Follow the Yellow Brick Road

Going up?  

Going down?

People Don't Blog Any More

Or at least I don't. But, here I am?

Anyway, here is a moment from 20 years past.  As ancient to me now as the Jurassic.

For the Rest of Your Life Remember...

 Recently, and quite inadvertently, I came into possession of someone's collection of matchbook covers from central Wisconsin.

One caught my attention:  I knew the place;  I remembered it.  It was the Edge Of Night Motel, in Antigo, Wisconsin.

Many years ago, in the mid-1980s, when I was a traveling administrative law judge for the Wisconsin Equal Rights Division, I had some hearings that took me to the Antigo area, where I stayed overnight. 

I don't believe I was actually staying at the Edge Of Night;   I think I was lodged at some more conventional place, a Holiday Inn or such.  If I remember correctly, I ran across the Edge Of Night on my way to or from some north woods supper club for dinner.

I took this photograph at sunset, amused (as I confess I still am) by the cheap visual pun: Edge of Night.  It also reminded me of something I remembered from when I was a kid: "The Edge Of Night," the classic soap opera that aired every weekday on our local CBS affiliate at 3:30 P.M., just about when I got home from school. I never watched much of it, but what I did see impressed me as having a somewhat darker, er, "edge," than most soap operas of that era.

What gets me now is the odd slogan on the back of their matchbook.  Why, exactly, would you or should you remember the Edge Of Night Motel in Antigo, Wisconsin, for the rest of your life? I'm guessing that in most cases where someone ends up remembering a particular motel for the rest of their life, it's not because of good things that happened there.

But, then again, here I am, still remembering the Edge Of Night Motel after 30-some years...

Optimism is...complicated

This sign was located by a railroad bridge across the Wisconsin River, on Water Street, just south of Sauk City, Wisconsin.  It was intended in part to discourage people from using the bridge as a platform to jump or dive into the river.

(That was years ago  - perhaps the early 1990s.  The sign is long gone. Now, there is simply a large gate across the tracks, making it impossible to get out on the bridge.)

I never knew much about the Optimist Club. I always just assumed that they were unremittingly cheerful folks who enjoyed getting together and encouraging one another to believe that everything would turn out alright.  Obviously, that was an uninformed and simplistic view. Something more complex and nuanced must be going on.

Don't drink and post...

Man, this blogging is like work.  Ya haveta find stuff to post and then justify it to the entire fucking universe.  Except for the fact that no one is actually watching.  Okay, that makes it easy. You're not watching, are you?  I am truly a tree falling in the forest here, right?  That was the plan, anyway....

Butterfly

I was cleaning up after having done some tree-trimming, when I happened to notice this butterfly clinging to a leaf laying on the driveway.

(I don't know butterflies, but I did some on-line research, and I think this is an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail)

Even when I got in close and stuck a camera in its face (okay, the thing that serves as a "face" for a butterfly), it didn't even twitch.

I guessed that it had been injured by the big lummox who had been chopping off branches and throwing them to the ground.

Then the cat approached.

It looked as if it might end badly -- but then she walked right by, oblivious. If something doesn't move, it's usually not interesting to her.

I clumsily tried to move the butterfly from the torn leaf it was clinging to, onto a purple coneflower in a nearby flower box.  It resisted being dislodged from its perch.  After more efforts, which undoubtedly seemed like brutality to the bug, it finally made the jump and perched on the flower.


And there it sat, still unmoving, apart from the occasional flap. I had chores yet to do, and went off to do them.

Later, I checked back, and the butterfly was gone. Taken by another creature, or left on its own power? Uncertain, like life.

Somewhere on El Camino Real

"Somewhere on El Camino Real."

Really, now.  That is lazy captioning.  Especially with Google available.

Let's try this:

Tacos Los Gemelos, 1630 El Camino Real, Redwood City, California.

Around 11 o'clock on a Memorial Day morning, 2012.

On a walk, while Bets does a laundry at a busy laundromat down the street.

Vehicular traffic light, pedestrian traffic even lighter.

The tube-guy, looking more like a tamale than a taco, is one of the few things moving.