Tag Archives: Europe

Shadow Racers

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Yeah, a lot of you have been asking ” Hey! What about the first heavier than air, air race that was held on May 23, 1909 – the Prix de Lagatinerie, at the Port-Aviation airport south of Paris, France? And how does that tie in with this new sport we’re hearing about called Shadow Racing?” In fact so many cards and letters have been coming in that we had to assign a special intern just to steam the stamps off the envelopes so we could use them again. We heard you and have been working feverishly to gather the information to put together this article. There’s a whole crock pot of information about this subject and we intend to dredge up every sordid, exciting, non-essential, nearly factual bit we can find.

Air racing as a sport has often included airplanes, some of them made here at home which would be America, and some made other places like Europe which at one time included Great Britain and France and Germany, all countries that fit inside Europe the continent and have had some success with inventing various stuff and then bragging about it constantly. One of these things was Airplanes and their own proprietary version of air racing.

The heyday of this sport was in the 1930’s and 40’s and even later in which the races were set at different venues and various contestants got airplanes and raced them. Many spectators attended these races and got sore necks from looking up all the time. Some even got all over dizzy of a second and had to lay down for a while. The planes themselves were interesting in that they all were heavier than air and took some skill to fly them. Every one who had a plane was extremely proud of their aircraft, even more so if it didn’t fall out of the sky and crash and these owners would go on and on about the safety of this new mode of transportation called aviation until you were just sick of it and began avoiding them whenever possible. In the early 20’s you had planes with names like the Albatross L 69 from Germany, the de Havilland DH.71 Tiger Moth from England. Even earlier you had the Deprussian 1912 Racing Monoplane from France. Those early planes were special in that they were constructed of things like, wood, wire, paper, canvas and glue and other non-essential materials that were cheap and readily available.

 Later in the 40’s you had the Caproni Bergamaschi PL.3 from Italy, and the Condor Shoestring from the U.S. There was even one from The USSR called the Yakolev Yak – 11. However there is no record of it ever winning a race or even flying for that matter which may have something to do with its namesake, as the only time Yaks fly is when they’re tumbling through space after falling off one of the high mountain cliffs in which they’re found. But you know the Russians they got to get their two cents in there. Even if it is to brag about their dumb named plane which supposedly crashed into a tree upon take off and never flew again. It wasn’t even a very tall tree.

All of  this sky racing stuff was not lost on our feathered friends, the birds, who have been flying for years and have gotten highly skilled at it. Birds are great mimickers and saw the fun that people were having racing their planes around and sometimes getting big bucks for doing so and thought “Wait a minute! I’m a bird! I can do that!” and soon were putting on their own airshows and races and pulling in big crowds.

One of the big events they created was the sport of Shadow Racing. This is when a single bird or sometimes many of them, builds up a head of steam way up in the air and comes screaming in, diving as low as they can over the ground, trying to out race their shadows. In the image above you can see this streamlined racing gull, a tried and true model that hasn’t changed its shape for many years, slowly but easily out distancing its shadow. Cool, right? This sport is growing in popularity and gaining big crowds at flyways like Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge and Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge both important areas for bird flying. We mustn’t forget Padre Island and those long sandy beaches perfect for this event. Even the lumbering old Pelicans, the C-130’s  of the bird world compete there. There is even some talk of a nationally televised race sponsored by Red Bull and Budweiser, but as yet no dates have been set.

We for one, look forward to this seasons many Shadow Racing events and will be on hand to capture the excitement of it with our cameras. In fact we have been busy designing our own Shadow Racing bird and believe we can do well in the shorter Shadow Racing Sprints. Wish us luck. Hope to see you there.

The Buffalo Whistle

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Many of you long time readers remember that *The Institute has its own fully domesticated herd of North American Buffalo. You can see them in the picture above coming in from The Institutes high country where they summer. These are Buffalo not bison which so many of those so-called naturalists keep insisting is their correct name. Those nattering nabobs of negativity constantly repeat this misnomer. They have even gotten it into some scientific writing, by having made up a scientific name for the animal. It is “Bison, bison” as if repeating it over and over makes it so. Look it up, they have even assigned a bunch of Italian words to its Scientific Classification. Like bringing Europe into this is going to make them right.

Remember when you were young and you went to the movies. What did every single Indian and a lot of white guys call these animals? That’s right Buffalo. Sometimes Tontonka but that a story for another time. Why would they lie? All through our history, our ancestors, who couldn’t all be lying, have used buffalo in song and story. “Buffalo gals, won’t you come out tonight, come out tonight, etc.” It’s buffalo, they’re called buffalo just deal with it. Wild Bill Hickok didn’t hunt bison. He was a buffalo hunter. He’d a probably shot you for calling him a bison hunter. They were touchy about things like that.

But we digress. This is just a small part of our bison Buffalo herd. We decided to bring them down from their high country pastures because of the storm brewing back there on the mountain behind them. We bring them in so they don’t get wet. They become irritable when they’re wet and even though we have them trained they become peckish and out of sorts when damp.

It also gives us a chance to trim their hooves, comb them out and remove as much tartar from their teeth as possible. That all works best when you have dry buffalo to work with. Each of the mature buffalo has its own monogrammed blanket which we put on them to ward off the chill. Woe betide the intern who places the wrong blanket on the wrong buffalo. You only do that once. That’s when we bring up the interns assistant to make the change from the wrong to the right buffalo. Sometimes we have to bring up several assistants in a row to get the job done. Cardinal Rule: Watch Which Blanket You Put On Each Buffalo.

We had a moving post card from one of our young readers concerning Buffalo. Here it is.

Dear Mr. The Director, Isn’t it hard to handle Buffalo when they’re alone? How do you do it with a whole big herd? Do they bite, or kick? I’ve seen stories about buffalo on TV and they make a lot of messes all the time. Who cleans that up? I think buffalo are neat and I would like to have one. Do you ever sell them? If so I know where Mommy’s credit cards are and I could send you the numbers. Would that be all right? Sincerely, Towanda Clarice Malachowski, from Green bay, Wis. P.S. If you send one don’t send it on the weekend, that’s when my dad’s home. I don’t think he likes buffalos. Love, Towanda.

Well Towanda, thank you for writing and liking buffalo as much as we do. We can answer your questions. It is hard to handle buffalo when they’re alone and it’s really hard when there’s a bunch of them, which we call a herd. They will bite and kick but only when you do something the buffalo doesn’t like, such as tightening the blankets straps to tight. If you get one, don’t do that. It makes them grumpy. Yes Towanda they do make messes but it depends on how much you feed them. If you get one we will send along a pamphlet to explain their care and feeding. As for who cleans all that up we have a new intern here that does that. Her name is Hane Fonda and you can write to her if you want. Just send your letters to Hanie the Scooper % of The Institute.

The big question you didn’t ask, Towanda, was how do we get them to come when we call them and behave when they get here. That’s our big secret about handling buffalo. And it involves a special invention that we created right here at The Institute. Our staff at our “Inventions Made To Order While You Wait department” made it just for handling buffalo. It’s ours and no one else can have it. It’s called the “Buffalo Whistle”. When we blow it our specially trained buffalo come running to be first in line to get out of the weather. And also to do other things like tricks and synchronized dancing. We have a great big special one that we mount on a half-track ( A great big truck thing that hauls guys to places where they can shoot other guys. Ask your Mommy about War,) and when we blow that one, you can hear it in Kansas, it’s really, really loud. If there are any buffalo out there they’ll hear it and come running for sure. If you get your very own buffalo, and you said you know where mommy’s credit cards were, we’ll send you your very own buffalo whistle with your name on it. It has a hole in the top for a chain so you can wear it around your neck. None of the other kids have one of those we’ll bet. You ‘ll be the most special kid in school. Just think of show and tell day when you get to show off your new pet. We’ll send you a phone number where one of our special friends in Mumbai will help you with mommy’s credit card numbers. Then just sit back and wait. Before you can say “Holy Mackerel! That’s a big buffalo” there’ll be one at your door. Thank you for writing Towanda and you might ask some of the other kids if they like buffalos too.

We here at The Institute love to receive mail from young or old so keep those cards and letters coming in. Email too. We like Emails. We’d like to stay and chat longer but we have to get down to supervise the tartar removal process. That’s a complex process that needs a lot of supervision. It takes several interns to hold the buffalo’s head while we drill and fill as our resident dentist likes to say. Stay tuned.

* Note: For those of you unfamiliar with The Institute and what it does, please see the page labeled The Institute on the Menu Bar above. That should explain everything. You shouldn’t have one single question remaining regarding The Institute after reading it. None. For those of you favored few who already know about the Institute, Nevermind. Return to your daily activities. Thank you for your support.

A Portrait Of A Man In Stone

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There have been many, many requests, well at least five, asking for more information about The Director. Who is this shadowy figure that controls the enormous empire that is The Institute? What does he look like? Is he nice? Does he talk or walk funny? Is he an American? Does he support the Women’s movement and their right to bear arms and/or children? Sometimes at the same time? Is he incredibly wealthy and overly generous? Does he like women who look like Christina Hendricks? Is he “LikesEmHot&Slow” on page number 300 of ‘Dating For Seniors Who Can Still Walk’ website ? Is he really as handsome, suave and debonair as they say? And of course the most commonly asked question, When can we see his picture?

Well all we can tell you is that The Director does not grant interviews. He is a very private person preferring to do his work behind the scenes, as it were, and so we cannot answer those questions. He also does not send out glossy, autographed 8×10 photos of himself suitable for framing, for 25.00 each plus postage and handling.

He did consent however to provide one image that he had done while he was tooling around Europe, or what is now known as the EU, by the famed sculptor Phenofantabulo, a stuttering, semi-literate Italian who was as crazy as an outhouse rat but a savant when it came to capturing the likeness of someone in stone. This image became so popular in Venice, a suburb of Italy, that you can still find it gracing the bottom of the many abutments that hold up Venice’s bridges. There you can see his eternal gaze fixed steadily on the waters of the canals as they slosh back and forth sluggishly before emptying into the Bay of Fundy or whatever they call that bay by Venice. The Director has a fondness for this image as he often will be found staring vacantly into any moving stream of water nearby, and as he is being guided back to The Institute will say “Did you see that?”  Sometimes he will say it more than once. It’s best just to agree with him and say “Yes, yes we did.”

For those of you clamoring to see what The Director looks like the portrait above will have to suffice. Although we did mange to squirrel away a few hundred of his regular pictures we got off his driver’s license when he was down staring at the river. So the 25.00 dollar offer still stands. Let us know if you want one.

Somethin’ Bad Must a Happened

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In our travels around the country we’ve noticed a disturbing trend regarding old buildings. They tend to fall down. It doesn’t seem to matter if it’s one of those wooden, Northern Territorial designs found in remote Montana and Wyoming, or one of the adobe styles found in the desert areas of the Southwest, if you see an old building it is likely falling down. Due to the universality of this phenomenon we were sure Somethin’ bad must a happened.

We were puzzled by this and began comparing it to old buildings in Europe and other oddly foreign places where they’ve had old buildings for years and they don’t fall down. OK Some in upper England fall down and just lay around in a pile of rocks, but we chalked that up to the fact that they have VAT on everything over there.

Why then do ours fall down. We’re a lot smarter than they are. We’re better looking. We don’t have to suck up to royalty and aristocrats and other door knobs that hang out over there. What’s happening then. We build other good stuff that doesn’t fall down. Why are we archaeologically challenged?

We posed that question to a couple of archeologists we found scratching in the dirt along side the road. “Oh My Gosh!” they answered, “Really? Like falling down flat and stuff?” when we asked our question about deteriorating buildings. “Yes,” We said, “completely coming apart, totaled, like that motel room in Daytona you guys had over Spring break. Just a pile now.” They were speechless. We thought it was because they were overwhelmed by the social implications of our infrastructures disintegrating but it turned out they were struck dumb because they couldn’t figure out how we knew about the motel room in Daytona. Upon further questioning it turned out that they weren’t even archaeologists like we thought at all, but two college students collecting beer cans and trash along the road as part of a work release program. We thought those sticks with the nail in the end were an archaeologist’s tool but it was just standard State-issue roadside cleanup implements.

We then went straight to the horse’s mouth, or the archaeologists mouth in this case, and found real archaeologists at the University of Montana. We were not going to be fooled again by people that just looked like archaeologists but didn’t know archeology from a hole in the ground. These guys wore glasses, talked good, and had name tags that said Archeologist on them so we knew we had the real thing.

They were surprised and somewhat startled by our questions and it wasn’t until we began supplying them with photographic proof that they would venture an opinion. The older one, who we thought looked smarter and a lot like an archeologist that would be in the movies remarked that he could make some definite comments regarding the image above, and why there appeared to be some deterioration going on.

“Number one” he said in a deep resonant voice and a far away look in his eye, “was that whoever built this structure made one major mistake. They built it out of dirt, and to my trained eye, they used cheap dirt. Probably procured at rock-bottom prices at some low-end dirt retailer. Not to mention names, but perhaps someone like Dirt Depot. You can tell that by the fact”, he went on learnedly, removing his glasses for emphasis, “that the dirt didn’t cling together as it should have, there’s no clingy-ness or ‘adhesion’ to use an archeology word, and as a result it fell down. We don’t use dirt much these days in building for that simple reason. That and it is nearly impossible to find good quality building dirt anymore at a price someone who is willing to live in a dirt house will pay.”

“Number two, and this is very apparent if you look closely at the picture. Whoever the contractor was neglected to put a roof on the structure. This is of paramount importance when building any kind of building someone would live in or spend any time in. A roof keeps the weather from falling into the building from the top due to gravity. It stops it and sends it to the outer edges of the roof, which again to use an archeology word, is where the ‘eaves’ are located, and the weather, presumably moisture, drips off the top of the building onto the ground making a mess around the outside of the structure, but it does keep it off of the occupants inside and prevents it from soaking and saturating the walls, which has been proven by numerous tests will often make them collapse due to internal muddiness and loss of structural intent. It is my belief that is what happened here. No roof, muddiness ensued, building fell down. Pretty clear-cut to us trained in this kind of stuff.”

We had several more “Yeah, But…” questions but these were busy guys and soon they were off to do archeologist things in some god-forsaken wind-swept desolation that these guys like to hang out in. We yelled our thanks as they drove off in their jeep and one cheerfully waved a pick axe at us in farewell. We weren’t entirely convinced of our experts opinion but as we had no more time to spend on this problem and we were hungry we decided to do lunch. We passed by several restaurants built with this dirt type of construction for one that was made out of cinder blocks. We figured this was much less likely to fall down around our tacos than the dirt ones. If you are in the market for Western real estate we highly recommend a cinder block building or even a well made double-wide with tie-downs. You’ll be a lot happier a few years down the road.

A Murmuration

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Lately there has been an explosion of news on the major networks, NBC and CNN to name just two, about murmurations. Well two rather small announcements actually, one very visible and the other I sort of had to hunt around for. But when was the last time you heard anything about murmurations at all. Been a donkey’s age hasn’t it. One murmuration was in Israel and the other was in England, where they go absolutely nuts about anything birds do.

So what is a murmuration you might ask, well according to Wiktionary it is as follows,

murmuration (plural murmurations)

  1. An act or instance of murmuring. (I know, that really helps doesn’t it.)
  2. A flock of Starlings.

What it appears to be in real life, is a huge flock of birds, usually starlings but can be other kinds too. This flock photographed at Bosque del Apache wildlife refuge, is made up of mostly red-winged blackbirds. They gather together in extra-humongous numbers that apparently makes them kind of nuts or something, as they will all take off and fly around aimlessly but enthusiastically, until one of them decides to land, then they all land at once and make noise. This is repeated endlessly.

There are supposedly many scientific studies that explains why they do this. Money has been spent and mans hours accrued by these scientists watching these birds to figure this stuff out. They say that they have figured out why there is this nutso behavior and have published their findings in some awfully prestigious publications. I looked at one and all I can say is it made my brain hurt, your mileage may vary. If you really have to know what they said, Google murmuration – expensive scientific studies, and it’ll tell you more than you ever wanted to know.

Of course our scientific community here at *The Institute has already figured this all out and we didn’t bill the government doodley-squat in American dollars. We sent a team out to look at them, those red-winged blackbirds, take some pictures, kind a talk amongst themselves for a while, go to lunch, take a short nap after lunch, come back out, check them out one more time and come home. Total cost about 12 bucks for hamburgers at McDonald’s, which we fronted out of our own pockets thank you very much.

 Our conclusions were a little different from the scientific types and as we chose to use American, as spoken by everybody on TV as our language, this makes our report a little simpler to understand. Here it is in a nutshell.

These birds are not your average run of the mill dummies. Yeah some of them may look goofy but they’re not. They learn by watching and when they see one of their neighbors grab a seed out of the dirt or find a worm or something they pay attention. They are also greedy by nature and want that worm or seed for themselves so they go right over there and try to take it away from that guy. All of these birds in one place at once, squabbling over a bug causes a commotion, and some of the other birds and it only takes one, freak, jump up into the air and that tears it. Now they all jump into the air and being paranoid figure that the other guy knows where the better food is and they are not going to let him out of their sight for a second.

Hence the flying around in perfect unison. They pack so tightly together that nobody in the middle can even see anything so the guy on the bottom of that murmuration gets a chance to see something, like a juicy bug down there in the weeds, and goes for it. When that happens the result is everybody dives for the ground and you get ‘murmuration’. One of our observers came up with the thought that they fly so close together because they totally believe the guy next to him knows where he’s going, when the truth is not one of all those birds, and we’re talking like, thousands, have a clue. Yes, it creates pretty patterns in the sky but it is not a display of higher intelligence.

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Murmuration is said to be derived from an old English word or medieval Latin, ‘murmuratio’, the meaning of which supposedly sounds like the murmuring of a crowd from the sound the huge flocks of starlings make as they form at dusk, back then when it was medieval. Well it does if the crowd is making a screechy, raspy, squawky noise similar to fingernails on a blackboard and you have a hangover. But since this word ‘murmuratio’ comes from old English who even back then really liked all things birds, they probably thought it sounded beautiful. To each his own. Just remember these English guys medieval or not, like warm beer and eggs fried to the point of incineration. Just sayin’.

Murmuration is a world-wide event that the media is trying to play up as a special thing that only happens in exotic places like Europe and the Middle east but nothing could be further from the truth. We’re having murmurations all over the place right here in the USA. This one was in New Mexico, we saw one up in Wyoming of Franklin gulls visiting for  a day that put on a great show, and that was just a bird squawk above the state line from Colorado.

I hope we’ve taken some of the mystery out of Murmurations and helped you to understand one of Nature’s little quirks before you get led astray by expensive and some say unreliable studies even if they get on TV. As always if you have any questions about this subject or anything else for that matter, call us, drop us a line, we’re from The Institute and we’re here to help.

*Note: For those of you unfamiliar with The Institute and what it does, please see the page labeled The Institute on the Menu Bar above. That should explain everything. You shouldn’t have one single question remaining regarding The Institute after reading it. None. For those of you favored few who already know about the Institute, Never mind. Return to your daily activities. Thank you for your support.

Ancient Secrets

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I’m kind of mad at Europe right now. They’re always going on about how old everything is over there and how we don’t have anything ‘old’ because we’re such a young upstart place with no history and as such we don’t account for much. Well I call BullPucky on that. They might have some castles and aqueducts and old beer joints but they don’t have this. I was there, in Europe, I looked around and I didn’t see anything like this. I saw a bunch of old churches and I can tell you, making them big and old isn’t the same. You walk around here and you can feel the old just seeping out of the stone. I’m very sure, confident in fact, that our stone, besides being prettier, is a lot older than their old stone, plus it’s put in better places. They, the Europeans, stick their old joints out in a field or on a rock next to a river and call it the best. I say, anybody can pile up rocks out in a field and just because it was done a long time ago when they didn’t have anything better to do anyway, doesn’t make it the coolest. But you take those Anasazi guys who had to crawl up sheer cliffs holding their rocks in their teeth so they could hang on with both hands and make something like this, well it makes me proud to be an American.

So the next time you see one of those glossy brochures saying “Come on over , we got really old stuff to look at” I say, “Hey! look right here in our own backyard. Our old stuff is neater and probably older and you don’t have to go through customs with them dumping your bag out so they can look through your stuff either”.

There’s old stuff in practically every state in the Union. Even in Wisconsin where I’m from we had an old bar that had been around since the 1930’s called the ‘Blue Side of Nowhere’ where you could get a hamburger and a shot and a beer and a fist fight for under five  bucks!  Remember we got history and some old things that were ‘Made In America’ long before those uppity Europeans made theirs and thought they were so high and mighty. And if you think about it they don’t have one old thing that was ‘Made in America’, that’s got to tell you something right there. Just because their accents sound cool in the movies doesn’t make them any better than us, except for maybe Jean Paul Belmondo, and Dame Judi Dench because she was so good in Sky fall, and Jean Reno in The Professional but that doesn’t make up for all those years of listening to their bragging about how old everything was there. It helps some, but not enough. Plus you’ve got to remember some of those people thought that Jerry Lewis was funny. How can you take them seriously?

So before you get sucked in by some fancy brochure trying to lure you over to Europe to look at their supposedly old stuff, think about our old stuff right here in the good ol’ USA and spend those Eurodollars where they’ll do some good.

Monet’s Coyote

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It is a little known secret that I was a frustrated wannabe painter. In fact for years when I was sculpting I used to tell people that I was a sculptor because I couldn’t paint. Later on in life when I had reached a stage where I made grandma Moses look like a freshman cheerleader I went and took lessons from a well known plein air painter. She told me that after she trained me to hold the brush with the bristles towards the canvas and how to get the cap off the paint tube with out redoing the walls, that I might have potential. I defined potential as “No way in Hell” but I persevered. But in my persistence a funny thing happened, not funny in a grab your sides, milk coming out of your nose kind of way, but strange. Funny strange. The more I painted the more I loved paintings as an art form and the less I liked actually doing it. It turned out that I really loved sculpting after all but because of the lifelong dreaming of painting thing I viewed it more as a job rather than a soul satisfying art form that occasionally made me money. That realization however, did not diminish my obsession with the 2D art world. We artists talk like that, 2D, paintings or flatwork, as opposed to 3D, sculpture, it makes us look a lot smarter at parties and stuff. I had traipsed through most of the big museums and galleries here and in Europe and had a catalog of my favorite painters and their work in my head, and when I began photographing in earnest I was always looking for that Monet shot or the light in Rembrandt’s chiaroscuro work. It is surprisingly hard to find in real life. Rarely does chiaroscuro jump out at you when you turn the corner or the subtle light of Monet’s gardens happen every time you get ready to take a picture. But sometimes it does. And when it does, and you get to shoot it, it is like when someone comes up to you and says “I think you are quite the splendid fellow, here’s several million bucks. Take the rest of the day off”, that kind of feeling. That may not have happened to you yet but when it does, are you going to be happy. This image of a coyote in a meadow at Sheep lake in Rocky Mountain National Park was one of those times when Monet’s spirit was at work. If he had been a wildlife artist he would have painted this and been a happy man, just as I was for being able to have seen it.