I changed my profile photo today

This evening (Friday, after a long work day and a long work week) I went to the shop where I've had my hair cut for 20 years. The owner's daughter, E., mans the front desk. I'd say the age gap is more or less 30 years, and, alas, it seems, that's not the only gulf between us. She is one of those people who proudly guards her ignorance. I once used the word, "biofuels" in front of her. (This is a university neighborhood, where everyone uses million dollar words. All the time. Without thinking. In the normal course of discourse.) She puffed herself up a little and said, "oh, I don't know what that is!" so I said, a little surprised, "there's been lots of talk about it on TV and the news lately" and she said, "oh no, I don't watch the news" and, by extension, read the newspaper, check the internet, or any other option, God forbid she should learn something about the world around her.. This doesn't mean she isn't likable, but it does make her a bit of a puzzle to me.

Today after the usual good cut and shapely dry by faithful and skillful S. (who has made me look good for years), it took me a few moments at the front desk to dig my wallet out of my purse to pay. While I dug, E. looked up at me from behind the counter and said, "you always look like you're angry." I wasn't sure whether to take that as a compliment or an expression of condolence. So I said, "well, I sure could use some botox between these brows, and I've had these frowny lines on either side of my mouth forever" and she said, with some kind of pity in her voice, "do you ever, you know, have a glass of wine or anything, or go do things in the evening?" Now I'm really wondering where that came from. Do I really look like a grumpy, lonely old spinster? So I said, "oh sure, (because I do), but usually I go home on Friday night and have carry-out dinner at home with my boyfriend" and her eyebrows shot up to her hairline. "YOU have a boyfriend??" (incredulity)

What am I to make of that? I paid, gave S. his tip, said good-night, strode home, had a big huge glass of wine, and took down my Amusing Musings profile photo, which I've always liked because I'm squinting into the early morning sun coming up over Yellowstone National Park, and that's what I'd like to be doing every morning. I've replaced it with a photo, of very recent vintage, with a less squinty look. But that's because, when it was taken, I wasn't greeting the sun coming up over Yellowstone.

America Is Your Park campaign. Or maybe not.

In response to Troutbirder’s comment below, which was in response to my post of August 1, alas, I have to agree, there’s either something desperately wrong with Coca-Cola's "vote for your park" Web-site counter, or there’s something real funny about the voting. So I’ve stopped voting, and have rescinded my excitement about the opportunity to get a nice-sized grant for Yellowstone. The last time I voted, probably three weeks ago, Yellowstone had around 16,000 votes; today it has just over 19,000, while as Troutbirder notes, for example, Hawaii's Koke'e State Park now has 126,810 votes. I'm sure it's possible that Koke'e State Park has that many dedicated, voting fans, but it's certainly not possible that love for Yellowstone is that lukewarm. 

But I really appreciate your efforts to post some votes for the most wonderful of all national parks, Troutbirder!

Yellowstone Lake, in June of 2006

Door County, glorious Door County

I plan to blog a bit, soon (!), about a wonderful long weekend in Door County, Wisconsin, but until I do, please enjoy the show (I recommend setting the "delay" at 4 seconds):

These days I'm not posting much

And when I do, it's only retail junk. Where there is always plenty of fodder for commentary.

Note how many more of the "watermelon" pops have sold than "green apple" (??) pops

Could it have something to do with lack of verisimilitude? Maybe?

Long time no blog

Really, it's because of the crud that saps your imagination in very hot, very humid weather and from having to sleep with the air conditioner running day after day after day.

It's been very good for the bugs though. Photos taken in the botanical garden that is the joint effort of the University of Chicago and the City of Chicago Park District along the Midway Plaissance,  just across the street from my office building.

Mud dauber wasp

Honey bee

Red Admiral (with bumble bee,right foreground) on purple cone flowers

Ailanthus Web Worm moth & unidentified bee (with a spike do on its butt)

Here's a take on wildlife I bet you haven't seen before

Vote for your favorite National Park (as long as it's Yellowstone, Or the Tetons, Or both)

VOTE

The following is from a letter to park superintendents from Dan Puskar, Director, Partnerships and Government Relations, National Park Foundation, that was passed on to me my a friend who is an NPS ranger in Yellowstone National Park:

"I’d like to tell you about an opportunity for your park to receive a $100,000 grant from Coca-Cola through the National Park Foundation.
 
The National Park Foundation and Coca-Cola are encouraging Americans to be active outdoors in their national and state parks with the launch of the “America Is Your Park” campaign.  Through this campaign, an online voting center  has been created to let individuals cast a vote for their favorite park. The national or state park that receives the most votes by August 31 ^st  wins a $100,000 grant made possible by Coca-Cola’s Live Positively initiative. No sign-up or registration is necessary to participate and individuals can vote as many times as they want until the voting closes on August 31 ^st .  
 
To vote, begin by clicking here . Then simply:

1)     Click the “Vote for your park!” button.2)     Type the name of the park you’d like to vote for in the “Search” box in the upper left corner, and hit the Enter key. (You may also search for parks by state or zip code.) 3)     Click on the red “Vote” button next to the name of the park you support.

  In addition, for every vote cast, Coca-Cola will also donate $1 to the National Park Foundation up to a total donation of $200,000."

Take care that Yellowstone (or whatever your favorite park is) comes up into the voting field. Great Smoky Mountains is the default, and it has already received tens of thousands of votes, where as of this writing, very surprisingly, Yellowstone, a favorite of many people world wide, is still to reach 10,000.  These grants are extremely meaningful to the parks that receive them. Please vote early and often, as we say in Chicago.

 Thank you!!

Meandering sloughs of the Firehole River

Yellowstone National Park, Early morning, May 2009

Tempest in a Q-tip

WHAT'S GOING ON HERE? WAS THERE A HURRICANE IN THE BATHROOM?

  

Ah-ha! I should have known! A hurricane called "Teddy"

Almost as much fun as an ordinary fuzzy mousie (a green one in this case)!

Guess that'll teach me to leave the medicine cabinet door open!

Aging faces

For many, many years I would look at myself in the mirror and see the same person I’d seen the month, the year, even the decade before.  Conscious nonetheless that people do not look the same at 40, 50, 60, as they did at 10, 20 and 30, I told myself this sameness was an illusion, that I must be changing and, since I felt as I always had inside, I must be fooling myself about my exterior—except for my gray hair, which has been noticeably transitioning from dark brown to salt-and-pepper to something approaching steely, for 30 years.  Then suddenly one day, not long ago, I saw someone looking back at me who was familiar, but not exactly the same, as the “long-time” me. I’ve completed my fifth decade but am still not feeling any declines interiorly, still no arthritis or other signs of the inevitable (except for the fact that I just can’t wear high heels like I used to!)  maybe a little more ready to seek opportunities to rest, certainly heavier than I was in the prime of life, but that’s about it.  

There is plenty of interest in the exterior manifestations of aging in the profession of cosmetic surgery, the beauty products industry, and among forensic artists. It turns out I have plenty of material of my own with which to examine the phenomenon. Below is a series of photos of those close to me by blood, history, or happenstance. I tried to pair images from young adulthood with ones as close to the present, or, in several cases, as close to the end of life, as I could. The shortest span is Winston the cat's 21 year life; the longest span is 66 years, my mother's (the first pair). Most are between 30 and 40 year spans.
What do you see in them?

 It happens to us all.

New Web cam pleasures

Yellowstone's newest Web cam is run by the USGS Volcano Hazards Program's Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, hosted at the University of Utah and mounted on Lake Butte Overlook above Yellowstone Lake. It refreshes only once every hour - geologic time, after all - but in spite of the cage bars of burned snags between it and the considerable scenery beyond, yields wonderful information to the non-geologist. Picture # 1, a small elk herd, including a spotted calf front and center very early in the morning; picture #2, just a nice sunny view; and picture #3, what lies beyond.

Another Icing On The Cake post

Yesterday, the fourth of July, Independence Day, was gloriously beautiful and aptly hot in the Chicago area. KLK and I made a big suburban* shopping excursion during which he replaced his entire blue jeans wardrobe (not so much the black jeans, I guess that will be another trip) and his "between-running-and-dress" shoes - the kind you wear with khakis on Fridays at work. The latter acquisition was an emergency, given that his old pair spontaneously up and disintegrated as he walked along a banking district street in Zurich last week.What else was nice about it, besides the hunting and gathering successes, was that apparently either a lot of people were at bar-b-ques, or they thought the stores would be closed (however unAmerican that would have been).

We came home in time for dinner, with the thought that we might go out to Promontory Point,  a wonderful park that juts well out into Lake Michigan, along with 99% of the rest of the neighborhood, to watch the tiny little official city fireworks shot out over the lake from Navy Pier some 5 or 6 miles away. As it got truly dark out,  we suddenly realized there were major fireworks being rocketed from very close by. Hoorah!  Unbeknown to us, the City has provincialized the fireworks display, presumably to mitigate  huge congestion downtown. Yes, the main fireworks, which we could see on TV, proceeded as usual (well, not quite, they lasted 15 minutes, not the traditional 20, so hey, it's only a 25% cut) , but they also miraculously selected our  neighborhood to put on a secondary show. What extraordinary luck! I took a few photos through the window, and given that and that the camera was hand-held, I was very pleased with the results. Next year, when we know this is coming (unless the economy tanks even more between now and then) we'll go to our  building roof deck with the tripod at the ready. How fun, what a treat, whatever we did to deserve this, let's do it again!

* Land of the Free parking and where gas is cheaper and the sales tax a couple of points lower

Little pleasures

Like all children growing up in the Midwest, I spent untold outdoor summer hours watching lightning bugs (otherwise known as fireflies, species photinus). Just after dark, in any grassy or brushy area, especially mid-June to mid-July, the males of these little beetles fly a few feet over the ground, flashing a bright yellow-green light in their abdomens to attract females in the grass below.  The sight of the little blinking lights in the late darkness of a hot summer night is beyond entrancing.

For the last 22 years I have lived in a high rise, 11 stories off the ground, too far to see the little flashes  going on below. Most often when I go out on a summer evening I drive my car out of the garage and head off to someplace covered with cement, and so, these days, I have to make a point of seeking out the lightning bugs. Last night presented such an opportunity, and sure enough, there, in the grassy baseball field next to a local elementary school, the males were doing their part to ensure perpetuation of one of Nature’s most pleasurable little wonders.

Life’s been very stressful lately, both at home (more about that later) and the office (nothing I’m not paid to deal with, but a lot, nonetheless). Watching the slow-mo scintillations of the lightning bugs last evening heartened me, lifted me, the Earth is not being completely destroyed by acid rain or greenhouse emissions or gargantuan oil spills after all.

Boy or girl?

In June of 2008, KLK and I fortuitously had the opportunity to view and photograph this magnificent grizzly bear that was of such a size, and without a cub at the time of year when both black and grizzly bears are most active and most visible with their babes, we assume it was a boar. 
Exactly two years later, my fellow Yellowstone chat-pager, Hélène, has posted this video, taken in exactly the same spot as we watched the “boar.” I think we were very wrong about the bear’s gender. 

Whether or not this is the very same bear (it sure looks like it), four cubs is an extraordinary production. Quadramom Bear is truly the Park Celebrity of the Year. May she have all the luck raising them to maturity and independence. If all goes well, she will liberate them in the late spring of 2012. God speed, lovely bears!

Watch for gigantic sink-holes to start forming all over the world

Chopping down the world's mountains, one kitchen at a time:
Granite is the most popular material for kitchen counters.

Life in da' Hood

For the last 62 years, the second weekend in June has been reserved for the 57th Street Art Fair here in Hyde Park, where I've lived for the last 42 years. I always go if I'm in town. It's never been the greatest, and in recent years has had trouble attracting high quality artists or high quality buyers (not clear which comes first). Hyde Park's a hard sell: No place to park for visitors from other parts of the city (though there are a couple of inexpensive express buses and the Metra commuter rail to bring you here if you can get yourself to downtown), we're mostly upper middle class but don't part so readily with our money (some of us may be well educated and full of SES potential but don't have much to part with, since a good fraction of the community is made up of students in the college and graduate schools of the University of Chicago and numerous institutions of religious higher learning), and the weather is perfectly capable of being awful at the beginning of summer. I've also often wondered at the selection jury's sanity. For instance, this year there were at least two exhibitors selling beautifully crafted, boringly similar, wood pens. There was a new vendor this year selling laser-cut iron silhouettes, just like the kind made in China and sold in the gift shops in Grand Teton National Park. And there was a lot of work for sale expensive out of proportion to the creativity, materials, and maker's time requirement. However, happily, this morning the weather was spectacular, and the people-watching was good. Here are a few snaps just for fun.

A sunscreen day

Not all the art is fine art

Abs, and everything else, of steel

Art fair health fare. Not.

Her cello case was open and people were dropping in bucks. At least she'll always be able to make a living playing in the subway station.

Urbs in hortis