowboys and Indians

“I was born on the prairies where the wind blew free and there was nothing to break the light of the sun. I was born where there were no enclosures.” — Geronimo

No different from many young boys growing up inspired by tales of cowboys and Indians, my childhood play often centered on mock battles between ‘redskins drunk on firewater’ and ‘white soldiers who spoke with forked tongues.’ We had our heroes and villains, brave warriors and General Custers, and those on the Indian side had war paint courtesy of Mama’s Apache Red lipstick. We watched the TV shows that inevitably portrayed the Indians as bad and the whites as good God-fearing Christians. One particular Indian’s ferocity made him into legend among his own people as well as whites. Labeled by some as ‘the worst Indian who ever lived,” Apache leader Geronimo was always a part of our boyhood games.

June 16 was the ‘infamous’ warrior’s birthday. Let us hope that students are learning in their American history classes these days that infamy existed on both sides of the fence, that like so many of his Indians brothers, Apache or otherwise, Geronimo got the short end of the stick.

Geronimo, or Goyathlay (“one who yawns”) was born in 1829 in the area of western New Mexico, at that time still Mexican territory. He was a member of the Chiricahua Apache. The name Geronimo was given to him by Mexican soldiers, possibly after Saint Jerome, though the reason is not clear. Some histories report that his numerous successful raids into Mexico led people to believe that his powers were supernatural, that he was invulnerable to bullets. To the Apaches, Geronimo embodied the very essence of Apache values—aggressiveness and courage in the face of difficulty. The Chiricahuas were a migratory tribe following the seasons, hunting and farming. Raids and vengeance were an honorable way of life among the southwestern tribes and when food was scarce it was customary to raid neighboring tribes.

In 1858 Geronimo returned home from a trading excursion to find his wife, mother and three children murdered by Spanish troops from Mexico. This event fired in him a hatred of Mexicans and whites and he vowed to kill as many as he could. Leader of the last American Indian fighting force to hold out against the United States, fighting insurmountable odds he became the most famous Apache of all. In the eyes of pioneers and settlers of Arizona and New Mexico at the time, he was a bloodstained murderer, an image that endured until the second half of the twentieth century. His raids were linked to a brother-in-law named Juh, a Chiricahua chief who because of a speech impediment allowed Geronimo to speak for him. Never a chief himself, he was a medicine man, a seer and both in and out of battle a spiritual and intellectual leader. The Apache chiefs depended on his wisdom.

The US government chose to view all Apache in the literal meaning of the word, which in English means ‘enemy.’ In 1875 by order of the government all those west of the Rio Grande were moved to the San Carlos Reservation, a dusty and barren wasteland called by many “Hell’s Forty Acres.” Geronimo escaped three times, always taking with him a band of warriors, women and children. At one point as many as 5,000 soldiers and 500 scouts were tracking Geronimo and his band. In 1882 he was back on the reservation, but escaped once more in 1885. He surrendered in 1886 and he along with 450 Apache men, women and children were sent to confinement in Florida. The next move was to Oklahoma in 1894. A prisoner of war never allowed to return to his homeland, Geronimo was thrown from his horse while riding home one cold night in 1909 and lay all night before a friend found him. He later died of pneumonia, his last words voicing regret that he had ever surrendered to the whites.

For those interested in more about the native American legendary figure, try Geronimo’s Story of his Life.

Lunch for Angela

On most days of the year the beach outside my windows calls up oohs and ahs and pretty descriptions. Some days are hot, some cool and some wet, but for the most part it’s all a pleasant sight, a comfortable environment. This Wednesday halfway through June it has all turned into a morass of stifling heat, smoke clouded and hazy skies, with the stench of a long burning fire and charred wood thick across miles of east central Florida.

Trees and brush drying out for months without rain, a flash of lightning and sixty acres of brush ignited Monday in Osteen, a small community twenty-two miles northwest of here. A forestry spokesman described a heat index of over a hundred degrees and winds creating a hellish scenario. A fireman on the scene added, “That roar, that deep rumble that you can feel in your chest—when you hear that sound coming through the woods there’s only one answer. Get out of the way.”

The beach has been murky for two days, and a walk this afternoon along the haze shrouded beach, the smell of smoke everywhere, had me coughing a couple of times. Lots of people playing and swimming, but not the best of days on this usually sparkling beach. A half mile south someone had spent time creating an unusual colored sand sculpture. Despicable Me. The sculptor is clearly a fan of the 2010 animated comedy film starring Steve Carell.

A couple of days each week I spend an hour or two visiting a friend down the street who is unfortunately confined to a retirement home. Her name is Angela, and though she has lived in Florida for some years, she came here from Karlsruhe, Germany, a small city in the southwest. She had her ninetieth birthday not long ago and though walking is difficult and her sight poor, she still has a sharp mind and is able to enjoy lively conversation and audio books. One of her favorite topics to talk about is cooking, and the many dishes she used to cook as a young woman in Germany. With a cultivated taste in food one of the disappointments in her days at the retirement home is an absence of fine cooking. The meals are bland, quickly prepared with frozen or canned ingredients, consistently lacking in any kind of imagination. For the most part Angela makes up for that with recollections of dishes she enjoyed once upon a time.

I have a sister who could be awarded Michelin stars for her cooking. Able to cook almost anything without need of a recipe or instructions, her greatest joy comes from cooking for others. She is quick to prepare meals for sick friends, for neighbors, and really anyone she feels could use a culinary boost. Here at the beach visiting for a week, today she prepared a special lunch for Angela and delivered it to her table in the garden of the retirement home. The suggested menu came from past conversations with Angela, and for the first time in years she enjoyed a lunch of veal scaloppini, fresh asparagus, sautéed mushrooms, salad with a raspberry vinaigrette, and for her sweet tooth a chocolate-raspberry delight.

I like to think it was a special lunch for a dear old friend.

Another Amazon

The city of Manaus located at the mouth of the Amazon one thousand miles inland from the Atlantic coast of Brazil has always been one of the more exotic and perhaps romantic travel sites in my imagination. For a short span of years in the late nineteenth, early twentieth centuries, the city was the center of a rubber boom and became in the words of one historian, ‘one of the gaudiest cities of the world.’ The opera house cost ten million dollars to build, but one of its first visiting opera companies suffered the death of half its troupe from yellow fever. The growth of Manaus got its impetus from the Industrial Revolution and the need for Amazonian rubber. From that it grew into an almost Parisian city of European rubber planters. That lasted until 1912 when the seeds were smuggled out and rubber trees planted in Malaysia, Sri Lanka and tropical Africa. Their monopoly ended, Manaus languished until 1942 when World War II spurred a brief revival in rubber production, but it was short-lived. Today the colorful rain forest city boasts a population of about two million.

When ordering State of Wonder, the new book from Ann Patchett, I had no idea the story was centered in the rainforest surrounding Manaus, and a portion of it in Manaus. The initial attraction was my liking for books by Ann Patchett, and especially her 2001 prizewinner, Bel Canto. Whatever the story or setting, a new book by this writer goes immediately onto my wish list.

In the briefest synopsis, State of Wonder is about the efforts of a drug company and three of its employees to gain information about the research and progress of a doctor on payroll in the Amazon who has gone off radar. The first person sent there disappears until a letter arrives announcing his death from fever. His lab partner is the next to be sent, and more than anyone else State of Wonder is her story. Their research is in the area of extending pregnancy beyond the natural limits of menopause, of permitting childbearing into the late sixties and beyond. Or at least this is the cover story. As the story unfolds we learn of the doctor’s more useful and beneficial research program there in the rainforest, research she fears will be under appreciated, and with premature exposure unleash a media doomsday on the local tribe of Indians. Obviously, the story is one of discovery revolving around not only ethics, responsibility and cultural interference, but most of all the main character’s discovery of herself.

Marina Singh has been a doctor of pharmacology for thirteen years, a switch from her original med-school plans of internal medicine. An accident during her time as an intern prompts the switch, and we quickly learn that her professor and chief of staff at the time is the very same doctor Dr Swenson, head of the drug research in the Amazonian rainforest. Marina agrees to go to South America mostly to find out more about her co-worker’s death, and also as an appeasement to the man’s wife who believes he is still alive.

I have earlier described Marina as the book’s main character, but there is something a little lopsided about that claim. Of course, Dr Swenson is the book’s other main character, but in fact both these women oftentimes fall into shadow behind the mysterious grandeur and lethal presence of the jungle, the rainforest and primal mover of every living thing under its expanse of tangled vines, trees, water and mud. Every step in its world is loaded with the possibility of snakebite, vicious insect stings, and all manner of creatures looking for a meal, the bigger the better. And if the wildlife doesn’t do it, the headhunters will.

Just me perhaps, but I have never before read pages so fraught with horror and suspense as the six describing an onboard battle with an eighteen foot anaconda determined to kill all five people on the boat. Tension is relentless and the reader begins to fear the huge snake in all its flashing fury and foul odor is going to have its final way with the hapless boat crew.

‘There was an odor none of them recognized, the smell of a furious reptile, an oily stench of putrid rage that sank into the membranes of their nostrils as if it planned to stay there forever. The back half of the snake whipped up and made itself a knot around Easter’s slender waist and wrapped and wrapped and at the moment its head swung past, Easter reached into the air, his hand a quarter second faster than the snake, and grabbed its throat just below the head…’

The more subtle beauty of character development Patchett saves for her human characters. Page by page the layers of Marina’s complex life and experience are unfolded until we see her finally in full illumination. The writer is no different in the unraveling of Dr Swenson’s cocoon, a slow step by step unveiling of a character we are unable to see into initially. This is the unknown quality a reader latches onto with the promise it will be revealed as the story moves toward its conclusion. On the other hand, the rainforest hits us with its full brunt from the first moment, the first wave of its biting-sucking hard-shelled insects. The only drab in this green-brown world are the dilapidated huts, the worn and faded rags of clothing and the hoard of canned rations.

Spend some time with Ann Patchett if you haven’t yet had the pleasure—if not State of Wonder, then the earlier Bel Canto.

Unbeatable Yellow

Been some time since a new fountain pen has come my way, and posts focusing on fountain pens lately have been second looks at one or another of what I have here already. Looking at the pens on my desk and on shelves elsewhere anybody would surely agree that there are pens enough around here to satisfy even the most critical enthusiast, and while a new Pelikan or Montblanc would be welcome, for now I am happy enough to scratch scribble and diddle with what I have. The past few days one particular Sailor fountain pen has been my regular sidekick, one that I ordered from Classic Fountain Pens in Los Angeles about five years back. It’s the Sailor Full Size 1911, a joy to write with from the first words that flowed onto the page from its high quality nib.

According to Nibmeister John Mottishaw at Classic Fountain Pens, The nibs on these Sailor pens are among the best quality of any made in the world today. In my experience there is a lot of truth to that because the quality of Sailor nibs is directly related to their longtime master craftsman, Nobuyoshi Nagahara. Mr Nagahara’s work has elevated the art of nib design and production at Sailor to something that goes beyond even first class. But back to John Mottishaw, indisputably a top-ranked nibmeister himself, I credit him with taking the stock M 21k gold nib on the 1911 Full Size pen and customizing it to my preferences perfectly, giving me a pen that never fails, never disappoints. Let me quote another Mottishaw description: ‘Because of the large-bore opening on the Sailor converter, ink starvation problems, common to many other brands of cartridge/converter pens, are avoided.’

Further description of the Sailor 1911 Full Size on the Classic Fountain Pen website tells us that the overall design has its origins in the 1931 Sheaffer Streamline. No question it is an elegant design of clean lines with minimal distraction. There are four gold bands and a simple, almost plain gold pocket clip. The pen measures 5½ inches capped and a little under 6¼ inches posted. Good choice of colors to choose from: black, burgundy, blue, red, transparent and yellow. I chose the yellow, which resembles the 1928 Parker Duofold Mandarin. If the pen didn’t write like a dream I would still love it for its bright yellow.

I used to work with a Japanese man, someone I still call a friend who came around at least once a week wondering if he could borrow that wonderful yellow fountain pen, that he had a particular document that required the look of a good fountain pen, hopefully with a conservative dark ink. I never hesitated to lend him the Sailor 1911 because his handwriting was such a pleasure to see—a smart calligraphy-like hand, but neither too studied nor too fancy. I always marveled at how casually he dashed off such character rich lines always easy to read. He told me that half of it was the fountain pen, the Sailor 1911 Full Size.

Little need to pretend this Sailor 1911 is anything less than expensive, but it is one of those indulgences when value comes with every penny paid. I’m not sure what’s available on eBay or elsewhere, but the chances are good there is a 1911 Full Size somewhere out there at a price not too intimidating. It’s a fountain pen that any enthusiast will come to treasure.

Photo credit to Classic Fountain Pens for the two photos of the 1911 Full Size.

Going On About Crackers

One of those sublime June days of blue-green water, ocean breezes and mild sunlight, good time for propping up in an Adirondack chair and reading some pages of Raymond Carver. Two or three of his story collections are stacked up around here, but there is another, a well worn old paperback of the collected poems, All of Us. This is the collection put together by Carver’s wife and poet, Tess Gallagher eight years after the writer’s death. Gallagher is the woman Carver lived with for the last nine years of his life, marrying her only two months before his death in 1988.

In October of last year I posted three poems from this collection, but wavered some over which of the more than 300 poems in the book might be best for a short look at Carver’s poetry. Naturally, the tendency is to pick personal favorites, but there is hope also that a few of the chosen examples will give a clear look into the heart and peculiar expression of a great American writer. Here are two more poems from All of Us. The first, “Still Looking Out for Number One” originally appeared in the fall 1984 issue of Paris Review. The one who has ‘gone away for five days’ is Tess gallagher.

STILL LOOKING OUT FOR NUMBER ONE

Now that you’ve gone away for five days,
I’ll smoke all the cigarettes I want,
where I want. Make biscuits and eat them
with jam and fat bacon. Loaf. Indulge
myself. Walk on the beach if I feel
like it. And I feel like it, alone and
thinking about when I was young. The people
then who loved me beyond reason.
And how I loved them above all others.
Except one. I’m saying I’ll do everything
I want here while you’re away!
But there’s one thing I won’t do.
I won’t sleep in our bed without you.
No. It doesn’t please me to do so.
I’ll sleep where I damn well feel like it—
where I sleep best when you’re away
and I can’t hold you the way I do.
On the broken sofa in my study.

“Soda Crackers” is a delicious piece of whimsey, a Carveresque ode to a box of crackers which become a part of a solitary stay at his Port Angeles, Washington house. The poem first appeared in 1986.

SODA CRACKERS

You soda crackers! I remember

when I arrived here in the rain,

whipped out and alone.

How we shared the aloneness

and quiet of this house.

And the doubt that held me

from fingers to toes

as I took you out

of your cellophane wrapping

and ate you, meditatively,

at the kitchen table

that first night with cheese,

and mushroom soup. Now,

a month later to the day,

an important part of us

is still here. I’m fine.

And you—I’m proud of you, too.

You're even getting remarked

on in print! Every soda cracker

should be so lucky.

We’ve done all right for

ourselves. Listen to me.

I never thought

I could go on like this

about soda crackers.

But I tell you

the clear sunshiny

days are here, at last.

Pretty in Pink

The custom around here is to sit down in the late afternoon for a solitary hour and knock together some ideas and words for a blog post. For most of Saturday my routines and customs were off kilter with family come-to-call, with thoughts scattered and for the most part revolving around a big nada. At such times a love of Japan and all it’s weird-wacky diversity usually provides a starting point for some kind of blog scramble, and if the words fail to come then there are always a few pictures of the unusual made into art.

Chances are high that a few of the pictures below have bounced around the world and the Internet a dozen times, but both the photos and the ideas behind them deserve another rerun. From a long list of favorites seven examples of the weird, crazy, funny, puzzling and unbelievable side of Japan are shown below.

It took a minute or two to figure out what the pink frame around the woman’s face is for, but then I noticed the long hair and it spatial relation to the bowl of noodles. The horribly unattractive pink face-frame is meant to keep the woman’s hair from dangling into the bowl of noodles. What’s wrong with an old-fashioned rubber band or hair clip?

There’s really more good timing to this photo than weirdness. Experience tells me that the occasion here is probably something like a school festival, a time when students often put on drag. Certainly it is a special occasion of some sort, and a time when two of the guys took a restroom break. Great picture though.

I have a funny feeling this baby is not Japanese, but Chinese. I found the photo labeled as Japanese, but something about it makes me think otherwise. In any case, it is an unusual picture and altogether charming.

The point in this photo of a trash receptacle inside a store somewhere in Japan is the small, hard-to-read English translation of the Japanese phrase at the top of the green label. The Japanese moenai-gomi means non-burnable trash, which has been translated here as NONCOMBURNABLE GARBAGE.

The Japanese prefectures of Kumamoto, Nagano and Ôita are famous for basashi, or raw horse meat and the dish is common in the Tôhoku region as well. I once had it in a Tôhoku inn and believe me, once is enough. But clearly there is also a dessert made from horse meat called basashi ice cream.

Chicken wing ice cream is a regional specialty of Nagoya, a city famous for its poultry. No, I’ve never tried this one and doubt I could be enticed.

The chocolate puff snack above is pretty good and there’s nothing at all unusual about the taste. Tastes about like any other cookie with chocolate on top. It’s the name and the shape that come across badly in this case. It looks just a little like a box of chocolate-filled colon bits. Awful in the same way that the Japanese drink Calpis was renamed initially as Cawpis for the US market. When too few shoppers bought the drink because it sounded like ‘cow piss’ the makers changed it to Calpico.