Animation, Art, and Other Shiny Things
Short of Beaker, the Swedish Chef is my favorite character. Oh, and the Yip-Yip aliens, so he’s my 3rd favorite character… Well, there is the Amazing Mumford too, and… uh… The Swedish Chef is among my favorite muppet characters. Yes, that’s it.
I grew up riding in Corvairs, including a Greenbriar van. That’s all my parents drove for years. By the time I was buying my own cars they were getting hard to find and even harder to find parts for.
1962 Monza
My father did all the work on the cars with my occasional, and somewhat clueless, help. Somewhere there is a picture stashed away of me (stashed away 1970’s deep, if you get my drift…), bent over a pan of gasoline washing parts, surrounded by the rest of a Monza engine. (could’ve been the van’s engine though, that one was rebuilt a few times)
A first gen parked at the mechanic's shop down the block just last week. Nice condition too!
The novelties and quirks were half the enjoyment of the cars; the push-button or paddle gear selector on the dashboard, the big steering wheel, the unbroken chrome flashing all the way around the belt-line of the car, two carburetors, dropping the engine to replace the plugs… (unsure on which one, or more, it was, but the opposing 6-cylinder engine didn’t leave alotta room to work)
Our 65 was burgundy
I really liked the 2nd generation styling, we only had one of those, a ’65 (I think it was a Corsa), and I thought it kind of hearkened to the sharp-ended Corvette Stingrays but didn’t get you pulled over all the time. I got to drive that one and while it wasn’t the quickest whip in the neighborhood, it was pretty nimble.
On top of it all this thing had 4 single-barrel carbs! How cool is that?! I was familiar with the dual-carbs, but this was a whole new level. My Dad was already a master at balancing two carbs without the aid of tubes or wires and 2 more didn’t faze him.
The real workhorse over the years, though, was the Greenbriar panel van. No seats in the back, an astro-turfed plywood pallet covered the middle pit between the rear-mounted engine and the front axle some of the time.
Ours was a panel van so no side windows.
Bare-walled metal with the engine humped over the rear axle, it was loud in the back of that thing. Preferable, however, to being in the front seat. I never had any desire to drive it, in fact, it kind of scared me; you either bounced around in a deafening metal box dodging a sliding tool box in back, or placed your feet at about the spot a grill would be on any self-respecting car with a nose on it. The only advantage to driving it would’ve been access to the brake pedal. With all due respect to Sacred Bull’s driving, back then I instinctively stomped around trying to find one on the passenger’s side alot.
That red and white Greenbriar rattled and gear-ground it’s way down the road – dependably – for many years. My Dad probably knew every bolt on that thing, engine innerds included, and knew how to keep it’s heart blatting.
The last Corvair was made in 1969 and, as you can imagine, they become rarer as time speeds on. I hadn’t seen one on the hoof for a year or more when Aunt Bee brought home some pictures of a nice looking gen 1 parked at the repair shop next door. Prices online surpass the eldo’s worth quickly with well maintained cars selling in 5-figures.
But I can dream. And in the meantime, here’s a 1960 advert The Corvair in Action (with h/t to Patrick):
Quality animation and electronica!
Caffeine by Brandt Brauer Frick
An interesting post with possible Library 2.0 applications: The Cure For Information Overload.
Fred McFeely Rogers was a neighbor and friend of mine for all of my life. I never had the honor of meeting the man, and he had no idea who I was, but that didn’t matter; he cared about me and thought I was special. That was something I knew.
A week ago, March 20th, Mr Rogers (and all of us) would have celebrated his 83rd birthday. He died back in 2003, but the care, concern, and deep love he had for all of us remains.
As a reminder here are just a few glimpses back at this quiet and remarkable man.
ONCE UPON A TIME, a tong time ago, a man took off his jacket and put on a sweater. Then he took off his shoes and put on a pair of sneakers. His name was Fred Rogers. He was starting a television program, aimed at children, called Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. He had been on television before, but only as the voices and movements of puppets, on a program called The Children’s Corner. Now he was stepping in front of the camera as Mister Rogers, and he wanted to do things right, and whatever he did right, he wanted to repeat. And so, once upon a time, Fred Rogers took off his jacket and put on a sweater his mother had made him, a cardigan with a zipper. Then he took off his shoes and put on a pair of navy-blue canvas boating sneakers. He did the same thing the next day, and then the next… until he had done the same things, those things, 865 times, at the beginning of 865 television programs, over a span of thirty-one years.
Tom Junod via Can You Say… “Hero”? (a wonderful read, please stop in and read the entire post)
I grew up in a household full of animals. Sure, there was an abundance of dogs and cats – even a canary and a couple of turtles (of the red-eared variety) – but most of what padded, scrabbled, and flew through the house were not your standard issue pets.
Me and a Lion cub sitting on the stairs at the newly built Children's area of the Woodland Park Zoo. Published in the WPZ newsletter "Zoonews" ca 1967
If you go by sheer numbers, then it would be a close call between mice and squirrels. If you measure by unusualness, then the Red Fox squirrel or carnivorous beetles would fall toward the top of the list. If you include, uh, not live animals, then the 8-foot python (in the freezer) and Giant Red Kangaroo (autopsied in the garage) would take honors.
My mother was called ‘The Animal Lady’ by folks in the neighborhood. Both parents were docents (plus) at the Woodland Park Zoo for years and I got to know many of the Zoo’s denizens as well as other local “exotic” animals. I counted a cougar by the name of Loki among my friends. (He stayed with a lady who also had Servils and Civit cats.) I walked along with Bamboo the elephant when she took a walk around the Zoo. (she was ‘a toddler’ at the time and barely stood 6-foot at the shoulder.)
My parents and little sister with a Lion cub behind the scenes at WPZ
My original 2 mice (Antony and Cleopatra, btw) spawned a colony of mice of a couple hundred at any one time. (we supplied WPZ with treats for the Owls and Snakes when the colony would get too large) Through selective breeding we got albino mice with dark eyes, and dark mice with pink eyes. My mother was even able to breed a strain that got a specific skin cancer every other generation and bred true. Those went to Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Now that was something around the homestead. This was back in the late 60’s and early 70’s and this showed a genetic link to a form of cancer. It wasn’t until 1980 that I finally read a paper in Scientific American about the Oncogene – something my mother had proven 10 years before, working in a little shed in the back of the garage.
I was a lucky kid.
One of the few photos of the PNW Tree Octopus
For all the Raccoons and Opossums and Squirrels that shared our domicile through the years, there were a few fascinating Northwest denizens that didn’t pass though those portals. One was the local Tree Octopus.
The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus lives in the rain forests of Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. Rarely leaving it’s coniferous cozy, the PNW Tree Octopus makes the arduous journey to the Hood canal only to mate, and it’s likely because of this formidable expedition (and it’s shyness) that we never took in one of the arboreal cephalopods.
Building around the greater Seattle area continues to boom and the resulting growth has effectively cut off many of the migration paths of the Octopus between the Olympic National Forest and the waters of the Hood Canal. This, coupled with predation by Cats, Eagles, and Sasquatch, has resulted in a greatly reduced breeding population and is threatening it’s extinction.
Photo detail enhanced using advanced ZPi cephalopod-image processing technology.
There is always speculation about ‘pockets’ of PNW Tree Octopi living in or around the Seattle area proper, in fact there has been sightings reported at our neighborhood Carkeek Park. The hypothesis is that the Octopuses hitch ‘rides’ on harvested Xmas trees and, being highly intelligent, are reputed to have hidden deep within the tree’s boughs until given the chance to escape, sometimes stealing the harvester’s vehicle to hasten their departure.
Despite their seriously depleted numbers, there are still very few ways to show your support and help alleviate the plight of these cedar-sitting cephalopods. Fortunately, there is a rather direct manner in which you can help. As explained at the ZPi blog:
If you must give money to ease your conscience, donations to help the Tree Octopus should be given directly to the Tree Octopuses. Here is how to donate: Travel to the Olympic Peninsula (if you are a minor, ask your parents first). Stand in the Tree Octopuses’ forest near a tree and hold out a dollar bill. If you stand still enough, eventually a Tree Octopus will come by on a branch, reach out, and take the bill with her suckers. She will continue to return for more bills as long as you hold them out, so bring lots of singles. She will use them to line her den in the trees, as the bills will soak up rain water and keep her skin moist. Given the current value of the dollar, this is the most cost effective way to help.
Please note: don’t give them coins. While they are attracted to shiny objects and will gladly take coins, the toxic metals in coins (especially copper) can easily absorb into their skin and poison them. Paper money, checks, stock certificates, coupons, etc. are preferable and make better nesting material.
So please, do what you can for this endangered animal and, while you’re here, buy expensive things from our Washington state gift shops. In the words of Emmett Watson; Keep Washington Green – Spend Money then Go Home…
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The Ruffled Crow 