Musings

Today I walked around the old economic heart of A Real City.

The Beating Heart was these falls, the Upper Saint Anthony Falls, now marred? by a lock and dam.

The power the river generated, and this is the Mississippi so it is a mighty generator, ran the Gold Medal Flour mill on the south/west side…

And the Pillsbury mill on the north/east side. This is the underbelly of the mill complex. [Note fisher-person.] Now the mills are no longer milling, and this sacred place of the people who were here before the EuroAmericans arrived is irretrievably altered.

I quite enjoyed walking across the curving Stone Arch Bridge that seems to connect the two mills. It’s a pedestrian bridge now, although it was built for rail cars. The water on the left is the lower end of the Pillsbury millrace (it seemed to me), and the bridge crosses the main channel of the Mississippi.

And all this? Yup. Couldn’t have put it better myself.

Posted at 10:28 PM | Comments Off on Layers of history

A UP friend (who now lives in Florida, far from snow banks and running-board slush stalagtites) suggested I might enjoy a free app called “iNaturalist, LLC” that identifies plants. And boy howdy is it fast, even with a crappy picture with lots of shadows. I’m so loving it.

Even though I know this as Queen Anne’s Lace, the app notes that it’s Daucus species, probably Daucus carota, also known as wild carrot. Look how much I’m learning. Watch out, AT&T, I’m going to be burning through my data!

Also, I’m sorry I didn’t capture what looked to me like a hornet buzzing these flowers…it’d be another species for me to identify (somehow)!

Posted at 8:09 PM | Comments Off on Reduced guessing

Before envelopes, there was letter-locking. This was a European trick, it says here*, for folding a letter and locking it closed with parts of the letter-paper itself, so as to keep its contents concealed from prying eyes. Apparently a recipient judged your folding skills along with your literary talents. This research determined there were a dozen basic styles or techniques for letter-locking.

A fantastic digital manipulation, yes, but not as incredible as blooms.

* “New Technique Reveals Centuries of Secrets in Locked Letters” by William J. Broad, NYTimes, Mar 02.

Posted at 8:27 PM | Comments Off on Blossoming

I labeled this photo dragonfly then wondered: is it? Or is it a damselfly? I do think the artist was going for dragonfly based on wing position (horizontal, away from the body). HOWEVER, by definition, dragonflies have a broader hindwing than forewing—not true of this wonderous creature.

At least that’s the rundown based on WikiPee, which I don’t think is always right, but it’s easy to find and I believe mostly correct…regarding this type on natural history topic, anyway. IMHO

Posted at 6:42 PM | Comments Off on It’s art

Over time, the details of this carnivore sculpture have disappeared, and to me it looks a bit of an elongated lump, and no longer a king of an ecosystem.

WikiPee says Jaguars began as the first automobiles of a motorcycle sidecar company. Sidecar!

Posted at 7:58 PM | Comments Off on Of all things

I wonder how many meter-reader jobs dried up when these were installed across the city? At least I’m pretty sure this is the dark side of an automated water meter that broadcasts pertinent info somehow to…¿passing trucks? ¿low-flying drones? I dunno that part…. Anyway, I find it’s rare that I see the underbelly of these contraptions.

Posted at 8:36 PM | 2 Comments »

The sun came and went several times while I was out, always making me smile.

Lately I’ve been trying to up my daily sixty minutes to around seventy; my success has been uneven, although my (left) knee is holding up. Today I made seventy-four. Whoopee.

The title refers to the wintery transition we made, with our initial use this season of the steering wheel warmer (twice, actually). It came with the car; I don’t imagine we would have ordered it!

Posted at 5:45 PM | Comments Off on Hot wheel

Well there’s a computational photography experiment that was a flop. Portrait mode with spotlight. Not a real spotlight, but an apparent one. Clearly, this technique does not work on a complex subject like these tiny flowers.

However, I do laud such experimentation.

Yes, lots of important current events…just not aired here.

Posted at 8:20 PM | Comments Off on Experimentation

Sometime during the night the wind went silent and I found the change almost eerie. For today, almost entirely sunshine! Yay!

Nurdles are lentil-sized plastic buttons that manufacturers buy to transform into bottle and other shapes to hold their products. An estimated 53 BILLION end up in the ocean every YEAR. Critters think they’re food, and you know there is nothing good about that.

If you can’t find it in yourself to worry about nurdle pollution, think about the plastic bits that are torn and worn away from the whipping action of weed-eaters.

Back to a positive note: sunny day! ☀️

Nurdle photo-story by Annaliese Nurnberg and Gianmarco Maraviglia, “‘Mermaid Tears’: A photographer documents one of the most dangerous marine pollutants,” in the Washington Post, dated 5 October.

Posted at 5:47 PM | Comments Off on New vocab: nurdle

It is Apple season, too. I/we splurged on the new 6 (the first AppleWatch in our household), and originally delivery was promised Oct 3–5. It came today. In fact, it went from Mt Pleasant to Rudyard this morning, then out for delivery. Just days ago it was in Alaska, Singapore, and China—in reverse order.

So far I can confirm that I have a heartbeat and that the device counts my steps, plus I have received and sent texts. You can “write” a text by bringing up this zone for you to finger spell in. My letter shapes were darned crude, yet it got every one correct immediately. Yup, Apple season.

Posted at 8:31 PM | Comments Off on Apple season