I was just working on something in Google Docs and needed to insert a letter “a” with a circumflex. I clicked on “insert symbol” and searched for “a,” but none of the options were what I needed. Then I noticed that there was a box where you could use your finger to draw the symbol you needed. (I’m working on a tablet; wouldn’t work with an older computer.)
Well, worth a try, I thought.
Definitely worth a try! Look what I got when I drew a picture of what I was looking for. Thanks, Google!
In reading a novel set in England around 1815 this past week, I followed two characters into a “dovecote” that had fallen into disrepair.
I’d heard that term before and vaguely associated it with some kind of architectural feature similar to a cupola. I probably would have glossed right over it, as I’ve been doing with unfamiliar words in novels my entire life (and which, ironically, is how I’ve built up a pretty strong vocabulary), except that one of the characters looked up and commented on how the thick walls were full of pigeonholes going all the way up to the roof.
Pigeonholes?
Like the pigeonholes in desks? Yes, but the actual originals upon which the desks’ tiny compartments for storing papers are based. I like pigeonholes in desks, but I don’t like to be “pigeonholed,” that is, labeled/categorized in such a way that my opportunities are limited. Beyond the desk cubbies and the labeling, though, I’ve never really considered what a pigeonhole actually is.
So I did a little quick background reading and found some cool info on dovecotes. Basically they were medieval chicken coops, except for doves and pigeons. Birds like these were an important food source centuries ago. For example, “squab,” which I sort of knew was some kind of game bird dish, is actually a young pigeon. Similar, I guess, to the way a chicken can be a broiler/fryer (young), a roaster (older), or a stewer (even older).
Anyway, the dovecotes were often built as towers with an opening in the roof. The birds would go off on their own to forage during the day and then come home to roost at night, sleeping in their little pigeonholes, safe and sound from predators. Until the day came for them to make a menu appearance, of course.
Oh, yuck. I just remembered that scene in Gigi where Leslie Caron has to learn how to eat ortolans correctly. You eat the whole bird apparently (except the feet). The whole bird. I guess that would be somewhat similar to eating doves and pigeons back in the day. Eating ortolans is illegal now in France, but not because it’s disgusting or inhumane, only because the little birds were so popular a delicacy that they’re endangered as a species.
Now that I think about it, the passenger pigeon became extinct in America because it was hunted in such massive numbers as a commercial food source (and also apparently for recreational target shooting, trapshooting with real birds instead of clay pigeons). Passenger pigeons as a food item were shot in the Midwest and shipped by train to Eastern cities.
Did you know, coincidentally, that one of the last surviving flocks of passenger pigeons was kept by an amateur ornithologist in Milwaukee named David Whittaker? I didn’t, not till I read one of the Slate articles linked to below. Now I have a new little research adventure to tackle. If /when I discover anything more about this flock, I’ll be sure to share 🙂
Meanwhile, here are some links to additional articles on dovecotes and pigeons, in case you’re interested in learning more:
Today’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel contains a fascinating oral history of the December 31, 1967, “Ice Bowl” NFL Championship Game between Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers and Tom Landry’s Dallas Cowboys.
Link to the article here.
Several thoughts come to mind after reading the article. Most most prominent is the realization that this game should NEVER have been played in the first place. Several of the players suffered lasting effects from frostbite and injuries related to the bitter cold and icy conditions on the field that day. Blame goes to NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle, who more or less ignored his own players’ well-being while concentrating his attention instead on the AFL Championship Game he decided to attend in Oakland, California.
Along with wondering why the NFL commissioner would attend another league’s championship instead of literally minding his own business and attending the one he was responsible for, I guess my main takeaway from reflecting on Rozelle’s radio silence that day is a conviction that people in the top jobs are morally obligated to maintain a laserlike focus on the people they serve. Which Rozelle did not. Although communications technology fifty years ago was not what it is today, and although the huge drop in temperature from the mid-twenties to -16 degrees took everyone by surprise, Rozelle still should have been on top of weather conditions (December 31 in Wisconsin, after all😄) and been ready to call the game off if necessary.
On the other hand, my second takeaway from this article is how AMAZING these players were, not to mention the referees and coaching staffs and all the fans (those 50,861 hardy souls!) who filled the stadium that day. It takes stories like this, the stuff of legend really, to illustrate the extremely stern stuff of which humans are made and the astonishing, incredible greatness that we’re capable of when faced with an insurmountable challenge.
It’s hard to believe now, but it must have rained last week. That’s when I snapped this photograph of/in a puddle on the sidewalk in front of MSOE’s Campus Center.
This recurring puddle has been a remarkably fertile source of photos for me, including this one of the Plaza East office building as raindrops were just starting to fall again . . .
. . . and this one of the Grohmann Museum, a favorite that wound up in the alumni art exhibition celebrating my undergraduate school’s fiftieth anniversary.
Where will I turn to for inspiration once the city someday repaves and improves this sidewalk’s drainage?
P.S. ~ Thank you to my friend and fellow blogger Karen Spivey for her poem/post today that got me thinking about how negatives may actually be positive forces in our lives 🙂
Taken this afternoon as a light, powdery snow fell across Milwaukee.
Made a Starbucks run during a two-hour break in between meetings and dinner with a job candidate last Thursday. Stopped on the way back to take the first photo when I noticed the striking shadows cast against the lower level of MSOE’s Campus Center across the street.
Photo taken at 3:45 p.m.
Then, practically as soon as I’d put my gloves back on and picked up my coffee again, I noticed that those shadows had already changed. So down once more went coffee to the sidewalk; off again came the gloves. Snapped the second photo, put myself back together, and started walking up the hill to the Grohmann Museum (where my office is).
Photo taken at 3:46 p.m.
Once again noted a shift in the shadows, this time far more noticeable, before taking just a few additional steps. Gone were the interesting shadows I’d seen just a couple of minutes earlier. Notice, too, how the area between the windows is now completely shadowed and the shadow of the sign on the left has disappeared.
Photo taken at 3:48 p.m.
On the other hand, you can now start to make out the shadow of a harp light. Even as the interesting shadows that first caught my eye exited the scene, a new one had made its entrance. If only I’d been alert enough to notice, I could have waited one more minute and taken another photo once it sharpened and became more defined.
Then again, though, once that shadow began to fade, another would probably have begun materializing, and I might never have gotten back to my office 🙂
The Milwaukee School of Engineering logo, created by Brooks Stevens (the industrial designer famous for the Jeep Wagoneer and the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile, among other things), as reflected in the windows of the old German-English Academy Building last night when I was leaving work.
Lots of links today, so you can check out anything you’d like to know more about. By the way, “Mozee” is a nickname for MSOE that I assume arose from the Brooks Stevens logo, which spells out “M-O-S-E” if read from top to bottom, left column first.
I have loved Fast Company for at least 20 years. It’s sort of a “new economy” business magazine, but it’s actually more about ideas and people than it is about business, industry, or technology. I cited an old Fast Company profile on an über-productive inventor/creator in one of my (very) previous posts on creativity, in fact. (See my post, “Creativity, Mr. Patent, Keith Richards, and me” HERE. See the original Fast Company article, “Mr. Patent,” HERE.)
Lately, with our department’s program switch from the Technical Communication major to its new User Experience and Communication Design (UXCD) major, I’ve been following/reading Fast Company’s design magazine online, Co.Design. I like it for its very wide-ranging take on what “design” is, and if you like to think about “creativity” or “creative thinking,” you would really love Co.Design, too.
Digression: Have you noticed that a magazine in its online form usually DOESN’T have italicized titles when people write about it? Like it’s a “place” more than a “text”? So I may switch back and forth on such items in my blog; if I do, you’ll know that’s why and let me slide. (Right? 🙂 )
So anyway, the point of today’s post (finally!): Co.Design has a list of super cool and mostly reasonably priced gifts that you can buy now at the last minute from Amazon. Link to that article/list HERE if you’re interested.
My favorite suggestion? Never Use Futura, by Douglas Thomas, which costs just over $16. A “must” for font geeks! And anyone else who is curious and welcomes new creative insights.
As reflected in the second-floor window of the MSOE Campus Center across the street from my office around 5:45 last night 😄
County parks workers began putting down the water earlier this week, and today I saw the Zamboni smoothing over the snow we got yesterday.
I’m at Starbucks (of course😄), which is apparently the only Starbucks in the U.S. and probably therefore in the world that is part of a park. Definitely the only Starbucks with an ice rink and skate rental!
Milwaukee’s Slice of Ice rink opens tomorrow, December 15, with FREE skate rentals from 4-6 pm. ‘Tis the season!
Katherine Wikoff 