Old Glory Waving High

When I visit somewhere I consider it just common courtesy to do a little homework first.  So naturally when getting ready to visit Sheboygan Wisconsin on the Fourth of July weekend I noticed quickly that they had what was described as "The World's Tallest Flagpole".  That of course made a visit mandatory on a magnificent sunny day.

It is certainly one very, very tall flagpole.  That little white dot at the base of the flagpole is a strapping 6 foot plus lad who frankly looks like an ant.

Here I am leaning on the base of the pole.

So, what's the deal?

The flagpole is 400 feet tall.  It is a project undertaken by the Acuity Insurance Company and stands outside their headquarters.  The numbers are mind boggling.

The flagpole is 100 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty.  It weighs 420,000 pounds.  It takes 500 gallons of paint to coat it.  The flag proper is 70 feet by 140 feet.  Each star is three feet tall. The whole thing weighs 340 pounds and is 9,800 square feet of Red, White and Blue.

It draws the eye.  It is hard to stare at it very long - you get a bit dizzy - but hard also to look away.

But is it really the tallest?

No.  I was not aware of it but there has been a recent - sorry for the pun - wave of Giant Flagpole building.  Assorted Middle East and Central Asian countries just have to one up the competition and raise their flags just that much higher.  Freudians, have a field day with this one.

Make what you will of it but all those Big Sticks in repressive lands are the handiwork of an American firm, Trident Support Corporation.  Marc Summers and David Chambers are a couple of resourceful engineers who got into this line of work kind of by accident.  Every few years they build one a little bit taller.  And then their phone rings.  Tajikistan, Jordan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan.  The current "champ" is in Jeddah Saudi Arabia. At 560 feet it has held the record for two years now.

Now, I want to be fair.  The info that claimed the Sheboygan flagpole as the world's tallest was either old or poorly written.  The actual information that Acuity puts out calls it "The World's Tallest Symbol of Freedom".  

I am ok with that.  None of those other flags, though they may be a little higher off the ground, fly over as good a place.  Here you can salute the flag, or if you prefer, not.  You can agree with the policies of the current Administration or call them scoundrels.  I can and do have pointed discussions with friends and relatives who vote in different ways and still consider them - as I hope they consider me - to be decent patriot folk and great neighbors.  

Tajikistan and its ilk may be waving something around but it is certainly not a symbol of that kind of freedom.

Happy 4th of July, 2016

Zika Explained. It's the Republicans Fault of Course.

Political Incorrectness Warning.  If you have a low tolerance for same just look briefly at this adorable monkey picture and move on.

Oh, for cute as my old Scandinavian grandmother was wont to say.

It's no secret that our politics have gotten strange lately but last week a headline caught my eye that I thought just had to be a typo: "White House Threatens Veto of Zika Funding Bill".

What?

It is hard to imagine why a veto would be threatened when Congress wants to designate $1.1 billion dollars to fight a disease.  But, you see, the Administration wanted $1.9 billion.

Now, it matters not one bit that there is little to no chance of another $800,000,000 being just found lying around somewhere.  This is an Election Year Disease and things are not what they seem.

First of all the Administration wanted "all new money".  Or to be more precise, since we are in deficit spending mode, all new debt. How irresponsible to use money "left over" from a fairly successful fight against the last Election Year Disease - Ebola - and from funding designated to set up Obama Care exchanges in U.S. Territories which will actually happen several geological ages after pigs learn to fly.  

Also, Paul Ryan and the House Republicans had the nerve to put this to a vote when most Democratic Representatives were staging a "sit in" thus depriving them of a chance to gripe about how stingy and inadequate over a billion dollars really was to fight this new, SCARY disease.

Zika has been around forever and was first discovered in 1947 in a rhesus macaque monkey in Uganda. Yep, that's one at the top of the article.  It is a moderately unpleasant illness to have although almost everyone survives it and seems to have life long immunity.  The mosquitoes that help it get around have been spreading around the world, with the global economy, the warming planet and the banning of DDT all contributing.  Of late it has been associated with sexual transmission and with birth defects in children.

Naturally there is great interest in doing something about it and many companies and institutions around the world are working - independent of US funding - on a vaccine. It is estimated that finding one will take two years and getting it past regulators will take....another six.

Zika is not the first disease to become an Election Year Disease.  But it has pretty much all the required criteria for a good one.  Interesting Name, check.  Foreign Origins, check.  Connection with sex, check.  Association with Man Damaged Rain Forest, check.

Although Election Year Diseases are a fairly new phenomena I think they are here to stay, courtesy of CSI type shows where all scientific problems can be solved in under an hour by wise cracking genius nerds typing on computers.  Let's review, shall we:

1976 Swine Flu.  Republican's fault because Gerald Ford did too much.
2014 Ebola  Republican's fault for questioning CDC policy on quarantine.
2016 Zika  Republican's fault for only finding a measly billion dollars.                                     

Of course all these diseases are also Republican's fault because everyone knows they don't much like foreigners, sex or Mother Nature.  

It is all so tedious and silly.  The CDC should take the billion dollars, say "Thanks, we'll get back to you if we need more".  It would buy a whole bunch of public service announcements telling people to get rid of old tires that mosquitoes breed in.   It would not of course allow for any Republican notions like draining swamp lands or liberally applying swell insecticides.  Nor would it have any influence on the slow process of regulatory approval of a vaccine.  Any children born in the interim with birth defects are the fault of Republicans for not giving more money to Planned Parenthood.

You will note that on the list of Election Year Diseases I have not included AIDS, even though it was an actively discussed issue in several election cycles.  That's because to be a really silly political issue you can have Ominous Threat but not significant numbers of Americans actually dying of an illness.

Across the political spectrum Americans are much, much better than the chumps who lead us. We know how to recognize real tragedy and step up in response.

Of Moths and Manses

Mostly for my own amusement I make occasional mention of my house as being called "Trowelsworthy Hall".  It is of course a very real place, and as it is past the century mark expensive repairs and upkeep are always lurking. 

On a recent Saturday morning as I sat on the front porch swing I was dismayed to see what looked like a bit of peeling paint on one of the pillars.  

Zooming in nice and close we see that it really is this:

  

The wee chap is doing his or her best to blend in.

I got a sense of deja vu because I have seen very similar photos in old science textbooks when I was young.  It seems that one of the early studies lending experimental evidence to Darwin's theory of Natural Selection came out of the British Midlands in the 19th Century.  It was noted that as industrial soot poured out of Manchester and its environs, all the trees out in the countryside got dark and sooty, the light colored lichens (which really do look like moths..or paint chips) having died off.  Soon dark colored moths, previously quite rare, became the norm as hungry birds gobbled up all the poorly camoflaged lighter variants.

A few observations.

1. Manchester has been cleaned up a great deal.  We spent a short time there in May and I saw no soot at all.  Also no moths but I was not looking specially for them and they are good at hiding.

2. British scientific studies generate an enormous amount of amusing commentary.  In looking at this question I found not only the sensible issues of how many moths you need to extrapolate for all of Insectkind, but some highly entertaining accusations of moths glued to tree trunks to fudge data, and one author comparing his disappointment in having to reconsider his position as being similar to finding out at age six that his father, not Santa Claus, was the bringer of Christmas presents.

3. I don't need to paint the porch this year.

Family, including the Ketchup Cousins

I was out for a walk on a recent Saturday.  It was getting hot and I had no particular enthusiasm for my objective; our community garden plot which was in need of weeding.  So it was with considerable delight that I began to detect the faint odor of cooking bratwurst, and the happy buzz of a gathering crowd.  I had forgotten you see that it was time for another sort of community: our local brewery's annual Family Reunion.

In this context Family is a rather inclusive concept.  You show up and prove you are over 21 (my grizzled beard was sufficient ID) and you will be given an armband that gets you food and beer.

Bratwurst being cooked on an industrial scale.

Add some chips (sorry, crisps to my UK pals) and a cookie.  It was a very hot day and I am afraid the cookie turned into chocolate lava before I got around to eating it.

Ketchup, mustard, onions and sauerkraut.

The authorities of course were on hand but for this kind of gathering they sent The Cool Police.

There were even a few happy dogs.  They got bowls of water.

But for their masters....why, everyone got to take home a free 12 pack of beer!  I picked up mine early in the day but I don't think I really needed to have done so.  The fork lift just kept bringing out more pallets full.

A marvelous day.  Although we are fated to live in oft troubled times this day the sun shown down on the Saintly and the Struggling with equal radiance.  Contrary to what we have always been taught, there really was not only a Free Lunch but Free Beer to boot.  And everyone was Family, even those extremely peculiar cousins who think it is OK to put ketchup on a bratwurst.

England 2016 - Some Last Silly Looks

Weeks, sometimes months after my annual spring trips to England I reach a point at which the stories have been told, the pictures shown.  The last few are random odds and ends, things I just pointed a camera at and hit the button for no particular reason.

Carlisle Castle front door.  Hobbit accessible.

 Hey, mean spirited, smelly, omnivorous critters need somebody looking out for them...

I'm not sure how many patents and copyrights are being flaunted by this made in Somewhere prize. You'd think the combined legal departments of Lego, Lucas and The Great Mouse would be all over this.

Pretty good advice bolted to a pretty high wall.  I should send this to my new parent Son and Daughter in Law.

We were out for a pastoral stroll when we saw these menacing figures appear on a ridge line.  We assumed that woolly hoardes on the other side were just waiting for the order to attack.

Ah, what can I say.  I take a lot of sheep pix because they are so darned photogenic.  This was the special pen for abandoned sheep.  Sometimes a ewe just ditches one of the little darlin's and the farmer collects them in a batch for bottle feeding.  When we walked up to the pen there really was a mass rush of woolly critters.  They figured we had their bottle.  Don't put a finger near them, they are not very smart.  This one is using steel fence as a teething ring!

Guiting Power - Real and Imagined

I have made mention of my impression that the Cotwolds are just a little "too cute".  It was an area of considerable natural beauty with rolling hills and nice little towns built in lovely locally quarried stone.  When it was "discovered" by artistic types circa 1900 they did some excellent work in preserving the marvelous things they had found.  But did they perhaps also improve upon things a bit?

Guiting Power is a good case in point.

It sure is pretty when you walk into it from the south.

Very quaint.  Here's a nice little village green.

It has a post office, a village store, a bakery, an old church and not one but two pubs.  Pretty impressive for a place with a population under 300.  But when you settle in to stay the night there it becomes apparent that this Time Warp Quaint is sustained by artificial means.

There is some serious money here.  We stopped in for a drink at one of the pubs and found out that it was the place that the local "Horsey Set" frequented.  Posh, lots of pictures of race horses on the walls.  The barkeep was a guy from Italy.

The entire village was in derelict condition circa 1900.  In the 1930s there was the first stirrings of an effort to buy up the whole place, putting it into the hands of the Guiting Manor Annuity Trust.  This preserved the structures intact, allowed local residents to remain in them...and banned most structural and cosmetic changes.  Continuing perhaps the theme of things not being exactly as they appear, the driving force behind the establishment of the Trust was a certain Raymond Cochrane. Cochrane was born a hermaphrodite, one of those rare individuals whose anatomy is ambiguous.  Raised as an upper class woman, Cochrane later rebelled, alienated his/her family and had a very early gender reassignment surgery. Cochrane arrived in Guiting in the 1950s and made preservation of the village a personal passion.

We stayed in a nice B & B across the way from The Farmer's Arms, which is the other and more authentic pub in the village.  Over a tasty rabbit pie - that gave me grim satisfaction as I thought of the pests eating our garden back home - various tales of the village came forth.

The policy of locals being the preferred tenants is still in place, but swank Londoners can find a way nowadays.  The entire community is shortly going to be upgraded to the fastest internet connections in the UK courtesy of a music producer who lives and works remotely there.  We also heard that the Trust still has charge of every aspect of the village.  You can't put a new gate on your fence, you have to wait for the appropriate workmen to come and do it for you.  

On the way into town we had noticed that next to the church there was an open field where sheep were grazing around some old foundations and all about some curious earth works.  We were assured that the former was the remains of an ancient Anglo Saxon church and the latter a genuine Bronze Age barrow where intact human remains had been found.  

I had begun to have doubts about the authenticity of many things in Guiting Power.  Those Trust approved workmen sounded just a little too zealous....

Here is the top of the monument in the village green.  It looks centuries old but has a WWI Tommy leaning on his Enfield rifle.  This may not be a conscious effort to deceive as the local stone does weather quickly and gracefully, but certainly serves as a reminder to keep one's eyes open.

Guiting Power supposedly dates back to at least 780 AD.  A church of course would be one of the first things that the Anglo Saxons would build.  I have no doubt that the Trust's archaeologists found the remains of an early church here.  I have equal confidence that what they found was a sad and random little collection of stones that were later reassembled and enhanced with plenty of extra parts.  Those Trust workmen are such industrious chaps.

Oh, and that ancient barrow.  Here's what it looks like today:

Such an astonishing degree of preservation!  Such clear definition of the mounds and the surrounding enclosure ditch!  Such.....such nonsense.

It took a bit of looking around the internet to sort this out.  The Trust's official site does describe it as a reconstruction but other references say a barrow has been there long enough to show up on Ordnance Survey maps.  The truth of it seems to be that a rather unimpressive barrow did exist here from ancient times.  I found a comment on a message board devoted to the study of barrows that really sums it up well:

What was previously a 38m diameter 1.5m high Bronze Age Round Barrow (which a 1992 excavation proved was a 'well preserved Barrow') has had what many people would call 'The Mars Bar treatment' (now very much smaller and a lot more costly) - the propaganda states that the reconstructed barrow (a flat topped mound 20m in diameter) 'reflected the original barrow' - well anything is possible these days, especially with considerable imagination, in the Cotswolds - perhaps it should be named 'Designer Barrow' -


Is this Preservation Gone Too Far?  It is a fair question.  One could debate it over a pint at The Farmer's Arms and have an enjoyable evening of it.  The pub looks authentic and the local residents are in fact members of a functioning small community.  If the whole enterprise has perhaps a little more help that the casual observer might notice, well, its better than many other possible ways that Guiting Power could have ended up.

The Monkey Mayor of Hartlepool

My friends in the UK were understandably curious about American politics.  In fact they are at least as puzzled as we are over the considerable disdain for establishment candidates.  They have some similar trends going on of course, some are already speaking of Boris Johnson as the British Donald Trump.

Interestingly two different conversations ended up discussing The Monkey Mayor of Hartlepool.

Hartlepool is a rather drab town on the East Coast of England.  One of its few claims to fame is that it was actually shelled by the German Navy in World War One.  The rest of Britain may not have been all that bothered by this, it seems Hartlepudlians are looked down on as being rather dim witted and narrow minded folk.  Sometimes they were even called the derogatory term "Monkey Hangers". More on that in a bit.

In 2002 a referendum had passed creating a new post of Mayor, replacing an earlier Council based system.  This was a solid Labour party district so the outcome was not considered doubtful. But an odd thing happened.

A certain Stuart Drummond was at that time the mascot for the Hartlepool United Football Club.  In his role as H'Angus the Monkey, he decided to run for Mayor as a publicity stunt. Other than to "put the piss up" a bit, as my UK friends describe it, his sole campaign promise was to provide free bananas to all school children.

Well, he rather looks the part of a successful politician...

Hey, you could do worse.  And in a startling rebuke to the complacent Labour Party Drummond/H'Angus won the election.

By all accounts he was a good Mayor.  He knew how to compromise on the banana issue, settling for increased fresh fruit in the school lunches.  He did nothing to embarrass himself or his constituents and won re-election twice.  In fact he is the best Mayor Hartlepool will ever have, being of course the first, and as it turns out the last.  Perhaps having learned a humbling lesson the powers that be found a way to eliminate the office and return to the old system. Personally I like sports mascots and find them several notches up in respectability as compared to most politicians.

Hartlepool is enjoying a bit of prosperity these days.  Probably H'Angus doesn't deserve credit for much beyond lightening the general mood. Oh yes, the "Origin Story" of H'Angus.

As they tell it* during the Napoleonic Wars a French ship ran onto the rocks off of Hartlepool. It broke up in the waves and there were no survivors. None that is except a monkey that had been dressed up in a French uniform, presumably for the amusement of the crew.  The good people of Hartlepool having never seen a Frenchman before convened a drum head trial on the beach.  The ship wrecked survivor being unable to deny accusations that he was a spy was hung on the spot!

*the story is probably nonsense having been in circulation earlier in the form of a popular song!
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Later this week.  A village where things are not what they seem.  Also menacing shapes on the horizon.....