Monthly Archives: May 2012
The Spreckels Cups
The sport of polo’s Spreckels Cup has a deliciously confusing history, a tangle to delight those who take pleasure in unraveling the strands. We begin with the namesakes: Shown above, John D. Spreckels (1853-1926) and below, Adolph B. Spreckels (1857-1924), sons of California sugar baron Claus Spreckels (1823-1908). Working together, John and Adolph invested in […]
DLIWC
In November of 1968, after six weeks of Air Force Basic Training, I was sent to the Defense Language Institute, West Coast branch, at the Presidio of Monterey. There I would study Serbo-Croatian. DLIWC, a.k.a. “dilly-wick,” was a mystery to me, but I was so grateful to be leaving Basic, I gave no thought to […]
Oktoberfest
In which we explain why a celebration called Oktoberfest begins in September and features a beer called Märzen (March) The first Oktoberfest was indeed in the month of October, hosted by Bavaria’s King Maximilian Joseph to honor the marriage of his son, Crown Prince Ludwig, to Princess Therese von Sachsen-Hildburghausen on October 12, 1810. After […]
Dear Roland,
March 21, 1986 Dear Roland, Her screams and the sound of shattering glass were so close together I couldn’t tell them apart. Crouched behind the counter now she was still screaming, right in my ear, her hands tearing at my jacket as if she wanted to force her way inside, and the glass was shattering […]
The Nutcracker
December 2000 Last night Laurie and Abbie and I went into Syracuse to see “The Nutcracker” and have an early dinner at The Blue Tusk. As is traditional before ballet, I had a liverwurst sandwich with a bag of chips. Tim, the owner, treated me to a pint of Rogue Yellow Snow Ale, a holiday […]
The Hawk Letter
An incident in 1988, embellished with a new introduction in 2002. Our backyard on Crawford Avenue in Syracuse was lovely, but it was never the Garden of Eden, nor was it the Peaceable Kingdom. On one occasion, Laurie watched a cheeky sparrow take a sunflower seed from a chipmunk, who grabbed the sparrow and dragged […]
Letters and the U.S. Post Office
“It’s long past my bedtime. But writing letters is my chief dissipation at present, writing ’em to you being the chiefest and most dissipated.” — E.B. White, in a letter to a college sweetheart, September, 1921 That’s one of the things I love about letters. Sixty-one years later and I can hear E.B. White as […]
How to Make a Stone Chess Board
I am not the handiest person, but I like to putter around, and recently, while thinking about slate roofs, I got an idea for a chess board made with slate squares. I couldn’t find any stone squares of the right size on the Web, but while wandering around Lowe’s, I stumbled into the tile department […]
Polo’s Obscure Mr. Besley
The pages of polo history are filled with interesting people, even in the footnotes. Browsing the winners’ list of the Pacific Coast Open, you might breeze right by J.C. Besley; he only appears once, winning the trophy in 1913 with the Coronado Country Club. His teammates were all better known: Malcolm Stevenson and C. Perry […]
Baba Blackshirt
On the face of it, it’s the trophy presentation at the 1929 Pacific Coast Open Championship, with the sweaty but pleased San Carlos Cardinals accepting accolades while a woman smiles under a cloche hat. Oh, but the history in this photo. On the left, polo coat open and eyes on the prize, stands George Gordon […]
Faithful Readers 