Above Freezing!

     Today, the high reached 40°F.  Tonight's predicted low will be 33°.  We haven't seen our last freeze of the winter, I expect, but we're supposed to mostly stay above freezing for the next week.  We may see the upper 40s or even 50 by the weekend.

     It's a small respite, but I'll take it.

Heavy-Duty Cotton Twill

      A commenter asked, "What's a dungaree, anyway?"

     It turns out that's quite a question.  The easy answer is that it's a heavy, hard-wearing, twill-woven cotton fabric, typically yarn-dyed -- a sibling to denim.

     The harder answer branches and twines.  About as soon as people figured out some things -- wool, cotton, flax, hemp (and so on) -- can be spun into threads and the threads woven into cloth, they started working out various ways to weave it.

     Canvas -- from an Anglo-French or Old French root -- is heavy-duty cloth in a plain over one, under one weave, and it was first made from hemp: cannabis in Greek, or cannapaceus in Vulgar Latin.  The Dutch turned out a really tight-woven version suitable for, oh, sails, and called it "canvas cloth," except the Dutch word is "doek," and there's your canvas duck.  "Cotton duck" is canvas without the hemp.  Canvas is heavy stuff, great for tents, bags, maybe capes.  But it's stiff.  It doesn't drape nicely, and it'll sandpaper your skin.

     There are flexible weaves that are still tight, like twill.  It's an old pattern, and there's no telling it if was invented to make a pretty design, move better, wear less -- or someone just lost count.  Humans like to fiddle, and as soon as we had looms and some free time, we started trying things.  Twill weave was probably invented more than once, and there are multiple patterns that count as "twill."  But it's ideal for clothes.  By the Middle Ages, the French were making a good twill, "sergé de Nîmes," which you and I know as denim.  In the 19th Century, Levi Strauss started using it for workwear after Gold Rush miners -- miners! -- complained the canvas he made jeans from was too rough on their hides.

     (Wait, what's "serge?"  It's a specific two up, two down twill weave that flows nicely and the word meant "silken."  And "jeans?"  Weavers in Genoa, Italy copied the French weavers of Nimes, right down to the blue dye: blue Genoa cloth became "blue jean" material.  The name went from the cloth to clothing -- and "denim jeans" is either redundant or a well-hedged bet.)

     The thing is, another people had beaten French (and Italian) weavers and San Francisco tailors to the idea: in India, they'd been spinning and weaving cotton* for centuries if not millennia (when Alexander the Great invaded India in 327 BC, his troops soon swapped their woolen clothes for comfortable local cotton), and their wardrobes tended more to folding than cutting and sewing.  Twill had long been woven in and around the city of Dongri, giving rise to the Marathi word dongrī for the cloth, Urdu dungrī and Hindi dũgrī  -- and, by the 1600s, the English word dungaree.  It was a short step from the name of the cloth to the workwear, and thus we get dungarees.  The Indian original was yarn-dyed, and so is the thread for the modern cloth.  Yes, it's likely that hard-wearing farm (etc.) clothes of radically different cut and design were made from essentially the same fabric; when the human race comes up with a good idea, it tends to spread, getting reimagined as it goes.
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* Of some note, when you see pictures of Gandhi quietly sitting on the floor, running a spinning wheel?  He's not engaging in a gentle pastime, he's being defiant.  The Raj was happy to use Indian cotton -- in their own mills, mostly in England, and to sell the cloth back to Indians at a nice profit.  Just like marching to the sea to boil out salt, they didn't want the Indians doing for themselves.  This policy...engendered resentment.  You'll notice the Raj isn't around any more -- and the Indians have a spinning wheel on their flag.

I Didn't Think It Was Supposed To Sound Like That

      Saturday is my day to do laundry.  Especially this week -- I've got to fill in at work on Sunday.  So it had to get done today.

     First load, tops and delicates, a surprising amount of which can go in the dryer on low.  Which is where I put it.  I loaded the air-dry stuff onto plastic hangers and started the washer filling for the week's worth of work slacks that follow.

     H'mm, the old dryer's sounding a little rough.  I decided to check the outside vent as soon as I got upstairs.

     It didn't look too bad, but what was clunking around?  I did have three hooded sweatshirts in there....

     I took the slacks down and loaded the washer.  The dryer sounded worse.  It seemed to be varying in speed as the drum turned.  Was it a drive-belt issue?  Overloaded?  Motor failing?

     Most dryers have synchronous motors.  They need to be extremely unhappy before the speed starts to vary, and they usually don't last long after that.  And the noise was getting worse and worse, with occasional banging sounds.

     I decided to put everything on hangers and let it air-dry while I had a look at the dryer.  Not great, but it's winter and a pretty cold day: the air in my house is plenty dry and a little extra humidity wouldn't hurt.  A fair amount of messing with damp clothing later, I opened up the dryer.

     It still didn't look too bad.  I  found some lint balls in the exhaust vent, and maybe the belt is wearing faster than I'd like, but that was all.  In a spirit of trying things, I got my portable vacuum and started cleaning the squirrel-cage blower; the machine has been taking longer and longer to get clothes dry recently, and it did have some lint build-up on the vanes.

     In the process of cleaning the fan, I eventually realized the impeller was turning independently of the drive shaft.  Oh, it would turn if the shaft was turning, too, but it's supposed to be rigidly coupled.  And it was wobbling quite a bit.  That's the kind of thing that would account for the racket the dryer was making.

     Double-checking the drawings online, it looks like the motor shaft is D-shaped and the fan is clamped to it, with a matching opening at the hub.  I've ordered a replacement impeller, clamp and circlip.  Replacing it is probably going to be a fussy project, down at floor level, and until it arrives, we're out of the dryer business.

     In the meantime, my load of work slacks was done -- two pairs of medium-weight cargo slacks, a matching pair with a warm winter lining and three pairs of heavy double-front dungarees.  I improvised an indoor clothesline in the basement and plugged the dehumidifier back in.  I'm checking the progress of my tops and some time before bedtime, I'll move the dry ones to storage and bring the slacks upstairs, to dry where it's warmer.

     When it comes to clothes dryers, I have a skewed view: my Mom used the same 1949-vintage one well into the 1980s, getting it repaired as needed, and on some level, I may believe they're supposed to last forever.  I'll see how the repairs go.  The parts sites show a lot of the components for my dryer as "unavailable," so the clock is ticking.

It's Snowing Again

      After all, it is winter.  What did I expect?  But I still don't like it much.

It's Missionaries All The Way Down

     The first place I saw the company logo was the same as a lot of people: on an amplifier.  You saw big ones at concerts and smaller ones at radio stations, and they were just about indestructible: Crown amplifiers.  For many people of my generation and younger, there was an association between Crown amps and rock music.

     (The second place I saw the logo was on a product with closer links to the company's origin, a tape recorder.)

     You can imagine my surprise when, years later, I learned the "crown" in question wasn't meant to refer to any peak of technical perfection or earthly sovereign.  Nope.  It was the crown of Jesus.  And the story of the company was a story about missionaries -- some of them with slide rules and soldering irons.

     Crown didn't set out to make audio amplifiers, though they arrived at them pretty quickly.  They didn't even start out as "Crown."  In the years right after World War Two, audio tape recording was one of the hottest new technologies.  Everyone was finding new uses for high-fidelity recording and playback, easy editing and rapid duplication.  Looking back, it's easy to forget that the only audio recording system good for anything better than scratchy voice was discs, typically big 16" recordings, celluloid over a soft aluminum core, running at 78 rpm for best quality, easily broken, easily bent, flammable* and impossible to edit.  Everyone wanted tape -- and that included preachers.

     Religious institutions had been quick to adopt radio broadcasting when it started out.  How better to reach the populace than with their own programs, or better yet, their own stations?  Tape recording was a natural fit, for many reasons.  Even missionaries were using tape -- and that's how pastor (and radio amateur) Clarence C. Moore of Elkhart, Indiana first got involved.  Early tape recorders were large and fragile; Moore began modifying them to hold up to the rigors of missionary work.

     Clarence Moore was already involved with radio station HCJB in Quito, Ecuador.  Anyone who was a shortwave listener from the 1930s through the early 2000s will recognize the call letters.  At one point, you could pick up the station almost any time of night or day, just about anywhere in the world.  (Airport expansion and, reading between the lines, an increasingly uncooperative local government led the station to scale back high-power shortwave broadcasting, but they're still around, and these days the parent organization works to "plant" local-service stations in underserved locations all around the world.)  The station first went on the air in 1931, and was known for getting high-quality results on a tight budget.

     Back home in Elkhart, Moore's International Radio and Electronics Corporation had gone from modifying tape recorders to building their own -- lighter than the competition, simpler in some ways, but rugged and reliable.  Before too long, the missionaries were asking for PA amplifiers, and IREC built them, too, eventually becoming one of the first companies to combine the two, producing a portable (or at least luggable) recording and playback system capable of serving a crowd.

     By the 1960s, the company's products were selling to a wide group of customers.  The Moores owned radio stations in Elkhart and the company changed their name to Crown.  Maybe it was a subtle message to all the radio and music heathens who were using their equipment; under any name, the quality spoke for itself.  And that's notable.  There are some companies with religious affiliation that lean into religion -- "Buy our stuff 'cos we share your faith," and sometimes the goods don't quite measure up.  That's not how the pastor from Elkhart worked.  Crown was always first-rate.  A Crown amp would deliver power to a horrendous load without undue distortion -- they ran ads showing their more powerful amplifiers with 60 Hz audio plugged in the input running an electric drill from the output.

     Crown got into high-end hi-fi early on, and built a range of products.  They always had a close association with HCJB.  By the late 1970s, they were out of the tape recorder business, but were manufacturing FM tuners, graphic equalizers and other products along with amplifiers.  In 1980, they brought the first Pressure Zone Microphone to market -- it's a remarkable and very different approach to picking up sound, and the engineer behind it once worked for a radio station that I worked for, years later.  But that's another story, and one with too much unverifiable hearsay to tell.

     Moore had also been involved in RF work.  Early on, he'd developed a directional antenna for HCJB and in 1975, when the station needed a high-power shortwave transmitter, Crown offered workspace (and presumably expertise) in Elkhart to HCJB engineers, where they developed a 500,000 Watt, frequency-agile transmitter. Many of those transmitters remain in service around the world, long after the transmission center in Ecuador shut down.  Crown also got in on the early development of solid-state FM transmitters, and built models with outputs ranging from ten to 500 Watts that have sold well for years.

     Clarence Moore died in 1979.  In 2000, Crown's audio line was bought by Harman and it's still around, using a crown-in-circle logo.  Meanwhile, the RF side stayed with (or was repurchased by, information varies) Moore's descendants, and as a division of International Radio and Electronics, Crown Broadcast still builds FM transmitters (and rebroadcast receivers), with a crown-in-rounded-square logo.  The same family remains at the helm and the same faith guides them -- and, heathen that I am, I will note the quality of their products remains high.  SonSet Solutions continues the work of the engineering team that built and installed the big shortwave transmitters for HCJB, too, supporting religious broadcasters and the shortwave equipment as well as local-scaled stations.  That's quite a record of accomplishment for Clarence C. Moore!

     (Apocryphally, people who worked at the Moore's stations in Elkhart decades ago report they were typical medium-to-small-market owners, careful with their money, not paying DJs more than necessary -- but the stations did have some unique custom equipment, including a couple of the very few Crown-branded large audio mixers!)
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* A common prank at radio stations was to leave a small ball of celluloid cutterhead shavings in an ashtray.  It would go up almost like flash powder when a lit cigarette came near.  Given that the other thing laying around radio studios was heaps and heaps of paper -- logs, scripts, teletype wirecopy, newspapers and record sleeves ("shucks") -- you can imagine how popular this kind of hijinks was with management and other responsible adults.     

Heat Wave

      Yesterday's high was at least 30°F and it was a real relief.  After a long stretch of single-digit temperatures either side of zero, more normal winter weather has been an improvement.  We might even reach 50° next week -- but I'll believe that when it happens.

Rabbitholes And Politics

     After recent special elections keep turning up surprise Democrat victories in states and districts that heed been electing Republicans with clockwork reliability, I'm starting to suspect that both sides have once again failed to understand what a powerful motivator it is to piss off the normal middle, the voters who are content stay home on Election Day unless they decide things are getting out of hand.  Some of 'em are out waving signs now.  That rarely happens.

     Elsewhere, a recent note has me looking into the history of an Indiana electronics company that began about 160 miles away from Indianapolis, and I don't mean Electro-Voice.  E-V has long been gone from South Bend, but at least one of the successors to the outfit I'm reading up on is still in the city where they started out -- and it turns out their ties go much further afield.  It's a complicated story and I might not get it all untangled, but I hope to post a link-heavy article about it eventually.

Succotash With Ham

     It was more or less succotash.  And it worked out well.

     I wasn't feeling especially ambitious for dinner.  There was a package of ham chunks in the fridge and a use-it-or-lose-it onion in the cabinet.  I had bought a package of fresh mushrooms that wanted used up, too.  And we have canned corn and beans; I keep them on hand.

     But I started with a strip of bacon, cut into eight sections.  I browned it a little in the bottom of the pan and kept half the grease, adding diced mushroom and following with the onion after taking my time cutting it up.  I added the ham chunks, covered the pan and let it cook down while deciding what else to add.

     A small can of mild Hatch chilies, a can of corn with red and green peppers, and most of a can of pinto beans followed.  I used about half of the liquid from the beans, and added some Italian-blend seasoning, a bay leaf and a little parsley.  After simmering  for fifteen minutes, it looked pretty good and smelled tempting.

     Tam's not a big fan of beans, and Portobello mushrooms aren't her favorite -- but she finished a half-bowl of the stuff in short order and went back for more!  The combination had plenty of umami, a little smoky, savory and with a bit of spice.  Tam added chili-lime Cholula sauce to hers; I settled for a dash of black pepper.

Read It For Yourself

     The indictment against journalists Don Lemon, Georgia Fort and several apparent protestors (or maybe reporters) has been released and you can look it over yourself.

     They're accused of collusion for what reads to me as regular embedded-type reporting.  Based on what's in the indictment, they were not running the protest or even helping to plan it.  Multiple DOJ staffers are alleged to have refused to pursue the case because it was a nothingburger.  But have a look and make up your own mind, and we'll all find out what the court concludes, by and by.

A First Amendment, If You Can Keep It

     A pair of journalists who covered a protest at a church have been arrested for it by Federal authorities.

     This is...problematic.  They weren't protesting; there are knotty issues with people showing up uninvited at religious services to make a political protest.  That's the kind of tangle that keeps civil rights attorneys gainfully employed, and one that may not have especially satisfying or universally good answers once it goes to trial.  Whose rights prevail?  That's a legal battle entirely within the First Amendment, the freedom of religion and the right to protest balanced, with freedom of speech as the fulcrum.

     But arresting journalists covering the event is clearly over the line.  News is news, and our country has generally recognized a right to report and to publish, to point cameras and microphones at events as they happen, to make notes now and publish afterward.  Arresting the people doing that is always questionable, and while there can be debate over how close is too close, that's not what happened here.

     Journalists aren't untouchable -- but the act of reporting is a Constitutionally protected activity.

     Or at least it used to be.

Overheard In The Office

     RX: "Are you interested in bacon?"  [Holds out plate with a bacon/egg/cheese sandwich on whole wheat, with a couple of half-strips of bacon on the side.]

     Tam: "Yes!  But is bacon interested in me?"  [Takes bacon.]

     She considers my typical morning sandwich or bowl of oatmeal impossibly heavy, but a little bacon is always welcome.

     Outside, it's -4°F.  There has already been one water main break, and as the temperature cycles up and down, we can expect more.  Citizen's Energy inherited a system that had been struggling to keep up with aging pipes for years, through a series of ownership changes.  Citizen's, an unusual public trust, has made remarkable progress -- but it's not a task that is ever entirely done and they'll have more work before this run of extreme cold is over. 

Screamin' Cold

      As the bitter cold and deep snow goes on and and on, I find myself less willing to get out and deal with it.

     Oh, deal with it I have, from shoveling and snow-blowing and running my car a little up and down the alley on Sunday to jouncing out into the ruts on Monday to get to work.

     Monday, I carried a snow shovel.  Just in case; but our neighborhood streets had not been plowed, and I had my suspicions -- suspicions that were confirmed when I returned home.  The city had called in their contract plowing services, which mostly consist of people who own large trucks with a snowplow blade on the front, with which they pick up some extra winter cash clearing parking lots and driveways.  They're fast and enthusiastic in response to the city-funded windfall, and one of them had plowed up a nice wall of snow at the entrance to our alley some time after my neighborhood SUV drivers had all returned home.

     I turned around at the nearest intersection and parked with my headlights on the alley entrance and flashers running, wrapped my heavy scarf around my face and got out the shovel.  A couple of slow passes in each direction got a car-width of the wall knocked down, and after one more, it wasn't any higher than the ridge of snow between the ruts.  I backed my car off, made sure it was in "winter traction" mode, swung wide and took the snow as square-on as I could manage.  My old Lexus mini-SUV plowed right through!

     My tolerance for that kind of tiny adventure is fading.  I'm leaving the house with four layers of tops under my coat, double socks, multiple pairs of gloves so I can keep warm spares inside my coat or between the heated car seat and my legs, and there's just no margin for trouble.

     We're now in the coldest part of the week and I think I'm out of heavy jeans.