Odd Lots

[jeff_duntemann]

• There's an ancient and (from all appearances) abandoned German cemetery at the southeast corner of Rand Road and Golf Road in Des Plaines, just northwest of Chicago. I passed it on my walk yesterday, and took ten minutes to walk the rows and look for any familiar names. I didn't see any names from my own family tree, but it was interesting nonetheless. Of the 80-ish graves I saw (and it looks like many have long since been removed) at least half were of people who died in the 19th century, though one man was buried there as late as 1975. Many markers are broken or mostly buried, and there is one foundation for a now-gone mausoleum. A little Googling showed it to belong to Immanuel Lutheran Church, on Lee Street in downtown Des Plaines, but there is no sign on site to that effect, and there is no fence nor much evidence of any care save the occasional mowing of weeds. I did find a page with a summary of readable markers. For you geofreaks, it's located at 42° 3'9.79"N 87°53'40.49"W.
• After an insane amount of time wasted screwing with the drivers, configuration, and application setup, I finally got LightScribe to work on one of my Dell SX270 XP machines. I have yet to get it to work on any Win2K machine, and I've begun to wonder if there's something in LightScribe that (intentionally or not) simply doesn't play well with 2000. However, once I burned a few LightScribe labels, I must say that I don't recommend it, even on XP. The contrast is very poor, and if the text is small enough to express titles for 20 songs, it's virtually unreadable. Don't bother.
• One of my favorite hymn tunes is Gustav Holst's Thaxted (named after the town in England where he grew up) which most people recognize as the great anthem around which Holst built the Jupiter movement of The Planets. Anglophiles may also know the tune as that of the WWI-era patriotic hymn "I Vow to Thee, My Country." The Wikipedia writeup indicates that it has a meter of 13 13 13 13 13 13, which is extremely uncommon and may be unique among Christian hymns. Is that why it still gives me chills after hearing it literally hundreds of times? Why are we moved by some tunes (absent words to carry emotional content) and not others?
• Saw something today (at Trader Joe's) that I'd never seen nor heard of before: The pluot. Quarter plum, three quarters apricot. They look like plums, but were not for sale individually and I didn't want to buy a whole package without knowing a little bit more about what they were. I like both plums and apricots, though; how can I lose?
• George Ewing's review of the first Carl & Jerry books is now on the stands in CQ Magazine, page 35. Although we still don't know much about John T. Frye, a chap who used to live in Logansport, Indiana wrote this afternoon to tell me that John's younger brother Bailey WA9OWH is still alive and still living in Logansport. I'm hoping to contact him in the next few days to see if he can provide any additional details. John T. Frye himself died in 1985.