Wandering unsupervised in various real and imaginary places. Detritus reflects my interests in robotics, travel, history and the odder aspects of the world around me.
The robotics team has continued to meet through the summer. The kids are doing actual productive things, building another test robot, upgrading the competition machine for an off season comp, that sorta stuff. I just arrange various outreach visits. The robotic Dog-n'-Pony show has so far been to:
3M. By the way, I usually take pictures of things after the main presentation. That's when the serious engineers all want to get toes up to the robot and ask the serious questions...
Phillips Medisize. This one was extra fun. One of our early days alumni works there. After the presentation we invited him to come down and operate the robot. I think he looks a bit rusty. We'd added settings that were specific to this venue. Could we get a game piece launched all the way to the back of the auditorium?
Heck, yeah.
Our annual update for the School Board. This was just before they doubled my salary (2 x 0 = 0) and made my status as robot overlord official. Reluctantly we opted to not fire the shooter in this room. So much nice student artwork hung everywhere....
I've been working with kids and robots in our school district for a quarter of a century now. And finally.....
The team presented at the School Board meeting yesterday. The board is always a great audience. And in a touching gesture they voted to double my salary. Of course two times zero is still zero.
And I got a new ID badge that makes my long semi-official title actually, well still semi official, but I'll take it.
I have not updated my CV for many years, but I may just have to do so one last time. When you can add Robotics Overlord to your resume, well....what more is there?
At this point the majority of you are saying "What the heck?", while a few oddball savants are saying "A bit early, isn't it?". For the second group I'll just say that given all the excitement in our political arena I'm not sure that one week after the election a story about putrid blubber raining down from the sky would stand out in the least.
So....
There is actually a considerable, er, corpus of data on dead, beached whales blowing up. Sometimes just by the natural, if disgusting, process of decomposition. But by far the most exciting example of the genre occurred back in 1970, and had the assistance of a poorly thought out half ton of dynamite.
A 45 ton sperm whale washed up on the beach at Florence Oregon on November 9th. After three days in which the whale got stinkier, it was decided that the best course of action would be to blow the whale up with explosives. The idea being that it would then be in smaller bits which would either be eaten by the converging mob of seagulls or be in small enough parts that hauling them away would be simpler. Beaches were at that time under the jurisdiction of the Oregon Highway Department, an outfit who had a bit of experience in blowing up obstructions. It did not go well. No, not well at all.......
Delightfully this event has become part of local lore. There is an Exploding Whale Memorial Park in downtown Florence. Every November the locals hold Exploding Whale Days. Delightfully, the cub reporter who appeared in the above video 54 years ago is still with us and will be in attendance! I can't actually find out much more about the festival. It seems to involve a funky art show and at 3:45, a public toast in memory of the whale. I like that.
Florence Oregon is not too far from Eugene where they have a minor league baseball team. It is somewhat in vogue - probably for extra merch sales - for teams to have special "alternate uniforms". So last year the Eugene Emeralds played a few games as the "Exploding Whales".
The logo is actually a lot cooler than the uniforms.....
Well, food for thought. This probably caught my eye based on our own experiences sighting a similar beached whale on our Florida trip in March. The folks in charge of that situation appear to have been well aware of the Exploding Whale legend, and learned from it.
So a Happy Exploding Whale Day to you, one and all. When the actual official day rolls around on November 12th lets hope the air is not filled with panic and a fine mist of rancid goo.
Wisconsin has plenty of tidy little rural cemeteries. But sometimes you need to have sharp eyes to spot them. This one was a bit off the main road, and behind some unsightly junked cars.
Only one "Tree Shaped Tombstone", memorializing a Nels Nelson, but it is a nice one.
Lots of nice detail, ropes, anchor etc.
Alas, the cute little dove perched on a branch has lost his head. I'm not sure why the birds are less durable than some of the other gee gaws, but this seems to sadly be the case.
Google Maps is a great way to plan alternate routes that go past little rural cemeteries. Welcome to Scott's Valley east of Eau Claire Wisconsin.
Having seen hundreds of Tree Shaped Tombstones in my travels I'm still pleased to find something unusual once in a while.
Pretty standard stuff, even the person being remembered is boring.....being named Smith will do that. But look at the top of this thing. Usually there is a simple, flat top, sometimes still with a central drill hole left over from the stone cutting and milling process. But here....
A tasteful basket of flowers. I assume this was an extra you could order, and that it is secured to the tombstone by a peg that goes down into the central drill hole. Not that I'd try to wiggle or rotate it or anything, that would be a bad idea with anything this old.
I like the way that the orange lichen fits into the flower motif. Plant life imitating art.
Still traveling down unfamiliar roads. Finding the cemetery outside of Osseo, Wisconsin took a bit of doing.
Here's a nice specimen with full "Woodsman" regalia. Also an unusual amount of "tombstone lichen".
This is another one of those with a weird backwards tip. Usually you can tell that it is just shifting over time, but this almost looks intentional.
Over in a nearby grove of real trees, a Tree and Book variant. Perhaps because of the different light conditions there is no moss/lichen to speak of on this one. As usual, the inscription on the open page is barely legible. Upright surfaces age poorly in a climate with rain, snow and blistering sun.
And to round out a nice assortment of types, one of the "Two Trunks" style. Usually this is a married couple, reaching out to each other in the next life...
