"We saw a lot of road kill and thought of you." —my sister
For more information on oil prices, click here. Podcasts of My Intro Economics lectures (in .wma format) For my 2005 Radio Economics MP3 podcasts, go to the bottom of the page that lists the lecture podcasts.
We live in downtown London (Ontario), right at the fork of the Thames River. Several days ago one of our neighbours wrote that she had seen deer on the lawn of our condo building. This morning when I looked out the window, I saw two deer in the park right across the street.
So grabbed my camera to take some photos. In this first one, unfortunately I had left the flash turned on and it reflected off the bedroom window. I've cropped and adjusted the photo a bit, but it still is not very clear.
By the time I got the flash turned off, the deer were moving back toward the river. I panicked a bit and didn't hold the camera steady for the next photo.
It is exciting to see the deer. The river habitat, even in downtown London, might be able to support them for quite some time. But I really doubt if this is the right place for them.
Sadly, it appears the mother duck has given up and abandoned what few eggs she had left. She wasn't there this morning when I checked on her, and there were only maybe two or three eggs left in the planter. As I said in my initial post, when you see how few eggs hatch, with the ducklings surviving to maturity, it becomes clear how powerful natural selection can be.
I just returned from checking on the duck that has nested under a spruce tree along Dundas Street in downtown London, Ontario (for previous postings about the duck and eggs, see the links below).
The two eggs that were on the outer edge of the pot and readily visible have now disappeared. The mother duck has changed position several times. But oddly, on the other side of the tree trunk from where she has been nesting this entire time, there are at least three eggs, uncovered, in a deep hollow.
I wonder if there was another mother duck nesting on the other side of the tree. Given the territoriality I've seen in ducks, that seems unlikely. At the same time, I can't imagine this mom pushed some eggs of her own over there, but maybe...
Anyway, here is a really crappy photo I tried to take of theDuck and Eggs situation. The mother duck is on the left edge of the photo. You can barely make out half of her. The eggs are under a branch on the right side of the trunk.
I have walked by the nesting place nearly every day since then, and the mother duck is still alive, quiet, alert, and nesting. One of the eggs that was outside the nest seems to have disappeared, but amazingly one is still there.
Clearly I am not the only one to have noticed her. There is a little plastic container inside the tree, possibly to capture water for her or possibly to hold food someone might have been providing (or who knows? maybe it was there before she began her nesting, but I don't remember having seen it there initially).
Yesterday noon during my walk to McDonald's, I checked on the situation again. I was initially quite concerned when I saw that ALL the other evergreens had been removed from their huge planters (something I don't understand. I liked them). But the shelter tree for the mother duck and her eggs had been left in place. Here's a photo of two of the other planters, showing the trees removed.
So someone on the city works/parks crew is doing their best to leave her undisturbed and protected.
Can you imagine this situation during the depression less than 100 years ago? What are the odds the duck and her eggs would have been left alone then? My guess is they wouldn't have survived there. As our society becomes wealthier, we tend to forgo hunting and foraging for food like this. I guess there's a positive income/wealth elasticity of demand for "Awww....".
The first summer I taught at Herstmonceux Castle (2006), there were three different mother ducks who made nests and laid eggs in the courtyard.
The first batch to hatch included 13 ducklings, 11 of whom survived the summer being well-fed by profs, staff, and students, and somehow avoiding attacks from the jackdaws. The second batch was smaller. I'm not sure if any of them survived, but the first mom and her ducklings were so well-developed, they pretty much fought the second batch into oblivion. The third batch didn't even hatch; the mom laid them in a somewhat open area, and the jackdaws got the eggs.
Every year there is also a duck who lays her eggs in a planter outside the castle tearoom. Some of her ducklings seem to survive much of the time.
There were several possible insights from those experiences:
The first batch of ducks to hatch is more likely to survive. Ducks that mate and nest early are more likely to have surviving progeny and to extend their gene pool.
Ducks with well-hidden nests are more likely to have surviving ducklings.
Many, many ducklings and eggs do not survive very long.
It was these memories that affected me when Ms. Eclectic and I saw these two eggs under an evergreen in a huge planter in downtown London last week.
I was saddened by the fact that the eggs had been abandoned, but knowing how few eggs and ducklings survive, it seemed part of the order of nature.
Last night I walked past the same planter and the eggs were still there. That puzzled me. I had expected that some animal or some hungry person would have taken them.
So I investigated further (albeit from a distance). Sure enough, very well-camouflaged inside the evergreen is a mother duck. I'm guessing she laid so many eggs she can't incubate them all, so these were pushed out of her nest. But that's just a guess. Anyway, here's a photo of her that I tried to take with my smartphone (it is cropped; I didn't really get this close).
You can just about make out her head and body in the photo. Nesting mother ducks really know how to lie still and blend in with their surroundings.
Let's suppose she is able to hatch a bunch or even several of these eggs. What will happen to the ducklings? That looks like a fairly hefty drop to the sidewalk in the first photo. Will the ducklings survive, or will Londoners have to pull a Spokane here and catch them as they fall?
And if/when the ducklings survive until they reach the sidewalk, it's a several-block walk to the river from their nest. Will Londoners stop traffic for them? And even if that happens, will they survive attacks from crows, hawks, racoons, etc.? Updates to follow.
It'll be gone by this afternoon, but I couldn't resist getting out to do one more piece of snow-stomp art. [for previous pieces, see this, this and this]
And what better subject than the show "Cabaret" now on at the McManus. 8pm Tuesday - Saturday, $25; 2pm Saturday, $15. Great reviews, and it is probably the best production of this show you will ever see.
Update: indeed, it has nearly all melted away by noon. 8-(
Update #2: This photo was just featured as the "weather photo" on the local television station.
The morning of the day we left Molokai, I went back to Popahaku Beach, partly to linger, partly to hold onto the memories.
And, of course, I couldn't leave without doing some stomp art in the sand.
Our flights home took us via Chicago O'Hare, where it was snowing when we landed. It was a wet snow, and it didn't seem all THAT serious, but I guess it was. When we landed, we had a very smooth landing, but the plane seemed to slide sideways a bit. And once we landed, we had to join a queue just to get to our gate. Meanwhile, we got to watch the snow-removal teams of vehicles at work. I counted 12 of them in a row, ploughing and blowing the snow from the taxi strips.
Because of weather issues and mechanical issues with a plane ahead of us, we waited on the tarmac for nearly two hours before we could disembark. If our other plane was on time, we had 10 minutes to get to it. But the minute we got off the plane we checked the board and saw that our next flight (direct from Chicago to London, Ontario) was delayed an hour, so we relaxed a bit and found our way to the proper gate.
It turned out that about every 15 - 20 minutes, the flight to London was delayed again, just a bit more, "awaiting inbound aircraft" which, it turned out, had never left London to get to Chicago.
During the wait, this sign really tickled me:
The rescheduled departure time was 4:15 CST; the flight was due to arrive in London at 4:24 EST (which is 3:24 CST). And the flight was expected to take an hour and 14 minutes. I assumed that meant we'd be traveling faster than the speed of light.
That flight was eventually cancelled. So we rescheduled for the later flight. Then 20 minutes before it was due to depart, it too was cancelled. So we tried to rebook. It turned out there was no way to get out of Chicago that night to London. Furthermore, every conceivable way of doing it the next day was completely booked up. We were going to have to spend two nights in Chicago.
So I called a number provided by the airline, and they automagically booked us into the Intercontinental Hotel at O'Hare for about $80/night. Ms. Eclectic and I looked at each other and agreed; I pronounced, "hurt me some more." The rack rate of the room we had was $500, and the currently listed internet rate is about $170/night.
We relaxed. We drank. We ate. And we enjoyed ourselves in our corner room with a funky bathroom:
It sort of reminded us of the Old Dominion Hotel in the lower old village in Quebec City.
Finally, after two nights, we boarded a flight from Chicago to Toronto, were pleasantly surprised to see our checked bags were with us, and from Toronto flew home.
Overall, it was a pleasant, relaxing holiday, even with the flight cancellations in Chicago.
The last afternoon we were on Molokai, I decided to hike a few miles north of the complex to a beach (Kawakui Iki) that is generally even more isolated than the others. The walk meant going up and down a couple of hills, following a very rough dirt track that some people attempt with 4x4 vehicles, but that is pretty daunting.
You can see two things from the above photo and the two photos below.
These tracks are not user friendly.
The kiawe trees are everywhere.
How tough is the track? tough enough that this happened and that the shell was left to deteriorate.
Above: My first view of the bay. Do you see any vehicle tracks here? Neither do I.
But if you stare intently at this next photo, of the beach, you can see a pickup truck parked over there, under the trees. I'm sure that wasn't a smooth ride getting there.
I love seeing these flowers growing out of the rocks near the beach:
The rocks around the beach were from several different types of geological formations. Some appeared to be sandstone (or something?), holding forth against the standard lava base of the island.
Sunsets, sunrises. Both left us feeling grateful for the opportunity to be there, enjoying the splendour and colours. Here's a cloud, after the sun had set. We loved all the shades and colours.
Down the hill from the swimming pool and the abandoned bar/restaurant, the beach is very rocky. This particular clump of rocks intrigued me. It reminded me of the gap in the rock formations at the Gaspe or of some of the natural rock bridges that one can see lots of places. But it's a lot smaller than those.
In previous postings I've mentioned the abandoned hotel. It hasn't even been boarded up entirely, but many of the roofs look as if they are in need of repair, and there might be some serious leaking in some of the units. It was a large hotel complex. Here is just a portion of it:
All those buildings have been abandoned (though probably not abandoned legally). The part of the lawn that has clearly been tended to is on the northern edge of the condo complex.
Much of the neglected ground was once part of the fairways of the golf course that surrounded the complex. Quite frankly, Ms. Eclectic and I were just as happy to have no golfing there. It was more open, less crowded, safer, and quieter. But there's no doubt that the abandonment of the golf course (and hotel) had a serious negative impact on the resale values of the condos.
One morning, our friends drove us to Kalaupapa Lookout. From there, we could see the imposing steep cliffs. Also, down on the peninsula is the Kalaupapa National Historical Site, where the leprosy colony was established and where a succession of priests and nuns worked tirelessly, self-sacrificingly to ease the lives of the people who had been condemned to living there.
On one of the information signs, there was a cute little green beetle, about a half-centimetre in diameter, crawling along (again, I used the macro lens here).
That evening, our friends took us to a fund-raiser for a hula school. Apparently the hula began on Molokai (a source of pride for the island residents), and the dancers from this school perform all over the world.
It turned out that the people running the fund-raiser had no objection to people bringing their own wine, so two of us walked three blocks into downtown and bought some wine. My choice: Flip-Flop Merlot for $5.39. Fortunately we bought three bottles of wine, cuz we drank 'em all!
The next few photos are from that event. They're not very crisp, but they capture the essence of the show.
The opening dance:
Notice the dancers were wearing red and yellow. Most (but not all) of the costumes were based on these two colours, which were the royal colours of King Kamehameha. There is a cape of red and yellow feathers that belonged to the king in the Kamehameha museum in Honolulu.
A recently written dance about the history of fishing:
And a dance about the extremely, wonderfully aromatic plumeria flower:
One morning we decided to go look for a geocache along Popahaku Beach, which is south of the condo complex. It is a beautiful, long, sandy beach which has very few visitors. This is one end of it.
Next is a photo showing the full length of the beach. Locals call it "Three-mile Beach" but my guess is that it's noticeably less than three miles long. Nevertheless, given the difficulties of walking in that type of sand, I expect walking the full length of the beach would be quite a workout.
Farther along, there were two people fishing at the edge of the water, and we saw them catch a good-sized fish while we were ambling along.
Later we walked up a road and gully to the top of KaiAka, a rocky hill/point sticking out into the ocean near the condo. Here's a photo, looking back eastward. You can see the rain clouds in the distance.
And here's the same view, just a minute or so later, as the rains arrived.
Unfortunately, some raindrops made blurry spots on the next photo, taken of the beach in front of our condo.
The geocache was a little too close to the cliff edge for my taste, but I found it.
And a travelogue from me wouldn't be complete without some roadkill (and flies):
One evening, as a few of us were standing around one of the communal barbecues, we started talking about the "green flash" that some people say they see at sunset. I took a lot of photos of this sunset, but I never saw anything green aside from the grass and palm leaves.
On one of our walks, we came to this isolated cove/bay. Absolute aloneness here, and not at all far from the condos. Someone told us this beach is where people come who want to bathe and sunbathe nude. None there when we were there, though.
Just after I posed for this next photo, a large wave broke and soaked me up to my calves.
On the way back from that beach, we saw this Egret, walking across the patio of the abandoned bar. What an unusual place to have so much deteriorating real estate.
Another of our walks took us a bit south of the condo complex, past storage areas where things from the past have been left to deteriorate... old equipment from the hotel, bar, restaurant, golf club, etc. Amazing that nothing was done with it. Here are some old umbrella frames:
and a bunch of other stuff:
And, of course, the ever-present kiawe trees. I called this one "Ichobod Kiawe".
The beach in front of our condo was just over a bit of a rise. Here's a photo taken from the rise, looking back at the condo complex. The path in the red dirt runs across what used to be fairways on the now-abandoned golf course.
The sand on the beach itself is very different from the sand I'm used to around the Great Lakes or on Oahu. Great Lakes sand is silica; Oahu sand is mostly pulverized coral (especially at Kailua, where we lived in 1986-7). But the sand here on the west coast of Molokai is pulverized shells. And you sink in it, even if it's wet. There's no hope of running rapidly and exhilaratingly on firm sand along the water's edge here because you sink all the time.
There are two reasons there are no footprints in the sand:
Very few people walk along the beach here. Despite the appearance of its being a heavily populated area, judging from those condos, it isn't; and those who do visit here don't spend much time on the beach.
The wind is generally pretty strong and fairly constant. Footprints don't last long. I have a kite which usually flies very well in strong wind, but it was a struggle flying it here (sorry, no photos; I couldn't relax enough to take any photos).
People don't swim at this beach, especially not in winter when the waves and cross currents can be strong and unpredictable. We were warned that a young man had been killed surfing just up the beach a ways from this spot when he lost control of his surfboard and crashed on the rocks.
The rocks are all along the beach. Here are some of the rocks that I liked. I call these rocks "The Cliffs of Molokai" since they remind me of the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland (okay, in a very micro sense maybe).
Another photo of the beach.
Walking back to the condo with Ms. Eclectic, we came across some particularly captivating little lavender flowers. I'm not sure these photos do them justice (They are tiny! I used the macro lens to take these photos). I call the first one "Ethereal Transluscence".
As I said before, I love the windswept openness of the hills everywhere I go. This scene reminds me so much of so many of the places I've loved walking.
Farther up in the hills, at one point I glanced in through the kiawe and saw this old truck.
The truck looks like an abandoned vehicle, but I'm not so sure. In Hawaii, vehicles are kept a looonnnnggg time, even those that look as if they belong at the junkyard. It makes sense, given the high shipping costs for new cars, that people would keep old ones on the road a long time.
As a less extreme example, our friends in Molokai share a 1984 Mercedes. There is duct tape around the moon roof to keep the water out, and the emblem has been replaced by a hand-fashioned set of shells.
On the way back down from the hills to the condo complex, I saw a man trimming a palm tree. Some of the palms look pretty shaggy if the dead fronds aren't trimmed.
And here's the condo we stayed in. We were in the upper unit on the near corner. It was very comfortable and very well-supplied.
As I said before, I absolutely love windswept openness. And the west end of Molokai has LOTS of it.
The short, scrubby trees you see in the above two photos are kiawe. More about them later.
The dirt on most Hawaiian islands is red, presumably from the iron in the magma and lava (though I'm not sure). We all remember the red mud we encountered many years ago when our family climbed Olomana on Oahu, and it is abundant here, too. The dust is red, too, and it gets on everything, including inside the condo and on the roadside guardrails.
There were a number of imports to the islands that didn't work out very well. The Japanese emperor donated some small deer. These have thrived on Molokai, but during dry periods they go down into the condo complex, looking for edible vegetation.
Another import was the mongoose. Reportedly Mongeese (?) were brought to the islands to hunt the rats, but that didn't work out very well because they are active at different times of the night and day. But the mongoose holes can be serious and dangerous.
A third import, and one that is really horrid now, was the kiawe tree. I'm told it was originally imported to be raised as a source of firewood. And that might have been successful in the days when wood was the only source of carbon fuel. But the trees have spread and have nasty thorns. Several times I had thorns from downed twigs or branches stick into my shoes or sandals (fortunately, they didn't go through, but they certainly do go through flip-flops). Nevertheless, kiawe are beautiful, gnarly trees.
One morning, I decided to take a loop walk up into the hills overlooking the ocean. Overall it was only about 5 miles with an elevation change of maybe 500m. As I left the condo area, I took these photos of some of the flower hedges.
The condos in the above photo are quite a distance from the ocean and are quite different from the one we stayed in.
Later, I passed a number of trees with flowers like this one, a bit smaller than a golf ball.
Most of the western half of Molokai was (is still?) owned by "The Ranch". At one point, the Ranch decided to try to develop the west by putting in serviced lots (with underground provision of water, sewers, electricity, etc.) for high-end resort homes. They never sold many of the lots, and the hills remain a type of windswept emptiness (which reminded me of the same wonderful feelings I had when walking on the South Downs, Yorkshire Dales, or Saskatchewan coulees). Meanwhile the signs of attempted development remain.
A depreciating sign for Kaiaka Road:
Part of the development included putting fire hydrants all along the roads. There are very often no homes or other places to be protected by all the fire hydrants, but I gather they come in handy for fighting brush fires.
The condo we rented for the week was near the oceanfront, with a gorgeous view of the ocean.
And the morning sunrises made attractive pastel patterns in the sky.
On really clear days, it is possible to see Oahu across this channel. And every once in awhile we saw whale spouts out there. At one time there had been a splendid golf course and an upscale hotel here, too, but for reasons I never fully understood, those things changed hands a couple of times and were abandoned. That's the former 9th (closest) and 1st fairways between us and the ocean.
Between our condo and the shore was something that reminded us of our recent stomp art.
At first I thought those were hunks of coral, carefully arranged. It turns out there is very little coral in this part of Molokai. Those are coconuts painted white. I guess it has been there for a few years.
During the week we were there (Kaluakoi), life was very calm. There's almost a kind of natural selection process at work. It turns out that lots of seniors like a quiet, relaxed holiday. We met a few people at the community bbq, we spent time with our friends, and overall it was a pleasant stay.
In 1986-87, I was on sabbatical at The University of Hawaii, where I did research and taught. While there, I read about but never visited the island of Molokai. That island had a reputation for having had an isolated sanctuary/colony for sufferers of leprosy, but other than that, the general impression was that Molokai was not very exciting or even interesting.
Last fall our friends were telling us about how they and some other people we know spend months, every year, on Molokai. I was surprised and asked them about what the attraction was. They told us that where they spend their time is in a condo complex on the west coast of the island. It is isolated, relaxed, peaceful, calm, and it has wonderful views of sunsets.
We were later told that Molokai has NO stoplights, NO elevators, NO escalators, and no buildings taller than a moderate-sized palm tree. The nearest grocery store to the condo complex is 21 miles away. These facts capture an important aspect of the island. They are proud of their slow-paced lifestyle, and they fiercely defend it.
When our friends suggested we should visit them, we hesitated, partly due to the expense and partly because I'm involved in several shows in London. Fitting a trip in between shows looked possible, though, so I conferred with the director/producer of Cabaret in which I have a couple of minor roles (March 21-31, McManus Theatre, London Ontario), and obtained approval to miss rehearsals for the week we would be gone.
It's a long flight. It could be uncomfortable being cooped up for 9 hours, and we're old. So we booked first-class tickets. The flight from Chicago's O'Hare to Honolulu was on a United Boeing 777. I was surprised at how poorly equipt it was in the first class section: no plug-ins for recharging phones or laptops, no seat-back screens for watching movies, the red wine they served was ice cold, limited music selection. But there was one amazing redeeming feature: serviettes (napkins) with a buttonhole in the corner.
I had seen these a number of years ago on a flight, and over the past few years I've sewn buttonholes into many of our cloth serviettes here at home. Here is why:
Serviettes with buttonholes are SO sensible, I'm surprised restaurants don't provide them.
Our friends greeted us and took photos as we disembarked from the plane.
My older son, David Ricardo Palmer, wondered whether we'd flown Islay airlines and had gone to Islay (home of several of his and my favourite scotch distilleries). Nope. That was Island Air.
Tonight are the last two performances of Marlowe's Edward II. It's been a fun ride with a wacky cast, many of whom I've worked with before. Too bad it has to end.
Here's the latest version of Leicester. Many of the other characters in the show have some colour in their hair, so it seems appropriate that Leicester would, too. Who knows: maybe tonight he'll have ALL blue hair. 8-)
I am presently appearing in Christopher Marlowe's Edward II, at The Arts Project in London, Ontario. I have two fairly minor (length-wise) roles: Mortimer, the Elder, and The Earl of Leicester. Here are photos of me as I appear in each role:
Mortimer, the Elder:
After the first act, Mortimer Sr. goes off to fight the Scots and doesn't appear again.
Near the end of the fourth act and into the fifth act, I appear as the Earl of Leicester:
I know this is a day or two early, but this past weekend when we looked at the weather forecast, my son and granddaughter and I decided we'd better express our greetings then, knowing full well they'd be washed away by the rain and warm weather by Thursday.
I had intended to do more work on my most recent snow-stomp art, depicting champagne being poured from a bottle into a champagne glass. But just as I was finishing the glass, a long-time resident of the condo building where we live (and in front of which I did the work) came out onto his balcony and asked me what I thought I was doing.
I explained with a big smile that I had made a bottle in the snow down the hill (which he could not see from his low balcony) and was now making the glass into which the champagne was being poured.
He informed me in a very officious manner that the condo doesn't own the hillside (where the bottle is); that is public property. He then asked if I had city permission to do that?
Me: I'm just walking in the snow, making a design.
Him: And you know this part up here is owned by the condo. You have to get permission from the condo board to do anything.
Me: I'm just walking in the snow, making a picture for people to enjoy.
Him: But we have a person who is in charge of the landscaping here. You need to get board permission if you are going to change anything.
[etc. etc.]
Me: Oh. Okay.
and I left.
I can't imagine there is any legal bar to my doing the snow-stomp art. And I can't imagine I need anybody's permission to do it in a public park or on the lawn of the condo where I live. Maybe if I had designed some sexually explicit erotica, it would be a different story; and maybe he objected to the depiction of alcohol use on the condo lawn; but I doubt it.
Quite frankly, I think he just objected to anyone having fun.
The glass is on a flat, level surface, but the bottle is on an uneven hill. I thought the label was a nice touch.
As before, Ms. Eclectic took a series of photos as it was in process. The art work looks much better and clearer in the sunlight, when the stomp patterns are more obvious.
I tried to bump up the contrast a bit in these photos that were taken when it was cloudy. The result isn't great, but it shows the process.
Last week I posted a photo advertising the upcoming concerts of Encore...the Concert Band. Unfortunately that photo was super low resolution. Here's a hi-res version (thanks, Jordana!). This one also shows the Roughrider logo over the bell of my green trumpet that I use in the Saskatchewan Roughrider Pep Band.
Last summer a few of us were asked to take part in a series of photo shoots for Encore...the Concert Band (in which I play French horn). Here is a photo from that shoot, enlarged and in poor resolution, unfortunately.
Yes that's me in the upper right, playing my E-flat alto horn. And see that green trumpet? That's mine, too. I play it in the Saskatchewan Roughriders Pep Band.
Encore, the Concert Band is probably the best band I've ever played in. Most of the members are music teachers or have an immense music background or are just plain highly talented. (I play 9th-chair horn out of nine). Our concerts are on Sunday afternoons in the auditorium at Central Secondary School. The next ones will be on:
During our dress rehearsal, Ross Davidson took a steady stream of photos, which are spectacular. Here are just a few that I've cropped into quasi-headshots:
When I retire, I want my employer to dedicate a urinal in the Socionomology Department to my memory (but, like BenS, I'd rather hold a dedication ceremony now, while I am alive, so I can enjoy it, too). It turns out that the concept of "The John Palmer Memorial Urinal" is neither unique nor original.
This morning, former colleague Brian Ferguson wrote in email about a related effort at Dixie State College in Utah.
In a brazen effort to raise funds, Dixie State offered naming rights to individual bathroom stalls in a musical theater company's planned building. ...
Laugh if you want, but Dixie State isn't the first cash-hungry college to seek money for bathrooms.
As first reported by Above the Law, Harvard Law School recently opened the Falik Men's Room. Like tuition, bathrooms seem to cost more in Cambridge. William Falik told Above the Law he received the honor - if you want to call it that - after donating $100,000 to his alma mater to create a public interest fellowship in his father's honor....
Not all would-be bathroom benefactors have such open-minded alma maters. The venture capitalist Brad Feld approached the Massachusetts Institute of Technologyabout 10 years ago offering to endow a bathroom. After a few months of back and forth, he said, MIT officials told him that would be inappropriate. Feld was shocked, having thought the college would use his proposal as a chance to upsell him on his annual giving.
But Feld was vindicated when he paid to name a bathroom after himself in a University of Colorado at Boulder science building. John Bennett, director of the university's Alliance for Technology, Learning & Society, offered Feld a campus restroom for $25,000 after hearing about his rejection at MIT. Feld, who lives in Boulder, agreed immediately. He visits his masterpiece of plumbing every couple of months and occasionally checks in there on foursquare. ...
A University of Pennsylvania donor funded a bathroom renovation in the campus library. His philanthropy had one catch -- that the walls be lined with plaques reading, "The relief you are now experiencing is made possible by a gift from Michael Zinman."
Note that all I was suggesting was a urinal be named after me, not an entire washroom and not even a stall. So I mentioned that in email to some colleagues at The University of Regina when I forwarded Brian's email message to them.
Sure as shootin', a colleague from there obliged and sent this photo:
Back in May of this year, during the purging and down-sizing we were going through as we prepared to move from Clinton to London, Ontario, we came across 2700 slides that I had taken between 1957 and 1979. We hadn't looked at them since then, but we didn't want to throw them away. So I took them to Carman's, a camera shop in nearby Goderich, and asked them to digitize the slides to DVDs for me. It wasn't going to be cheap, and we expected it to take some time, but we were okay with that.
A few weeks ago, we spoke with them about how things were going, and they assured us they were nearly finished.
Then the tornado hit Goderich, destroying nearly every building on the square around the courthouse, including Carman's.
We figured, "Well, that's that. We hadn't looked at the slides for years, and it's too bad we won't be able to see them ever again." I expected to call them, maybe in a few weeks just to find out for sure.
Lo and behold, yesterday we received a call from them, telling us that during one of the periods they were allowed access to the area, they were able to salvage all our slides and the DVDs they had made from them. The shop was pretty much destroyed, and they had set up a table at the local arena to return photos and processing jobs to people who had left things with them.
We feel very lucky that our memories were spared by the tornado, and we're very grateful to Jeff and Kim for getting in there when they could to save them before any damage from the later wind and rain could ruin them. I'm sure their other customers are thankful, too.
"I really enjoy your site, and I'm planning to assign your blog to my students. I love to find "real world" examples to supplement the text, and your blog is terrific for that. Thanks for writing it!" -- J.A.B.
