Victory Over Moths

Posted on November 16, 2022 by admin

Is it too soon to declare victory over moths? I have a superstitious feeling that after I do so, I’ll see a moth flit by here inside our house, as soon as a day or two later. Our victory will prove to be illusory.

Never mind all that. I’m declaring victory over moths — noiseless, shadowy, harmless moths that still represented an insect invasion of my dwelling space. One to be suppressed, which was the consensus of everyone here. Harmless, but annoying all the same.

At no point in your ownership of a house have you seen it all, since there’s always the possibility of another novel expense or pain-in-the-ass nuisance you haven’t experienced before, lurking in unexpected places. In the case of the moths, lurking on walls, if moths can rightly be said to lurk.

That implies a presence of mind I’m not sure moths actually have, but anyway there they were, clinging to higher parts of living room and kitchen walls. Small gray moths had starting making their appearance sometime in the summer. Originally we took them for outdoor moths accidently in the house, but pretty soon their increasing numbers made us re-think that assumption. They were setting up colonies. That meant we had to start some aggressive measures.

I became the main moth assassin. Yuriko swatted some, and so did Ann when she was here, but mostly it fell to me, fly swatter or thick paper weapon in hand (we still have a few paper magazines around, ready to roll). There’s one! Twack! Wait, another — thup! Damn, missed that last one.

Sometimes it would take a few moments to identify them; there are spots on the walls I took for moths and vice versa, especially in the early days of moth suppression.

An aside: our fly swatter goes back to 2008, a souvenir of the Bluegrass Inn in Frankfort, Kentucky. Sturdy blue plastic, it had seen only intermittent use since then, but now its hour had come, and soon started collecting faint grey stains.

I hadn’t swatted so many insects since that day in Ulaanbaatar when I cleared our hotel room of a rich bounty of flies, or the (seemingly) all-night mosquito hunt in my low-rent digs in Pusan.

As house-invading insects go, individual moths are fairly easy to kill. Mosquitoes, and flies that aren’t in their terminal moments bumping up against window glass, are much faster and seem to be paying attention. Moths wait obligingly as you spy their position and prepare the swat. As long as you aim correctly that first time — because if you miss, it will take flight — the moth will immediately become an ex-moth.

Of course, containing an insect infestation with a swatter is a fool’s errand. I soon advanced to a chemical weapon. Raid, in this case, applied to what I believed were strategic locations, and away from where the dog might go. The moth population dropped for a while, and we experienced optimism that the bugs would be vanquished.

The moths had other ideas. Localized infestations were discovered in boxes of dry cereal and one particularly vile node was in a bag of dry dog food. These packages were tossed, contents and all, and replacement boxes and bags were more carefully re-sealed. For a while, fewer moths were seen. But they returned.

With the help of my research assistant Google, I looked into moth infestations. I determined that we had pantry moths, not closet moths. Our bugs didn’t seem interested in our clothes. Naturally, there were suggestions of products to try to deal with them.

So soon I turned to a biological weapon. A successful, inexpensive and easy-to-use biological weapon, one I am happy to mention by name, so successful was it: Maxguard Pantry Moth Traps. Put one together and you’re got a tent-shaped bit of thick paper. On the inside surface, Maxguard provides a sticky surface infused with “extra strength pheromones,” the box promises.

A glue trap for male moths, other words. Or rather (projecting a little more), honey traps. They come, attracted at the prospect of moth nooky, stick and die, forever unable to do their biologic jobs when it comes to reproduction, thus setting the stage for a localized population collapse. That was my hope, anyway, when I set up the four traps that came in the box at various parts of the house in late September, before my latest trip.

Since I’ve been back, a month now, I haven’t seen any moths — except for those many stuck to the glue traps. Dozens of them. Snuffed out of whatever it means to be a moth, by human trickery. We’re pretty good at that. So long, moths. You are not missed.

Golden West Nuggets

Posted on November 3, 2022 by admin

This is the kind of detail that keeps the built environment interesting. A visible part of an alarm system of some earlier vintage, operable or not.

To be found in Placerville, California. You can also take a look at a small tower of some vintage in that town.

Placerville’s old bell tower. For use in the pre-electronic communication days, with a ring meaning something’s going on, come quick.

Wish I’d been hungry in Placerville, but no.

Some miles away, a Coloma plaque. I’m a fairly regular reader of plaques.

Another. I could post nothing but plaques, but that would be more granular than I want to be.

It’s a good-looking part of California anyway.

With recreational opportunities.

Mark Twain on Lake Tahoe (from Roughing It): “At last Lake Tahoe burst upon us, a noble sheet of blue water lifted some 6,000 feet above the level of the sea, and walled in by a rim of snow-clad mountain peaks that towered aloft a full 3,000 feet higher still.

“As it lay there with the shadows of the mountains, brilliantly photographed upon its surface, I thought it must surely be the fairest picture the whole earth affords.”

Enjoyable vistas for sure. It was good to see other people there.

I had breakfast my first morning in Reno at a restaurant for old people — except that’s me now, isn’t it? But on a weekday mid-morning, I was one of the younger patrons. Decent food, though a touch expensive (a contagion from California, no doubt, plus the inflation du jour).

After I finished, I went out to leave, but noticed a sign I had to see, not far away. I took a closer look.

Not in the market, but someone must be. If that isn’t local color, I don’t know what is.

When serendipity is with you on the road, that kind of sighting leads to others. That’s what happened that morning in Reno. This was nearby the wedding chapel.

“Bee Dance” by Andrea Greenlees (2019), according to its sign, which also said it was created at Burning Man that year.

On the next block — all this was on West Fourth Street in Reno — was a closed off place called Glow Plaza, an outdoor event space that only opened this year. Well, open for concerts on the weekends. It wasn’t open for me to look around, though there was some construction going on at an adjacent site (probably new apartments), so maybe that restriction was just temporary.

Anyway, I got a look from the sidewalk. New-looking sculptures.

Including vintage Reno neon, or maybe close-replica homages.

Speaking of apartments, this property in downtown Reno has the look of a 2010s adaptive reuse. I checked, and it is. It used to be a motel. The loss of an SRO property? Maybe, but I didn’t know there was much of that left.

Now it’s an “upscale micro-unit living facility,” to borrow a phrase from Northern Nevada Business Weekly. I checked again, and its rents range from $1,100 to $1,700 (the low end of the range is for about 250 square feet).

Could have done an entire posting of name plates on vintage cars at the National Automobile Museum. The familiar and the less familiar.

That last one’s an attention-getter. You can find it on a Krit Motor Car Co. auto, made years before jackbooted lowlifes shanghaied the symbol.

The Battle Born Memorial in Carson City, dedicated to fallen soldiers from Nevada.

At first I thought, iron? True, iron is at the heart of modern war. But as soon as I was inside, and looked up, I realized how fitting the material is. A remarkable memorial.

Especially when you gaze up at it.

The names of the fallen are inscribed there.

Eight hundred and ninety-five names, I understand. Punch Architecture did the design, which was completed in 2018.

Later I looked up Battle Born. I didn’t know that was a nickname for Nevada. Everyone’s heard Silver State, but not Battle Born State. I puzzled on that a while, but eventually realized that when Nevada entered the union (1864; Lincoln needed another two Senators), it joined the fight, as a state, to keep that union together.

A much smaller metal-work, underfoot in Carson City. Good to know I’ve been on the Kit Carson Trail.

Underfoot in Reno.

On the road to Virginia City.

The drive out from Virginia City to I-580 is along Nevada 341, and it’s a winding drop of a drive through arid landforms. This snip from Google maps illustrates the winding-est part of the road, called Geiger Grade Road at that point. The entire drop is from more than 6,100 feet above sea level at Virginia City to Reno’s 4,500 feet.

Light traffic on a sunny weekday afternoon. A fine drive if you’re paying attention. Almost car commercial driving.

This instead of a real map.

No, California. Don’t do this. It’s false economy. I don’t know how, I just know that it is.

I figured out my way around without a gizmo map. I even found a spot a few hundred yards from a parking lot, and a little off a nearby trail, where I could sit in the sun for a few minutes, and listen to only faint sounds. Almost as quiet as Joshua Tree or Big Bend NPs.

The Hotel Charlotte in Groveland, California. Now a hundred years old, it’s the kind of place that gives you a brass key, and lets you know there’s a fee for replacing it. Basic and comfortable, though the most expensive place I stayed on this trip; you’re really paying for near access to Yosemite NP.

Main Street in Groveland (California 120), just after dawn.

A few more images. Such as in Sacramento.

I had to look up lumpia: spring rolls found in the Philippines and Indonesia. And northern California, it seems. Too bad I wasn’t hungry. Also, it was closed. Not long after, I saw a Balinese restaurant in Old Sacramento. Still wasn’t hungry. Damn.

I was driving to the last place I was going to stay in Sacramento on the late afternoon of October 7, and I got a little turned around, wandering some neighborhood streets before the inevitable moment when I pulled over to consult Google Maps.

I chanced on this place.

What a garden it is.

An extravaganza of roses.

Go in the garden and ask the rose its meaning.

Late Bloomers

Posted on September 15, 2022 by admin

Summer is ebbing away, but it’s still warm. Looks to be for a little while longer.

Took a photographic survey of our back yard flowers this afternoon. The hibiscus are mostly gone, but other blooms whose names I don’t know carry on during the declining summertime.

Such as this blood-red bloom.

Less intense, but still a vivid color.

On to pink.

White.

One more — vivid red again, but this one was worth a look not only because it’s striking, but because its a bloom on what many people would probably disdain as a weed (before it flowered, that is).

The term weed ought to be specifically plants that interfere with agriculture, as well as old slang for cannabis. Mostly it just means plants people don’t like. There are plants I don’t like, and sometimes — when I have the energy — I uproot them. But usually I think of plants such as the one above as volunteers, whether they produce vivid flowers or not.

Budget Buster

Posted on September 14, 2022 by admin

I’ve been seeing items in various stores advertised as “inflation busters,” which is vacuous as most other ad-speak, and not very original. But it did seem to inspire this variation, found on a circular for a local pizza joint.

Made me smile. Budget buster, eh? What was the thought process that went into that choice of words, which ended up meaning the exact opposite of what was probably intended?

Unless, of course, they meant to say that the place is expensive, so it’s got to be good. Somehow, I doubt it. If you really can feed 20 people — let’s take the low-end estimate — then $8.25 each isn’t bad.

The Demise of Nabih Berri the Ficus

Posted on September 11, 2022 by admin

Below is the text of a paper letter I sent from Arlington, Massachusetts, in September 1995, to a friend in Texas. Most of the letters I sent that year are trapped on a disk readable by an ancient world processing machine that’s in our laundry room, but ones from September through November (for some reason) were written using another machine, copies of whose documents are more accessible.

The last time I fired up that ancient machine — some years ago — it worked, but retrieving the text would either mean printing every page, or taking pictures of the screen for every page. Either would be time-consuming, so it’s possible that that correspondence will be as lost as the Amber Room, except that no one cares.

Got your e-note this morning when I got in. We’ve got a correspondence going! Reason enough to like the new medium, no matter what the neo-Luddites think. But I won’t quit letter or postcards. As you can see.

Sorry to hear about your current difficulties. What happened to your car? Thought it was up & running. Maybe your can learn to live without a TV, though.

No need to replace Nabih Berri the Ficus. Sic transit gloria mundi. (Sic transit gloria fici?). Gone, but not forgotten. A plant among plants, it was.

My friends Matt and Jill from Australia have come and gone. Fine people, but exhausting. They’re out to see America between beers. Did get to try a pretty good Mexican restaurant near Harvard Square during their visit. The place has Lone Star Beer. Hm.

Want to get away, before it’s absolutely freezing, to Montreal. Don’t know when yet, but of course you will be informed by postcard. I’ve bought some maps and a guide to the city at my company’s expense, because we do genuinely need them for research, besides the fact that I might use them myself. We have an account at Globe Corner Bookstore on Boylston Street, and all I have to do is sign my name. Now that’s an expense account.

Cold (for September) (high 50s) and miserable outside. Gotta go home through it anyway. More anon.

I had just started using email that summer, as mentioned. I’m not sure anymore what his “current difficulties” were, but it sounds like car repairs and a burned out TV.

As for Nabih Berri the Ficus, that was a twisted ficus of mine that died that year. As for why I called it that, call it youthful whimsy. I think he was in the news when I originally got the plant. I was surprised to learn today that he original Nabih Berri is still alive.
As for Montreal, we didn’t make it that year. It had to wait till 2002.

Dimming Summer Light

Posted on August 31, 2022 by admin

Goldenrod has started to turn golden out toward the back yard fence. I noticed that as the sun was going down for the last time in August 2022. It’s been an eventful month.

The dog was patrolling the yard at that moment.

Her patrols know no season, but various creatures to spy — including dogs beyond the fence — are more likely in the warmer months

Temporary Saw Horse Installation

Posted on August 29, 2022 by admin

A thunderstorm rolled through yesterday around 6 pm, and today again around noon. Each was followed by slightly cooler air and clear skies. Summer’s in decline, but not gone. Ragweed has started pumping out its pollen.

The repaving of our street is done, leaving behind asphalt smooth as Tennessee whiskey, but dark as a claims adjuster’s heart. Will genetically modified moss or some such — smooth and hard, but green and alive — one day in some future decade be the surface of choice for transportation infrastructure?

Meanwhile, the paving contractor recently gathered all of the lighted saw horses from the street, and lined them up for removal. It was a few days (and nights) before they got around to picking them up.

Nice effect after dark. We’ve walked the dog that way a few times, and while it might impress us a little, the dog doesn’t seem interested in such items. Can’t eat it, or smell it, or exchange growls or whines with it, so who cares?

Apron Replacement

Posted on July 25, 2022 by admin

Not long ago, the village sent me a note — a low-tech, paper note, stuck in the door — that soon my “apron” would be replaced. It took me a moment to figure out that meant the section of my driveway that’s between the street and the sidewalk. Turns out the village meant not only that, but the sidewalk next to it as well.

Technically, the apron isn’t part of my driveway, since the it’s beyond my lot line. But I use it all the time as if I owned it because it leads to my driveway. The advantage to it belonging to the village is, of course, no fee for the replacement above the taxes I already pay.

We had time to move the cars to the street where, we were assured, they wouldn’t be ticketed for overnight parking. And they haven’t been. Soon workmen and big machines came along.

Wooden boards were erected to contain the concrete in its liquid-ish moments.

Pouring concrete.

I don’t have an image of the finished apron and sidewalk, but it’s a bright white hard surface. I didn’t sign my name or initials on it, or let the dog paw it. Also, there’s no imprint by the contractor, or a date, as you see elsewhere sometimes — and for a long time.

Such as the sidewalk in Milwaukee’s Walker’s Point neighborhood earlier this month.

Not the contractor, but the city’s imprint. It was an old slab of concrete, but it’s held up fairly well for more than 80 years in the chilly Wisconsin climate. Will my new apron hold up so long? Till the turn of the 22nd century?

Light Years Ahead

Posted on July 17, 2022 by admin

Fifty-three years ago, Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins were on their way to the Moon, an occasion to recall each July, not only for those who remember, but also those who do not. Not long ago, I happened across this remarkable video about a very specific, and well known interval of only a few minutes in that mission: the Eagle’s final approach to the lunar surface.

More specifically, the video is a lecture about what the guidance computer was doing and why during those fraught minutes, including a lot of detail that isn’t that well known. Posted by the National Museum of Computing, I was skeptical I would make it all the way through. I was wrong.

One Robert Wills, a software engineer with a clear enthusiasm for the computing that made the Apollo missions possible, tells the tale in simple enough terms — but not too simple — that a non-specialist like me can understand much of it, if not everything. No mean feat, as attested by the non-trivial number of teachers and professors who cannot do so.

I knew a fair amount of the story, but hardly all of it, and the video filled in a lot that I didn’t know. That should be the goal of any video with any claims to being educational, I believe.

Northern Indiana Dash

Posted on July 6, 2022 by admin

Ah, high summer.

That’s in Dallas. I’m not there. Today’s high here was 79 F., a dip from a hot and muggy 90s-day on Tuesday. Several degrees of latitude will make that difference.

One of these days, the times might catch up with Gen. “Mad” Anthony Wayne, leader in the Revolution and scourge of the Northwest Territory Indians, but for now, you can find him on horseback in bronze at Freimann Square in downtown Fort Wayne, Indiana, in a work by Chicagoan George Etienne Ganiere (1865-1935).

We gazed a Mad Anthony for a few moments as part of our trip through northern Indiana. I wanted to take a short trip over the long Independence Day weekend, but I didn’t want it to consume the entire three days.

So on Saturday, we left in mid-morning and made our way to Fort Wayne, where we stayed overnight. On Sunday, we returned across northern Indiana to get home, which took up most of the day.

We arrived in Nappanee, Indiana, for lunch on Saturday. I’m glad to report that Main Street Roasters (not so new anymore, it seems) makes a fine pulled pork sandwich. Yuriko said the ingredients in her Cobb salad tasted very fresh, and I sampled some, and agreed. The place was doing a brisk business.

We figured the main source for both fresh pork and fresh greens was the Amish farms in the area. Nappanee is considered the focus of one of the country’s larger Amish populations, though that’s a little hard to tell in a casual look around downtown, which isn’t so different from other Indiana towns its size (pop. nearly 7,000). Out away from town, though, you can see from the road farm houses and other buildings, clustered closer than in other rural areas, which is characteristic of Amish settlements.

In town, Plain People in carriages rolled by now and then. Some female store clerks wore the small head coverings common among Mennonites. The Amish tourist attraction in Nappanee known as Amish Acres closed in late 2019, and a more upmarket property re-opened the next year — in an example of bad timing, though it seems to have survived — as The Barns at Nappanee, Home of Amish Acres. Maybe all those extra words are going to cost you more.

Across the street from Main Street Roasters (and not Amish Acres).

On Sunday, our first brief stop was at Magic Wand, home of the Magicburger, which can be found in Churubusco, Indiana.

We didn’t have a magic burger, but rather shared a strawberry milkshake to go. Among strawberry milkshakes, it was the real deal. The real tasty deal, straw-quaffed as we speed along U.S. 33.

Churubusco was a name I took an instant liking to. The town fathers apparently read in their newspapers about the battle of that name, and wanted the town to borrow a bit of its martial glory. According to some sources, it gets shortened in our time, and maybe for a long time, to Busco. I also noticed references to the place, on signs and the like, as Turtletown. Really? What was that about? I wondered.

The Beast of Busco, that’s what. Quite a story. A giant among turtles that the townsfolk never could quite capture. I haven’t had this much fun reading hyperlocal history — lore — since I chanced across a small lake in Wisconsin that is supposedly home to an underwater pyramid. Turtle Days was last month.

Another spot for a short visit on Sunday: Warsaw, Indiana. It’s the seat of Kosciusko County, with a handsome Second Empire courthouse rising in the town square.

Designed in the 1880s by Thomas J. Tolan, who died during construction, the Indiana Historical Society says. The project was completed by his son, Brentwood S. Tolan.

The square sports some other handsome buildings, too.

Warsaw is also home to a garden the likes of which I’d never imagined, and the reason I stopped in town, days after spotting it on Google Maps and then looking it up: the Warsaw Biblical Gardens.

The brainchild of a local woman back in the 1980s with access to the land. “It would be no ordinary garden — not a rock garden, nor a rose garden, nor a perennial garden — it would be a truly unique and beautiful Biblical Garden,” the garden’s web site says.

“Actually, we say ‘gardens’ because the Warsaw Biblical Gardens has a variety of areas: the Forest, Brook, Meadow, Desert, Crop and Herb gardens; the Grape Arbor; and the Gathering site. Warsaw Biblical Gardens is ¾-acre in size, and there are very few gardens like this in the United States.

“The term ‘biblical’ refers mainly to the fact that the plants, trees, flowers, herbs, etc., are mentioned in the Old and/or New Testaments of the Bible. These have been carefully researched to preserve the integrity of the Gardens’ uniqueness.

“The Warsaw/Winona Lake area of Indiana has a long religious history. That history begins perhaps with the Chatauqua times of Winona Lake, now being revived. [Really?] Many other famous historical religious figures made their home’s here, from Homer Rodeheaver to Fanny Crosby to Billy Sunday.”

I won’t pretend I didn’t have to look up the first two of those three. Regardless, it’s a stunning little place.

Go far — always good if you can manage it. But also go near.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Over the Transom