Author: turndoozie

Been a busy time here in the heart of the rust belt. End of
the semester things have kept me busier than the person doing damage control on
Trump’s Twitter account. For the good of the nation somebody needs to take that
idiot’s phone away from him. Just give him a little box that lights up and
makes noises but doesn’t really do anything. I doubt he’s smart enough to know
the difference.

Despite the busyness there has been some time for fun.
Several Molly’s high school chums were coming back for Thanksgiving so we
decided to stay here for the holiday. Had a great Thanksgiving dinner with the
Hall family. We cooked traditional turkey dinner and the Halls did a ham
dinner. Much eating and frivolity to be had by all.

The Saturday after Thanksgiving Lise, Molly, and I did a trip
down to the Detroit Zoo. They had an exhibit of the British Natural History
Museum’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year winners. Lots to be jealous about,
including entries from the under ten years old group. In all fairness, some of
those kids were using some heavy-duty camera gear. We’re not talking cell
phones here.

The Detroit Zoo has built a new penguin exhibit that Lise
and I had not seen. This was major cool. Actually, it was cold. They had
manufactured snow falling in it. The exhibit has a tunnel under it where you
can watch the penguins swimming by you and over your head. At one spot they can
hop out of the water or waddle up to the glass right by where you stand. There’s
just a thin glass wall protecting us should any of them decide to go rogue. You
get the distinct impression they’re observing us as much as we’re observing
them. Personally, I think they are reading Trump’s tweets and feeling sorry for
us.

Swimming – or flying through the water.

Swimming – or flying through the water. 

Did you see who they elected – poor saps.

Until Molly came along I was never much of a zoo person. I
was never comfortable with penning up larger and more advanced animals. Animals
where travelling distances is a part of their daily routine. I didn’t have quite
as much of an issue with smaller animals. For an animal like a tree frog, whose whole universe isn’t typically much more than a few square meters, zoos
probably aren’t a bad thing. Especially where zoos are serving as an ark for
very endangered species. But something always bothered me, staring at an animal
like a lion or large primate that was staring back at me. Maybe that’s why I
let our lizard Fido free range around the house. Not that she was any more
intelligent than say, a frog.

Then Molly came along and zoos became a regular part of our
life. I remember our first zoo visit. She was enamored with elephants and would
watch movies and videos about elephants over and over. So, we went to the
Indianapolis Zoo to see some real elephants. A trainer had an elephant out
where you could walk up and touch it. I was carrying her and as we walked up to
the elephant she started to grasp its size. She made a little “ahhhh” sound and
sank back into me. For a long time we just stood there while she stared
slack-jawed. I would ask if we should go look at other animals and she would
silently nod no. After about 15 or 20 minutes we finally touched the elephant
and moved on.

So, after that experience, I softened my stance on zoos a
bit. Especially when it comes to penguins. These waddling flightless blobs of
lard are probably my favorite birds. And unless I can get Lise to open the
purse strings a bit, I’m not going to see them in the wild. I have to settle
for observing them from my side of the glass.

I bet we could take the guy with the camera.

Turn him into scrapple.

Last night Lise and I went with Ellen and Barb to see Carrie
Newcomer perform at the Ark in Ann Arbor. The Ark is a folk music Mecca that
has been around since the mid-1960s. Carrie Newcomer is a great
singer-songwriter who lives down in Bloomington.  Naturally several her songs had uplifting
messages about persevering despite things like the results of the past
election. She told a little story about the creeks around Bloomington being
full of geodes and sang a song about how indistinct little brown and gray blobs
like geodes can have something beautiful inside. Lise made comments to the
effect of, “I’m homesick and we’re moving back.”

Winter is upon us. We had cold, snow flurries, and some
sleet today. Not really much of anything but it portends a couple months of
dark and cold. Marquette, where we are thinking of retiring to, had a couple
inches of snow. Meanwhile it was 68 degrees and sunny in Lewes Delaware. So I
guess there’s a reason Lewes has twice the cost of living that Marquette does.

In the who’s monitoring these things department, I just got a
letter from the MSU Provost that starts with “I’m writing to you at the time of
your retirement….” Apparently nobody has noticed that I haven’t been coming to
work since June 10. I’m not sure who that speaks worse of, them or me.

I haven’t gotten out
much for photography lately but before it got too cold I did get to play a
little in my studio/garage. Here’s a few of Lise doing some yoga poses.

Lise and I did a quick weekend trip back to Pennsylvania
this weekend. Back to the Scrapple Nation. Where the only good artery is a
clogged artery. Where men are men and pigs are nervous.

We were in the North-central part of the state. What we from
Lebanon would refer to as “Upstate”. The area was initially settled in the
1700s by Yankees drifting down from New England. Beautiful area smack in the
Allegany Mountains. Chock full of hills, rivers, streams, trout, and plenty of
public property. And pretty much Trump country. Mining, manufacturing, and
timber jobs just are not there anymore. The poverty rate is a couple percentage
points above the national average and three points above the state average. These
deluded fools think that electing a bigoted bully as president will make
everything go back to the way it was in 1950. I’m fairly confident they’re
going to have a rude awakening in the next couple years.  

We went back to help my sister Lynn close her upstate place
for the winter. I also brought back several of my deceased brother-in-law’s woodworking
tools. I’ve wanted to start woodworking for some time.  I’m thinking back to a ninth grade woodshop
project that I never finished. It was a maple and black walnut chess board for
my Dad that just never quite got done. It’s a little late to finish that one
but there are lots of other projects I can think of.  Now, once I’m finished teaching for the
semester, I’ll have the time and the equipment too. I already have some saws that
are fine for whacking at 2X 4s but these are a step up from there. Now I have
to produce something to justify hauling these things back from Pennsyltucky.

When I said two out of three things in my lifetime wasn’t
too bad, I was referring to the Cubs losing, not the presidential election. Looks
like the Democrats, and pollsters, have once again grossly overestimated the intelligence
of the American electorate, and grossly underestimated the hatred of Hillary
Clinton by some segments of our society.  

Has Hell frozen over? 108 years!

Friday
I went with Lise to visit one of her potential project sites over by Sturgis,
MI.  The site is a hydroelectric dam that
went online in 1911. So the adventure of the week was walking the catwalk over
the dam that I think was installed when it went online. 

Crossing the Sturgis Dam

Looking back to the generation plant.

Yesterday Lise and I went to the wedding of Helen, a former
co-worker and friend, and her partner Elizabeth. Helen is one of my favorite people.
It was a moving, if slightly disorganized ceremony. They started by asking the
audience to say yea if they felt that the union should go forward. There was a unanimous
and rousing YEA from the audience.

One of the readings was Supreme Court Justice Anthony
Kennedy, writing for the majority opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges, the ruling
that made gay marriage legal.  “In forming a marital
union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the
petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may
endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they
disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect
it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope
is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of
civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of
the law. The Constitution grants them that right.”

More eloquent words were never spoken.

Elizabeth, Helen, and Elizabeth’s daughters. A happy family. (facebook photo)

There are a few things I never expected to see in my
lifetime. A woman in the White House, legalized gay marriage, and the Cubs
winning the World Series. Two out of three ain’t bad.

Twenty-one years ago today Molly came into this world. I
would say the world has been better for it too.

Happy birthday Moo. 2.1 decades down, I hope many more to
go.

Molly still steaming as a newborn.

Celebrating her first legal drink in the U.S., shortly after midnight.

Busy times
in our world. I’m teaching or co-teaching three classes this semester. It’s
really keeping me hopping without much time for writing.

The weekend
of October 7 we were down in West Lafayette for Sue’s 90^th birthday.
XC in Roman numerals. Fun times had by all.

While we were
down there we spent some time at Prophetstown State Park. Hiking along the
floodplain for the Tippecanoe and Wabash Rivers we went through a forest of the
largest giant ragweed I have ever seen. This
was like being in a corn maze, but one that gives you hay fever. Could have
been worse I guess. At least I wasn’t at a Trump rally.

Giant ragweed is one of
the worst allergens we have around. This beast is downright evil if you have any
kind of pollen allergies. The Latin name
for giant ragweed is Ambrosia trifida. Ambrosia is a Greek word translating to
something like food of the goods. I don’t know who decided to call this monster
ambrosia, but that is one line of genes we should put an end to.

Lise and
ragweed at Prophetstown State Park. These were the first couple plants. This eventually became a solid
forest of ragweed with a path through it.

The ragweed
forest did produce something besides sniffles and red eyes. Lise picked up a
palm warbler giving her 306 species for the year, with me trailing behind at
302 species. Still some chance for both of us to pick up a few more too.

Me looking at dragonflies over the
Prophetstown State Park

prairie.

Yesterday
was plumbing Sunday. Not the way I planned to spend a lovely Sunday. On the pleasurable
scale, it’s right up there with watching presidential debates. The hose on our kitchen
pull-out faucet decided to squirt water out its side every time the faucet is
turned on. So after a trip to the local hardware store I came back with a $30 universal
pull out hose replacement kit that fits every brand faucet. Except mine. A trip
to the big box Home Despot store, where I bought the faucet in 2009, produced
the same universal kit in different packaging. After some internet searching I
found out my faucet, and presumably the replacement hose, are obsolete. There’s
a few of the replacement hoses out there in internet world, but they cost half
the price of a new faucet. So I sent a desperation message to the company and
they are sending me a new hose for free. We just need to wait until the
freighter from China arrives.

Meanwhile, the earth
is starting to tilt away from the sun and we are sliding into fall. The
temperatures have turned decidedly cooler and the number of daylight hours is noticeably
fewer. Meaning the dreary Lansing winter is just around the corner. As a
reminder that winter is coming we had the first junco from up north show up in
our yard yesterday.

Other
species are still on the move too. During the past week the Detroit River Hawk Watch has
been recording thousands of turkey vultures migrating through in a single day.
The scraggly patch of dirt we call a garden has been pretty productive too. Besides the
usual residents we have had a common yellow throat, Nashville warbler,
golden-crowned kinglet and white-throated sparrow making some brief
appearances before heading south. As we sit at the window watching the garden the dog-walkers probably think we’re Ma and Pa Kettle with binoculars.

Summer is winding down here. I really hate to see it go. This
place is kind of dreary in the winter. Gray and dismal with a highly reduced
photo period. Hibernation is looking better and better.

The southward bird migration is well under way. A couple
days ago the Detroit River hawk watch had over 5,000 broad-winged hawks come
through. Sunday morning we got out to Fenner Nature Center. Saw some warblers on
their south bound trip, all in their dull non-breeding plumage.

Most of the flowering plants around here have finished for
the season. One notable exception in our yard is Lise’s New England aster,
bringing a last dash of purple to summer’s end. The aster is part of this really
messy garden we have out front. Mostly late summer bloomers and very untamed
looking. It isn’t pretty, but it’s very productive. The aster easily had a couple
hundred bees from at least five different species on it. The rest of the plants
have gone to seed and the birds are hitting the seed heads hard. In addition to
the locals we have had Nashville warbler and common yellowthroat in there the
past few mornings.

Bee with pollen on it’s legs.

Loaded with pollen.

Pollen covered bee.

Pollen covered bee.

Goldfinch feeding.

Goldfinch checking me out.

Grabbing seeds.

A quick nap.

I’ve been plugging away at my endless list of things to do
around the house. The tasks on my white board appear to have mastered mitosis.
Every time I wipe off one task, two more magically appear. One task I finally
knocked off was getting the African Queen up and running. This is a single
person pontoon boat that my now deceased brother in law Jack bought at an auction.
It was bought for fishing as a birthday present right before he fell to cancer.
Jack never got to use it and I came into it last October. Took a couple valves,
some gaskets, and a bit of patching, but it floats. I also found out that I’m
really good at rowing in circles.Straight lines are a different story.

African Queen.

Been a busy couple
weeks. Classes have started and there is the usual initial rush that will
hopefully die back a little. I’m teaching two classes at LCC and co-teaching
one at MSU. The two LCC classes I have done before and I pretty much have them
down pat. Not so the MSU class. This is with the English Dept. and very
different from what I normally do. We are mapping novels and examining the role
of the mapped space in the novels. There is a good bit on the theory of space
and mapping thrown in too. So I have been crazy busy.

Not that there hasn’t
been some fun in the mix. We’ve been getting in some birding and hiking. I hit
a stretch of the Huron River in Island Lake State Recreation Area to do some
dragonfly photography. I wade in the diver wearing waders and pull a rubber
raft holding the camera equipment. Not too many cooperative dragonflies but I
got a few damselfly pictures. More importantly, I got to play on the river.
 Can’t beat that.

American rubyspot
male.

American rubyspot
female.

Mating stream bluets.

Unknown damselflies
mating.

Unknown damselflies
ovapositing.

Unknown female
spreadwing damselfly.

And I got a little black and white time in. My neighbors saw me laying on my back in the driveway to take this.

Tree of Heavan. An obnoxious invasive but it looks kind of neat with back light.

We also did a trip to
drink a Moscow Mule. The Moscow Mule was invented many moons ago at a bar in
Harrisburg Pa. A proper Moscow Mule consists of vodka, ginger beer, and lime
juice, served over ice in a chilled copper mug. For a while Dad worked up in in
Harrisburg and I believe the drink had quite a local following when he worked
there.

When I was about
four, Dad got a job back down in Lebanon. I don’t think he had a Moscow Mule
after that. I don’t know that ginger beer was ever a commonly stocked item and
copper mugs were even harder to find. I remember him getting excited when he
would find ginger beer, saying all he needed now was to find copper mugs. I’m
pretty sure he went a long time without a Moscow Mule.

I’ve never heard much
of the drink anywhere else and I believe it generally fell out of favor. Well
the Moscow Mule has become a bit trendy again. Zoobies, a bar in Lansing’s Old
Town, makes a traditional Moscow Mule. Complete with chilled copper mugs. So
Lise and I did a little trip there and drank a toast to Dad.

The Moscow Mule.

Here’s to a good man.

Jumping to a
completely different topic, since Fido died we don’t have a pet in the house
for the first time in many years. I’m not opposed to getting another bearded
dragon but Molly is putting on pressure to get a hedgehog. So now every time I
turn on a computer the background has been changed to a new hedgehog picture.
Like Sebastian, the flying hedgehog.

A potato with feet
and a nose.