On occasions like this, it’s fitting even for citizens of a republic to say, Long Live the King!
Here’s the image of Elizabeth II that I like best.
That’s for strictly personal reasons: I picked the coin up in change in Australia over 30 years ago.
I was glad to see 50-cent pieces in circulation somewhere.
On Monday, which was like a Sunday in terms of work schedules, we took a walk at the Palatine Prairie Nature Preserve in Palatine, a not-too-far-away suburb.
We’ve been here before, I told Yuriko.
We have?
I couldn’t remember exactly when (till I looked it up), but I knew that we had — and we’d seen guys playing Frisbee golf there. Besides a walking trail, the preserve includes a disc golf course. It still does.
Something I noticed this time that I never did before: the players were all carrying bags with more than one disc inside. Maybe a half dozen discs. Like a golfer has different clubs, a — disc-er? — has different discs for different shots? Must be.
We didn’t go to toss discs, but just to walk.
And read a bit.
Gold is a prime color of late summer.
This little memorial, under a tree, looked fairly new.
This Tony Esposito? Probably so, considering his long tenure with the Chicago Blackhawks.
What’s our idea of a good way to spend a few hours on a long weekend at home? A long walk between a small creek and a large electric substation.
After a fairly inert Saturday, on Sunday we walked a section of the Salt Creek Greenway, which runs 25 miles or so from Busse Woods in Elk Grove Village to the Brookfield Zoo. The part we walked was in Wood Dale, Illinois.
We started at an empty parking lot. Signs call it a bike trail, but the entire time we were there — on a pleasant, cloudy weekend afternoon — we saw exactly one bicyclist, along with a handful of walkers, including one other family with a dog.
The trail is decidedly obscure, at least to judge by its emptiness on Sunday, and we liked it that way. No dodging bicycles, for one thing. We walked a total of two miles or so, one there and one back, since the trail doesn’t loop.
Early September is still a lush season along the trail.
Salt Creek. The trail crosses it at one point, but mostly runs at some distance from the creek along this section.
Maybe people are put off by the ComEd substation on one side of the trail. It’s impressively large. I get a kick out of getting a good look at important infrastructure, but that’s just me.
Part of Illinois 390 is also visible from a short section of the trail.
Note the birds. For a moment, especially when they took flight, you could imagine you were in a Hitchcock movie.
A really pleasant evening to start September. I could sit out on the deck in a t-shirt and be quite comfortable late into the evening. These nights will be fewer and fewer in the weeks ahead.
Crickets are signing their little hearts out. Wait, do insects have hearts?
Insect Cop says: “Insects do have hearts, but they look very different to our own. The insect heart is a long, tubular structure that extends down the length of the insect body, and delivers nutrient-rich blood to the organs and tissues.
“Insects also have their own version of blood, called haemolymph. Unlike human blood, insect haemolymph does not carry oxygen and lacks red blood cells.”
Back to posting on September 6. It’s good to take Labor Day seriously and not work. We ought to have two labor days, come to think of it — add May 1 as a springtime holiday.
A public domain shot, lifted from NASA. Photographer: Joel Kowsky.
Hope all goes as planned. Yet I can’t help thinking — how is it so different from the Saturn V? An improvement in any way, after 50 years? Hard to say.
Why orange? Black and white were good enough for the Saturn V, after all. Turns out it’s a weight issue, and with Moon rockets, every ounce counts.
“The orange color comes from insulation that covers the vehicle’s liquid hydrogen and oxygen tanks,” noted an article published by the Planetary Society about seven years ago.
“This is the same reason that the Space Shuttle’s external fuel tank was orange. The first two shuttle flights, STS-1 and STS-2, in 1981, featured tanks painted white to protect the shuttle from ultraviolet light while sitting on the launch pad. But after engineers concluded the protection was unnecessary, the white paint was discarded, freeing up 600 pounds of weight in the process.”
One more thing, NASA. Get a better name for the rocket. Artemis and Orion are good; they go together in history and lore. But Space Launch System? That just doesn’t have the panache of Saturn.
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
Last night for dinner, we had tilapia and salad — cucumbers and tomatoes from our back yard. Mostly Yuriko attends to the various garden plants in pots next to our deck, though I do a fair amount of watering, and put the pots back upright when the wind blows them down.
A most delicious salad, pictured here in our red plastic mixing bowl. Looked like this before we added a bit of oil-based dressing and I added croutons to my serving.
The yard produces somewhat more than we can eat. When that happens, as an old friend of mine put it, you’re gardening for virtue.
As long as I had my multitudinous image-maker handy, I thought I’d do a few still lifes as well.
So seldom do I write about art that I had to check: the plural is indeed still lifes, not still lives, which maybe could refer to a cave-dwelling hermits who lead still lives.
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?
I’m sure there will be some chatter about the 25th anniversary of the death of Diana Spencer this week, but I won’t add to it, except to say we were out of town that Labor Day weekend.
Some years ago, I wrote: “We made it as far west as Iowa, briefly, but the main focus was getting to Nauvoo, Illinois, perched way west on the banks of the Mississippi. The first day [August 30, 1997], we stopped at a place called Bishop Hill, which itself was the site of a religious commune in the 1840s and ’50s, home to a good many Swedish immigrants that followed a charismatic Swede.
“Alas, he died [indeed, was murdered] and there was no one to take his place, unlike certain other cults that flourished around that time and later went to Utah, so they parceled out the commonly held lands to cult members in the 1860s. About a hundred years later, their descendants became interested in restoring some of the town’s buildings, which have their charms. The church was nice in a sort of plain way, and the hotel was a fine example of 1850s Midwest architecture.”
In our time (including 1997), Bishop Hill is a small town in Henry County, Illinois, and a few of its buildings constitute Bishop Hill State Historic Site. The name is an English version of the birthplace of sect founder Erik Jansson, who was from Biskopskulla parish in Uppland, near Uppsala, Sweden. There may be a hill at that place in Sweden, but I’m pretty sure there’s no hill at Bishop Hill in Illinois.
I took some pictures. It was still the days of film cameras, so only a few. Such as of Yuriko, who was large with child at that moment. The child will be celebrating her 25th birthday come November.
Note the bed of brown-eyed susans. Late August is their time. The other day, we saw an enormous crop of them along the shore of Volkening Lake.
A local cat, who was large with tail.
Next, I’m standing near one of the older buildings in town, though I don’t believe it’s part of the historic site. Someone used to sell beer there. Curiously, the same building can be seen in the image illustrating Bishop Hill’s Wiki page.
Another view
I won’t swear to it after 25 years, but I think we arrived too late in the day to see the interiors of most of the historic buildings. In any case, it was our last trip before full-blown parenthood.
Now that’s an image. It’s been getting some attention, and for good reason. Marvel of the age. Posted here.
The entire caption, for form’s sake, since I’m not going to further investigate the technical specs of the filters:
Webb NIRCam composite image of Jupiter from three filters – F360M (red), F212N (yellow-green), and F150W2 (cyan) – and alignment due to the planet’s rotation. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Jupiter ERS Team; image processing by Judy Schmidt.
I saw a video clip about these Webb images today — produced by some local news outfit — and Jupiter was called “fifth rock from the sun.” Had a nit to pick with that, right away. Pretty big nit, actually, consider that Jupiter’s equatorial diameter is about 88,900 miles. The planet isn’t called a gas giant for nothing.
The following are couple of physical leftovers from the Michigan trip, acquired at grocery stores along the way. In both cases, my friends left the unused portion behind with us, and we’ve used them up in the weeks since. Such as the ground coffee. They said it was good, and Yuriko agrees.
Superior Coffee Roasting Co. is in Sault Ste. Marie, state of Michigan side.
The coffee bag got me thinking. Just how many ore carriers are their plying the Great Lakes these days? The Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum didn’t mention that, or at least that I saw. But the answer isn’t hard to find in our Internet-linked times.
More than 100 freighters transport iron ore across the Great Lakes, a combination of U.S.- and Canadian-flagged, and international carriers, according to an article published by the Great Lakes Seaway Partnership in 2019.
Citing the Iron Mining Association of Minnesota, the article also notes “more than 80 percent of the nation’s iron is mined in Minnesota, and that ore accounts for nearly 60 percent of shipments leaving the Duluth port. Iron ore led the port’s exports in the last year [2018], with 21.5 million tons shipped — the most transported from Duluth-Superior in a single season since 1995.”
Next, strawberry-rhubarb jam. Gone, as you can see. Much of it put on my breakfast breads this month. Wonderful sweetness. From Keweenaw Kitchens of Baraga, Michigan, on L’Anse Bay on Lake Superior.
Good travel writing can be hard to find. I came across this text the other day, when looking for useful information about a particular small U.S. city, Z.
Are you ready to explore some of the most AMAZING things to do in Z?
All caps doesn’t inspire confidence, but let’s carry on.
The perfect blend of unrivaled nature and diverse culture, Z is one of [state name]’s most vibrant and eclectic towns.
Interesting choice of adjective to go with “nature”: unrivaled. I’ve never been to this city, but I’m sure its “nature” is interesting enough, maybe even beautiful. Much else surely rivals it, though.
As a buzzing college town, Z offers an abundance of events and activities as well as being the perfect melting pot of different states from across America.
The only bit of useful information in that sentence is the fact that Z is a college town; but I already knew that, and so do many other people.
Not only is Z a hive of activity and excitement, the town also offers some of the most spectacular nature to be found in [state name].
This unique town is one not to be missed and with so many things to do in Z, you will certainly want to stop by.
“I’m looking for the hive of activity and excitement,” you say to the clerk at the Information booth in Z’s airport. “Could you tell me where that is?”
Well, it’s easy to mock this paint-by-numbers intro, but I might go through the slide show anyway, despite the fact that I’d support this kind of bad writing in some small way by adding to its clicks. Why? You can learn even from bad sites. I don’t know the city that well, so I’m bound to notice someplace I might want to see.
Sure enough, I did. More than one place.
Last Saturday, I drove Ann and some of her stuff back to Normal for her new school year as a sophomore. Her room is in this tower.
Which is next to this tower.
Nearby is basketball —
— and religion.
But not that much religion. According to a sign near the door, the building is occupied by the New Covenant Community (a “tri-union congregation”), the Judson Baptist Fellowship, the Lutheran Student Movement — and the Center for Mathematics, Science & Technology.
Maybe the landlord (ISU, I assume) considers scientism a religion, but more likely, a tenant is a tenant.
