culture – Page 4 – Life In A Word

Fruit of the Bloom

On Monday I noticed a lot of the wearing o’ the green because, of course, Americans celebrate St. Patrick’s Day as if we are somehow Irish. It’s a fitting burst of color as winter slowly but inevitably surrenders the seasonal baton. Soon you’ll find a full-on rainbow of blooms in every garden you pass. For now however, let’s drink and dance in honor of another bright color this week: pink. More to today’s topic, cherry pink.

If you’re tuning in from Washington D.C. you already know where I’m going with this one. Today is the first day of spring, and the beginning of the Cherry Blossom Festival in our nation’s capital: four weeks of seemingly countless opportunities to celebrate the flowering of the graceful trees on the banks of the Potomac. If you’d asked me a week ago what the bloomin’ fuss is all about, I’d have said the festival’s significance is as shallow as the water in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. But now I’m properly informed. There’s more to this story than just pretty in pink.

In the early 1900s, America and Japan were unconditionally friendly countries (years before that little dust-up in the 1940s). To acknowledge the friendship, Tokyo’s mayor shipped 3,000 Japanese cherry trees to Washington D. C. There’s a longer, more convoluted history behind this gesture, including players from both countries making repeated efforts to populate the city with trees, but the details are about as interesting as pushing a bill through Congress. Suffice it to say cherry trees were planted along the river, up and down the avenues, and in numbers worthy of an annual festival starting in the 1930s.

I love cherries; always have. I think the flavor itself appealed to me before the fruit, in the popular junk food of the 1970s. Hostess Fruit Pies. Life Savers. Slurpees from 7-11. Or the proverbial maraschino on top of an ice cream sundae. As much as I got my fill of those, I could never get my fill of my mother’s homemade cherry pie, and I mean homemade. The cherries were passed down from her mother each year, picked, jarred, and ready to go. The crust was made from scratch, including the signature latticework on top. It’s a wonder the butter wasn’t churned from the milk of a family cow.

It’s also a wonder I’ve never been to D.C.’s Blossom Festival, considering my unabashed affection for the fruit. I’m sure I’d find a couple dozen new ways to enjoy cherries besides the usuals. I’d happily scarf down a serving of flambéed Cherries Jubilee over ice cream, or the cherry-filled sponge cake of a Black Forest gateau. For the more adventurous there’s a savory Hungarian soup made with sour cherries.

Of course, there’s a lot more to the Blossom Festival than just food. You’ll find parades, concerts, and kite-flying, with every shade of pink you can imagine. Tour the historic Anderson House, filled with art and floral displays (featuring the cherry blossom, of course). Compete in a “Petals and Paddles” boat race across the tidal basin surrounded by the trees. Or get wet in “Pink in the Pool”, a family-friendly swim party replete with colorful beach balls. There’s even an “Opening Ceremony” event on the first Saturday, (already sold out by the time I checked the website). The weeks-long agenda proudly declares “events are primarily free” but I beg to differ. Tickets to the first several on the list were decidedly pricey.

For all I’ve just written, it’s a wonder the word “cherry” appears less than ten times in the hundreds of posts I’ve published on Life In A Word. One time I referred to the children’s game “Hi Ho! Cherry-O”. Another I talked about Cherry Coke. The rest were the same things I mention here – ice cream sundaes, Slurpees, and so on. So let’s add the Blossom Festival to the list, shall we? With four weeks of celebrating, it’s safe to say life is a lot more than just a bowl of cherries.

LEGO Notre-Dame de Paris – Update #9

(Read about the start of this “church service” in Highest Chair)

What was once a giant box of LEGO pieces is finally starting to resemble a cathedral! Bags 15 and 16… of 34 bags of pieces, focused entirely on the body (nave) of the structure. We’re now building in the years 1220-1225, when the walls of the nave rise to the same height as the semicircular chancel at the east end.

The parishioners look rather tiny, now that we’re working so far above them. And notice all those free-standing columns from last week aren’t so free-standing anymore. We’ve capped them with structural elements to support what is still to be built up above. Also notice we’ve closed in the west end of the cathedral, which patiently awaits the addition of the soaring bell towers.

Okay, it’s time to address the elephant in the room; an elephant that gets bigger with every update. A few of you have sounded the alarm on my running count of leftover pieces. It’s a fair concern, considering the LEGO Grand Piano also started as thousands of pieces but only amounted to a handful of extras.

Here’s the truth of it: the twenty-six leftovers shown here amount to just a handful as well. Every one of them is among the tiniest pieces in the entire cathedral. It probably cost LEGO pennies to add in these “bench players”. And given the tendency of pieces to run away I’m grateful to have them. Heck, by the time the cathedral is finished maybe I’ll have enough leftovers to build a small elephant.

Running build time: 7 hrs. 57 min.

Total leftover pieces: 26

Some content sourced from the National Cherry Blossom Festival website, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Tucked-Away Place to Pray

In trying economic times like these, it wouldn’t surprise me to hear about people using credit cards to pay their bills. After all, when you have more month at the end of the money you do what you must to stay above water. But it’s a bit of a fool’s game isn’t it, creating one debt to eliminate another? Its what we call robbing Peter to pay Paul. And speaking of the Christian apostles, let’s talk about robbing John to pay Peter.

As promised when I began construction of the LEGO model of Notre-Dame de Paris last month (read about how I started this project in Highest Chair), I’d like to pay homage to a few of the world’s prominent cathedrals along the way. These magnificent structures are places of worship at heart but oh-so-much more besides. Each can be completely different in look and location. My goal here is to not have you walk away from Notre-Dame thinking “seen one, seen them all”.

What better place to start than at the most significant cathedral in the world? I’ll give you three hints. It’s located in the middle of Rome. It serves as the seat of Rome’s bishop (who just happens to be Pope Francis). And it’s named for one of the most influential figures in the Bible. Okay, time’s up, let’s have it. Did you guess St. Peter’s?

If St. Peter’s was your guess, you’d be… incorrect, and in fact, incorrect three times over. The St. Peter’s you’re thinking of – the “largest and greatest” church in the world – is not even a cathedral (but merely a basilica). St. Peter’s is not even in Rome, since the Vatican is technically its own country. Finally, St. Peter’s is not the seat of the pope (or any other bishop), even though Francis does live close by. Instead, the award for most significant cathedral goes to Saint John Lateran.

The Lateran cathedral is about a 5K jog from St. Peter’s Square. In fact, if you were to make the walk from one church to the other you’d pass by several of Rome’s highlights. The Pantheon. The Trevi Fountain. Piazza Venezia. The Forum. The Colosseum. Eventually you’d be standing in front of the imposing facade you see above.

Click the photo to see the tiny tourists!

Saint John Lateran is old – even by Rome’s standards – first established in the mid-300s. It sits on the site of the former Lateran family palace. The cathedral survived several fires, earthquakes, and periods of deterioration, eventually retreating into the shadow of the grander St. Peter’s. In the 1700s the Lateran received a complete overhaul, including the facade you see today. But it has always served as the cathedral of Rome. In fact, a plaque near its ancient bronze doors deems (in Latin): “… mother and head of all churches in the city and the world.”

Like Notre-Dame de Paris, the Lateran boasts a lot more than just the structure itself. Giant statues of the twelve apostles line the interior of the sanctuary. Six popes are buried here. The ancient Egyptian obelisk in front of the church is the world’s tallest. Finally, the Lateran claims to have hosted significant relics of Christianity over its many years, including the Ark of the Covenant, the wooden table where Jesus hosted the Last Supper, and (for the less faint of heart) the skulls of St. Peter and St. Paul.

It goes without saying; a trip to Rome isn’t complete without a visit to St. Peter’s and its surrounds. The sheer size and elegance of the basilica is unparalleled and worth several hours (if not days) of your time. But now you know; Saint John Lateran also deserves your attention. It’d be a shame to travel all the way to Italy and back without claiminng a visit to the most significant cathedral in the world.

LEGO Notre-Dame de Paris – Update #6

(Read about the start of this “church service” in Highest Chair)

The model-building word of the day, boys and girls, is structure. Bag 9… of 34 bags of pieces, brought us face-to-face with the finished look of Notre-Dame de Paris’s iconic flying buttresses, installed carefully around the walls of the cathedral’s east end. Most of those “pasta bits” I showed you in our last visit amounted to fourteen (or about half) of the cathedral’s buttresses. They look like tiny cannons, don’t they?

Remember, the structural support of this cathedral is on the exterior, allowing for tall, thin walls, and more uninterrupted open space inside. Someone could come up with the ten coolest structural elements for buildings and I’d have buttresses “fly” to the top of the list.

If Notre-Dame’s parishioners felt a sudden sense of security and stability, it’s because the giant hand of Dave was buttressing the very walls around them as they worshiped. And if these structural elements aren’t elegant enough, they also house horizontal pipes to drain the water from the cathedral roof.

I keep referring to the cathedral’s “east end”, but now that we’re starting to see the finished product we should use proper terms for church architecture. We’ve effectively completed the chancel, which is the altar and surrounds to the east of the transept. Picture a giant Christian cross laying on the ground. The top of the cross is the chancel and the crossbar is the transept. The lower length of the cross, where most of the parishioners sit, is the nave. At the very bottom of the nave will be the bell towers.

Today’s build was not without its adventures. A small black piece escaped to my home office floor early on, prompting a prolonged hands-and-knees search. I swear I heard the piece clatter to the floor yet neither hands nor knees made the encounter. I was perplexed. Finally, with the aid of my handy-dandy iPhone flashlight, I found the crafty little devil way, way back in the dark central recess of my desk. This little guy was clearly making a move to freedom. Sorry, bud; it’s time to come home.

Finally, I thought the adjacent photo was worth including. Pretty much every single LEGO piece of Notre-Dame de Paris is unique in size and shape. Except this one. How does a singular “trademark” LEGO block end up amongst thousands of irregular pieces? Sadly, this piece was installed one level below the dark gray roof line of the chancel, which means you’ll never see it in the finished product. So I figured it deserved its moment of glory here instead.

Running build time: 5 hrs. 32 min.

Total leftover pieces: 23

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Adventures in Library-ing

Early each calendar year I look back on the previous year’s expenses to discover areas in the family budget where I can trim. The price of food, gasoline, and other “have-to-have’s” always seems to go up, so I search for items that are not so “have-to-have” to balance things out. A good example is books. I read two or three a month on my Kindle e-Reader. At say, $14.99 a pop that’d be over $500 I could carve out of annual expenses… if I could only get those same books at no cost. But where-oh-where could I possibly find books for free?

You bibliophiles out there (and the rest of you, for that matter) are laughing as I’m about to describe going to the library as an adventure, but here’s the thing. I’ve been e-reading on my Amazon Kindle for so long that the idea of holding a book and turning its pages – let alone checking one out of a library – has become, well, novel again.

I wouldn’t have reached this crossroads were it not for a particular book. Amazon described Frank Delaney’s The Matchmaker of Kenmare just the way I’d hope: an intriguing WWII-era work of fiction. So I went to “try a sample”(where Amazon allows you the first several pages of the book for free) and – horror of horrors – it’s not available in digital format. WHAT? No e-Version? You’re saying, Amazon, I have to shell out $24.99 for the hard copy if I want to read it?

A book for $10 doesn’t make me pause but one for $25 sure does. Hence began my library adventure. The last time I spent meaningful time in one was in college (and I don’t want to tell you how long ago that was). The library experience is probably different in every way now, starting online. When I “checked out” my library’s website (ha) I discovered I could get a digital library card almost immediately. With the digital card I could reserve and check out books from the comfort of my home computer. Hurrah, free books here I come!

Oh how I wish it were that easy. Turns out, my library’s software is not compatible with an Amazon Kindle. No digital books for me, sigh. And besides, physical books – like the one I wanted – require a physical library card. So with no other excuse to avoid it, I got in my car and headed off to my local branch. Guess what? Parking at the library is free. Entering the building itself is free (no cover charge!). Getting a library card is free. Even the library bathrooms can be used without having to check out a book first.

Yes, this is my tax dollars at work of course, but the illusion of all this free stuff is fun while it lasts. And boy howdy, libraries aren’t what they used to be. Ours has all these rooms and services and people, as if the surrounding shelves of books are merely a carry-over from past generations. You can sit down to public-access computers, attend a lecture, host a meeting, rent DVDs, buy coffee, and even spend time in a room of books dedicated to the history of the surrounding county. Maybe this is all review for you, but it’s a little overwhelming for an e-reader who’s navigating libraries of the new world.

Our secondary (and ancient) library branch

There’s more to this adventure in library-ing than I have time for today (including the over-the-river and through-the woods visit to a different and decidedly ancient branch in my library’s network), but let’s close the book on this topic with a “laugh’s on me” conclusion. As I was researching for this blog post I went to the Amazon page for my Matchmaker… novel again. Go figure; it’s available in digital format after all, and even in paperback. How did I miss these options the first time around? Must be the library gods telling me to go old-school and get a physical copy for free.

LEGO Notre-Dame de Paris – Update #4

(Read about the start of this “church service” in Highest Chair)

Click the photo for a more detailed view

As Notre-Dame de Paris rises slowly from its foundations, I often picture a congregation of parishioners down there at ground level, sitting quietly in the pews. Startled by the snap of a LEGO block above them, they gaze skyward, see my giant fingers, and wonder, “OMG is that the hand of God?” No, no, little ones, it’s just Dave, working through Bag 7… of 34 bags of pieces.

Today almost included the long-awaited moment where I realize with mock horror that LEGO left a piece out of one of their model sets. I churned through my piles of pieces, endlessly stirring and turning them over and over, but to no avail. A piece was missing, and that sick-to-your-stomach feeling settled in deep, the way you reach the end of a jigsaw puzzle minus one piece. Then, to my utter amazement, I spied it out of the corner of my eye. The tiny traitor was still in Bag 7. Wow. Good thing that plastic bag wasn’t already relegated to the trash, huh?

On the other hand, with more excitement than it probably deserved, today we began construction of Notre-Dame’s signature flying buttresses. At first I was disappointed in the LEGO pieces, because I thought they looked a little, well, “underfed”. Then I remembered; we’re only beginning the structure of the buttresses. The finished look you see on the outside of Notre-Dame is supported by a complex of arches and columns well below it. Here I thought my “God’s hand” was already working at roof level but in fact, we’re only about halfway up the structure.

Running build time: 3 hrs. 32 min.

Total leftover pieces: 16

Mind Your Mannerisms!

My late father had a habit I always admired. He’d send personal notes of thanks to those he felt deserved his gratitude. His notes were not smartphone texts, emails, or Word documents. They were handwritten sentiments on heavy card stock, his name elegantly embossed across the top. Why did these notes capture my admiration? Because I’ve forgotten how to write them myself. Or more to the point, I’ve forgotten how to write.

America’s Common Core Standards – the guidelines by which most states create curriculums for school grades 1-12 – no longer include cursive writing. Students still learn to write block letters, but the flowing, looping mannerism of cursive has pretty much been left behind. Instead, typing is more Common Core, and probably taught in a grade much sooner than my own middle school years. Frankly, the only remaining argument in favor of cursive writing might be for the signature of one’s name.

Even handwritten signatures have fallen by the wayside. Ever heard of an Autopen? It’s a mechanical hand, designed to hold a pen and duplicate one’s signature over and over. The Autopen is popular with politicians who want their handwritten signature on countless memos and letters, but without the added task of actually signing them.

I have a sort of Autopen myself but it’s more of a stamp. I sent my handwritten signature to a company and a few weeks later I received a stamp in return. When used with just the right amount of pressure it’s the spittin’ image of the one I’d sign with my own hand. It’s something of a writing “crutch”.

The hard truth is, over the years my cursive has devolved from “Dave, you have beautiful handwriting” to “Uh, what is that supposed to say?” I can’t even read my own writing anymore. To add to this misery my hands shake a little, which means my formerly elegant loops and curls are now jiggly, scribbly lines. Filling out the tip, the total, and the signature on a restaurant receipt is now a legitimate challenge in legibility.

It didn’t occur to me until recently that my illegible handwriting is simply the product of no longer writing by hand. I’ve always believed this degradation was the result of aging fingers, hands, and the associated muscles required for cursive writing. To a certain extent this is true. But more importantly, my writing muscles just don’t remember what to do anymore.

The first day I walked into typing class was likely the first day my cursive writing went downhill. The manual typewriter, followed by the electric typewriter, followed years later by the computer keyboard ensured I could create quick and perfectly legible documents in myriad fonts. Cursive writers average only 13 words a minute. Typists? 40, 60, sometimes as many as 80 words a minute.

But the pursuit of writing efficiency comes at a somewhat alarming cost. You lose the connection between mind and matter. Cursive writing is slow-w-w, which translates to more focus on what you are writing about as you form the letters. Typing feels more like a sprint to the finish, to get your thoughts through the keyboard as quickly as possible. Think of cursive as “in your own words”, while typing is “verbatim”.

Here’s an interesting experiment for you bloggers to consider. Write your next post in cursive before you take to the keyboard. See if your “voice” doesn’t sound a little more thoughtful than the one from the keyboard. Now here’s an experiment for me. What if I were to spend ten minutes a day trying to restore my handwriting? Would it eventually be described as “beautiful” once again?

Side note: I’ve somehow retained the dexterity of playing the piano, even though I don’t sit down to the keyboard very often. I’ve noticed my fingers hover over the piano the same way they do over the computer keyboard. Maybe this is muscle memory at work, no matter what the fingers are doing?

Someday it wouldn’t surprise me to see a famous quote, penned in beautiful flowing cursive, framed and displayed as artwork in a museum. The piece would bring us back to simpler days, back to the times when a physical hand put deep thoughts on physical paper. Of course, the question then would be, will anybody still be able to read cursive?

LEGO Notre-Dame de Paris – Update #3

(Read about the start of this “church service” in Highest Chair)

There were moments in the build today where I would’ve preferred to be laboring on the real cathedral. Bags 4, 5, and 6 – of 34 bags of pieces – were loaded with some of the tiniest pieces I’ve ever seen in a LEGO set. As I spilled out one of the bags a determined little square tile dashed away to the deep, dark recesses underneath my desk. If it weren’t for my phone’s flashlight I might never have rescued him.

The east end of the sanctuary (and altar beyond)

We built a lot of round, structural columns today. I’ve never seen a step in a LEGO instruction manual asking for 48 identical pieces, but there I was, stacking them in my hand as I counted, “33, 34, 35…”. Those 48 pieces assembled to the 24 columns you kind-of sort-of see here.

The altar from above (before this is all covered up!)

We also reinforced, filled in, and rose to new heights the curving east end of the cathedral. This assembly brought new levels of frustration, in that the installation of some pieces caused others to promptly dislodge. Indeed, at one point a very tiny piece skittered onto the floor of the cathedral (hidden within those 24 columns) and the only way to get him out was to rock the whole assembly back and forth in my hands the way you would a marble maze.

I need to do a better job of taking photos as I build, because the fruits of my labor are already being covered up by the higher structure of the cathedral. Maybe it was no different with the artisans of the real Notre-Dame de Paris, who crafted in very small spaces knowing almost no one would ever see the detail of their work. At least I have a camera. Back then they’d have to make a painting of what they created just to show off their accomplishments!

Running build time: 2 hrs. 50 min.

Total leftover pieces: 11 (!)

Some content sourced from The Guardian article, “Signature moves: are we losing the ability to write by hand?”

Pride, Pomp, and Circumstance

I managed to get through high school literature class without having to wrestle with Shakespeare, not even once. To me, Romeo and Juliet are simply characters from a movie I’ve never seen. Hamlet is another name for a small village. Othello is a board game I played as a teenager. But hey, maybe I should be a fan of Shakespeare. After all, he gets the credit for penning the phrase “pomp and circumstance”.

It’s true – “Pride, pomp, and circumstance (of glorious war!)” is a line from Shakespeare’s play Othello, written way back in 1603. Somewhere in the hundreds of years since, “Pomp and circumstance” became the name of the musical march we all associate with graduation ceremonies. But for today’s purposes, pomp and circumstance (or “P&C” if you will) means “formal and impressive ceremonies or activities”. And Monday’s presidential inauguration ceremony was the perfect example of that.

I am a big fan of American P&C. Without it the inauguration ceremony would’ve been nothing but mundane repeat-after-me oaths. With it you get your heart fill-er-upped with pride. Monday’s ceremony was replete with red, white, and blue decor. American flags were everywhere. The guests of honor were escorted to their seats by men and women in splendid uniforms. The cannons nearby boomed over and over when the oaths were completed. And for my American dollars, nothing says pomp and circumstance like those patriotic anthems.

Having spent most of my years in Colorado Springs, “America the Beautiful” is close to my heart because its lyrics were born from the top of nearby Pikes Peak. All credit to Carrie Underwood for her performance of its first verse on Monday, enduring technical difficulties to sing a cappella. Then there was the charismatic Rev. Lorenzo Sewell, embellishing his prayer of gratitude with the opening lines of “My Country Tis of Thee”. And you’d be forgiven for shedding a tear during the soaring “Battle Hymn of the Republic”, belted out by the men and women of the U.S. Naval Academy Glee Club (and earning a standing ovation).

But I’m forgetting one more anthem. Or should I say, I can’t forget the one more. Yes, Christopher Dean Macchio (“America’s tenor”) sang “The Star Spangled Banner” to close out the inauguration ceremony, but he also performed another anthem to kick things off and I’m still humming it today. Why, I ask myself, have I never heard “O, America” before?

“O, America” – go figure – was written by an Irishman. Brendan Graham penned the lyrics into a big hit for the group “Celtic Woman”. You’d think the words would be from the perspective of someone overseas but “O, America” is clearly about someone here… and someone now. Have a listen and I think you’ll agree. In the words of Othello, “O, America” is all about “pride, pomp, and circumstance”. This week I am filled with all three.

LEGO Notre-Dame de Paris – Update #2

(read about the start of this “church service” in Highest Chair)

I’m glad I remembered my antiperspirant today. Bags 2 and 3 – of 34 bags of pieces – encouraged sweat, tested patience, and made me realize my fingers are anything but nimble. My hands are still shaking after the hour and change it took to build this section.

We started by tiling the cathedral floor. Look closely – those black and white pieces aren’t all the same shape or orientation. I installed one wrong and almost needed pliers to get it back out. Imagine if you made the same mistake on the floor of the real Notre-Dame. You’d get fired for wasting priceless marble!

Having said that, the floor was just a warm up for the colonnade that now rises up around the altar. It is made from tiny, tiny pieces! I think LEGO should invent special gloves that a) allow you to easily grasp these little guys while b) protecting your fingers from their sharp edges. Pressing them into place again and again can be painful! Those beige column supports you see on the tile floor left little round dents in my fingertips.

Finally, notice the repetitive structure of the colonnade, like a circle of rocket ships ready to launch. LEGO shows you how to build one of these vertical elements (each one is about twenty pieces) and then goes, “Okay Dave, do that fourteen more times”. The Grand Piano was also tough but I wouldn’t say it was repetitive. Notre-Dame de Paris has found a new way to test my patience.

Running build time: 1 hour 37 min.

Total leftover pieces: 5

Some content sourced from the Irish Central article, “Irishman’s song ‘O America’ performed at Trump’s inauguration”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

See You In (my) Church

When I went to Sunday school many, many years ago, they taught us the little ditty “Here Is The Church” (… here is the steeple, open the doors and see all the people). You’d make a church with your hands pressed together as you sang, raising the steeple by extending and touching the tips of your pointer fingers. Today, sixty-odd years later, those same hands will build a cathedral – Notre-Dame de Paris. Granted my church is made from LEGO blocks and the entire model will be smaller than a cornerstone of the real Notre-Dame, but at least the steeple is made from more than fingers.

So then, “Here Is The Cathedral”… in its purchased form. The cardboard box you see is not what I would call huge, but it’s an ample residence for 4,383 plastic pieces. These pieces dwell in thirty-four separate plastic bag communities, just begging to be liberated. Buried underneath all these subdivisions (in the crypt, if you will) is the brick of an instruction manual, a veritable phone book of almost 300 pages. C’mon, you didn’t think we’d raise this cathedral in a single blog post, did you?

Mr. Instruction Manual could be called the mayor of this manufactured mess. He guides me on who gets together with who, when they get together, how they get together, and what it’s all supposed to look like as I go. Mr. Manual has pages and pages of impressive illustrations (like this one), but also some LOL ones (like the one below). I mean, check out the upper left corner. Am I really supposed to vigorously shake the bag out like that? The tiny residents will go running in all directions! We’re trying to create order from chaos here, people, not the other way around.

I expect all of the same challenges I encountered when I built the LEGO Grand Piano. I’ll think pieces are missing until somehow they appear right in front of me. I’ll connect pieces incorrectly and have to backtrack several steps to get them right. I’ll be left with extra pieces every now and then, and forever wonder if they were really “extra” or perhaps “overlooked”. And I’ll police plastic piles around the meager real estate of my home office desk. Maybe I require a shepherd’s crook or a bullhorn? I mean, it’s me versus 4,383 others so you can see how one or two of them are bound to escape.

Here’s a thoughtful aspect of LEGO Notre-Dame de Paris, and oh-so appealing to the architect in me. The model will be built in the same chronological order as the original was (instead of, say, from the ground up). The first twenty years of Notre-Dame’s construction produced only the rounded east end you see here, which served by itself as a functioning church. The next twenty years generated the full footprint but without the roof, towers, and other noteworthy exterior elements. The final sixty years brought everything across the finish line. So I’ll be building the LEGO model in the same order, only in a hundred days (or less) instead of a hundred years.

Before I snap Piece 1 onto Piece 2, let me dress down my many thousands of new plastic friends. Together they comprise nowhere near the largest of the LEGO sets. A model of Harry Potter’s Hogwarts Castle is over 6,000 pieces. The LEGO Star Wars Millennium Falcon is over 7,500 pieces. LEGO Titanic (er, before it sank): 9,000 pieces. And standing regally at the top of the LEGO podium (and just a twenty-minute bus ride from Notre-Dame de Paris): the Eiffel Tower, the only LEGO model to exceed 10,000 pieces. To each of these top-tens I say non. Notre-Dame will be challenge enough for this builder/blogger.

LEGO Notre-Dame de Paris – Update #1

Now that we’ve had the prelude (so to speak) it’s time for the church service to begin! Bag #1 – of 34 bags of pieces – houses the first 100 or so of the little guys. LEGO thoughtfully opted for a sub-community in Bag #1 for the tiniest of residents (some of which are just begging for tweezers).

Mr. Instruction Manual (who is multilingual by the way; he speaks English, French, and Spanish), warns me to “… avoid danger of suffocation by keeping this bag away from babies and children!” Mr. Manual also wants me to know my thousand of pieces were manufactured in five different countries: Denmark (of course), Mexico, Hungary, China, and the Czech Republic.

It’s fair to say I haven’t stood in the LEGO “pulpit” for awhile. I snapped pieces together incorrectly at least three times today. I also thought I was missing pieces twice, and I fretted over the fact I ended up with two leftovers. Let’s hope our church service is smoother next week! In the meantime, here is the build of Bag #1. Not much to look at but at least it’s the foundation of the east end of the Cathedral. In 1163 Pope Alexander III oversaw the first stone being set in place. In 2025 nobody saw me do the same.

Bag #: 1

Running build time: 25:38.

Total leftover pieces: 2

Highest Chair

When we babysit our granddaughters here at the house, we tap into several items to make the job easier. A big basket of toys and stuffed animals sits in the corner of our living room. A dozen children’s books line the lowest shelf just waiting to tell their stories. Sesame Street is easily streamed on the nearby television. And at dinner time we roll out the high chair so everyone’s on the same level. So who would’ve thought a high chair would be my blog topic for today? Maybe you, if you know anything about cathedrals.

We’re almost there, loyal readers. I will lay the corner-block of my LEGO model of Notre-Dame de Paris next week. Why not this week, you ask? Because before we crack the seal on the giant box of pieces, we need to pay a little respect to the real Cathedral. I want you to know a few things about the stone and glass Notre-Dame before you witness the rising of the plastic one.

It’s a cathedral in the middle of Paris, Dave… what more do I need to know? Uh, a LOT more. To begin with, do you even know what a cathedral is? I didn’t (and I have a background in architecture, for gosh sake). It’s a big, giant church with stained glass and chapels and a raised altar, you say. Well yes, you’re right, but what makes a church a cathedral? Interestingly, it has nothing to do with the building itself. Instead, a cathedral is the seat of a bishop (the ordained clergy-person who presides over the surrounding parishes). For lack of a church this person could just as easily be in a small house and it would still be considered a cathedral.

Cathedrals really do have “high chairs” on their altars for the bishops (cathedra in Latin means “seat”) but Notre-Dame de Paris is much more than a place for furniture. First and foremost, it took a hundred years to construct (1163-1260). In that era the building evolved from the common Romanesque style of the period to the more elegant French Gothic. Notre-Dame feels unusually vertical and airy for a structure of its time and there’s a novel reason for this: flying buttresses.

Imagine Notre-Dame’s architect – Eugène Viollet-le-Duc – talking to the Paris city council in the twelfth century and saying, “Look guys, let’s think outside the box here… literally. The structural support for this church ought to be outside of the building instead of inside”. Why would the architect want this? Because the flying buttresses assume the structural load that was previously handled by short, thick interior walls. The result is taller, more dramatic spaces, filled with the light of high-up stained glass windows. In other words, flying buttresses allow Notre-Dame to “reach for the heavens” much better than its Romanesque predecessors.

There’s also more to this French “grande dame” than structure, of course. Notre-Dame has twenty-nine chapels surrounding the main sanctuary (that’s gonna take a lot of LEGO). It features three spectacular stained glass “rose” windows that would not be as large or as high were it not for those flying buttresses. Notre-Dame’s twin towers host ten massive bronze bells and they each have first names. “Emmanuel” (listen to his sound bite below) and “Marie” are so big they take up the entire south tower, while their eight ringing siblings all fit into the north tower.

Notre-Dame also has a central flèche, a spire not unlike the ones you see on more modest churches. This spire, however, is topped by a bronze rooster, which is not only the symbol of the French state but also a container for (supposedly) a small piece of the Crown of Thorns, worn by Jesus leading up to his crucifixion.

As you would expect, Notre-Dame de Paris hosts countless works of art, whether paintings or sculptures. Many of the sculptures are biblical scenes intended to educate the illiterate parishioners of the twelfth century. But my favorite sculptures may be those of the twelve apostles, way up high surrounding the base of the flèche and looking outwards towards Paris… all except one. St. Thomas – patron saint of architects – faces Notre-Dame itself, and was given the facial features of Viollet-le-Duc.

Okay, so now you know more about Notre-Dame de Paris than just the LEGO model. Considering there are over 500 Gothic cathedrals in Europe, it’s impressive to see Notre-Dame at the very top of at least one “Top Ten Cathedrals” list. We’ll visit some of those other “high chairs” in future posts, to add even more life to my pile of plastic pieces. In the meantime, my LEGO “church service” begins promptly at 10am next Thursday.

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

You Can Say That Again

When I was a kid, I remember (or was told) I used creative pronunciations for common words. Instead of cinnamon I’d say cimm-anin. Instead of spaghetti it was bis-ketti. The library was the lie-berry. Maybe back then my excuse was in just learning to talk but I can’t play that card as an adult. So when someone says Feb-YOU-air-ee instead of Feb-ROO-air-ee, or Shur-BERT instead of Shur-BET, I tend to wince.

We’ve made it to the time of year where we reflect on the previous one, and we do so in year-in-review lists. “Most Influential People of 2024”. “Best Television Shows of 2024”. “Significant World Events of 2024”. And how about this one? Most Mispronounced Words of 2024. Thanks to Babbel, maker of language-learning platforms, the hard audio evidence doesn’t lie. Babbel came up with ten words people mispronounced over and over last year.

I could print Babbel’s list here, but it’d be a waste of your time so I’ll just hyperlink it instead. Eight of the words I never ever used in 2024 (and never will), and the only reason I spoke the other two was because they’re the last names of politicians featured in 2024 headlines. To be honest, the list made me question Babbel’s approach to learning languages. Are these the words promoting a budding English speaker’s proficiency?

Babbel also listed mispronounced words from other languages, including one of my favorites: espresso. Not sure how we Americans get that one wrong time after time, but we do. Maybe the myriad “ex-” words in the English language have us saying EX-presso but the concentrated coffee drink sounds exactly as it reads: ES-presso. Keep that in mind and your next Italian barista will be happy to serve you.

As long as we’re speaking Italiano let’s get another one right – al dente. When you want your pasta cooked just right; “not too soft but firm to the bite”, you describe it as ALL den-tay, not ALLA dawn-tay. I only know this because I learned Italian when I was in college. If I didn’t know better myself I’d probably go with AL dent.

As long as we’re talking foreign language mispronunciation, let’s correct another one. Notre-Dame de Paris, the medieval Catholic cathedral in the middle of Paris (and the middle of the River Seine), can be mispronounced so many ways it’s almost as devastating as the fire from which it was resurrected. On the surface it sounds something like NOH-tur daym day PEAR-iss, which is “English-French” at its absolute worst. In actual French it sounds like this: NOH-tr dam due PAH-ree, where the two “r”s almost sound like “l”s.

You never saw it coming but today’s language lesson is a segue to the topic I’ll be covering for the next several weeks and months. Notre-Dame de Paris is a magnificent structure and a renowned work of architecture. It’s also a new model created by the good people at LEGO. And speaking of good people (great, actually), my wife put that LEGO model under the Christmas tree for me this year.

For those who enjoyed the long journey of my building the LEGO Grand Piano (which I chronicled in Let’s Make Music!), and the shorter journey of the LEGO Fallingwater House (Perfect Harmony), I’ll be at it again as I attempt to rise Notre-Dame de Paris from the “ashes” of 4,383 plastic pieces. Won’t you join me on this foray into all things FRON-says? (That’s “French” for those of you who mispronounce it.) You’ll learn about the world’s cathedrals along the way, many of which took hundreds of years to construct. Let’s hope my own build of Notre-Dame de Paris is a whole lot shorter than that.

Some content sourced from the CNN World article, “These are the most mispronounced words of 2024”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Choc’ Full and Wheat Thin

Chocolate aficionado that I am, the recent headline of the possible buyout of The Hershey Company instantly grabbed my attention. Hershey has been around for well over a hundred years; the American brand most associated with chocolate (no matter what you think of their products). But one detail caught my attention even more than the chocolate. Mondelez, the purported buyer of Hershey, also makes Wheat Thins snack crackers. Suddenly this announcement is downright riveting.

If you don’t have a box of them in your pantry right now, you’re at least familiar with Wheat Thins. The flat, square, unashamedly crunchy crackers have been around forever (that is, if 1947 is the same as forever). Wheat Thins are packaged in the bright yellow box with the distinctive red Nabisco logo in the upper corner. The box top encourages you to “Open for 100% Awesome” and boy do I ever. I sometimes wonder whether Nabisco has baked more Wheat Thins or Oreos over the course of their respective existences. As a kid I would’ve hoped that winner would be Oreos. These days I nosh more like an adult and prefer the ultimate snack cracker.

Here’s where you come at me with your own “ultimates”. Maybe your pantry is stocked with Cheez-it crackers instead of Wheat Thins. Maybe “everything sits on a Ritz” in your house. Or you like Premium saltines because they’re, well, saltier. Are you’re one of those inexplicables who actually prefer table water crackers? You must’ve really liked communion wafers as a kid. Nothing says “Styrofoam” like the taste of a table water cracker.

Wheat Thins was (were?) introduced to my palate at a very young age. My dad was obsessed with them. I can’t think of a time I entered our pantry where the big yellow box wasn’t present. My dad would eat them right out of the box instead of bothering to pair with cheese or dip. My dad was never one to talk with food in his mouth, but I swear I can still hear him holding conversations with my mother while simultaneously crunching a mouthful of Wheat Thins. Apparently obsessions are hereditary.

Wheat Thins are described as “100% Whole Grain”, which is a sly way to throw you off the canola oil, sugar, cornstarch, and other garbage you’ll find on the ingredients list. Admittedly there were several years where I strayed from Wheat Thins. At the time our pantry morphed into a collection of decidedly more healthy options, and many, many boxes of Wheat Thins gathered dust on grocery store shelves. We indulged in almond, baked, and organic wheat crackers instead, as if any of them held a candle to Wheat Thins.

I can’t say exactly when they made their comeback, but suddenly Wheat Thins is a pantry staple again. Probably because I missed their “indescribably delicious taste”; a spot-on advertisement because I can’t describe what makes a Wheat Thin so delicious. Whatever the attraction, the recommended serving size of “16 pieces” is laughable. Heck, I grab that many in one handful. On that note, I’m eternally grateful to Nabisco for creating a “Party Size” box of Wheat Thins (and I’m perfectly content to be the only one at the party).

To be clear, we’re only talking about the “original” here. I was horrified to learn there are over twenty spins on the taste of Wheat Thins, including “lime”, “chipotle”, and (gag) “dill pickle”. Then Nabisco went completely off the rails and created sweet versions of Wheat Thins, including “honey” and “lightly cinnamon”. Those last two have been discontinued because, c’mon, did they really think the king of sweet crackers – the graham – could be dethroned?

Like a lot of food products I was raised with, Wheat Thins are not as “original” as they claim to be today. They just aren’t. I can’t say how many of them I’ve eaten in my life but let’s go with a billion, shall we? That makes me an unquestionable Wheat Thins expert. And I’m here to tell you the taste may be the same but the consistency is suspect. Wheat Thins are a little crunchier these days than they used to be. If they’d just let me into their factories I bet I could figure out exactly which ingredient they swapped out (in the interest of profit margin, of course).

If I were you (wait… reverse that; if you were me), keep an eye on Mondelez. You know them by their former name: Kraft Foods. Mondelez is quietly consuming the entire snack aisle. Chips Ahoy, Triscuit, Sour Patch, Toblerone, Dentyne, even Tate’s Bake Shop (another “thin” delight) all belong to this foody conglomerate. Hershey Kisses (and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups!) may soon join the list. But if someday we all wake up and finally realize these products are terrible for us, I hope the one cracker Mondelez is still making on the day it closes its doors is Wheat Thins. I’m not sure I can live without them.

Some content sourced from the CNN Business article, “Hershey’s stock explodes higher on report Mondelez offered to buy it”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Recycled Airbags

As I build the beginnings of this week’s blog post (three “b”s already for those keeping count) my screen distracts me with alerts for Cyber Monday deals. Laptops at 30% off retail. E-readers at 25% off. DNA tests at 70% off (which begs the question: do we really care about our ancestry anymore?) Cyber Monday is a sort of second chance for those who shunned the big box stores the Friday after Thanksgiving (good decision). But here’s what I wonder today. Why endure Black Friday or get distracted by Cyber Monday when you can shop through lost luggage any day of the year instead?

I’ve finally found a reason to visit Alabama. A six-hour drive due west of my keyboard puts me in the little town of Scottsboro, of which an entire block is consumed by a business known as Unclaimed Baggage. UB is exactly what you think it is: deep-discounted personal belongings made available to you by the traveling misfortunes of others. Think of UB as one person’s trash becoming another person’s treasure only, of course, the original owner had no intention of throwing it away.

Unclaimed Baggage is the kind of entrepreneurial enterprise I wish I’d thought up myself. Consider the end-to-end process. You and your luggage start at Point A, but sadly one of you doesn’t make it to Point B. The airline (or the bus or the train) spends several months trying to reunite the two of you. Failing that, they compensate for the loss (sometimes). But what of your bag if it turns up later? Dump it into a “Dead Luggage” office? Actually, yes, and then Unclaimed Baggage comes a-calling.

Here’s an encouraging stat: 99.5% of lost luggage is reunited with its owner. You wouldn’t think Unclaimed Baggage could make a business of the leftovers. But those leftover are, on average, 7,000 items every day. No wonder Unclaimed Baggage needs a city block to house all that it sells. And the best part of the business? UB never knows what it’s going to get because the airlines don’t (or aren’t allowed to) open the bags. It reminds me of the show where bidders vie for contents of storage lockers without being able to raise the roll-up doors beforehand.

The most expensive item UB ever sold was a Rolex watch for $32,000 (50% of retail). Visit the store today and you can purchase a diamond ring for $20,000 that surely appraises for more. Some items are so strange they’re relegated to an area known as the “Museum Gallery”. Wigs. Shark teeth. A funeral casket key (?) Items considered “unsaleable”, and items where you have to wonder why they were on an airplane in the first place.

When I first learned about Unclaimed Baggage I thought, they have something of mine and I want it back! No, I’ve never lost luggage. Rather, I’m the passenger who keeps forgetting the little things in the seat back pocket right in front of him. Reading glasses. E-readers. A rather expensive pair of noise-cancelling headphones. Somehow my stuff gets left behind despite the pointed announcement from the flight attendant: “Please check in and around your seat for personal belongings, as you will not be allowed back on the aircraft after you deplane.” Sigh…

Unclaimed Baggage has at least one example of an item unintentionally returned to its original owner. At UB’s annual ski sale (which earned an LOL from me; I mean, just how many skis are left at baggage claim?), a shopper purchased ski boots for his girlfriend. When he brought them home, she discovered initials on the inside of the boots – hers. The airline had already compensated her for the lost boots so effectively, she re-owns her boots at a deep discount.

As you might expect, a good percentage of shoppers at Unclaimed Baggage are the same ones who troll garage sales and eBay for items they have no intention of owning. They simply relist their wares online for purchase (and profit) from others. It’s another enterprising way to make a buck but it’s not my cup of tea. I’m the shopper who shows up at sales well after the best items have been picked over.

Unclaimed Baggage has cornered a lucrative market. I don’t think they have any competition for the business of repurposing lost luggage. I will say this: I’m less likely to leave my stuff on airplanes now that I know about UB. I mean, do I really want some stranger buying my stuff for way less than I paid for it myself?

Final thought for the day. Why don’t they call it Unclaimed Luggage? Baggage? Luggage? Bag? Lug? Who the heck added two words into the English language when we only needed one? The Oxford English Dictionary estimates we use 170,000 words these days. I’m here to say that’s one too many.

Some content sourced from the CNN Travel article, “US travelers lose millions of suitcases every year…”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.