Reno

About a week ago, we visited good friends, Cheryl and Gerry, in "The Biggest Little City in the World" or Reno, NV, as it is otherwise known. I thought Reno had lots to offer beyond its gambling and quickee divorce reputation. The casinos and shows are fun, of course, but the region is beautiful and is close to lots of historic and scenic sites. So there is plenty to do.

Cheryl and Gerry moved there about 2-1/2 years ago into a beautiful retirement community just outside of the city in an area known as the Truckee Meadow. Here is a view from the community lodge looking to the south. The weather was wonderful while we were there. Temperatures were near 80º the first two days of our visit. They said that the weather is relatively moderate all year round in this high desert region of the country.

In nearly all directions from their home, you can see mountains, which are foothills of the Sierra Nevada range. The homes are very nice, and the residents seem to be seriously involved with each other in recreational, hobby, and numerous group activities. For example, while we were there, a Johnny Cash/Patsy Kline tribute band played a concert for all of us at the community lodge--that was lots of fun (Anders would have loved it).

On Friday, we drove up to Donner State Park in the mountains just west of Reno. This was only about 35 miles away. Of course, this is the site of the famous Donner Party, which became trapped there in the 1840s while trying to emigrate to California. The park is just alongside Interstate 80, which now allows travel over the mountains (via Donner Pass) nearly all year round. This year there was a total of 68 feet of snowfall at Donner Pass, and we saw huge amounts of not-yet-melted snow near the park and around Donner Lake, where the snow reached the roofs of two-story homes there.

This monument was dedicated around 1914 to honor the many emigrants who passed this way, especially those in the Donner Party. It is said that the snow at the time of their entrapment was as deep as the base of the monument. Three of the children who were part of that unfortunate incident were still alive at the time of the dedication and were present. It is a sad, though interesting, story. Three good books that I have read about the incident, if you are interested, are: Desperate Passage: The Donner Party's Perilous Journey West, Ordeal by Hunger, and Impatient With Desire. The latter is an imagined journal of one of the women in the party, a journal known to have existed but which was lost. The first book listed is a very recent publication.

Gerry and I also visited the Nevada State Railroad Museum in Carson City, also about 35 miles from Reno to the south. They have lots of equipment dating back to the 1800s with some of the nicer units having been restored and used by the Hollywood movie industry for westerns and other period films. Below is a Baldwin 4-4-0 engine, followed by a McKeen interurban unit (the only one still in existence).

We did a little gambling, of course, and enjoyed the historic downtown area. The Truckee River rushes and tumbles right through the town and is a favorite place for kayakers, one of whom is transporting his dog to the opposite bank of the river, if you look closely below.

Mostly, we had a wonderful time catching up with our friends.

HERO Robot

Years ago (circa 1983), when I was still working in the Department of Computer Science, I assembled a robot for our laboratory. It was a Heathkit HERO robot, and it was capable of motion, motion detection, voice synthesis, distance detection, sound detection, and probably some other things I don't recall. The machine also had a head that could rotate. An arm was connected to the back of its head, and this arm could be positioned through pivoting, rotation and extension so that its gripper could be operated to grasp things. Faculty and students used it to study a variety of interesting issues in robotics, including programming and scene manipulation.

Here is what HERO looked like while I was in the process of assembling it. It is naked, and those are its guts you are looking at, but don't be squeamish!

And here is what I looked like, while I was assembling it. My grandmother used to say I looked like "one of those old guys in the Bible." You would think she would have liked that, given the reference and her religious leanings, but I think she thought I looked scruffy or something. I used to be able to grow hair--dark hair!!

Here is a top view of the finished HERO with its arm, programming pad, and teaching pendant displayed.

The cool thing, though, is to see how far robotics has progressed. Kathie's investment club owns some stock in a company called Intuitive Surgical that makes medical robotics. Here is a video of a doctor in Seattle using some of their technology to make and throw a paper airplane. It may not seem like much at first, but be sure to watch all the way to the end. You'll be surprised. You couldn't do this with HERO!

Weekend in Minneapolis

I recently spent an extended weekend in Minneapolis with Will, Sandy and Anders. Naturally, there were lots of activities with Anders, beginning with a walk. Anders rode his bike.

Sandy and I walked along. They are taking care of Jean's dogs for a spell, so Zeke and Gracie were along for some exercise.

You may know that Anders absolutely loves Johnny Cash, especially the songs Ring of Fire and I Walk the Line. Using "his" computer (an old Mac that his folks no longer need), Anders navigates to YouTube and finds videos of Johnny singing these and other songs. Then, he plays along on his guitar. He is very serious about this, but we are going to have to restring his guitar for left-handed playing, if he wants to keep using it this way.

Sometimes, he prefers to look for Johnny on his mom's iPod or his dad's iPhone, or he might play a game or two.

Bath time is a very involved process, with lots of water and suds and toys and singing and other loud, joyous noises.

After the bath, he dons a favorite special towel.

Later that night, we found him zonked out as seen below. He had taken his doll to bed too, after carefully undressing it. Puppy is there with him too, of course.

While I was there, Will and I celebrated our respective birthdays. His was actually yesterday! I failed to get a picture of him cutting cake while I was there, but here is another just for the record.

My birthday isn't for awhile yet, but Will was very thoughtful about his gift for me by suggesting I come to Minneapolis to hear, with him, an interview of John Thorn by Garrison Keillor. We had dinner together first and then went to the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul for the event. You can read about it here. John Thorn has written a new book about the early history of the game of baseball, which is my favorite sport. I intend to read the book in the near future.

New Trike

In 1947, evidently, when I was just three, I received a new tricycle. I remember having that trike for a very long time. Its whereabouts today are a complete mystery--it is probably a pile of rust somewhere. Grandson Anders has one that looks very much like it, however. In the picture, I seem to be having trouble reaching the pedals. My hairdo is nicely in place, though, and I've got my bibs on, but no shirt. That's a pretty smug look on my face. I'm thinking that this is probably right around my birthday. I don't recall for sure, but a good bet would be that the trike was a birthday present. The location is definitely the farm south of Clarence where we lived when I was that age. What else was going on in 1947? Well, the war had been over for around two years. My sister would have been about one and one-half years old, and my folks were a young 29. All was right in the world for me, with loving parents and lots of loving relatives and friends nearby.

Where's The Justice League When You Need Them?

Old-time avid readers of DC Comics may remember the Justice League that appeared in the 1960s. For the unenlightened, a more recent image of the league members appears just below.

In my previous posting, I introduced the original Wonder Women. Here is another original. What biceps! What an impressive grimace! Able to leap small items in a single bound! Faster than a speeding spitwad! Look! Up on the couch! It's a bird! It's a boy! No! It's SuperRobbie.

Wonder Woman

You may have heard that an update of the old Wonder Woman TV show is being prepared for the fall of 2011 on NBC. You can read about that here, if you want. Want to know what the new star, Adrianne Palicki, will look like when the show opens? Just take a gander below.

Well, I'm here to tell you that NBC has it wrong. The real Wonder Woman look was demonstrated years ago by my niece and daughter. Proof appears below. They are much cuter. Read it and weep, Adrianne.

Mixed Feelings

This photograph always brings a smile to my face. It was taken at Lake Itasca, where the Mighty Mississippi is merely a small stream emanating from the lake. People go there to wade across and to enjoy the very pretty Minnesota state park within which the lake resides.

The photograph also makes me feel some combination of guilty and sad about the way this nation has diminished certain peoples and nations. Our history is quite poor and shameful in that regard. This kindly Native American gentleman was doing something fairly common at the time at tourist locations around the country. That is, to offer opportunities for pictures like this to be taken in exchange for a contribution. I have no recollection of how much money we may have given him, but it was surely not enough to compensate for what may have been to him a somewhat humiliating or degrading place in his life or for the state into which we put his peoples. It is difficult to believe that he could make a very good living this way. On the other hand, maybe I give him too little credit.

Snow Days of Yore

Spring is almost here, and we can begin to put those snow days behind us. Here was a snow day that is way behind us (way behind me at least). You think we have had serious snow this past winter. Naaaah! Here's real snow and no snow blowers to move it. Just good old dad scooping away, while I watch with admiration and play nearby. Sometime later, I fell off the snowbank onto the sidewalk, and my play shovel came down behind me and hit me on my forehead. Old Doc Smith didn't believe in stitches. Hence, the scar high above my left eye.

Yikes!

Imagine being greeted like this when you walk into your kitchen. Well, actually, this is a pretty good way to be greeted. Not everyone has three lovable munchkins to make their lives brighter. The trouble is that they grow up and move away and end up being greeted each morning by their own munchkins. So I have some advice for these three: savor every moment like this, because they all pass by too quickly.

P.S. No, I was not feeding them wine. I'm pretty sure that was a bottle of sparkling grape juice that at least a couple of them seemed to like at the time.

Those Wonderful Cows

I can't think about my father without also thinking about the herd of Holstein cows he cared for and which provided him with a good income when other parts of his farming operation varied with the whims of the markets. Dad was many things with this herd: manager, strategist, veterinarian, planner, breeder, and caretaker. He actually did have a special relationship with each animal, and they responded to him in ways they would not with others. They were much better behaved in the barn than other dairy cows I happened to be around. Milk from the herd was tested monthly for quality and quantity. I still have some of his herd record books. He occasionally received awards for the production levels of selected cows or the overall herd. Dad was a very good dairy farmer. He didn't have a proper barn or the money to invest in a grade A milking operation. Grade A is for human consumption and means pipelines and bulk tanks and a level of cleanliness that simply wasn't possible with the resources Dad had available. Instead, his operation was grade B. That milk was dried and used for making animal feed and other products. Dad always said that it was the cows who put my sister and me through college and allowed him many other benefits in his later life.

I did a share of work with these cows too, including feeding them, cleaning their barn, assisting with the births of calves, and herding them to/from pasture. When I first got involved at a young age, Dad was selling cream instead of whole milk. That meant processing the milk through a cream separator. This was my job. I could start when Dad was about half finished milking and then be done only a little after all the cows had been milked. We used the skim milk (left over after the cream was removed) to make feed for Dad's hogs (we called it slop) or to feed calves. When I was old enough, Dad sometimes left me in charge of the farm so that he and Mom could travel. Getting up at 4:30AM every morning to do the milking and then doing it again at 5PM every evening with lots of other work in-between makes one appreciate how hard farmers work.

Betsy was pretty small the last few years that Mom and Dad were on the farm, but Rob and Will remember being there. Here are some pictures I love. Rob, with his curly blonde hair, is watching his grandfather milk a cow and then pour the results into a tall pail.

1963 Mercury Meteor

I don't always have current events or news to report, and since I've been spending lots of time lately organizing my old photographs and documents, I thought I might share an occasional story. When I look at these old pictures, I usually recall things that are not evident in the pictures alone. For example, here is a picture of me with my first car. This was taken in the spring of 1964 in City Park in Iowa City looking east across the river.

Let's get the obvious things out of the way first. Yes, at a mere 20 years old, I was thinner and had more hair. The car is a 1963 Mercury Meteor, a mid-size model. Fins were still popular, but the ones on this car were not quite as outrageous as some. I thought the lines of the car were quite nice, actually. The color was a deep burgundy, and the interior was a medium brown. White wall tires were still around, although these were the thin stripe versions that replaced the full white sidewalls of earlier years. I liked these better and still think they look nice. At the time, license plates in Iowa denoted the county in which the vehicle was licensed followed by a vehicle number. So, this car was licensed in county 16 (Cedar County), which was my official residence while I attended the State University of Iowa (later just the University of Iowa). My parents still operated a farm then near Lowden, Iowa. Other things that I notice about the car are its very tall antenna and its double headlights. One had to actually get out of the vehicle to adjust the height of the antenna in those years. Forgetting to put one all the way down at a drive-through car wash could be disastrous to the life of the antenna. Double headlights had been around for a few years on many cars, but that was a relatively recent approach for handling high and low beams. I don't recall anything about the mileage the car got, but gas only cost about $0.35 per gallon in 1984, and so I suppose good mileage wasn't much on my mind or anyone else's, for that matter, much to our eventual distress as a nation.

Now, regarding the non-obvious aspects of the picture. I think the picture was taken by Jim Inghram, who was my college roommate in an apartment we rented a couple blocks west of City Park. I came to own the car through some good fortune. Sometime during my early high school years, I had become interested in the stock market. My Great Uncle Mark dabbled in the market and nurtured my interest by explaining the market to me and discussing stocks and companies and the like. He was a very generous man, and at some point (a birthday, I think) bought 20 shares of Burlington Industries for me as a gift. I recall that the price per share was then about $17. When my father and I began to discuss my having a car of my own, we decided to sell the stock, which had risen in value to about $70 per share. This yielded enough to purchase this low-mileage used car from someone dad knew, also from Lowden. I remember dad being considerate about asking Great Uncle Mark if he minded our using the stock in this way. He didn't mind, and I recall his commenting that he should have bought a number of shares for himself when he bought mine.

This car served me well for several years until I eventually bought a new, gold, 1967 Chevrolet Chevelle with a floor-mounted stick shift and bucket seats. That car was ultimately badly damaged in a hail storm the size of baseballs. But that is another story.

Conehead

From Tighe: It was bad enough that they subjected me to the loss of my essential maleness, but then they abused me further by making me wear this dumb cone. I tried, with some success to rip it from my neck, and I made a point to crash into everything I could with it so as to be really annoying. I feel like nobody loves me. Everybody hates me. If the ground wasn't frozen, I'd go out to the garden and eat worms. (But then, that isn't beyond me at any time!)

Wisconsin Winter or Winter Near Winter, Wisconsin

Late last week, we drove up to our place in Wisconsin to enjoy some of the winter fun here. On the way, scenery along the Mississippi river south of Lacrosse was pretty this time of year.

Will, Sandy and Anders came to visit us for the weekend. The fun started with a required Friday night fish fry at one of our local restaurants.

Anders and his mom enjoyed the fireplace Saturday morning. Anders is holding a "snowman kit" that I bought. I suppose one could just use natural things, but the plastic carrot nose, pipe, buttons, and eyes, along with a scarf and cap will be good resources for snowman building for a long time. Besides, Anders thought it was a fun item and that is good enough for me.

I had gotten a new bread machine for Christmas to have at the lake. So, I thought Anders and I should make some raisin bread. He did a great job putting all of the ingredients into the baking pan. Then later, he and I enjoyed watching the machine mix everything up.

He is very careful with the "dumping", and having your mouth open and sometimes your tongue out helps too.

Anders has gotten to be quite the puzzler.

While mom and dad did some cross-country skiing, I took Anders for a long pull on a sled down our lane and back across the lake. After that, Grandma treated him to a nice warm dip in the tub. I'm not crazy about Macaulay Culkin, but I have to admit that this picture reminds me of him in Home Alone. Anders is definitely cuter and will grow to be a much nicer boy.

The next day, I showed Anders how we used to slide on scoop shovels when I was young. We didn't need saucer sleds! We just sat on the shovel, hung onto the handle, and pointed downhill. As long as you didn't spin sidewise or get backwards, it worked great! If that happened, you often enjoyed a bailout or tumble. With a little practice, you could learn to keep the edge from digging in and do a complete spin. Give it a try! I highly recommend it.

You may have seen the earlier pictures that Sandy posted of Anders' outing on the cool little snowshoes that his dad made for him. Here he is trying them out again on our lake.

It got warm enough on Sunday to make a snowman and try out the snowman kit. See! It does work well. Anders liked it!

While dad and mom loaded the car for the trip back home, Anders practiced driving. I don't think he actually drove home, though. Rather, I imagine he was asleep by the time they got to the end of our lane. What a fun and rewarding weekend it was for us for them to be here with us.