Tony's Odd Neighbors

Moammar's summer house may be on the Multilist soon

Royalty in Bordentown

The characters who have washed up in tony northern New Jersey...
Jon Corzine, recently of the multimillions, has moved to Hoboken from Saddle River, not Manhattan as you'd expect.  Maybe he can call on Tony Soprano for tips on how to hold on to a fortune (Tony would tell him that gambling is for fools).
The Libyan government owns a mansion in Englewood, and Moammar himself was going to camp out on its front lawn in his Bedouin tent a few years ago, but the neighbors (one of whom is Eddie Murphy, but whether he cared isn't on record) wouldn't have it.  Never used by his ambassador for summer retreats as planned, it sits empty. 
The estate that once stood in Bordentown, Point Breeze, was built by none other than Napoleon's older brother Joseph after he abdicated as the appointed King of Spain following a revolt in 1813 (the one Goya pictured so devastatingly well).  He had not wanted to be a king, or a lawyer as his father had insisted, but rather a man of letters.  After moving to New York City and then Philadelphia, he enjoyed the largest library in the United States at the time in his New Jersey mansion.  It burned in 1820, probably due to arson perpetrated by a vengeful Russian immigrant.  He rebuilt, but left to return to Europe in 1839, dying a few years later.
Joseph left behind two daughters with his Virginia-born mistress, and younger brother Jerome left behind a baby Bonaparte after a brief American marriage in 1803 when he also returned home.  The last member of this family line met his end after tripping over a dog leash in Central Park in 1943.
Alpine, NJ, is home to many of the new royalty like Stevie Wonder, P. Diddy, Wesley Snipes and Lil Kim.
A motley crew!

Squeezed

Smallest apartment in New York

Advanced materials and design in Tokyo

A really narrow lot

Despite ol' Newt's (not geologically or mathematically possible) claim that if the Sierra Club would just get out of the way the U.S. could produce 4 million more barrels of oil daily, some rational people seem be on to the constraints our energy needs and wants face:  only 12% of future homebuyers now want driving-required houses in the suburban fringe, preferring nearness to town centers and walkability.  But buildings use half our energy, and people in areas already provided with public transit, most stressed by population density and cost of living, are developing some surprising ways to survive in changing conditions.
A married couple and their two cats live in New York's smallest apartment, calling it a "microstudio."  Located in Morningside Heights, it cost them $150,000 and they have adapted by not cooking there and storing their work clothes in office closets.  No car, of course, but speaking of cars, their home is the size of a parking space (175 square feet).
In Japan, microhouses (kyosho jutaku) are being designed and built utilizing narrow spaces, by going long and up to three stories high and experimenting with advanced materials such as superthin steel membrane and fiber-reinforced plastic.  Inner walls, doors and closets are eliminated, among other things we would be more hard pressed to think about living without.  Toyko's building codes must be quite receptive to innovation and the inspectors uncharacteristically open-minded.
For non-urban areas, some like Californian Jay Shafer of Tumbleweed Tiny Houses, who lives in a 70 square foot cabin himself, design and build single homes well under 300 square feet.  He got some publicity on HGTV's Design Star; I hope that helps him with his dream of a community of such "cottage houses" connected by paths with a green commons in the middle.  In upstate New York (Utica, I think), a similar co-housing community has existed for quite a while -- space is conserved by communalizing what can be (i.e., laundry, tools and maintenance equipment).  In both cases, Jay's dream and the existing community, cars are banished to parking on the edge.  Shared and public transit may reduce their numbers.
There are technologies, some used in the marine and RV industries, which would help make such radical living space reduction possible and economical, such as 12 volt lighting and fan systems.
Hot air from our lobbyist-purchased leaders and fear peddled by the apocalyptic religious evangelist-entrepreneurs will not solve any part of the energy problem facing us.  Hope for all of us lies in the creativity and rationality of a few of us.
  

Yikes! What Bikes!



Bike mower -- could this work?



Ho Chi Minh Trail technology

Madsen cargo bike




E-Solex electric bike

  If  bike shops (outside of California) stocked some of the exciting new interpretations of that most efficient and economical machine, would they sell?  Highly featured and shockingly expensive baby strollers have found outlets and eager buyers, but they speak status rather than eccentricity.  Acceptability might follow the usual path of early adopters in vanguard enclaves, notice in the media, and then a favorable mainstream attitude vis-a-vis entertainment value + utility.
When huge and growing demand for fossil fuels slams headlong into declining supplies, we'll still need transport; the many ingenious varities of bikes and trikes now used for practical purposes in the third world might be one solution to the problem -- for the few fit enough.  I doubt if you see 350-pounders on Rascal scooters in the bicycling nations such as the Netherlands or China.
They do work, though -- the rickshaw trike can carry up to 500 pounds; for up and down hills I think you'd need an electric assist and sturdy brakes.  The North Vietnamese walked their heavily-loaded cycles through jungle and over mountains, but the Madsen cargo bike's design would do the job well for an urban guerilla going to Lowe's today.  And they're only about $1000; a car costs about $8000 a year to operate after a five-figure purchase price and sales tax to boot.  Not that a car, without public transit to use when distance and weather pose difficulties, wouldn't still be in the picture for most people.  Hybrids and all-electrics will make that possible.  Bicycle-based alternatives for light transport are out there, and you just may see them on the road someday soon.
The 50cc motorbike, moped or scooter has been used by millions in Europe and Asia; the Solex brand debuted in 1946 in France alongside the Vespa in Italy and they're still going strong due to well-focused design and quality.  The new 400 watt electric-motor E-Solex isn't available in the U.S., but at $2100 it's an attractive combination of trusty old and beautiful new.  Unfortunately, most of what is available here in electric bikes and scooters is made in China and promises a short life to disappointed buyers.
The Studebaker family knew when to transition from wagons to automobiles, and we know what a leap in transportation technology the Wright brothers' bike shop produced.  There are some inventive Wilburs and Orvilles at work around the world, and that's a comforting thought in challenging times.

ElliptiGO -- something really new

       (7/2012 update)  I just found out about the ElliptiGO, a real innovation, the brainchild of two former Ironman triathletes.  It was first introduced in California (of course) in 2010, and four arrived in a local (Camp Hill, PA) bike shop this year, which sold immediately.  If you ever wanted to take your indoor exercise equipment out into the fresh air, this is the way.  Described as looking a lot like a preying mantis, it will probably elicit a variety of reactions out on the roads!  This combination elliptical trainer/bike weighs about 37 pounds, has eleven speeds, can do 25 MPH and climb hills, while exercising older or beat-up limbs and joints safely.  The three models range from $1800 to $3500.  Looks like fun.

Galt's Gulch in the Seaweed

Ready-made island fort for sale!

James Bond villain's lair

As if the James Bond series were prediction, not fiction, we learn that yet another billionaire proves the rule that with great wealth comes great sociopathy.  PayPal founder Peter Thiel has put up $1.25 million to start the process for floating autonomous libertarian "countries" at sea.  Whereas the Bond villains wanted to take over the world, the real unbalanced superwealthy just want it to go away. 
For a little more, Peter could buy, for 4 million pounds sterling, an island fort built in the Victorian era (so perfect for a steampunk theme!) sited in the English Channel.  It has a 21 room luxury hotel, two helipads (a must-have for evil geniuses), a heated indoor pool, and can bristle with armaments again as it once housed 49 cannon as well as antiaircraft guns.  Peter, like all libertarians, really just wants to avoid taxes, so his plan is to head 200 miles west of San Francisco and eventually link up other oil-platform "islands" to make a nation recognized by the U.N. (a little libertarian contradiction inherent in that, but our Ayn Rand robo-clones today can't recognize cognitive dissonance for beans).
A Cato Institute utopia will not, as he might think, result in Plato's Republic; billionaires with limitless guns served by indentured serfs are no philosopher-kings  -- they're just mob bosses in a closed, rigged system (feudalism run by unrestrained aristrocrats and Church magnates all over again).  Yes, we had, in the 14th century, the "moral order based on freedom and individual responsibility" and "restrained government" that libertarians sputter about, and you can see it now in 15 failed states around the world.  Haiti is the exact image of what a libertarian nation is all about.
Aside from this silliness, islands of wealth effectively detached from the broader body politic have been established in the exurbs of cities such as New York, L.A., Philadelphia, Miami and Denver.  These wealthy enclaves, through local control, can fund large and well-equipped police forces supplemented by layers of private security.  Anyone looking out of place can be expelled and fined quickly.  They want or need nothing from the state and expect the same.  Meanwhile, a city in Michigan has removed its no-longer affordable street lights and miles of roads are returning to gravel all over the nation.  Mirroring the disappearance of moderates from Congress, families living in middle-income neighborhoods have declined from 65% in 1970 to 44% today.
The extremism of concentrated wealth here and the extremism of levelling (Mao's Cultural Revolution or Pol Pot's Stone Age ideal) are two faces of the same coin.  Neither ideology goes anywhere but off the cliff.  As Aristotle said, virtue always lies in the middle.

(The Hipcrime Vocab blog is the inspiration and principal source for this post.) 

Name Game

To answer the old question, there's a lot in a name.  Our individual names (given and surname both) come from somewhere ("Melissa" comes from the Greek for "honeybee;" I hope no one's name means "jerk" in some old language).  Jack Kerouac's family name can be traced to an ancestor from a "wet place" in Brittany; Henry VII Tudor's family name came from a  time when ordinary people only had a first name, in this case, Tedwr (Theodore).   Place names everywhere usually hide an intriguing story, and we don't call other peoples and their countries by their real names at all.  Egypt is from the Greek word for the place; it's called Misr in Arabic.  India is really Bharat.  The Chinese transliteration of America comes out Mei-kuo, which literally means "beautiful country."  The Hungarians have always called themselves Magyars, and the Greeks call their country Hellas.  Finland is Suomi:  not even close.
That emerald isle we commonly refer to as England has changed its official name to reflect expansion (unlike the United States, but they've been around a lot longer): England and Wales comprise Britain; add Scotland and you have Great Britain; add Northern Ireland and today it's the United Kingdom.  The English St. George, the Scots St. Andrew and the sort of made-up Irish St. Patrick crosses comprise the Union Jack (the Welsh dragon didn't make the cut).
The ancient Phoenicians didn't call themselves that; they were Canaanites but identified with their individual city-states only.  If the names we use are those bestowed by the "winners" of history, they often were or still are derogatory:  the adjective "Punic" used by the Romans to refer to the Phoenician Carthaginians had negative connotations due to their centuries of rivalry and war.  The followers of the Roman polytheistic religion were called "pagans" by the Christians, which derived from "peasant."  I think those referred to in the Old Testament as the people of Dan were actually Minoans, based on their superior metalworking skills.  So many lost peoples and places are referred to in the Bible, it makes you realize how little knowledge we have compared to what has vanished and appears only in a shadow of a memory.
When Europeans expanded over the New World, native names or versions of them were retained, but often misunderstood.  Sewickley, a borough near Pittsburg, claims its name means "sweet water," but it probably has a source in a contraction of the name of one of the seven clans of the Shawnee.  I think Michigan actually means "sweet water," but who knows for sure.  Chicago may mean "stinking water!"
The French explorers heard of the Sioux before they met them; that name which we've adopted comes from the Algonquin word "nadouessioux," which means either "foreign speaker" or "enemy."  The Sioux themselves refer to their allied nations as the Seven Council Fires.  The French also unkindly named the Atsina "Gros Ventres," or Big Noses, and the Wyandot they called "Huron," which just referred to their hair style.  Most native nations called themselves simply "the people," or added a distinguishing adjective such as the "raven people" (Crow in English, Absaroke in their language).  The tribal group in northwestern Pennsylvania wiped out by the Iroquois known to us as the Erie or the Neutrals called themselves the Cat People.  Too bad we don't know anything more about them, but they ticked off the mighty Iroquois, which was a fatal mistake in those days.
The French have the greatest variety in surnames, and the Koreans the least; I think all Sikhs are named Singh.  Makes their phone book pretty hard to alphabetize... Barcelona got its name from the Barca family of Carthage (of which Hannibal was the premier member); did their reputation for business acumen come from those Phoenician traders, who established that and many other still-vital Spanish cities?
It amuses me to chase down facts through history, but I'm guessing "page views" for this post will be 0.
And the only comment would probably be, "get a life, dude!"




 

Badass Baldassare

Angelo Roncalli was elected pope in 1958, and by choosing the name John XXIII probably irritated the gentleman above who had the same appelation, and now rests in the Baptistery in Florence inside a lovely tomb inscribed, "John the former pope." With all those Johns, some confusion has set in.  It began back in the 10th century when there were two John XIVs, and, two hundred years later, no John XX.  There may well have been a female pope named Joan, but that's a tale for another time.  All this sort of skews the infallibility thing, it seems.
Our forgotten first to be the twenty-third of his name had a beginning that was consistent with his end:  born to a noble family who alleviated their impoverishment by becoming pirates, he was ambitious, larcenous and quite successful as a soldier. But he was more the Godfather than a saint.  Baldassare Cossa had risen high enough in the Church hierarchy to be one of the three claimants to the papacy in 1409, and with the death of one, moved into the job, making his fortune quickly by naming the Medicis the Vatican bank on one hand and selling indulgences all over Christendom on the other.
His rivals, Benedict XIII and Gregory XII, didn't go away quietly and had sufficient support to have a Council called at Constance, Switzerland to resolve the dispute.  Always the operator, Cossa tried to distract the gathering by luring the Bohemian "heretic" Jan Hus to state his case there, guaranteeing his safety ("not a hair on his head shall be touched").  Poor Jan, denied any chance to speak, was thrown into a refuse-pit cell for a year, then burned alive (at least we only get pepper spray -- so far -- today).  The sideshow did not work as planned, as Cossa was charged with several heinous crimes and deposed in 1415. Then our former pirate and pope was removed from the official list; no one wanted to share his name for quite some time.  Cossa was imprisoned like his victim, but the Medicis repaid  favors by ransoming him and providing the fine final resting place a few years later.
They don't make 'em like that any more.

Tuscan Bean Soup

                                         The new Fiat 500, 2007

                                         1959 Fiat Abarth Zagato
Consider the white canneloni bean, and its unexpected grand moment when it stars in Tuscan bean soup.  The genius of north-central Italian cuisine is to raise a modest number of humble ingredients to new sensory heights with thoughtful combination and exactly the right spices.
The cute Fiat Cinquecento (500), produced en masse from 1957 to 1975, was the kidney bean of cars:  utilitarian, inexpensive, adaptable; but since it was from the smoky industrial center of Torino, it had no spice and zero street cred.  The Renaults, Yugos and Fiats disappeared from the American market for very good reasons (the Citroen, too advanced and too weird for its time, did not die out because of any similar lack of quality and safety).  Yet, for a year to so, a Fiat Frankenstein lent a little color, not to mention a lot of blue exhaust, to our otherwise dull suburban enclave in the far western reaches of Richmond.  Even in the desert, a flower blooms once in a while.
Around the corner and up a block, my friend Bob Freeman was the only child of well-educated, slightly eccentric parents.  He was born in Rome (!), since his father was in the Immigration Service and did a lot of good work helping resettle refugees after WWII.  He could identify exactly where someone came from by their last name or accent; I thought that was a pretty unique skill. They also, like one other adult couple I knew of, had a library.  The family next door to them had a classic ketch (small yacht) and an impossibly gleaming black Steinway grand, so maybe the desert had more flowers than I thought.
Bob liked things I did, with great enthusiasm:  Bob Dylan, New Directions avant garde paperbacks, the two cuties in the Steinway house, and....cars.  We weren't snobs, either; we liked 'em all if they had personality, Chevys or Jaguars or Corvairs.  His parents eventually gave in to his pleading to acquire something more interesting than the utilitarian sedans they got every three years or so from the tiny Chevrolet dealer way out in Crozet (I went along a few times), so first they got a Renault Dauphine for him with windows so cheap they mostly didn't work after six months, and a three-speed stick on the floor.  Thus began Bob's long and surprisingly lucky career flipping cars over.
The deadman's curve where Quiocassin turns into Gaskins destroyed the tin Renault after the second flip.  His wonderful 'rents then got a burgundy Corvair Monza with a FOUR-speed floor shift and a sexy black pleated fake leather interior.  One hundred and twenty horsepower and faulty weight distribution = another 360-degree spin and into the ditch at deadman's curve. Minor repairs to Bob at the emergency room, a short time-out on the driving, and then, damned if he didn't call me to come see his 1959 Fiat Abarth 750 pocket rocket (he paid for this one himself).  Already staining the driveway with oil and other fluids, there it was in its gleaming silver aluminum body, the craziest and most, uh, unusual Class H slalom racer anywhere.  Others in the Virginia Motor Sports Club (which we quickly joined) were always excited to see it, turning away from the suddenly mundane Austin-Healy Sprites and MG Midgets, frankly amazed it was running (it was built on a Fiat, after all).  My 1958 Mercedes 180 with its fierce Lucas foglights was mostly ignored, but what it lacked in performance (everything) it made up for in adorability.
A little background, since people have heard of and seen the products of better-known racing/tuning shops, like AMG, Shelby and the BMW M series:  Carlo Abarth (a Scorpio, thus the cool scorpion logo) allied his fortunes with Fiat a few years after starting his company, producing what he called "small, but wicked" racers along with his renowned exhaust systems.  It was acquired by Fiat, morphed into its racing division, and then for the past couple of decades has been mostly just a name with cachet.
I have no idea where Bob found it in the mid-60s, as there were very few Abarths around in the U.S.; only 600 of the 1959 - 1960 Zagato750's were made, and they were useless for transportation.  Our houses had no garages, so he worked on it -- endlessly -- in the driveway, sometimes under a tarp in the rain.  When ready, he drove it up at the Puddleduck raceway north of Richmond and had a ball leaving the Sprites in his dust and smoke.  It didn't always make it back home on its own, but glory and a few quite small trophies did.
Flip #4 came late one night in the Willow Lawn parking lot, where Bob was practicing his chicanes.  Miss Abarth was in peak condition and I guess her driver got a little overenthusiastic.  I was across the street at the radio station, and after signing off at midnight, came out to see the police and ambulance lights flashing, surrounding the fleet silver bug.  She was greasy side up, but went out the way she was destined to, the diva.
Bob's accident #5 occurred in Aix-en-Provence, France, on a mobylette in a medieval alleyway, but that's a whole other story.  Like several of my friends, he was lucky enough to enlist in the Coast Guard; he went off to the Chicago area to defend Lake Michigan and we lost contact.
With the retro trend still strong, the Fiat Abarth has been born again along with the VW Beetle and the Mini Cooper.  Based on the new regular 500 reintroduced in 2007, it is "wicked" again, in red and black with 160 turbocharged horsepower, racing suspension and brakes.  It's no 750 Zagato, but that's probably wise.
Wherever he is, I suspect Bob's on the waiting list for a shiny new Abarth.  If you own a shopping center, I'm warning you now.