Infinite Universe ∞ = ∞

December 21st, 2012 - Nothing About The End Of The World

noreply@blogger.com (dignature) — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 18:57:00 +0000

Hey look, it's a blog post. Meh.
As I'm sitting down to the luncheonette counter of the 'Friendship House Diner' (formerly Wendy's) the other day, one of the waitresses is rolling up silverware (well, not SILVER exactly, not in color or composition; but forks, spoons, and knives anyway) into napkins and chucking them into trays to be brought out to freshly 'cleaned' tables.
She's laughing about something and the other waitress is saying, "Well, I guess I can't move to Tennessee, because I won't be able to use my Tennessee pickup line!"
I had just suffered through three hours of bad personal interaction with a 'client' and was looking to leave that behind me, so I wanted in on this conversation.
"What's the 'Tennessee pickup line'...?, I ask, "or maybe I don't want to know...," I say.
The napkin waitress says laughingly, but to me as to a confidant, "Oh, she has all these pickup lines. The Tennessee one goes something like, "Hey stranger, are you from Tennessee...?"
I play along and answer, "Why no, why do you ask...?"
"Because you're the only Ten I see in here," she answers back.
"Oh man," I say.
"Yeah," she says. "And then there's the Windex one."
"The Windex one...?"
"Yeah, hey, is that Windex on your pants...?"
(Me looking at my pants, then back at her) "No, why...?"
"Because I can see myself in them."
We laugh.
Then I think of one I heard a long time ago.
"I got a Kentucky one for you, I say."
"Yeah, let's hear it!"
(I'm staring at the grease-stained ceiling trying to get it right) "Okay - what's the best pickup line to impress a girl in a hillbilly bar in Kentucky...?"
"What," she says.
"Nice tooth!" I say.
She laughs.
Napkin waitress goes off to ring someone up at the till, and I spoon through my chili trying to cool it off.
She comes back and starts to roll up more napkins. She says, "Yeah, she's got her own set of lines, not my style at all. Mine are more like the, 'If you were a booger, I'd pick you' sort of thing."
I laugh. "No wonder they have those signs in the bathroom about washing your hands," I say.
She looks at me nonplussed for a second then laughs and rolls up more napkins.

You didn't really think I would start a blog post with a title like that and not talk about the end of the world, did you?
Not that it isn't an important topic, but I'm kind of sick of everyone talking about it, and even more fed up with the commercialization of it. A friend of mine posted a picture from the Renaissance Festival saying, 'If the world doesn't end on 12/21/2012, we'll give away 5 free pairs of tickets to the 2013 Renaissance Festival on Monday! Click and share this post to win!'

I was thinking, 'Well, this is the end of a Renaissance era, and the beginning of a capitalistic one.'
At least they are only after clicks, whereas the news today is full of stories about people going to Mexico to spend their last days, have an excuse to party, hide in a bunker or whatever, and the locals saying, "It's great that they've bought into this myth, this is good for us!"
Groan.
The whole thing reinforces in me that we as humans can't seem to think outside our world, our little Earth. Our mindset is that because we invented our own religions, philosophies, and cultural traditions, that everyone in the universe must behave like us, because we set the example, it's all we know. It's what 'The World' does.
What is 'The World' anyway...? Some sort of quantified description that we invented for our earth culture. Is it the human race, the earth, the universe...? What ends when the world ends...? If the end of the world happens, is that the end of time, too? Can time have an end, or does what lies before and after it have a definition that can be measured? What do we do when our calendar runs out? Get a new calendar, I guess.

I wonder if an intelligence from another part of the universe were ever to get to Earth, what they would think of our attitude and basing of everything on our transcribed history and traditions, which have become our beliefs. Maybe the 'alien' culture will be the exact same way but have their OWN set of rules and traditions and think they are the only race in the universe. What will they think of the Bible? The Koran? Euthanasia? Social order? It would be an interesting thing to see. Philosophy would be back in style.
There is the phrase, "Think locally, act globally." Maybe it should be more like, "Think globally, act universally."

Peace,
- T.

April 20th, 2011 - The Star in the Cottonwood Tree

noreply@blogger.com (dignature) — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 19:59:00 +0000

I first learned about the star in the cottonwood tree many years ago from my friend and naturalist teacher, Pat Rummenie.

As we were walking in the forest, she picked a small, dead cottonwood twig up off of the ground and snapped it at it's "knuckle", (the banded joint that is characteristic of cottonwood branches) and said, "If you are lucky, inside you will see the "Star in the Cottonwood."

In the heartwood at the center of the twig, I saw a five-pointed star shape.
There are many Native American legends and fables about the star and what it means.
I learned one from Mary Louise Defender Wilson, who tells about it in a Dakotah legend.
Like all good folk tales, it is embellished and changes as it is related.

It goes something like this...

The Star in the Cottonwood Tree

A long time ago, when everything was still pretty new, up in the sky there were many, many stars.

Amongst them was a little star that was very interested and curious about everything.

As this little star travelled across the sky, it would stop and examine so many things.

One day, the little star came down by the earth. It travelled all around the earth, looking at all of the animals, all of the birds, all of the plants, and everything that was alive on it.

The little star came near a village. There was a sound coming from the village. This sound was so beautiful, so wonderful, that the little star could not believe it. It had never heard anything so beautiful in all of the heavens and all of the places it had visited around the earth. So the little star stayed close to the village.

As it listened and listened, it could not get enough of listening to the beautiful sound.

Soon the little star heard the other stars calling and realized, "I am a star, and I should be up in the sky with the other stars. Even though sometimes we stars are very far apart, I had better go back up there to be closer to them."

So the little star went back up into the sky to be with the other stars, but it still kept thinking about the beautiful sound it had heard coming from the village. Soon (well, what is soon to a star) it began to get very lonely and very sad.

One night when all the stars were close together shining and talking about all the different things stars talk about, the little star asked if it could go back to the village so that it could hear the beautiful sound again.

The other stars answered politely that no, it was a star, and that it belonged here, up in the sky with all of the other stars.

The little star didn't say anything. It tried to be involved in all the things that stars do, shining in the night sky, travelling here and there, dodging the planets, but the little star felt as though it didn't fit in with the rest of the stars, and it missed the beautiful sound more than ever. It got so lonely, it pleaded with the other stars. "Please may I go back to that village…?

I want to live there and listen to that beautiful sound forever!"

The oldest of the stars said, "I'm sorry little star, but you cannot do that. People live in that village. They have many things to do in order to stay alive; they have to gather their food, they have to build their houses, they have to mend their clothes, they have to teach each other."

The eldest star continued, "If you go back there, shining around as you do, the people will be distracted, wondering why a star has come down shining around their village. They will be disturbed by you and they won't be able to get all of their necessary things done."

So the little star thought and thought.

Finally it said to the other stars, "If I can find a way to be close to that village without them seeing me, can I stay there?"

The other stars chuckled and said, "Yes little star. If you can find a way to be close to that village without disturbing the people and keeping them from their work, you can go live there."

So the little star got an idea. It went down by the village, but not too close. It got close enough to hear the beautiful sound, but not so close that it disturbed the people.

It noticed it was next to a tall, tall tree, a cottonwood tree. The tallest tree in the area.

It thought, "This is perfect! I will stay inside this tree so that I can hear the beautiful sound. But I will not disturb the people." And so it did.

And it listened to its favorite sound, the sound that came from the village.

This was the sound of all the people laughing, and talking, and teaching each other.

The star is still inside the cottonwood tree today, listening and hoping to hear more of those beautiful sounds.

March 25th, 2011 - Winter Green

noreply@blogger.com (dignature) — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 02:07:00 +0000

A few weeks ago I was involved in a whirlwind trip around Wisconsin that had me helping out one of our other state agricultural nursery inspectors. It being March, there wasn't a lot going on in most nurseries, but the places we visited were "all winter" growers, being companies that keep their greenhouses running all winter (not an inexpensive proposition in northern Wisconsin).
These were very interesting places, and it was especially nice to see some very green plants and walk around in a 75 degree greenhouse after snowshoeing the perimeter of an apple orchard a couple days previously.

This place was a HUGE grower of geraniums, and was gearing up for Easter with pots and hanging baskets.
As a matter of fact, their were literally pots and baskets for as far as the eye could see.
It was mind-boggling. They had just built a new greenhouse solely for this plant material, and were busy potting, watering, hanging, and moving things around for the big shipment coming up.
The large green blocks you see on the right side of the above image are all pallets of hundred of pounds of peat.
From this, the nurseries make their own "soiless mix" to put in their pots, using peat as the base material. This is to keep the growing media as sterile and neutral as possible, and have a starting media that is clean, free of contaminants, and that can be specifically tuned to the plants being grown by adding things like Milorganite, permeability agents, fertilizers, growth inhibitors, and all kinds of voodoo to get your plants healthy and perfectly timed to be looking their best when you are admiring those beautiful baskets hanging in your local store.
The colors and smells in these places are amazing. The plants and trays just go on and on to the vanishing point.
Every house has it's own style of heating and ventilation, which are critical for keeping the plants within their growing conditions, and helping prevent mold, fungus, and insect growth from taking advantage of the small succulent little plants, much sought after by these organisms. As with other things in nature, the young shoots are the tastiest, and are often the most vulnerable as well.

They are always trying to maximize space in the greenhouse without cheating something out of it's sources of light, water, airflow, and nutrients. And all while trying to make them easy to get to.
These young starts are on large metal tray-tables that slide on rollers to create aisles, then slide back for watering. The roof is also on a computerized system for opening the vents and controlling fresh air, and temperature.

"The Language of Nature is Mathematics" - Galileo Galilei

Luckily most of these plants are annuals, which aren't as large of a concern to us nursery inspectors. Our definition of the plant materials we need to inspect is normally, "Materials that will over-winter outside in the Wisconsin climate," but we do inspect geraniums and most other plants that come in from other countries (even if they were inspected there before shipment) as there have been problems with viruses and insects brought in that didn't show up before the plants began to mature. Everything was super-clean here.

I thought these were going to be "upside down" tomatoes from a distance, but no, more ornamentals. Wow, there is a lot of weight hanging there.

I want that one. No, not that one. THAT one.

March 23rd, 2011 - Tales From The Wing Seat

noreply@blogger.com (dignature) — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 01:35:00 +0000

A recent Facebook discussion got me thinking about another one of those 'Travel Trips from Hell' of mine that happened long, long ago, one that I had pushed so far back into my little locker with all the other Travel Trips from Hell, nightmares, embarrassing moments from childhood, that it was deeply hidden under some bad hangovers and tacky memorabilia.
Long ago and far away, I had been a field service technician for a 24 hour photofinishing laboratory known as Guardian Photo. The things that went on there during the 'normal' all-night shifts, things like people putting smoke bombs down the film chutes into the splicing rooms causing mass-evacuations, workers being served cease-and-desist orders in the middle of their shift, others being handcuffed and dragged away for god-knows-what, or irate boyfriends ramming cars in the parking lot were all taken in stride and could fill a chapter on their own. But let us focus on one trip away from the glitz, drudgery, and all-night party that was 24 hour photofinishing at that time. That time was the early 1990's.
This trip had me getting up early one morning on a weekday, (already a freakish start as I worked 10 PM to 6 AM and was lucky if I was getting to bed at 10 AM after a few dark beers in those days) and hopping a flight to Detroit (Dee-twa) from Minneapolis, where I would then board a small commuter aircraft and fly to Fort Wayne, Indiana.
In Fort Wayne, Indiana was the Kodak Printer Maintenance School. This was a fancy name for an industrial bay that accepted printers from local photofinishing labs to be used as demonstration examples for repair instruction by Trained Kodak Factory Technicians.
Sounding honest and noble on the surface, actually what was happening was that the local photo-finisher would send their crappiest broke-down piece of junk printer to the school and by the time we were done learning with it, they would have a nicely repaired and rebuilt machine, with a full overhaul having been performed on it by a group of students and factory-techs. How nice for them. Well, the premise was that we would see real-life problems that we might actually see in the field. And that was true, provided our own machines back home were crappy broke-down pieces of junk that had a zillion prints on them, which most usually were. So I guess it was a practical school. And I since didn't have to pay for it, so much the better.
The first leg of my flight to Detroit was uneventful. It was a nice day, sometime in the early spring of the year, I was kicking back and napping most of the way.
Arriving in Detroit however, the weather was beginning to change. Thick fog was rolling in, cold damp breezes had begun to blow, and freezing drizzle peppered the airport windows.
Inside the gate, the boarding notice for Fort Wayne was called, and as I approached the doorway, it was clear that I was about to board the smallest commercial aircraft that I had ever seen. It had two propeller engines, one on each wing, and about twenty seats, judging by the number of windows.
As I walked out on the wet tarmac carrying my flight bag and began climbing the roll-up stairway attached to the plane, (that was about eight steps long total) I was thinking, I have never boarded a plane without a jetway before. Weird. I felt like I should have been wearing a trench coat and fedora, and have this mornings paper tucked under my arm as I tapped out my pipe on the handrail.
A cold mist stung my face as I stepped into the cabin and promptly clanged my head on the roof of the door. "Watch that," said the captain flatly as he shuffled papers in the tiny cockpit. "Yeah, thanks" I thought, as I made my way down the cramped aisle past other people rubbing their heads.
After finding my seat and staring blankly out the window for a few minutes, I notice a maintenance guy vaporizing out of the fog. He climbs a footstool, and opens a small hatch on the left engine. I watch him. From his bag he pulls out a quart of oil, and holding it deftly in his left hand like a grease-monkey in a George Raft movie, he plunges a metal filler-spout through the top of the can with his right hand and crams it down into a hole somewhere unseen beneath the cowling. I'm imagining the 'glug, glug, glug' from the can and thinking, "What's he going to do next, duct tape a crack in the prop...?!" {editors note: this is what happens when you don't tape the prop}
He yanks the can out while removing the spout in one snappy motion, with only a minor amount of oil dripping on his jumpsuit. Then he backs up a few steps, and while chucking the oil can into the back of his truck gives the pilot a thumbs-up. The engine turns over with what seems to be an abnormally long amount of chugging and shuddering, and finally a haze of pale blue smoke bellows from the exhaust, re-enforcing the stain that is already on the wing. Did the other engine start? Yup. We are now ready for take-off. I guess.
If I remember right, the flight was supposed to take about an hour and a half. The plane was manned by just the pilot and co-pilot, with no stewards or stewardesses.
A video screen slowly emerged from the center aisle ceiling and a deteriorating tape-recorder voice explained where things were, what to insert into where, and that there would be no beverage service. It retracted again with little fanfare.
Soon we were bounding down the runway with both engines gunned up, cutting through the thick clouds of ground fog at what I imagined was top speed. I'm hoping the pilots can see better than I can, because I can't see a damn thing, and it takes me a second to realize we've even left the ground.
Maybe half of our twenty or so seats are filled, with mostly business types and the token parents with their screaming child. From my seat over the right wing (I guess I just naturally gravitate there), I can look straight down the aisle and into the cockpit.
These were the days before security-sealed cockpits, and I can see the pilot and co-pilot with the yokes in their hands, along with a large green science-fiction-movie-looking radar tracking console shared between them. A bright green line tracks a circle on it with blobs of yellow beneath.
Once we get to "altitude", which I'm guessing is a few feet over the tops of the tallest buildings, the pilot comes on the intercom and explains that, "Hey, we're in for a bumpy ride today folks... looks like we've got a lot of cloud cover all the way to Fort Wayne... but we'll do our best to give you an enjoyable trip... keep your seatbelts fastened AT ALL TIMES, and sit back and enjoy the ride..." he says, just as we hit some turbulence with a sickening free-fall drop that makes his voice go up at the end.
A short time later, I'm beginning to realize that I am not enjoying the ride. Our little craft is bouncing around the sky, moving forwards and sideways and vectoring into the fourth dimension all at the same time. It's like we're being blown by some unseen wind, and all I can see out of any window is milk. An occasional wisp of contrast goes by, but it's not enough to give my mind something to grasp to create the image of perspective, stability, or direction. It's just milk, milk, milk. I'm beginning to feel a little green around the gills.
My eyes wander around the diffuse light inside of the plane trying find something to focus on, and I begin to notice how grungy it is. My dog-eared copy of Hammacher Schlemmer has an obscene doodle on it's cover and numerous Cheetos are ground into a carpet of indeterminate color at my feet.
Soon I am grasping for some form of tantric meditation that will keep my stomach from rolling independently from the plane. Don't look at the milk. The milk won't help you. Hammacher Schlemmer is not helping. Ground Cheetos are not helping. Eyes closed, not helping. As I realize this and open my eyes, I notice the kid is no longer screaming. Well, that's something, I think. As I look over to his seat, I see why. His parents are showing him how to use the barf bag. Other patrons are using or seemingly thinking about using their barf bags too. The plane is playing a meandering one-note song of dual engine humming, struggling to maintain that one note and not quite doing it. This is soundtrack is accented by an occasional retch.
"Keep it together" I whisper to my stomach inwardly, and as my eyes go from rolling up inside my head to up the aisle towards the cockpit, the moment they reach the radar screen which is the only thing with any real regularity within my vision, it brightens for a moment, then shrinks into a single green dot, finally blipping out to a shade of dead pastel green like an old TV set. The co-pilot stares at it expectantly for a moment, then reaches back and draws the plastic accordioned curtain to the cockpit closed quickly, meeting my eyes for a fraction of a second. I look away and groan inwardly.
More milk goes by the windows. More retching. More roller-coaster dives and swoops. I never liked roller-coasters all that much. Focus. Let the mind go blank. Let the stomach be at peace.
Okay, say I DID want to use a barf bag, I should have it handy right? I'm not giving in, I tell myself, I'm just preparing for any eventuality that might occur. I go through the seat pocket in front of me: Hammacher Schlemmer... Cheesy laminated evacuation instructions with 80's hairstyles... In-flight magazine, never read... and a barf bag. NO! A FULL barf bag. Ugh.
That's disgusting, I think as I try the next seatback pocket. Another full barf bag! The NEXT seatback pocket. Full barf bag. I collapse back into my seat and withdraw into my own private horror.

Example 'A': Barf Bag.
Notice the full range of applications listed at the bottom of the bag.

Twilight Zone music begins to play inside my head as images of William Shatner looking out his window at a gremlin go by. But no, now it's just... milk.
Soon my lack of attention is snapped by a voice over the intercom announcing "THAT WE WILL BE LANDING IN FIVE MINUTES."
Five minutes! I can do this. Focus. Don't look out the window. Don't look at the barf bags. Don't look at the Cheetos. Just, breathe and don't look at ANYTHING.
After the longest five minutes of my life, the ground is finally coming up to meet us. Or rather we are meeting it a little too quickly, and with a hard thump, an overhead compartment opens up, launching someone's briefcase airborne. Luckily it hits an empty seat and takes a nifty bounce before hitting the aisle floor and sliding into the bulkhead. No one says a word.
The microsecond we've stopped our forward momentum, my green passengers and I bolt for the cabin door. No one looks at one another. Goodbye, barf bag nightmare.
Goodbye plane, I hope they clean you this time. Hello Fort Wayne, Indiana. It's SO good to see you.

March 6th, 2011 - Witchy Willows

noreply@blogger.com (dignature) — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 04:49:00 +0000

Our snow has been 'come and go' lately, but I have been out snowshoeing in it as much as possible when it's around.
The other day we got a fresh six inches and I went over to 'Calhoun Park' in New Berlin, WI.
Calhoun is about the hilliest close wild place we have, which isn't saying all that much, this is southern Wisconsin and isn't exactly the Alps, but the place does have three sledding hills.
Anyway it's more than enough to get my heart rate pinned after about ten minutes when I'm wearing the big (28") Sherpas and using poles and wrist weights.
Here is a view from the upper trail. As you can see, the snow came from the north. Exclusively. A bit of a one-sided storm.
This is not a black and white photograph by the way, that's the way it looked.
Kind of the "bas-relief forest".
The next day much of the snow had melted off, but I put the Sherpas back on and walked out our patio and down along our little "creek".
It's been fun exploring along the creek, and this is about the only time of year it's easy to do.
It gets really muddy and marshy in the spring, buggy in the summer, and really overgrown most of the year. The snowshoes get me around the seeps and over the prickly black locust.
Well, most of it.

Yes, there is a creek there. Well, a flowage.
Is it a 'navigable waterway?
Depends upon the size of your boat, I guess. The beaver consider
it enough to try and dam up, so that to me, makes it official.

If you follow the creek far enough to get behind the neighboring apartment complexes, you come upon the scrubby willows full of "Witches Brooms."
These are weird growths that make the twiggy branches look like, well, old besom brooms.
A bit Harry Potterish.
We also see them fairly frequently in evergreens when inspecting Christmas tree farms.
There are numerous things that can cause these strange growths. Often they are thought of as being "galls", but don't always fit that definition in the strictest sense of the term.

According to Paula Flynn from the Iowa Department of Plant Pathology, "In medieval times, mysterious and unexplainable occurrences were often blamed on witchcraft. Brooms during this time were made of bundles of twigs.
The term witches' broom comes from the German word Hexenbesen, which means "to bewitch (hex) a bundle of twigs" (besom).
Witches' brooms occur on many different woody plant species, including deciduous trees such as hackberry, maple, and willow, and conifers such as pine and spruce.

Here's a double.

There may be only one broom per tree, or they may be many scattered throughout the tree. In some cases, the brooms are quite large in size and are easily spotted. In others, they are small and well-hidden.
A number of stresses, both biological and environmental, can lead to the formation of brooms. Organisms such as fungi, phytoplasmas (bacterial-like organisms), mites, aphids, and mistletoe plants can cause abnormal growth when they attack a host tree.
Environmental stresses that injure the growing points of branches can also trigger the formation of brooms.
Some brooms appear to be caused by genetic mutations in the buds of the branches. Unlike brooms caused by living organisms, there is usually just one broom per tree when the cause is a genetic mutation. Pinpointing the cause of a witches' broom can be difficult, especially if the formation is related to an (abiotic) environmental factor."
Cool stuff. Mutant plants. And there is so much of this when you really start looking closely at growing things.
Cultural history, natural history, genetics, physics, botany, ecology, environmental science, and aesthetics all twisted up in some scrubby little branches. And these are the things that we can actually see.
Imagine what is there that we cannot see...

March 3rd, 2011 - A Public Service Announcement - You May Be Wasting Money

noreply@blogger.com (dignature) — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 03:51:00 +0000

My position as a Plant Pest & Disease Specialist for the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture brings me a lot of interdepartmental email. And I read a lot of Press Releases that I probably wouldn't if it wasn't for my job.
In Wisconsin, the Department of Agriculture operates under the "DATCP" or the "Department of Trade & Consumer Protection". As agricultural inspectors, we are responsible for the consumer protection of the growers, dealers, and end-users of plant materials, trying to make sure you get what you think you are paying for: plants free of pests, and plants that live up to their description and guarantee. Yes, some plants do come with a guarantee.
Another department under the DATCP umbrella is the state's main "Department of Consumer Protection", and within that resides the "Department of Weights & Measures." I read their releases religiously. It is to this entity I would like to draw your attention.
Weights & Measures is one of those near transparent governmental branches that works hard for you everyday, but unless you go looking for it, rarely do you realize the importance and numbers of what they do.

W & M Inspectors check the accuracy of gas pumps, prices at the checkout registers, grocery store scales, package weights, home heating fuel deliveries, and ALL other products sold by weight or measure.
In 2010, DATCP weights and measures inspectors completed 192,045 inspections at 5,513 business locations throughout the state.
The National Conference on Weights and Measures (NCWM) estimates that weights and measures inspectors nationwide save the average family about $600 a year.

Here's the Wisconsin 2010 Weights & Measures Summary:

2010 BY THE NUMBERS

Inspection Type	Number of Inspections	Consumer Confidence*	Total Accuracy Rate**
Gas Pumps	30,264	99.6%	97.8%
Price Scanners (Items Tested)	29,143	99.2%	96.8%
Retail Scales	8,729	99.6%	97.5%
Package Weight (Packages Tested)	120,756	97.2%	97.2%
Percentage of time a consumer would be charged accurately or undercharged. * Includes all overcharges and undercharges.

When you look at the accuracy rates and think of the sheer volume of transactions involved with these different measuring devices, it boggles the mind. Just because your sleek, super fast, convenient, carpal-tunnel inducing price scanner at the store down the street rings up your breath mints at $1.79 doesn't mean it's right EVERY TIME.

After testing over 29,000 items, it was only right 96.8% of the time. If your gun was going to fire a bullet out the barrel 96.8% of the time, and a bullet in your face 3.2% of the time, would you shoot it?

We put a lot of trust in our technology and take for granted that it is doing us right.

In June of 2010, a weights and measures investigation led to the conviction of a St. Croix County man.

John Rassbach, of Rassbach Oil, was sentenced to four years in prison on 14 criminal counts of theft. Rassbach was ordered to pay $165,000 in restitution for stealing heating fuel from customers by overcharging through underfilling their tanks.

15 companies paid civil forfeiture settlements – totaling $216,461 – in 2010, as a result of weights and measures inspections into the following issues:

Wisconsin CVS Pharmacy, L.L.C.	$93,332	Inaccurate prices
Waukesha Wholesale Foods, Inc.	$24,126	Short weight seafood
Supreme Lobster & Seafood Co.	$22,245	Short weight seafood
Eastern Fisheries, Inc.	$13,857	Short weight seafood
Home Depot USA, Inc.	$9,276	Inaccurate prices
Roundy’s Supermarkets, Inc.	$9,100.50	Short weight seafood
Aldi, Inc.	$7,756	Short weight seafood
Marder Trawling, Inc.	$7,756	Short weight seafood
Topco Associations, L.L.C.	$6,235	Short weight seafood
Milton Propane, Inc.	$5,570	Short weight LPG cylinders
Schnuck Markets, Inc.	$5,570	Short weight seafood
New Horizons Supply Cooperative	$5,023.50	Short weight LPG cylinders
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.	$3,161	Short weight seafood
Abbyland Truck Stop, L.L.C.	$2,406	Short measure fuel
South Padre Seafoods	$1,047	Short weight seafood

In these settlements, none of the businesses admitted to committing the above-mentioned violations.

That's a chunk of change. And a lot of people are paying money for ice with their fish. Some quotes had it worked out to $23 a pound for some of the ice-stuffed seafood.

In 2009, state weights and measures inspectors conducted 178,844 inspections, including: 28,979 gas pumps, 25,637 price scanners, 7,538 retail scales and 110,539 package weights.
Twelve companies paid civil forfeiture settlements totaling $504,347 in 2009 as a result of weights and measures inspections. Many of these cases involved price scanner issues.

It sounds pretty dry, but this week is Weights and Measures Week in Wisconsin.
"This week marks the signing of the first weights and measures law by then President John Adams on March 2, 1799. Wisconsin's Weights and Measures program dates back to 1839, when the Wisconsin Territorial Legislature enacted a law to standardize weights and measures."
So hat's off to your Weights & Measures people!

I am currently working on a presentation to teach people observational skills. One of the factors in observation is knowing what to look for. I vow to do better at this myself, and notice more things around me. Wasting money should be a pretty good motivation...

Here are some things you can do.

As far as gas pumps go:

> Compare the price on the pump with posted advertisements to make sure they are the same.
> Make sure the pump’s dial resets to zero before you start to pump gas.
> Check to see the price per gallon remains the same throughout the pumping process. If the price changes or the numbers appear to skip, black out, or advance too fast that you cannot read them, there may be a problem.
> Make sure the meter stops running when you stop the pump.
> Check the price computation for accuracy. (Pump prices round up to the nearest whole cent.)
> Always get a receipt, even when paying by cash, as this is your proof of purchase.
> Review the receipt and make any errors known to the store clerk immediately.

General shopping:

> Write down prices or special sales as you shop. In grocery stores, consider writing the price on packaging without a price tag.
> Bring the store's ad with you. Some advertised specials such as 25% off or a two-for-one sale may not be in the computer, and the cashier must enter them manually.
> When sold by weight, all items must be sold by net weight. The wrapping or container should not be included. This also applies to packaged items, which must indicate net weight.
> At the checkout counter, watch the display screen as prices appear. If you think you are being overcharged, speak up. Ask the cashier to make any adjustment before you pay. Some stores simply adjust the price; others deduct an additional amount or offer the mispriced item for free.
> Check your receipt before you leave the store. If you have already left the cashier’s lane, talk to a store manager to correct any mistakes.

Wisconsin law requires stores to charge the lowest advertised price and refund any overcharges. Most overcharges are unintentional. Regardless of the reason, the law requires refunds when consumers are overcharged.

So hey, don't believe everything you read. Stop, Look, & Listen. Eat your vegetables. Wash behind your ears. Just kidding.
But if we keep cutting the budget, you may have to do this stuff yourself from now on.
Even as it is, W & M inspectors can only test so much.
So Caveat Emptor: "Let the Buyer Beware."
You're the next contestant on: IS THE PRICE RIGHT???

For more weights and measures information in Wisconsin, or to file a consumer complaint, contact the Bureau of Consumer Protection on the web at datcp.wisconsin.gov; via e-mail at datcphotline@wi.gov; or call toll-free at 1-800-422-7128.

Public Service quota completed. Over and out.

March 1st, 2011 - Trees

noreply@blogger.com (dignature) — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 04:29:00 +0000

The White Pines are showing their gold jewelery this time of year.

The White Birch are taking on some attributes of the red barn.

The Jack Pine's cone is an engineering masterpiece.
Set to open up at different temperatures,
from early summer's heat to a wildfire inferno,
the tree times it's germinations for a better chance
at long term survival.

The Black Locust is a hardcase.
Nasty spines greet you when it's a young whip,
then when it gets big and old and crotchety,
it's lumber is the best for fenceposts.
They say it lasts 25 - 30 years, untreated.

The Juniper is a cool plant. Like the Black Locust,
it takes a long time deciding if it's a shrub, or a tree.
This is a Juniper berry, the thing that gives gin it's flavor.
The green bow tie is the branch scar, which
up close looks like a very complicated net of plumbing.
The white dot is a drop of sap.
Why is it blue?
Because a vest doesn't have sleeves.

Trees need a place to grow.
This is the creek behind our apartment compartment.

February 27th, 2011 - Aztalan

noreply@blogger.com (dignature) — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 03:20:00 +0000

A couple days ago, our little family (Sharon, Happy the Dog, and myself) made a pilgrimage to my favorite clothing manufacturer; Duluth Trading Company's flagship store now housed in a former Mustard Museum (now hardware museum, clothing store, and more) in the middle of the troll-ridden downtown of Mount Horeb, Wisconsin.
That was cool and all, but on the way back east down "94," I suggested we stop at Aztalan State Park, in the town of Aztalan, and near Lake Mills, Wisconsin.
The Aztalan archaeological site has intrigued me since I stumbled upon it during a web search for something else. It's a true enigma.

Many say, "It's the most important archaeological site in Wisconsin." It certainly is a unique place, with a lot of unanswered questions.
There is what is described as a "stockade," at least in the form of what the white man calls a stockade, and many mounds that have been found to have been used for food storage, burials, and ceremonies. It is built along the Crawfish river, which is actually a tributary of the Rock River, but I doubt these names mean anything to the peoples of the time when this was an active village.
From the DNR site: "The Indian occupants who built these stockade walls have been traced to a mother site at Cahokia, a large Middle Mississippian settlement in west-central Illinois located near present day St. Louis, Missouri. Cahokia housed 20,000 people and covered five square miles. At the north end of Cahokia's "urban" center is the 14-acre Monks Mound, the largest prehistoric earthen construction in North America.
The people who settled Aztalan built large, flat-topped pyramidal mounds and a stockade around their village. Decades of archaeological research, including carbon dating and tooth samples found at the site that were traced back to Cahokia, have provided some clues to the culture that created these mounds. It was once a village and ceremonial complex of about 500 people that thrived between 1000 and 1300 AD before the site was mysteriously abandoned."
It was a very developed little "city", unusual in many respects. It gives the impression that there was much planning involved here, and that sustainable living was happening for an extended period of time. For example, "fish weirs" were built with rock that extended underwater into the river, sort of the equivalent of our "wing-dams" on the Mississippi, to divert fish into shallower pools, presumably for capture or easier access.
"One side of the river was a wide open prairie, rich with flowers and grasses. The other side was wooded providing timber for building and wildlife for hunting. The area has dozens of springs, which to Indian people are sacred entrances to the fertile underworld.

Corn, a staple food source for the Mississippian Indians, would also have grown well in the area (and still does). Also, games of skill were played here such as "chunkey", a contest that involves throwing spears at a disc-shaped stone.

"The village flourished for about three hundred years, then sometime around 1300 AD, the Aztalan Mississippians, like their relatives at Cahokia, seemingly vanished. There are no legends telling what happened and no written accounts since the Indians lacked a written language.
Mississippian culture was still active in areas that are now the southern and southeastern states. The Spanish conquistador Hernando DeSoto and early French explorers described the Indians' customs and beliefs." There is evidence of trade with these cultures in the remains of Aztalan, including copper implements.
One hypothesis suggests the Mississippians left Aztalan when they ran out of resources. There is evidence in Cahokia that some people were malnourished – subsisting too much on corn and lacking a diet rich in protein. New climate models indicate that the Midwest also might have suffered a serious drought at the time. Violence in the region might also have chased them out of Aztalan.
Some speculate that the Oneota Indians moved into the area and were strong competitors for resources. Major Oneota occupation sites have been found at nearby Lake Koshkonong as well as near La Crosse and along the Mississippi River.
More than 80 percent of the Aztalan site has not been excavated. While some artifacts are now housed at Aztalan, many pieces are scattered throughout the area, with a large number curated at the Milwaukee Public Museum."
Sounds like another pilgrimage waiting to happen.

So for now, maybe that's all there is to say, until we can go back and see more. Maybe a visit in the warmer weather, take some tours and explore more. There is still plenty of wildlife in the area, as when we were there, turkey tracks ringed the "stockade" while deer and raccoon tracks were plentiful near the river.
It is an interesting place, an old place, with many layers of "old." I am glad there are still places like this.

February 25th, 2011 - The Old Soft Shoe

noreply@blogger.com (dignature) — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 15:45:00 +0000

Last week after the snow had all but disappeared from around here, I was actually thinking about taking the sandbags out of the back of the truck, putting the ice scraper under the seat, and pumping up my bike tires. So of course Mother Nature had to graphically remind me that it is still February in Wisconsin.

Lucky for me I like to snowshoe. I recently traded an old bike for two pair of vintage snowshoes, and sometimes in the winter I get paid to snowshoe around dormant nurseries looking for Gypsy Moth eggmasses. Last Tuesday was such a day.

It was that sorta wet / sorta dry type of snow that likes to hang in the trees until late in the afternoon, aided by a nightly pre-application of freezing drizzle, or "frizzle" as we say in the trades.

So it was really cool peering down the endless rows of snow-covered willow, ash, and other nursery trees as I softly shuffled by, while scoping the big trees around the outside fencelines.
Thinking about it now, I probably should have taken a short video of it, but I don't seem to think in video, at least for the majority of the time.
That reminds me though, I do have a couple vids I shot last Christmas tree inspecting season that I should pull out and share. (Scrawls note on junk mail envelope hastily pulled from the recycling bin and already over-crowded with illegible notes).

Anyway, it was an awesome little walk in the woods, I didn't find any signs of Gypsy Moth, which is good, but also kind of unsatisfying for me at the same time because I didn't find any. It's a no-win type of situation.

One thing I did find though was a heck of a lot of sapsucker (Sphyrapicus varius) damage on the pines.
What these birds do is hammer away at the trees making strange, almost Asian-looking character patterns, usually formed from repeated horizontal drill lines. They create sapsucker "wells" and let the sap run for awhile, then come back to lap the sap (they really don't suck it, it's a misnomer, they should be called "sap-lappers").
They also take a few insects that are attracted to the flowing sugary carbo treat, for a little protein don't cha know. Kinda like little sausages to go with your syrup and 'cakes.
Many of the well-patterns in the trees are just horizontal lines, but some of the heavily pecked and presumably extra tasty trees had very developed intricate character alphabets written on them in sapsucker braille.
The other thing that's cool about this process is that tree itself starts putting up a defense to the drilling, by filling the holes from the inside with little "sap-plugs" to stop the drip and seal itself off from the elements.

You can see some of these plugs in a few of the holes in the photos, they look like little eggs. (Some may actually be eggs, insect eggs, but the insects usually don't lay them this close to the outside of the tree until the weather warms and they figure they will have a better chance for survival in more moderate temperatures).

Another novel thing I came across was this saprophyte growing on a completely downed and debarked tree. It's some type of fungus - that I should probably know the name of but don't...But hey, I can accept that, I can barely remember my own name, that's why they give me a badge on a string to wear around my neck. The interesting thing (to me anyway) is that this particular fungus looked as though it had been growing in and around some bore-holes in the trunk, probably caused by a bark-boring beetle or other insect. I haven't often seen this type of "behavior."

Well, one organism's trash is another organism's treasure...

Other recent notable snowshoeing outings brought back some interesting pictures of the prairie at Retzer Nature Center in Waukesha, Wisconsin.

This week, right on cue, Old Man Winter (Oh yeah, it's still officially winter) brought on another storm, and poof! A nice white blanket for snowshoeing after my afternoon class at Retzer on Wednesday, after all the snow had virtually disappeared during the weekend.

Here's a quick little hacked together panorama (QLHTP) from the top of the prairie "hill" at Retzer looking mostly west towards Sussex, WI, and south towards the fens down in the little valley:

Sorry about the stitching and the dark corners, I blame it on "my cheesy little camera." (MCLC) Click on the image to view it larger and see if you can find the sun and moon.
They are both there in the same picture (It's a 360 degree pano).
I suppose if you were a really good astronomer, you would know where to look for them at 43.013246 N, -88.29939 W, facing SW on Wednesday, ‎February ‎23, ‎2011, ‏‎5:36:04 PM.
I for one, am not.

Hey! Make the most of winter - there are only a few weeks of it left...!

February 20th, 2011 - Leftovers Again...?!

noreply@blogger.com (dignature) — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 04:27:00 +0000

Yup. Here's a few pieces I found moldering in some sundry folders, filed under "I should blog these sometime."

On July 19th, 2010, a tornado with ripped through the small town of Eagle, WI, bearing winds of between 111 mph and 135 mph. It cut a swath 4 miles long and three-quarters of a mile wide, destroying at least 25 homes and damaging hundreds more.
Last November I drove through Eagle on my way back from southeastern Wisconsin, on a cold but sunny day. I was just taking the road less traveled, doing what my co-worker calls "getting your nose dirty" by riding the backroads and keeping your eyes open. "Try a road you have never been on, and hook them all together," he says. So I was.
By November much of the storm's damage had been cleared away, but the thing that struck me as I rolled into town was the cemetery.

The row of oaks along the east side had been snapped off five to six feet off the ground right down the line, and the oldest of the trees had been literally topped. Snapped in half as it were. Sad to see, but awesome nature none the less.

It's kind of a spooky old place, even on a sunny day. There is a "Boot Hill" in the middle of the lot, complete with dilapidated concrete crypt housing the town's founding fathers, I guess. Or maybe it's a keep for the local voodoo queen, who departed after "mysterious circumstances". (I'm making that up. I think.)
I wanted to come back for the evening light and get the tangles of the trees silhouetted against the sunset, but it was not to be, not on this day at least.
The city had done a good job cleaning things up, but bearing in mind this was five months later, there were still many trees to limb, and still this massive pile of huge ancient oak to sort out.

Some nice table-top and furniture material there. I vowed I would go back in the evening someday, just to see if my spooky impressions were correct. I'll have to check the sun tables and see when the sun is on line to "go down" over Boot Hill.

These next photos I didn't take myself, but borrowed them from Wikipedia, after one of those, "I'm looking for something else, but WHAT THE HELL IS THAT...?!" searches.
Turns out this unique vehicle is called an "Amphirol," designed and built in the southwest Netherlands in he 1960s.
It is a "screw-propelled vehicle," with it's propulsion provided by two large, hollow worm gears that it rides upon.
The Amphirol is able to navigate the sticky clay revealed by the outgoing tides and, owing to the hollow tubes, "swim" through the water during high tides.

Note the beached boats in the background.

With it's top speeds of 7.7 MPH on mud and 6 MPH in water, it is not setting any land speed records.
However by adapting two independent transmission units, it makes it possible for the screw cylinders to be deliberately driven in the same direction, so that the vehicle can crab sideways on dry land at the rather alarming speed of 19 MPH.
When moving sideways, steering is effected by angling the front of the cylinders so that they are no longer parallel – giving it a large minimum turning radius. This lends it to modern-day purposes, such as compacting tailings from industrial processes.
Primarily though, Amphirols are used for ground surveying, grooving the surfaces of newly drained polders to assist with drying, and to carry soil-drilling teams to remote, barely accessible locations.
I want one. Or at least I want to drive one. I also want to drive a Sno-Cat too. I might have a more realistic chance at that. I know where one is anyway.
Here's some more links about screw-driven and similar vehicles, including an early "snowmobile." And one with the Ampirol on a cool old Pathé newsreel, fighting fires and running the polders in Holland.

Last but not least, just a photo I personally need to see in the middle of February: one of our favorite beaches on Lake Michigan, in the middle of summer.
This beach is a little south of Two Rivers, WI, and it's great.
The dog loves it. Seems like it's always uncrowded, good for meandering down and pondering the world, and it has a sand bar that goes out into the lake for many dozens of yards. Kind of the epitome of a sandy Great Lakes beach in my mind.

Here it is on a little bit of a wilder day.
Okay, back to spring cleaning, and daydreaming about driving weird vehicles.
Ciao.

February 18th, 2011 - Mish-mash, Goulash, and Ratatouille

noreply@blogger.com (dignature) — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 04:41:00 +0000

Got a bunch a stuff here to lay on you, kind of a yarn-ball of photographic threads and lint that have been rolling around the computer and through dark alleys of my soul for a while, looking for a home.
I apologize insincerely if you may have seen some of these things on my Facebook site.
I have been bouncing back and forth about putting things up there or here, or on my photo web site. I don't necessarily like the way FB controls your images, but people actually take the time to comment about them there so what can you do. I try to put up smaller versions there and save some good stuff (as if) for the blog, as I have people that read me here and not there, and those that read me there but not here, and well, here it is.

I was at a nursery (plants) the other day in Illinois, and I was blown away by their awesome counter top/table/desk and the home-made wooden furniture in their office.
I guess the original members of the family that started the business about thirty years ago built it, and it has been gracing their office ever since.
It's all made from pieces of cut saplings and tree scrap attached to a 'credenza-like' wooden counter form.
The top pieces are about 3 to 4 inches long in various diameters covered with glass-plates, and the front is composed of about three foot long sections of many different species of trees of about the same diameter.

They also had a cool bentwood chair and end table made in the same style.
Pieces of furniture don't often turn my head, but when I see something I like, I get really engrossed in it. I like to build my own stuff, and it's not always very decorative, but I can appreciate when someone's concept and craft all comes together.
Combine that with a sweet Weimaraner named "Gracie", and you've got yourself a nice comforting place of business.
I just have to remind myself that although Weimaraners were bred to bring down deer and other animals by biting them in their genitals, this has been mostly bred out by now and that I will probably be okay even though I find myself shielding my nuts every time I see a Weimaraner coming my way.
The next day I went snowshoeing at Retzer Nature Center in Waukesha, WI.
It was late afternoon after our 'Landscape & Grounds Maintenance' class, about the latest in turfgrass fertilizers and weeds of turf and sod, which I expected to be boring as hell but was actually very interesting. Did you know that recent studies have shown that turfgrass can sequester more carbon than equivalent acreage of woody forest...? Well, that is a powder keg topic probably not to be addressed here, but the workshop was a great excuse for me to bring my snowshoes and get in some shoeing at the park before everything melts.
And it was quite literally melting underfoot as I was out tromping around. The haze of water vapor coming off the dwindling snowpack turned into a thick ethereal fog.

I saw one large deer and tried to sneak up on it, but sneaking up on snowshoes in this crunchy slop was a fool's errand. I did see that it had been leaving bloody hoof-prints. Not sure what was up with that. Maybe just cut on the ice, or the old barbed-wire fence-line I kept seeing coming out of the melt around the edges of the park.
A Facebook friend said she she wanted to paint this image as a watercolor, and I was going to try apply a PaintShop "brush-stroke" effect and see if I could watercolorize it, but I ended up going a little further and making an abstract out of it.

I tried to make it as minimalistic it as I could without losing the forms. I tried to keep the horizon line, the contrasts to trees, snow, grasses, and accentuate the color.

The geometry comes from an effect called "Fur", which I over-tweaked to strengthen the lines. Fun stuff.
Couple more here - the running Whitetail deer from Blue Mounds State Park in southwestern Minnesota, near Luverne...
I just happened to be in the right place at the right time when the deer was caught by surprise between two hiking groups, and I got a jump on firing off some quick succession shots as I could see which way it was going to go.
Then there is the um, little spoof on the "Carbohydrate Death Bowl" that a certain pizza distribution chain was featuring for awhile.

Anything stuffed with that much carbo-laden cheese is begging for a little friendly criticism.
The one on the right isn't my image, but I came across it while I was researching some pictures for my New York story a few posts back.
If you have a big family to perform a lot of sacraments for, hey, we got ya covered.
Buy a jug, get the second at half-price. Get to sacramentin' and save yourself some shekels.
Last but not least, our very own Happy The Dog, doing what he loves best, levitating at the beach.
He loves his Lake Michigan, unless he has to get his doodle wet in a big wave. But then again, who can blame him?

February 12th, 2011 - Of the Warping of Space, Pixels, and Time

noreply@blogger.com (dignature) — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 04:27:00 +0000

Just a quick notation here to share what I have been working on recently (because I'm so computorily drained from it that I can't muster much more). Above is an example of um, a creation of mine.
I've been calling the media 'fractal imagery' for lack of a better term. It came about as I was having so much fun generating fractals with this free fractal software I got a long time ago; "Apophysis".
After I upgraded my graphics-card recently, (it went from banal to nothing special) I dug the program back out to test the card, and got this idea to take some of my more graphic digital photos and combine them with fractal generated graphics.

What has been happening is, I'll think about or come across an image of mine that I consider to be "the root of a graphic concept" and start considering how I would generate a fractal to um, accentuate it, and then try to do that with the Apophysis program.
It is a cool program. Any program that cranks out that much math without me having to think about it is a cool program. On the other hand, it has a lot of knobs and sliders and values and functions and has taken a little practice to get a grasp of. On the other other hand, you can get cool stuff out of it by just blindly pushing buttons too.
The thing is, I don't think you can ever really GET a grasp of it totally, so a lot of what comes out of it is a bald-faced surprise, which is great. Chaos theory. Math that even mathematicians can't trust. This is what makes science great.
So I take my images and graphics and things and bring them into Paint Shop Pro, and go nuts layering, morphing, warping and smudging them together until I get what I want.
Today I realized this is like painting and photography combined. That is a very satisfying thought. Unfortunately it also makes me wish I had a wall-sized monitor and a large graphics tablet with a super-computer hooked up to it so that I could take on the monster Salvador Dali type projects, the modern-day output of which would actually be about the size of a city in proportion to Dali's big stuff, and would dim the lights of the neighborhood when I clicked 'render'.
It is a little tricky to make them HUGE huge, as you have to have all giant images to start with, and you are only as big as your smallest image. Also of course, the bigger you go, the slower your computer becomes, especially when generating a good-sized fractal. But it's good to keep your CPU humble once in a while, so it get doesn't get an ego and go all HAL 9000 on you.
However a great thing about this media is that you can keep drilling deep down into it and find more and more detail and do so much to it, as there is so much information to work with while you blend all the images and layers together. It's a great way to learn PhotoShop/PaintShop. You find yourself going, "I want to do this..." and are forced to figure it out.
The first picture above is composed of two separate fractals, a digital image from my point and shoot camera, (of my Bajo Sexto) and a star-field fill I made from a NASA photo.
The second image is two fractals (the eye is a separate fractal) layered with a large digital image of a golden eagle. Below is an image of a snake skeleton (yes, they do have bones) layered with a fractal background.

So if I sound excited about it, I am. But it's hard to get the true impact of this stuff through these little images. I would like to see them on a photo-canvas of at least 30 x 40 inches, or a large projection. Like on the side of a building or something. Heh. No, seriously.
So as I muddle along I am gaining foresight (I hope) about thinking ahead to my finished concept, (not an ordinary thing for me) and looking at and maybe shooting my images differently, which I think is always a good thing.

"Nature's great book is written in mathematics." - Galileo Galilei

Now put the keyboard down, and slowly back away...

February 9th, 2011 - Scanners

noreply@blogger.com (dignature) — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 03:15:00 +0000

Just a few old scanned prints for you today, gentle reader.
Something got me thinking (and I can't imagine what, owing to the picture) about this photo the other day -

I dug through a musty stack of old 35mm prints (Google it if you don't understand) and sure enough, it was still there.
I took this picture at THE GREAT FRESNO FAIR® in Fresno, California, in er, 1983, I calculate.
I was selling computer pictures from an "Independent Concessionaire Unit" (aka "Carney Joint", or "ICU") down the alleyway from a "Velvet Painting Artist" that painted live at the fairgrounds. He was a short, Hispanic gentleman with pretty severe Vitiligo that spoke little English, and could be seen in the shadows of the horsetrack grandstand, painting away on his latest velvet masterpieces.
This beauty, with ET drinking a can of Coors on glorious black velvet, was too much to just walk past. He was a little hesitant of my photographing his work, but I tried to make it as quick and painless as possible.
I wanted to buy it and keep it in our carney motorhome, but my trailermates wouldn't go for it, as it was about three feet high and would probably mean one of us sleeping on the roof. This I did many nights anyway, but I was voted down.
Note the velvet smoking-jacket (velvet on velvet, that's like rhyming the same word with itself) and the lack of a left hand, which we conjectured was holding a filter-tipped cigarette in an extremely long holder, or a pipe, ala Hugh Hefner.
The artist also had some groundbreaking works of Elvis in various gyrations, horses, and Mexican deities, all on wonderful black, purple, or blue stretched velvet. What can one say.
So I scanned that, and also in the stack was this picture of a picture, one of my old favorites of my brother-in-law Mikey deep in his Freak stage, holding a baby that is beginning to pull his beard.

There's just something about the American flag, the raincoat, and the chain, that sets it off, with the feeling of it all being kind of a "found object."
Maybe there is some deep symbolism, it's my place to let you interpret for yourselves.
With the print in the photo beginning to turn sepia from it's time in the sun, to me, it lends an emotion of time to the whole thing.
I usually like pictures with a lot of symmetry and order, but there is something about the "this is the way things fell" disorder to this one that I like. Shows you how much my photography has changed in thirty years.
I can actually like my own stuff now. Occasionally.
That photo was taken in Twain Harte, California, circa 1982.
My last scan from the stack is a photo of my hand on these rocks behind my sister's family's house in Sonora, California, probably taken in the mid-1990's.

I was actually photographing the landscape and sat down to change lenses or something and noticed this rock that seemed like it had a series of gouges ripped out of it in the shape of a huge hand.
When I put my hand in it, it felt so natural and comfortable, I just sat there for a minute.
It felt like being a tiny part of a much bigger, older earth and really brought me into the moment, and for a little while, there was nothing else.
After a while, I snapped the picture with a zoom lens and it didn't come out super sharp, a little disappointing, but I still liked the concept. And the memory. Sometimes it's okay to shoot pictures just for the memories you know.
I have since been back to that same pile of rocks many times, and I still haven't been able to find that particular rock. Maybe it was just the light, or the time of day, or some karmic conjunction, but to me, it was a cool thing.
So look for light you like, and have a camera ready when you find it.
Ciao.

P.S.> And don't forget to look through your old pictures once in a while.
- T.

February 4th, 2011 - Escape From Plainview - Based on a True Story - End of the Line

noreply@blogger.com (dignature) — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 06:09:00 +0000

It is 6:30 AM, December 23rd, 1995, the day is prematurely gray.
On my way through the hotel lobby after check-out, the TV is blaring and showing an overly made-up talking head speaking in a distinctly non New-Yorkian accent, "...the burrough of Brooklyn has used up it's entire city plowing budget for the entire year on this storm so far..."
I stride past on my way to the shuttle pickup.
The shuttle is there, people are crowding on with enough baggage for a battalion, and the driver is in a fowl mood.

"Siddown, I can't moves the bus until yas sit down..." he says tersely for what sounds like could probably be the 10,000th time this morning.

Wallowing through the deep snow the shuttle sidles up to the ticketing entrance at New York's JFK airport. There is a melee of people at the curbside check-in, with their baggage reaching the roof and into the street. I never use the valet check, so I tip the driver in return for a "Tanks," and trundle my luggage through the airport doors into the maw of some hideous beast.

Inside, I'm floored by what I see. On one end of the terminal sits the Continental Airlines check-in with it's serpentine line of humanity stretching across the entire terminal, which is at least 100 yards long and beginning to curl back upon itself. At the other end of the terminal, United Airlines, MY airline, also has a line snaking the entire length of the terminal in the opposite direction, and is curling back upon itself. In the middle is a no-man's land of people facing in all directions, frowning, pointing, fretting, swearing - occasionally shoving their bags with their feet along the slushy tiles at indeterminate intervals, in a direction known only to them.
They resemble slaves pushing a huge circular grindstone inside a mountain in some bad medieval movie, and expect them to start chanting, "Ohhh Wee Ohhh..." at any moment.

I head for this human beehive in the center of the floor and get scowled at for both bumping people with my luggage and from them thinking I'm trying to cut in line in front of them. Even though there really isn't any line at this point. It's just a mosh-pit of humanity which shuffles en masse until they've moved far enough to make a decision as to which airline's line they are actually in.

It is 7:15 AM. My flight "leaves" at 9:00 AM. I resign myself to my fate once again.

I sit on my toolbox and slide my bags along every so often in time with rest of the ludicrously long line. We're like a giant crabby caterpillar. Time crawls, writhes, and falls over dead. Possibly two hours go by before I even start to make the bend so that I'm actually facing my ticket counter, far off down the other end of the terminal, out of sight, except for the sign.
Public address announcements blare in some indecipherable muffled electronic language, immediately drowned out by the din of the terminal. "Miss Green... Miss Kelly Green... I think I hear the PA announcer say, please reclaim your lost item..." I chuckle to myself about Kelly Green. She must have a pretty limited wardrobe. They are also announcing not to check your bags at the curbside, which seems rather pointless since we are all are inside the terminal already.

I look around. Every kind of person and family is clustered together in their own little spot, many with Christmas presents over-flowing from their luggage. I watch a large gold-jeweleried family dressed in all black try to manhandle a GIGANTIC black trunk with brass hardware that must stand five feet high and four feet wide. "Oh my gawd," the wife is saying, "this is ridiculous. Ri-DIC-U-lous. Just ridiculous!" She keeps repeating. Her exquisitely dressed princess daughter and princely son are stomping the slush at each other and being constantly chided, but to no avail. Others in line have reached the zombie state, pallidly focused only on the coat of the person ahead of them. The only thing missing is the drool.

Babies wail, and the people in our line bemoan their fate to each other. Our current local hobby is to watch the expressions of the people just arriving through the doors, and rate their expressions.
"Oooo, 9.9 for the businessman in the Armani suit, don't you think...? You could literally see his face collapse in horror as he scanned for the ticket counter and realized he would have to stand in line with that Mexican family with the five kids. Tough break." The others standing nearby nod their approval and manage sardonic half-grins.

By now, four or five hours have gone by and we have been moving like a glacier towards the ticket counter. I believe I've had several out-of-body experiences and can see there are only two ticketing staff people at the counter for our entire line, and they have been the only two people there as long as I could actually see the counter. I feel for them deeply. Unfortunately for us, because of our lines position in the terminal, which is sort of like being on our own forty yard line with the goalpost as the ticket counter, every time the line moves it triggers the automatic doors to the outside, and snow blasts in like a mini-blizzard, covering us and our luggage and forcing us to put our outside clothes back on. Then after another indeterminate amount of time, we shuffle a few feet up to the space between the automatic doors where the gigantic heater-blowers are running full-on because of the doors being constantly opened and closed, melting all the snow we had just collected and frying us with blasts of forced air so that we have to strip back down to our short-sleeves. This is repeated for the next another couple hours as we make our way across the terminal. I feel like I am in a torture test for wrinkle-free pants, and find myself thinking about the French Foreign Legion.

It is now 7 PM. I have been in the same line for eleven hours. I think I had scarfed a Clif Bar that I was going to eat on the plane at some point, and my liter of bottled water is long gone. I am starving and wondering where one of those frigging New York pretzel wagons is when I need one. I also have to piss so very badly, but am afraid to leave my baggage in the middle of this long line, thinking that the line at the bathroom is probably just as long. There is no way I am getting OUT of the line.
At least I can sit on my toolbox, I tell myself, but with no backrest. The floor is total slush and out of the question. We have now reached the point where the line is making it's final bend towards the ticket counter, but we are still a ways off. At this point, I know all my neighbors in line pretty well, not by name, but we had chatted about this and that, wagered guesses as to when we would make it to the counter, if ever, and tried to guess people's careers by their looks and baggage. Most of our diversions had been used up long ago.

The P.A. was now droning that "ALL HOTELS WITHIN A ONE HUNDRED MILE RADIUS OF THE AIRPORT ARE FILLED. PLEASE MAKE OTHER ARRANGEMENTS OR PREPARE TO SPEND THE NIGHT AT THE AIRPORT. ALL TAXI SERVICES ARE RUNNING AT MAXIMUM, AND IT MAY BE BEST TO RECONSIDER YOUR FLIGHT PLANS IF AT ALL POSSIBLE. SORRY FOR ANY INCONVENIENCE THIS HAS CAUSED. WELCOME TO NEW YORK, AND THANK YOU FOR FLYING UNITED." This brings a loud rankle of boos, vulgarities, hisses, and general sounds of disgust and incredulity.

People are still arriving at the terminal, and either bailing as they come through the doors and see the carnage, or adding to one of the long lines.

Every so often a person or family will try to walk through our line and up towards the ticket counter like either they didn't understand that we had been in line for eleven hours or just didn't think it was for them. They would be immediately shouted down vehemently and sent to the back of the line in disgrace, as only New Yorkers can disgrace a line-jumper.

It was about this time that a fake-tanned, heavily-jeweled matron and her husband walked straight in the door and right up to the ticket counter. Ignoring the escalating menacing threats of my fellow line-mates, she tried to garner the attention of the closest ticket agent, who was busy with an Indian family, and struggling through some language barriers. The ticket agent turned to her and politely asked her to please take her place at the end of the line, and after she turned and saw where the end of the line was, she went ballistic. "BUT I'M A GOLD CARD MEMBER...!!!" she screamed like it was the magic phrase to open The Forty Thieves Cave. "SO ARE WE...! GET TO THE BACK OF THE FUGGIN LINE!!!" half of our line screamed back at her. Her face began going through a myriad of expressions in a much too rapid manner and in a split-second she rushed the ticket counter, did a half belly-flop and came down, scratching the ticket lady's face in the process. A tumult ensued, ending with a large security guard steering her off in a full-nelson to places unknown, her husband calmly picking up their bags and following behind with an expression on his face like he had been through this a hundred times before. Murmurs ran through the crowd.

The ticket lady was now crying and trying to clean herself up, and after a quick look into a hand mirror a look of horror struck her face and she said, as if talking to the whole line, "That's it...! I don't need this...! Fuck Everything! I'm outta here...!!!" She quickly grabbed her purse and fled the counter as the other ticket lady looked crushed and longingly after her.

An audible "Aughhhhh...." simultaneously came from deep within every member of our line, including myself.

Time stopped, stood still, then slid backwards. No chatter could be heard from the line. We were now on death row, without the last meal. We were down to one ticket agent.

About two hours later, the nice African-American lady in front of me got her turn at the counter.

As I watched her approach the counter, it seemed unreal that I was the next person in line.
After being in "the line" for over thirteen hours, I was beyond sanity. I was like a guru that had just walked over hot coals and was now being asked to answer math story questions.
I wasn't sure if I could remember how to speak in more than monosyllabic sentences.

The lady in front of me finished and left the counter with a piece of paper in her hand, expressionless.

The ticket lady said, "Next..." without looking up, and I had to convince myself it was my turn.
I trundled up with my luggage, pushing my toolbox along with my feet.

"First, let me say you are doing a hell of a job, and I'm so glad you're here" I said, sincerely, but surprising myself. "You deserve an accommodation or something."

"Thank you," she said wearily, "I'm doing my best." And managed a half-smile as I looked deep into the pits of her eyes.

"Okay," she went on. "Minneapolis. Now what I am going to do is first give you a reservation that we know can guarantee, then keep in mind that you will be on standby for Minneapolis until that flight."

"Great," I say, sounding optimistic for the first time in fourteen hours.

She punches some numbers into her computer and after a slight pause says, "Okay, the earliest flight I have for you, leaves from White Plains on the seventh."

My eyes unfocus like I've been staring at a book too long and realize I'm not actually reading it anymore. "Of January...?!!! I let slip a little louder than I would have liked. "Um, er, okay.... I guess..." "But I'm in New York City..." I'm thinking as I take my paper weakly from the ticket lady with a confused look on my face.

"Remember you're on standby for each flight to Minneapolis until then... Gate 41..." she adds to sort of "to cheer me up" as I walk off aimlessly, then speed up as I remember how much I have to go to the bathroom.

While I'm taking about a ten minute non-stop leak in the disgusting airport restroom, I'm thinking about the realities of spending a week in the New York airport. Or maybe a few days and then another rat-hole hotel. Or, I don't know. It's so ludicrous I can't even fathom the options, if there are any.
I head for the food court. The only thing open is Taco Bell, which actually has it's door partition partially closed, but has decided to either have mercy on the poor people stuck in the airport, or has recognized this is the capitalist opportunity of the century.

Unfortunately, there is a long line there as well, not as long as in the terminal, but maybe thirty or forty people. As I walk up, I notice it is composed of the exact same people that were in my ticket line, and in the exact same order. I say hi to the nice lady that was in front of me in the last line. She smiles the smile of a confidant, shakes her head, and says hi.

I place my order, for tacos, as that is the only thing they have at this point, and the nice lady beckons me over to her table.

As we eat, we exchange stories, and I ask her what she is going to do.

"I've cancelled my whole holiday," she says, "I'll never make it to upstate and back before I have to go to work. My boyfriend is coming to pick me up, I just called him, but it's probably going to take a couple hours for him to get here, and a couple hours to get home."

"That sucks." I say. "I'm so sorry. Say, where is White Plains...?"

"It's about 40 miles north of the city. Why?" she asks.

"That's where my only guaranteed flight leaves from.... On January 7th." I respond.

"You're kidding!" she says with a huge smile, the biggest I've seen all day. "Sorry," she adds choking down a guffaw and a taco bite. "That's crazy."

"Well, that's what they tell me," I say. "I'm on stand-by until then."

"Did they say how long before you might get something?"

"Naw, they have no idea. I guess I'm ready to stay here for as long as it takes" I say, not too confidently. "What else can I do."

We say our goodbyes, give each other a hug, and wish each other well. I have a deep feeling of empathy for her even though I barely know her. I hope she can still have a good Christmas. I try to imagine what I think her life and holiday would be like. A completely different culture, different everything. Then I start to wonder if I will be home for my Christmas.

The food is starting to make me tired and I figure I might as well head for the gate, get a walk in, and see what the scene is like there.

As I enter the gate area, it is packed with people and I stake out a place on the floor with a blessed wall to lean my back against. There's no way I'll be making a stand-by on this flight I think.

I sleep for a little while, or think I do, until I'm awoken by something. Not noise, as there is plenty of that, but just a feeling maybe. I look out the gate windows. It's as dark as ever. There's no plane at our jetway, but planes are landing and the snow is still coming down with a vengeance.

A plane comes in, begins to land, and passes our gate moving seemingly faster than normal. It continues past, now obviously much too fast, and by the end of the runway it has slowed considerably, but drifts to the left and slides off of the tarmac, it's front wheel collapsing rakishly into the snowbank beyond the runway, with the plane sitting at an odd angle.

Emergency vehicles and fire trucks rush the scene and the people at my gate rush the window. Murmurs and chatter abound. After a few minutes nearly everyone turns away and silently heads back to their places at once, evidently realizing at the same time that they are hoping to fly in such a plane very soon. The gate becomes eerily quiet.

Flights come, flights go. Hours pass. The crowd has thinned somewhat, but I'm hazing with sort of a zombie tunnel vision and have just a vague sense of people moving around me.
Another plane is parked at our jetway. At 12:02 AM, on December 24th, 1995 my name is called to approach the counter. I am there instantaneously and am being told I can get a stand-by ticket for this flight, the last direct flight out of NYC for Minneapolis until tomorrow. I feel like I have just won the Irish Sweepstakes. I want to kiss everyone in the gate and do the hustle with them. I am handed a boarding pass that glows with a hallowed light. Forget about my bags they say, they will get them to me as soon as possible via courier. Sometime in the near or not so near future. Whatever, sounds good.
The plane is boarding and I am waiting for the stand-by call. There it is! I'm walking down the jetway with my boots three-feet off the surface of the carpet. The plane is COMPLETELY jammed, jubilant, and a free-for-all of luggage cramming, high-fives, and people trying to figure out what to do with winter clothes.
I head for the back of the plane. No seats yet. Further back. Nothing yet. Um, I'm getting to the back here... there. The last row of the 727 has an aisle seat. I got the last seat on the plane, I realize. I smile.

We take off like an overstuffed sausage and circle the city on our way back west. I look out the window and flip-off New York City both literally and figuratively. Ugh. What is your problem, city...? Why do you make it so hard for me? Why do I always feel this way about you? Do we know each other from some other time...?
The interior lights are dimmed. Many people are still talking excitedly, telling their survival stories for the day. Others are completely knocked out. I'm drifting, free-thought, images and memories flashing by. I'm doing the math... up at 6:30AM, it's now 12:30 AM... that makes an eighteen hour day so far and seventeen of them spent in the airport. I drift ethereally in body and spirit.

About two hours later we land rather heavily at MSP; Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.
Everyone's in the blocks sitting waiting for the doors to open, and they make a mad, luggage-dragging scramble for the door when the bell goes off. I amble off in a daze and thank the attendants, flight crew, and anyone in a uniform and hat on my way through the gate.
I am TOTALLY beat, but I still need to get a shuttle or a cab to get my car, which has been sitting in off-airport parking for the last ten days. It looks like Minneapolis has gotten some decent snow as well.
On the way down the escalator, a mother is trying without any success to console her crying child that is crying so hard that it can barely stop between wails to get a breath.
I look at it a long time and say, "I know exactly how you feel, kid."
It stops crying for a second, looks at me and then picks back up where it left off. The mother laughs. I laugh.
After a few laps around the car park, we finally find my car, as most are still partially buried in snow, and all look the same. It's a relief to see the old war wagon, a 1989 Chevy Cavalier Wagon, silver and rust.
After some creative lock-jiggling I get the door open, throw in my carry-on, give her the Tim's patented two pumps on the gas and... nothing.
It doesn't turn over one iota.
FUUUUUCK...!!! I scream, fogging up the windshield with every ounce of energy I have left.
Now what.
I slog back to the lot house and tell them it won't start. What? You have a portable car starter on a truck...???!!! What a great thing! You will drive me back out there and hook it up...???!!! I spend my last trickle of adrenaline trying to say, "You rock."
Twenty minutes later I'm shivering like hell but rolling down the empty freeway. MY empty freeway to MY house. With MY cat inside. And MY own thermostat. I have escaped from New York City. Well, this time...

February 2nd, 2011 - Escape From Plainview - Based on a True Story - Chapter Three

noreply@blogger.com (dignature) — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 00:46:00 +0000

At 7:30 AM on December 22nd, 1995, a late-model silver Lincoln Continental pulls up into the cul-de-sac in front of my Ramada Inn. Not really a limousine per se, but a nice cab with a female driver that looked totally out of place from what I am used to seeing out in front of the Lambada, as I have come to call it.
The prim but jovial lady driver electrically rolls down the passenger window, tips her captain's cap and asks me if I am "Mr. Teem." I am shocked to answer that I am.
I hop into the spacious back seat. She asks me where I'm going. I say to Plainview, and give her the address. Instead of backing up and telling me to get the hell out, she rolls slowly away from the curb. I am checking to see if I am actually awake, and looking around for movie cameras.
"Where are you from...? " She says sweetly.
"Minnesota," I say, "installing some equipment out here."
"I have some friends in Minnesota, nice place. But I've lived here all my life." She says reassuringly. Suddenly a horn honks off to our right. "Too bad I'm driving the Lincoln," she says soothingly, "If I had my car I would have run that stupid fucker off of the road. Ah well, these people don't know how to drive in the snow, he'll be lucky if he makes it anyway."
"What's the deal with this cab?," I ask hesitantly. "This doesn't seem like something my client would spring for," I say, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
"Oh, we usually operate as a sort of shared shuttle for the suits from the airport hotels," she says evenly, "but this morning you're my only fare on the trip in," she says, smiling and glancing at me in the rear view, as I'm sitting in the middle of the back seat.
"Lucky me," I say into the face in the mirror.
She drops me off at Alex's, and I give her the best tip I can muster.
"You take care Mr. Minnesota," she says. "More snow is coming. Doesn't look good, even for Minnesotans. Have a nice day now." She smiles, tips her cap and drives off.
As I turn towards Alex's door wondering if that just happened, a car drives by close to the curb and sprays a wave of slush up onto the sidewalk at my feet. Snow begins to drift into into the corners of the store windows, and the "El" train rumbles by about a block away. The day begins it's slide into murky cloudiness.
Alex lets me in.

Once inside, it's back to the usual routine; Flintstones, training on the computer controller, (the same stuff I have been showing them for the last three days) deli sandwiches with gherkins, interspersed with more complaints about this and that.

This, in theory, should be my last day here. I have rescheduled, cancelled, and rescheduled and cancelled my flight twice, and it is now set for tomorrow, December 23rd, at 9:00 AM from JFK. I really can't put it off any longer due to the Christmas flight bookings.

In the back of my mind I'm thinking something is going to blow up and Alex is going to keep me captive here in indentured servitude for God knows how long, probably forever.

We continue to work through some more program tweaks and paper formatting, and more of anything he wants to do. Annetta is running the printer, albeit slowly, with one finger pushing one button at a time, and waiting for something to happen.
I'm glancing occasionally outside, and seeing serious snow coming down in sheets every time I look. I'm starting to fret just the slightest bit.
"Um, Alex, so what do you think, are you comfortable with the machine...?" I gulp. "Looks pretty good on the paper, don't you think...?" I say, concentrating all my force of will to get a positive response.
"I don't like dees spaces between prints. We can make them smaller, yes...?" he asks.
"Um, yes... I breathe out, I'll show you again how to do that, and if you ever need to adjust it, you can call us at the factory and I can walk you through it over the phone if you need help too..." I say with false optimism.
We make some more adjustments and wait for more images to come off of the paper processor. Twelve excruciatingly long minutes for each cycle. It's three in the afternoon and it looks like midnight outside. The streetlights have come on and aren't doing much against the snow.
"Just a few more adjustments..."
Round and round we go. The monostoneic fam-a-lee... I'm in a time-void. We back up the changes to the software. Twice.
It is now 7 PM. "Okay. I guess looks good." Alex says. "I still don't like light picture. But we make it work."
Before he can say anything else I rip the form I have already filled out of my pocket and thrust it onto the nearest flat surface in front of him, stick a pen in his hand, and just about move his hand for him to help him sign off on it. I start grabbing my tools and chucking them haphazardly into the toolbox (you NEVER EVER put your tools into the toolbox before you are ready to leave the jobsite on the last day or you will UNQUESTIONABLY jinx the machine into failing, GUARANTEED) saying over my shoulder, "Bye Bupka, I mean Annetta, so nice working with you, you sure are doing GREAT with that computer, I hope you learn another song besides the Flintstones, I gotta go, so long now..."
"Wow, is a lot of snow outside," Alex says. "Better call cab company to make sure they have cab."
My heart stops as I'm sitting on my toolbox to try and make it shut long enough to latch the latches.
There is a buzzing in my head as I'm listening to Alex trying to talk to the Spanish-only speaking cab company over the phone... the only cab company that will run in this neighborhood. "No. Ya. Hunh? No Spanish. Cab. CAB. TAXI...! HOTEL. AIRPORT. What? What? Unh? Da, okay."
He hangs up the phone and tells me we had better walk over there, he wasn't sure if the guy knew what he was talking about or not.
After Alex bundles up, and I put on my only thin leather jacket and gather up my gear, we say our goodbyes and Alex tells Annetta lock the door behind us. As he opens it, the wind rips it out of his hand and it slams against the entry with a loud, SMACK! Letting snow into the entryway. We step out into a foot of blowing snow with Alex immediately breaking into a cold-induced trot, and me trying to run through the snow with a forty pound toolbox in hiking boots, making sure he doesn't get so far ahead that I can't see where he goes.
The night is dark as hell and the sounds of the city are there, but very muffled by snow and wind.

I'm already breaking a sweat as we reach the stanchions under the EL train, and walk up to what is basically a door hanging open into a flat-walled building with a few Latinos standing outside smoking.
Not a cab is in sight.
Alex goes in and after much jabbering in Spanish, English, Eastern European, and mixes of all three, comes out and says, "They don't got cab right now. They say maybe twenty minutes or something. Don't know. It's snowing."
I'm wondering how he got all that out of the conversation when he says, "You be okay here...? I should get back to my daughter."
He seems relieved when I say, "Yeah, I guess..." I'm feeling relived that I am even out of the lab and have all my stuff. Although I'm starting to get cold from sweat and standing outside with not enough on.
"Okay. You did good. Goodbye now Mr. Teem," he says openly.
"Bye, Alex." I say. "Have a good Christmas."
"You too..." he says running off into the night. By the time he gets across the street, I can't see him anymore. I feel a shift deep inside.

"I step through the snow into the tiny, dimly-lit cab office. A hairy Hispanic guy with a large mustache and a phone in one hand says slowly, "You call taxi? To air-port ho-tel? Yes?"
"Yes," I say.
"Twenty minutes. Twenty minutes. About." He adds.
I stick my hands in my pockets and try to warm up.
About forty minutes later, a late-seventies Chevy Impala plows up through the snow. It looks like the car my friend had in college. It MIGHT be the same car. I'm disheartened to see that it doesn't have a cab sign. I does however have about nine New York City cab stickers from unidentified years stacked on the driver's side windshield, and the back seat is filled with kids toys. Other than that, no door signs, logos, or any other indication that it's a cab. I now notice a taxi meter. On the floor. Next to a crushed Mountain Dew can. I look around blankly at the empty blackness and the snow being driven sideways through the headlights of the running car.
The driver steps outside of the car, looks at me and says, "Taxi...?"
I look at him and then the car and say, "Yes...?"
"Ahh, donde va..?" He says.
"Ahh, no Espanol..." I say, expectantly.
"Where you go...?" He says, questioning his own words.
"Ramada, Hotel, Airport. " I say hopefully.
He beams. "Si! We go...!"
Expecting him to pop the trunk for my toolbox, he instead opens the back door and begins pushing kids toys off of the seat and onto the floor of the car. "Ay", he says as he grabs the heavy toolbox from my grip and launches it into the back seat. He points to the front passenger door and beckons me with a motion of his head to get in.
"In the front...?!" I say in disbelief.
"Si, si, is OK." He says as he grabs his door handle.
I get into the front seat of the cab. This is the first time I have gotten into the front of ANY cab, ANYwhere. It's just not done. About ten different colors of cardboard pine tree air-fresheners hang from the rear-view mirror, and a few escaped kids toys protrude from under the seat and a dinosaur rides on the console.
"Uno momento..." he says, groping behind the driver's seat for something, and comes out with an Am-Way squirt-bottle half-full of windshield washer fluid. He rolls the driver's window and with the wipers still running, and tries to time his sprays to do the most good. He rolls it back up and says, "Sorry, de thing no work" with a yellow-toothed smile.
Off we go, sliding and weaving down the streets. With the blizzard there is not much traffic in the burrough now, and what little there was has left deep slots in the snow that are filling up quickly.
I'm feeling some optimism. I've completed my work at the lab, I'm on my way back to the hotel, and out tomorrow. Back to things familiar and comforting. My house, my cat, my town. I watch the lights and the snow go by.
Subtly, that damn 'New York feeling' ekes into my bones again. I look at the street and signs, and begin realizing this isn't the way that either Alex or the last cabbie took me to the hotel. I look at the Spanish-only speaking cab driver and feel a pang of doom.
"You sure this is the way to the airport...?" I say, not as confidently as I would have liked.
"Is okay." My driver says, like he fully understood me this time. "Uhh.. shortcut."
"Okay..." I trail off meekly as I see we are now going down what looks like a dead-end street with NO tire tracks in the snow.
This is it, I think. This is the end. Stupid Midwestern kid found naked and stripped of everything in some ditch in Queens. He doesn't even HAVE to kill me, he can just take all my wallet and my jacket, push me out, and drive off with my tools and luggage. I won't make the night. I resolve myself to this fate. Will there be a struggle? Should I grab his car-keys? This thing doesn't even have a dashboard radio, he has a walkie-talkie. Can I use a Playskool toy as a weapon...?

As my mind is racing and the Flintstones is playing through my head, suddenly the dark, dreary, dead-end street opens up into... a frontage road...!!!?? Lights! Civilization! (such as it is) Other cars! This is one time in my life I was ABSOLUTELY CONVINCED it was over. My adrenalin is over the red-line.
A little more bobbing and weaving and we slide up to the drop-off at the Lambada.
I breathe a sigh of dread relief and tip the man heavily.
"Bye! Gracias! Feliz Navidad!" I'm saying exuberantly as I pump his hand for way too long.
I grab my tools, head for the door, and shake off like a dog as I enter the lobby. Holy crap, I never thought I'd actually be GLAD to see this place.
Back in my room, as the door slams I high-dive onto the bed and try to remember what this morning was like. It was eons ago. No one knows.
It seems later than it is, but I have to pack everything up and grab a shower to hit the sack and be ready to catch the Airport Shuttle early tomorrow morning. Home, I think. Home is such a weird thing.
Sleep comes fast in a blur of images of darkness and snow.

continued ~

January 31st, 2011 - Escape From Plainview - Based on a True Story - Chapter Two

noreply@blogger.com (dignature) — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 21:10:00 +0000

Well, I did have long hair and round glasses back then, but I don't think I looked much like John Lennon.
Before I go on, I have to reiterate that I don't personally have anything against New York City. But as I've said previously, it seems to have something against me.
We just don't get along. Granted I've only been there twice; this, the Queens time, and another time when I had gone to midtown Manhattan to do repair work for the same company.
That sorta sucked, but it was during a nice October in Central Park, and I could walk to the lab and work with the Irish guy that didn't have his green card yet, and he would take me to Irish pubs and his Italian girlfriend dance-instructor would make us antipasto.
I did however stay in the hotel formerly known as "The New Yorker" that was - strange. It was at that time owned by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, it's architecture being sort of a "run-down Art Deco."
I was on like the 85th floor (hunh, now it makes me wonder if there was a 113th floor...)

You had to take the elevator up to the fiftieth floor, get out, cross the hallway and take the second elevator up to the nosebleed numbers. My room was this tiny little tall rectangle about the width of the bed, with one narrow but tall rectangular window, that perfectly framed the Empire State Building and nothing else.

So you could be saying, "Well, it's not the city that's the problem, it's your job," or that it's just me. And you could be right. I felt like a fish swimming upstream the whole time I was there. People taking cabs to go a block down the street, lots of yelling, and this huge hive of people noisily thrumming and swelling like a plutonium core about to go critical are not my style, but hey, some people thrive on it.

There is of course the stereotype about "A New York Minute" and "pushy New Yorkers."

It's just a stereotype, but I think it's not without some basis in fact. Not everyone is an "I'll step on the back of whoever is in my way to get ahead" type asshole, but that town is a competitive arena, and desperate people resort to desperate measures.
There seems to be a lot of seething aggression.
So far what I've described could have happened anywhere, but when I'm in New York City, to me, there is a "feeling." Sort of a squeezing, choking, suffocating feeling.
But somehow there's just enough good stuff thrown in to be the carrot on the stick that leads you on down the tunnel of doom.

Now, back to our story.
So I told Alex to get an air compressor at Sears, and gave him the specs that he needed to get the right one. He got his official-looking cashiers check ready and prayed it was for the right amount. He called the prick paper-processor rep who said he couldn't come for a couple days. I wasn't sure what we would be doing while we waited for this to happen, or how long Bupka could stay out of school without the state child labor bureau shutting us down.
This, as in all field-technician situations I've ever been in, was "winging it." The nature of the business.
The first job I ever did for this company, they sent me to Oklahoma with a machine that wasn't finished. The customer needed it, it was long past the estimated ship date, and a part of it really hadn't been, um, 'designed' yet. So they shipped the machine anyway, sent me there and said, "start installing it, and we'll send you the attachment after you get things running."
On the plane there I'm thinking, "this is a suicide mission." It's "the new guy" syndrome: send the new guy as a human sacrifice, he can take the heat for your problems. They've never installed this new part on anything. What are the odds it will work? Slim to none. I half-joked they should send a Sawzall and a Dremel along with it. They did not laugh.
On the next job and the next job after that, and the next, I found out they are ALL suicide missions. So by this point I was good at rolling my eyes and shaking my head.
After the restaurant, Alex dropped me off at the Ramada by the airport. It, like most buildings in any big city was a little "lived in." Planes shook the walls and taxis honked, people chattered in every language of the globe, around the clock.
The weird thing about that neighborhood, was the church. Out by the airport you expect to see the Air Force Training Facility, which was there, Hotel Row, which was there, and an occasional Denny's, which was there, and maybe a tennis center (which was down the highway a spell.)

From the hotel window I noticed this oddly-shaped building, from which I couldn't figure out the purpose by the architecture. So I took a walk down "the road." The only road. The airport road. No sidewalks, trees, nothing except the road by the airport with what turned out to be a church surrounded by chain-link fence with coils of razor-wire on top. People drove by looking at me like I had wandered out of the airport while looking for my gate.
I don't remember what denomination the prison church was, but it had an auto-locking chain-link gate that rolled open, and was set back from the fence a good thirty yards, so the eggs, spray paint and hand-grenades couldn't make it to the building I guess.

Just another architectural feature lending flavor to the mystique of Gotham. Not the most inviting parish I have come across.
The next day, Alex chugged up to the front of the hotel to pick me up in his Aries, and we drove off to the "lab" while he cursed the traffic and I talked about the plan for the day.
"Did you get your air-compressor, Alex?" I prompted.
"I get today. You know how to put together..." Alex replies, more of a statement than a question.
Pregnant pause. I'm grinding my teeth, realizing that if I don't hook his air compressor up, it's just going to delay things further. But really, it's NOT MY JOB.
"You know Alex, I'm not supposed to be doing any of this prep work. But just to speed things along, I'll see what I can do." I sigh flatly.
"You do fine." Alex says, like a father teaching his kid to drive for the first time.
I scowl and stare at the side of his face.
Arriving at the lab... we walk in and quickly lock the door behind us. Annetta is already there, playing the theme from the Flintstones. Alex leaves to get the air-compressor and I begin fiddling with the printer.
I ask Annetta if she has ever worked with a computer before - she says, "Yes, a little, in school." I try to start up some small talk, but she's not biting. She likes music in school, and that's about it. Flintstones, meeeet the Flintstones....
After futzing with the printer for a while and doing about everything I can to prep it for hookup, I have a horrifying realization. This machine is what is known as a "dark-room" printer and needs to be in a DARK ROOM to be able to change the paper, as it has no paper magazines to take out and load in a separate changing room. You load it by taking the light-sensitive paper out of a bag and putting it on a big spool while the doors of the machine are open. So the machine needs to be in total darkness while this is being done. Right now the machine is sitting in what amounts to an alcove, or vestibule, with no cover, curtain, door, or way to block out the room light. Groan.
Alex comes back with a compressor in a cardboard box, and thankfully it looks adequate for the job.
"I have tools!" Alex bellows and from some unseen dusty corner thrusts a vise-grip and pliers with one of the plastic grips missing towards me.
"Um, no that's okay." I say, "I have mine." Good thing too because Alex neglected to get any Teflon tape or thread-sealant for the fittings, and was about to go after the soft brass with a vise-grip before I pried the tool out of his hands.
"First, help me get it down the basement, and then maybe you have some ideas for lunch...?" I add hastily to distract him.

Out the door and down the steps we go. We set the compressor down and I straighten up and look around. It's not so much a basement, but sort of a root-cellar with an overhang that opens out into a large, square, long-overgrown courtyard connecting the backs of all the buildings. A frowning, weathered woman is hanging brightly colored wash out to dry on clotheslines three floors up, and ramshackle lean-twos, corrugated tin, and awnings are nailed in every configuration over the porches and outcroppings of what must have been tenement housing in the 1920's or before. Clotheslines are strung everywhere. It looks like it hasn't changed much in 75 years, if at all. I get a shudder of déjà vu and think of F. Scott Fitzgerald and William S. Burroughs at the same time.
The light coming in from above is surreal. I long for a camera. A few snowflakes land on my toolbox and melt quickly.
As I watch them melt, it snaps the effect and I begin to trace the conduit to find a place to plug in the compressor. Come on baby, don't blow the fuse, I'm thinking. It fires up and starts to fill with a hiss until I shut the petcock drain on the bottom of the tank.
Above me the door jerks open and Alex clambers down the stairs. "It works...! Genius, John Lennon!" he squeaks with glee. He is looking at it like it's a chrome custom engine in a show car, eyes glazed. Before I can get, "Don't..." out of my mouth, he grabs the shiniest part, which happens to be the copper tubing connecting the tank to the compressor head, which is probably about 300 degrees from high-pressure air travelling though it at a high speed.
"Ouch! Why you not tell me not to touch that...!!!
He recoils and shouts, cradling his fingers in his armpit.
"ICE...! Bupka...! ICE...!!!" he yells as he turns and trips up the stairs. I look at the shiny new air-compressor and shake my head. I take one more glance at the tenement porches expecting to see men with shoe-polish hair and chickens running though the lot, but it's disturbingly quiet, and the sky has turned gray again.
After running the air hoses to the printer through the ancient walls of the building, and explaining the problem about the printer needing to be in a light-tight space (to which Alex is saying "Why I not know this...? Why I not know this...?" and coddling his hand with an ice bag tied on it with an Ace bandage), he says he will come up with some black curtain to frame the printer into the alcove and "shut the lights off in the room" when the paper needs to be changed. I'm visualizing him shooting a portrait session with three crying babies when Bupka interrupts to say that she has to shut the lights off for a few minutes to change the paper. I say nothing, and look at my boots. I don't remember getting that scuff by the toe...
"Bupka! What ees better for lunch, Chinky or Slav...?" Alex blurts out.
"I don't know, Papa." Annetta mumbles, pushing buttons on her keyboard, going from Samba to 4/4 Rock beat rather rapidly. "McDonalds."
"No McDonalds! You would eat there every day if I let you. Auk, you kids. I get Slav."
More of the same goes on. Minutes turn to hours, hours to days. Flintstones to well, more Flintstones. After running extension cords from God knows where, probably the neighbors, the printer is plugged in and aired up, and amazingly, working, mostly. I try to teach Alex the basics of the floppy drive system and the rudimentary computer commands, but Annetta is front and center and he keeps asking her if she is "getting all this." She seems pretty good with it, really.
Days turn into more days, and still the processor remains empty. The boxes of chemistry are stacked on the floor next to the machine forlornly.
Alex tells me he won't be coming to pick me up the next day, the processor guy is coming. I stay in the hotel and try to avoid listening to the businessmen having nooners with their hookers, but I make the mistake of going for ice right as the um, couple in the next room are leaving after their "session." A big smarmy guy in a cheap black suit strides down the hallway with a bemused and slightly superior smirk on his face, while an aging, slightly-embarrassed dark-haired woman with smeared make-up struggles to catch up to him as she adjusts her bra strap from the front. "Hi...!" I say as I pass, much too loudly.
Another phone call, another day told not to come in. The processor is not working quite right. I rot and fester in the Ramada Inn. I watch the planes, the TV, and crack cans of beer until I can't take it anymore. VERY ironically, "Groundhog Day" is on and I can so relate.
I wish I was home, or had someone to talk to. I check in with HQ sporadically, and appraise the situation. It's getting to be the 21st of December. Christmas looms beyond the edge of some formless bubble. The days are as gray as my concrete neighborhood. My boss tells me there is a storm on the way. So what else is new? I think.
The next day I wake to a couple inches of snow. Being from Minnesota, it looks like any other day, but out on the streets of New York, it's like a madhouse demolition derby. Traffic crawls down the "expressway." Several cars are in the ditch and on the median with their doors open and their former drivers kicking their tires and yelling at them. You can hear them inside our car as we drive by... "Ya Bastud...! Stupid piece a crap!"
I look over at Alex and he's got a white-knuckle death-grip on his blue steering wheel and a furrowed brow that goes down to his nose. "I... can't ...pick you up.. tomorrow..." he squeezes out between clenched teeth, "dees car got no good tires... can't drive like diss... will call cab."
Just as I'm picturing what that cab will actually be looking like, we skid to a stop just missing the bumper of the car in front of us by about four inches, and turn off down Alex's street. Alex deflates like a hissing balloon.
At the lab, we get through the day actually seeing some real prints off of the machine, the processor needs some tweaks, but things are working. To me, anyway, then Alex storms up with a sheet of mini-wallet photos hot off of the processor, thrusts it up to my nose and says, "You see this?! This print here (pointing at one of about sixteen images through the back of the paper that are so close to my face I haven't even been able to focus on it yet) ees too light..! I can't sell that! Not acceptable! I look at it closely. Closer yet. Change the light. It is barely, imperceptibly lighter than it's surrounding images. I measure it on his densitometer. It is off by the smallest of fractions from the surrounding images, all of which show the light-haired and light-completioned sheepishly smiling Anetta in front of a totally white backdrop. She still has her keyboard in her lap. I'm thinking, 'Geez, the guy as densitometers for eyeballs.'
"It's within the optical specifications of the printer" I tell him, "the calibration department wouldn't have certified it if it wasn't. There's not much you can do. We can put a piece of filter material over it the other lenses and try to match it... but it will probably make it worse or slow down the printer. It's within our spec, which is what you signed off on. Besides that, the wallet prints are cut up by the time you give them to the customer, they won't notice something like that. Aren't they...?" I say, looking around for a print cutter to back me up and not finding one.
"Oy, I mortgage my house to buy thees thing and this is what I get..." bemoans Alex, slathering a extra dab of guilt-seeking in his tone. "Okay... we done now, I call cab to take you to hotel," he sighs.
The Spanish-only speaking cab driver comes to pick me up outside of Alex's front door, and after some creative hand-gesturing and head-nodding, drops me off back at my semi-private dungeon.

January 29th, 2011 - Escape From Plainview - Based on a True Story - Chapter One

noreply@blogger.com (dignature) — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 06:26:00 +0000

A few posts back I was ruminating about the personalties of large cities, and this brought back memories of a business trip of mine to New York during the 1990's, which could unquestionably be filed under "Tales of Travelling Hell."

I suppose it's time I purged it in writing and laid it to rest, perhaps avoiding driving a stake though it's heart at midnight.
It all started sometime back in 1995, as I remember. You tend to push the traumatic events deep into your subconscious as time goes on, so as to best avoid post-traumatic-stress-disorder, it's just your brain's natural reaction.
I was working for a Minneapolis company (NORD Photographic Engineering, a.k.a. NERD, with one former client suggesting it was an acronym for 'Not Of Right Design') that manufactured "high-speed multi-image photographic printers," such as those found in the school-picture, wedding photography, and ID badge printing type dog & pony shows, er I mean, industrial production facilities.
This was before the true dawn of digital cameras, before low-cost dye-sub or inkjet printing, before the digital mini-lab revolution. Back when pictures were shot on rolls of wide photographic film, and large prints with many sizes of images on the same sheet of paper came out of large vats from machines full of very stinky chemistry.
It starts innocuously enough. Evidently, a Romanian gentleman, we'll call him Alex, short for Alexandru, arranged to buy what was known as the 'Wedding Printer' from our company at a trade show earlier that year.
This machine was a 600+ pound behemoth which stood well over six feet high, driven by pneumatics, hydraulics, chains, solenoids, whipped slaves and a double-slot 5 1/4" floppy-disk controller.
The Wedding Printer had been around since the inception of the company, back when the owner of the business would pull into your town on his own RAILROAD TRAIN, complete with printer and photo developing lab aboard, and walk everyone in town though the train in an attempt to convince them they needed a high-speed multi-image photographic printer, ala the Music Man gone horribly wrong.
So the main body and design of this battleship printer hadn't changed much since the Iron Age, they just kept hanging more 'accessories' on it, and cobbled on a (then) state-of-the-art 386 computer until it resembled a cross between the family truck in "Grapes of Wrath" and very large refrigerator on wheels. Inside were racks of optical lens trays driven by pneumatic cylinders and a chain drive system, and a pneumatically driven rotating turntable to orient the film over a light source that would fry your eyes if you looked at it too long, and well, you get the idea.
One stipulation of this device was that you HAD to have an air supply connected to it BEFORE you turned on the power switch, as many of the air cylinders required air pressure to return to them to their 'home' or operating positions, and it you didn't, things would smash and crash together, lenses being driven in random positions at the wrong times and general mechanical chaos would ensue.
So with that requirement, and the fact that the lab or studio owner needed an operating paper processor so that we could actually develop and see what images we getting off of the thing, we made the customer sign a "pre-installation agreement" contract to make sure these and other requirements were met before installation.
Alex signed off on my document, phoned me and said, "When you can come to install eet?" Alex always sounded EXACTLY like Boris Badenov from the Rocky & Bullwinkle show, and this made it difficult to communicate with him; 1. with a straight face, and 2. without responding like Natasha Faltale. I vowed to do my best.
We built the machine at our plant, as each machine was set up with custom options chosen by the customer for their type of film and image sizes, calibrated it, blessed it with a recently slaughtered chicken, and about two weeks before Christmas 1995, it shipped it off to Alex's place in the lovely burrough of Plainview, NY, outside of Queens.
At this point, I should have begun to prepare an excuse as to why I couldn't go, or just skipped the country for Mexico or the like, but had I failed to see the omens.
I called Alex and asked where the best hotel was to stay in around his place of business, and after he answered, "You can stay in room upstairs. We have extra room, we make room up for you." I should have just thrown down the phone and ran. But no, I had a job to do.
However, there was no way in hell I was staying upstairs of some guy's shop whom I've never met, in the New York burroughs, which I had never seen, and which would leave me without an escape route from days at the installation site.
Next, he says that I "probably wouldn't want to stay in his neighborhood" (DING DING alarm bells failed to go off) but I could stay at the Ramada by the airport, (JFK) and he would come and pick me in his car up everyday, instead of paying for a cab. Hmmm. Okay. I guess. It's the customer's responsibility to pay for lodging and travel on these installation trips, I'll take it easy on him. We didn't usually use rental cars in New York City because the parking was such a pain, and it was difficult to get them back in one piece.
So Alex, are you ready to have me install this thing..?
"Da. I mean, yes."
Have you been reading the manual so you have an idea on how you want it programmed...? "Oh, yes."
Okay. So I naively hop on a plane for New York City with my bag and toolbox.
As I fly out of Minneapolis it's a bright, sunny, optimistic morning, and as I approach NYC, it's the middle of the day, but strangely beginning to get dark, foreboding, and grim.
Even the Statue of Liberty has a scowl and is waving me away. Turn back, she whispers in French, but I don't understand.
On the ground in NYC I get my bags and head for the cab line with all the suits. When I get up to a Yellow Cab, I tell the cabbie where I want to go, and he says, "Unh unh. Yellow cab don't go there. Try another cab."
I'm thinking, "You're shitting me" as the next customer drives off with him. Finally I persuade some Off-Broadway Independent cab company to leave the airport with me, and he takes me to downtown Plainview without saying a word.

The street scene in Plainview is like something out of West Side Story gone 21st century. As we drive by the New York stoop-front apartments, people hang out on the steps, lean out of the windows, yelling at each other up and down the street. Horns honk and sirens wail as the dark clouds seem to thicken.
In front of the "Photo Studio" (which looks like any other storefront) at the address I am to go to, I feel like I have a target on my back with my toolbox and garment bag at my feet. I grab the doorknob and prepare to go in, but it's locked. Uh? It's 2 PM on a Wednesday afternoon, and the place is closed?
I bang on the door and try to ring the bell that doesn't work, and just before my life begins flashing before my eyes, a short, stocky, hairy except for a bald spot guy comes and unlocks the door. He just about pulls me in along with my luggage, slams the door and double-locks it in one motion.
"I'm..." I was about to say.
"Teem! Teem! You are Teem here to build my machine! The NORD guy!"
"Um, yeah."
"You lock the door during the DAY?" I ask.
"Yes, yes, is bad neighborhood. Can't trust no one. They steal your stuff and want to use your phone." He snaps.
"Un hunh," I say, as he is pulling me into the room.
"Dees ees Boupka, I mean Annetta, my daughter. She is home from school to learn how to use printer."
What? I'm thinking, as my eyes wander through the dark clutter of studio lighting, backdrops, cords and bric-a-brac stopping on an attractive teenage blond girl sitting on an extremely tacky couch, playing, or slowly trying to play, "The Theme from the Flintsones" on a synthesizer keyboard on her lap.
"Um, Hi Annetta," I say.
"Hullo," She says, glancing up, muffing a note on the keyboard, and focusing back in again.
Doot doooo, deee do doot dooooooo...
"I gave her Chreesmas presink early, since she had to stay home... er, sick. I show you lab," Alex says quickly. "We put your stuff over here. Are you sure you don't want to stay upstairs...?"
"No, um thanks..." I say glancing around, expecting some other life form that I haven't noticed yet to materialize out of the piles of junk and clutter.
"There is your preenter." Alex says proudly, pointing to our printer still shrink-wrapped and standing in an alcove barely big enough to fit it. "Here is new paper-pro-cessor."
I look at the paper processor, indeed brand new, built into the wall, and completely void of fluids.
"There's no chemistry in it." I say.
"Yes." He says. "Yes. The UPS man is dropping it off today, you know about mixing chemistry, yes...?"
An audible deflationary sound comes out of my lungs. "No." I feign. "It was part of your pre-installation agreement to have the processor ready before I..." As I'm saying this, there is a banging at the door, and right on cue is the UPS man balancing a two-wheeler full of boxes while juggling his logging computer and glancing around disapprovingly.
I shake my head and move over to look at "my printer" while Alex deals with UPS and Annetta continues to struggle through the Flintstones.
As I begin to unwrap the printer, I notice there is no air hose, no air hose fitting, and no electrical outlet anywhere near the printer. I sag. I should just call my boss, find a cab (yeah, right) and high-tail it back to the airport at this point. And I'm thinking about it. But, I'm here. I don't want to have to come back. And it will be me that has to come back. We can deal with a couple minor setbacks. Right? Ugh.
As I'm pondering my fate and wondering how long it's going to take to get this lab to the point of even developing a photo for us to begin testing the printer, Alex comes rushing up to me.
"Teem! Teem! How much money do yo have with you..???!!!"
"What..?" I say.
"The UPS man says I need cash or cashiers check for $600 or he will take chemistry back on truck!... I no have cashiers check here!"
I laugh.
"Alex, I've been in the lab for twenty minutes and you are asking me to pay for your chemistry, mix it, and balance your processor..???!!! Forget it!"
"Teem, you've got to help me!"
"No way."
Alex throws up his hands and races back to the UPS man who is trundling the boxes back on the truck after having set them down in the studio, and is visibly irked.
Flint-stones, meet... the... Flint... stone... s...
Alex slams the door and locks it harshly.
I stare.
"Boupka, we go to eat something. You don't open the door for nobody until I get back," Alex bellows.
"K, papa." The words sound off of Annetta's lips like a slight breeze over the mouth of a pop bottle. She stares transfixed at her fingers moving on the keyboard.

Alex leads me though the door and locks it from the outside as we amble down the busy street. Snow begins to fall through a cold wind. The city is taking on a monochromatic hue and the buildings seem to come together at the top of the street like a jungle canopy that closes in.
We get into Alex's car, a (mostly) faded blue 1980something Dodge Aries that is a bit rounded off on all the edges and slightly worse for wear. The next thing I know, I am opening the passenger door and staring down at an empty crack baggie lying in the gutter outside of a decrepit mission-like restaurant in Queens.
Crap, I think to myself.
Inside, the I'm over-powered by the smells of curry, garlic, clove cigarettes, human B.O. and cologne. Over a bowl of hot matzo-ball soup, I confront Alex with my issues so far.
"So what's the deal with the chemistry, Alex?" I say, tentatively.
"Tomorrow I get cashiers check from bank, they bring it back. I don't know why they say this check or cash only. Piss me off."
"I can't mix that chemistry for you. If something goes wrong, I don't want to be responsible. Doesn't the processor manufacturer have a rep that is supposed to do it when they install the machine...?" I ask.
"Yeah... he always busy, never wants to come. Prick. I call him, when we get the chemistry." Alex says tersely.
"Well, I can set up the printer and make sure it works, and program in your packages, I say. Where is your air compressor?"
"Ahh... I don't have air compressor yet... where I get one? I don't know."
I roll my eyes and end up back on his. "Alex you know we can't even turn that machine on until we get air supplied to it... it was all in the pre-installation contract. Did you even read it?" I ask, trying not to sound incredulous.
"My daughter helped me with it."
"Have you ever used a computer before, Alex...?"
"No. Boupka will learn it. I'm no good with that."
Oh god help me, I'm thinking to myself as I finish the last bite.
"You look like John Lennon," he says as he gets up from the table.

to be continued...

January 28th, 2011 - Signage And The Lack Thereof

noreply@blogger.com (dignature) — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 00:56:00 +0000

I swear Wisconsin has the highest per capita percentage of weird signs in the country, maybe even in North America. Well, that is when we actually HAVE signs, as many of our intersections here can be studied with a magnifying glass for any HINT of which road you are on or are crossing, and there is not a sign to be found. Not a local...? Tough noogies. You need a hospital...? Well, good luck, it's Friday and I'm going to fish fry.

Today I was driving home from Kenosha on some road I've never been on before, (not unusual owing to the lack of signs) and I see the stereotypical Wisconsin "Big Farm House In The Middle Of Nowhere"; in the yard, a tractor, a few junk cars up on blocks, snowmobile outside the front door, and a large sign in the front stating:

STUNTS ARE US
by appointment only

I wish I could have gotten a photo, but I was about to be rear-ended by the stereotypical Wisconsin bar traffic on a Friday night, so I drove on.

Using my keen sense of direction, and the setting sun, I turned onto another road of unknown origin and destination, and after a short drive I noticed a housing development with the sign:

"Welcome to Oak Clearing"

Hunh. I wasn't sure if this had to do with HAVING a lot of oaks surrounding the houses or NOT having ANY oaks. By the lack of wooded area, I assumed the latter.

Further down the same road I came across an interesting, yet bizarrely named school called:

"THE DROUGHT SCHOOL"

Maybe the last survivor of the Dust Bowl Days teaching FFAers not to let that happen again? One can only shake one's head and guess.

Hey, it's Wisconsin. I don't have to write this stuff, it writes itself.

----------------------------------------

The one picture I do have to show you, really stabs at my heart. I have seen this same picture in Minnesota, and it really pisses me off. It's a tribute to the ludicrous assholes of the world.

January 23rd, 2011 - Milwaukee River. Merry Christmas, bastards.

January 26th, 2011 - I've Got Questions, You've Got Answers

noreply@blogger.com (dignature) — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 23:11:00 +0000

Today we are going to take a short walk through my brain. That's about the only option we have, really, it's not that long of a path. Consequently, some days I feel I know next to nothing. It seems like everyone in my field of work (no pun intended) knows more, and remembers more than I do. It's frustrating. On the other hand, I feel that if I have the courage to ask my questions, they are often "outside the box" and often do help to answer other peoples questions that may be related, but from a different perspective.
I don't know how much faith I put into Myers/Briggs tests, but I always seem to come out between an ISTJ and an INTJ. Lately, I have been thinking about the characteristics of an ISTJ, which go something like this: "With Introverted Intuition dominating their personality, INTJs focus their energy on observing the world, and generating ideas and possibilities. Their mind constantly gathers information and makes associations about it. They are tremendously insightful and usually are very quick to understand new ideas. However, their primary interest is not understanding a concept, but rather applying that concept in a useful way. INTJs are driven to come to conclusions about ideas. Their need for closure and organization usually requires that they take some action."
Maybe it's the constantly gathering information that leaves no room for the information that is already there, but this seems pretty true for me, and it just keeps coming. And I feel a need to "see it though" and get my questions answered or I can't move on. So I go in circles.
I recently read a quote from Albert Einstein. He said, "It's not that I'm so smart, it's that I stay with problems longer." Maybe I can aspire to this.

So I drive around the state for my job as a plant inspector, (Re: ISTJ - Inspector Personality) and lately I find myself just looking at things during all of the driving, the amount of which can be considerable. Just looking. No radio, no audiobooks, just looking, absorbing, and thinking. I like to think I absorb a lot of information like this, but then again there is an infinite amount to absorb. I see things I don't understand, and they stick in my head. Forever. Until finally something associates while I'm in a situation talking to someone who would know the answer, and I ask. If I don't get a full answer, the question lingers until I do.

Recently, I've gotten some answers to some nasty brain-itches from the past. Thank god. I might forget the answers tomorrow, but at least I have closure.

Here are some of my questions resolved this week:

#1. I've been working on the microscope for the Department of Ag, trying to learn how to take good "stacked-mosaic" images (which result in sort of a pseudo three-dimensional picture, similar to a CT scan). It's amazing stuff, and an amazing tool.

One of my trial images was of the "Black-legged tick" (a.k.a. "Deer Tick") that was attached to me last fall. I kept it in hand sanitizer for months (works great, you should try it) until I got the chance to look at it under the scope, and it is an incredible world within a world.

Now since we're able to look at the tick so closely (about 100x), I noticed the two small holes at the base of the hypostome ("harpoon") and wondered what the heck they were for.
First some interesting things about the tick. The ixodes scapularis ("deer tick") here has a few characteristics that other ticks don't have, such as the long hypostome, (for it's body size) which actually harpoons you, and then the animal secretes a "glue" that literally glues the tick onto your skin. They are much more difficult to remove, especially without breaking off the hypostome once they're attached. As opposed to, say a wood tick, which pretty much just sucks with it's mouth, can clings on with other handy appendages.
In speaking with Dr. Phillip Pellitteri, Chief Entomolgist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, at a worksop this week, I was able to get answers to a few of my questions.
One was, "Is the hypostome hollow? Does it suck blood through it like a straw, and into it's gut?" Answer, "no." Along with the glue, the hypostome is for attachment, and the tick secretes saliva that keeps the wound open (as an anti-coagulant) so it can suck with it's mouthparts (under the bottom of the hypostome in this photo). It alternately sucks blood and secrets saliva into the wound to keep the process going. If it wasn't for the anti-coagulant saliva, the tick couldn't suck the blood, because it would coagulate, dry out and turn into goo, and it wouldn't flow. Unfortunately for us, this also seems to be the process that exchanges the tick's nasty gut-bacteria with our system and ultimately transmits the Lyme's disease to us in ticks that carry it. The tick also has anti-coagulant in it's gut, so that it doesn't turn into a gummy-tick.
My photo is a bit unique in that because the organism was yanked out of me, the chericerae, and palps that usually protect the hypostome and retract during it's injection, are gone. If you look closely on the hypostome, you can see it has little "troughs" that help the blood flow, even though it is stuck into a very small hole in your skin. Some say that the shape of the barbs, officially known as "files" or "scales" on the hypostome actually help keep the wound open to a point, being not flat like a knife, but raised and triangular, much like a bayonet, a weapon designed to make an incision that is irregularly-shaped and slow to heal. Clever.
My final and ultimate question was, "What then are the two small holes for, Dr. Phil? Salivary glands...?" Answer, "no." He said we can see that they are glands of some sort by their sub-structure with an electron microscope, but that the saliva comes from the mouth and blood/gut tract. He wasn't sure what their ultimate purpose was. He said not all 34 subspecies of ixoides have them, and said that some of these types of ticks have sensing appendages near their heads also with unknown purposes, and that we can only guess what they are for. We don't even know if they are useful to the tick in it's form now, or perhaps only served a purpose at some other point during the tick's evolution.
So bottom-line, they are glands of some sort, but I need a super tick-freak to tell me what they think they're for.
File that part deep in the brain-void for future reference, and hope it remains accessible.
I can see why people dedicate their lives to studying insects and microscopic creatures - when you can actually can look at them closely, there are an amazing amount of body parts and things that we never would otherwise see or think about.

#2. Driving down the interstate one day, I was behind a 4000 gallon pumper truck. I know this because it said, "Contents 4000 gal." on the back of the tank. It also had painted lettering which read: "Recycling in Action!"
This immediately got me thinking, "What the hell could be in a 4000 gallon pumper truck that would be recycled...?" Feces? Please don't let it be feces. Um, waste water? I really had no idea.

So as I passed the cab of the truck, the door stated that it was from the "LaBore Grease-Trap Company." Okay... what is going on, does Burger King sell their French-fry grease to McDonalds and then McDonalds sells it to Wendy's...? I couldn't put together the "recycling" part.
As it turns out, after talking to my counterpart in the Department; Lenny, formerly a pesticide cop, fertilizer, and farm implement salesperson, that some of the grease from restaurant grease-traps, at least in Wisconsin, goes to... cattle feed producers. Cows and cattle need a balanced diet of fat, protein, carbos, and nutrients, and some if not all of the fat is provided by nice cheap grease from restaurants. Hunh. Kinda scares me that cattle are already eating fast-food before we slaughter them for fast food. Just another reason to add to the list of why I don't eat fast food.

#3. My third and final question (for now) is one that has been clattering around my head for some time. I think it started as I was sitting in a construction zone, staring bleakly at the heavy equipment trundling by.

I was noticing the bulldozers with the track system that has one idler wheel or "bogie wheel" sticking up in the back, sort of making the track into a trianglar shape, instead of the stereotypical stretched-oval or "D" shape one usually sees on dozers, cranes, army tanks, and the like.
When I see some mechanical 'break from the herd" such as this, my immediate response is, "Why?" (Which is usually my immediate response for everything, I guess.) And my first guess as to an answer is usually, of course, cost. And I am usually partly right.
Back to Lenny again. He told me the reason, but by the time came to write it down, I had already forgotten it, so I had to look it up again. Then I said to myself, "Oh. Yeah..."
The reason behind this design, which is exclusively owned by the Caterpillar Tractor Company of Peoria, Illinois, is manifold.
According to those in the know about heavy equipment, this configuration is called "elevated sprocket" or "high drive", and it goes a little like this:

"The high drive design is unique to Caterpillar bulldozers. It eliminates the final drive system, which tended to break frequently on conventional units. This elevated drive sprocket undercarriage is built in modular form. The tracks can be easily disassembled and the drive sprockets easily replaced. The transmission can be pulled out the back of the machine without much disassembly." You can imagine this is a major wear part on something that pushes maybe hundreds of thousands of pounds of rock and dirt all day...

"The high-drive system eliminates the traditional final drive in favor of a planetary final drive, which is more effective at withstanding engine torque, since it spreads the forces over multiple gear teeth instead of a single tooth as in the traditional system."
Very much like a bicycle, the smaller cogs tend to wear out before the larger ones due to less chain wrap, and less stress on the individual cog teeth.
So in a nutshell: easier to maintain, less wear on expensive parts = cheaper overall.
Always with the cheaper.

Well, we'll see how long this information sticks around. At least if I write it down it has a better chance of sinking in.
Until next time, keep absorbing, keep thinking, stay with the problems, and ask a lot of questions. And ask someone who knows.

January 24th, 2011 - Chic-a-go, Chic-a-go... you fill in the rest.

noreply@blogger.com (dignature) — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 23:37:00 +0000

Holy Cripes, another post already. And the ink's barely dry on the last one. And it looks like I've given up not starting sentences with a conjunction. Or next I'll leave my participles dangling all over. Well just nevermind about grammar fer now.
So yeah I was in downtown Chicago last week for that Trade Show, and I took a few pictures with my 'little camera'. (That would be the Olympus Stylus 850-SW as opposed to the Nikon D80, which was too much baggage for this trip).

We were working down on Navy Pier, a large convention center and amusement park which overlooks the lake, and we were usually there pretty early in the morning and leaving about sunset, both great times to take photos.

I always have mixed feelings about the downtowns of most big cities.
I like nature, but steel and glass and stone have appeal too. Something about the massiveness and the symmetry. You can say all you want about Ayn Rand being a capitalist prick, but she was very good at describing this. Anyway, Chicago is all right.
I think its redeeming values are that it's pretty old, and it doesn't take itself too seriously, at least from my feeling of the place.

Some cities seem like they try to be more than they are, and end up without a soul.
Chicago has the lakefront (Lake Michigan) the river (the Chicago River, green at times, no one knows exactly why) and it has a lot of very cool Art Deco architecture and a nice mix of old and new.

I don't have anything personal against New York, but it seems to have something personal against me.
Bob Seeger calls it a "friendly old ghost," but in my experience it's more of an evil-tempered poltergeist waiting to grab your legs from under the chair. I've had a few good experiences there, but mostly it's got it in for me. I flipped it off from the plane the last time I flew out of JFK and said, "Ugh! You couldn't pay me to go back there! Die monster, die!" And the like.

Another story. But I digress. There, I did it again.

Every morning as we came past on the shuttle bus from the hotel, there would already be people sitting out on their plastic five-gallon buckets, fishing. We got there super early on the last day of the show and no one was out yet, albeit it was - 10 F with a hellacious windchill. It didn't stop the joggers and the pedestrians I saw later though, so I assume it was business as usual after the sun came up.

I've got a couple shots of the harbor light, definitely different days. It would be fun to go back in the summer and see the contrasts. Looks like it is a busy place in warmer weather.

On our walk into the facility every morning we passed through the "Stained Glass Museum," which was amazing, and was a great moral booster for starting the day.
At different times of the day the pieces look very different, as some of it is lit by outside light, and some by totally interior lighting.
There is some amazing stuff. Lots of panes, but also complete doors, windows, and three-dimensional sculptures made from thousands of pieces of stained glass.

There were a lot of "Coney Island" type distractions at the pier as well, the "maze of mirrors", souvenir shops, cruise ships and boat tours in the summer, carny food, and lots of historical images and museum pieces from Chicago's past adorning the walls.
But I was surprised at the number of people that were drawn in and took the time to look closely at the stained glass exhibits.
Many of these people were busy show exhibitors like ourselves, but the colors, textures, and intricacies of the glasswork tend to suck you in.
It's a good place to practice your photography skills as well. Some of the pieces were inside glass cases, and the lighting was inconsistent. A good challenge for someone with no tripod and used to shooting outdoors with natural light.

Incredible stuff.
As far as the show itself, it did not disappoint. It was busy most of the time, and as with most trade shows, was an eclectic mix of industry mishmash.

If you needed some snake repellent, they had that. Though I'm not exactly sure why you'd want to repel snakes from your plants, as they are strict carnivores and actually eat a lot of the rodents that cause the most plant damage. Maybe they just make you feel too oogie to be worth the payoff.
I had to look at the ingredients list to see where the magic came from, and was not surprised that the main active ingredient was "putrefied egg solids," a common denominator in many of these repellents.
I guess if you don't like snakes, you probably aren't going to want to putrefy your own egg solids, and would happy pay someone else to do it for you.

I was also captivated by these trippy cacti and succulents.

They seem to be the "more cacti per square inch cacti" so as to put more cacti in a small space for your best value-added return, for more-cacti-per-capita.
Anyway they are a texture-lover's wet dream. Looks like a nice place for some spiders and insects to have a hoe-down.
Or maybe to remove those tough baked-on food materials left on last nights cookware.
So that's my take on the whole shebang.

Next I need to go through the seven zillion images I took from multiple angles on the concourse and stitch together some panoramas of the entire auditorium show floor.
We'll see how good my stitching program really is. I've been using the one that came with my Canon setup (Canon PhotoStitch), but have also just downloaded the Microsoft ICE freeware version as well.
Maybe a side-by-side comparison is in order.
Till next time - toodles.
Watch where you sit when you're at the cactus booth.

January 22, 2011 - Prepare Yourself

noreply@blogger.com (mnainfochair@gmail.com) — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 20:57:00 +0000

Wow. My last post was July 18th, 2010 at 2:11 PM CST. Totally unacceptable. I'm switching over to a new blogger template here in an attempt to try and spark some new life. Haven't even put the pictures up on the walls yet. So let's just pretend that the last 6 months, 4 days, 11 hours, 42 minutes and 1 second never happened. Because I have BIG NEWS...!!! H U G E news. EARTH-SHATTERING NEWS !!! (I'm breathing heavily into a paper sack this very minute).
Okay. So this last week I was an exhibitor at the Mid-Am Horticultural Trade Show in downtown Chicago. Three days of heart-stopping horticultural excitement. I was representing the Great State of Wisconsin as a nursery inspector, it's what I do (along with "duties to be named later").
AS IF the hustle and bustle of the best of the "Green Industry" wasn't enough excitement, I happened to pick up (during my immensely busy day of shaking hands, kissing babies, and talking about bugs and diseased plants) a copy of one of the trade rags known as "Green Profit" Magazine (catchy, no?)
and I began thumbing through, in between chats with farmers about the damn weather and who is going to win the Packers-Bears game.

I was soon floored by this astounding news story:

"Honeysuckle: Color of the Year"
Oh. My. God.

Here's the sassy copy:
"Pantone ®, an authority on communicating and matching colors (?), has declared Honeysuckle to be Color of the Year for 2011. (!!!)
With characteristics that make it "courageous, confident, vital," this reddish-pink hue is a color for every day, with nothing "everyday" about it.
Bold and emboldening, (that is a classy writer) its vigor is said to help people face troubles and meet the challenges of everyday life.
(Who knew...?!!! But wait, there's more...)
"In times of stress, we need something to life our spirits,: explains Leatrice Eiseman, (PERfect name, she HAD to get this job) executive director of the Pantone Color Institute.
"Honeysuckle is a captivating, stimulating color that gets the adrenaline going - perfect to ward off the blues. (You know them, those evil BLUE colors...) Honeysuckle derives its positive qualities from a powerful bond to its mother color red, the most physical, viscerally alive hue in the spectrum." Leatrice notes that this color may stir a nostalgia for the memories of springs and summers past. (Unless you are less than a year old, in which case it does nothing).
Pantone ® suggests Honeysuckle will add a lively flair to interiors in the form of patterned pillows and tabletop accessories, and also as colors for interior walls. Or, perhaps add this color to brighten and embolden endcaps and retail displays."

Wow, is all I can say. They just sold a subscription. So look for Honeysuckle this year emboldening your endcaps and making you feel all better. I know I will. I'm looking forward to it.
Ironically enough, last year's color was Turquoise, so I guess we got a little too bluesy there and now need to counter-balance things a bit.

Okay, I can put the bag down now, phew.
But that is not all of the news, no. On another page of this amazing magazine, I found what is sure to be my next career opportunity. Can you believe it? In the same issue!
Here it is, under "NEW PRODUCTS":

Easy Green Lawn Paint...!!!!

"With the high cost of watering and maintaining a lawn, Easy Green Lawn Paint is the perfect solution to save water, time, and money. Simply mix the concentrated formula into a regular garden sprayer. Spray on the lawn and it instantly goes from dormant brown to a lush green. It takes about an hour to dry. Once dry, it last for up to three months. Environmentally friendly and kid-and pet safe."
www.easygreenlawnpaint.com

I'm going to sell it to golf courses and make millions! Gotta go!

July 18th, 2010 - Signs, Signs, Everywhere Are Signs, Part #432

noreply@blogger.com (mnainfochair@gmail.com) — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 19:11:00 +0000

I'm back from an extended mid-season, intrastate agricultural inspection extravaganza for my work, the bugs and plant diseases are all cooking up to formidable levels with the summer heat and humidity.
Our 'growing days' so far are about 20% ahead of last year and multiple storms have brought quite a lot of localized rain. At least after these multiple storms, everyone got some, though not necessarily consistently.
In talking to the farmers to the north of us, the last big storm brought some 0.2" of rain, while those only 3 - 5 miles away got over 8" in one night. Well, that's farmin'...

Sweet car for sale on a drive-by. It was still there the other day...

At least 20 to 30% of my time is spent driving the state minivan, down the country roads, through the unincorporated towns, mucking around questionable field access roads (no 4-wheel drive for me), and over the highways and by-ways of the Great State of Wisconsin.
I finally got myself a navigational car GPS, which has saved me a lot of time, while causing me a lot of grief as well. Depending on how it's set, it usually does a pretty good job, however it was interesting the other day...
I was navigating overland across a bounty of county roads, Co.X, Co. Z, Co. ZZ, (my favorite) and "Ghost Road," (another favorite). Finally I'm trundling along from my previous stop with my next stop programmed in, when the GPS lady comes on and says, in her polite but Steven Hawkingesque voice, "In oint eee iles, urn efft on ounty ine oad."
Up to this point, things seemed right, we were headed in the general direction of my next stop, and at least I'm wasn't trying to read four county maps while flying down the road with all the windows open. But turning left or east on County Line Road out here in the middle of Manureville when I needed to go west didn't seem like a logical move. So as I was turning left onto this Dead End road she says, "Prepare to go off-road..."

Whoa there. Ya, right! The mini-van doesn't speak that language. I check her settings and "Off-Road" was not checked, but "Shortest Distance" is.
Okay, let's try "Fastest Time" and hope for the best, because I haven't been following along on the map and it's going to take me 20 minutes just to FIND this road, if it's even ON the map. "Recalculating...."
Off we go.
Needless to say, we made it, but my future confidence in her went down a couple notches.
On the other hand I DID get to see this awesome piece of property for sale (No not the "Not a Door", although that would be awesome), it was a farm with a dilapidated ancient foundation of some mill and huge stone fireplace on one side of the property, with no wood left on the structure at all, just the foundation, a really old windmill and lots of trees. The other side was a moderately old farmhouse and field. I tried to find it again online but it's lost in the "Wisconsin Triangle". I probably won't see it again until I'm lost down there again next time. If it even existed in the first place. Maybe it was on "Ghost Road". Cool though.
But I digress. The story here is about all the signs that one sees while driving around the state. Some are truly amazing. Profound. Profane. And everything in between.
Some I have yet to document, as they sometimes take a while to sink in as I drive by. "Important While Flashing" being one. This is a garishly yellow sign with big lights on it, often seen along the interstate, that I have never ever seen flashing.
It's not like you are going to miss a huge, garishly yellow sign, even if it's NOT flashing, which makes it hard to think it's not important unless it's flashing. I'm sure some government agency spent a lot of money researching the psychology behind huge garishly yellow signs, and they know what's best for me. However, they are not inspiring a lot of confidence on my part either.
I think they are in cahoots with the GPS lady.
Another symbol I haven't quite figured out is the NASCAR air-freshener. I saw one hanging from a car's rear-view mirror the other day, and it got me thinking. Those little tree air-fresheners attempt to smell like pines ('attempt' being the operative word), the gelatinous cherry air-fresheners smell approximately like cherries, so what does a NASCAR air-freshener smell like? Exhaust fumes? Anything to override Dale Ernhardt's body stench after five hours in the same Kevlar suit, I guess.
Okay! Here are of the some signs I've seen in my travels lately:

I think this was a bar.

One of my inspections was at the more than surreal "Jellystone Park".
Yogi welcomes you in, with a stake up his butt, looking more like he is trying to hitch-hike out. Bar-none, this place has the highest amount of speed bumps per cubic foot than ANY place in the United States.
It is basically a year-round trailer-park, and everyone gets around on their fleet of golden golf carts (mostly to pick up ice at the main office).
It's rather... spooky.
If you don't like putt-putt golf and/or have a largemouth bass mailbox, it might not be for you.
Come to think of it, that tie is rather surreal too.

If you happen to be at Jellystone, realize it's not for you and that you would rather not be recognized, you may purchase "many styles' of FUZZY FACE moustaches (or mustaches, depending upon your personal dictionary) from the vending machine in the office lobby.
Somehow seeing everyone there wearing a fuzzy mustache, driving around in their gold golf carts and picking up their mail from their largemouth bass mailboxes, doesn't even begin to make it any more surreal than it already is.

Some people call the police, we call McGruff, the Crimedog. Who will then look suave and point his finger at you.
Why does he have fingers again...?

If you haven't already stopped, you should now be noticing that you are in the middle of a dangerous intersection.

Um, pretty self-explanatory.

Okay board members, what should we call our new church...?
"Well, there is already a cross made out of plumbing on a rock in the front yard, maybe we could incorporate that somehow..."
"Great idea, Billy Joe Bob Cletus Ernie!"
Hook me up.

And from permanently soiling your underwear.

Some cities may settle for a mere water tower, but here in southern Wisconsin we much prefer the Horton Waterspheroid ®

Serve yourself - use the sign if you need to.

From the Shameless Marketing Department, if you're too dumb and impatient to grow plants, we have a solution.

It's all about the all-important 'branding placement'. I think there is a plant in there somewhere. Of course the pot was a giant logo as well, why even question that.
One reason it's "Weather Tough" is that it's considered hardy in at least zones 5 through 11 and can be a creeping invasive species if not kept in check.
Kind of like a frontal system.

It's even more specially priced after it starts looking like it's going to die.

If we deliver it in less than 30 minutes, YOU GET IT FREE!

Somehow I knew after it was all said and done, I'd end up in the Big House...

May 30th, 2010 - The Voice of a Lake

noreply@blogger.com (mnainfochair@gmail.com) — Mon, 31 May 2010 00:20:00 +0000

Hey, I wrote this back in November of 2009 for the "1000 Friends of Minnesota's - Voices of a Lake" essay contest, and had completely forgotten about it. Well, I'll be dipped if they didn't pick it for the finals and post it today!

"The Voice of a Lake" by Tim Boyle

I seen lotsa changes in my coupla thousand years as a lake, you betcha I have.
I might be a little thick ‘round the edges, but don’t let that fool ya. Parts a me are from the Laurentian Divide, parts from the Mississippi. I can’t tell ya how this whole ‘vaperation cycle thing works, but I swear parts a me cooled them reactors at Monticello, and parts been driven on by ice fishers at Mille Lacs. I keep my blue eye on the sky and I see lots. It rains and my thoughts come in, from all over. Thoughts from rivers, farm fields, clouds looking down from them big hills out past the prairie, don’t even know what they call them places. I been here all my life.

Guess it’s like most things, I don’t member my early years. Somethin’ ‘bout some big mother lake up north that was all over the place, ‘sposta come from some big chunk a ice, sounds about right for northern Minnesota, lemme tell ya! This thing melted and flowed all over, inta all the kettles and pots and into the swampy bowl that was my crib. After that things jus’ kept happenin’. I felt big old fish swimmin’ around in my belly and beavers bigger’n Paul Bunyan chompin’ up trees ‘round my edges, making me even bigger. Perty soon there was people spearin’ stuff and fishin’, lemme tell ya it was somethin’ ta see, an I seen it all. There’s trappers and rafts and boats and jetskis.

I never really noticed zactly when, but my thoughts comin’ in seemed like theyz changin’ ever so slightly, I started noticin’ some thoughts I ain’t never thunk before, stuff ‘bout fertlizers and some weird kinda tastes, – not nice tastes like rottin’ algae in the sun, but kinda bitter slippery stuff thaz all differt colors. Seemed like the plants in my belly started ta grow differnt, I doan know, it’s been so long and I seen so much, it’s hard fer me ta tell. I jus’ take it all in. Maybe one a them scientists sittin’ ‘hind a desk downstate could tell me somethin’ bout it, but I doan know nothin’ cept my own thoughts that trickle in.

I figger iz jus another part o’ me, jus a drop in my bucket, quite litterly as them good speakers say.
I jus leave it all up ta them.

Your friend,

The Lake

May 28th, 2010 - I'm a Freak of Nature

noreply@blogger.com (mnainfochair@gmail.com) — Fri, 28 May 2010 15:44:00 +0000

Yo ho...! Sorry for the lapse. Holy frijoles, the world is spinning like, um, the world spins.

Since starting my new job with the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture as a Plant & Pest Disease Specialist - Nursery Inspector, LTE, (Nursery Inspector "Lite") (No, it actually means "Limited Term Employee", what the Naturalist world calls "a Seasonal") I have been on a non-stop merry-go-round of plant inspections in my four SE Wisconsin Counties (Dodge, Jefferson, Washington, and Osaukee) (Wow, I spelled it right the first time) as well as trips criss-crossing the state in a random ant path and just haven't had time to crank out blog posts.

In lieu of that, I have put together a collection of freakish and surreal plant things I have come across in my travels, and that will have to do for now.

Till next time, when you smell manure, think of me.

Visit the weirdness:

At the Freaky Plant Gallery!

- T.

April 23rd, 2010 - Random Pics From The Old Bag of Tricks

noreply@blogger.com (mnainfochair@gmail.com) — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 03:41:00 +0000

I found a few quick pics that I had set aside over the last few months whilst looking for something else along the way.

The quality of some might not be on my "A" list, but I felt that there was enough redeeming value to justify a post.

Ansel Adams would have probably told you otherwise, but I feel pictures are not always about technical quality. Sometimes a concept shines through, and even though you didn't 'nail it', it still presents something interesting.

I feel that maybe too much emphasis is placed on taking a laboratory grade image every frame these days, and that trying to live up to that sort of takes the fun out of it. Sometimes pictures should just plain be impulsive enjoyment of the moment, or express the mood or the scene, and you get what you get when you get it. I think that's what makes camera phones so great. I wonder if Ansel would have a camera phone. I think not.

These images have come out of everything from a scanned 35mm print, to my first 1.3 Megapixel Pentax digital Point and Shoot, to my current Nikon DSLR...

I don't know about you, but something in this photo tells me this a female Milkweed.

Just a guess. Plants have their own special way of looking good to other plants, and to their pollinators.

It's not something that is well understood by humans.

Alas, as their season moves on, gravity has it's way, things dry out, and wrinkles begin to occur.

The next thing you know, your pods are exploding.

And so it goes.

I been framed, framed I tells ya!

Don't I even get a phone call mister Ranger man?

You got nothin' on me.

Any psychoactive substances found on my person are occurring there naturally, man.

Aww, I can't believe this. Stupid salamanders are probably eatin' all my flies while I'm rottin' away in this bubble on a bad rap.

Dang. I gots rights!

Speaking of crime scenes, I'm not exactly sure what went on here.

Looks like the pigeon or crow came in a little too hot for the normal approach and skidded on its butt for a spell, like an F-16 missing the carrier wire.

Then comes the part I don't get. It looks to me like it gets up, walks in a 180 to it's right and ends up near the dark area at the upper-left of the photo (actually a rock or a dead-head frozen into the creek.)

Note then the other set of bird feet walking the same direction towards the rock. Where did it go? Did it moonwalk backwards off camera-right? In the full size image it doesn't look like there are any more tracks than are shown here. Unh?

Here's an old (early 1980's) scan of a B & W print I took looking west down the railroad tracks near sunset from the Hennipen Avenue overpass by Lagoon Avenue in Minneapolis, MN.

This rail-route is now home to the Minneapolis Midtown Greenway bicycle corridor, the tracks are long gone, paved over, and the bridge is a bus stop.

Seemed like it was always a nice sunset looking down the rail while I was headed over to my friend Mike's to play records, guitars, and ping-pong, no doubt.

Our old cat Harry the Cat. He was a good cat, when he wasn't trying to rip your face off.

Sweet boy.

Frosted Ritz cracker...?

No just a manhole cover venting through the fresh snow.

One more for the road. I made this from a 'failed shot', actually one of those pictures that results from your camera going off as you are putting it back in your pocket.

I thought the initial shot was pretty cool, it was from my cheapy little camera, and was a full-frame smear with this surreal focused area on one side that was caused by the flash firing while the camera was being swung.

I won't tell you how I did the rest, unless you really want to know...

I call it Gas Ball.

Take care now...

Take those pictures, even if you don't think they are good enough to win the Pulitzer.

Just have fun.