Amusing Musings

Before and after

2012-02-12T10:11:00.005-06:00

I liked it from the moment I saw it:

In a display at the Churchill airport of regional artwork available for purchase in town.

I like it even better on my wall after my favorite frame service has worked their magic. Giclée of the painting "Eternal Night" by Canadian artist Nathalie Parenteau. Enjoy looking at more limited editions at her website.

This is a screen snip of a Google search on the artist's name. Click to enlarge and marvel at the charm and brilliance of her work.

Suze Orman, what are you up to now?

2012-02-10T19:47:00.002-06:00

For those who might not be familiar with the Suze Orman Show, which I admit is a guilty pleasure of the kind that makes KLK cringe, Suze is a self-styled expert in personal finances whose real talent lies in an outsized personality. I'm sure she has a well-stocked, fundamentally competent staff that examines the finances of, and makes recommendations for, the show's call-ins so Suze can lecture them in her tough-love style, making the rest of us happy that our mortgages aren't under water, that we don't have tens of thousands of dollars in student loans to repay, that we don't have a mother-in-law who is sucking our bank accounts dry, and that our credit card balance is pretty much duly payable every month.

But in spite of her good reputation, she does have a bit of a tenuous grasp on reality sometimes. I've heard her tell late middle-aged retiree-wanna-be's that if they would just invest "that money" at a 4% annual rate of return, by the time they're 70 they'll have a million dollars on which to retire comfortably. I would prefer if she would just come out and tell us where we can get a steady 4%, I'll move all my spare cash there ASAP. Anyway, someone else thinks she has an even more tenuous grasp on real life, apparently. I couldn't keep myself from laughing at this highly annotated ad on the bus - for the most innocent and certainly most plebeian of financial institutions, credit unions.

What Money Susie? I'm not Republican, or a Military Contractor, or Dick Cheney

Another car portrait surfaces!

2012-02-04T18:39:00.004-06:00

Alas, this one, a 1946 Ford station wagon - wood-trimmed - wasn't ours. Perhaps it belonged to the man sitting on the running board, whom I can't identify. At left, standing, is anthropologist and linguist Carl Voegelin, to the right, his wife, also an accomplished ethnographer (and also present in the photo below of my father supervising the changing of a flat in Mexico), Erminie Wheeler-Voegelin, and my father. They're all beaming, aren't they, and well they should be with a vehicle like that one to pose beside.

The art of letter-writing

2012-02-04T07:51:00.002-06:00

I recently came across a fabulous blog, Letters of Note, which for your convenience, and mine, I've added to my Check out these blogs! banner at the lower left of Amusing Musings. Regular readers know how precious letters (and just notes left under doors) can be to me, several of which I've written about here. I especially refer you to Monday, January 30's Letters of Note post, "To My Old Master." Let me know what you think!

In my family, we don't have a love affair with cars

2012-01-24T21:43:00.001-06:00

My family prided itself in not being swept up in the American culture of crazy automobile worship. Oh no, we're always practical about our cars, comfortable and safe transportation is all we need. Well, except for the fact, it turns out, that we really like to have our photos taken with our cars. I think that's evidence we liked them a lot more than we were willing to admit, starting with my mother's parents, when she was very young. Here they are having a picnic by a pineapple plantation in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, where they lived in the early part of the 20th century.

That's my grandfather teetering uncomfortably on a wooden crate that says, "Stow Away from Engines and Boilers" with my mother, who looks to be about 3 (making this about 1915). The smiling woman in the hat, under the shade of the car roof, is my grandmother, with friends.

I hope some day to know what kind of car it was. But even though they had a car--grandfather was a banker, after all--they kept this--maybe just for fun, or maybe for those days when the car wouldn't start--and made a photographic record of it, too:

A couple of years later, as their fortunes grew, and as cars evolved, we find them out and about in this rather more capacious and sophisticated-looking vehicle with white-walls!

And yet later, their close friends, known to my mother as Uncle Billy and Aunt Suze, had a Winton 6 worthy of this formal portrait, which in turn was worthy of being kept along with all the other old memorabilia all these years:

What a magnificent beast!

My father's family was not to be left out, of course. Here's a portrait of my paternal grandfather, dated 1943, with a gorgeous, shiny Buick convertible, after the end of the "black-only" paint option era:

My parents met and married a few years after my grandfather had his picture taken with the Buick. My father, who was very junior in the ranks at Indiana University at the time, was nonetheless apparently able to afford his own car. I don't know the story around these photos, but they are marked "Spring 1948" on the back, and I would bet a lot it was their first new car. Here's a view of my mother posed in front it, revealing it to be a Frazer (and that she smoked cigarettes at the time):

Says Wikipedia, "The Frazer (1946-1951) was the flagship line of upper-medium priced American luxury automobiles built by the Kaiser-Frazer Corporation of...Ypsilanti, Michigan, and was, with Crosley, the first American car with new envelope body and fresh postwar styling." In those days it cost about half a year's salary.

By 1953 they had upgraded to a much more modern model. This appears to be a rather large two-door Kaiser, with 3-year old me playing on it.

Sometime during this period, one of our cars, maybe this Kaiser, was completely consumed in a flaming accident on a rural road. The story was that a woman was tearing along the road in the dark with no headlights on, and that my father, who could not have seen her coming, pulled out right in front of her. Somehow (in those pre-seatbelt, pre- airbag days) we weren't hurt, though I don't know the fate of driver who hit us. That was certainly the last time my father would buy a black car though, determining that the dark paint had contributed to our nighttime invisibility.

There may have been others in between, but the first car I have a good memory of was our 1956 flamboyantly pink Plymouth exactly like this restored beauty:

Thanks to Regina Antique Auto, Members' Rides, for the use of this image

My father was about as unmechanical as a man could be. But somebody with a sense of humor (namely, my mother) snapped this on a Christmas 1959 trip to Mexico. Although Mother and I were along, it was basically a business trip, and the cars were chauffeured. My father seems to be supervising the changing of a tire, something he certainly never could have managed himself on his own car:

Around this time,the station wagon became all the rage. Here's my father most debonairly posing in front of our Rambler Ambassador, red with a white blaze and all, in 1960:

Flash forward about 6 years. We now live in a house with a big garage, I have my driver's license, and I have to get myself to school, to work, and out to the farm where I kept my horse. And, Volkswagen not long before had invaded America. Here's my very first car, a 1959 VW beetle with no gas gauge, only a lever on the floor next to the gas pedal that, with the nudge of a toe, would allow just enough additional gas to flow from a spare tank to get me to the nearest gas station when the main tank ran dry:

You're probably thinking, "hey, there's nobody posed with that car!" but if you click to enlarge the photo you can just see my German shepherd dog Katja smiling from the back seat, eagerly awaiting a ride to our next adventure. What wonderful new-found freedom that was for us both!
Cute and useful as it was, my bug wasn't exactly a hot car. My mother, who also worked and had a busy life, decided to buy herself a car, and was unaccountably attracted to a bright red Mercury Cougar with white leather interior seats. Now that was a HOT car. It drank gas like it was going out of style, had a very heavy-duty four-on-the floor, and could lay a patch a block long (which my mother thought hilarious). Need I add, it was a boyfriend magnet when my mother let me drive it? Also unaccountably, my mother actually let me drive it from southern Indiana to New Orleans and the gulf coast of Texas with a boyfriend. I can't exactly reconstruct when that was, or how I managed to get my mother's approval, but here's the boyfriend at what appears to be the edge of a Texas oilfield with just the tail end of the car showing:

Boy, I loved that Cougar. The boyfriend, not so much.
By this time, though, I had sold my pretty green VW and gone off to college, where the undergrads weren't allowed to own cars. When I at last graduated, in her great generosity, my mother bought me my first new car. It was a 1972 Mercury Capri. Pronounced ca-PREE. Which drove my multilingual father, of European birth, insane, as the original Italian isle is unequivocally pronounced CA-pree. The showroom price was $3,000. It too was a sporty four-on-the-floor, very muscular and nimble, and gave me all pleasure and no trouble commuting across country and over the mountains of southern Arizona where I went to grad school. Unfortunately, I can't find a good portrait of the car--I hope there is one somewhere that I've overlooked. But there it is, with a giant U-Haul container bolted to the roof for a cross-country move, forming the distant backdrop for yet another boyfriend. Yes, he is Italian, so that his shirt is open to his navel revealing a gold medallion on a chain goes with the territory.

Eventually, I wore out my beloved little Capri. It lasted only about three or four years until it started to show signs of serious engine troubles at around 80,000 miles. What I really wanted next was a BMW, but what I ended up with was a blue 4-door Toyota Corona. Not sexy, not hot, but plenty reliable and long-lived. I don't seem to have a great portrait of that car either, but here is KLK grinning hopelessly at me since I had pulled into a space centering his door perfectly over a giant mud puddle, 1989.

And here is the one-and-only interior shot I have from any of my cars. This is my dog Pia (aka Woofie) looking cute in the back seat of that Toyota.

She was a sweet, gentle dog, but had enough German shepherd in her (about half) that she defended that car, more ferociously than our home even, from threats like evil automated car washes and toll-booth attendants who had the temerity to reach toward the driver's window in order to accept toll payment.
The Toyota gave many good years of service, but was ultimately deemed seriously unsafe when it was possible to view the road through the rusted floor boards. In 1993, I bought myself a right nice new Honda Civic, bright red, four-on-the-floor again, and with air conditioning. It was my very first with air. Don't ask how I survived the Capri in Arizona without air conditioning. I have no memory of having been terribly uncomfortable, but I it must have been so.

That's me, beaming from the driver's seat, Saugatuck Michigan, 1991. That was truly one of my greatest car, comfortable, much more roomy than it looks from outside, mechanically sound, road-sure and peppy, but efficient. With crank-down windows, manual door locks, and of course, no airbags.
This darling lasted intact until one early morning in 2003, when I was driving on a mostly empty high-speed interstate highway and I came across a car stopped perpendicular to the median barrier. Both front doors were open and I could see the deflated airbag drooping over the steering wheel and the crushed front end. A few dozen feet away from the car was what must have been the hapless driver, no blood, no guts, just a cell phone socked to her ear. I can tell you that I was deeply impressed by the fact that the driver was uninjured in what could otherwise have been a very different sort of accident. I knew the time had come to upgrade.
I sold the Civic for $500 less than asking to a flattering male Italian graduate student ("Oh, a be-yooo-teee-ful car, and a be-yooo-teee-ful woman") and summarily purchased my third new car, a silver VW Jetta with all the modern amenities I didn't even know I wanted, like a sun roof and heated seats (both are very nice). Isn't it amazing that I made it through half a century and into the new Millennium before I owned a car with air conditioning? Automatic door locks? Electric windows? And that what goes around comes around. I started with a VW, and that's where I've ended up, for now.

Door County, Wisconsin

No, we don't we don't worship our cars in my family. But doesn't their coming and going mark signposts in our lives, their power, and sculptural beauty, and capacity bring us pleasure and ease, their very existence add to life's adventure?

How my phone bill blew up

2012-01-08T10:03:00.000-06:00

I would give up my land line in a minute (no more recorded mortgage offers from law-breakers violating my presence on the do-not-call list! no more legal but oh-so-annoying calls from politicans!) but cell phones still aren't that all that reliable in terms of sound quality, and besides, my battery runs down in no time. So why would I give up my land line? Well, for one thing, the cost in relation to the service is ridiculous. Typically, my bill for basic services and certainly no long distance, is a little over $23, with about 66% of that for line charges, federal access charges, and other mystery fees. Of course, my cell phone bill is similarly full of tack-ons, but at least long distance calls are included in my fixed exorbitant monthly total. No surprises with the cell phone, thank you very much.

But in late November, trying to eliminate the increasing pile of dead trees arriving in my snail-mail box in the form of paper catalogs that I'm also not supposed to be getting because I signed up for the no-junk mail-list, using my land line I called the sender of each new catalog to politely (while gritting my teeth) request that I be taken off their mailing list. After dialing what I obliviously assumed was the toll-free number of one of these senders, as they answered the phone it suddenly dawned on me that it might not be a toll free call--I realized I didn't recognize their area code as likely being in the usual series of freebies. I had the presence of mind before I said anything else to ask if the call was toll free, and the customer service representative answered, "no, but I'll be glad to call you back" (I wonder how any catalog store can expect to retain customers if they have to pay to order by phone?). She called right back, at the company's expense this time, and cheerfully confirmed she would take me off the mailing list. Fine, done. I assumed my goof would trigger a long distance charge of some kind on my phone bill, but I never dreamed it would come to this:

And that, my friends, is how my dumb little 32¢ sin blew up into a $3.58 charge.

History in my hands

2012-01-01T16:33:00.002-06:00

I've posted a number of times about my maternal family's connections to Puerto Rico, including my best reconstruction of my grandfather's life and death there, my mother's late middle-aged return for the best years of her life, and what little I know about Eliette Adonicam, who was the cook in my grandparents' home in San Juan. This good long New Year holiday weekend I was playing around on Flickr, enjoying looking at others' photos of that colorful Caribbean island, when I came across a couple of disparate groups (where members post their photos on specific themes) devoted to historical images of Puerto Rico. Most of them don't have a lot of members, and they don't have a lot of images, but what they do have made something click in my mind. Over the last couple of years I have scanned in only the most telling photographic portraits of my grandparents, my mother as a child and young woman, and her little sister Louise, who died at the age of 6 in those pre-antibiotic days. But in the fat envelopes I found among my mother's things when she died are easily dozens more fading photos of the countryside, the cities (which were so undeveloped they were almost rural in the first third of the 20th century), poverty and riches, lifestyles, and a couple of lesser or greater historical figures who were my grandparents' friends, all taken between 1908 and January of 1948. I've been busy scanning them all day today, and I'm not half finished. Here, for example, are some very interesting shots of a handsome, dignified woman identified on the back of the undated photos, in my granny's handwriting, as Dr. Martha Caul, posing in front of what looks to be a once-grand, now-decrepit, country house:

I guessed, since there are a total of four formal portraits of her, that she must have been an éminence grise and a good friend. How did we ever answer questions before there was Google? Several gems turned up, and this one, from the Poughkeepsie NY-Eagle, December 9, 1936, shows Dr. Caul deserves not to be forgotten by Puerto Rico. This is from the :

NEW YORK. Dec. 8 - Dr. Martha F. Caul, Brooklyn Physician died last night at the age of 68.

Dr. Caul lived for many years in Puerto Rico and in the hurricane of 1928 [?] headed a Red Cross delegation in relief work. She also led a $2,000,000 relief fund drive for victims of the disaster.

She attended public schools in Buffalo and was graduated from the Buffalo Medical college. Funeral services will be at her home tomorrow and burial will be at Brant Center [?], N.Y. her birthplace

She also turns up in Ancestry.com, where the image of a 1916 passport application reveals that she was born on May 2, 1869, and her profession is listed as farmer. She's there in the 1920 census as well, where, as a widow, her role in the family is head-of-household, and the industry in which she works is a finca de toronjes - she had a grapefruit farm! Here's another extraordinary tidbit about her life from the Emporia (Kansas) Daily Gazette of May 5, 1933:

Dr. Martha F. Caul, of Brooklyn, one of the best known women physicians (she witnessed the operation on McKinley when surgeons tried to save him from the assassin's lead) is said to have been the first women to own and drive a motor car in New York State. Barney Oldfield taught her.

McKinley was assassinated, in 1901, in Buffalo New York, so that excitement took place before she came to Puerto Rico.

My grandparents kept wonderful company: Dr. Martha F. Caul must have been an intrepid woman indeed, start-to-premature-finish.

Part VIII: Something about Winnipeg

2011-12-25T09:46:00.000-06:00

(Please start with Part I, if you haven't already, and work your way up!)
The United Airlines direct flight from Chicago to Winnipeg (aka, Winterpeg, and Windypeg, though you wouldn't know it from our couple of beautiful days there), jumping off city for Churchill and polar bears, is surprisingly easy from Chicago. Although from the perspective of that other Windy City, the one at the nadir of Lake Michigan, Winnipeg seems as though it should be much farther, in fact flying time is under two hours. We arrived in plenty of time to be summarily delivered by Natural Habitat Adventures to our hotel, the Fort Garry, dump our stuff, and head out to spend the afternoon with our friend, photographer Doug Dance, whose home Winnipeg is. I know him from years of travels to Yellowstone.

Doug has a day job but lives for weekends when he can get out of town with camera rigged for serious nature photography. In 2003, the year this photo of us was taken at Floating Island Lake, he had taken a year off from that day job to spend 365 days, 24/7, in Yellowstone The result was his wonderful first volume, Once Around the Sun in Yellowstone. Doug is the most accurate observer of wildlife, weather, seasons, and the impact of human beings on natural processes that I know, and his device of following selected sagas--especially the soap opera that is the lives of Yellowstone's wild wolves--is brilliant. What a treat that, on the beautiful mid-October day of our arrival, he took us out to Oak Hammock Marsh, a favorite birding spot less than a hour's drive from the center of the prairie city that is Winnipeg. We were a little early for snow geese, a little late for many other winged migrants, but just in time for loads of Canada geese, and a dozen northern harrier sightings as they worked the stubbled fields along the way. The major thing we learned from this lovely afternoon is that Manitoba, the population of which is in any sense dense only in the southern fourth of its geography, is resplendent with natural beauty and an abundant variety of major wildlife, much of it within a few hours drive time from Winnipeg, making "The Peg" a fine place to live for a nature-lover.

KLK and Doug looking for a rare bird, or even a common one, Oak Hammock Marsh

Another of Winnipeg's major claims to fame is its location at the "fork" of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers. In fact this hydrography, at the confluence of two major navigable rivers, was important in pre-Columbian times for the same reasons it made an ideal location for the early 18th century French fort and trading post that eventually matured into a modern city.

Please click to enlarge for detail.

The red star is the felicitous location of our hotel, the Fort Garry, and the green star is where I was standing when I took this photo:

How often do you see a map that so precisely portrays such a small land form? The Winnipegians have sagely preserved this whole area for parkland and other public use. There are running and bike paths, and inviting pedestrian bridges, such as the Esplanade Real across the Red...

...which parallels the visually friendly Provencher Bridge for vehicular traffic, and beyond that (not visible in this photo), the railroad bridge:

Note that the etchings on the flanks of the bridge honoring the culture of the precolonial era.
Just under construction at the Forks is the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. It's going to be an architectural destination if nothing else when it's done.

Another of Winnipeg's claims to fame is that it is extraordinarily multicultural, in large part due to its stable economy and good job market; the Human Rights Museum will doubtless hold much meaning to locals as well as visitors.
Also at the Forks, a little indoor shopping area with some nice restaurants and most appealing sculptures outdoors:

The Wisdom Owl, artist unknown

This is the view from the Forks looking back past Union Station (passengers and freight trains) to the copper wedding-cake roof of the historic Fort Garry Hotel, and to the left, a highrise newer section.

Over the years, I've checked out the lobbies of, or stayed in, a number of historic hotels built in late 19th and early 20th century by Canadian railroads, including the Chateau Frontenac in Quebec, the Prince of Wales in Waterton, Banff Springs in Banff, the Chateau Lake Louise in Jasper, the Empress in Victoria, and the Hotel Vancouver in Vancouver. Winnipeg's Fort Garry (opened in 1913), was built within a block of the railroad station, and is still a thriving concern nearly 100 years later. It has its charms, though I would not say it is quite up to the standard of your average 21st century hotel, nor does it rank up there with the Canada's top historic railroad hostelry for charm or elegance. The rooms are small (we stayed in two of them, one going and one coming, with four nights in Churchill in between), lined with feminine rose-print wallpaper, furnished "granny" style, with big old cathode ray tube TVs (I haven't been in any sort of hotel room, including the ill-fated Northern Nights in Churchill, that didn't have a flat screen TV, in years), and sun-stained green velveteen drapes. Perhaps being a conveniently-located historic edifice with reliable contracts with tour companies makes the existence of competition moot!

In any case, we ended our stay in Canada with a good night's sleep, and on the flight home caught one last good look at how this lovely city sits surrounded by rich productive agricultural land, the fruits of which keep the port of Churchill busy.

Part VII: The people of Churchill

2011-12-18T20:28:00.002-06:00

(Please start with Part I, if you haven't already, and work your way up!) One of the big advantages of staying in town, as opposed to a "lodge" on the tundra, is that after long days looking for bears from the vantage of our tundra rover, we were treated to dinner at one of several Churchill restaurants (Gypsy's, the Seaport, or at the now burned-to-the-ground, Northern Nights Lodge) followed by a visit to hear a local raconteur. But one of my very favorite Churchillians was Stu, driver of our "in-town" van for Great White Bear Tours.

Stu, was raised in Churchill but now living with his wife, a nurse, in Saskatchewan, had returned to work polar bear season. Returning, for him, is a special pleasure because his mother and sister still live in Churchill. Stu told us his heritage is Cree and Dene, which are the two most prominent First Nations groups of the region. So typical of native peoples, he comes from an amazingly hospitable family. One day, after a drive around the docks along the Churchill River, Stu pulled the van into a parking lot of a building very like this one--a typical modern-day Churchill dwelling:

He left the engine running--we did need the heater on!--unbuckled his seat belt and said, "Wait just a minute, I'll be right back!" In flash, he was back with a cutting board and a large, foil-covered slab of still-hot-from-the-oven bannock bread, baked for us by his sister. Simple, fresh, refreshing, and accompanied by butter and locally-made jam, this was the ultimate hospitality from a woman too humble to come out to the bus for us to thank her. It was one of the highlights of the trip, thanks to Stu and his family.

Guide Sandra and van driver Stu with everybody's cameras taking a group picture.

Stu was not officially a guide, but he was quite knowledgeable about the area, the wildlife, local lifestyles and history. Of the caribou ragout at the Lazy Bear Lodge, when asked if he liked it, Stu said, graciously, "yes, it's good" and then, of course, "but it's not like my mother makes it." I'm sure that's true!

Lunching on caribou and muskox dishes beyond the caribou skin at the Lazy Bear Lodge Cafe

One evening we visited the Churchill Métis Heritage Center where we were hosted by Métis elder, Myrtle Demeulles. In Canada, Métis is a demographic designation referring to people of mixed European and aboriginal heritage; in the United States such people were denigrated as "half-breeds." Like many such people around the once-colonial world, they suffered from a lack of acceptance by either parent's culture and doubtful treatment by the government. Today, the Métis of Canada are proud of their legacy, and have found strength in their numbers in large part due to the leadership of people like Myrtle.Of Scottish-Cree descent, she was married to a Frenchman. She has in fact been recognized as the recipient of the Order of Manitoba. Here's her certificate, displayed at the Heritage Center to remind the young of the importance of her work:

Myrtle spoke to us for about a half an hour about what it was like to grow up in a Cree community, how the Cree take care of their needy (especially, "skinny women"), and how inspiration comes to her in dreams. Myrtle is well-known for her wonderful tufted caribou fur "dimensional sculptures" charmingly depicting the natural boreal world. Here they are on display, with my apologies for not having a close-up to show you (click to enlarge for detail):

And here is Myrtle, ever friendly and interested chatting with her visitors at the Center:

On another evening, we found ourselves at St. Paul's Anglican Church, of which Churchill's official website, "Everything Churchill" has this to say:

St. Paul’s Anglican Church, the first prefabricated building in North America and a designated heritage site by the Province of Manitoba, is the oldest church in the North still in use. It originated as a kit of pre-fab components made in England, was assembled on the west bank of the Churchill River, then was moved in winter by sledge to the other side of the river followed by a final relocation to another street. St. Paul’s also has ties to the exploration era – Lady Franklin donated a stained-glass window in memory of her husband Sir John Franklin, the famous Arctic explorer. It can still be seen today.

They fail to mention Bill Calnan, the church's lay spokesman, who entertained us on another evening with tales of the early British-European history of the area. Bill was original from the United States, but has lived and worked in Churchill--often as a tour bus driver and guide--for 40 years.

And here's a detail of the remarkable Franklin window housed at the St. Paul's (click to enlarge to fully enjoy its beauty):

The other prominent cultural legacy of Churchill is of course, that of the Inuit, celebrated and preserved by another religious organization, the Catholic Diocese of Churchill, in the Eskimo Museum. In a possibly uncharacteristic moment of foresight, in 1944 the mission determined that the artifacts of the Eskimo culture (now known by their name for themselves, Inuit) should be sheltered, studied, and appreciated. Today the museum remains very small, but replete with precious objects such as these fine walrus-tusk carvings:

and these larger icons of the Inuit, authentic hide-covered kayaks that look like they are well-used:

In the background the museum's excellent little shop is visible. It's full of brilliant carvings the Inuit are known for so well. I think the whimsey--amply visible in the ivory pieces too--and extreme precision of the work are perhaps what comes of very long northern winter nights with little else to do. To our pleasure and good fortune!
X

Part VI: When good bears go bad

2011-12-11T09:24:00.002-06:00

(Please start with Part I, and work your way up, if you haven't already!)
Living peaceably surrounded by hundreds of hungry, bored and curious bears can be a challenge for humans. The good people of Churchill set limits, but bears ignore the signs and sometimes--well, apparently, fairly often--wander into town, where there might be garbage, dog food, or other nutritious edibles, and where they can be entertained by antics, and destructible property, of humans. Needless to say, this is very problematic, so when a bear is spotted in the neighborhood, it's seriously discouraged with firecrackers and blanks. Some bears aren't impressed. Those that don't go away usually find themselves entrapped...

Polar bear traps waiting to be deployed around town from the Holding Facility

...and consigned to the Churchill Polar Bear Holding Facility, aka, the Polar Bear Jail, which consists of a huge quonset hut with 30 cinder-block cells inside, dim lighting for sensory deprivation, and only chunks of ice to gnaw on, with the intention of delivering a miserably aversive, but harmless, message. Sentences are 10-30 days long. When their sentence is up, the parolee gets a free helicopter lift to a remote location to await freeze-up of Hudson's Bay without human interference (or vice-versa).

One day, when we happened not to be out on the tundra, our guide got wind of an impending release, which our group and a few others were invited to observe.

Looks just like the roadside in Yellowstone, but in micro-miniature

We set up, the Manitoba Natural Resources officers set up, the jail door swings open, and out comes a four-wheeler with a well-sedated big white bear flopped on a flatbed trailer. The four-wheeler lines up with a net splayed on the ground, and next thing we know, the bear is ready to wrap. Although the day was very dull, since she had been kept in an unlighted cell for days, the kerchief over her eyes allows her to adapt slowly to the relative brightness of the outdoors:

As if this wasn't already plenty cool enough, the door swings open again, and out comes the four-wheeler again, this time with a good-sized cub on it:

Large cub, probably coming into its second winter

While a wildlife officer secures a tow rope to the bottom of the 'copter for Mom, Little Bear gets to ride in the back seat. Our guide Sandra tells us it will be seat-belted in.

The sedated cub looks like a toy polar bear

Baby on board, Mom well-secured, and without further ado, the helicopter lifts off and the slack comes out of the rope around her net:

Mom, who looks entirely relaxed and oblivious swinging up there in the cold air, has a big blob of green paint on her back. I have heard different explanations but understand this is a conventional way of marking bears that have been incarcerated. Although it's unlikely the Inuit would want to hunt and eat such a skinny bear (she's been nearly fasting, after all, since June), especially one with a cub, and what's more, I assume there is no hunting allowed in the Wildlife Management Area, in other regions and at other times of the year a hunter would surely want to know if the bloodstream and flesh of a bear contained a major sedative before shooting it for food.


Bear-in-the-Air

Bye bears! Have a wonderful winter! See ya' next year! NOT.

Go to Part VII.

Part V. Tundra, tundra, tundra!

2011-12-03T15:20:00.003-06:00

(Please start with Part I and work your way up, if you haven't already!)

"Alpine" tundra territory along the Beartooth Highway, Montana, in 2007

So what exactly is the tundra? (Doesn't the word itself have an appealing ring to it? "TUNDRA!") Having spent a week there makes me no expert, but according to Wikipedia (which knows everything, right?), tundra is an ecological region characterized by permafrost, vegetation (little of it in the form of trees) adapted to harsh conditions and a very short growing season, but lush with bird life, a variety of mammals, and even insects. As mentioned previously, the boreal tundra where Churchill is located reminds me very much of the alpine tundra along the Beartooth Highway (Montana), which is far lower in latitude (about 49N compared to Churchill at 58N) and far higher in elevation. The photo above was taken at about 8,500 or 9,000 feet, compared to Churchill, at 94 feet above sea level at its maximum.
In mid-October, the tundra along the western shores of Hudson's Bay can be a dreary, windy, rainy place, but even the low visibility and wind-driven precipitation can't hide its unique beauty.

Inukshuk in the tundra, taken in the Churchill Wildlife Management Area; click to enlarge.

Dotted with big, sheeting snowflakes, this scene reveals an inukshuk at the left--this one smaller and certainly more traditionally constructed than the two large, "official" ones in town--and stunted trees, probably black spruce, known as krumholtz. Some are flag trees, with branches growing mostly leeward.
The tundra is full of shallow depressions where water collects, and tundra rovers are fully equipped to ignore such impediments.

"Carry on!"

Tundra along Hudson's Bay

Soon to be frozen over, featureless, and bearless until spring thaw--the tundra is nonetheless not colorless.

Google satellite image, Churchill River and estuary (center), city of Churchill, edge of Hudson's Bay, and surrounding tundra; note the pock-mark like lakes, especially to the west.

Part IV Life and death on the tundra

2011-11-28T21:36:00.003-06:00

(Please start with Part I, and work your way up, if you haven't already!)
We spent two very full days on the tundra, learning more about it and its inhabitants each day. Polar bears thrive on a diet of ringed seals, which live in Hudson's Bay year 'round (and elsewhere where polar bears abound) but the bears can only access them from the ice surface, in other words, they can gorge themselves on this nutritious food source only from November through about June each year--unless a seal is serendipitously delivered up to them on the beach before ice-up. It does happen; given the windstorms we were experiencing, I would guess by the looks of it, this poor guy apparently had had a fatal head-on bash against a rock.

Ringed seal, favorite polar bear food, named for the distinctive spots on its hide.

Polar bears, like other bears, are by no means averse to consuming a free meal, and this one had already started to investigate this gift from the sea.


A polar bear tests the air in an effort to locate the odoriferous seal carcass about 75 or 100 yards in our direction.

Same hungry bear, circling the source

Unfortunately, at that moment there were a three tundra vehicles surrounding the seal carcass, and I think, in spite of very strong off-shore winds blowing across it towards the bear, the large vehicles may have distorted the scent-line. He walked back and forth several times while we watched, stopping to point his nose in the air, clearly aware that a free meal awaited somewhere nearby. But he either wasn't quite able to accurately locate it, or he was not willing to pass between the rovers to get it. After a while he bedded down in the osiers for a nap. A friend who stayed in the Tundra Lodge later reported to me that the next day her rover excursion witnessed a bear consuming the last of the seal. It may have taken a while, but the bear(s) took full advantage of it after all.
More bears out there, everywhere:

A nice big bear heads toward the fully liquid Hudson's Bay; less than a month later the Bay was frozen and the bears had left the tundra.

The nature preserves of Churchill are known for other wildlife besides polar bears, too. Everywhere we saw what looked like dozens of kleenex tissues fluttering in the wind, rising about 15 feet in the air, swooping, and landing on the ground. When the "tissues" did finally descend for a few seconds they were revealed to be snow buntings, like large sparrows with white breasts and undersides, black-tipped wing tops, and rusty nape, head, and "necklace," pecking at the remnant fruits of the summer's seed-bearing plants. We saw a raven or two, three or four lesser scaup lagging behind their migrated brethren, and maybe an occasional gull--forgive me if I know not what kind. We also saw a tiny herd of rock ptarmigan, all in winter white except for little black Zorro masks across their eyes. Most disappointingly, none of this birdlife was gracious enough to stand still for a photo. In other seasons, they say, it's birding paradise.
Other critters we might have seen, but did not happen to: arctic fox, arctic hare, boreal woodland caribou, and moose. And very, very remotely possibly, wolves. What we did see, in town near the docks (on Cape Merry) rather than out on the tundra, was this stunning red fox, described as being "cross phase" meaning, I believe, that it combined red and silver fur patterns in one animal:

With apologies for the poor quality image (what a lost photo op!!) -- I wasn't allowed to get out of the van and shoot without a windshield between camera and critter because a polar bear was said to be in the vicinity. We didn't see the bear but in the distance we could see the trap that awaited it.

And of course, the presence of fox means a plenitude of small rodents year 'round. It gave me the feeling that there's so much more going on out there that I wanted to know about!

Go to Part V.

Part III: Where the bears are

2011-11-27T07:46:00.005-06:00

(Please start with Part I, and work your way up, if you haven't already.)
Bears are not welcome in town (about that more later), but they have their own protected territory: The Churchill Wildlife Management area (which also encompasses Wapusk National Park) is just adjacent to town. In the far distance to the left of the sign are the buildings of the Churchill Northern Studies Centre, where scientists conduct research on wildlife, botany, geophysics, climate, and everything else that is fascinating about the boreal tundra.

Churchill Wildlife Management Area

From: Hudson Bay Lowlands Proposed Protected Areas (undated), Manitoba Conservation

The very top of the beige area on the map, along the shore of Hudson's Bay, is accessible to permitted organized tours. But accessible has a rather specific meaning on the tundra. Although the Canadian military once used the area for research and training, the "roads" in the protected area can only be referred to in quotes.

What the military left behind was a small network of routes that require specialized vehicles to navigate. The vehicles used today, called tundra buggies or rovers, were locally designed and assembled to safely navigate the terrain (deep mud, water, ice, snow, rocks large and small), and to keep passengers warm and safe inside while allowing good viewing and photography. Early on our first morning in Churchill, Great White Bear Tours delivered us to the rear viewing deck of our rover to board.

The rovers are truly massive, and although they accommodate 30 or so people plus the guide and driver, NatHab limits the number of participants in each group to 14 or 15 so every one can have a window seat. Everyone wants a window seat!

They heave along the tundra at maybe 3 to 5 miles an hour, affording plenty of time to keep a lookout for wildlife. We rolled along for almost an hour while Sandra talked about bears, the tundra, and the local culture. Then someone called out BEAR!! There she was, our first wild polar bear, rolled up against the willows, butt to the wind (of which there was plenty: it had not let up even in the slightest since our arrival).

She momentarily looked up, sleepy and unconcerned--the bears have been living with rovers full of tourists in their midst for at least 20 years--conserving energy while waiting for the winter hunt to begin. Then she went back to sleep.

The reason they rest butt-windward, which we observed over and over again on our forays on the tundra, is that it enables them to utilize their acute sense of smell to monitor what is going on behind them; like humans, they have to squint when facing the wind, so thus oriented, they can then use their human-like vision to keep an eye on what is before them, even in blizzard conditions.

Facing the wind

Great White Bear Tours and one other company also have rights to park a train-like assembly of tundra vehicles that includes a kitchen car with staff quarters, dining car, lounge, and several sleeping cars, during polar bear season. Visitors can opt to stay out on the tundra in one of these lodges for the duration of their visit; they're probably not as comfortable as those of us in town, and they did not have the opportunity to enjoy the local culture and variety of restaurants (more on these later) like we in town did, but their bear sightings were nearly continuous as the bears, curious by nature and bored by circumstance, like to hang out near the lodges. Each time our rover stopped at the lodge we were amply rewarded.

Another snoozing polar bear, this one beneath the Tundra Lodge

This bear, hanging out by the lodge tires, was consuming a ball cap that had blown off of someone's head from the viewing platform above.

All bears use their noses, but polar bears are believed to have the most well-developed sense of smell among their kin. Reportedly, they can pick up the scent of seal breath 20 miles across the ice. This guy appears to be particularly enjoying the aroma of fresh tourists.

Go to Part IV.

Part II: There are no roads to Chuchill

2011-11-26T14:30:00.006-06:00

(Please start with Part I, if you haven't already, and work your way up!)
The next morning, we joined our group in a mini-van that delivered us, in caravan with other NatHab groups' vans, through the back gate of the Winnipeg airport, across the tarmac, to the foot of stairway to our Nolinor charter 737 that was to take us on a 1-1/2 hour flight to Churchill. The weather was gorgeous, but Sandra, our guide, cautioned that two prior flights to Churchill that morning had been cancelled due to turbulence, so we might expect our ride to be "a little bumpy." Well, whatever, it's a little late to back out just because of wintery weather up north, right? And besides, one can certainly not drive to Churchill, every single wheeled vehicle in town got there, in whole or in parts, on rails or on a ship. And in any case, I am here to tell you how fabulous it is not to need a boarding pass, to skip security, not to have to take shoes, watches, bracelets, and belts off, and not to empty water bottles before boarding. We lifted off expeditiously, but to my window-seat-loving disappointment, the scenery below, which I fully expected to be like nothing I'd ever seen before, was soon obscured by clouds. But the flight was perfectly ordinary, turbulently-speaking, from start to finish.
The territory below that I couldn't see was, initially, the flat cultivated surrounds of Winnipeg, then taiga (thick, boreal "Hansel-and-Gretel" forest), then tundra, which reminds one of nothing so much as being at 10,000 feet at, say, the 49th parallel (the north entrance to Yellowstone is at the 49th, but just a little under 6,000 feet in elevation) with a few scrawny trees (krumholtz) scattered here and there, osiers and even lower-to-the-ground vegetation, lots of exposed rock formations, rough terrain, and many places for water to pool and ice to form. This is exactly what the ground looked like as far as I could see when we finally poked down under the thick cloud cover at Churchill.

When we came to a stop on the runway, watching the folks seated ahead of us deplane we noted that they all walked across the rainy tarmac at a 45 degree angle. It turns out the wind was blasting at an unremitting 55 mph. The reason the landing was smooth is that the runway - originally built by the military - was aligned perfectly into the wind, and the wind was not gusting. But the irony of the name of the neighboring commercial aircraft, CalmAir, was not lost on me.

Great White Bear Tours was our local transportation provider, and our small bus was waiting as soon as our luggage was off-loaded. Our first stop was one of Churchill's two prominent inukshuk, this one overlooking Hudson's Bay.


Inukshuk

An inukshuk is a sculptural assembly of rocks that is used by native peoples as a place marker, a cache, directional aid, memorial, and so on. They have great significance to the aboriginal peoples all across Canada. This one was easily 20 feet high. If you click on the image to enlarge it you can make out the enormous rollers heading onto shore from the Bay behind it.
Our group was then taken to the Northern Nights Lodge, situated right behind another of Churchill's large inukshuk, also a gateway to the port.

Churchill's other major inukshuk, with the marine fuel tanks of the port visible in the distance. To the right was the Northern Nights Lodge, where we bunked.

We rather liked the Northern Nights, in spite of its motel-like decor. It was cozy and quiet, had a very good restaurant, and made a good home for us for four wonderful nights. We could see from our window that someone had, probably weeks ago, left their fishing nets hanging to dry out back. In the unrelenting wind, the nets became gossamer, punctuated by little blue weights.

The tundra view from our window; polar bears sometimes wander out there.

I just learned that the Northern Nights Lodge burned to the ground the night of November 18. There was one minor injury, everyone else was safe (though their possessions like passports and cameras mostly destroyed), and I would guess the hotel not full as the bears had already left for the ice and there are few visitors in town now. It's nonetheless very frightening to think about, as it could so easily have happened to us. And although bear-watching season was over for 2011, Northern Nights is among few employers in town and numbers of jobs went up in flames too. Northern Nights, may you rebuild and flourish again next season!

Go to Part III

Part I: What we thought we knew we didn't

2011-11-25T08:39:00.011-06:00

The tiny, but mighty, town of Churchill, Manitoba, is located on the western shore of Hudson's Bay, about 500 miles south of the Arctic Circle. It is accessed by air, water, or train only - there literally are no roads to Churchill, even from near-by towns. Of which there are none. It is a unique inland deep-water port through which, historically, massive tons of produce, comprising 90% wheat from Canada's breadbasket provinces - Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta - is delivered by rail and shipped out: this in spite of the tightly limited season during which the Bay is ice-free, from July to early November. But it is with the ice that the greater world's fascination with Churchill really lies. Each winter this ice, due to quirks of geography and climate, forms first along Churchill's shores. And the polar bears (Ursus maritimus) that have been on land all summer congregate there, starting in October each year, waiting nervously for the Bay to freeze.

We are amply familiar with the annual cycles of grizzly and black bear life. This October, KLK and I had to re-learn what we thought we knew about bears. You might be thinking, as did we, "winter + ice + bears = hibernation" but the polar bear's year is radically different. The great white bears in fact spend the winter quite awake, feeding upon, in the case of Churchill's bears especially, ringed seals. Yes, we have all seen zoo polar bears playing in water, but it turns out they do it to keep cool in warm climates like Chicago, and because they're otherwise bored silly in captivity. They are fantastic swimmers, but they just can't nab an agile seal in open water. They wait on the ice, sometimes for many, many hours, near the seals' air-holes. When a hapless seal rises for a breath, the bear reaches down and grabs its head, hauling it onto the ice to gorge on its ample blubber. Or, if it's lucky and stealthy enough, it can sneak up on a seal basking on the icy surface.

Unlike that of its black and brown cousins, polar bear metabolism demands a diet of fat rather than protein.There's even nice symbiotic relationship with little white arctic foxes that follow them onto the ice, cleaning the proteinaceous meat off the bones when the bears are done with the fat. Nothing goes to waste, even in this time of surprising plenty.

When the pack ice melts and hunting is no longer possible, the bears come back onto land to spend the summer. Though they avail themselves of the rare beached seal and other carrion, a little vegetation, kelp washed onto shore, and garbage when they can get it, they functionally fast for four to five months. By the time they return to Churchill, they're thin, hungry, and mostly indolent in a state called "walking hibernation." This, it turns out, is the very best time to observe them.
Traveling with an organized tour was a first for us. We picked Natural Habitat Adventures (aka, NatHab), recommended by friends, and were well-pleased. In particular, our group leader, Sandra Elvin, was superior in every aspect of her job: she is a bear researcher, studying the impact of industrial development on the black bears of Newfoundland, but highly knowledgeable about non-ursine wildlife, geography and geology, climate, and local culture as well. She is especially skilled at graciously herding the cats that comprise 14-member tour groups in potentially dangerous environments.

Guide Sandra Elvin demonstrates the workings of a polar bear skull.

Our journey started October 15 with a direct flight, Chicago to Winnipeg, capital of the Canadian province of Manitoba.

NatHab's "Vegetable Van" was there to take us from the airport to our hotel.

Our home for the night was the Fort Garry Hotel, one of the pearls in the transcontinental necklace of historic copper-roofed, fairy-tale-design hotels built by the Canadian railroad in the early part of the 20th century. It was full of NatHab groups and guides, gathering at the Fort Garry even as the bears were gathering around Churchill...

The Fort Garry

Go to Part II.

Life in the District

2011-11-20T07:52:00.002-06:00

Click photo to see detail

Here's a snap from "within the Beltway" - it seems life in Washington DC might not be all it's cracked up to be. This is the real, official license plate for cars registered there. Who would'a thunk?

Crushed by the crazyness but not done in yet!

2011-11-19T15:00:00.001-06:00

I'm a person who needs lots of downtime, during which I write, read, (a-)muse, play with my cat, dream of my future, take restorative naps, and plan trips in my head and with my heart. I've had terribly little downtime of late, first because of a big grant proposal hump (I worked every week and every weekend from early September to early October), followed by a week-long trip that was so fantastic it was richly dream-like (several blog posts to follow!), followed by one weekend in Chicago half spent shopping for the right clothes and accoutrements for a dear co-worker's wedding, followed by a day with an old friend and her family in the 'burbs of DC, followed by four days in the heart of the nation's capital at a conference, quickly followed the next Saturday by my co-worker's lovely wedding - in Chicago but consuming more than half of my Saturday - followed by the temptation to do nothing this dark and dreary November weekend, except that I have tickets to Lyric Opera's matinee performance of Boris Godunov (Mussorgsky) tomorrow. [YAY!] In between all of this is condominium association board work aplenty. Surely there is no rest for the weary? If the stars favor me, I will start posting on that mid-October trip over the long Thanksgiving weekend. I can hardly wait.

Meantime, these are two photos snapped with my pocket Panasonic Lumix. It's a little embarrassing to get such good pics from such a cheap little camera, when by preference I lug all over two SLRs and assorted lenses of far greater price with not-always such great results.These are Great Falls of the Potomac: who knew the Potomac River had such a magnificent heritage upstream from where Mr. Washington purportedly heaved his silver dollar across? It was nothing less than stunning on that perfect early November day.

Celebrating Norman Bradburn

2011-10-30T08:09:00.001-05:00

Friday night I attended "A Tribute to Norman Bradburn: 50 Years at NORC" at which the contributions of this great scholar, academician, administrator, teacher, and consummate colleague were recognized by the organization I work for, NORC at the University of Chicago. Pleasantly enough, the event coincided with NORC's 70th birthday. Congratulations both to Norman and to NORC!

The exquisite quote below, reprinted from a letter printed in The Saturday Review (1963), capsulizes Mr. Bradburn's philosophy about the meaning and significance of two broad areas of intellectual pursuit. In the use of the word "beautiful" he reminds me of no one so much as another beloved Norman in my life, Norman Maclean, about whom I have written several times.

"Specifically, I believe that the humanities are concerned with defining, illuminating, exemplifying (and guarding) what is good and beautiful, not what is true in the world. On the other hand, the sciences, including the social sciences, however imperfect may be their methods, are properly concerned with what is true about the world and not about what is good or beautiful except insofar as conceptions of the good and the beautiful are basic facts about people living in society."

Need I add that Mr. Bradburn is renowned for his studies of human happiness?

Why American health care costs so much

2011-10-22T15:14:00.000-05:00

I've been waiting about a year for this post. On October 9, 2010, I had the pharmacist at Osco Drug (one of our local chains, similar to Walgreen's) administer my annual flu shot. The charge, in sum, was $26.99. I paid this out of pocket and submitted a claim for it to my health insurer, Blue Cross-Blue Shield of Illinois. It was rejected outright because Osco is "out of network." I knew that would happen, and was reimbursed instead from my health care flexible spending account (a handy little arrangement by which working persons can arrange for their employer to withhold an elected amount of pre-tax money from their paychecks from which to be reimbursed for certain out-of-pocket health-related expenses).

This year I decided the best revenge would be to get my flu shot "in network" and I just received my statement from the in-network University of Chicago Medical Center for $121.00 for services identical to those provided by Osco Drug. Of course the Medical Center had initially sent the charges to Blue Cross-Blue Shield. According to the statement, BC-BS paid the Medical Center $85.72 of that total. Compare that to the approximately (allowing for a little inflation since last year) $26.99 they could have paid had they been willing to reimburse Osco Drug. Or perhaps BC-BS would have preferred that I not have a flu shot at all (no cost to them!) and taken the chance that I wouldn't contract a case of the flu severe enough to require, say, 5 days hospitalization.

Oh yes, and the amount I owe the Medical Center is $35.28. By playing this game, $8.29 more comes out of my flexible spending account. It is worth it just to prove a point about the state of our medical insurance system in this country.

Go! Mommy Go!

2011-10-09T19:31:00.001-05:00

The 34th annual Chicago marathon was today; it was bright and sunny, the turning trees sparkling in a gentle breeze, and, alas poor runners, warm. Moses Mosop, of Kenya, won in a stunning two hours five minutes and 37 seconds; the first woman to cross the finish line was not far behind: Russian Liliya Shobukhova ran 26.2 miles in two hours eighteen minutes and 20 seconds. Athleticism like that really excites my admiration. And by "like that" I mean anyone who can run, trot, walk or crawl, 26.2 miles in a single stretch at all.

In Chicago, all roads to the center of the city, where the marathon is run, are blocked off for hours and hours. I hadn't noticed the coincident date when I bought a ticket to my first matinee in Lyric Opera's 2011-12 season, Jacque Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann. The opera house is one block from Franklin Street, an appreciable stretch of the course of the marathon. Although Lyric avowed that the street closures surrounding the house would have been removed by the city a good two hours before the curtain was to rise, and they were, farther away from the house, between it and my route up Lake Shore Drive, plenty of real estate was still totally inaccessible by car. So I had to go all around Robin Hood's barn to get to the my favorite opera parking garage (also on Franklin), but it worked out in the end. This car was parked there along with the opera fans'. Go Mommy!!

Oh, and the performance was fantastic too. You may not think you're familiar with the music of Tales of Hoffman, but you are. Click and listen through the snippets of music! And speaking of athleticism, this was a performance very demanding of the cast (and very entertaining to watch). I can hardly imagine projecting one's beautiful singing voice to an audience of 3,500 people and dancing vigorously (and gracefully) around the stage at the same time.

Lots of aerobic capacity around this city today!

Do the math. I dare ya!

2011-10-01T18:04:00.002-05:00

OK, so how much do three"Coca Cola Fridge Mates" of soda cost? How about one pack? Let's see...buy two, get one free. But how much do two cost? Three, says the sign, cost $4.00 each, or, if I'm figuring that right, $12.00 (far from a bargain). But if you buy two, and get one free, that's not the same as buying three, is it?

What's your best guess?

Swirling down a black hole...

2011-09-28T20:44:00.000-05:00

Working very hard night and day on a big grant proposal -- by this weekend it'll be as good as it's ever going to be and out the door. Then I will return to my normal routine, including posting a blog now and then, even better, having time to read favorite blogs of others! (I miss keeping up with ya'll!) But meanwhile I do have a new camera and lens, and took a brief walk out to Promontory Point, a little spit of parkland that sticks out into Lake Michigan just at the latitude where I live. Here's KLK (dressed for jogging, not for fall weather) enjoying an autumnal late afternoon, the City of Chicago beyond. I have also taken time to notice that leaves are changing--how could all that be happening with me too busy to notice? Fall is my favorite season, I'm so glad it's here again!

I adore you Adorama, but...

2011-09-10T15:06:00.001-05:00

...I had a few camera supplies to buy, including lens cleaning tissue, so I checked the big two or three on-line sites for cameras and photo supplies. The cheapest on Adorama's website was this 99ȼ packet. But before plunking down 99ȼ, though, I wanted to know what I was getting for the money. A reasonable question, and I took advantage of an "Ask a Question" button that took me to a form into which I could insert my question, which was: "How many sheets per pack?" I assumed someone at Adorama would respond, but over the next three or four days, this is what my question yielded in my email box: