When a dear friend moved to Minnesota, to property that backed up to a nature conserve, she said they finish the day by walking over to "listen to the loons on the lake."
They moved from where we all lived--Silicon Valley--and it sounded like they'd retired to heaven to me.
It opens with Clair de Loon, Debussy's famous piano piece arranged for orchestra and well, loon.
I woke up this morning feeling vaguely migrainous, going about my business inefficiently, but still going about it. Only now did I remember hubs had told me yesterday his weather forecast for today included a migraine alert. So either my subconscious is much better at remembering these little details than Conscious Me is, and it decided to cook up a self-fulfilling prophecy for me, or those weather alerts might actually mean something.
Another strange factoid about the common loon is the “social gathering.” In late summer you can see gatherings of five loons or 20 loons. Researchers don’t really know why they do this. One possible reason is loons might be scoping out potential territories for the next season. I’ve seen a few of these social gatherings. It’s strange because they’re very territorial birds.
Ahhhh, the common loon. I’m sure I’ve mentioned before that I am a loon ranger on our lake. I observe, record and report sightings over the summer. We have a pair that return every year and they are banded, one orange and one green. They’ve been very successful breeders, often with two chicks. They reside mainly in our bay and when I hear the yodel, I wanna get out a bullhorn to yell at the tourists to back off. It’s usually when boats get too close to the chicks. The oldest recorded couple are further up north. A loon love story. https://www.fws.gov/story/oldest-known-common-loons
House cleaning tip for the day: when cleaning fake grapes, wipe them with a damp cloth rather than submerging them in soapy water. (Day 2 of trying to get them dried out.)
I wanted to be like Heloise and do household hints when I was much younger. There is a hint of engineering, chemistry and material science in that, I suppose.
An elderly family friend, who lived in a mansion and taught piano, had fake grapes made of wire, silk, and stone. More upscale than plastic grapes, and pleasanty cool to the touch. But still fake grapes.
When I was a child, someone in the family introduced decorative grapes made from boiled marbles that were then quenched to fracture on the inside. They were pleasnt to hold. For some reason, they did not survive.
Those of us who’ve spent a lot of time in the Adirondacks know the cry of the loon well! In fact, we’ve spent a week or two at Loon Lake (north of Lake George) for a few years now. It’s fun to watch a loon dive and to guess where he’ll re-surface — sometimes a hundred yards away. They’re good underwater swimmers.
Good 65F morning. If you can tolerate another am email, especially fun, amof course non-political, I recommend https://earthsky.org. nice am space and earth activities, planets, nebula, Webb, volcanoes, some ornitholocigal x paleo items like below:
"Archaeopteryx isn’t the first dinosaur to have feathers, or the first dinosaur to have ‘wings.’ But we think it’s the earliest known dinosaur that was able to use its feathers to fly. This is actually my favorite part of the paper, the part that provides evidence that Archaeopteryx was using its feathered wings for flying.
The Chicago Archaeopteryx provided a valuable clue: a long set of tertial feathers. These are feathers on the upper arm. They’re closest to the body, covering the gap between the body and wing. This provides more lift for a bird to remain airborne. O’Connor explained:"
Good morning. 52 and cloudy with rain possible later and highs in the 60s. Ladder Lady might come home from rehab Thursday, as directed by insurance.
The mothership is covering the results of the Sunday elections in Romania, which elected as President a pro-European pro-Ukraine “normie” instead of a more anti-Europe pro-Russia populist. The election was a “do over” after the nation’s highest court ruled that Russian interference in the election last fall invalidated that election.
Nice TSAF article on the loon, Cynthia! The loon is featured on the reverse of the Canadian one dollar coin the “loonie”.
Yes, she wanted to clean a gutter. She fell and broke a rib and pelvic bone. Brief hospital stay and a week to date in rehab. She told me today she’s ready to come home.
The comment section at the mothership following Nick Catoggio's article was semi-depressing to me. I know most commenters mean well, but I wish more were of the mind to flush all the players over the last 10 years down the toilet.
I get the first 3 or 4 paragraphs of every Nick column gratis before the pleading to subscribe, which is more than I need, but I read them because they're free.
Was it the one where he's whining about Joe's cancer?
Nick attracts a slightly different audience. One where too many people's biggest regret is that it wasn't Trump with stage 4. JohnM takes a bullet for those who are not universally critical of Trump, as I am as well. I didn't vote for him, but I don't hate him.
If I am honest with myself, I hate him for the way his antics have warped the thinking of people that I love. The strong feelings are more properly directed at those close enough to him to know better that humor rather than curb him. But even so, hate is not constructive and I fight it.
I stopped reading NC's column because of his and his commenters' willingness to let politics have the final word in personal relationships.
I haven't stopped reading NC because his writing style helps me laugh at the absurdity of it all.
That NC repeats that there is more at stake morally in ordinary people's MAGA vs non-MAGA decisions than the political decisions we had previously got used to making doesn't distress me, firstly, because I agree with it, and secondly, it still doesn't increase my bitterness toward the ordinary MAGA I might meet – I'm pretty easygoing on that score.
Botching a high-stakes decision is a very human thing to do, and when we consider stakes are in proportion to our control over them, I've botched far worse, trusted those who botched far worse.
In short, I find Nick's writing a non-nihilist form of comic relief.
I really appreciate JohnM - most often not for arguing a point as being willing to call bull*** on comments that deserve it. It takes earned social credit and a good bit of perseverance.
Loons...lotta memories about loons. We'd go fishing in Canada and had an old wood cedar stripper canoe. We'd spot a loon a ways off, then extremely slowly and without any quick movements, slowly paddle toward the loon. If you could keep the canoe pointed directly at the loon so the profile didn't change, and not make any overt moves and stay absolutely silent, you could get within a few feet of them. You could see the confusion in their actions...they knew something was wrong, and would make increasingly quick moves to get away, then they'd dive in an explosion of squawks and water splashing, to come up 100' away, when we'd begin the dance all over again.
The word "lunatic" is derived from the loon. That's a true fact that I made up just now.
There is no sound so cool as a loon wailing in the middle of a summer night.
As a kid I did a High Adventure trip to Boundary Waters in Northern Minnesota. The loons are beautiful at a distance, but do not like humans.
What I remember was a beaver glide under our canoe, and as he went under BAM BAM BAM! He thumped the bottom of our canoe with his tail. Loud, scary sound. I swore he had a snicker on his face as he glided past us. I don't think he liked tourists...
They won’t “tremolo” much once territories are established. But you will hear the wail and the yodel even after breeding season. They also don’t mention the hoot which is how they communicate with the babies. Both the male and the female raise the chicks. The adults typically migrate before the chicks.
Good morning, everyone. It's Trash Day here in Boring. Epic Fail completed the lawn-mowing yesterday, and then we took the mower over to his friend's house. His friend is setting himself up as a small-engine repair guy and says he can change the spark plugs and do other things. We will see, in a few days, how it turns out.
His friend also just got a driver's license, and I let F stay for an hour or so, and then his friend drove him home, without any incidents that were reported to me.
Lawn mower maintenance is among the most annoying of first world frustrations. After many years, where the spring season found a mower that wouldn't start, I finally discovered the beauty of ethanol free gasoline. This made a world of difference. Damn corn farmers. I'm fortunate enough to have a Phillips 66 nearby that offers ethanol free gas, but if that's not available, the hardware stores sell it for a highway robbery price. Still worth it.
I’ve noticed that lots of gas-powered equipment makers now have prominent warnings only to use non-ethanol fuel. I’m guessing this means they’ve failed in their attempts at making low-cost ethanol-proof small engines. It’s hardly any wonder, though, considering that ethanol draws moisture out of the air, and fuel for small engines is more likely to sit in containers unused for longer spells during which water vapor accumulates.
For my part, I don’t mind doing the regular maintenance on 4-cycle mower engines and keeping a supply of ethanol-free fuel. But I have definitely switched over to LiON powered tools to replace the 2-cycle gear. Even if you keep ethanol out of the fuel, the oil-mixing business is too fiddly. The last 2-cycle string trimmers and blowers I had were no longer-lived than the 3 to 5-year lifespan of a LiON battery pack.
So dumb especially for a high school. The entire referendum was very contentious in our town because the voters were basically lied to. I suspect they’re going over budget and they need more money to save face. The whole thing is dirty.
The alternative to gas mower maintenance I chose a couple of years ago is an electric mower, which has 2 heavy lithium batteries instead of a gas engine.
I have a battery powered push mower: with two batteries. One will not finish my yard. But I could always get the front done on a single charge.
But I inherited my FIL's ZTR, which is gas powered. Since it was free (other than the cost of renting a trailer to bring it home), I use it now. I have a local stihl dealer who for $45 will come out and pick it up; I then pay for the tuneup every fall, but it is worth it. I just have to remember not to turn on a dime, as that will lower the mower blades. But with the blades up, that's kinda fun.
When this ztr dies I'll look at buying an electric ZTR. As long as I can get the front yard done on a single charge, i don't mind mowing 2x a week.
I'm now using ethanol free gas in the car. I know these days the cars are designed for the corn blend, and so I'm wasting money. But I do it anyway. A political protest no one will ever notice.
My tool crib is now 100% rechargable...M18...with 8 batteries of different mAh rates. When I get a new tool, I always get the package with 2 batteries. Nowadays, it's about the batteries and interchangeability; the tools are almost secondary.
Battery life and compactness and power have been increasing for years, to the point where battery-operated equipment now competes seriously with other forms of power.
When a dear friend moved to Minnesota, to property that backed up to a nature conserve, she said they finish the day by walking over to "listen to the loons on the lake."
They moved from where we all lived--Silicon Valley--and it sounded like they'd retired to heaven to me.
We are fortunate to have a lot of bird life in our corner of suburbia. But not loons: there are no significant bodies of water nearby.
Hear that, bodies of water near Cynthia’s? You're insignificant!
If they turn up at the door to protest, I'll let you know.
I present, courtesy of some random YouTube fan, the first CD I got as a present:
Classical Loon
https://youtu.be/DeDY6JMajhk?si=wLl2EnOmiSa-Iztz
It opens with Clair de Loon, Debussy's famous piano piece arranged for orchestra and well, loon.
I woke up this morning feeling vaguely migrainous, going about my business inefficiently, but still going about it. Only now did I remember hubs had told me yesterday his weather forecast for today included a migraine alert. So either my subconscious is much better at remembering these little details than Conscious Me is, and it decided to cook up a self-fulfilling prophecy for me, or those weather alerts might actually mean something.
Seems like it might work better as a duet for loon and bassoon.
Another strange factoid about the common loon is the “social gathering.” In late summer you can see gatherings of five loons or 20 loons. Researchers don’t really know why they do this. One possible reason is loons might be scoping out potential territories for the next season. I’ve seen a few of these social gatherings. It’s strange because they’re very territorial birds.
Very interesting, thanks!
Ahhhh, the common loon. I’m sure I’ve mentioned before that I am a loon ranger on our lake. I observe, record and report sightings over the summer. We have a pair that return every year and they are banded, one orange and one green. They’ve been very successful breeders, often with two chicks. They reside mainly in our bay and when I hear the yodel, I wanna get out a bullhorn to yell at the tourists to back off. It’s usually when boats get too close to the chicks. The oldest recorded couple are further up north. A loon love story. https://www.fws.gov/story/oldest-known-common-loons
House cleaning tip for the day: when cleaning fake grapes, wipe them with a damp cloth rather than submerging them in soapy water. (Day 2 of trying to get them dried out.)
I wanted to be like Heloise and do household hints when I was much younger. There is a hint of engineering, chemistry and material science in that, I suppose.
"There is a hint of engineering, chemistry and material science in that, I suppose."
Yep. It's more or less the only excuse I have right now to use any of that academic knowledge.
My mom had fake grapes.
For our generation they are a mom thing. And were a grandmother thing.
The one I found actual had an overripe grape or two included for that natual look.
Wow.
so did my mom. I still cannot stand plastic fruit as decor
An elderly family friend, who lived in a mansion and taught piano, had fake grapes made of wire, silk, and stone. More upscale than plastic grapes, and pleasanty cool to the touch. But still fake grapes.
When I was a child, someone in the family introduced decorative grapes made from boiled marbles that were then quenched to fracture on the inside. They were pleasnt to hold. For some reason, they did not survive.
I have some assorted plastic fruit, but I only bring it out to use in a Thanksgiving cornucopia.
Hard to eliminate plastic from holiday decorations. Not the same type of decor.
Same.
Not a cat. A bird. If I were a Flintstone, I might employ a loon in my kitchen to help me out by cutting or skewering things with its beak.
Birds are dinosaurs.
Those of us who’ve spent a lot of time in the Adirondacks know the cry of the loon well! In fact, we’ve spent a week or two at Loon Lake (north of Lake George) for a few years now. It’s fun to watch a loon dive and to guess where he’ll re-surface — sometimes a hundred yards away. They’re good underwater swimmers.
Ah Lake George! We lived in the Berkshires for 25 years minus outposts. Loved Lake George. Had several commercial meetings there
Good 65F morning. If you can tolerate another am email, especially fun, amof course non-political, I recommend https://earthsky.org. nice am space and earth activities, planets, nebula, Webb, volcanoes, some ornitholocigal x paleo items like below:
"Archaeopteryx isn’t the first dinosaur to have feathers, or the first dinosaur to have ‘wings.’ But we think it’s the earliest known dinosaur that was able to use its feathers to fly. This is actually my favorite part of the paper, the part that provides evidence that Archaeopteryx was using its feathered wings for flying.
The Chicago Archaeopteryx provided a valuable clue: a long set of tertial feathers. These are feathers on the upper arm. They’re closest to the body, covering the gap between the body and wing. This provides more lift for a bird to remain airborne. O’Connor explained:"
https://earthsky.org/earth/how-did-dinosaurs-become-birds-this-fossil-offers-insights
So interesting!! We saw therapod dinosaur tracks at Bull Canyon overlook in Utah. They were pretty darn cool.
From JohnM at the mothership:
Worth Your Time Unlocked: ' Walter Frankenstein, 100, Dies; Hid From the Nazis All Over Berlin'
https://archive.ph/CODpU
I read it. That is an amazing and inspiring story. Way better than the "news".
Good morning. 52 and cloudy with rain possible later and highs in the 60s. Ladder Lady might come home from rehab Thursday, as directed by insurance.
The mothership is covering the results of the Sunday elections in Romania, which elected as President a pro-European pro-Ukraine “normie” instead of a more anti-Europe pro-Russia populist. The election was a “do over” after the nation’s highest court ruled that Russian interference in the election last fall invalidated that election.
Nice TSAF article on the loon, Cynthia! The loon is featured on the reverse of the Canadian one dollar coin the “loonie”.
I’m pretty sure I missed the ladder lady story, did your wife fall off a ladder?
Yes, she wanted to clean a gutter. She fell and broke a rib and pelvic bone. Brief hospital stay and a week to date in rehab. She told me today she’s ready to come home.
Glad she’s recuperating! Apologies for my misapprehension.
As I saw with a cousin last year, prolonged hospital stays are a disaster in terms of muscle loss…
Oh no that sounds horribly painful.
It was indeed and still is.
MIL, iirc.
No, my wife.
The comment section at the mothership following Nick Catoggio's article was semi-depressing to me. I know most commenters mean well, but I wish more were of the mind to flush all the players over the last 10 years down the toilet.
I get the first 3 or 4 paragraphs of every Nick column gratis before the pleading to subscribe, which is more than I need, but I read them because they're free.
Was it the one where he's whining about Joe's cancer?
Yep, that story. Most lined up with their team. I think reading 3 or 4 paragraphs of Nick is usually enough. For my tastes, he goes a little long.
Sometimes I skip to the end and see what the last paragraph says, before deciding whether to read the whole thing.
I should add Jay Janney had a most gracious comment that left the politics behind.
I remain mildly amazed that people do that...the political team thing. The last couple months, especially so.
Nick attracts a slightly different audience. One where too many people's biggest regret is that it wasn't Trump with stage 4. JohnM takes a bullet for those who are not universally critical of Trump, as I am as well. I didn't vote for him, but I don't hate him.
If I am honest with myself, I hate him for the way his antics have warped the thinking of people that I love. The strong feelings are more properly directed at those close enough to him to know better that humor rather than curb him. But even so, hate is not constructive and I fight it.
I stopped reading NC's column because of his and his commenters' willingness to let politics have the final word in personal relationships.
I haven't stopped reading NC because his writing style helps me laugh at the absurdity of it all.
That NC repeats that there is more at stake morally in ordinary people's MAGA vs non-MAGA decisions than the political decisions we had previously got used to making doesn't distress me, firstly, because I agree with it, and secondly, it still doesn't increase my bitterness toward the ordinary MAGA I might meet – I'm pretty easygoing on that score.
Botching a high-stakes decision is a very human thing to do, and when we consider stakes are in proportion to our control over them, I've botched far worse, trusted those who botched far worse.
In short, I find Nick's writing a non-nihilist form of comic relief.
I really appreciate JohnM - most often not for arguing a point as being willing to call bull*** on comments that deserve it. It takes earned social credit and a good bit of perseverance.
I could see myself sliding into a little hate. Now, I'm just kinda aghast at how stupid it all is.
He is who he is. The fact that so many support him even while he strings them along points to him not being the primary problem. Sigh.
Trash day always reminds me to be grateful for modern life. That and a hot shower in the morning.
And the coffee pot with a timer.
And not having to use a privy.
Loons...lotta memories about loons. We'd go fishing in Canada and had an old wood cedar stripper canoe. We'd spot a loon a ways off, then extremely slowly and without any quick movements, slowly paddle toward the loon. If you could keep the canoe pointed directly at the loon so the profile didn't change, and not make any overt moves and stay absolutely silent, you could get within a few feet of them. You could see the confusion in their actions...they knew something was wrong, and would make increasingly quick moves to get away, then they'd dive in an explosion of squawks and water splashing, to come up 100' away, when we'd begin the dance all over again.
The word "lunatic" is derived from the loon. That's a true fact that I made up just now.
There is no sound so cool as a loon wailing in the middle of a summer night.
“There is no sound so cool as a loon wailing in the middle of a summer night” under a full moon. 🥰
A truly cool sound, and one that on an otherwise quiet night can send shivers up and down your spine.
As a kid I did a High Adventure trip to Boundary Waters in Northern Minnesota. The loons are beautiful at a distance, but do not like humans.
What I remember was a beaver glide under our canoe, and as he went under BAM BAM BAM! He thumped the bottom of our canoe with his tail. Loud, scary sound. I swore he had a snicker on his face as he glided past us. I don't think he liked tourists...
I've had beavers get aggressive and slap their tail on the water right next to the canoe.
A lot of loons overwinter in the rivers and estuaries of North and South Carolina. I did not know this.
I imagine (WAG) they’re generally less vocal out of breeding season, no?
They won’t “tremolo” much once territories are established. But you will hear the wail and the yodel even after breeding season. They also don’t mention the hoot which is how they communicate with the babies. Both the male and the female raise the chicks. The adults typically migrate before the chicks.
I couldn't say, but maybe I'll look it up later.
It might be like the geese. They've figured out it's warm enough and there's enough goofy humans to feed them, so they hang around.
Or, it's climate change. Climate change did it.
Maybe they've been doing it since the Ice Age, and I just didn't know. We're rarely at the coast.
Those extra few PPMs of CO2 are what separate the common loon from your stark-raving variety, no doubt.
Good morning, everyone. It's Trash Day here in Boring. Epic Fail completed the lawn-mowing yesterday, and then we took the mower over to his friend's house. His friend is setting himself up as a small-engine repair guy and says he can change the spark plugs and do other things. We will see, in a few days, how it turns out.
His friend also just got a driver's license, and I let F stay for an hour or so, and then his friend drove him home, without any incidents that were reported to me.
Lawn mower maintenance is among the most annoying of first world frustrations. After many years, where the spring season found a mower that wouldn't start, I finally discovered the beauty of ethanol free gasoline. This made a world of difference. Damn corn farmers. I'm fortunate enough to have a Phillips 66 nearby that offers ethanol free gas, but if that's not available, the hardware stores sell it for a highway robbery price. Still worth it.
I’ve noticed that lots of gas-powered equipment makers now have prominent warnings only to use non-ethanol fuel. I’m guessing this means they’ve failed in their attempts at making low-cost ethanol-proof small engines. It’s hardly any wonder, though, considering that ethanol draws moisture out of the air, and fuel for small engines is more likely to sit in containers unused for longer spells during which water vapor accumulates.
For my part, I don’t mind doing the regular maintenance on 4-cycle mower engines and keeping a supply of ethanol-free fuel. But I have definitely switched over to LiON powered tools to replace the 2-cycle gear. Even if you keep ethanol out of the fuel, the oil-mixing business is too fiddly. The last 2-cycle string trimmers and blowers I had were no longer-lived than the 3 to 5-year lifespan of a LiON battery pack.
Likewise! Ethanol-free gas and an occasional shot of sea foam has reinvigorated the old mower and roto-tiller.
We have a manual push mower. It works well enough when it's maintained.
Our ethanol plant just donated $350k to the new high school that’s being constructed for naming rights for the football stadium. Naming rights??
For a high school stadium? Yuck. I hate naming rights. Besides being overly commercial, they can lead to name changes.
So dumb especially for a high school. The entire referendum was very contentious in our town because the voters were basically lied to. I suspect they’re going over budget and they need more money to save face. The whole thing is dirty.
I would expect high schoolers to be able to make up their own alternative names if they thought the sponsored one was dumb.
How much will the football stadium cost?
Good question that wasn’t addressed in the article. Supposedly all the sports facilities are included in the construction cost.
The alternative to gas mower maintenance I chose a couple of years ago is an electric mower, which has 2 heavy lithium batteries instead of a gas engine.
My husband is talking about getting an electric mower if Goofball Friend can't fix the gas-powered one.
I have a battery powered push mower: with two batteries. One will not finish my yard. But I could always get the front done on a single charge.
But I inherited my FIL's ZTR, which is gas powered. Since it was free (other than the cost of renting a trailer to bring it home), I use it now. I have a local stihl dealer who for $45 will come out and pick it up; I then pay for the tuneup every fall, but it is worth it. I just have to remember not to turn on a dime, as that will lower the mower blades. But with the blades up, that's kinda fun.
When this ztr dies I'll look at buying an electric ZTR. As long as I can get the front yard done on a single charge, i don't mind mowing 2x a week.
I'm now using ethanol free gas in the car. I know these days the cars are designed for the corn blend, and so I'm wasting money. But I do it anyway. A political protest no one will ever notice.
Ah, that's true. Having a very large lawn (previously) I never trusted the batteries, but I'm sure that would be wrong now.
Battery life would be an issue. But if you have 2 of them, you can always run on 1 while recharging the other.
My tool crib is now 100% rechargable...M18...with 8 batteries of different mAh rates. When I get a new tool, I always get the package with 2 batteries. Nowadays, it's about the batteries and interchangeability; the tools are almost secondary.
Battery life and compactness and power have been increasing for years, to the point where battery-operated equipment now competes seriously with other forms of power.
Morning! We’re celebrating Trash here today, too, in Greater Mar-a-Lago-Land.