text:
Category Archives: wisconsin
Autumn, milwaukee, Nature, Uncategorized, wisconsin
Walks Around Wisconsin. Milwaukee, October
October 29, 2022 Robert ParkerA Pirate Looks at Forty Below, Autumn, Flaps Down!, milwaukee, plasma, Stop Wobble & Tilt, wisconsin 27 Comments
It's that time of year again.
The days are mellow but at night, there's a bit of a nip in the air. OK, really more of a wholehearted bite.
Autumn in Wisconsin — hard cold winds straight off the Canadian prairies sweep summery days away.
Experienced walkers in these parts know how to stay the course during the cold winds. Put on your heaviest boots & take on some ballast – – drop a half-dozen rolls of quarters in your coat pockets, maybe a couple pints of Captain Morgan, the favored antifreeze in these parts.
Wax the ear flaps on your Stormy Kromer hat to cut wind resistance and head into the headwinds.
People are using to weaving, here in the city that leads the country in excessive drinking, so tacking & jibing with the wind comes pretty naturally.
Signs in the park remind dog owners that during High Wind days, any breeds smaller than a St Bernard should be double-leashed and aviation wheel chocks are recommended when they stop by a fire hydrant.
Who knows where the summer's heat is carried off to – – I seem to recall an old Chippewa legend — when the North Wind blows into town, all the sunshine's warmth is swallowed & carried to Capistrano.
Or perhaps I've got that muddled somehow. But modern science offers an equally crazy story to explain the change in seasons.
This old planet wobbles along on a bent axle or tilted axis, something like that?
"Wobble & Tilt" should be a carnival ride, or cop lingo for an inebriated pedestrian, but it's scarcely appropriate behavior for a mature planet.
And recently I've become hopeful that scientists will buckle down and stabilize this situation.
The Big Red Ball. Photo by Jeff Miller / UW-Madison
Last month, apparently lacking adult supervision, those crazy kids at NASA deliberately crashed a spaceship into an asteroid. (Some articles called it a "moonlet" which makes me feel bad, like we're picking on the little guy.) The idea was to see if they could change the asteroid's course as a kind of test run for a planetary defense system.
So I'm thinking, once NASA has practiced up a bit, crashing spaceships & changing orbits, etc. perhaps they can correct Earth's wobble & tilt problem?
Redirect some pointless wandering rock to smack into Earth. Nothing over the top like last time, when they wiped out the dinosaurs, just a smack on the wrist with a ruler, so Earth straightens up and flies right. Haley's Comet is due for a visit in 2061, they should have it all worked out by then.
These same science types are working on jaunts to Mars, where temperatures during the tourist season average -81 degrees F.
We laypeople may not know much about space travel. But we do know, that those sorts of scientists, interested in the Red Planet, and eighty one degrees below zero, are not from around here.
No one from Wisconsin is much interested in traveling somewhere colder. The Wisconsin science types are mostly in Madison, huddled around a plasma magnetosphere called The Big Red Ball.
Our planet has a magnetosphere of course, so at least we're protected from solar winds, even if it doesn't help with the Alberta Clippers or the Arctic Cold Fronts.
The Big Red Ball, at the U of Wisconsin, kinda looks like a Hollywood mad scientist thing – – covered with magnets, wires, gauges, and pretty sure a 48-cup stainless coffee maker. And it cranks out 500,000 degrees F. or 5 million K, something like that, basically "real hot," a miniature sun. And the scientists really don't care if they discover a darn thing — as long as the funding holds out, the lab is nice and toasty.
And that reminds me, time for cinnamon raisin bread toast and hot coffee, gotta go.
Great Lakes, milwaukee, Spring, Winter, wisconsin
Walks Around Wisconsin. First Spring Blossom above the 42° Parallel North
March 7, 2022 Robert ParkerHope springs eternal & jumps over the snowdrifts, March is thawsome!, Spring, wisconsin 33 Comments
Well, I don't really expect I've fooled anyone!
Yes, I took a bit of latitude with the title, and need to backpetal – – it's not a real blossom of course.
I sliced the stem off the top of the last acorn squash from last fall's harvest, and it just struck me, how much it looked like a daisy.
Around here, it's still dropping below freezing every night, and probably down into the teens by next weekend.
But we had some warm weather over the past weekend, and we're getting ready for some flowers and green leaves.
Hope springs eternal, even if it has to jump over the snowdrifts.
milwaukee, Uncategorized, wisconsin
Walking around Walker's Point
October 26, 2021 Robert ParkerBrew City, milwaukee, Walks Around Wisconsion, wisconsin 36 Comments
Well, I haven't been posting much. So other than working and studying, what have I been doing?
I've been making a determined and deliberate effort to make Milwaukee feel like home and have pretty much succeeded.
Part of this process, I think, was going to live in Walker's Point, a neighborhood on the south side of town.
Nice brickwork on an old school building
A mostly industrial area, on low-lying ground between two rivers, and in recent years just a footnote in the city's story, this neighborhood has also long been a hub for people who were "othered."
For many years, this was a German town, but in the early 1900's, immigrants from Mexico were brought in to work in the numerous tanneries, which for a time, produced more leather than anywhere else in the world. Polish and Slovenian immigrants had arrived before them, to work in the steel mills, machine shops and factories.
I like walking by the local print shop, showing off some of their posters. My neighborhood has the largest concentration of Spanish-speakers in the state.
Walker's Point is now gentrifying and growing, old businesses and warehouses being converted to brewpubs, restaurants and loft apartments, but the residential population is still pretty small, there's still a great sense of neighborliness and its low-lying houses nicely frame the skyline of the downtown. The skyscrapers for Northwestern Mutual and U.S. Bank are easily visible and not too far, but a world away from this neighborhood.
Also visible is the clock tower at Rockwell Automation, with its 40-foot clock faces (twice as big as Big Ben's clock), big enough that ships on Lake Michigan use it like a lighthouse.
Rockwell Automation "For Over a Century, Doing Our Darndest to Get Rid of Humans"
The area is also home to artists and the gay nightlife scene, and there's a diverse and tolerant crowd roaming these streets. After being a backwater, now I think now the currents here are a lot of the lifeblood of the city, with true big city hustle & bustle but small town feelings of neighborhood.
neighborhood shops
Walking around, there are oldtime residential pockets, and you're struck by the many Victorian homes. Many are stately and charming, with quaint flowerbeds and yards full of statues and art. While a lot of this area is still industrial and not far from the harbor (and the Milorganite factory is sometimes within smelling distance), it's quiet and safe.
Here's some cellphone snapshots of random things from from recent walks. There's no theme today, it's just an interesting town to walk around.
I liked this old Victorian, but took the picture on a day the sky was absolutely gray. So this is a fake blue sky. Photoshop's bag of tricks sometimes strikes me as clever and useful, sometimes as funny, and some days, as downright creepy. But for a random postcard like this, I guess the fake sky doesn't seem to present any huge artistic or ethical issues.
Here's some stuff from other parts of the city. Closer to downtown, they're building a 25-story apartment building. What makes that interesting – – it's wooden! I don't mean it will have wood facing or paneling, but the actual structure. It will be the tallest timber frame building in the world.
Near the high school where I worked a few years ago, are some Frank Lloyd Wright houses, currently being restored.
The Basilica of St Josephat, built by Polish immigrants. Maybe it was the spiritual locus, but the sky above it really was that blue the day I walked here.
Hard to believe you're looking at a former post office (keep reading for the explanation).
By 1900, when this was built, there were 60,000 Poles living here, and they already had seven churches, but wanted something grander, with room for over a thousand worshippers. So this is basically a scaled-down version of St. Peter's in Rome.
In a clever bit of economy, they bought the old Chicago Post Office, a big 4- or 5-story Second Empire-style building, which was being replaced, and re-used the stone blocks. (The giant 9-story Old Chicago Main Post Office you see today, which goes over the Eisenhower Expressway, was built in the '20's and '30's)
And that's the news from Milwaukee. I hope everyone is well and staying dry.
2 November 2021 update on the timber frame apartment building. It will be 284 feet tall, the tallest wood-framed building in the world.
Cellphone shot of a 1915 station in Sparta, on the Chicago Northwestern.
Originally, this line was called the Baraboo Air-Line Railroad. (Isn't that kind of great!?)
The trains don't go there anymore.
Although there's active stations not too far away (eighteen miles east in Tomah, and 28 miles west in La Crosse), because Amtrak runs more-or-less northwest across the state, on its way to St. Paul.
This little brick building is now the office for the 32-mile Elroy-Sparta biking trail, which the official guide tells us, is "considered the first rail-to-trail in the United States."
It's about 120 miles northwest of Madison, and if you continue NW from Sparta, on the La Crosse River Trail, you'll hit the Mississippi.
The sections I walked were pleasant, if unexciting, but the big attraction is the tunnels.
The trail was mostly crushed limestone and well-maintained. I think one section of trail may still be closed after some storm damage, so if you're planning on biking this, check with the folks in the Sparta office.
In the 1870's, RR workers dug & blasted their way through the hills. We walked through the longest tunnel, nearly 3/4 of a mile long.
The closest access point is reached by driving down a semi-washed-out gravel lane next to the church I posted yesterday.
At the foot of the hill, there's what looks like an ancient stone-lined canal.
It was actually just an attempt to divert storm water away from the tunnel and railbed.
The tunnel is almost entirely unlined, and water drips down steadily from the ceiling, and runs alongside the path in little ditches.
At some point, the burrow is reinforced with massive stone blocks, and water cascades down the wall – – I think the spot where the workers hit an underground spring. This picture was taken with a flash, there's no lighting in the tunnel.
This is to give an idea of walking through the tunnel with your flashlight turned off, looking toward the entrance.
If you don't mind getting a bit wet, and perhaps hearing a bat or two overhead, it's a wonderfully cool place for a walk on a hot summer day.
And a great place to sing, if there's no one around.
I recommend selections from Bohemian Rhapsody, or Phantom of the Opera.
1870's, Railroads, Uncategorized, wisconsin
Walks Around Wisconsin. Chicago Northwestern, Sparta station, 1915. And a Dampish Sort of Tunnel, 1873.
August 31, 2021 Robert ParkerBaraboo!, places with good acoustics for amateur singers, Railroad Bed Trail, tunnel, Walks Around Wisconsion, wisconsin 43 Comments Image
A cellphone snap of an 1878 church near Norwalk, Wisconsin (pop. 638)
Built by German immigrant farmers, miles from any village, surrounded by hills and cornfields.
Looking well-looked-after, in a nice setting, surrounded by thriving crops.
Apart but without any feeling of isolation, just peacefulness.
The church is called St. John the Baptist, and the corn certainly looked well-watered.
1870's, wisconsin
Walks Around Wisconsin. The church on Summit Ridge.
August 30, 2021 Robert Parkerwisconsin 23 Comments Image
Kind of a nice home office, when you work in Frank Lloyd Wright's former home.
Lots of attention on working-from-home, so I thought I'd do a post about Taliesin, where Frank Lloyd Wright worked, lived, and taught.
I work at a busy university, but in a seldom-visited ell off an old building. Some days my only visitor, is someone checking if I've watered the office plants in the window of the common space. (I haven't.) Other than a couple of meetings a week, I'm used to working solo — I spend my day on computers, email and phone — so the adjustment to working and attending college from home really wasn't too traumatic.
Apparently though, based on the continuing flood of online advice, it's been a real sea change for a lot of folks.
Lots & lots of articles floating around, or rather, we're floating in a sea of articles, about remote learning and working.
Taliesin is very close to the Wisconsin River, but this pond is a reservoir, created by damming a little stream. The overflow was used to generate electricity for the house.
All this advice is eddying round and round my head, kind of confusing.
Here's some of my notes:
Turn on drone music.
Analyze your neural pathways & practice brain-hacking
Need to hack a pathway through shrubs for drone pizza deliveries.
Do we have oregano in spice cabinet
Learn to better communicate with your animal companions.
Resolve relationship crises between cat & dog.
Evaluate pets as an emergency food source.
Order a larger crock-pot.
One with a lockable lid.
Buy more oregano. Catnip? Horehound?
Maintain Focus!
Research-Backed Secrets to Concentration!
💐 Let your mind Wander🎈🌻 It will create Wonder💐
Remember, a wandering mind, like a Labrador, almost always comes home by dinnertime, carrying with it, something interesting.
An online motivational voice tells me to live in the moment.
But his accent makes it sound like mo-mint, and I realize how long it's been since I had a York Peppermint Pattie. Doesn't mint kill germs? Was it peppermint or spearmint as a plague preventative? Mandrake?
Then I wonder if it's true, that if you breathe through a hookah filled with mint mouthwash, the air will be cleansed of germs.
Would people stare at me, if I did that on the bus. Not in my neighborhood. But if they see the hookah, will they think it's a bong, and approach too closely, to ask if I'm holding? I'm not a pothead, but I'm often mistaken for a homeless guy, when I wear my favorite old jacket, and don't shave or comb my hair.
What if I just wear that horrible old jacket, which has been encouraging social distancing for years, before that was a thing, and is infused with organic scents (citronella, lemon eucalyptus oil, raisins, and wet Labrador) and just keep popping York Peppermint Patties? What about tabbouleh with fresh mint, would that kill a virus? Are there any Lebanese delis in this town? Do they sell hookahs? Is that an offensive stereotype?
When I was a kid, my grandmother walked me through her herb garden, and handed me little snips of every plant as she named them. I put them in my jacket pocket, and forgot about them. Then when I was riding on the school bus, I kept thinking about pizza all the time. After a couple of weeks, I realized, my jacket was full of pizza spices — oregano, marjoram, basil, thyme, etc. I left them in the pockets, I loved having a pizza jacket, but they didn't prevent me from getting frequent colds and ear infections.
Buy fresh mint when you get the oregano. See if they have mandrake in the Goya aisle.
And so it goes. I don't think my mind is coming back anytime soon.
But let's get back to architecture, we'll be minty fresh & on point.
Walking toward it from the visitor center, Taliesin resembles a little hilltop village. The hill was one of Wright's favorite spots as a boy, and overlooks land that was farmed by his relatives. The visitor center itself is fun to visit, designed as a restaurant, but not finished until after his death. It does have a small restaurant operating in the building also, which had terrific food.
Like a lot of people, housebound, I've been thinking about how our surroundings and architecture influence our mood, and our thoughts.
Lots of studies and articles – – by architects, artists, home decorators, psychologists, color psychologists, etc.
Wright designed a schoolhouse for his aunts, within walking distance of his house. The whimsical-looking "Romeo and Juliet" tower in the distance, was a functioning windmill, to pump water for the school, as well as a pretty cool observation spot.
In this monograph, we will explore how manifestations of this current crisis complicate our societal work-centered dynamic & we will deconstruct the underlying cultural sources of pandemic-induced burnout.
Just kidding, were you scared?
Interesting stuff, but this column isn't structured to construct or deconstruct much of anything.
I find too much structure, grammar, stuff like that, disrupts the feng shui of my site.
It's Spring, and barbeque season, and that brought to mind a trip during April of last year, to Frank Lloyd Wright's home/school/workshop in Wisconsin. A place of beauty and really bad fires.
"I knew well that no house should ever be on a hill or on anything. It should be of the hill. Belonging to it. Hill and home should live together each the happier for the other." FLW
If you're gonna work from home, this is the way to do it! A fascinating, sprawling place, in a bucolic setting. The house, studio, and outbuildings total 37,000 square feet, and if you add all the other buildings on property he designed (Hillside School, theater, sister's house, barn, visitor center, etc. ) it collectively covers almost two acres.
Arriving there from my 700 square foot apartment, it felt…spacious.
The almost-invisible corner, formed by two panes of glass, was one of Wright's distinctive design elements.
The hilltop is a whole complex of buildings – – the main house, guest house, drafting room, carriage house, farm structures, garage, etc. It was a place of constant modification – a chicken barn, for example, was converted into a dormitory at some point. The courtyards have lawns, stone paving, pieces of Asian and Wright's own art, and a patio under an arbor covered with vines.
Inside & out, are examples of Asian art, that Wright brought back from his trips. For a time, he had a successful side business, selling Japanese woodblock prints.
The house is not as dark as it looks in my terrible photo, there are hundreds of windows, and it's filled with light. In my defense, I wouldn't describe the tour as rushed, but neither did it allow time for photography.
Some of the Asian antiquities, rescued from earlier house fires, were incorporated into the stonework.
I was a docent at a house museum, and at the Jamestowne site in Virginia. So I understand that you cannot talk about every aspect of a place, in one tour.
So it wasn't a complete surprise, when the guide at Taliesin, didn't mention the ax murders.
So I asked.
Mostly out of curiosity over how the docents would handle the topic.
I don't want to do a hatchet job on the tour, or the house, so I shouldn't exaggerate. No one was actually killed with an ax.
It was a hatchet.
Wright was already married, with six kids, when he ran off to Europe for a year, with a married client, Martha Cheney.
He built a house at Taliesin, and Martha and her two children lived there with him.
A husband & wife from Barbados worked there as a handyman/cook team, but had just been fired. The mentally-unstable handyman attacked and killed Martha and her children, and four others, poured gasoline on the bodies, and set the house on fire.
Instead of fleeing the site of the massacre, Wright rebuilt it.
It burned down again, from an electrical short. (It seems ironic, that one of the first homes he designed in the area, for his sister, was featured in a magazine article "A Fireproof House for $5000." Wright later set the theater wing of his architecture school on fire, trying to clear some brush.)
Wright rebuilt for a third time, on what some people might have felt was an unlucky sort of spot, or at least, too far from the nearest fire department. The current house is sometimes called Taliesin III.
And here's one thing – – no one on the tour, including myself, felt the slightest sense of creepiness. The house is light-filled, calm and lovely.
I've read that traditional Navajo will burn or abandon a home, when someone dies inside it. Some cultures practice purification rituals, burning sweetgrass or sage, etc. Perhaps they'd feel that the two fires served as a cleansing process, or that ghosts need a physical fabric to attach to a site.
Well, it struck me as a lovely spot.
Across the little valley, a Shingle Style chapel is visible, with the interior designed by Wright, and where some of his relatives are buried. He was originally buried there as well, for about 26 years, but his tradition of controversy, family strife, and fire continued even after death. In 1985, according to the wishes of his third wife, but apparently without the knowledge or consent of other family members, he was disinterred, cremated, and the ashes taken to Taliesin West, his studio in Arizona.
Fireplaces were scattered throughout the house, some so narrow that the logs would've been placed vertically.
Home ownership isn't a guarantee of serenity, is it. The guide explained that this cracking was due to the ground settling, over many decades. But some of the stonework was not quite professional-looking, and was probably done by his students. I was surprised to find some of the recessed lighting was pretty cheap-looking. But our guide pointed out, that this was a home, and workshop, and not a glamorous project with a wealthy client footing the bills.
I've now toured a number of Wright structures – the Darwin Martin complex in Buffalo, Graycliff (a lakeside estate for the same client), Fallingwater, Pope-Leighey (a small "Usonian" house in Virginia), the Guggenheim, as well as individual rooms, that were rescued from buildings being demolished. I've viewed others in Rochester, Milwaukee, Chicago, etc. They are all wonderful.
But quite often, you see or hear about problems and staggeringly expensive restorations – – cantilevered floors that had to have I-beams retrofitted, at huge expense, ceilings coming down, etc. Some of that is simply a function of age and weather. One of his principles, that a house should be an organic part of the landscape, integrated with its surroundings, is famous, and now seems kind of inarguable. But sometimes his houses seem to want to disintegrate into the landscape – most tours of Wright structures include recitations of repairs and restorations, and pleas for contributions.
But even during his lifetime, there were problems. The shellac that he specified for exterior woodwork, peeled off, repeatedly. Ask a few carpenters sometime, if they've ever used shellac on exterior wood. They're just going to look at you funny, while they shake their heads, no, never. A famous story was about a client, calling about a skylight, leaking water all over his desk. Wright's reply: "I guess you're going to have to move your desk." Leaks in flat tar roofs, cantilevers that weren't up to the task, rooms heating up because the windows were without drapes or shades at his insistence, etc.
Much of the woodwork, inside and out, is bald cypress, which he started using during the '20's, although it isn't native to NY or WI. Projects in the west sometimes used redwood, and later houses, mahogany.
Kentuck Knob Museum website
I've never taken an architecture class, and know very little about Wright. But I'm going to stick my neck out, and express my uninformed personal opinion. Wright's houses are wonderful, they're timeless designs, and I guess you don't need me to explain that to you – – but sometimes…they seem to have been constructed like stage scenery, not intended to last. Wright was an artist, a theatrical person, leading a life filled with drama. Very Hollywood. An abandoned wife & family, notorious affairs, financial insolvency, dozens of automobiles, a lurid mass murder, and what some would see as a flamboyant arrogance. The guy wore a cape, for heaven's sake. And a cardsharp broad-brimmed hat. The house was modern, organic, "natural style," but the narration inside it was gothic.
These houses are like fantastic home theaters, for the residents to strut their hours on the stage. Phone calls from clients, full of sound and fury, complaining of leaking roofs, do not signify — there's not a note that's worth the noting. He created these scenes, and left it to the home owners — the actors and stage managers, mere players — to fret about impracticalities & drips. "Reason and love keep little company together…" Bob Vila mentions a number of leaky houses created by famous architects — Philip Johnson, Le Corbusier, Frank Gehry, etc. — and a story about someone visiting a Wright house in Tulsa, during a rainstorm. There were containers all over the house, to catch the drips. The owner just said, "This is what happens when you leave a work of art out in the rain."
So, what are the takeaway lessons for working from home? Think creatively, stretch, take time for recreational pursuits, like other people's spouses, put new batteries in your smoke alarms, and don't leave sharp objects laying around when you've fired your staff.
Oh yeah, and try to create something revolutionary, beautiful and serene, that people will admire forever.
Looking toward the back of the house, a clear line of sight. I don't think it's visible in the photo, but you can see a glimpse of the sky, through the front windows.
The complex included a carriage house and garage. Wright loved cars, and owned fifty of them during his lifetime. Jaguar, Bentley, Lincoln Continental, Packard, Cadillac, Mercedes-Benz, etc. This was one of them – – a 1930 Cord L-29 cabriolet, in Taliesin Orange. It's in the Cord Duesenberg Museum in Auburn, IN. The photo is from the Library of Congress. Obviously an economical, modest little runabout.
Guest house, forming one side of the complex. The masonry was made of thin cuts of local stone, designed to suggest the way natural rock layers are visible in outcrops.
1920's, 1930's, architecture, wisconsin
Taliesen. Working from home.
May 21, 2020 Robert Parkerarchitecture, wisconsin, work-from-home 42 Comments Image
Looking into infinity. The new walkway connecting the Milwaukee and Chicago airports. 73 miles to the baggage claim.
Well I've been living in Milwaukee for the better part of a year, but I've just begun to explore the zone outside the city limits, which the nice folks at the farmers' market tell me, is that fabled land called "Wisconsin."
I was afraid it might be a bit dull, to a New York sophisticate like myself.
What a relief to encounter true and large-scale weirdness.
This spring, on a cold, rainy day, I rented a car and ventured out-of-town. At first, it looked a lot like where I grew up, especially the cows, but driving along the Wisconsin River, toward the upper Mississippi, we entered the "Driftless Area," winding through sharp little ridges and valleys, sometimes wooded.
And then we visited a very strange place indeed.
Even weeks later, thinking it over calmly, my reaction is still the same – it seems less like a real memory, than a drunken, moldering dreamscape. Fun, even charming, but also a bit spooky.
from a collection of antique coin banks. These were labelled "Clowns Are Trump, You Pays Your Pence and You Takes Your Chances"
About forty miles west of Madison, beginning in the late 1940's, and working through the '50's, a man built a house in the woods, on top of a rocky outcrop. He called it "The House on the Rock."
In a pretty commonplace region of cow pastures, woodlots, small towns, this experiment sticks out, literally and figuratively, as a strange, strange place.
A stray fragment of Lewis Carroll's fantasy realm, Tim Burton as the architect, soundtrack by Tom Waits.
An immense cabinet of curiosities, sideshow extraordinaire, and hoarder's storehouse of earthly "treasures," the place where Antiques Roadshow goes off the road.
A crackerjack palace, decorated by Liberace, with every shelf & nook & cranny stocked by the Ringling Brothers & John Lennon, tripping on LSD, raiding every flea market, boardwalk, and carnival, Rube Goldberg tinkering in the back room.
P. T. Barnum's ghost wanders through, and is humbled.
We didn't plan on being there.
Family was visiting – – all of them Frank Lloyd Wright enthusiasts – – and we were headed to Taliesin, Wright's home and workshop.
The two houses turned out to be a yin & yang thing.
The day we visited Taliesin, the weather was perfect, and the guides were well-informed and well-rehearsed, if a bit dry.
Wright's artistic creation was well worth the drive – – an organic-seeming creation, the model of the perfect prairie house, in harmony with its surroundings, and almost spartan in its clean lines.
Yeah, so, we can talk about all that art & balance & perfectness & good taste some other time.
And now for something completely different.
Because the day after visiting Taliesin, we went somewhere else entirely – – a place all about the unhinged and the off-kilter and questionable, about trickery and cheesy excess – – you know, more like the America we actually live in, and that's what this post is about.
Spaceship landing on what appears to be a chocolate cake.
It is truly impressive. I remembered a quote from Dolly Parton:
"It takes a lot of time and money to look this cheap, honey."
It was a weekday, off-season, and the weather was crummy – – cold, gray, windy – – and that is absolutely when you should visit, when the place is nearly empty. We almost had the place to ourselves.
Just a few miles from Taliesin, but it was another world.
Just like Frank Lloyd Wright, another local guy also built a home and workshop up on a hill.
It was described to me as "interesting…different…maybe the biggest tourist attraction in the state," by someone who'd never been there, but we decided to stop by.
I hadn't read anything about it, and you cannot see the place from the road. The lane winding through the trees gives you the first inkling – – lined with giant bronze vessels, with metal lizards attached to the sides.
A word about my photos for this post: SORRY. This is a big overstuffed post, but these are snapshots on the fly, in really dim lighting. I had family visiting, and gotta keep the old folks amused & moving, or they get cranky and rust up. But if the pictures are sometimes fuzzy and a bit hard to decipher, that's actually the way it seemed when I visited – – a huge murky space lit by low-wattage colored bulbs. Some stuff is in cases with fluorescent lighting and dusty glass. Think of the photos as a slightly out-of-focus slide show, after having a few cocktails, that's the feeling I'm going for.
To call it a house is inadequate. Yes, there is a house – most of it, a dim, low-ceiled, cave-like conglomeration of amateur rough stone, old stained glass, church bells, firepits, and… shag carpeting. Lots of musty-smelling shag carpeting.
Lots & lots of tchotchkes, statuettes, knick-knacks, bottles, iron pots, etc.
Ebony figures from Africa coexist with imitation Tiffany lights.
Lots of graying, yellowing, browning books – the man read anything and everything, apparently. A wood staircase is lined with bookshelves, for three or four floors.
You come to a big room with slanted windows, looking out over the countryside, and carpeted tiers, what I believe was called, back in the day, "conversation pits."
And then, the first bit of weirdness – you realize the music you've been hearing, appears to come from a mechanized little orchestra, sawing away at "Bolero." Complicated contraptions, looking like drunken mashups of hydraulic valve lifters and bits of pinball machines, with a dash of Edward Scissorhands, seem to be playing actual instruments. You'll encounter a number of these robotic ensembles, sometimes, I think, just going through the motions while recorded music played, but drums and other instruments were definitely playing – – amazing, impressive, and often sounding kinda awful.
If Fred Flintstone moved to the Jetson's neighborhood, and Wilma started hitting eBay and garage sales, this would be their house.
So I guess I'd call it Groovy, or Cool, Daddy-O, or possibly Yabba-Dabba Doo!
A wall made of slabs of glass, with colored lights behind it.
And…I'm underwhelmed.
It's fun, kind of cozy, and the colored glass windows are great, but mostly it's a higgledy-piggledy maze of eccentricity and clutter, with a dash of tackiness.
A number of decorating themes slug it out in the house – – some vaguely Frank Lloyd Wright elements, Asian, African, Flintstones, etc. but the dominant motif was "Rec Room"
But the experience hadn't really even begun.
The entire complex is a "house" in the same way the USS Intrepid is a "boat."
You'll notice I haven't said anything about "the man" who built this place. His name was Alex Jordan, Jr., and he apparently was what my grandmother used to call "a real character." And I'm not going to tell you about him. You may have already googled him, you definitely should.
There's also a fun video filmed there, by the band "10,000 Maniacs," (from Jamestown, NY, yea!). It's a re-make of Roxy Music's "More Than This." (The video was done after Natalie Merchant left the band, and their cover isn't as good as the original, but it gives a good idea of the place.) https://vimeo.com/108524874
You go up to the roof to admire the view, then down past a minimal, vintage kitchen, and a couple more Buddhas. Did I mention there are a whole lot of Buddhas sitting around? Indoors and out, big and small, in gravel courtyards and tucked into niches. They seemed a little dubious, like garden store knockoffs, looking less contemplative than baffled, just like the rest of us.)
And as the sound of the endless "Bolero" begins, mercifully, to fade, you hear, around the corner and down a corridor, the theme from "The Godfather."
And then you enter something that's that's not weird, cluttered, and uneasy, but just plain great.
The Infinity Room.
An enclosed, glassed-in room – – a covered bridge shaped like a Viking longship, juts out, cantilevered to what seems an impossible distance! You quickly realize the optical illusion, and (spoiler alert) it really isn't infinite, but it is over two hundred feet long, with a glass window to look down at the far end, at the pine trees and boulders you're suspended over.
There's a rocky outcrop underneath, somewhere, to balance the weight of the thing, but you can't see it, and it just seems like the coolest treehouse-and-walk-the-gangplank-observation-room any daydreaming kid ever sketched in his notebook during geometry class.
The wind was kicking up, the day we were there, and the room creaked and swayed a bit, which was cool, but you could tell it was OK.
And anyway if it did collapse, how cool it would be to toboggan down the hill, through the pine trees, yeah, with the theme from the Godfather echoing in our ears, and the tinkling sound of countless imitation Tiffany lights smashing!
A wonderful external picture on the "Highest Bridges" website http://www.highestbridges.com/wiki/index.php?title=Infinity_Room_at_the_House_on_the_Rock
Outside, in the fresh air, smelling the pines, is a garden with a little waterfall, in the Japanese style, as done by a Holiday Inn.
And connected to the house, by a series of roofed, somewhat decrepit walkways, are labyrinthine warehouses. You walk past a waterwheel, into a sort of millhouse, with suits of armor and random artifacts everywhere, including the men's room.
You are entering a delirious steampunk world.
"You're travelling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind; a journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That's the signpost up ahead – your next stop, the Twilight Zone!"
Acres of massive hangers, filled to the brim with outrageous jumbles of collectibles mixed with giant industrial machinery (an iron drive wheel, bigger than a car, a massive steam tractor, a ship's propeller, huge electric generators) arranged into cityscapes, draped and intersected with dim colored lights.
I don't mean a few Christmas lights. They walked into J. C. Penny, and bought every made-in-Taiwan, ruby-glass kitchen light fixture, and grouped them into interwoven, homemade chandeliers of impossible sizes and scales, dangling eerily.
It is a glorious shambles – – creepy in places, charming in others, and sometimes a bit sad. I don't want to call it "surreal," because I think "hyper-real" is closer to the truth.
If you've ever played "Myst," a mystery video game from the '90's, you'll have a similar sense of a semi-abandoned fantasy realm.
The dimly-lit corridors and sloping catwalks are sometimes a bit disorienting.
You can feed tokens into antique arcade games – some work, some don't – decrepit musical machines from a hundred years ago, some still squawking out tunes from Edison rolls, others plinking plaintively from music boxes, or huffing asthmatically from dusty pneumatic systems.
Life-size mannikins jerk into action, pistons and gears and cranks beat out tunes.
Player piano rolls unroll, mallets & hammers tap on bells, drums, glass cylinders, chimes.
We dance to a Charleston-era tune wheezing from a massive ancestor of the jukebox.
Describing this place seems kind of impossible. Nothing really does it justice.
A huge old diorama, perhaps once impressive, but now creepy as all heck, looking like a decrepit anteroom to the netherworld. I finally remembered what it reminded me of – – an episode on Rod Serling's Night Gallery called "Camera Obscura," based on a Basil Copper short story.
It is almost overwhelming.
You may think I exaggerate.
No, my regular readers protest, not Robbie! Not that straight arrow, scrupulously-reliable-fact-checking-chronicler-of the American Way!
And this may all seem like pretty tame stuff, really. It's just the volume of it all that kind of swamps you. Like that scene in "Moscow on the Hudson," where the recent immigrant from Russia, overwhelmed by choices, faints in the breakfast cereal aisle. And the dusty stillness of some sections – – they really ought to put bells on the darn maintenance guys, so when they're tinkering with something behind the scenes, and then step out suddenly, they don't give you a heart attack.
I got a drink of water, straightened up, and told myself "We're Americans, darn it, we like stuff! The more the merrier!" And pressed on.
Another robotic band setting. The museum's creator, Alex Jordan, designed animatronic figures and mechanical gadgets to play musical instruments.
The Smithsonian is far, far more extensive, with over 100 million artifacts, and is often called "America's Attic."
Sometimes in idle moments, I wonder what those people want with, for example, 140,000 taxidermied bats, but it's Washington, D.C. another focal point of weirdness.
An assemblage of drums reaches up several stories. I do not know why there are birch trees.
You want clocks? We gotta lotta clocks.
The House on the Rock is on a more modest scale, but its chaotic and mostly unlabeled collection seems worthy of being "America's Basement," at the very least. Parts of it might be the props storeroom for Cecille B. DeMille.
Life-size scenes of medieval mêlées, with armored elephants, depicting…ok, I do not have the slightest idea.
Sometimes it's a labyrinthine museum, with glass cases along claustrophobic aisles, and sometimes, like an antediluvian amusement park
A three-story wooden clock, just past the remnants of a massive old electric generator
And another difference from any other collection of Americana I've visited. – -some of this stuff is junk. By which I mean, it's unabashedly phony. Homemade neo-Victorian nonsense is jumbled together with genuine antiques.
Rusting outside, is a real cannon or howitzer, probably WWI French or Belgian.
A room of firearms contained clearly fantastical creations, like 36-shot pepperbox pistols, that looked to be cobbled together from bits of old piping. The flintlocks appear to be brass-bedecked tourist items from the Casbah, or perhaps a theatrical prop room. Naval 32-pounders might have come from a movie set. Larger items, like a two-story cannon, must have come from defunct circuses or sideshows. They're all together, and you're left to distinguish the real from the imaginary. Or not.
Heading toward one of the larger mechanical bands, you walk up a dim brick-paved Street of Shops – – storefronts stuffed with antiques. I paused to take the picture below, of the pale, glass-eyed dolls, staring back from their baby carriages, and was left behind by my group.
And honestly, when the place is empty, it felt a bit creepy, a place one feels watched, and doesn't want to be alone in. When a maintenance man appeared out of the shadows, I froze for a couple of heartbeats.
Overall, it's not creepy. But still.
Life-size and doll-size shops
After admiring the first dozen dollhouses, I walked and walked past innumerable more examples, barely looking at the tiny tea sets and miniature domestic tableaus, and then, out of the corner of my eye, noticed one tiny figure had apparently given up on escaping, and had tucked a shotgun barrel under his chin.
Hitchcock dolly zoom
I think there is about an acre of miniature circuses
The H.O.T.R boasts a number of carousels, but you cannot ride on them. The biggest, claimed to be the biggest indoor carousel in the country, has many creatures, but not a single horse.
Instead, the walls of the huge building are covered with the wooden horses.
Hovering overhead are a host of dissolute-looking department store mannequins, like vengeful ghosts from shuttered Macy's and Gimbels, ready to snatch people like me, who fail to color coordinate – –
tarnished angels in the architecture, women in loose gowns, with huge wings attached.
I imagine they're intended as angels, but, especially since some are missing hands, or suffering wardrobe malfunctions, they looked like inebriated and menacing Valkyries.
Huge glass bells, part of the carousel music machinery
Another, smaller carousel, is reserved for hundreds of dolls. And at least one skeleton.
The carousels are spectacular.
At some point, just after looking at more spittoons than I've ever seen before (which spilled over, so to speak, into the adjoining exhibit areas), continuing to march along ramps, walkways, and corridors, feeling pretty stunned by the sheer mass of it all, we found ourselves in a nautical area.
And as you enter the four-story warehouse, with walkways and cases winding up the walls, looming over you is a giant model of a whale fighting a giant squid.
I could not estimate the number of ship models. Clippers, carracks, caravels, aircraft carriers. Some were museum quality, some were toy-like, and some would have looked at home hanging over the bar in Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville. The Titanic hitting an iceberg. Big tin Spanish-American dreadnoughts. Scrimshaw, some real, some fake, scattered amongst the models.
Towards the end, shambling along in mostly stupefied silence, we entered the newest wing, for model airplanes. (Too tired to even attempt a pun.)
I actually feel that you can learn something from this place. I'm just not sure what that is. They call a lot of this stuff "memorabilia," but what exactly are we remembering? Mostly, I'd say, those dreams we get after eating a pepperoni pizza, while watching Vincent Price in "House of Wax."
One thing that popped in my head. The scale and variety of this vast repository, and the jumbling of steam engines, generators, and other industrial detritus, with the toys and old arcade amusements, strikes me as perfectly right & proper.
When American fired up the Industrial Age, it also started cranking out industrial entertainment, and decorative knickknacks. "The Theory of the Leisure Class" came out in 1899, and introduced the idea of "conspicuous consumption," that is, buying stuff you don't need, to show off.
Permanent "amusement parks," like Coney Island, boardwalks & piers full of rides, penny arcades, and coin-fed fortune-telling machines, etc. and huge "expositions" or "World's Fairs" started popping up, peddling technology and manufactured fantasy.
You can learn a lot about a place, and a time, by visiting serious museums, symphony halls, art galleries, etc.
– – but life isn't all dioramas & statues, Beethoven & Rembrandts, is it?
It's also beer & skittles, the Dead Kennedys, hotdog stands, snow globes, and graffiti.
In Wisconsin, a state that prides itself on its blue collar solidarity and working stiffs' pleasures, the House on the Rock takes our pride in unrefined fare to a memorable extreme – – amassing thousands of the cheap thrills of yore, kitschy games, and diabolical-looking toys from the five & dimes, carnivals, fairs, and toy shops.
A house built not on sand, but on bric-a-brac.
A turn-of-the-last century mechanical novelty, one of dozens, mostly still functioning – – pop in a token, and the barber begins to shave – – and a policeman pops up in the window. Any idea what this was about?
It's a blast.
Wear comfortable shoes, and brace yourself.
Call me Ismael ~ ~ Confronting the giant plaster whale ~ ~ Ish & The Fish
Me & me old mum, in front of robots playing kettledrums. She hates clutter, and yet loved this place.
1870's, 1890, 1920's, 1930's, 1950's, 1960's, Arrant Nonsense, craft projects for lifers, History, Uncategorized, United States, wisconsin
House on the Rock. A walk through mass production and madness.
July 7, 2019 Robert ParkerAmericana, Collectibles run amuck, Garage Sale Disorder, House on the Rock, Industrial Age, Michael Moorcock, Myst, Neo-Victorian, omnium-gatherum, Steampunk, Step right up, wisconsin 59 Comments Image
Milwaukee has a plethora of delivery startups. T'uber delivers baked potatoes to your door. They partner with ForkLyft, which supplies cutlery. There's AirB&B (beer & bratwurst by drone), DroneDrone (drones delivered to you by drone), DroningDroneDrone (CNN transcripts to your doorstep), FroshDirect (essays for first-year college classes), Amazons (heavily armed women) (to intimidate your cat when it's having a manic episode).
Flash News from Milwaukee
Most people in New York, where I grew up, and Maryland, where I went to college, have never been to Wisconsin, and don't know much about it.
Some confuse it with Minnesota, others believe it's the capital of Saskatchewan. One friend mentioned exile to the steppes, and offered to write the Tsar for a pardon.
Most visualize Life In The Land of Bland – – a monochromatic, mayo-white-bread place, awash in Schlitz, bratwurst, jello salad, Sons of Norway lodges, and endless "Laverne & Shirley" re-runs. And cheese. "Processed American Cheese Food," that yellowish stuff the Dept of Agriculture is always stockpiling in Area 51 warehouses and old missile silos.
Yeah, Milwaukee does have its share of bland – smiling but reserved Midwesterners, making guarded, ambiguous comments – but the city is also a lively, interesting, multicultural place, and a great place to find good food. A vibrant, diverse, "minority-majority" town – comprised not just of German/English/Irish stock, but Polish, Hispanic/Latino, African-American, Asian (especially Hmong), Persians, Arabs, Syrians, Serbs, Scandinavians, etc. They host one of the biggest Native American gatherings every year.
Margherita Pomodora, Goddess of Pizza. Knowing a bit about these characters just comes with the territory. I grew up west of Syracuse & Corinth, south of Junius and Tyre, north of Ithaca and Romulus, east of Attica and Corfu.
And I was happy to find there are a least a few people of Greek and Italian descent, and some Mediterranean-style eating places. You may have seen the Greek flags waving in the stands, since Giannis Antetokounmpo started playing for the Bucks.
So while the city has all the usual delivery and ride-hailing services – Uber, Lyft, Grubhub, etc. – the ride service I use is staffed entirely by Greek and Italian immigrants. And it changes its name weekly.
In its first incarnation, it was Quicksilver Messenger Service, but that was already taken, by a hippie band in the '60's. So the next week, it was Mercruiser, but that's the outboard motor company in Fond du Lac. Then MoussakaKar, followed by Quo Vadis, Dude?, Ben Hur'ry, ToGaToGo, and currently, Bona Fide Ride.
Saturday, I was starving for Greek food – gyros, souvlaki, and the local classic, Spam-ikopita – and kept chanting under my breath, "I wanna go to Golden Acropolis," and somehow summoned this weird old driver, Hermès. He skidded to the curb in a beat-up old Zephyr, once silver-colored, and he had this whole Mercury theme going, wearing a cap with little wings on it.
He jumped out with an Olympus point-and-shoot, mouth going a-mile-a-minute.
"A quick snapshot of each passenger, my memory is fleeting, c'mon, jump in, your chariot awaits and all that, you can call me Hermes, Quicksilver, whatever, just don't call me Freddy Mercury, alright?"
There were little wings on his sandals, too.
I figured he must be from Minneapolis.
He popped a Styx 8-track in the player, put his foot down, and his bucket of bolts peeled out. I heard Sirens wailing, but we made it to the gyro place faster than was humanly possible.
He waved off the tip, "Save it for the ferryman, at my age, I don't need drachmas, I don't need drama, I don't need…" and off he went, like a silvery streak of extra-virgin-olive-oil-greased lightning.
Yeah, I'm just gonna take the bus next time.
Mercury in his salad days. Some people feel the burn, others feel the breeze.
But I recognized him, of course. Hermes/Mercury, The Messenger. A lot of the old Greco-Roman gods, semi-retired now, live around Brady St, or the Shorewood area of Milwaukee. Tzatziki sauce and lightning storms all over that neighborhood.
Ceres has a vegan place called "Ancient Grains," Vulcan has forged a chain of body shops. Bacchus tried opening a wine bar (dude, in Milwaukee?), went broke, and I think is in rehab somewhere. Hermes opened a seafood place with another guy, but "Neptune & Mercury Fish" didn't go over well for some reason.
Mercury, working off the clock. Grand Central Terminal (LOC photo). To his left, Hercules is obviously worried about that bird, and seems to be sitting in a machine shop, which is normally Vulcan's thing. Minerva is ignoring the other two, while she works on a grocery list, to add to the salad bar she's got going up there. This busy little tableau is also called "Progress with Mental and Physical Force" or "The Glory of Commerce," and both of those are darn catchy titles.
I was surprised to see Hermes just driving around, especially with a V8 getting 12 mpg, but he told me, yeah, he's the Patron of Thieves, Liars, and Tricksters, but his Titanic success in Washington had actually scared him a bit. "I'm not really a bad guy, just kinda fickle, y'know, mercurial, who needs The Messenger when everyone's texting, right now I'm focused on Auto-Mobiles and Transporting…"
A real live wire. But riding shotgun in the cab, was some glum, totally boring type, humming tunelessly, that I didn't recognize. At home, I looked for him in my Big Book of Forgotten Deities, riffling through a whole horde of lesser Greek & Roman gods, demi-gods, heroes, satyrs, etc.
After a half-hour, I'd gotten as far as Hypnos, the somnolent god of sleep, and his semi-famous sons, Morpheus & Phantasos, the gods of dreams – – at least a nodding acquaintance for most people.
Hypnos had literally a thousand other offspring – – one thousand kids to keep in sandals, he'd say, and they had to share their birthday parties – – always joint affairs at Chuck-E Cheese, to save money. And then, in a photo from one of the parties, skulking in the corner, with no one talking to him, was the guy from the ride:
Phragmites, The God of Monotony.
Hypnos can make us sleep, Morpheus & Phantasos can shape our dreams, but Phragmites is so very dull, he can induce a coma.
And I realized, as if waking from a dream, that's what I wanted to write about today.
A plumed phalanx of phragmites invades a marsh.
Phragmites australis, a/k/a common reeds, are now everywhere.
You may wonder, along with countless screaming Argonauts, why did I wander
so far into the weeds,
to just talk about reeds
Yeah, it's a ridiculous segue, but honestly, I cannot hear Phragmites without thinking it's some sort of Greco-Roman hero. One that fights Hydras, or at least Hydrilla.
(So, just to be clear, this is a segue, not a digression, ok? I'm not digressing anymore. It would be cool to work a Segway in here, as a modern-day chariot for Mercury, but that would be a digression.)
I am seeing phragmites everywhere. Ponds, marshes, ditches, drainage swales, unused parking lots, etc. – – it's like hearing Justin Bieber songs on the radio, why is this reedy crap everywhere I go? Chesapeake Bay, all around upstate NY, and now in Wisconsin.
You're probably surprised I didn't work in the story of Syrinx, the Naiad-nymph who was fleeing Pan, and was metamorphosed into a reed, which was then made into a Pan-flute. But I didn't want to be panned for a digression, so pipe down.
There are several varieties of these reeds, including one native to the eastern U.S., but the ones I'm talking about are aggressive and invasive. The native plants are not a problem. They mix, they mingle, they get along well with the other plants.
The invasive strain, which can spread ten feet in a summer, crushes diversity, crowding out cattails and other native marsh plants, and forms dense, pretty much lifeless thickets.
Just like some of the talking heads on TV, you ask yourself, how can anything this monotonous, dull, and boring, be so successful at taking over?
It's simple.
They poison the neighbors.
This is called "allelopathy" and you probably already know that. I'd heard about this tactic, because there's black walnut trees all over New York, and you're always told, don't try growing a garden anywhere near them. But the walnut trees seem to practice restraint, because often there's ferns etc. , thriving all around their trunks, and anyways, the nuts are delicious.
"Monotony has nothing to do with a place; monotony, either in its sensation or its infliction, is simply the quality of a person. There are no dreary sights; there are only dreary sightseers." I'm not sure about G. K. Chesterton's idea. I can see beauty in a sea of reeds, but, sorry, the omnipresence of common reeds does make them monotonous and dreary, and I like cattails and a healthy, lively ecosystem better.
The invasive phragmites seem to be much more zealous – – the plant equivalent of Assad, pursuing total war with chemical attacks. They poison and disintegrate neighboring plants, and I've seen cattails, for example, be eliminated from some small marshes in just a few years.
Here's a good succinct article:
University of Delaware. "Invasive Plant Secretes Acid To Kill Nearby Plants And Spread." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 15 October 2007. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071012084128.htm>.
And how to tell the native vs invasive reeds:
http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_PLANTMATERIALS/publications/idpmctn11494.pdf
Horsetails, I've read, have been popular since the Paleozoic, come to think of it, I think they predate horses, so how did folks back then pick that name? Anyway, they seem to be on the decline in the Finger Lakes, perhaps due to competition from phragmites, loosestrife, etc.
Monocultures, whether it's farming, fields, or woodlands, are a problem. There are marshes overrun with purple loosestrife, and others with nothing but these reeds. Some woods in the Finger Lakes now have nothing but garlic mustard as the undergrowth.
Now, "The Naturian" blog just listed some recipes for garlic mustard pesto, so there's a positive, and you can certainly find beauty, and a kind of calming music, in a rustling thicket of reeds.
It's the lack of balance that's the issue. A lot of things beginning with "mono" kind of stink, if you think about it. Monotonous, monopolize, monotone, "Kissing disease," monocles, etc. Gardeners tell me that monocots are OK, but I prefer a regular size bed. There's wonderful monotone of course, B&W photography, but a lot of the time, I'm hungry for color, kind of a Kodachrome guy, makes you think all the world's a sunny day.
Van Gogh's "It's not the heat, it's not the humidity, it's the monotony"
I hope I'm not being too subtle, so >here's another segue< . (I heard that Barry Manilow song "Copacabana" and at some point, he yells out "Key change!" so I guess it's ok to announce a segue.) It's a pretty obvious analogy here today. Monocultures are boring, whether it's in cities or wetlands, and it's not good for you, it poisons the land.
I grew up around marshes full of iris, ferns, Joe-Pye weed, arrowhead, cattails, salamanders & sycamores, willows, pussy willows & winterberry, redwing blackbirds, egrets, milkweed & muskrats – – and I don't enjoy going back to find a expanse of unbroken, lifeless, dun-colored boredom. And then moving 500 miles west, and finding the same dreary reeds have spread here, too.
Life should be a variety show. There's something wonderful and stimulating about places with a teeming mix of plants and animals, people and cultures. A complex mosaic, not the dull monotonous prosaic. I like to hear new music, sample fantastic new foods, maybe learn a few new words, or even new ideas. Hear the full orchestra, not just the reeds. I'm happy to live in a town enlivened by immigrants, old-time and new.
But what's to be done about these pesky plants? I'm in talks with Mercury about a food delivery "Pesto Presto" and already lined up some guys in Parks & Recreation to start yanking the garlic mustard. The reeds, I guess if Washington succeeds in returning us to the Dark Ages, we'll be glad to have materials for thatched huts.
food, Great Lakes, milwaukee, Uncategorized, wisconsin
Mercury & Poisoning
May 17, 2019 Robert Parkergarlic mustard, Greco-Roman rustling, Hermes, Invasive species, Mercury, monoculture, monotony, Phragmites, reed section 49 Comments Image


A wine-tasting trip to California's Napa Valley is a popular escape, but B.C.'s Okanagan Valley (aka "Napa North") triumphs when it comes to reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. According to one carbon-footprint calculator, the 2.5-hour flight from Vancouver to San Francisco (return trip for two people), plus the round-trip 144-km drive from San Francisco to Napa, uses about 0.94 metric tonnes of CO2e (C02e, or carbon dioxide equivalent, is the internationally recognized measure of greenhouse-gas emissions). Compare that to driving a 2016 Chevrolet Cruze, for example, for the 780-km return trip from Vancouver to Kelowna: it generates 0.13 metric tonnes of CO2e. Going electric? A 2016 Chevrolet Volt produces 0.10 metric tonnes of CO2e. Find DC fast-charging stations in communities along the way such as Chilliwack and Hope.


Hello, book lovers! We are sure you must have been reading this thing or that thing these days. Like always, you must be waiting for some books to be released which you can just devour without any delay! We have brought some interesting books for you which will be released very soon. The one which we are focusing on in this article is a splendid work – youthful sparks of a writer can easily be sensed in that work! We are talking about The Elephant Chaser's Daughter by Shilpa Raj. We will be giving you hints about this work by her (without spoilers). It will ensure that your reading pleasure isn't deprived of any preoccupations.
The Elephant Chaser's Daughter: This is a memoir written by Shilpa Raj, an author from Karnataka. However, you cannot understand the importance of this book by just saying that this a memoir published at an odd day! This is the 'first ever memoir written by any woman from the Dalit community in India' and that's why this book suddenly becomes one of the hot new releases of this month! The book documents the journey of author Shilpa Raj from the early days of childhood to the present day. Moreover, this does not only summarise the life of Shilpa alone but the book becomes a mouthpiece for all those people who belong to the downtrodden or the lower sections of Indian society. By presenting the struggles of her family up to four generations, Shilpa Raj has spoken for all those who cannot afford to raise their voices because they don't even have access to the basic education!
Besides these hard-hitting truths, there are also many emotional instances in the book which will bring out the pathos. Shilpa has written in details about her relationship with Kavya, her younger sister. How they played together; how she used to chide Shilpa; how she faked events and also a tragedy that changed their lives forever… So, The Elephant Chaser's Daughter has got everything to be called a perfect memoir and with the credentials that the author has already with her, we are sure this book will be making new records of success.
Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs – Must have book!


Societe Internationale de Chirurgie Orthopedique et de Traumatologie / International Society of Orthopedic Surgery and Traumatology (SICOT) 40th Orthopaedic World Congress is organized by Societe Internationale de Chirurgie Orthopedique et de Traumatologie (SICOT) would be held during Nov 28 - 30, 2019 at Muscat, Masqat, Oman. Additional details will be posted as soon as they are available.
2020 World Cancer Congress is organized by Union for International Cancer Control (UICC) and will be held from Oct 19 - 22, 2020 at Muscat, Oman. Conference Description: The event aims to strengthen the action and impact of the cancer community on national, regional and international scales through its educational programme which spans the full spectrum of cancer - from prevention and treatment to palliative care. Additional details will be posted as soon as they are available.


All electrical and electronic products sold in markets around the world must demonstrate that they function according to existing electrical safety regulations and standards. These standards and regulations differ from country to country, with varying degrees of complexity.
At TÜV SÜD, we are fluent in the complex language of electrical safety. Our testing facilities and expert staff around the world provide electrical testing and certification services, whether your need is on a local, country or global scale.
TÜV SÜD is one of the leading independent Electrical and EMC testing facilities that provide a full suite of EMC test capabilities. Product certification services in compliance with the CB, CE, Bluetooth, BSMI, FCC IDA and e/E regulations are also available.
Our testing facilities and expert staff around the world provide electrical testing and certification services, whether your need is on a local, country, or global scale.


text:
Q: How to do scan document index I want to index bulk scanning documents
I have 2 type of document as invoice and bills
I want to upload this different type of document to 2 separate folder
can you please help me how to achieve this problem

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
The 1930 National Derby took place during August and September with the final being held at Harold's Cross Stadium in Dublin on 5 September 1930. It was the third edition of the event. The race at this stage was considered unofficial because it had not been ratified by the Irish Coursing Club.

The winner was Prince Fern, trained by J Harper.

Final result
At Harolds Cross, 5 September (over 525 yards):

Distances
¾ (lengths)

See also
1930 UK & Ireland Greyhound Racing Year

References

Greyhound Derby
Irish Greyhound Derby
Irish Greyhound Derby

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Thoughgentile.shop is 2 months old (current registration since 22 February 2019).
thoughgentile.shop is known by our system for 2 months. His IP address is 54.180.124.130 and there's 96 websites on this ip, it's a shared host.


3 on the lyre, the ten-stringed lyre, to the murmur of the harp.
6 Stupid people cannot realise this, fools do not grasp it.
8 whereas you are supreme for ever, Yahweh.
9 Look how your enemies perish, how all evil-doers are scattered!
11 I caught sight of the ambush against me, overheard the plans of the wicked.
12 The upright will flourish like the palm tree, will grow like a cedar of Lebanon.
13 Planted in the house of Yahweh, they will flourish in the courts of our God.
15 to proclaim Yahweh's integrity; my rock, in whom no fault can be found.


Swimming Lessons and Gym & Swim Members are invited to attend the Member Cocktail Party on Friday the 5th of April.
Join us in the Function Room for light refreshments and snacks. Join us in the Function Room for light refreshments and snacks. We will be discussing the upcoming events and you can meet the team who have worked to minimise the impact to your normal routine.


text:
Springbok squad named
Nine uncapped players were included in the Springbok squad of 32 for the Castle Incoming Tour against England, named on Saturday in Pretoria by SARU CEO Jurie Roux and Springbok coach Heyneke Meyer.
The nine uncapped players are flanks Marcell Coetzee and Jacques Potgieter, locks Eben Etzebeth, Juandré Kruger and Franco van der Merwe, flyhalf Elton Jantjies, wing or centre JJ Engelbrecht, prop Coenie Oosthuizen and scrumhalf Jano Vermaak.
Jantjies and Oosthuizen toured with the Springboks at the end of the 2010 season and in the 2011 Castle Tri-Nations. Van der Merwe and Vermaak have previously played for the Emerging Springboks.
Meyer and the national selectors, Peter Jooste and Ian McIntosh, were unanimous when it came to finalising the squad. They have also recalled 15 members of the Rugby World Cup 2011 squad, while nine Rugby World Cup winners from 2007 remain in the squad.
The most experienced player in the squad is South Africa's foremost test try scorer Bryan Habana, with 74 caps. Six more players have played in excess of 40 tests for South Africa.
"We were always looking to start the season with an experienced squad to face England, but injuries to certain players and the non-availability of others have made it difficult," said Meyer.
"What we've lost in experience, we've made up in passion and desire to play for the Springboks.
"We have put together a squad with a nice balance between a number of veterans and players with less experience as we start to build for the rest of the season.
"Working with these players during our four Planning Camps this season has been great and really made a very difficult selection process a bit easier. There were a few unlucky players that didn't make it and they will get opportunities in future as long as they keep on knocking on the door.
"The nine uncapped players have all put up their hands during Vodacom Super Rugby this year and we know they have what it takes to succeed at the highest level.
"We realise that it is impossible to please everyone when it comes to selecting squads like these, but we would really like to see the entire country stand behind us as we take on England."
Furthermore, six promising players have been added to the Springbok squad for the next three weeks. They are not eligible for selection but will train with the squad in Durban, Johannesburg and Port Elizabeth.
The six up-and-coming players are Siya Kolisi (flank), Arno Botha (No 8), Frans Malherbe (prop), CJ Stander (loose forward), Francois Venter (centre) and Piet van Zyl (scrumhalf).
Meyer said: "We feel that these players have what it takes to play for the Springboks and they were close to selection in the final squad. However, these three weeks provide the ideal opportunity to work with them, show them what the Springbok culture is all about and hopefully put them on the right track to play for South Africa sooner rather than later. By doing this now, we will reap the dividends going forward.
"We also rate a number of great players in the South African Under-20 squad, but they were not considered at this stage due to the fact that they are playing in a very important Junior World Championship."
SPRINGBOK SQUAD (number of caps in brackets)
Willem Alberts (The Sharks, 9)
Bjorn Basson (Vodacom Blue Bulls, 6)
Marcell Coetzee (The Sharks, 0)
Keegan Daniel (The Sharks, 1)
Jean de Villiers (DHL Western Province, 72)
Bismarck du Plessis (The Sharks, 42)
Jannie du Plessis (The Sharks, 30)
JJ Engelbrecht (Vodacom Blue Bulls, 0)
Eben Etzebeth (DHL Western Province, 0)
Bryan Habana (DHL Western Province, 74)
Francois Hougaard (Vodacom Blue Bulls, 15)
Elton Jantjies (MTN Golden Lions, 0)
Ryan Kankowski (The Sharks, 19)
Zane Kirchner (Vodacom Blue Bulls, 14)
Juandré Kruger (Vodacom Blue Bulls, 0)
Werner Kruger (Vodacom Blue Bulls, 2)
Patrick Lambie (The Sharks, 11)
Tendai Mtawarira (The Sharks, 32)
Lwazi Mvovo (The Sharks, 4)
Wynand Olivier (Vodacom Blue Bulls, 34)
Coenie Oosthuizen (Toyota FS Cheetahs, 0)
Ruan Pienaar (Ulster, Ireland, 51)
JP Pietersen (The Sharks, 42)
Jacques Potgieter (Vodacom Blue Bulls, 0)
Chiliboy Ralepelle (Vodacom Blue Bulls, 21)
Pierre Spies (Vodacom Blue Bulls, 47)
Frans Steyn (The Sharks, 47)
Morné Steyn (Vodacom Blue Bulls, 34)
Adriaan Strauss (Toyota FS Cheetahs, 9)
Flip van der Merwe (Vodacom Blue Bulls, 11)
Franco van der Merwe (MTN Golden Lions, 0)
Jano Vermaak (Vodacom Blue Bulls, 0)

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Oriental Institute Publications (OIP)
OIP 138. Bismaya: Recovering the Lost City of Adab
Karen Wilson, with Jacob Lauinger, Monica Louise Phillips, Benjamin Studevent-Hickman, and Aage Westenholz
Purchase Download Terms of Use
An expedition from the University of Chicago excavated the site of Bismaya (ancient Adab) from December 24, 1903, until late June 1905. The excavations were directed first by Edgar J. Banks and then, briefly, by Victor S. Persons. Over 1,000 artifacts, many of them early cuneiform documents, were sent to Chicago, where they are now housed in the Oriental Institute Museum.
The results of the Bismaya excavations were never properly published, and most of the material was never published at all. Banks wrote a lively and highly readable popular account, Bismya, or the Lost City of Adab, that appeared in 1912 and gave the impression that his field methods were considerably less than satisfactory. However, that was not the case. Banks kept a careful field diary, complete with highly accurate sketches, and sent detailed weekly reports, lavishly illustrated with his own drawings, back to Chicago. These materials show that he excavated a mid-third-millennium BC temple and discovered some of the world' s first historical inscriptions incised on stone vessels dedicated in that structure. He also uncovered residences of the late Early Dynastic period, two Akkadian administrative centers, and a palace of the Isin Larsa/Old Babylonian period.
This monograph presents this large and significant corpus of unpublished material and includes analyses of stratigraphy, architecture, sculpture, cylinder seals, metalwork, and pottery, and discussions of chronology, the succession of the first kings of Adab, and administrative practices during the third millennium BC.
Chapter 1. A Note on the Sources
Chapter 2. Early Exploration
Chapter 3. The University of Chicago Expedition to Bismaya and "the Oldest Statue in the World"
Chapter 4. The Site, the City, and the City Wall
Chapter 5. Mound I — "The Palace": A Palace of the Isin-Larsa/Old Babylonian Period
Chapter 6. Mound II — "The Cemetery": Residence(s) of the Late Early Dynastic Period and Remains of the Isin-Larsa/Old Babylonian Period
Chapter 7. Mound III — "The Semitic Quarter": An Akkadian Administrative and Light Industrial Complex
Chapter 8. Mound IV — "The Library": An Administrative Center During the Reign of Sharkalisharri
Chapter 9. Mound V — "The Temple": A Series of Temples of the Third Millennium B.C.
Chapter 10. Mound X — Residences of the Akkadian Period?
Chapter 11. The Remaining Mounds
Chapter 12. Objects Whose Findspots Could Not Be Determined
Chapter 13. Objects Purchased by the Expedition
Chapter 14. Archaeology and the History of Bismaya
Appendix A. Early Dynastic Tablets from Adab in the Collection of the Oriental Institute Museum. Monica Louise Phillips
Appendix B. The Ur III Administrative Tablets from Adab in the Collection of the Oriental Institute Museum. Benjamin Studevent-Hickman
Appendix C. The Old Babylonian Tablets from Adab in the Collection of the Oriental Institute Museum. Jacob Lauinger
Appendix D. A7447 — The Inscription. Aage Westenholz
Appendix E. Objects from Bismaya Now in the Collection of the Eski Sark Museum, Istanbul
Appendix F. List of Objects by Oriental Institute Museum Number
Appendix G. Bibliography of Works by Edgar J. Banks
Oriental Institute Publications 138
Chicago: The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 2012
Pp. xxx + 194; 47 figures, 113 plates, 13 tables


Join us for PVUMC's Ministry Match Meet & Greet, May 3, 2015, when we roll out the carpet to help you discover how you can be more involved with PVUMC's many ministries. Do you like to greet? We've got a place for you! Do you like to host parties, and decorate? We can use your help!
Whether you're interested in being on a committee, serving on a task force, leading a ministry team, or just helping out from time to time with special events or programs, we invite you to come by the ministry team tables and chat with us. The Meet & Greet is just what it sounds like: an opportunity to meet others in ministry here at the church, introduce yourself, see where you might use your talents and God-given passions, and build relationships.


Mansory also added some beefiness into the 4x4 squared to help it climb through steep hills and over tough terrain. Positioned underneath the rear portion of the running boards is a rectangular sports exhaust that was added into the vehicle to help the vehicle conquer difficult terrains. Another addition is a "Powerbox" unit that unlocked an extra 62 horsepower to its standard 416 horsepower and an extra 73 lb.ft. of torque (for a total of 523 lb.-ft.). All these upgrades have seriously made this vehicle an off-road beast.
From the looks of it, Mansory did another good job in giving this Mercedes Benz G500 4x4 squared some extra kick to ride through difficult terrains. Hopefully, the German automaker sees this as an opportunity to improve their standard 4x4 squared. You'll never know, maybe somewhere in the near future, they change their mind and offer a G63 AMG version. For now, let's just appreciate and bask in the glory of this Mansory-tuned off-road monster.


Last week I was looking out my window remarking as to how warm and beautiful the weather was. What a difference a week makes. Then it was 44˚F and raining and now it's 22˚F, but at least it's sunny. I think we'd rather have sunny and cold than warm and damp any day. At least I would.
Last week I also wrote about rats. Last weekend, I'd had enough of the smell of dead rats in my workshop so went to cleaning and vacuuming to try and get rid of the smell. I'd describe the odor as nauseating. Friday night and much of the day Saturday was spent in my workshop where everything is now clean and organized but I couldn't find any culprits no matter how hard and thorough I looked. So Sunday I decided to work on Peggy's bay where she keeps her car in the winter.
I pulled out everything in front of her car including scraps of landscape fabric, a wooden barrel full of long handled tools, a copper bird bath, a barbeque grill, an old woodstove, several bird feeders, two cast iron radiators and many "needs repairing" projects which I will probably never do. I really don't know how this stuff accumulates. I sorted, vacuumed all and put back in some sort of order, but still, the odor lingered. There is in the corner of the garage, two water pipes which run from my boiler into the house and back. As the pipes drop in elevation coming out of the garage they are housed in a wooden box we built when we installed the system. Sure enough, at close examination, something had drilled about a 2 inch hole in the wood and the smell was pretty strong in that area.
I pulled the box apart, and there, nestled in between the heat pipes were three dead rats. They had taken insulation from the walls of my workshop (they drilled holes in the plywood to get at the insulation) and built a nest right between the pipes. As for the smell, whenever we got a south breeze the wind would enter the hole and spread the odor through the garage for us all to enjoy. After removing the rats and vacuuming out their nesting spot, I reinsulated the pipes and put new boards over the water pipe box. Done, or so I thought.
The smell continues to haunt us in her bay but I think that will go away in time. It's much better than it was. In my workshop however the smell was still quite strong. By now I've cleaned everything to within an inch of its life and am about to give up. But wait, I can't do anything in my workshop with the current smell so it's off to find the source. The smell is definitely strongest over by the furnace. Perhaps it's under the pile of kindling wood – nope - not there either, but at least it's cleaned and organized now. Finally, in an act of desperation, I take my flashlight and get down on my hands and knees and search for the cause of the odors. Bingo – found him! A half grown rat underneath the furnace; dead as a door nail and he smells like he's been there a while. Once he was disposed of, the odor dissipated and perhaps now I can get something done!
So by now you're probably thinking what does this have to do with the farm? Rats are surprisingly clever and adaptive animals. They have been poisoned, trapped and persecuted throughout the ages and yet they continue to survive, and in many instances thrive. They live around us because we supply them food and shelter, largely undisturbed. Birds feeders provide a food source as most are surrounded by seed thrown out by the birds. If you have domestic animals that eat grain – well, there's a free food supply. Rats often visit animal feeders at night when we're not likely to bother them. I've snapped the lights on after dark to see rats scurry from the chicken pens. They live under the barn, in greenhouses, in and around compost piles and anywhere out of the weather that's close to their food supply.
Trapping is effective for a while but they learn fast! If they step over a fellow rat in a trap on the way to the food bar they learn what not to step on, no matter how tempting. Control without poisons is usually a lot of work for a limited amount of control, but there are some things you can do to at least make it harder for them to live in close proximity with us humans. Rat control, of course, presents a problem when using poison; we want to kill the rats but not the animals that feed upon them. One dose of poison in my garage and I found seven dead half grown rats – all inside and all disposed of properly. I didn't however find any adults ones. Last week a reader wrote me about using a "Rat Zapper"; I think I'll try one of these in the henhouse; they come with lots of good recommendations.
All feed and grain gets stored in metal trash cans. I've had rats chew through plastic ones to get at the feed but never metal ones. I like to feed out exactly what the birds will eat before night fall, so the rats don't have free range all night. Of course if the birds are made to clean up their feed before nightfall there will be considerably less waste anyways. Having the birdfeeders out away from the house exposes feeder visitors to predators. I've seen bobcats and owls hanging out around our feeders looking for a tasty meal. Peg and I watched an owl one afternoon. He didn't take a second look at the birds, but when a mouse came calling; well, you know the rest of the story. Mice, rats and squirrels seem to be on the favorite foods lists of many predators.
The storage area for winter root vegetables in a root cellar or cold storage should be designed so critters can't gain entrance. We store our squash in an unheated room in the house and I've seen tooth marks in the skins already. Our two cats are marginally effective. They don't actively hunt them but rather catch the half grown and relatively stupid ones; mice that is. Cats generally won't attack rats, especially full grown rats.
Here at Johnny's, we make the greenhouses as inhospitable as possible. We roll up the sides for the winter and let the cold air in. We clean up any crop wastes and seeds that were spilled or dropped during the harvest season. We empty all compost bins and store the bins well away from the buildings. Anything that remains in the greenhouses is stored up on pallets so there's no room under anything to build a nest and stay the winter. Our compost area is at least 400 yards from any buildings so what critters do live down there won't venture this far to gain entry and are controlled by natural predators.
In summary, take away their food supply and deny them a place to overwinter where it's warm, or at least near the food supply and you've gone a long way to reducing their numbers and discouraging them from taking up residence in your house, greenhouse or barn.
To help with the smell, put out some vinegar in some open bowls around the area. It is amazing how effective it is in getting rid of odors. Had a dead mouse in the cellar some time back and it worked great.
Also if you have some sensitive areas that are hard to control use peppermint and spearmint sprays. Rats and mice hate the smell. Doesn't kill them but they will move along.
Good to know; after 2 weeks there's still a foul odor in the garage. I'm pretty sure I got all the dead critters out of there. I'd rather they not take up residence in the first place than having a control issue like I did this year. I'll let you know how it works out in a future column.


text:
Posted on Jan 2, 2014 by Security Bloggers Network
It's that time. Invitations for the Security Bloggers Meetup at RSA Conference 2014 have gone out, which means that the RSVP scramble has officially begun. We're all really excited and we hope you are, too.
This year we're taking over Jillian's, so it will be a truly private event. The same rules apply but we'll be able to let more people join the party and, well, let you all have run of the place. Poor Jillian's.
Which rules? Fellow committee member Rich Mogull shared them earlier. There are lots of definitions for bloggers but as the founder of the event and our resident "heavy" on the committee, he's reminding everyone the spirit of the event that we want to maintain for everyone's benefit.
If you think you fit the description but did not receive an invitation please complete this form. It is the only way to request an invite. Please do not email the committee members (unless you have a different question or just want to say hi!) or send carrier pigeons. Fill out the form and you'll be notified after committee review of the list each week.
Remember, if you've unsubscribed to the Security Bloggers Network email then you may not have received an invite, which means you may need to fill out the form, too.
Also, as Alan stated before, none of this would be possible without our fabulous sponsors, all listed in the big silver graphic below. Please thank them.
Security Blogger's Network
« View More Blogs
Weekly News Roundup January 4-8, 2021
By Kacy Zurkus	on Jan 08, 2021
Ben's Book of the Month: Review of "Tribe of Hackers Blue Team: Tribal Knowledge from the Best in Defensive Cybersecurity"
By Ben Rothke	on Dec 31, 2020
Domain Attack Surfaces: What Are They? How Big Are They?
By Jonathan Zhang	on Dec 23, 2020


Valentines Day - Flowers make an intimate connection and create a sharing atmosphere having a positive effect on state of mind and emotion.
Mothers Day- The presence of flowers triggers happy emotions, heightened feeling of life satisfaction.
Birthday - Flowers have a long-term positive effect on moods adding to the occasion.
Condolences - Flowers can give a mood-boosting effect. Research links flowers to compassion and tranquillity.
Just Because - Flowers fuel the soul and create an inspiring space. Fresh flowers are the perfect every day accessory for any budget. They add colour, fragrance and style. They increase energy and compassion.


Developing Effective Boardroom Decision Making - ICON Inc.
Developing Effective Boardroom Decision Making © is a training program designed for sitting boards specifically focusing on improving communication both internally and between the board and senior management. It can be delivered to the board members only or jointly with the senior management staff. The emphasis on clear problem identification and mutual understanding of relevant issues makes it particularly useful as an initial step prior to the beginning of the strategic planning process.
Highlight the importance of individual board member involvement and discussion on decisions of consequence while demonstrating mutual respect.
Provide participants with a recognition of the value of conflict in the decision making process, while differentiating between constructive and destructive conflict.
Create and understanding and comfort level with the inherent element of risk in all decisions and apply discussion techniques to help manage the risk element.
Provide the board and senior management a guide and format for clearly identifying and defining problems and/or issues of consequence requiring board decisions.
Lay the groundwork for the development of specific and effective action plans by the senior staff in response to decisions made by the board.
This course is approximately nine hours in length and can be offered in a one day or one and one half day (recommended) format, with or without joint involvement with the senior management staff.


text:
Local News News
Kenya leveraging on technology to deepen financial inclusion, enhance service delivery, President Kenyatta says
PSCU
President Uhuru Kenyatta has said Kenya will continue leveraging on new technologies to deepen financial inclusion and enhance service delivery.
He said the country is registering impressive successes in the deployment of technological solutions in various sectors of the economy especially in financial inclusion and in enhancing efficiency in the delivery of public services.
"Riding on mobile phone financial services, access to financial services in Kenya has more than tripled from 26 percent in 2006 to 82 percent in2019," President Kenyatta said.
The President spoke this evening at the Kenya School of Monetary Studies in Ruaraka, Nairobi County when he delivered the key note address at the ongoing inaugural Afro-Asia FinTech Festival.
The two-day financial technology (Fintech) conference is the first of its kind globally and is jointly organized by the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) and the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), and brings together thousands of delegates from Africa and Asia.
The Head of State called on Africa and Asia to work together to build more robust digital economies adding that Kenya is open to work with other governments and private bodies in leveraging innovations for technology driven financial inclusion.
While citing several of Kenya's leading innovations among them MPesa, the President said the country will continue leveraging on technology to enhance its tax collection through the iTax and provision of services to the public through the e-Citizen platforms.
He listed several other Kenyan innovations such as M-KOPA, a service delivery innovation in the power and lighting sub sector that has enabled many rural households to receive solar lighting gadgets.
President Kenyatta also talked about M-Akiba, which provides a savings mechanism for ordinary Kenyans who can save a dollar a day, and at the end of 30 days invest in government securities.
"For my Government, our key motivation in rolling out this product was to democratise access to financial services and to give a space at the heart of the financial system to every Kenyan no matter their location, social or economic status," the President said.
The President also spoke about Stawi, whose pilot was launched in May 2019, that targets to provide MSMEs with an 'anytime-anywhere' product that leverages on both traditional and non-traditional sources of credit information, particularly digital payment footprints arising from mobile money transactions, in order to allow banks to form an accurate credit appraisal of enterprises for the purposes of credit rating.
"The use of big data and artificial intelligence that the product (Stawi) is built on in effect de-risks the MSMEs and enables the reduction of credit cost," President Kenyatta said.
Delegates attending the seminal conference include inventors,entrepreneurs, technology scholars, researchers, media and university students drawn from 30 countries spread across five continents.
President Kenyatta said digital economies will help Africa expand opportunities to bring prosperity for more people.
He called on Asian governments and companies to partner with Africa to build stronger digital bridges between the economies of the two continents.
"Africa is open for business and we urge you to join hands with us in building a better and more prosperous World for All our People," said the President.
President Kenyatta also witnessed the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the CBK and MAS to co-develop "foundational infrastructure on identity,data and electronic Know-Your Customer procedures (e-KYC)."
Identity and e-KYC are critical prerequisites to enhancing financial inclusion while ensuring financial integrity at both national and cross-border levels.
"This initiative between our two Central Banks aligns well with the ongoing drive by my Government to introduce a ''single source of truth'' digital identity," he said.
The President encouraged more public and private sector partnerships to drive the growth of digital technology, a sector where Kenya plays a global lead role.
"It is only through such public and private sector collaborations and partnerships that we can build truly robust and resilient digital economies that leave no one behind and score astounding accomplishments for our citizenry,"the Head of State said.
More than 20 Singaporean companies are part of the delegation from Singapore led by Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Senior Minister and Coordinating Minister for Social Policies.
During a plenary presentation, Mr Shanmugaratnam talked at length about the benefits of globalization which aims at "growing the pie" for the largest number of people.
He said the FinTech summit is a unique conference focusing at giving opportunities to many entrepreneurs at the bottom of the financial radar.
"FinTech focuses on what the neglected segments of our people can do by offering them opportunities," said the Singaporean minister.
Others who spoke at the summit included CBK Governor Dr Patrick Njoroge and National Treasury Cabinet Secretary Henry Rotich.
Mr Rotich said the iTax and e-Citizen plaforms had greatly improved efficiency of service delivery in terms of of time and the range of services offered.
Besides the main conference, participants have an opportunity to visit exhibition booths by Kenyan and international companies where several top notch innovations are being showcased.
← Governors now move to Supreme Court over division of revenue stalemate
Police kill three Al-Shabaab militants in Lamu →
Nairobi// Women leaders support Uhuru
Regional Partnership, county governments join hands to address water crisis in Laikipia
SKF launches new anti-counterfeit app in Kenya


text:
Julodis euphratica es una especie de escarabajo del género Julodis, familia Buprestidae. Fue descrita científicamente por Laporte & Gory en 1835.

También conocido como el escarabajo joya sulfuroso o el escarabajo joya eufrático. Mide de 29 a 31 mm. Su cuerpo verde brillante está adornado con manchas de color amarillo brillante. Se alimenta del néctar de las flores silvestres. Las larvas de estos escarabajos viven en árboles de acacia, donde pasan el año antes de pupar y emerger a principios de la primavera para aparearse. La etapa larvaria dura unos 9 meses y los adultos viven 3 meses. La vida útil total del escarabajo desde el huevo hasta la adultez y la muerte es de aproximadamente un año.

Referencias

euphratica
Insectos descritos en 1835


Resort gift cards provide a fun and easy way for guests to choose their experience at Turning Stone.
Yellow Brick Road gift cards allow for an easy and fun way to make purchases. Gift cards are redeemable at any YBR restaurant and retail outlets or other participating Oneida Indian Nation Enterprise entities.
Point Place Casino Gift Cards make great gifts!
Skana the Spa at Turning Stone. Where soothing treatments and modern amenities combine with ancient American Indian healing traditions to create the world's most luxuriously unique spa experience.
At Ahsí Salon & Day Spa each service focuses on de-stressing and delights your senses with the ultimate line of treatments, results-based products and beauty care designed to revitalize your body and spirit.
Play where the pros play! Turning Stone is the Northeast's premier golf destination. Enjoy an unforgettable golfing vacation at some of the country's top award-winning championship courses and home of the Turning Stone Resort Championship.
A Restaurant Gift Card allows you to choose from any of Turning Stone's restaurant options.
Enjoy classic cuts, chops and cocktails at upstate's newest restaurant, TS Steakhouse, located in the Tower. Featuring a menu to dine for plus panoramic views, lifted spirits in our penthouse bar, and fine cigars in our intimate smoking parlor.
Pino Pronto serves up fast-paced, quality Italian street food, while Pino Bianco offers a casual yet sophisticated Italian family dining setting, and Bar Pino is the place to sip on a perfect glass of wine.
Overlooking Turning Stone Resort Casino's grand lobby sits Upstate Tavern, a full service casual American restaurant with an emphasis on good times and great food.
Saddle Up! At Tin Rooster, the pig's sacred, the beer's cold, and the atmosphere is Country Americana at its finest. Our BBQ features signature flavors that may start a finger lickin' addiction.
A gift card to Maple Leaf Market means you and those you care about will always have a full tummy and full tank of gas.
SavOn gift cards provide a fast and convenient way to purchase gas, diesel, food and grocery items, at any SavOn store. A perfect gift for someone on the go!


text:
Daata () is a 1989 Indian Hindi-language action drama film directed by Sultan Ahmed, starring Mithun Chakraborty, Shammi Kapoor, Padmini Kolhapure, Suresh Oberoi, Supriya Pathak, Amrish Puri, Ranjeet, Deepak Parashar, Shafi Inamdar, Saeed Jaffrey and Bharat Bhushan. This movie was average in big cities, but in small cities and in north India, it was a big hit. "Daata" remains for Mithun Chakraborty one of his best performances till date.

Plot
Dinanath is a school-teacher in a small town in India, and lives with his wife, Kamla; daughter, Shanti; and son Kundan. He has published a book called "Daata", in which he has made reference to all major religions of the world, and is honored for this contribution by none other than the President of India through the Education Minister, Raja Suraj Singh. He arranges the marriage of Shanti to the son of Gopaldas; when Gopaldas demands dowry, he is unable to afford this, and states that he has given sufficient gold and jewellery to Shanti. The gold turns out to be fake; as a result, the marriage is cancelled, Shanti kills herself, Dinanath dies of a heart attack. His name is tarnished, no one comes forward to help Kundan or his mother. Kundan decides to avenge his father's death by killing Gopaldas' son; as a result, he becomes a bandit, joins a band of other bandits and is on the look-out to kill Gopaldas. The question remains; is this what Dinanath had foreseen for his son - a life of a bandit, and death at the hands of the police?

Cast

 Mithun Chakraborty as Kundan Singh
 Shammi Kapoor as DIG Sher (Sheroo) Ali Khan
 Padmini Kolhapure as Sona Prasad
 Pallavi Joshi as Shanti Singh
 Suresh Oberoi as Ramzan Khan
 Supriya Pathak as Suraiya Khan / Suraiya Rauf Khan
 Amrish Puri as Gopal Das (G.D.) Sarang / Gopi
 Prem Chopra as Lala Naagraj (Nagi)
 Ranjeet as Natwar Sarang
 Saeed Jaffrey as Master Dinanath (Dinu) Singh
 Deepak Parashar as Inspector Rauf Khan
 Shoma Anand as Alka Naagraj
 Arjun as Kundan's Friend
 Bharat Bhushan as Pandit Dwarka Prasad, Father of Sona Prasad
 Birbal as Veeru
 Jamuna as Seema Suraj Singh
 Anil Dhawan as Kundan's Friend
 Satyendra Kapoor as Barkat Khan, Father of Ramzan Khan
 Raj Mehra as Jamuna's Husband
 Leela Mishra as Jamuna
 Mac Mohan as Kundan's Friend
 Mukri as Pandit Ram Prasad
 Jayshree Arora as Kamla Dinanath Singh
 Tom Alter as Pat
 Arun Bakshi as Inspector Sharma
 Brahm Bhardwaj as School Principal
 Kamal Kapoor as  Panna Seth Smuggler
Keshav Rana as Dhaniram , Smuggler
 Viju Khote as Thief
 Roopesh Kumar as G.D.'S Employee
 Arjun Sarja as Kundan's Friend
 Girja Shankar as Bheema
 Om Shivpuri as Education Minister Raja Suraj Singh
 Bhushan Tiwari as Jango, G.D.'S Employee
 Ashalata Wabgaonkar as Ratanbai

Music
Lyrics were written by Anjaan, Indeevar and Asad Bhopali.
"Daata Tere Kai Naam, Koi Pukare Kisi Naam Se Aaye Tu Sabke Kaam" - Mahendra Kapoor, Sadhana Sargam, Manhar Udhas
"Rona Dhona Chhod Chhod De, Hum Se Naata Jodh Jodhde" - Kishore Kumar, Alka Yagnik
"Naach Mere Lala" - Sapna Mukherjee, Nalin Dave
"Holi Khelein Nand Laal, Laal Khele Holi Kanha Ne Mari Aise Pichkari" - Sapna Mukherjee, Nalin Dave
"Teri Meri Yaari Yeh Dosti Hamari, Bhagwan Ko Pasand Hai Allah Ko Hai Pyari" - Suresh Wadkar, Mohammed Aziz
"Meri Jaan Pyar Karo, Pyar Hi Pyar Karo Pyare" - Asha Bhosle
"Daata Tere Kai Naam, Koi Pukare Kisi Naam Se Aaye Tu Sabke Kaam" (version 2) - Mahendra Kapoor, Sadhana Sargam, Manhar Udhas
"Baabul Ka Yeh Ghar Behana" - Kishore Kumar, Alka Yagnik
"Baabul Kaa Ye Ghar Behana" (Sad) - Kishore Kumar, Alka Yagnik
"Daata Tere Kai Naam, Koi Pukare Kisi Naam Se Aaye Tu Sabke Kaam" (version 2) - Sadhana Sargam, Manhar Udhas

Box office
The film was a super hit and the fifth highest-grossing movie of 1989.

References

 http://www.bollywoodhungama.com/movies/cast/5262/index.html
 http://ibosnetwork.com/asp/filmbodetails.asp?id=Daata

External links

 Daata at AllMovie

1989 films
1980s action drama films
1980s Hindi-language films
Films scored by Kalyanji Anandji
Indian action drama films
Films about social issues in India
1989 crime drama films