Re-run Sunday: A toast to ice

Still not too late to impress your neighbors by planning your 200th birthday for ice next November. Yes, ice is only 199 years old. Not the kind you find in nature. No, the kind you put in the glass. The essential ice.

Not sure if it’ll be warm where you are this week, but here from summer 2012 is a story about the genius who in 1815 invented ice as we know it.

Mark your calendars for November 2015. That’s when ice celebrates its 200th birthday.

The declaration will no doubt startle those who revere the literal word.

How could ice be only 200 years old when earth endured what is known as “The Ice Age” 20,000 years ago? 

Let me to explain.

Prior to 1815, ice was a substance that inspired one expression: profanity. It was slippery. It impeded motion. It made drinking water without a campfire difficult.

Sure, there may have been some Nordic types who reveled in ice, but that’s only because they had no choice. Guaranteed, go to Disney World this February and I’ll wager you dollars to lutefisk you’ll spend at least an hour standing in line with folks named Sven and Olga.

No one in their right mind chooses to live in landscapes dominated by ice. In fact, the only species that seems to do so is one the one famously ill-suited for any kind of mobility. That is the penguin.

It can’t fly, its webbed feet make migration impossible, and its lack of thumbs rule out the hitchhiking option. They seem like agile swimmers, but that can’t be or else they’d have long ago colonized places like Key West.

So we can all agree ice is a menace to hospitable living, right?

Wrong. And that’s why 1815 is a year to commemorate.

All hail Frederic Tudor!

He is to ice what Benjamin Franklin is to electricity. He didn’t invent it, but he realized its potential and harnessed it.

In fact, you could draw a line through history right at Tudor and 1815. On one side is barbarity, the other side civilization.

Tudor is the visionary who in 1806 gazed upon frozen New England ponds and saw gold.

Perhaps I’m drawn to celebrating him and his achievement because he seems like exactly the kind of guy with whom I could sit around and enjoy a cold beer.

And that was precisely the problem.

Cold drinks were an unheard of luxury back in the 19th century. No one ever dreamed ice had a utilitarian potential.

No one but Tudor. The third son of a wealthy Boston lawyer, he was a renown family layabout who’d skipped going to Harvard, as was his privilege, because he reasoned excessive study would bore him.

Sensing a kinship?

One day he and his rich brothers were enjoying an afternoon idyll with ice cream -- I like to imagine hammocks and really, really early Jimmy Buffett songs were involved -- when the oldest brother casually remarked what a pity it was that people in the sunbaked climes would never know what it was like to experience a chill.

The speculation immediately brain barnacled in the young Tudor’s head.

Why not, he wondered, take the chill to them?

It’s interesting to wonder if he considered mass moving equatorial people north in what would be a racially charged version of Make-A-Wish. Probably not. Taking ice in the other direction made more sense.

He’d spend the next six years and thousands of dollars in other people’s money trying to make that happen. 

With borrowed money he bought a freighter and set sail on a 1,500-mile journey with a cargo preposterous enough to earn ridicule from the Boston Gazette. This from the paper’s February 10, 1806:

“No joke. A vessel has cleared the Custom House for Martinique with a cargo of ice. We can only hope this doesn’t prove a slippery speculation.”

Who knew smart ass bloggers existed 200 years ago?

His early efforts were uniform failures that led him to long stretches of debtor’s prison. The ice kept obeying basic physics and melting from solid to slush to liquid then being too tuckered from the exertion to turn to steam.

My favorite part of the story is imaging him trying to explain to baffled islanders why he kept showing up on their shores with boats full of warm water.

A restless self-promoter, he’d carry a cooler of ice with him to restaurants to add to the glasses of fellow diners to create demand where none previously existed.

He never quit and history shows that on Nov. 1, 1815, Tudor succeeded in delivering 150 tons of ice to the Caribbean, a region that today is difficult to fathom without frozen pina coladas and other cocktails to slurp.

I suppose I’m drawn to his story because it so contrasts with mine. He never had access to cold liquor and changed the world.

I have access to plenty of cold liquor and rarely bother to change my profile picture.

I bare him no historical grudge. I can’t imagine enduring these forecasted scorchers without access to ice for my bourbon or to add refreshing chill to beer-filled coolers.

He’s a man who should be memorialized.

Anyone think a big ice sculpture is too obvious?

Sounds cool to me.

Results of my weekend crashes, the computer and the car

(1,436 words)

Determined to overcome vexing computer problems, I made the hour-long drive into Pittsburgh Sunday morning with the expectation of returning home about $1,300 lighter. I figured I’d need to buy a new laptop.

Turns out I was half right.

I drove home about $1,300 lighter. But I didn’t get a new laptop.

And I spent a good portion of the last 24 hours wondering if I’d had a very good or a very bad day.

On Saturday the friendly repair gang at the Apple store in Shadyside said my computer would be ready Sunday, but they never sent word if it was done or if the hard drive restoration problem had been resolved.

So I did some resolving of my own: I decided I was going to drive in and lay out about $1,300 for a new MacBook Air. My MacBook Pro was about five years old and I figured I’d better shell out for a new one rather than spend more money on an old one that was overdue to expire anyway.

I don’t like spending money I don’t have, but I do like getting shiny new stuff and the Discover card could float the balance until that long overdue Powerball ticket finally cha-chinged.

Understand, I didn’t even know if it was ready. So driving there in time for the store opening at 11 a.m. was a bit of risk. I’d spent a good deal of time in the car the past two days trying to get this thing fixed and was eager to get home for some Sunday relaxation.

Lo and behold, they told me it was done, it was repaired, and the charge was just $59.

This was gonna be a great day!

I decided to stay an extra 90-minutes to make sure the back-up went smoothly. I’m scrupulous about backing up my hard drive.

In fact, I’m so scrupulous about backing up my virtual essentials I decided to purchase another $100 external hard drive in case the first hard drive ever failed simultaneously with the computer.

See, I can be very prudent.

Well, most of the time.

Really, it did feel like I’d already hit a jackpot. It’s a wonderful feeling expecting to spend a big chunk of change and learning the expense is unnecessary.

So I was feeling pretty good around 1 p.m. when I’d stopped in for some Pad Thai at Lulu’s Noodles in Oakland. It’s delicious. I was figuring I’d be home around 2:30 p.m. in time to commandeer the TV to watch golf and March Madness. And I’d have what now seemed like a nifty $1,300 surplus.

And that all would have happened just as planned save for one slight miscalculation of about eight inches over about .05 seconds.

It was that close.

As I said, I’d been in the car a good bit the last three days and was eager to get home. I was driving east on a pothole-strewn stretch of Fifth Avenue near Wilkinsburg.

It was the kind of calculation each of us makes maybe four or five times a day; the green light turned yellow. I had a split second to decide: could I squeak through or should I slam on the brakes?

I accelerated. It was an aggressive move by a fully engaged driver.

Do that 1,000 times here in Latrobe, birthplace of Fred Rogers, and you get through the intersection unscathed by motorists who drive mostly like Fred. Here the only other aggressive driver of any renown is Arnold Palmer and he does most of his aggressive driving with a Callaway Big Bertha Alpha on dogleg par 5s over at Latrobe Country Club.

Big cities have more than their share of aggressive drivers. On Sunday at about 2 p.m., I ran right into one. He began advancing through the green light the instant it turned.

If he hadn’t been so aggressive, I never would have hit him. Of course, if I hadn’t been so aggressive the whole point would have been moot.

So there could be no weaseling out of it. This wreck was my fault.

I told him so as soon as we’d pulled off the road to powwow.

I thought for a moment I’d never seen a vehicle like his. Then I realized I was mistaken.

I’d seen one similar to it in the 1971 Stephen Spielberg movie “Duel,” about a truck from hell being driven by an unseen madman out to terrorize a traveling salesman played by Dennis Weaver. But the truck’s the movie’s real star. It’s filthy, beat to hell and exudes menace.

That’s what the modified Dodge monster truck I hit was like. I swear its finish was like like black stucco, almost like shark skin. I was afraid to lean against it for fear it’d shred my skin. It looked indestructible. 

And it was at least when it was up against a once-sporty 2007 Saturn Vue.

He lost a driver’s side headlight. The fender may have been scratched, too, but it was impossible to tell. He estimated his damage at $75.

My car was another matter. The driver’s side front quarter panel was destroyed, the hood was wrinkled, the rearview mirror was right then in the middle of the intersection getting pulverized. And the front and rear doors were tattooed with garish rubber from his monster truck tires.

Sitting in the driver’s seat, however, it looks like nothing’s really wrong. Another eight inches and all I’d have lost was that rear view mirror.

I estimated the damaged and figured, yep, that looks like it’ll be at least $1,305.

Perfect.

The guy’s truck may have appeared Satanic, but the guy was an angel. He absolutely could not have been more understanding.

You never know how someone will react in a tense situation like this. It’s not uncommon for threats to be issued, for fists to fly or guns even to be pulled. Heck, the first thing many do is summon the police or reach up and start rubbing their neck for phantom chiropractor-enriching injuries.

I thanked him for his reaction.

“Oh, man, I could tell within the first 30 seconds you weren’t going to be an asshole about this so there was no point in making it any worse for you.”

Mom’ll be proud.

He’s a molecular biologist who runs a construction company. It’s as fascinating a story as it sounds, one I’m sure I’ll one day share.

He asked what I did for a living.

I told him I write books.

He asked what kind.

The kind, I said, that aim to help people learn how to keep bad things from ruining good days.

He thought that was hilarious.

My car is perfectly fine to drive, but I don’t know how the other parents will feel when I show up in it to pick up their kids on the nights when it’s my turn to head the car pool.

It’s been about 20 years since I’ve had a claim-worthy accident, so I’ll probably turn it in for cosmetic purposes.

I got home and, as planned, switched on the tube and enjoyed the sports. The girls had been out and returned all abuzz about the accident. I was honest and told them it was all my fault. I think a kid can learn a lot from how a parent deals with unexpected adversity.

And I began to think about those eight inches and that .05 seconds.

With just a bit more deft snap of the steering wheel the whole accident could have been avoided. That would have been great.

Then I thought about this: What if if had been eight inches in the other direction?

The vehicle frame would likely have penetrated the driver’s safety cocoon. The car would have been totaled. I could have broken a leg or an arm and lost my ability to control the car’s direction.

The Saturn could have jumped a curb and struck a bystander waiting for a bus. That bystander would have been tending a baby carriage.

I spent the rest of the night enjoying a nice pasta dish Val’d served up. We sat in front of the fireplace, watched some shows, played some games and I got to read some bedtime stories to our darling 7 year old.

We tucked the kids in, said some humble little prayers and then Val and I had a glass of wine and spent the rest of the night relaxing in the welcome peace.

Good day? Bad day?

Hell, it was one of the very best.

Related . . .

Someone keyed my car! Suspects abound . . .

I pranked the trash man today

Vegas: Dream racing my 5-minute Ferrari

Getting all kill crazy over parking spaces

Happy 50th Birthday to these words (with profanity)!

(1,495 words)

I’m convinced the day my wife fully grasps I pay $295 every year for a virtual dictionary she’s going to smash me over the head with a $17 real one.

But I can’t help myself. My subscription to the world’s oldest and biggest dictionary is my most fond extravagance.

I justify it because, hey, it is a tax deduction, I have a still-active book proposal about how words become words and because words are a writer’s tools as surely as hammer is a carpenter’s.

It’s just that only an idiot carpenter would pay $295 for a new hammer every year.

But this is no ordinary dictionary. It’s the Oxford English Dictionary, the most venerable dictionary in the history of the spoken word. A typical 3-pound desk dictionary contains about 155,000 words. The OED includes definitions for more than 600,000 words.

More than that, it includes their precise histories and examples of them used in sentences written by guys like Shakespeare and Mark Twain.

And in what is a favorite feature of mine, it includes the word’s birthday.

It’s true. Every word you use has a birthday, a day when it officially became a word recognized by the OED.

It’s a fascinating feature. You can go in year-by-year and see when a word became a word.

So every year or so I try to go back and see which words were born that year 50 years previously. I choose 50 years because they resonate with most people alive today.

For instance, last year -- the very same year I turned 50 -- I learned that it wasn’t until 1963 that there was sufficient usage and inertia for the OED to recognize the word “dipshit.”

I choose to think of it as a flukey coincidence.

But I spent about an hour on the laptop the other night sleuthing what words were born in 1964, the year OED chose to recognize 369 new words. Many are arcane or specific to obscure disciplines. But here are 26 that still have cultural relevance, many of them more germane today than ever. It is to me a fascinating list.

Check ‘em out:

A-Team: Designating elite U.S. Special Forces and paving the way for pop culture superstardom for the inimitable Mr. T some 20 years later.

aw-shucks: Maybe the perfect expression of humble bashfulness. I’m surprised this one isn’t about 100 years old.

Beatlesque: “Characteristic or reminiscent of The Beatles.” These guys were such a cultural phenomenon they became an adjective about 18 months after their first hit single. The rapidity still stuns. I’m going to be sure to watch that Ed Sullivan 50th anniversary special on, I think, February 9.

binge drinking: I just wrote a blog post about how they keep re-defining binge drinking making it easier and easier to accomplish. I like how many new words were invented by parents to describe the excesses of their Baby Boom children.

braless: I like the thought of some demure old granny hearing the word “braless” in conversation and running off to the dictionary and being traumatized by the definition.

condo: Coming off the era of Levittown housing tracts, condos were a fresh and exciting housing option. Now, I visit my Mom in one.

dork: It’s not uncommon for my own kids to describe me as the “world’s dorkiest father.” If they are strict constructionists, they are calling me the “world’s dickiest father.” Dork is, in fact, a Midwestern synonym for penis. By the way, the OED lists 78 synonyms for penis and one day I’m going to write a blog that mentions every single one of them.

drunk-driving: Another cultural touchstone. I remember my grandfather saying how there never used to be drunk driving laws and if you were caught too tipsy behind the wheel, the police would just take your keys or drive you either home or to the town drunk tank. Then they came up with a legal term for it, got the lawyers involved and now it’s just an enormous racket from which no convivial person is safe.

GIGO: Garbage in garbage out. How come I’ve never heard this before? It’s very handy.

jive-ass: I read this one and immediately thought of the scene from “Airplane!” where Barbara Billingsley translates “jive” from two black passengers speaking in what used to be known as jive. In fact, the dictionary describes jive-ass as a person who loves fun or excitement. So I’m a jive-ass! I hope you are, too!

kvetch: I would have thought this Hebrew word was as old as Moses. I guess not. Maybe it was against his nature for Moses to kvetch.

monokini: Never heard of it? Me, neither. It’s a one-piece beach garment or swimming costume worn by women or girls; half a bikini. Let’s bring this useful one back.

motherfucker: Oh, boy. See, the OED includes all the great swear words, too. They were the very first words I looked up! Author Greg Olear wrote a really great book a couple of years ago called “Fathermucker.” Pure genius. Humans prove over and over again how creative we can be when it comes to expressing profane disdain for one another. So happy birthday, motherfucker! One more piece of mofo trivia: Grace Slick is direct a descendant of Mayflower Pilgrims and the first person to ever say motherfucker on live TV (the Dick Cavett show).

ninja: person trained in the feudal art of Japanese art of ninjutsu. Another one I mistakenly thought would have been ancient. If I was frivolous with my time, I’d delve into this one and a few others. Well, I mean more frivolous.

ooky: The only time I’ve ever heard this word meaning “unpleasant, repellent, slimy” used by adults is when it is sung in the theme from “The Addams Family.” And when did “The Addams Family" first appear on TV? 1964.

pat-down: Same meaning as it did last time you went through an airport. My first of maybe 200 travel stories I did for msnbc.com stemmed from my pitch about what people named Pat Downs think about pat-downs. It was a really fun story and I’m still Facebook friends with one very cheerful Arkansas woman named Pat Downs. I’ll link her story below.

picturephone: Today, they are ubiquitous, but the first picture phone was demonstrated as a see-as-you-talk call between the World’s Fair in New York and Anaheim, California. No mention if toddler Steve Jobs had anything to do with it.

Pop-Tart: A proprietary name for a flat, rectangular pastry with a sweet filling intended to be heated in a toaster. I’d have in college perished without the Pop-Tart. I like how that word has morphed into a pejorative description for young mostly female singers like Miley Cirus who are usually anything but flat.

pratfall: Geez, this word is only 50 years old? What word did they use to describe what Charlie Chaplin had been doing all those years ago?

sitcom: I’d love to coin a word like this. There are a lot of crappy sitcoms, sure, but good 30-minute sitcoms like “Taxi,” “Cheers,” “Seinfeld,” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” have provided me with some of my life’s most carefree moments. So we’ll always have sitcoms. Amen.

Skank: Yes, there were no skanks prior to 1964. Today, many singles bars are full of dorks and skanks. Progress? I don’t know.

skateboard: You now, I never owned a skateboard? I don’t feel deprived. I liked my banana seat bike.

skinny dip: Why this, a word to describe one of humanity’s most joyful activities, wasn’t around until 1964 makes me feel sad for all the people who came before ’64. I’ll link a skinny dip story at the bottom, too. And I’m using the word bottom purely for descriptive purposes and not to be cheeky.

superpub: Guaranteed, the dude who coined this word ended up in a few short years coming up with the word disco. A good pub never needed an upgrade. Pubs are super enough. A superpub described a once-decent bar with a dance floor and  strobe lights. I’m glad I never hear anyone enthusiastically describe my favorite hangouts as superpubs.

TV land: Not the network, yet. This referred to the state of mind. I remember the first time we learned our cable was broadcasting TV Land was Christmas Eve, I swear, in about 1998. Val was fulfilling her duties as church organist for the late service. She came home around 10 p.m., snatched the remote from my hands and started flipping through and -- lo and behold -- found “Bewitched” playing behind the little TV Land logo. We watched nothing but that channel for the next four years.  I still remember that as the night of Val’s Christmas Miracle. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her happier.

yuck: This word is just 50 years old? C’mon! Picky babies have been saying this since the shortly after the very first pea harvest.

Related . . .

My $295 dictionary

Skinny dipping on National Nude Recreation Week

CDC report on binge drinking has me re-defining binge drinking

What Pat Downs think of pat-downs

Word Quest: My mission to land a word in the dictionary

“Dipshit” & me turn 50!

Re-run Sunday: An alphabetically ordered world

Tomorrow's the first day of school here so I thought today would be a good day to re-run my Sept. 2011 post about how the world would be better if more of our lives were structured like home rooms. I'm always pleased to see when this one pops back up, which is happening more and more. Enjoy your Sunday!

I was hashing out the first week of school recently with a high school English teacher friend of mine. He said the year’s off to a great start.

The kids seem interested, well-behaved, etc.

Who’s in your home room, I asked.

“A good bunch. They’re engaged, respectful --”

That’s not what I’m talking about. What letter kids do you have?

“I have the As. I always get the As. My room is the first one in the hall and that’s where they put all the As.”

See, that bugs Rs like me. While the As could just coast right into their room, I had to walk much farther down the hall.

The extra distance naturally gave me less study time, fewer opportunities to catch up on homework and left me starting each day sweaty and fatigued from the extra exertions.

I blame the As for conversely adding to the reasons why I’ve never gotten very far in since high school.

So I’ve never liked As, much less earned any.

I asked my friend if any of the Gs, Ms, Ts or other students called his room the A-hole.

He said no, but I think he’s going to defensively recall our conversation the next time some unruly kid glares at him and mouths, “A-hole!”

I wish more of the world went by alphabetical order. It would ensure we’d meet a better cross section of people.

For instance, I drink in a bar with some Bs, some Ss, some Ms, a pair of Ps, some Ks, a U or two and surnames covering just about every letter in the alphabet except perhaps Q and Z.

And the owner doesn’t discriminate. It’s not like if a neighborhood Quatrini or Zelmore walked in and the owner, a fair-minded C, would say, “We don’t serve your kind in here.”

But while our last names may be varied, we are alike in nearly every other regard. We’re all white, middle-aged, paunchy and have bad haircuts.

There ought to be bars that are ordered just like our old homerooms. It would be a boon to diversity.

That way I’d drink with a Spanish Rodriguez, a Jewish Rabinovitz, an Irish Rafferty, an African-American Robinson and maybe a Korean Rhee.

It would bring me into friendly contact with a whole rainbow of humanity, at least those whose last names begin with R and enjoy getting all pie-eyed every night from 5 to 7 p.m.

The start of school and homeroom order always has me thinking of Theodore Zyzak.

He for more than 40 years was the last name in the 1,853-page Pittsburgh phone book. He may have been the last name in all America. You have to figure if they started calling roll of everyone in America it would take until at least 2019 until he’d get to raise his hand and say, “Here!”

He always fascinated me because I knew in high school some mean boys -- I swear it wasn’t me -- who’d crank call him and ask was it was like to always be last.

Years later, I asked him that very same question in a professional setting for a Pittsburgh Magazine story I did about him and what it was like being first in last.

“Ah, it was awful,” he said. “I never got to enjoy those idle moments after they call your name. No, they’d call my name and it would be, ‘Okay, open your books to page . . .”

The worst, he said, were the inoculations. He’d have to sit there through escalating anxieties as kids were alphabetically summoned and would howl in pain or faint dead away.

He said the only time he ever got called first was when some sergeant felt creative and reversed the alphabet and ordered Zyzak into hazardous duty in Okinawa and later in Korea.

A proud Pole, he said he never considered changing his name to something like “Byzak” or taking the coward’s dodge and having his phone number unlisted.

It’s been years since we talked. I wonder how he’s doing.

For all I know, this noble elderly gent may have recently passed on and is awaiting heavenly summons.

I just hope this time the poor guy doesn’t have to wait an eternity to hear them call his name.