In The Blink Of An Eye

In yesterday's post, I had a very cooperative Great Blue Heron only feet away. What a neat opportunity, huh? Well, after I looked through the photos again, something caught my eye.  In fact, it was his eye.  At least, a part of it, anyway......

Yes, the picture is not crisp, but who cares.  If you look closely, he (okay, I'm not sure he's a he, but I'm gonna go with it...) has a thin, transparent thingy over his eye.  It looks like an eyelid, but it is clear and working the wrong way, so it can't be an eyelid, right?

Wrong.

The nictitating membrane is basically a third eyelid found in many critters, including lots of birds, fish, reptiles, and some mammals.   While I can't tell you if it was opening or closing, you can see from the photo that it works "across" the eye instead of "up and down".  Basically, it is either used for extra protection or to keep the eye lubricated. (In the case of this heron, thrusting of the head into the water to nail a tadpole, frog or fish, could be dangerous.  One slight jab or scrape with a stick or cattail stalk and he could have a problem.)  One study even suggests that the membrane is tightened on a woodpecker's eyes milliseconds before it slams its head into a tree;  it helps to hold the eyeballs in their sockets!  Newton's First Law (an object in motion....) can be a drag sometimes...

You might be thinking "Wow, I wish I had one!  When I slammed my forehead into my desk  in frustration after I heard Glenn Beck last night, I'd swear my eyes almost flew out of my head!"  Well, some biologists think we used to have this membrane, too.  But, like our appendix, wisdom teeth, Darwin's Tubercle,  and common sense,  we basically don't use it anymore.  In the case of the membrane, it has all but disappeared.  

If you want to see what is left of your nictitating membrane, find a mirror.  Stuffed in the corner of your eye, you'll find a small fold of basically transparent skin.  That is the pilca semilunaris.  Yup, that is your ancient eyeball protecting eyelid.  Cool stuff.   Make sure you fingers are dirty and and play with it.  Don't touch it.  You don't need to be sticking things in your eye!  However,  repeatedly saying "pilca semilunaris" goes over well at parties. Chicks dig it.

By the way, the shutter speed on the exposure was 1/1250 of a second.  For the average person (read that as a non-drunk individual), the average blink is about 3/10s of a second.  So, the next time you are banging away with your camera, keep in mind that your camera's "eyelid" is moving much faster than your real eyelid.  

A very fortunate press of the shutter button, and low-and-behold, an eye-opening exposure.  Or was it an eye-closing exposure...?

What Did He Say?

I took a few minutes this morning and doodled around at Lake Erie Metropark.  After walking around the trails for a mile or so and finding next to nothing, I wandered over to one of the marsh overlooks. 

As I approached the overlook, just below, with its attention everywhere but on me, stood a Great Blue Heron.   Absolutely certain it had seen me and would move out, I just kept walkin'.  

It kept huntin'. 

Literally feet from it, I was able to put the sun over my left shoulder and take shot after shot after it stood there with its face looking into the water.  Fish?  Frogs?  Who knows, but something had its attention.  It certainly wasn't worried about me! I suspect it has to do with the fact that this is a young bird.  That peculiar scaling on the neck a the give-away. 

After maybe 30 seconds, it decided to press on the "greener pastures", so to speak, but not before it opened its mouth.  I don't speak "heron" but I have to think that there were a few unpleasant words in the mix.....

The Loss Of A Dear Friend

It is tonight, with deep sadness, that announce the loss of a dear friend.  It was all my fault and I will never forgive myself.........

Friday night, I was hosting a grill night with friends.  Grilled corn with cilantro pesto is always a good recipe on a beautiful summer night. Despite warnings that one new-comer likes "plain" food, I went with another stand-by in my grilling arsenal - flaming brandy burgers.

A few pounds of ground chuck, some diced red onions, salt, pepper, and a solid dose of allspice were, with love and care, massaged into 6 patties.  After carefully attending to them on the grill, it was time for the final ingredient - brandy.

Yes, a solid splash of this distilled wine product aged in oak barrels was added to each burger in turn. At such high grill temperatures, the brandy, much to the delight of all Boy Scouts everywhere,  burst into a stunning column of flame, first yellow, then blue.  As the alcohol burned off, the burger was left with a wonderful coating of caramelized sugars.  

With all the corn grilled to perfection and the burgers even closer, if that's possible, it was time to move everything to the serving plate.  The burgers, placed gently on  a kaiser bun, would for a moment, place one a step closer to pure ecstasy. Everything was going perfect.......

.....until it happened.

Somehow, some way, the burger slipped off the spatula and slid to its death.   Striking the concrete, small chunks of caramelized gorgeousness exploded in all directions with  the only audible sounds being the gasps off all those who witnessed it (okay, four of us).

You might be thinking "Five Second Rule!  Five Second Rule!"

Ummmm, no.

As seen on Mythbusters, the type of food that is dropped is key, as is the surface it is dropped on.  A hard candy or chip on a hard floor is hardly a big deal. A soft, wet, juicy, freshly brandied burger does not get a micro-second after it shlops onto concrete.  No sir.   In fact, I believe it would be disrespectful to the burger spirit to do so.  Add brandy?  Yes, that's fine.   In fact, the spirit may be honored.  Dried grass clippings and dirt? I think not.  

While we knew each for only minutes, in felt like a lifetime................

A Boch Becomes The Box - #805

According to Greek legend, a charming young woman was given a box.  Pandora, created by Hephastus as ordered by Zeus, was told not to open the box.  Ever.  Sure enough, she did.  All the evils of the world, including Glenn Beck, escaped.  As she slammed the box lid shut, she caught the last entity as it tried to escape - hope.

Well, in my own sort of way, I opened Pandora's Box and unleashed evils into my world.  Hope, however, was not lost. 

Pandora's Bock from the Breckenridge Brewery, one of the most clever beer titles ever in my opinion, was cracked open about a week ago.    My 805th beer was simply stunning from start to finish.  The sweetness on the nose and that delightful mahagony color was sooooo inviting.  Balance?  Perfect.  On the tongue, the caramel sweetness and subtle maltiness were dead on.  The finish is exactly what you want it to be - exciting, refreshing, and rewarding.  A "5" out of "5" -hands down.

When I cracked open that bottle, unbeknownst to me, I opened evil.

A short while later, I noticed my home computer was starting to act funny.  I have it set to go dormant after about 20 minutes.  When I go to bed, it may be on, but when I wake up, it's sleeping.  At least, it should  be.

One morning, it was still on.  Hmmmm...  Oh well, it was just this once.....  It will be fine the following cycle.

Nope.  Something was certanily up and it wasn't a head of beer.

That night, I was working on some emails. I was typing away and my "active window" suddenly became inactive. "Pop!", there it went. I did nothing.  Before too long, it was happening with all windows - emails, web browser, everything. 

While I was far from panic mode, I was certainly in "concerned mode."  Virus?  Bot?  Spyware?  Anything goes at this point. 

So began an odyssey of downloads, reboots, scans, and swearing that lasted easily hours over days.  A search of various discussion forums showed that I was not alone.  One fellow suggested that I enter the "Task Manager" and look for programs running in the background that should not be there.  I was prepared to start cross-referencing the list with known trouble makers and start "ending" them when fate stepped in. 

Zeus?  No.  His smokin' hot daughter, Athena?  No.

Neal.

"Dude...you better not do that..."

While not godlike in intelligence, he is pretty god-damned smart (one of the smartest in our high school graduating class, in fact).  I have known him since the Taft Administration, so we go waaaay back.  He was home visiting his parents and he knows a thing or two about computers. 

"You have got to be careful doing that.  If you cut the wrong program, you will have some serious troubles..."  were his basic words.  "Do a system restore."

It turns out the sometimes not-so-smart guys at Microsoft developed a program called System Restore (after all, if they were completely smart, I would not be having trouble!)  Every day, it takes a snapshot of the computer's guts.  If trouble starts, you can go back and set the computer to a previous setting.  If, for example, you downloaded updates and then trouble started, you can go back in time to a point before the updates were installed.  If the trouble is no longer there, you can work on figuring out which update caused the problem. 

Sure enough, the restore point, about the time I cracked opened my first Pandora's Boch, was incident free.  Hibernation was ..., well, hibernating and active windows stayed active. 

Interestingly enough, as I re-installed my drivers and updates one at a time in an attempt to confirm what caused the problem, the problem did not come back.  I have no explanation.  That said, I do not care. The computer is working, swearing has ceased,  and my blood pressure is back to normal. 

Keeping with the ancient Greek tradition, it is my intention to have a stone temple complete for Neal's return around Christmas.  The sacrifice of a goat is certainly in order!

I strongly recommend Pandora's Boch, but don't open it around delicate electronics. 

Incredible Find

The weather has been rainy and cold at nights.  Many prisoners have died from exposure, as not more than half of us have any shelter but a blanket propped upon sticks. . . . Our rations have grown smaller in bulk too, and we have the same hunger as of old.

So wrote Private Robert Knox Sneden.  A Union soldier, he survived the confinement and  went on to add his artistic talents and journals to that horrible chapter in our history - the Civil War.  He was imprisoned at  Andersonville and wrote this passage in his diary on Nov. 1, 1864.

Andersonville, also known as Camp Sumpter, was a complete hole.   The  most infamous and one of the largest prisoner of war camps in the Confederacy during the Civil War, it was used for 14 months.  During that time, 45,000 Union soldiers were confined there. Sad to say, almost 13,000 never left (including a distant uncle of mine - Harry Stemple). Only 26 acres in size, thousands of men were stuffed in there at any one time.  They died from disease and malnutrition brought on from over-crowding, poor sanitation, and exposure.   Some died because they chose to cross the "line of death" near the stockade wall and get shot by the guards.  Apparently, over 40% of Union Prisoner of War casualties occurred here.    August of 1864 was said to be the most hellish time.  One can only imagine the filth, the stench, and the oppressive heat of the Deep South's summer.  (The picture below is Andersonville.)

I should probably tell you that the Private's quote was not from his time at Andersonville. 

Read on......

With such massive overcrowding, more camps were built.   (We'll just have to forget that the Rebels had no way to manage camps of any size; resources late in the war were minimal.)  One was called Camp Lawton .  Within a matter of months,  General  William Tecumseh Sherman,  plowing his way through the guts of the Confederacy, came across the freshly abandoned camp.  Furious with what they found, including the board on a fresh pile of dirt marked "650 buried here", they torched it and the "town" of Millen just up the road.  The quote at the beginning of this post and the image below are from  Sneden's collection.

As the decades ticked by and memories faded, the exact location of the camp was lost.  Everybody was pretty sure that it was in or near Magnolia Springs State Park (south of Augusta, Georgia), but nobody knew exactly where.  Yeah, there were some earthworks that remained in the area but that did not seem to help much.  The state of Georgia even went to the extent of installing interpretive markers, but they really had no clue where the camp was, as odd as that sounds.   After all, it was only used for a few weeks, so most scholars never really cared to find it.

Well, last week, an announcement was made by Kevin Chapman, a graduate student from Georgia Southern University. 

Yeah, he found it.  

Sure, the logs that made up the stockade walls were have long since rotted, but archaeologists can easily figure out where they stood. After determining the location of the stockade, imagine their surprise when their test trenches brought up coins, pipes (with toothmarks),  and a tourniquet buckle (a simple gizmo used to tighten the straps during an amputation).   

The site is intact.  For a century and a half, it sat there and nobody looted the place. It is now being called one of the most significant Civil War discoveries in decades.  Now, qualified archaeologists, instead of treasure hunters and hacks, can use to state of the art technology and techniques to uncover stories from one of the most incredible chapters in American history.

This story is unfolding and it's gonna be cool.  You can read about it here on the website set up by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service.  It seems pretty complete. Check it regularly.

I will.