There we were, walking through the neighborhood, enjoying some fine weather between the scatter showers, and this little fellow zoomed past us. I was able to sneak up and get a picture.
It’s an Autumn Meadowhawk (Sympetrum vicinum). They’re little, members of the skimmer (Libellulidae) category. They’re about two inches long with a three inch wingspan.
Just thought you’d enjoy it.
Respectfully submitted,
Canoelover
If you drive along the back roads of northern Wisconsin this time of year, you’ll be certain to see an orange mist covering some of the grassy areas beyond the gravel shoulder. That would be caused by Orange Hawkweed (Pilosella aurantiaca). I spotted a large patch of P. aurantiaca growing in a field near Bayfield last week. Due to the colder Spring, the flowers were smaller and just barely emerging. Luckily the color lasts a long time due to an interesting and lovely configuration of multiple capitulae (flower heads) all clustered at the end of the stem. When one fades, another is already taking its place. It’s not uncommon for two or three of the flower heads to be blooming at once.
While not native to North America, I like Hawkweed. It’s considered invasive in most of the western states and is banned from cultivation in Australia and Tasmania. It is considered evil, which is why the folks down under call it the Devil’s Paintbrush. It is considered a protected species in some areas of Europe.
It’s interesting to me what makes something a weed. Again, it’s all about context. I see a field of lovely orange flowers, others see a patch of an invasive species. I guess if Hawkweed were taking over 500 acres of wheat on my farm, I’d consider it a weed alright. But for now, it’s not a weed, despite its name. It’s a lovely spot of orange in an otherwise monolithic world of greenness.
Respectfully submitted,
Canoelover
P.S. Where did Hawkweed get its name? It’s the trivia question for the week. “I’ll take Asteraceae for $600, Alex…”
“My sister-in-law…really tired of all this…cheated on her husband…just disgusting…can’t believe these people…I tried to tell her but…Cody was staying with his stepmom…she had booze all over the place…I’m not sure if I can take this much longer…she is pregnant with her boyfriend’s baby
while her own kids…Hailey is starting to dress like a little s-l-u-t…”
Good thing she spelled slut. I would have been really offended by her profanity.
Tilley Hats are something of an inside joke to canoeists. They’re decidedly old-school canvas wide-brim hats with traditional Canadian styling (i.e., not that much styling) and a lot of function. There are stories of Tilleys being swept over waterfalls and found six months later and sent back to the original owner because of the secret compartment which all Tilleys have in the top of their crown.
There’s a generation gap with the Tilley. If you’re 45 or older, you probably have one. If you’re 44 or younger, you probably would rather be caught wearing a lacy camisole in a truck stop than a Tilley. Somewhere in there I find wiggle room. I’m somewhere in the middle. It’s like eating garlic—I’m happy to wear mine as long as no one is looking or everyone else us wearing them too.
Anyway, we found ourselves on the Bois Brule River in northern Wisconsin a few days ago. At the bottom of a small rapid (Class I+) we were eddied out to wait for a group of kids to come through so we could surf the small wave at the bottom. While we waited, I looked down to the left and there was a floating greyish-brown blob of hat. It was the aforementioned Tilley. I scooped it up and stuck it in my boat and promptly ignored it so we could surf.
Back at camp I examined it, pulling open the secret compartment. In it was a small plastic bag with two band-aids, two books of matches, and $109.00 in cash. I confess to having kept a $20 in mine for emergencies, but 109 bucks? Sheesh.
The best news for the owner was the business cards he had in there. Mr. A—- F— of Superior, Wisconsin. Lucky dude, as the hat was pretty well camouflaged. It had sat in that eddy for at least three days before anyone saw it.
Since there was no cell phone reception at the campground, I called A—- on the way home. The conversation was funny:
Me: “Is this A—- F—?”
AF: “Yes.”
Me: “I understand you lost a very expensive hat recently…”
AF: [Laughing, talking to his friends—“They found my hat!”] “Yes, I did.”
Me: “I just need to know one thing: What sort of drugs were you taking, carrying around a wad of cash like that in your hat?”
AF: “Well…”
He never answered my question. They must have been good drugs.
Story was he was leading a group of kids and sacrificed his hat to save some kid from dampness. Me, I let the kid get wet, but anyway…he said he would be grateful if I would send it back, keeping $40 for a finder’s fee which he had advertised in the local paddling community. I declined as I didn’t really find the hat, it sorta found me, but I did take out $9.00 for shipping. I marked the package as containing hazardous material and sent it along today.
So please it that the Karmic Reserve make a deposit of “Recovery of one lost hat” into my karmic bank account. Now I need someone to find my orange Kavu ball cap that I spent a year breaking in and was the most perfectest hat of all time. It is probably in a ditch off I-90 in Chicagoland. I think it is gone forever. R.I.P., orange ball cap.
Cool. Super cool.
We were privileged to see a hatch of Ophiogomphus colubrinus, also known as the Boreal Snaketail. It was, of course, Ian, who first noticed the nymphs crawling out of the Brule to complete their metamorphosis into full-on dragonflies.
Since it was right at a landing, Ian took it upon himself to rescue snaketail nymphs from being crushed by careless paddlers (there were large youth groups that day who were not exactly aware of anything going on outside their immediate world). So we did, and did so for over an hour.
Ian is the micro-observer who misses nothing. It is because of him we see much of what we see—turtles, birds, insects, all sorts of wildlife. I catch the flowers and plants, he catches everything else. Pretty cool.
At first I thought these were Common Green Darners since they are, after all, common. But the body shape was wrong, the head shape was wrong, but these were not a species I recognized. Not a Darner. Not a Skimmer. Then I started noticing the end of the abdomen—a slight flair at the end, indicating a Gomphidae. This is one of the cooler categories – Clubtails.
Clubtails are a nifty little category. There are some fascinating species within the category, including the fairly rare Dragonhunter (Hagenius brevistylus). I didn’t know they were rare when I was once paddling the in Boundary Waters Canoe Area in Minnesota and saw a couple of them sunning themselves along a pebbly beach. I snapped a picture and analyzed it later. When I talked to a friend of mine about it, he became very excited. Apparently a few years before he had been out hunting for clubtails with a German friend who, when he spotted the Dragonhunter, started shaking from excitement. I have heard of buck fever, but odonate fever?
It’s always amazing that a dragonfly comes out of that nymph. It’s pretty cool.
There was another skimmer hatching – a few Chalk-Fronted Corporals.
Respectfully submitted,
Canoelover
…and someone had a great time.
I’ll have more to say when I dig out of the giant pile of mail, email, voicemail, and any other x-mail that exists.
Respectfully submitted,
Canoelover
“The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings, which are all part of one another, and all involved in one another.”
– Thomas Merton
As the sump pump goes off again, vibrating the kitchen floor, I can’t help but think about being surrounded by flood waters. We’re fortunate. We had flooding in the past and put some money into the basement so we wouldn’t have this again. But we’re probably in the minority.
I have a hard time imagining what it would be like to be in Cedar Rapids or any of those other cities that are under water. I experienced some flooding in Missouri this spring, but it was nothing on the scale of what our friends in Iowa are experiencing.
Some folks are thinking “Those poor people…thank God it’s not me…” I don’t think that, because while it’s not directly happening to me, it is happening to us. In some way, we are all in Cedar Rapids, Myanmar, Iraq, or Sudan. We may not be there, but we are.
Sorry for the paradox, but I’m feeling paradoxical this morning.
In my old job a few millenia back we had the annual giving campaign, an organized coercion that to this day reminds me of all I hate about cubicle farms and large state government buildings. The person in charge of the shakedown was a passive-aggressive fear-grimacing woman who wanted to make sure we got 100%. “Even if you only give a dollar a paycheck, we can still make our goal.”
Our goal? Excuse me, but my goal would be to keep my hard-earned money and make sure it goes to a charity that doesn’t give million-dollar severance packages and feels entitled to a little piece of everyone’s paycheck, with a level of accountability reminiscent of a Pentagon budget.
I am now officially vindicated.
According to Charity Reports, the top management of United Way earns over a million dollars a year. For another example, the United Way reported a $1.5-million pension payment to its former chief executive, Ms. Beene, when she departed after only four years on the job.
In 2006, it was reported that the CEO of United Way used $190,000 worth of points redeemable for hotel stays that had been originally donated for charitable purposes. Do you really want your hard-earned money to pay for this?
To quote Peter Griffin, “This is freakin’ sweet! ” C’mon people, give ’til it hurts. Give ’til it hurts the United Way. Give to the Flat Earth Society. Give to Defenestrators Anonymous. Give to the Manhattan Asphalt Preservation Society. Give to anyone BUT the United Way.
Because if 100% of us decide to not give, they’ll dry up and disappear forever. Do YOU want to be the person that keeps us from achieving our goal of 100%? Great. Just don’t sign here on the little blue payroll deduction card.
Legend: Black means “High.” Blue means “Over 90 percent. Green is normal flow, red is the drought.
So you can see why Cedar Rapids is under water right now. So sad…
David and I go out to lunch a couple of times a month. We often try to find a place we’ve not been to before. I picked up David and started driving toward the near West side, where there is a good selection of nice lunch places and more importantly, no Chili’s, Red Lobsters, or worst of all, Olive Gardens.
I have driven past Kipp’s a hundred times. Maybe three hundred times. On the corner of Monroe and Regent, Kipp’s is easy to see but for me, sadly, easy to drive by. Kipp says a lot of people drive past all the time but they’re always on their way to work or on their way home. Today we decided to stop there. I have no idea why, but we did.
We were greeted by Tiffany. When I asked if I could take her picture, she asked “Who me? Why?” It should be obvious why. Then Kipp came out and we introduced ourselves. He said he’d pose too. Tiffany is the smiler in the group.
We ordered the Friday fish fry special ($7.25) which included two nice pieces of fish, a cornbread muffin, cole slaw (good!) and either regular or sweet potato fries. It is served with a genuine spork.
It takes some (but not much) courage to try a new place for lunch when there are so many familiar places and “safe” places like the aforementioned restaurant chains with industrial-strength food that tastes the same in San Diego as it does in Bangor (i.e., boring). Me, I say take a chance. The worst thing that can happen is your meal is about the same as it would be at Outback Steak House.
The best thing that can happen is that you get to meet Tiffany and Kipp, and your meal is really, really good, and your cash stays in the community.
So given that, why on earth would you eat at any restaurant where there are 1,500 locations nationwide? To be safe? Comfortable? Boring? A little more adventure would suit us all, methinks.