6:3, 3:6, Winners, Losers, Connecting Sports into the Social Consciousness: England v Hungary, U.S. v U.S.S.R.

There, that is one pompous post title! All because of the chain that began last Sunday, January 18, when we were watching the first episode of "Grantchester," a British murder mystery series being broadcast on PBS as part of the Masterpiece: Mystery series.  Clearly taking place a few years after the end of World War II, I was curious to know exactly when (something that could easily be found from the synopsis if I had gone there first!). Since DI Keating was all mad about a football game that England lost to Hungary 6-3, I thought that might help me find out. Little did I know!

So, it turns out that this was not just a football match (soccer for us Yankees), but THE football match--a cataclysmic football match! Googling "6-3 england hungary" and you find the very first hit is its very own Wikipedia article: "1953 England v Hungary football match" answering not just my question--November 25, 1953--but all sorts of other questions, you didn't know you had: about how this match--"3-6" from the English side--fit into the psyche of English football fans, what this match--6-3 as far as Hungarians go--meant to the post-war, recently Communist Hungary. There is so much about this on the Internet, that my wandering could go on for ever, but where I started was with the tiny bit I had--its mention on the TV show I had just watched. While Wikipedia articles often mention how some historical event is picked up or treated in literature and film, this one had not been edited to add this little note. In fact, the only note was that there was a "popular 1998 Hungarian comedy film 6:3 Play It Again Tutti [based] on the match." (more on this later)

Henry Kurt Silberman: The Centenary of His Birth

This is a different kind of post. Today my father would have been 100 years old. Born on December 19, 1914, in Breslau, Germany, he died 11 years ago, December 3, 2003, in Richmond, Virginia. For some time I have made a few starts and stops at trying to put together photos, history, etc., but have not managed to produce a complete product. There is a Googlepages site I worked on some time ago--this includes transcriptions of some of his own memories, some documents, some WWII VMail to his parents--and on which I hope to continue to add.

Today, however, I don't have the time to add extensively to that record, but I thought I would do something more in keeping with this blog and do a little more wandering to honor Dad on this day. So while I, too, can add to the Internet, for other wanderers, one great thing about the Internet is that there is stuff all over the place, but as random as can be.

Death of Angela Banner

Given my earlier posts about Angela Banner and the Ant and Bee books, it is only right that I should also memorialize her (belatedly) with links to articles about her death on May 30, 2014.

First, as befitting of the paucity of information about her, my first hit of "new" material in my periodic internet wandering is an expression of exasperation from alt.obituaries:

"I can't believe I can't find a more formal obit!" 

Second, that is it. I could find nothing more than the same piece from FindaGrave.com written by her niece, so check it out and may Angela Banner rest in peace.

Memory Lane: The Times Square Hotel or The Times Square Motor Hotel or "The Times Square"

I hadn't gone wandering/wondering for a while, but I was put on the path again—this time memory lane—after reading a piece in Granta issue 126: Do You Remember? In "The Memory Box, Olivia Laing writes about her time in New York researching David Wojnarowicz. While working in his archives at NYU's Fales Library, she was staying at a place where her "room was on the corner of West 43rd Street and 8th Avenue, on the tenth floor of what once had been the Times Square Hotel."

Well that got my own remembering going, since on my only childhood real visit to New York (not counting seeing my grandmother prior to embarking to Germany in 1956 and just after disembarking in 1959), we had stayed at the Times Square Motor Hotel, which I assumed to be the same building. In her article, Laing goes on to write some more about how this building went from "glamour to a faded gentility."

Among other things, she says that the "Times Square Hotel was at the time in the third of its incarnations, and its history encapsulated the neighbourhood's uneasy accommodations between capital and enterprise, poverty and need." I had not been acquainted with any of the history a building which had been "[b]uilt like an art deco liner, with fifteen storeys and a marble ballroom," so it seemed only appropriate after reading about memory and persistence of objects to make my own wandering again—first to the basement to find the faded stationery shown above, and then to the Internet.

Oh My, What Have They Done?! Republished Ant and Bee Books Have New Pictures and Rewritten Text!

Following up on their reappearance, I just got my first views of the three Ant and Bee books being republished by Egmont Books. I could understand that there would be new covers, and I won't really fault these stripey things:

No, the real problem comes with some sneak previews you can get by registering at http://www.lovereading4kids.co.uk/ and reading about the books. The first hint that something is amiss when you read: "This classic from the 1950's has been lovingly re-illustrated by the author Angela Banner to provide a fun, contempory story"(emphasis added) and "Original author and creator Angela Banner has re-illustrated the book". What, the elusive, now almost 90-year old Angela Banner has done new drawings?! And for More and More Ant and Bee, it says "Ant and Bee are back in this brand new story!" How is a book that first came out in 1961 a "brand new story?!

Washington Baseball (Nationals and Senators), Arch McDonald, and Robert Ruark

Before today's game between the Washington Nationals and New York Mets (a veritable rout, it turned out), we were walking the concourse of Nationals Park and were walking by the Washington baseball history exhibit area (roughly behind home plate--interestingly, the internet wandering I have done has turned up no discussion of this exhibit area!). I have looked at this before, although maybe not with any intensity. Anyway, today I was struck by one photograph in particular.

While I am not sure what the caption of the photograph at the exhibit was, the caption on the picture to the left is roughly the same: "Bringing the Game to the Fans: Washington Senators radio broadcaster Arch McDonald is shown calling a Senators game during the late 1930s."

This got me wondering, in particular about the chimes that McDonald seems to be about to strike, which in turn led to this internet wandering exercise. [Note: unlike other exercises in this blog, I am not going in order of my exploration, because, for example, I could not even find this photo on first or second try.]

Thanks to the Detroit Tigers broadcaster Mario Impemba for posting this photo fairly recently on his Twitter feed. I don't know Impemba, but was happy (especially after my other explorations) to know that someone still recalls McDonald.

A Book of Many Colors: Colored Sweaters in Book Titles

This is probably the silliest wandering I have done, but I got stuck on it after having finished reading The Girl in the Green Sweater: A Life in Holocaust's Shadow and then seeing a recommendation for The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World So, I had to find out how many color sweaters exist in English book titles that have nothing to do with knitting or making sweaters. The answer is: too many: