Curmudgio Irrascius Speaks

Historian, raconteur and my good friend Pete Savin recently posted one of his videos on the ruins of Aescica, a fort along Hadrian's Wall.  Good stuff, and a reminder of green fields that are for this year out of reach for me.

Aescica in Springtime

It features prominently a landmark that I've been to myself, a Roman altar still standing in the middle of the ruins.  Oh, it is in tough condition, only vague shapes and no text have survived.  And to be perfectly honest it spent long centuries in the "horizontal and nibbled on by moles" status, presumably being put upright again after excavations in 1894.  But today it stands free, and as in Ancient Times passersby leave coins on it as votive offerings.

It's a picture that would make sense to a person nearly 2000 years ago....and to one today.  But for how much longer?   For roughly 80 or 90 generations people could in theory walk up to this, place a coin atop it for good fortune and walk on.  How many generations before  this no longer makes sense to people?

Commerce has changed.  After barter became inefficient coins were the sole medium of exchange. Paper bills supplemented it for a relatively short time, then we began pushing around little rectangles of plastic.  And now?  You can wave a "device" to transfer wealth.  And if a person from ancient times had difficulty understanding the concept of Bitcoin I at least would be in sympathy with their incomprehension.

How do we journey through this world?  On foot, in our silent electric chariots?  Or whizzing by virtually on our way to somewhere else?  What moments, if any, of reflection do we have along the way?  What powers beyond our ken do we propitiate, and what is the nature of our votive offerings?

Not long now until another virtual Jet Lag Drinks hour.  And some of these questions are too ponderous and frankly too crabby even to consider over pints as we sit magically in our own domiciles and Mercury, swift messenger of the gods, sends our voices and images instantly across seas and far horizons.

Strange Fishing Opener - 2021

There used to be a time when the Fishing Opener was on a specific date.  Now, with more scientific appraisal of fishing, there are certain species, certain bodies of water that are fair game at all different times.  But for Strange Fish - bottom feeders and glorified minnows - it's pretty much "meh, whatever".

So on an early April day it was my first fishing trip of the year.  A warm lazy time to sit on the river bank.

I caught some fish including a couple of these guys.  Alas, it seems to once again be a silver redhorse, a somewhat uncommon species but one that I caught last fall upstream a ways.  So no new species.  Alas.

Give a man a fish he'll eat for a day.  Teach him to fish he'll eat for a lifetime.  Teach him to bottom fish and he'll just sit in the sun and drink Mountain Dew.

 

CCC Camp Sawyer

Spring is an excellent time to be hunting for CCC camps.  You don't have to contend with bugs and the underbrush has not grown up yet.  Last week I visited the site of Camp Sawyer.  Obviously this was in Sawyer County, some distance from, well from anywhere but specifically from my starting point of Hayward.

As usual there is a nice sign.  It sure makes finding these things easier.

This camp made extensive use of these concrete pillars.  I don't think these were made on site, but rather hauled in.  I guess they had a bunch of them.

Two taller pillars mark the entrance to the camp.  The one on the right is mostly hidden by trees.

Some distance away are two stone hearths with chimneys.  These are said to be officer's quarters but I am doubtful.  CCC camps tended to be rather egalitarian and to have the officers living in nicer quarters and over across a road would be atypical.  Not impossible of course, this camp was established at the site of a previous logging camp and I'm thinking these were structures left over from that earlier era.

In one of the hearths there was this geocache which I found by accident.  It does not appear on the standard geocache database.  Some sort of bootleg cache?  I signed it anyway.

As it happens we actually have a very nice account of this camp circa 1940 and courtesy of a certain Claude L. Pitcher.   Well worth the read.  He makes no mention of these swell looking officer's quarters and indicates that the camp consisted of:

"3 barracks, a mess hall, generator building, Army office, Forresty office, rec building with PX Forrestry Motor Pool, Army motor pool, a fire wood shed, and a latrine with shower."

Spelling errors courtesy of Mr. Pitcher, but I'm not about to take issue with an ex-Marine on such matters.  About all that is clear is a pit that I assume was the latrine and the pillars between which Claude drove his truck out of camp.  This camp did lots of forestry work.  In addition they constructed the Black Lake Lookout Tower a few miles to the east.

It is a nicely preserved albeit smaller camp but is rather off the beaten path.  If you fancy a visit it is at the junction, or rather one of the junctions, of 174 and 164 east of Moose Lake.  GPS can help you in these situations.  It's at about 46.00'20.8 N,  -91.00'18.9 W.  

There is at least one existing copy of the camp's newsletter.  I'll publish some pictures of same when I get a chance to see it in the archives at UW Eau Claire.  Here's a picture of some of the men and their cooks standing in front of one of the now vanished buildings.  Taken in 1937 it was before Claude's time.

Sounds kinda fishy....

One branch of the extended family is part of a food cooperative.  Pay a small amount per month and every couple of weeks you show up and get a wonderous collection of foodstuffs.  It varies of course, but usually there is some fresh produce, a wide array of items from Mexican food distributors,  and odd ice cream products which are sometimes mislabeled.  And lots more.  You have to watch expiration dates closely, and sometimes the chicken flock benefits more directly than the human members of the family.

And sometimes it just gets weird.

This is the same branch of the family that is heavily into fishing, and in fact is the household where Chub Fest has been held.  So I had to wonder if "Chub Cookie Dough" had some kind of fish base to it!*

Mmmmmm.  Chub Cookies.  Now that's Fine Dining.

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* Never a good day unless you learn something.  I started the day not knowing that the plastic casing that for instance sausage, or in this case dough, comes in is called a "chub"!

Pug

I've been wanting a dog for some time now.  Oh sure I know the drawbacks and it won't happen right away, but it will happen.  And it might be a pug.

Pugs are silly looking.  That's important in a dog, as part of its job is to help us not take the world too seriously.  I mean,  look at that face and try not to smile!

I've always assumed that the name Pug had something to do with pugilist, the latter being a name going back to Ancient Rome and being a synonym for boxer.  Pugs of both sorts tend to have those flattened noses after all.  Indeed that is one theory you'll read, along with a related one that claims the name comes from "pugnus" meaning fist...because their faces sort of look like one.  But it apparently is not so.  Pugnacious, meaning ready to fight, comes from the same root word.  It hardly applies to pugs which are generally regarded as sweet tempered.

Pug, or Puggy is a very old term of endearment, one that has the connotation of a loved one who is small, elfin and a bit mischievous.  The word is first recorded circa 1560 and is probably a variant on "puck".  Puck of course is an Elvin character in A Midsummer's Night Dream (circa 1595).  Puckish has persisted as a word meaning full of mischief.

The other literary use of Puck is more modern.  In the delightful play turned movie Harvey the titular (to most) invisible six foot tall rabbit is in fact a Pooka this being another variant on the word descriptive of a decidedly mischief filled creature.  Variations on this word are quite old indeed, emerging from Celtic obscurity circa 1300.

But it appears the Puck/Pug designation for a fun filled, somewhat unserious being did not jump straight from mythology to dogs.  It was applied to monkeys from the 1660's onward and did not get connected to this ancient breed of dogs from China until the mid 1700's.  

Well as I said at the start I'll get a dog one of these days.  Perhaps until then I can go the "Harvey" route.  If I simply pretend to have a small white dog I can accurately describe it as a Pug/Puck/Pooka even if others can't see it!

Springtime and Robots

Even as the weather turns nice we are continuing our once a week robotics sessions.  There is just so much to do.

We've never built anything with chain drive mechanisms.  Well it's time to learn.  So a stock of chain, tools and gizmos has been laid in.  Here, learn this stuff.  Try not to break anything expensive.

I tossed in a few artifacts from the workshop.  Nearly twenty years ago I bought a retired Battlebot named Amish Rebellion.  I've been using its parts for various things ever since.  There were even some sprockets of the proper size for our chain.  We can't use previously made components in our final product, but for experiments and prototypes, sure.

Build table.  Working on chain drive and finishing up electrical connectors.

Our new build space has some significant advantages.  I can stand in one place and see all the subteams at work.  I turn around and here is the CAD team working on something interesting....

Software has large screen view now, which should make teaching a bit easier.  We are losing more kids off of this subteam than any other.  Fortunately we have a good group of prospects on our radar, and we look heavy on the programming side there.  Help is on the way.

Solid work in a long campaign.  We won't be back to competition for almost another full year.  And almost half of these kids won't see it, what with graduations and moving out of the area.  And still they turn up to work.  Even as spring blooms outside.

Beyond our Ken

I like interesting words and phrases.  So often we use them without knowing their origins.  Appropriately one such is "Beyond our ken", meaning, outside of our knowledge.

It is from middle English kennen meaning "to know", previously in Old English it was cennan.  But it must go back farther, to a time when shaggy folks on both sides of the North Sea spoke similar languages.  In German kennen also means to know.  

Like not a few oddities of the English language, the work was preserved up in Scotland in its original meaning.  But the specific phrase "beyond our ken" was not recorded until 1834 in of all places, Gettysburg Pennsylvania, and in of all contexts, an article describing an early balloon flight.

You'd think the name Kenneth would therefor indicate wisdom or knowledge.  And wrongly would you so think.  Although of Gaelic origins the name Kenneth derives from unrelated sources and means "handsome".  

So the most famous Ken of all seems aptly named.  Attractive, none too bright....