Walpurgisnachttag

Tonight being the night of St Walpurgia, I guess today would be Walpurgis Night Day. Fittingly, we had our all-staff meeting today- four of my co-workers (and a former co-worker who has gone on to other endeavors) used to perform a hilarious "Three Witches" skit (three were always "on" with two alternate witches as substitutes) during our formerly low-key October fundraiser. They had a hilarious schtick, and they served as the custodians of lost children until the kids' parents could be directed to them for pickup. Funny, it's not typical for the people watching the kids to have a prominently displayed book titled "HOW TO COOK CHILDREN", but that's how those witches used to roll.

Our season begins this weekend, and much of the meeting concerned the post realignment procedures that will be put into place. There was a bit of "rah-rah", a bit of consternation about local press coverage of the "realignment". We had lunch, one of my co-workers made a presentation about a collection of literary works donated to the organization, and another made a presentation about a new app for one of our sites. I found out that a co-worker I really enjoy working with (she's a Yonkers girl, a tiny slip of a thing with red hair and glasses who looks like she could be Larry Kirwan's relative) is leaving the organization after twelve or so years. I facetiously asked her if she were going to tour on the MMA circuit... she's leaving to work for a non-profit that provides support of various kinds to families with terminally ill children. High five to her.

In the president's presentation, he brought up the possibility of creating different apps to appeal to different demographic groups (e.g. games like scavenger hunts to be played while visiting a site). After the meeting, I mentioned to him that we already have an "augmented reality" game being played on our site, albeit without official sanction. Yeah, I brought up the Portal People- hell, the Portal People have visited one of our sites as late as 2:30AM, maybe we can learn from them how to increase our "door".

So, that was my Walpurgisnachttag revel. Lunch was good, and I saw a lot of co-workers I haven't seen in a while. I got to sit next to a colleague I've never had the pleasure of working with before, a very charming sixtyish woman from, appropriately, Bavaria. Witches, Bavarians, what could be better on this particular day?

Don't answer that!

One Conspiracy to in the Darkness Bind Them

Forget the Benghazi and Boston conspiracy theories, they are small potatoes compared to the über-conspiracy, the idea that extraterrestrials (or ultramondane extradimensional beings or time travelers from the future) have established a presence here on Earth that is being covered up by sinister agents of the world's governments. Seventy-odd years of a perfect conspiracy, with no screw-ups to give the game away? In some estimations, there have been eighty-odd years of an extraterrestrial conspiracy and coverup.

Today, though, marked the beginning of a series of non-official hearings to investigate the UFO conspiracy, a series of hearings given some gravy(train)tas (I mean, $20,000 honoraria?) by the presence of former legislators. Hopefully, this illustrious group will penetrate the fog that surrounds the UFO phenomenon. I, myself, want to know why the government is hiding all of the purple-haired moon babes:





Of course, on a serious note, the mere suggestion of such a mind-bogglingly enormous conspiracy is quite enough to distract creative people from investigating the real problems of the world, which are daunting enough. The very idea that there is an alien presence on the planet would ragard multiple conspiracies, multiple layers of deception. It's the great-grandpappy of all lesser conspiracies. Aren't purple-haired moon babes a sufficient distraction?

Now, I look forward to hearing from paleo, who is into the UFO phenomenon, zrm who is a sci-fi/robotics impressario, and mikey, who brings up the topic of physics, specifically how faster-than-light travel is impossible. For me personally, I feel that extraterrestrial life is a certainty... the discovery of planets around other stars is occurring simultaneously with the discovery of terrestrial life thriving under conditions previously thought hostile to life. I don't, however, believe that any spacefarers have visited our planet. While I believe the Drake Equation is an important cognitive exercise, I can't vouch for the soundness of the mathematical formulae. On the other hand, regarding the Gabrielle Drake Equation, the figures certainly add up.

Nympharium Privileges are Suspended!

The redoubtable Smut Clyde reminds me that today is International Act Like a Jack Vance Character Day, therefore, until the comments exhibit a welter of excellences, nympharium privileges will be suspended! Certainly, a nuncupatory lustration will remove the odium of obloquy from my obstreperous audience.

Let all weave a phantasmagoria of prosody, a scintilla of syllables by which we may overawe the mooncalves and churls. Let us eschew the the vapid mannerisms of pale people and concoct a linguistic farrago most piquant!

Captcha, WTF?

Why the hell is it that most captcha systems display the real word in a legible font and render the nonsense word difficult to decipher? Have the 'bots gotten good enough to puzzle out a real word written out in a jacked-up font? Personally, even though the spambots are annoying as hell, I'd rather make it easy for the commentariat, and there's something cathartic about deleting fifty spam comments in one fell swoop.

Wow, what a perfunctory post... earlier in the day, it was too gorgeous outside to spend a lot of time online, and this evening, the radio has been playing such a good selection of music, I pretty much neglected looking up any topics to tackle for a more substantial post. Anyway, one particular song which stuck out was recent release Echo My Love by Omaha, Nebraska based Tilly and the Wall.





Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to go back to slacking off.

Learning from the Obits

Today, I find out that country superstar George Jones passed away. I have to admit, I wasn't familiar with his body of work until I started poking around and discovered that he was the first person to have a hit with The Race is On by Don Rollins. Being a creature of a certain age, I am most familiar with the fantastic version by Welsh roots-rock revivalist Dave Edmunds. It's nice to be able to expand one's musical horizons, but I have to confess a certain feeling of melancholy that it took Mr Jones' death for me to become a fan. Anyway, here's the man himself singing The Race is On:





This marks the second time in a week that I've discovered the body of work by a talented musician by way of the obits. I have to say, I prefer learning about musicians via the radi-adi-o. Rest in peace, Mr Jones, I wish I'd met you earlier.

Jewels in the Crown of the City of Y______

The day being beautiful weatherwise, and I having the day off (plus, me being in need of a "mental hygiene" break after a bad week's worth of current events), I decided to drive to the corner of the city furthest from my home (I live in the extreme Southeast of the City of Y, a couple of blocks north of the Bronx and a couple of blocks west of "money earnin'" Mount Vernon) to visit two of Yonkers' most precious jewels. My first visit was to the Hudson River Museum, on Warburton Avenue, which overlooks the mighty Hudson. The Hudson River Museum combines a modern museum and planetarium with Glenview, a well-conserved mansion built in the 1870s:





The setting of the museum is unparalleled, the views of the Palisades and the river is unexcelled:





As one looks south of the museum, one is reminded of a less idyllic memento of the past- the abandoned Yonkers power plant, which is featured prominently in the wonderful book Hudson Valley Ruins (in the interest of full disclosure, I know one of the authors):





The museum was featuring an exhibit titled The Panoramic River: The Hudson and the Thames. The inspiration for the exhibit was The Rhinebeck Panorama, a panoramic depiction of London found in Dutchess County, New York. While I didn't take any pictures inside the museum (I don't know if flash photography is allowed, and I always err on the side of propriety in museums), I will post images of some of my favorite paintings from the exhibit.

John Henry Dolph's Haying Near New Rochelle is a nice pastoral scene set in an area which is now a small, multicultural city and foodie paradise. The body of water in the background is Long Island Sound, the Hudson being a few miles to the west:





Another favorite of mine was James Bard's painting of the steamboat Francis Skiddy- gotta dig the "painting in a painting" motif, as the housing of the paddlewheel sports an image of the Hudson narrows:





Another favorite of mine, George W. Wright's A Terrible Bore, which is part of the permanent collection, can be glimpsed on page two of the Museum's School Brochure PDF.

For a brief visual overview of the exhibit, here is a promo from a local public television station:





Another highlight of the Hudson River Museum is the Riverama, a permanent exhibit detailing the geology and ecology of the Hudson River region, and centered around a thirty foot long topographical model of the region. There is a video on the return of the peregrin falcon to the region (unrelated to the museum, but of note is the Mid-Hudson Bridge peregrin falcon cam), an exhibit on invasive species, a brief piece on the different sorts of boats plying the river, an interactive "wild sounds" console courtesy of the Cornell Ornithological Lab, and other nice interactive displays. It's a good introduction to the inner workings of the river, hydrologically, geologically, biologically, and sociologically. Pete Seeger would approve.

I followed my visit to the museum with a visit to Lenoir Preserve, which I mentioned in a blog post three years ago. The preserve is just as lovely as ever, and I'll have to return in a few months to see how some of the more ambitious projects underway are proceeding.

For a relatively small city (pop. 195,976 as of 2010), Yonkers does have a nice variety of cultural institutions. To be sure, midtown Manhattan is only a half-hour train ride away, but sometimes it pays to stay closer to home.

Separated at Birth?

So... the elder of the two Boston bombers was a fan of Alex Jones, who is convinced that the Boston bombing was a "false flag" attack orchestrated by the U.S. government for some nefarious, nebulous reason. The bombers' mother, no prize herself, also believes that her sons were innocent victims of a conspiracy. Here she is, giving her lunatic version of events (in the fact of overwhelming evidence that her precious sons were the perps):





Listening to the audio of the interview on the radi-adi-o this afternoon, I was struck by the fact that perhaps I'd heard this woman speak before- the accent, the lunacy, it all came together. Ahhhhhh... Mama Tsarnaev is related to Orly Taitz!