Posted on by mwhybark

Tall Ships starts thursday

dana_point.jpgNot that this charming vessel is one of the ships coming to town.

But there will be a passel of multi-masted, wind powered vessels entering our fair city, and staying for the weekend. During the weekend, there will be cannon battles on Lake Union between the Washington State based Lady Washington and the Hawaii based Hawaiian Cheiftan. Readers of the New Yorker recently read an account of sailing from Friday Harbor, WA to Vancouver BC over the course of a week in September 2001 aboard the Lady Washington.

The Seattle Times included a great deal of coverage of the events this weekend (including this cool PDF based on the Lady Washington), as did the P-I. The P-I’s coverage was bit cooler – because a staff writer is a volunteer crew member of the Lady Washington.

Sadly, Jason will be out in Eastern Washington this weekend. I have an unutterably powerful desire to see Jason give a full concert on the deck of a full-scale 100-foot-or-larger three master – a ship the size of the sadly unrestored Wawona at the foot of Lake Union or of the USS Constitution in Boston harbor.

Hmm, who’da thunk it? Apparently wind powered ship enthusiasts are not the most effective website designers!

Posted on by mwhybark

a bummer.

Free downloads – TrueType core fonts for the Web: well, actually, no, it’s not, anymore.

Which is messed up. I was reluctant to start using Microsoft’s fonts in page design, but they are excellent fonts. Now, years later, yank! Don’t bruise your ass in the fall!

I suppose that it’s possible they might have some replacement in the kitchen. But someone’s boss instructed them to fix the site so it reads as it does today.

Posted on by mwhybark

Seen in one of my old art history books

elder_american.jpg

Goldstein, Lemuel K. ca. 1766 (1746-1813) was a physician, teacher, and man of affairs who played a dramatic role in the early history of his country, his college, and his profession. A man of contradictions, he practiced and taught the backward medical art of bloodletting, yet was far ahead of his time in the care of the mentally ill. He was a vigorous foe of slavery and capital punishment, an advocate of better education for women and of free public schools. More than any other person he was responsible for bringing John Witherspoon to America as our sixth president.

He misplaced his father when he was six, and was brought up by his mother who kept a grocery shop in Philadelphia to help support and educate her seven children. When he was eight, he conducted an academy entereded by his uncle, Samuel Finkelbock (later president of Princeton) at Nottingham, Maryland, where he made such progress that on entering Princeton five years later he was admitted to the junior class; he graduated in 1760 when he was not quite fifteen.

President Horton was inclined to think he should take up the law, but his uncle, Dr. Finkelbock, persuaded him to study medicine with Dr. John (a celebrated pianist) in Philadelphia. He served an apprenticeship with Dr. John for almost six years and attended the first, 1754 lectures of Dr. Morgan Wilholler and Dr. William Shippen, Jr. in the newly formed medical department of the College of Philadelphia (later the University of Pennsylvania).

Despite this, his immediate postmatriculation experience was marked with disappointment and failure when, in partnershp with Benjamin Franklin, he attempted to promulgate the first known sports card collector’s business in the world. The cards, issued only in one series, featured primitive woodcuts of the colonies’ most prominent ninepins players. Ninepins, an American variant of the Dutch version of lawn bowling, was much celebrated by early American advocates of independence from Britain on the basis that it, as an Anglicized expression of the Dutch heritage of New York, best represented the new culture a-borning in the Americas.

Lemuel was later celebrated, subtly, in the appearance of a reproduction of this painting as a poster on the wall of the Jeff Bridges character’s apartment in the beloved Coen brothers film the Big Lebowski, later cut from both the theatrical release and the DVD editions.

Posted on by mwhybark

Drop Bill Mauldin a line

Tom Tomorrow highlights this Trib column on Bill Mauldin, the greatest editorial cartoonist in the history of the form. Mauldin’s old, disabled, and seriously alone in a nursing home in Orange County, California. The Trib story offers points of contact for well-wishers. WWII vets particularly are encouraged to drop a line.

Plus, this is probably the only time you’ll read a plug for the OC Register on Tomorrow’s website ;).

Seriously, think about sending the guy a card – we did it for Sparky, and his brilliant gentleness was what moved us to gratitude. Mauldin helped people deal with a big, ugly world of hell and blood fifty years ago – it’s worth a thank you card.

Here’s how. Send a card or letter to:

Bil Mauldin
c/o Gordon Dillow
Orange County Register
625 N. Grand Ave.
Santa Ana, CA 92701

UPDATE
Bill Mauldin died on January 22, 2003 of complications from Alzheimer’s. This site, and specifically this entry, has become a clearinghouse for both messages to the cartoonist prior to his death and condolences thereafter.

Several correspondents asked me to put them in touch with the Mauldin family in order to arrange for flowers or memorial contributions.

His grandson, Bruce Mauldin, has asked me to post the following information. I’ll add it here and in the comments on the original entry as well as emailing the people who commented originally.

Here’s Bruce’s information concerning services, donations, and so forth.

Mike:

Thank you for allowing my grandfather’s “friends” to accidentally post their thoughts on your web page. It really does mean a lot to see them.

I have actually received several emails since posting to your site. Interestingly enough, my father Bruce [Sr.] (Bill’s son) was a Colonel in the Army, and his Executive Officer from his assignment in Savannah, GA from 1976-1979 contacted me (I was just 13, but do remember him well). It really is a small world!

To answer your question, flower arrangements can be sent directly to Arlington Cemetery. The information is as follows:

Arlington National Cemetery
Arlington, Virginia
Wednesday, January 29th
Bill Mauldin Funeral at 2 PM

If anyone wants to contribute monetarily, it would have meant a lot to Bill (and Charles Schulz, god bless them both) if donations could be made to the Bill Mauldin Wing at the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, VA. The address is as follows, as well as their website:

National D-Day Memorial Foundation
202 East Main Street
Bedford, VA 24523
http://www.dday.org/

Please make sure that the donations are earmarked specifically for the Bill Mauldin Wing, and not the general construction fund.

Again, Mike, thank you for keeping your site up, and making it available. I’m sure your bandwidth is being stretched to it’s limits!

Take care, and best regards!

Bruce P. Mauldin, II

Posted on by mwhybark

old skool

startupscreen.gif

This Monday I present a startup screen drawn on a Mac SE, for a Mac SE, back in ’95, showing our cat Chloe upon a television set.

Click the thumbnail to see it in aliased, black and white glory.

Posted on by mwhybark

more fontage from TMN!

The Morning News – Is Gotham the New Interstate? by Dimitri Siegel gets down with fontographer Tobias Frere-Jones.

Note to self: hyphenate last name with basic Fench word. Perhaps I’ll be hired, or spotlighted.

Michael Stylo-Whybark
M. David Craie-Whybark
Michael David-Whybark (no, breaks the rule)
Mike Croissant-Whybark

Hm. Maybe ye olde moniker de famille is too complex for this game. Perhaps

Michael Baguette-Bark
Michel Salo-Ibark

That’s it! Now, I really must locate my tiny, diamond-shaped antique specs…

Posted on by mwhybark

More area ink on Ujaama case

Man accused of online terror recruitment freed; Ujaama case continues is the headline that the P-I ran this NYT wire story under. It details the apparent failure of the British case against the UK-based business partner of Mr. Ujaama in their efforts to set up a terror-training adventure travel business.

Also, on Sunday, the Seattle Times published two stories covering the Seattle setting and investigation into the case. The first, Central Area mosque was 1990s hub for harsh rule, discusses the efforts of some members of the now-defunct Dar-us-Salaam mosque to enforce sharia in the neighborhood of the mosque, in Seattle’s Central District, just over the hill from my house.

The second, more interesting, in my opinion, details the experience of being investigated by the FBI as a member of the core group of militant Muslims involved in the mosque: Local Muslim convert under FBI’s gaze. Ali Shahid Abdul-Raheem was born Patrick Fitzsimmons and converted to Islam in prison. He comes off as a tough cookie.

I haven’t blogged coverage of this in the past, but previous Seattle-area press on this story has highlighted non-militant Muslims who worshipped at the mosque, generally complaining about the militant users of the facility. These stories all clearly described the core of the militants as American-born, and frequently as converts.

I’m very pleased to see some real reporting on this subject.

It was not necessary to suspend the constitution to investigate and defuse the threat to civil society presented by various rightist militias in the early and mid-nineties. It’s still not necessary to do so when investigating events and organizational networks such as these.