The Baseball Reliquary

The Baseball Reliquary is a repository of the odd and unlikely. Its collections hold a piece of Abner Doubleday's skin, a Babe Ruth cigar (partially smoked), a Babe Ruth hot dog (partially eaten), Dock Ellis' hair curlers, and a tortilla bearing the likeness of Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley.

Some of these objects appear to be real, while others prompt one to ask "What is 'the real'?" and other postmodern questions. The Reliquary might be described as a Museum of Jurassic Technology for baseball.

Maxims from a physicist

In 1992, physicist David P. Stern wrote out some maxims for physics and life. E.g.,

Look for kindred souls. They are few and far between, and nothing is more precious.

Physicist or no, read them all:

Credo (found via BrownStudies)

[Update, 11:44 a.m.: Stern's site is down, but you can still read a cached version.]

James Brown estate sale

The most curious lot of the day was not the bracelet, however, or the singer's platform shoe collection ($15,000) or the paranoid note he once scrawled on loose leaf paper alleging that his record label was out to kill him ($7,000). It was not the suite of red leather furniture that conjured up images of the recreation room on a mother ship ($40,000).

In tomorrow's New York Times, a report on the James Brown estate sale.

The James Brown Collection (Christie's)

Pasta with spinach and lemon

What follows is too simple to be called a recipe, but the result is delicious anyway. The lemon zest gives this dish an ineffable zing.

1. Cook one box of pasta, minus the box. (I like penne.) You can do everything that follows as the water comes to a boil and the pasta cooks.
2. Smash and chop up some garlic, as much or as little as you like. I usually use six or eight cloves.
3. Scrape the zest from one lemon. A zester makes this work easy. If you remove the zest in long strands, chop them into smaller pieces.
4. Squeeze the juice from the now-denuded lemon.
5. Lightly brown the garlic in olive oil in a pan. Add some red pepper flakes, salt, and pepper.
6. Add a bag of baby spinach leaves to the pan, minus the bag.
7. Marvel at the way the spinach reduces so quickly in the heat.
8. It's really amazing, isn't it?
9. Add the lemon juice and zest.
10. Drain the pasta and mix with everything else.

Serve with Parmesan or Romano cheese, or no cheese. Dry white wine goes well with this dish (on the side, in a glass).

Related post
Adventures in grain (two more pasta dishes)

"MONEY MAKING FORMULAS"

[From the June 1938 issue of Popular Mechanics.]

I like the idea that the formula for making money is a formula, or formulas, or formulae, 1,059 of them. But homemade fertilizer? Please, leave the "veil of secrecy" down.

From the same issue of Popular Mechanics: Alkalize with Alka-Seltzer, A mystery EXchange name, "Radios, it is."

Manhattan Special

"You'd almost think it was in the Bible, for God’s sake," said Paul Botwin, a veteran of World War II and, later, the New York soda wars, working in the business and watching other local brands come and go. "The times passed them by. Coffee survived."

From a New York Times article on Manhattan Special, an espresso soda that now ships anywhere in the continental United States. Manhattan Special is made in — where else? — Brooklyn.

Related post
Things I learned on my summer vacation (2007)

"I Got Your Ice Cold NuGrape"

It is the real thing, with genuine rings, often imitated but never equalled. It is the beverage of the promised land; beloved of children, the married, and those who are courting; sold by street vendors and storekeepers alike. It is a cure for the blues and mysterious illness, an irresistible treat, an aid to romantic and connubial bliss. Or as Tom Waits would say, "It's a friend; it's a companion; it's the only product you will ever need."¹ Listen:

NuGrape Twins, "I Got Your Ice Cold NuGrape" (1926)

This strange and beautiful song is available on American Primitive, Vol. II: Pre-War Revenants (1897-1939), from Revenant Records. My best shot at the lyrics (with two corrections from the comments -- thanks, readers):

I got a NuGrape mighty fine
The Three rings around the bottle is a-
    genuine
I got your ice-cold NuGrape

I got a NuGrape mighty fine
Got plenty imitation but they none like mine
I got your ice-cold NuGrape

Way down yonder in the promised land
A-run and tell your mama here the NuGrape
    man
I got your ice-cold NuGrape

Little childrens in the backyard playin' in the sand
A-run and tell your mama here the NuGrape man
I got your ice-cold NuGrape

[wordless chorus]

When you feelin' kind of blue
A-do not know what ailin' you
Get a NuGrape from the store
Then you have the blues no more
I got your ice-cold NuGrape

What's that make your lips go flippity-floppa
When you drink a NuGrape
You don't know when to stop
I got your ice-cold NuGrape

If from work you come home late
Rolling pin waits at the gate
Smile and 'prise her with NuGrape
Then you seek direct to shade (?)
Then you'll sneak through in good shape
I got your ice-cold NuGrape

Sister Mary has a beau
Says he crazy loves her so
Buys a NuGrape every day
Know he's bound to win that way
I got your ice-cold NuGrape

[wordless chorus]


[NuGrape cap, from The Bottle Cap Man.]

¹ In "Step Right Up," from the 1976 recording Small Change.

Allergy or cold?

The New York Times has a timely piece on how to figure out what you have:

Symptoms of seasonal allergies and colds overlap, but studies suggest there are ways to tell them apart.

The first is the onset of symptoms. Colds move more slowly, taking a day or longer to set in and gradually worsening — with symptoms like loss of appetite and headache — before subsiding after about a week and disappearing within 10 days. But allergies begin immediately. The sneezing is sudden and overwhelming, and the congestion, typically centered behind the nose, is immediate. Allergy symptoms also disappear quickly — almost as soon as the offending allergen, like pollen, is no longer around.

Then there are hallmark symptoms of each. Allergies virtually always cause itchiness, in the eyes, the nose, the throat, while a cold generally does not. Telltale signs of a cold are a fever, aches and colored mucus.

If confusion persists, consult your family tree: studies show that having a parent with allergies greatly increases your risk, particularly if that parent is your mother.

Yes, even figurative trees cause allergies.

Minimus, minimi

The clue for 44-Across in the April 30 New York Times crossword — "Little fingers or toes" — has brought me two new words. Minimus is the name for the smallest finger or toe. The plural is minimi (MIN-ih-my). Having typed these words, I'm not sure that I will ever use them again.

In 1991, medical student John Phillips borrowed Mother Goose's little piggies to create Latin names for the toes. They seem not to have caught on. For more on the naming of parts, Wikipedia's article on the ring finger is amazing reading.

It makes sense that we have a richer vocabulary for fingers than toes. Fingers exhibit greater variety across the set of ten than toes do (each toe, bigger or smaller, is just another piggy). Fingers are, we might say, closer to us, right under our eyes and noses (and sometimes in them). Fingers are expressive, so it makes sense that we are more expressive about them.

[The April 30 crossword? A subscription to the Times crossword brings an extra month's worth of older puzzles from the archive. Thus some catching up.]

I.e., Sunday

A circumlocutory TV weatherman:

"Things look better as we move into the second half of the weekend.'