kimcatch22

I Love Lucy and LOST!

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I did it!

Ronnie did it in the 5th when he mentioned it on the radio.

Shh..Lilly

no-hitter thru 6 today.

I AM GOING TO PUKE BY THE END OF THIS GAME!! I am so nervous...

edit: also, look what your post almost did.

edit edit: fuck.

Brewers fired Yost.

http://www.bizjournals.com/milwaukee/stori.../15/daily7.html

i am really enjoying the two new songs on her myspace. anyone heard the whole album yet?

Yes, I really like it. Those songs are gonna sound great in the venues she's got lined up for this tour.

He's off to the great gig in the sky.

RIP.

I thought about going to this game with my brother-in-law, who is a Cubs fanatic, but chose instead to be lazy. Perhaps my one chance at seeing one in person... I'll be kicking myself for a long time.

I was gonna go but had a directv appointment scheduled for 8am-noon... and the guy showed up at 3:30.

ZAMBRANO!!!!! OH YEAH!!!!

Vibes to everyone this hit. Besides images of flooded Houston streets, yesterday I kept seeing footage of the Chase building with all the windows blown out on its east side. How bad is the building damage in other parts of town?

Growing up in the western burbs of Chicago, air traffic is a fact of life -- it's background noise and objects in your peripheral view of the sky every 60 seconds. The eerie stillness of the skies in the post-9/11 days was deafeningly silent. It felt like calm before the storm every time you were outside. My high school marching band practiced in the school parking lot, and at practice on the night the air traffic grounding was lifted, everyone stopped mid-march and stared at that first lone plane in the sky. After a few days of silence, the faint sound of its engines felt like it was landing on the ground next to us. The eerie silence and the perceived loudness of the return to "normalcy" are the two memories I can't shake.

anyhoo, it's just my horny opinion. Wood is too risky as far as I'm concerned.

Your horny opinion would be about wood.

I can only remember Marmol having one short, bad patch -- post All-star break. He's made things interesting a few times, but I think he's been pretty amazing this year.

That was a brutal patch. Overall he has been amazing, but that rough patch had flashes of how he looked last year, which was terrifying.

Samardzija gets under my skin, for some reason.

Notre Dame. And all the unnecessary letters in his last name.

yes. whatever his stats are, every time I see him play he either barely makes it through the inning or he blows it. he's blown it too many times and he could do it again and ruin our chances in the playoffs. the Cubs have other closers, like Carlos Marmol, that can do the job just fine. sorry, but I'm not waivering on this.

Marmol's been just as hot and cold as Wood. And I don't know what the hell Samardzija did last Saturday, but I blame Notre Dame football for that turd of a performance.

They're talking about teaching 9/11 on Chicago Public Radio's Eight Forty-Eight right now. The podcast will be up this afternoon if you can't catch the live stream, I think.

I'd like to hear what you all think of this theory: With the use of the "staff" to meet the construction deadlines, the White City is perhaps the beginning of the disposable commercialism that characterizes our current culture.

That's an interesting theory and while the White City no doubt played a part in the development of disposable commercialism culture, it's an oversimplification to say that it was the beginning of such a culture. The industrial revolution made mass production possible, and for some time before the Fair material culture was already moving away from homemade artifacts to mass-produced objects. Instead of owning a small amount of family heirlooms, people were buying factory-produced items.

The rise of department stores and mail-order catalogs (like Sears and Montgomery Ward in Chicago) in the years after the Fair made it even easier for people to buy mass-produced goods. If you ever have a chance to take a look at a circa-1900 Sears catalog, do it -- you'll be amazed at what they sell. Anything and everything! And if anyone has ever toured a faithfully-recreated Guilded Age house museum, you may have noticed the gaudy patterns in the upholstery. They look tacky to us, but to people back then they were a marvel of what the industry could produce. The tackier, the better -- and people ate it up!

But I definitely think the White City represents a "changing of the guard," so to speak. Larson captures this well in his portrayal of Olmstead's agony and Burnham's vision. And because the White City happened on an international stage, it certainly sped up the consumption culture.

Don't forget about the animosity amongst Midwesterners as well. Early on in the book when Larsen is discussing the bidding process and all of the cities who submitted bids, the St. Louis bid was basically mocked by all concern, including the Chicago group. Is this the genesis of the "strained" relationship between the two cities, or is this just a contiuation of an earlier, historical rivalry? Anyone in St. Louis care to chime in?

It goes back at least to the Kansas-Nebraka Act of 1854, when Stephen Douglas stole St. Louis's thunder by proposing the eastern terminus of a transcontinental railroad in Chicago. Chicago is what it is today because of Douglas's eventual success in getting us the major Midwestern rail terminal.

edit: I am from Chicago.

Here's the thing I love about the book and Larson's style. The "asides". Indicative probably of someone who's inclined towards trivia anyway. The origins of Samuel Francis Smith's "America"...the influence of the Fair on American culture and infrastructure (Alternating vs. Direct Current. A BIG fav. of mine as I've worked for GE for 16 years and take some subversive pleasure in seeing Edison's push for DC undercut by Westinghouse).

The trivia is very cool and helps bring the events to life as well as place them in context with things readers may be more familiar with. Scattering trivia throughout the text illuminates history and I feel might convert people who previously thought history is stuffy (wishful thinking? ) Like llynn said, the trivia gave me a lot of inspiration to go out and research this era.

Also, when I saw him speak, Larson confessed to being a trivia nut. So good call!

Happy birthday, Dunja!!!

Lots of love to you!!

Some friends of mine, history majors, said that they had a hard time taking this book seriously as "real history". The author has obviously documented a lot, but to the extent that he's getting into the mind of Holmes, he's had to take a whole lot of liberties, too. Does this detract from the author's credibility for you in other ways, or are those leaps acceptable for a serious historian?

I'll take a stab at the first question, gogo! My response takes into consideration the notes and sources at the end of the book plus something Larson said when I saw him speak last year, so if you consider those spoilers, skip over my post.

*possible spoiler alert*(if you think end notes can be spoiled!)

Popular history and academic history read as very different things, but as long as they draw from primary sources (as opposed to popular history just "making things up" or regurgitating secondary sources) both are "real history." The difference in a historical text being a bestseller versus being something read mostly by the professional community is how it is written. (Come take a look at my assigned readings if you need proof! ) Unless you're studying history at a professional level, you're probably not inclined to process dry academic texts. And the general population is equipped to handle a history that reads like a novel: it's the format we have the most experience with. So delivering academic history in a more accessible narrative format is great news, in my history-loving eyes.

Larson's narrative style does not detract from his credibility. He draws heavily from primary sources, including Holmes's journals. In his notes, he elaborates on the anguish he experienced over how to portray scenes in which there were no witnesses and discusses how he came to terms with an acceptable approach, drawing inspiration from other disciplines to create what evidence suggests is a faithful recreation. I'll leave it at that so as to keep "spoilers" to a minimum -- you can read the notes for yourself. And I can't remember for sure, but I believe when I saw him speak he said that anything in quotations came directly from a primary source. He may have inserted it as dialog, but it was an actual written quote from one of the book's players and still exists somewhere in a library or archives.

Any "leaps" he makes are an acceptable part of telling the story. That's all that history is, really: names and dates strung together by leaps and deductions (yet not even names and dates are certain, sometimes!) Objectivity in historical study, much as we'd like it to exist, doesn't. Omnisciency also does not exist. In that sense, all historians must make leaps like Larson's. History as we remember it from our school days may sound like fact, but it actually is an exercise in interpretation. As interpretation, it is open to revision, reframing, and fresh interpretation as new questions arise. This is what Larson does in this book by weaving together the Holmes and Burnham stories to examine the greater possibilities of human nature -- he examines the events in the book as a way to answer his own historical questions.

Finally, a side note: I've talked to quite a few history profs about this book. The general consensus is that this is a strong work told in an easily-accessible and appealing way -- and they're all jealous that Larson did it first.

My brother's working for the Colts and texted me some pics of the roof opening. Pretty sweet new facility, although the field doesn't have drainage so if they don't get the roof closed before bad weather rolls in, there could be trouble.

Happy happy birthday!!! yayayayyayyyy!!!

:party

Drink up!! Cubs AND Bears trying to give you birthday victories today!!

Happy birthday, Sam!!!!!

So, since you are somewhat wasted, does that mean I can take advantage of your posts? Have my way with them and such? Okay, nevermind.I'm getting drunk, and this typing thing is getting harder, and I'm getting stupider.Is that how you spell it?Dumb.I can spell that.

 

Edit-we shouldn't be doing this in a baby thread.

That's how baby threads are made.