Category Archives: Personal

Merry Christmas

Christmas at my Great-Grandparents. I believe the girl with the braided hair is my grandmother to-be, which would establish the date somewhere around 1910. (Click to enlarge).

To all those celebrating Christmas near and far, have joyful and happy holidays. If you might indulge me and grant me a wish, then please consider finding ways to restore Christmas as a season of hope and promise for a better world; to be shared and enjoyed among friends and extended family — free from the impersonal tyranny of mindless consumerism, shallow commerce and kitsch.

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R.I.P. Blake Edwards – Thanks For the Laughs

I love the original Pink Panther movies. Thanks for the laughs, Mr. Edwards! (Peter Sellers, who played Inspector Clouseau, passed away in 1980). May both of you rest in peace.

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I Still Have Mine!

This week’s announcement of the impeding end for Sony’s venerable, classic Walkman reverberated around the world. After all, the device has revolutionized the way we listen to music — since 1979. It once provided the soundtrack to my life and was one of my most prized possessions.

My old Walkman! Photo: Reinhard Kargl. Click to enlarge.

I still have mine! It cost a quadzillion (or what seemed to be a crazy amount at the time) and was the top of the line: all-metal construction, Dolby Noise Reduction, “Disc Drive Capstan Servo Anti Rolling Mechanism” (whatever that means), and two headset jacks. The latter was very important, since it made it possible  to get close to someone special while listening to music decidedly intolerable to parents. (Hah! Take that, iPod!)

After Sony’s initial announcement caused widespread echo around the world, the Japanese concern was quick to clarify: although Walkman cassette players will no longer be sold in Japan, some models continue to be available in select markets. (However, these models are cheapo, flimsy plastic thingies of inferior quality compared to the high-end models from the 1980s).

I think I’ll pop in a Ramones cassette and see it it still works. Until then, gabba-gabba hey! Whatever.

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Haiku

The weather in Los Angeles has been rather peculiar this year. After an unusually cloudy and cold summer, September 22 turned into the hottest day since the beginning of records in 1877. This was followed by another low pressure system. And today, Downtown L.A. broke the rainfall record for this date, set in 1916.

I love summer, but I am also looking forward to fall — with its fresh fruit, crisp air, fog, quieter times and pots of hot tea. Today I felt inspired to compose a haiku:

Thoughts floating about

like clouds in the sky, passing …

October arrived.

 

 

 

 


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Crazy Stacks of Paper

I haven’t met a journalist who does not love books.  If obsessive book collecting were not enough, we usually have huge stacks of newspaper and magazine clippings, in which we often seem to suffocate.

What do I need? What should I keep, what should I toss? Just reviewing everything takes time. And when do I find the time to file everything away so I can actually find it when I need it??

It’s hopeless. Sometimes I fear I could end up like this one day:

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Crossing The Bridge to Nowhere

Trekking up and down the East Fork of the San Gabriel River last weekend, through intense heat and about 20 wildwater crossings, we found the mysterious Bridge to Nowhere.

Bridge to Nowhere. Sheep Mountain Wilderness, California. 34°16′59″N 117°44′48″W. Click to enlarge. Photo: Reinhard Kargl, 2010

Why is there a bridge in the middle of the wilderness?

I was wondering too.

Built in the San Gabriel Mountains in 1936, the 120 ft (27 m) high bridge was supposed to be part of a road connecting the San Gabriel Valley in Los Angeles County with Wrightwood in San Bernardino County. But the road was never completed.

After being overcome by a flood in March of 1938, the road construction project was abandoned.

The bridge remains, leading nowhere. It is accessible only on foot.

Continue reading

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Mark Twain :. November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910

“The report of my death was an exaggeration,” he once noted laconically. And yet in the end, it wasn’t.

Today is the 100th anniversary of the death of one of my favorite Americans and historical figures – a journalist, author, traveler and philosopher born as Samuel Langhorne Clemens but better known under his pen name, Mark Twain. His work but perhaps more so, the way he lived his life, has been an inspiration for me since childhood.

Twain was an adventurer and explorer. A keen observer, he was convinced that it was a writer’s obligation to live life to the fullest in order to have something of interest to say. He was the embodiment of what we now call “participatory journalism”.

He was a self-made man who began his career as a typesetter and writer of humorous newspaper sketches. While working as a printer, he educated himself in public libraries during the evenings.

Twain went on to work the treacherous, highly dangerous job of a steamboat pilot, and after talking his brother into joining him, lost him in a steam boiler explosion.

Twain traveled widely and literally circumnavigated the world. He found his wife by falling in love with her photograph and befriended paupers and illiterates as well as intellectuals and royalty. He was an eccentric who in his later years wore only white from head to toe. But he was also a serious journalist, travel writer and documentarian, a book author, and a sought-after public speaker long before there was an industry hyping “media personalities”.

He made (and lost) fortunes of money (including his wife’s inheritance).

Twain was also a lifelong follower of science. He patented three inventions and was a close friend of the brilliant inventor, Nikola Tesla.

Twain supported women’s rights, the emancipation of slaves and the French and Russian revolutions. He spoke out against American imperialism and chastised the inequality of various ethnic groups before the justice system. In general, Twain made fun of mindless bureaucracies and selfish decadence. He was critical of organized religion, but became a Freemason in 1861 at Polar Star Lodge No. 79 in St. Louis. He was raised to the degree of Master Mason on July 10, 1861, but hardly commented on his ties to the fraternity.

Mark Twain’s eccentricity extended to his own death. He frequently make sardonic remarks about dying. One time, when he was believed to have been lost at sea, he published a faux article in which he promised to “investigate these reports”.

Many of the famous quotes attributed to Twain are somewhat inaccurate renditions of what he really said and wrote. This one here is easily documentable:

Twain must have jotted down this note some time in May of 1879 while staying in London. Somehow, Twain had received word that the New York Journal had published his obituary. On June 2, Twain sent a telegram to New York, and the New York Journal published this now famous quote: "The report of my death was an exaggeration. - Mark Twain"

Twain had a great fascination with Halley’s Comet. He was born during Halley’s perihelion of 1835 and predicted his own death to coincide with Halley’s reappearance in 1910. And he was right.

http://www.twain2010.org

http://www.twainquotes.com/Death.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Twain

Book recommendation:
“Mark Twain”, by Geoffrey C. Ward, Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns
Based on the documentary film by Ken Burns. Published by Alfred A. Knopf, New York 2001.
ISBN 0-375-40561-5


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R.I.P. Peter Oliver

For the fifth time in the last half year, someone close to me has departed. Time and time again, I am reminded of life’s impermanence.

I met Peter more than 15 years ago. We have been training at the same martial arts dojo and under the same master. Peter was always jovial, even during extreme physical and mental exhaustion.

Given that he was physically fit, his death seems completely senseless and stupid. Returning home one fateful night in March, he realized he had locked himself out of his West Hollywood apartment. During the attempt to climb through a upper-floor window, the ladder gave way. Unfortunately, Peter’s neck hit an obstacle during the fall, and he succumbed to his injuries.

At the memorial service, someone stated that nothing disappears without a trace. In Peter’s case, there can be no doubt about this. Peter was a skilled carpenter. His hands’ toil can be seen all over the dojo and will remain there as a testimony to his labors, and to his memory.

22nd Annual Grand Canyon Karate Camp, Flagstaff, Arizona, 2001. From left to right: Reinhard Kargl, Mike Johanns (standing), Carol Genovese, Peter Oliver, Tibor Hegedus, Stephanie Vieth, James Field Sensei, Mary-Beth Macaluso, Irene Wong, Guy Okazaki

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The Road Not Taken

Dedicated to KT.
Photo: Reinhard Kargl

This is a picture I took at the Huntington Library last week. At first I was not sure if I liked it. But when I was told that the image evoked impressions from one of my favorite poems, I was sold on it.

Here is the poem by Robert Frost, first published in 1916 in the collection Mountain Inverval. (More information can be found here.)

•••

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

•••

 

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Long Live The Flying Saucer!

Some inventions fly all over the planet. One such thing is the Frisbee, whose inventor, Walter Fredrick Morrison passed away at the age of 90 last week.

Since the 1950s, hundreds of millions of people (and their dogs) have been enjoying the flying discs. The original mass manufacturer, the American toy company Wham-O Inc., has sold more than 200 million of them. In addition, there must have been hundreds of millions of knockoffs made all over the world.

I grew up in Europe. My personal introduction to the Frisbee arrived with Kirk, an American exchange student from Ohio, who stayed with us at my parents’ house. To me as a boy, Kirk seemed very cool and very mature.

Childhood memories: Kirk in my parents' backyard, demonstrating proper Frisbee technique. It's all in the wrist!

Inventor Fredrick Morrison’s family moved from Utah to California when Fred was 11 years old. In 1937, he and his girlfriend Lucile began tossing a large popcorn lid back and forth. It seemed like a fun thing to do at a Thanksgiving party. The fun soon continued at Santa Monica Beach, where the couple switched to tossing a cake pan.

Californians are always quick to pick up a trend. When another beach-goer offered Morrison a quarter for the cake pan, it dawned on him that he had a business. (A cake pan cost just a nickel, thus allowing a hefty margin). Soon, Morrison and his girlfriend were selling cake pans at the beach.

They married in 1939. Soon afterwards, Morrison was off to the war. He served in the Army Air Force as a P-47 Thunderbolt pilot in Europe, was shot down and spent 48 days as prisoner of war.

Back home in 1946, Morrison used his aviator’s knowledge to sketch a more aerodynamical disc, which he called the Whirlo-Way. With experiments and experience, the discs’ shape was further improved and resulted in the Pluto Platter of 1955. Two years later, Morrison sold the patent to Wham-O Inc., also known for the Hula-Hoop a dozen other wacky toys. It was Wham-O that came up with the name “Frisbee” – which Morrison first resented but then (after receiving more than $2 million in royalties) made peace with.

And that’s the story!

I’m not sure what happened to Kirk after he left. But the Frisbee he gave me, made from indestructible plastic, might still be found in my parents’ basement somewhere.

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