what about the plastic animals?

Sunflower

You know how sunflowers turn during the day to face the sun?  Well, I noticed that the sunflowers on the Columbia campus are confused.  There's a little garden in the northwest corner of campus that is raising all sorts of vegetables and flowers, including a dozen or so sunflower plants.  Of them, only one flower was facing the sun.  The rest were facing the shiny new science building, reflections from which were providing the flowers with their early morning sun.

Going for the 'Gold

Ahh, it's summertime.  Time to sit back and enjoy a nice cold Rheingold beer.

The UNL Dairy Store

Continuing on in Nebraska, let's go to a different campus.  During the hot summer of 1988 I spent a lot of time in the East Campus library.  I'd ride my bike up there early in the morning before it got too warm and then ride back when, well, it was always too warm in the afternoon that summer.  The temperature was at least 90 degrees 65 times that summer.  On eighteen days it was 100 degrees or warmer.

One way to cool down was to visit the East Campus Dairy Store.  East Campus is the ag campus and the cows were on site.  I don't know if it is still true, but at the time a couple of students would get free housing in the barn in exchange for helping to take care of the cows.  The barn wasn't near the dairy store but the milk was about as fresh as you could get.  Back then a cone cost fifty cents plus two cents tax. Cones are now up to $2.50.

Soon after that summer the building the dairy store was in was expanded to become the Food Industry Complex, putting the university at the forefront of food extrusion technology.  ConAgra up the road in Omaha must be delighted by the food technology research, but I'm not sure why a university dairy store needs to be producing ice cream loaded with emulsifiers and stabilizers so it lasts at least six months.  Wouldn't it be better for the people of Nebraska if the dairy store produced small batches of stabilizer- and emulsifier-free ice cream?

Saint Barbara Soap and Queen Helene Cholesterol

Did you ever notice that every drugstore has a small section of off-brand or strange items?  The section will be a foot wide on two or three separate shelves.  On the shelves you'll find Carter's Liver Pills, Octagon soap, Hongo Killer and other oddities.

This morning at CVS I picked up a bar of Saint Barbara Soap.  I can't figure out if it is a sincere product for the devout or an ironic joke.  Googling only revealed another perplexed customer.

The Queen Helene Cholesterol hair conditioning cream is sincere.  I wonder where they got the name?

Elephant Hall

Pretty much every Nebraskan visits the State Capitol, Memorial Stadium and Morrill Hall at one time or another.  Of those three Morrill Hall is the only one that is universally beloved.  The capitol is populated with politicians.  Despite, or because of, the team's success, attending a football game is serious stressful business.  A visit to Morrill Hall, the University of Nebraska State Museum, however, brings nothing happiness to every kid in the state that visits (and they all visit).

During the last Ice Age what is now Nebraska was lousy with mammoths.  Big mammoths, small mammoths and every size in between.  Many of those fossil remains are on display in the Elephant Hall gallery, including the world's largest fossil mammoth.  Also not to be missed are the Hall of Nebraska Wildlife, the Nomads of the Great Plains gallery that displays artifacts from the Plains Indians, the dinosaur exhibits and the mysterious display of model NASA spaceships along one wall.

Almost as mysterious was the space capsule that sat outside the museum for years.  The Apollo capsule was just kind there.  A space capsule with a gutted interior sitting exposed to the elements.  It was looking pretty beat up by 1995.  With minimal descriptive information all sorts of explanations as to the capsule's history abounded.

The capsule's real story is mundane.   Apollo 009 (the 00 means it was unmanned) was shot into space in 1966 to test the suitability of landing on land.  It was subsequently dented when dropped from a crane.  Not really wanting an old capsule NASA eventually gave it to the university, where it was displayed for a quarter-century.  The capsule has since been restored and can be seen at the Strategic Air and Space Museum in Ashland.

For the first couple of years in Nebraska I was a fairly frequent visitor to the geology library in Morrill Hall.  The library wasn't air conditioned so I was glad when it moved to the basement of Bessey Hall.  On one visit to Bessey, Ruth the librarian called me over to rescue the baby bunny that had fallen into the window well next to the circulation desk.  I went outside, hopped into the well and lifted the little guy to freedom.  After that visit Ruth would say the magic phrase "Oh, we can't have that" if I had an overdue charge when trying to check out a book.  A few clicks on the keyboard and my debt disappeared.

Single and Double

Alliums.  Allia?

Mueller Carillon Tower

It's the Mueller Carillon Tower and Richard Serra sculpture on the University of Nebraska campus. The sculpture is a recent addition, the tower's been there since 1949.  The tower is a gift of Ralph Mueller, class of 1898, who made his fortune by inventing alligator clips.  Mueller also donated the money for the planetarium in Morrill Hall.

Unlike most bell towers the Mueller tower doesn't have bells.  Since Mueller was an electrical engineer the bells were actually metal rods of differing lengths that could be played via a keyboard or a device similar to a player piano.  According to the Daily Nebraskan sounds from the carillon are now produced by "digital tapes" and broadcast via loudspeakers.

To design the tower the university had a competition between senior architecture students.  Mueller was disappointed that none of the students designed the tower to look like a giant ear of corn.  I have a feeling Mr. Mueller would have liked visiting the Field of Corn.

Subaru Squeeze

Ha!

The Skyscraper Harlem Cycling Classic

Today was the 37th running of the Skyscraper Harlem Cycling Classic - New York City's oldest bicycle race.  The criterium finished off a day of racing around Marcus Garvey Park, starting with children's races at noon.  I got to the park too late to catch Biz Markie's performance and left too early to witness the 20 rider pile-up.

In between the race was intense.  The pile-up doesn't surprise me.  There was a lot of jostling in the pack and, with only inches between riders, little room for error.

Two riders from Germany pulled away from the pack very early on and dominated the entire race.  When I left they were 32 seconds ahead of the field.

Avery Hall

I walked by Old Glory and the Willa Cather Native Plant Garden for several years to get to Avery Hall.  The Geography Department was on the third floor and the main graduate student office was midway between the two stairs.  Jeff and I shared the office with a rotating cast of characters.  In the summer we would move the bookshelf dividing the room over a few inches to give us more space.  By the time I left it was pretty comfy on one side of the room.

Geography moved out of this building after I left and the building itself was completely renovated a few years ago so I didn't see any need to go inside.

I can see that the recent renovation included replacing the windows.  When we were there the university decided to replace the original single-pane wood-framed windows with more energy efficient ones.  In its infinite wisdom (to borrow a phrase from the faculty member who had the office next to ours), the university trusted the job to what was literally a fly-by-night outfit.  A couple of guys came in our office one day, took out the old windows and popped in cheap new ones in just a few minutes.  No safety equipment was used to protect the workers or anyone below should a window fall.  My memory is hazy but I think they started work in the morning and didn't stop until all the windows were replaced that night.  After finishing they were headed to their next job in a different state. 

Avery has the distinction of being the first building to be built outside the iron fence (popularly but wrongly believed to have been erected to keep the wildlife and/or cattle out) that surrounded the original campus.  It is also the academic building that is closest to the university's most important building.

If you squint you'll see a very funny, in a Nebraskan dry sense-of-irony kind of way, sight.  Close-up after the jump: