Sturgeon Bay – Fire From The Sky

Buried Treasures

2012-10-282012-10-28

Amazing what one runs across when cleaning out surplus stuff. Also amazing what one never notices until…when one notices it. I rescued this old label some time ago from a box that had been used for storage since whenever. Then it knocked around here and there and was buried, until I dug it up yesterday and scanned it.

Today, I took a close look at the scan image while touching up the color. There it was. The street address of my grandfather’s gas station. Yes, the old postcard that I spoke of here does show it.

I don’t know why the package was sent there instead of to my grandparents’ residence, but it makes a remarkable contribution to my growing collection of digitized memorabilia. In all the stuff I have gone through over the years in this house, it is the only thing I can recall that has that address on it.

I’m sure that I will discover more occurrences of the address as the “house arcaeology” progresses — and plenty of other interesting things long shoved aside. I also dread finding them after they have been destroyed by mice, silverfish, and leaky roof. 🙁

Fractal Sturgeons

2010-07-082010-07-08

The living sturgeons that gave their name to the bay that divides the Door county peninsula — and the city that straddles it — have been nearly wiped out by overfishing and pollution. But their ghosts now haunt the summer streets.

Ten years ago the first “Sturgeons Around the Bay” brought out interesting variations on the fishy form by local artists. This year they are back. I took a walk a couple of days ago and found two within a few blocks of my home. Both of them made me think of my large accumulation of fractal images. So I went digging into the seven years or so of Fractal Explorer archives for matching pics. Some of the collection is on CDs, but I found enough of what I was looking for on my current hard drive.

Menagerie of Mandalas, by Margaret Lucas

The mandala-like fractal forms that I dug up are a little disappointing in these small images. You really have to see the whole array of mind-boggling patterns of which they are a part. But then you would end up sitting at your computer, diving into fractals for hours, like I do.

The point is, I suppose, that art does not originate in our thpughts. It is, in some way, mathematically hard-coded in our cells. Everything is fractal.

Treading water

2010-02-012012-10-28

Not enough good sleep to make a meaningful post. I will some time soon, I hope. Both of the above.

This postcard turned up in a bad place when I reshuffled a shipload of junk so I could get up the stairs (the upstairs door was ajar, a criminal offense when the temperature outside hovers around 10F).

I believe the Standard sign (far left) belongs to my grandfather’s station (ETA: Yes, it is). Harry G. Ahlers, 1904-1984. I wish these old cards had dates on them.

The signs have changed, but most of the buildings haven’t.

Man-made Mini Sinkhole in Sturgeon Bay

2009-12-132009-12-15

I love karst landscapes. Wisconsin’s Door County, where I was born and currently live, is a monumental block of cracked, leaky Niagara dolomite, riddled with caves. Southern Poland, where my novel, A Drum Is Empty, is set, has it beat all to heck for caves, sinkholes, water-sculpted limestone cliffs, and monadnocks (huge free-standing rocks).

A shallow sinkhole provides a convenient camping place for kidnappers with evil intent in ADIE. It’s out of the wind and concealed from view. Un?fortunately, it makes sitting ducks of the bad guys for a sling-toting stone age sharpshooter like my MC.

This morning, I discovered a much less handy hole half a block from my home. Apparently the large snowblower that clears some of the sidewalks knocked an old storm sewer lid half off last week. I have walked past it every day, but didn’t see it until I was coming back from the laundromat today. It must have been concealed by snow until the weather warmed up; then the snow fell in — a man-made sinkhole!.

When I saw the hole, I said a couple of rude words, stared a bit, and then hastened home. Leaving my bags of wet wash to amuse themselves for a while, I scrounged up the makin’s for a couple of small marking flags. (Damned if I had the energy to drag a plank out of wherever….) I went back with two blaze-orange markers and my camera, shot some pics, and then returned home to leave a message on the street department’s answering machine.

Then I hung the wash and fed my hungry face.

It’s plenty big enough, and deep enough, to swallow a small child or an animal, and an adult could be trapped and/or injured.

The lid is not only heavy, it’s covered with snow and frozen down. Owoo.