what about the plastic animals?

The Stacks

Among the first things incoming SUNY-Oswego students learn when they arrive on campus is the names of the smoke stacks at the Oswego Steam Generating Station.  Those names shan't be repeated here.

This isn't the best picture to show this, but the history of air pollution control can be seen in older power plants.  The two original coal-burning plants are housed in the brick building.  The four smaller stacks (one is hidden) haven't been used since the 1970s, thanks to the Clean Air Act, because pollution from those stacks would fall over the city of Oswego.  The response to that was to build tall stacks.  These stacks are about 700 feet high.  The tall stacks improved Oswego's air but the building of such stacks across the country had the unintended consequence of producing acid rain far away from the power plants.  In turn, big light-colored buildings to either side of the generating stations are the scrubbers that remove the excess sulfur dioxide, ash and other pollutants.  This particular plant switched from coal to oil sometime in the 1970s and I believe it can also now burn natural gas as well.

Did I mention the freakishly large carp that hang out where the warm water discharges?  Of course not!  Why would I mention such a thing?  Pay no attention to the giant fish.

Amongst the Trees

 

I forgot to post this last fall!  I just noticed it in the draft folder.  Oh, well, I hope the links work.

In the trees north of Aberdeen.  Please excuse the dirty windshield.

Other videos about being in the pines:

Leadbelly's version of In the Pines/Where Did You Sleep Last Night/Black Girl

Mark Lanegan covering Leadbelly's version

Nirvana covering Leadbelly's version

Hole's version

Bill Monroe and His Bluegrass Boys doing their version

The Stanley Brothers

The Louvin Brothers

Dolly Parton and her parents

The Carter Family

Doc Watson and David Grisman

Elvis Costello, Renee Fleming, Rufus Wainwright and Kate McGarrigle

The Marquette Male Chorus

Jerry Reed, Glen Campbell, Tom Jones and Big Jim Sullivan

Joan Baez

He Went That Way

This is Thayendanegea, aka Joseph Brant, prominent Mohawk military and political leader of the late 18th century.  He spoke English and at least three of the six Iroquois Nation languages.  He fought with the British against the French in the French and Indian War, went to London and met King George III, and served with the British against the colonists in the Revolutionary War.  The keenest of keen history buffs will know that Brant was involved in the Cherry Valley Massacre.  After the war Brant moved to Canada, where he worked to secure land where the Six Nations could live without interference from the British Crown.  The town he founded is now known as Brantford, Ontario, known to all good Canadians, and a few bad ones, as the hometown of Wayne Gretzky.

That's a long winded way of saying I'll be away for a few days.  I might actually see this sculpture while I am gone.

At The North Portico

Somebody wrote their congressman and got us a tour of the White House.  While security is pretty tight, it is not as annoying as going through an airport.  You can't bring a bag, or electronics, or a camera, and your cell phone has to be turned off.  Thus no photos of the inside.

The tour is self-guided but somewhat limited in that you see the first floor of the East Wing and Residence.  Friendly Secret Service agents are in each room to answer any questions.  We got to see the Green Room, the Red Room, the East Room, where the President typically holds press conferences (it was much smaller than I expected) and where musical performances are held, and the State Dining Room (which was also much smaller, and a bit dowdier, than I expected).  The best part of the tour is in the Family Dining Room where you get a special White House pin if you beat the president in two out of three arm wrestling matches.

George Washington Is Still Sleeping Here

]George and Martha are eternally resting in a very modest tomb at Mt. Vernon.

Other final presidential locations that have appeared here:

Abraham Lincoln

Ulysses S. Grant

Warren G. Harding

George Washington Slept Here

Last month I had the pleasure of visiting Washington DC with some Bay Staters. One afternoon was spent at George Washington's Mount Vernon estate. We got a tour through the house (no photos allowed) and wandered around the grounds where we saw the lower garden, the wharf on the Potomac, a horse barn, a slave cabin and Washington's tomb.  We also toured the museum where George's dentures are displayed (no photos allowed).

Yes, that is a cherry tree in the middle photo.  The garden had a variety of fruit trees shaped to grow low to the ground. The giant tulip poplar was planted by Washington himself in 1785.

Did you know that after the revolution George operated one of the largest distilleries in the new country?

Go Gruene

Gruene was a successful cotton town along the Guadelupe River until a boll weevil infestation and the Great Depression essentially killed it off by the early 1930s.  There it sat until the 1970s when someone bought and restored historic Gruene Hall and then started buying and restoring many other buildings in town. Today Gruene is a tourist town but without a lot of the tackiness that implies.  I spent a very enjoyable evening walking around town, listening to the western swing coming out of Gruene Hall, buying delicious pecans to bring back to the office, and eating fish tacos and drinking a St. Arnold Fancy Lawnmower beer at Mozie's.

Then it was back to San Antonio and an early morning flight to New York.

Lindheimer, Naegelin, Zeitung and Heidemeyer in New Braunfels

In case anyone was wondering, many of the early European settlers of this part of Texas were German.  New Braunfels celebrates their heritage with a ten-day "Salute to Sausage" Wurstfest every November.  The flags are displayed at the Friesenhaus Restaurant.

I'm almost done with Texas!

Giant Golf Ball

You should have seen the club they were using!  Somewhere between Blanco and San Antonio.

Dining in Blanco

Hiking in Pedernales Falls State Park worked up an appetite and massive amounts of BBQ the previous day were telling me I should eat more vegetables and less meat for lunch.  Luckily the Redbud Cafe in Blanco wasn't too far away.

The Redbud was allright in my book.  When I walked in one of the cooks in the kitchen started waving oddly at me like she knew me.  I had stopped briefly in Blanco on my way up to the park a few hours earlier but didn't make any acquaintances in the five minutes I was there so I didn't know her.  Then it sunk in that she was giving a thumbs-up to the WFMU t-shirt I was wearing.

The soup, salad and local beer were all good but I needed something else to finish the meal.  In small-town Texas that something else is spelled DQ.  I ordered the smallest cone they had at the Dairy Queen and sat down to see Blanco's ladies of purple and red attire enjoying their lunch.