Harrumph!

Yeah, we had and are having some snow in Boston, over two feet.

I recall in the ’60s when I was on the South Carolina swim team and it snowed in Columbia during practice. We had guys from Florida and even Australia who had never seen the stuff. They ran outside wet and in their tank suits just for a touch and look. Good they did; it was all gone within the hour. That’s not likely happen here and now.

	Last night, before the real stuff, the deck looked like a scene from Dr. Zhivago’s dacha.
By this morning, we were at two feet and both storm doors were doing their job. They required considerable oomph to force open enough to get out.
	Our touchstone for snow is the New Mexico pottery sun on the garage. Snow it is.
With the strong winds, much of the snow was horizontal overnight. Most of our windows were more ornamental than useful.
	View from the side to our neighbor’s. Those are two vehicles and not snow forts.
The warm and cozy backyard cafe is not as inviting this morning.

Pix Notes: You’re welcome to anything useful. They are Creative Commons, so just cite Mike Ball once. Click images to enlarge.

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Little stuff in prep for the 2 to 3 feet and 70MPH gusts…

	As a reference for the white nasties, our front looked like this before the flurries started.
Easter abandoned, perhaps with hope for future candy, in an open lot on upper Milton Avenue. Surely no one felt the need to discard old baskets in preparation for the storm.
	The birds were not deterred by the flurries. Rather they crowed awaiting shots at the feeders.
No warning to the lilacs that are eager for spring.

Pix Notes: You’re welcome to anything useful. They are Creative Commons, so just cite Mike Ball once. Click images to enlarge.

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Hail to Da Mare and his minions. Post-Sandy, we’re feeling good about city services here in Tom Menino’s city of Boston and neighborhood of Hyde Park. The big old tree is gone. The last of it just went away in a big old truck.

We aren’t uninjured. A good sized limb was driven into the garage roof. We’ll need to fix that or have it fixed.

The tree though…the tree. A chum in Winchester had the same situation in the storm. A large pine fell on his property. There was no damage to his house, but he’s gotten estimates of a thousand for a clean up and $3,000 for the works including tree removal.

Here on Fairmount Hill:

1. a 40 to 50 foot pine in our front yard fell across the yard, sidewalk, street, and neighbor’s sidewalk and yard
2. my wife and numerous neighbors independently called 911, the local police station and Public Works
3. within a half hour, crews worked in the wind and rain to clear the street
4. a Public Works truck could haul away some of the smaller pieces they had gotten off with a chain saw
5. a Public Works loader moved the big trunk pieces to our lawn and sidewalk — four massive trunk pieces and the huge root structure
6. the crew head said (to my incredulity) that Parks would be by to pick up most of it and if we were nice all of it
7. this morning a contract tree firm showed up to chip and take away the branches
8. they ended up also loading up the two smaller diameter trunk pieces, clearing the sidewalk
9. a few minutes ago a green truck (Parks contractor?) showed and took away the rest

Here’s overkill on boys-with-toys. The final process, pix because I have ‘em.

	The trunk remainder was pretty massive still.
The guy operating the truck and its arcade-claw-machine style crane was clearly not new to the job. He made quick work of our residue and was off to the next job.
	A single trunk piece was too inefficient or slow or not fun enough. He doubled up.
The Public Works crew had also sawed through the trunk at the root structure, or he would have had it all at once.
	Double dump.
He had to swing the claw back for the roots. (It made me think of Toy Story — “Farewell, my friends. I have been chosen. I go to a better place.”)
	The nasty, gnarly root structure was up…
…and gone. And like The Lone Ranger, “Our work is done here,” and he was gone too.

Pix Notes: You’re welcome to anything useful. They are Creative Commons, so just cite Mike Ball once.

Actually, I thought the Public Works crew was optimistic. I have a small electric chainsaw and two bow saws. I considered what lengths I’d cut and such.

But I didn’t have to.

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Here’s best hopes and wishes for those in Sandy’s path. We had comparatively little damage here. Our flooding, lost power, and tree-on-house destruction would normally be sources for self-pity. With this monster storm though, we feel lucky.

Here are a few snaps of our hill in Boston’s Hyde Park neighborhood.

	Well, there was that tree. This 40 to 50 foot pine fell without creaking or other sound, suddenly blocking the road. The car normally in its path was not and it fell both away from our house and short of the neighbor’s.
Everyone, his brother and niece seemed to have called the city. Plus a Public Works big shot lives nearby. They told us they didn’t know when they could get to it, but were there within a half hour. They took about half the tree but used a loader to move the rest off to the sides so folk could drive through.
	Pre-Sandy old coot (and weatherman/woman) wisdom was it would be a waste of time to rake before the storm. That was partially true. Here is our formally totally clear patio after the blow.
On the other hand, we got trash, recycling and yard-waste pick up all on Monday. So 16 big bags or cans of leaves went to the city compost piles.
	A neighbor’s R.I.P. Halloween tombstone ended up in the gutter flood of leaves and water. I retrieved it and one of the downed-tree gawkers recognized it, taking it off to the rightful owner.
Our several maples were denuded by the big winds. The three big basswoods in the back haven’t even bothered to turn color much less give up their foliage. This dogwood held on to about half its covering.
	The skies still misted and more rain is allegedly coming throughout the day. Yet, early this morning, the sun tried to peak and promise.
With the big winds gone and guts down to 20 MPH, the political yard sign went back up.

Pix Notes: You’re welcome to anything useful. They are Creative Commons, so just cite Mike Ball once.

We know numerous chums who lost power and had water damage both here and in New Jersey. I hear that my WV buddies and getting a foot or two of snow as well. However, Sandy was relatively kind to us and Boston did a fine job.

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My scream, I was told, would have curdled milk. Until that defining moment, I had a serious fear of bees…apparently a common phobia.

At around 7 or maybe 8, my very intimate, in-the-shirt encounter with what I recall as a huge bee changed all of that. Previously, bees and like critters such as yellow jacket wasps hurt me physically a bit and emotionally substantially. While an outdoorsy, tent-camping, walk the woods, leas and cow pastures, garden in my grandfather’s one-acre “patches”  kind of little guy, I dreaded the next sting. I’d walked barefoot on bees, which in retrospect understandably stung me. Sitting at family picnics dripping watermelon juice, I’d get attacked by a bee or yellow jacket for no reason I could fathom. In short, the pain, itching and swelling came on me suddenly and with no malice on my part.

Then came the gigantic bee in my shirt.

My grandparents’ backyard in their house where I summered, abutted the Mytinger place (apparently the oldest house in the state and at the time very neglected property). With my family’s carefully planted and cultivated flowers, and the neighboring overgrowth, there were flowers galore. In particularly right on the border, my grandfather had planted hollyhocks, which were basketball-player height and jammed with blossoms that bees loved.

Several of us kids where playing right there when a huge bumblebee flew down the back neck of my tee-shirt and scampered way down inside.

My grandmother loved slapstick and to her the essence of humor was schadenfreude, not surprise. That evening, she said how sorry she was that she missed the event. She added immediately that the neighbors who did hear me thought I was being killed. Apparently I let out a loud, enthusiastic and, as it turned out cathartic, bellow of terror. Then I literally tore my shirt off, shredding it.

To this day, the humor to me is that not only did the normally benign (just ask a country kid) bumblebee did not sting me. Rather, the incident with its scream exorcised the fear. From that moment, I’ve had no dread of any critter in that family. I keep a judicious eye on the unpredictable bad actors, such as hornets, but bees and wasps are just other insects to me.

If I’m sitting outside and a bee or two land on my arm. Well, a bee or two landed on my arm. I might let them crawl or just blow them away. No foul.

Thus recently, I have been taking a few snaps of bees making love to flowers (as above). Those are not telephoto, rather with the lens an inch or two from the subjects. When people ask if I am afraid of being with the bees, I just tell them no. Rarely, I’ll add my tale of tee-shirt release.

The bee interplay does remind me of that charming The Point! album by Harry Nilsson. Its bee scene has the protagonists hiding in a hollow log from a bee swarm, when the log rolls downhill into the Rock Man. He looked at them and said, “Say – what’s happening with you boys . . . it looks like you’re pretty shook up, been goofing with the bees?”

I can relate.

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Spurred by Facebook and Twitter truths, several hundred of us queued for Morticia this morning at Boston’s Franklin Park Zoo. We came prepared for the sprawling visual glory of the titan arum, a.k.a. corpse flower, and a bit trepid over a promise of dreadful stench in the temporary greenhouse kept at 80-something humidity and temperature.

Visually, she as the staff said, did not disappoint. As for bad smells, you’d do worse with durian fruit or happening across a decomposing mammal in the woods or maybe that camp outhouse. I eavesdropped to hear people apologizing to each other for their “failure” to get disgusting enough smells after all the anticipation and trepidation.

The zoo has a nice profile of botany of Morticia, here. Plus there’s info on the donor, who presented this one and four others to the facility.

They also realized what a winner they had here. Two of these monsters have bloomed in the same year. Fester, also named for a creepy  Addams Family character, recently finished its cycle. As these bloom on their own mysterious schedules only for about two days every five to 15 years, this mini-run was a delight to plant freaks.

The zoo intends to keep all five in a more permanent greenhouse elsewhere on the grounds after Morticia fades. Others in the quintet are in various stages of development. The staff told me they had no idea when the other three might bloom…a year, five, ten?

This time, the zoo really accommodated us curious types. They had pre- and post-zoo hours just for gawking and sniffing, and set up the greenhouse right inside one of the gates. They also did not charge admission for those special times (8 to 9:30 AM and 6 to 8 PM). Zoo members and paying visitors who came at regular hours could also visit the flowers.

In addition to self-appointed alerters, the zoo updated developments and included photos of each change over the past week of pre-blooming. Their FB page had it all and their Twitter handle carried abbreviated versions. Coupled with not charging for a peek, they clearly wanted to plug people into the zoo. Smart marketing, says I.

When I arrived this morning a little before 8, I sank like a butterfly in the rain. The cars in front of me on Blue Hill Avenue were turning maybe a third or more of them into the park. The two semi-circles of parking spaces by the zebra entrance were jammed and backed up. So was the huge lot by the golf course. Cars were parked all along the drive a quarter of a mile down. The auxiliary lot doesn’t open until 9 either. I went ahead and parked in the little lot by the other entrance and across from the golf course, a  lot I generally use in winter when I cross-country ski there.

Ah, but good news, as I returned to the zoo, I heard the loud speakers at the golf course. There was some sort of links tournament there. So not the entire world just had to see Morticia. In fact, as I entered, I estimated I was 150 or so people back in line. A similar number came behind me in the next 20 minutes. If this was Disney World, that line would be nothing for any attraction worth the trouble.

Pix notes: Click on an image for a closer view. These are Creative Commons. You’re welcome to use and abuse them. Just give Mike Ball credit the first go.

As it turns out, these flowers blow it all in preparation and blooming. Once they open up, they let off their smells to attract pollinating bugs and such. They they quickly fold up show. Fester was nearby and showed what happens as the exterior parts fold down back onto the corm. It looks very woody and extremely dormant.

They let us in double groups of 10, so 20 sweating camera bugs at a time would be around the two corpse plants, with the next batch of 10 replenishing as folk exited.  Certainly, they did not want to spend a lot of time inside. The air was hot and wet. You could pretty well see and photograph and smell from various sides in five or 10 minutes at most. By then, your camera lens was likely to fog and your shirt was wet from your own dew.

Yet, I think we were largely disappointed at not being disgusted by the aroma. That may well have been oversold. Perhaps Fester was more fetid?

On the other hand, Morticia was one big honking flower. She was nearly five feet tall at at least four feet across. The colors of the open blossom were splendidly rich and a bit lewd, looking very vulvar both in folds and hues. The outer green cup of the flower was gloriously fluted too. As fond and proud as I was of my giant parrot tulips, I bow before Morticia.

I can’t say I’ll keep close tabs for the next five to 15 years. I have seen and smelled a corpse flower in bloom. On the other hand, if I’m near one at the right time, I’ll make the effort. Who knows what grand colors…and repulsive smells….that one will produce.

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When I saw the images of Pope Benedict and Fidel Castro glad-handing, I noticed the ears. The 84 and 85-year-old guys exhibit big, old ears, a.k.a. hypertrophy. The image here is cropped and pushed together so you can see what I did.

So, I clicked around that net place to get some figures on how our head projections grow, how quickly, how big on average and such. In high school, private reading and in college, I had heard from various biology and medicine folk that cartilage continues to grow slowly, even as we get shorter with age.

I was surprised to read that folk wisdom at least questions that. Numerous pages claim with no evidence that just isn’t so.

There are few scientific studies that do the real thing. They compare by age and gender, left and right, and so forth. Actual numbers from experiments, like here and here, confirm that I’d long heard. Old folks’ ears and noses look bigger, because they are.

I don’t find this unpleasant. In fact, there’s an elegance and almost sculptural glory in a large ear — so long as it does not spew hair out of the canal. I think immediately of a dear family friend we called Justice, which was has last name as well as an apt epithet, had fine ears and a nobly wrinkled face. Likewise in my childhoo, the old guys sitting on the nail kegs near the pot-bellied stove in the Farm Bureau in Romney, West Virginia, tended both to sun-and-wind weathered skin and impressive noses and ears.

I read also today that some rich oldsters have plastic surgery to lift sagging nose, shorten elongating earlobes, and remove cartilage from their ears. That’s vanity that affronts natural beauty from normal development.

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For only one more example that, for crying out loud in a bucket, we as a species are not multitaskers, consider the young woman who walked off a pier into cold Michigan water while texting. Sure it happens widely and rarely makes the news, except on the level of ridicule by acquaintances and relatives.

I’ve ridden this horse for years, like here and here.  For over a decade, I’ve seen adults and kids in malls walk into objects and people…because their brains are too single-stream to use a phone and travel simultaneously.

I lay special blame at the feet and graves of the likes of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. As marketing ploys, they blithely told consumers and managers alike that humans multitask well. This dovetails perfectly with the managers’ belief that lazy employees should be doing three or more complex tasks simultaneously (and well) instead of sucking away company money for goofing off.

Unfortunately for that fantasy, having several computer programs running and one or more phone calls connected and maybe even a meeting or oral conversation at one time is plain stupid. To belabor the computer context, we simply don’t have the RAM, processor speed, or disk to deal with many threads concurrently. A tiny fraction of us have brains capable of multitasking and the odds are high that you are not in that group. Give it a rest.

We believe we do only because software companies and bosses say that is so. This delusion has become so pervasive I’m a multitasker has joined I’m a people person in the list of top meaningless self-descriptions.

The fault, dear humanoid, is not in the handheld device or app, but in ourselves. Do one thing at a time well and avoid rear ending a vehicle or falling on your face.

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