I need some advice regarding telephone interference

Our family signed up for AT&T's U-verse service, which "provides broadband internet access, TV, and phone through a fiber-to-the-node or Fiber to the Premise communications network."  We've been delighted with the television and internet access, but the phone component has an annoying complication.

When we use any of our landline phones, we can hear in the background (over the dial tone and, worse yet, over an ongoing conversation) a local radio station.  Sometimes the sound level of this interference is loud enough to interfere with normal use of the phone.

A quick Google search suggests to me that the phones are serving as antennas to pick up radio broadcasts, but I've not been able to find a solution.  Is there a way to shield the phones?  Or some type of blocking device?  Would this have to be done for each phone set, or is there a single quick-fix that could be applied?

We'd be grateful for any suggestions from readers of this blog who have experienced the same problem and have had success in coping with it.  Or from anyone with relevant knowledge about telephone technology.

Addendum March 5.  Problem solved (see comment section).

Dane County Friends of Ferals

It was a year ago this week that I wrote a post about the life and death of a local feral cat.  This year I'd like to draw readers' attention to a local charity that cares for such animals, the Dane County Friends of Ferals. 

The organization is an all-volunteer charitable group that relies on donations and receives no government funding.  For seven years thay have provided resources for feral and abandoned stray cats and kittens, and have hosted annual Spayathons.  "To date, more than 2,100 feral cats have been rescued, housed, spayed and neutered, vaccinated and adopted to caregivers."

Our family has supported this group each year with donations and at their fundraising auctions; the reason I'm mentioning them now is that there is currently a promotion going on, sponsored by The Animal Rescue Site.  The public is invited to vote for local animal rescue groups; weekly winning groups will receive a grant of $1,000 and winners in each state will also receive $1,000.

If you would like to vote with a couple clicks of your  mouse, go to this link -

Vote Here

- and type in Dane County Friends of Ferals and select the state (WI), or else enter (WI) and Madison in the location boxes and select from the menu.  The "captcha" will ask you to identify an animal (zerba, monkey, etc) to confirm your humanity.  Voting is permitted once per day.

Thank you for your clicks.

Limited blogging today

Distracted by new events in Egypt.  Streaming online coverage here. 

Oops. And now the March issue of Harper's has arrived, with its always-challenging cryptic.  The cryptic always takes precedence over everything else.

Until later...

"Free Snow"

The snow is knee-deep in our yard, with drifts up to my waist.  Where the driveway meets the road, the snow is piled as high as my head.  That's where I put this sign the last time I finished clearing the driveway.

Incredibly, about an hour later our doorbell rang, and two neighborhood children asked if they could have permission to take some of our snow.  They weren't playing along with the gag - they were serious.  They explained that they were building a snow fort, and in their judgement the slabs of snow in our pile were just what they needed for the walls of their fort. 

Asking permission to take some snow.  Kids in this neighborhood are incredibly polite.

Retaining a sense of perspective

The graph above is attached to the side of our refrigerator with magnets.  It shows the historical average daytime high and low temperatures for our city (in degrees Fahrenheit) at weekly intervals from October through March.  The apparent shading is just a fold in the paper casting a shadow below; above that is the line indicating freezing (32 degrees).  The little arrows get moved along the graph each week.*

Today is January 22.  It hasn't been above freezing here since New Year's Day, and isn't predicted to do so until early February.  But two days ago the temperature was in the middle 20s, and the sky was brilliantly sunny, so I ran a couple errands, and when I came out of the library, I didn't even bother to zip up my coat or put my knit cap on, and a older lady walking into the library had no hat, gloves, or overcoat.

Those who live in more temperate or tropical climates probably can't understand why we put up with such bitterly cold weather.  Partly, of course, there are the stark economic realities of jobs and homes and families, but beyond that there's a certain quiet satisfaction that comes from living through cycles of four distinct seasons.  The first week in March crocuses will emerge right through residual snowdrifts (we've planted a hundred of them just because of that harbinger phenomenon).  A couple weeks later buds will appear on the trees and the lilacs will bloom, and suddenly the signs of new life are everywhere.

It doesn't surprise me that the earliest humans recorded winter solstices, that they monitored the sun's positions, that religious festivals were created to celebrate rebirth from apparent death.   There's an immense satisfaction in telling oneself that one has made it through the  most difficult time, and that things are now going to get better.

Those early peoples tracked these cycles by standing immense stones on end in open fields and on hilltops; we do it with yellow arrows made from Post-It notes on a refrigerator.  But the intention is the same, and we share their joy at the phenomenon.

*It's interesting that the coldest week doesn't correspond to the darkest week of the winter solstice.  I believe I read somewhere that the discrepancy occurs because of the "thermal sink" properties of the earth and Great Lakes - just as the hottest days develop a couple weeks after the longest days.

Things we can't explain

An event in the life of philosopher and mystic Emanuel Swedenborg, as presented at Futility Closet:

On July 21, 1759, Emanuel Swedenborg attended a dinner party after returning to Gothenburg from England. He went out for a short interval and returned pale and agitated. He told the party that a fire had broken out in Stockholm, 250 miles away, and that it was spreading quickly. He said it had already destroyed the house of one of his friends, whom he named, and that his own house was in danger. Two hours later he exclaimed, “Thank God! The fire is extinguished the third door from my house.”

The following morning the governor questioned Swedenborg, who provided a description of the fire, including how it had begun and ended, and word spread throughout the city. Two days later a messenger arrived from Stockholm bearing letters that confirmed Swedenborg’s account, and a royal courier brought news reporting the extent of the fire, the houses it had damaged and destroyed, and the time it was put out. All confirmed Swedenborg’s description.

“What can be brought forward against the authenticity of this occurrence?” wrote Immanuel Kant, who elsewhere criticized Swedenborg’s mysticism. “My friend who wrote this to me, has not only examined the circumstances of this extraordinary case at Stockholm, but also, about two months ago, at Gottenburg, where he is acquainted with the most respectable houses, and where he could obtain the most authentic and complete information, as the greatest part of the inhabitants, who are still alive, were witnesses to the memorable occurrence.”

Posted because a similar, possibly "paranormal" event occurred in my family.  In the 1960s my grandfather was admitted to a hospital after a severe automobile accident.  His children (my mother, aunts, and uncles) gathered at the bedside.  Several days later my uncle Paul arrived.  He had been driving from Minnesota to Seattle and was in the middle of nowhere when he heard his father's voice saying "Paul, come home.  I need you."  He knew it wasn't "real," but it was so compelling an experience that he turned his car around and drove back to Minnesota.   I suppose one can come up with a number of more prosaic explanations involving long-distance phone calls, but there was no apparent reason for him to dissemble about something like this.  I prefer to believe that such things are possible, and beyond the limits of our current understanding.  What kind of rational explanation can one offer for the Swedenborg incident?

Reusing prestigious wine bottles

China's booming wine market has created an astounding demand for empty bottles of famous wines, with fraudsters paying up to £300 for a good bottle that can be filled with a less celebrated vintage. Counterfeiters have begun collecting empty bottles and then refilling them to scam rich Chinese. A particular favourite is Chateau Lafite Rothschild 1982, which sells for over £2,000 an intact bottle at auction...

Mr Huang said his firm collected empties from bars and restaurants in Shanghai and Beijing and that the run-up to Chinese New Year, in February, was peak season, as counterfeiters targeted wine lovers looking to celebrate in style... In the past year China has become the world's fastest-growing wine market with legions of millionaires anxious to appear sophisticated...

The story brings back some pleasant memories. Three of my college roommates worked their way through school as bartenders.  One of the perks of the jobs was that they were often allowed to take the nearly-empty bottles at the end of parties, which we would then finish emptying back at the dorm and refill with the cheapest possible liquor from local discount stores.  Then, when we later hosted our own parties, schoolmates would act sophisticated by saying "Ah... Johnny Walker Black Label... you can always tell a fine whisky."  Or not.  We knew better.

Via Nothing to do with Arbroath.

"TV dinners" of the 1960s

This 1966 advertisement, found at Vintage Ads, brought back strong memories, because when I was in graduate school in the late 60s. the freezer of my apartment was well stocked with these, because they were fast - and cheap. (I believe they sold 3-for-a-dollar at the time...)

Design fiddling underway...

As promised/warned, I've started the process of updating and customizing the template for this blog. I've gotten the wider central column that I wanted. I still need to change the header photo so it isn't so intrusive, and I need a more neutral background for the text rather than this glaring white.

I've enlarged some of the photos on the recent posts to test the design. For the most part I like the images bigger - it may even save some "clicking to magnify" that was previously necessary. I'm also discovering that bigger is not always better, and that some photos don't benefit from a larger format; I may revert to more laterally-embedded smaller photos when the content is not crucial.

The bigger photos are also going to necessitate a bit more scrolling by visitors, which may be somewhat annoying.  I'll wait and see.   I think the text font is still o.k.  The highlight colors may need some tweaking.

I won't be able to go back over the entire blog and adjust the photo sizes, which apparently has to be done manually. There are over 7,500 old posts, so that's not a practical use of my time.

Addendum: Header photo removed. It was pretty, but took up too much space and delayed getting to the content of the blog. This new format is starting to look strangely familiar.

More fiddling tomorrow.

Holiday greetings from TYWKIWDBI

It's a bit late to wish readers here a Merry Christmas, but I do want to offer season's greetings to everyone.

I also need to append a brief, probably unnecessary, cautionary note.  Instead of blogging this coming week, I'm going to take some time to try to revise the master template for the blog.  I've wanted for a long time to widen the central column so that it's not always necessary to click the images to appreciate them.  Kevin has done this successfully at Nothing to do with Arbroath, so I'm encouraged by his results, and I've been assured by various people that "nothing can go wrong" and that the process will not jeopardize the content already posted.   If I did lose all 7,500 old posts, I think I would probably hang up my blogging hat for good.

At the very least, the blog may "look funny" for a while, because I will surely lose the logo photo and I'll probably tweak the color scheme and such to see what is most visually appealing and most readable.

Fingers crossed...

We've been flocked!

During last week's snowstorm here in Madison, this pink flamingo appeared on our front lawn.  She was accompanied by a plate of Christmas cookies and a note explaining that we had been "flocked."  An elaborate lawn ornament in her prime, the flamingo was now being repurposed as a neighborhood break-the-gloom-of-winter activity. 

The instructions accompanying her indicated that within 2-3 days we were to add a decoration and assist her in migrating to someone else's lawn.  We added a necklace of Christmas tree ornaments and helped her fly to a neighbor, who added two more flamingoes and in the dead of night moved her to someone's front yard on a different street.  She has two more weeks of travelling ahead of her before she ends up back on the originator's lawn.

Tonight is the winter solstice, which marks only the beginning of winter.  One wonders what's yet to come...

December 31.  The flamingo (now dubbed "Flo") has been returned to her home of origin, now laden with a purse, glasses, a scarf, and a variety of seasonal ornaments. 

Preparing for Christmas

A Chicago Tribune story this week declared that "Christmas tree buying is moving online."  They reported that Target stores are now selling freshly-cut Christmas trees:

Target said it is working with a grower in North Carolina, where trees are cut and shipped within 24 hours... "If someone says they want a 6- or 7-foot tree, I go out that evening and find it, and Federal Express picks it up the next morning," Whorton said. "We treat it special. Usually that time of year, we're able to scoop some snow into the bag... People tell us they never knew you could get a tree that fresh."

We wanted to splurge this year for a "biggest-ever" Christmas tree.  Out of curiosity I checked the Target website; for a 7.5 - 8 foot tree, they were asking $140.  Way too much.  So we headed out to a local tree farm to cut our own.

We visited Hann's Christmas Farm in Oregon, Wisconsin; I'm delighted to give them a free plug here on the blog because the people are exceptionally helpful and the service is excellent.  With several inches of snow in the forecast, we went last week while the ground was still bare.

Different areas of the farm are planted with trees of different types and of different ages, so you take your saw and seek out your perfect tree.  We walked into the Fraser fir section and found (as we expected) that the best proximal trees have been harvested in previous years, and that as you get further away from the parking area and barn, the selection improves.  After about 20 minutes we found one we liked, started to cut it down, and ran into our only glitch of the day: the saw from the farm rack (left) was gummed with pine pitch and froze after less than an inch into the cut.  My wife volunteered to trudge the quarter mile to the barn and back to get a fresh saw, which thankfully cut through the trunk like a hot knife through butter.

Then we had to face the task of hauling it back.  Here a word of advice to (other) newbies:  big Christmas trees are surprisingly heavy.  When we got it back to the barn, the staff put it in a "shaker" that dislodged all the extraneous material and critters, then baled it with twine, and helped us load it onto the car roof and tie it down.

We wound up with an eight-and-a-half foot Fraser fir for $55.  I don't know what you pay in your part of the country, but around here that's a great bargain.  It's been sitting in a bucket of water in the garage for several days, and will come into the house this afternoon.  Judging by how little water it has taken up during this time, I am certain it will be the freshest tree we've ever had; we should be able to keep it up until New Year's without any significant needle drop.

I didn't want to be encumbered with a camera during this trip, so the top two and upper side photos are from the farm's website.

Get your prostate checked !!

Today I finish my eighth year of survival after resection of locally invasive prostatic carcinoma.  I credit that survival to 1) awareness and 2) early detection.  If you are a male in your 50s (or younger, if you have a family history), ask your doctor to draw a PSA blood test.

Alternatively, if you take an airplane trip in the United States, the TSA will probably do the exam for you.

The photo does not depict what it feels like to have a digital prostate exam.   It DOES, however, reasonably portray what it's like to get a prostate biopsy.  Good luck.

Photo credit Reuters.

Halloween 2010

Arachnids on the door and on one of the pumpkins, a cauldron with dry ice steam bubbling over a "fire" by the door, and for a guest greeter at the door - a 92-year-old witch having the first "trick-or-treat" experience in her memory because such things weren't done on her isolated farm in the '20s, and thereafter she mostly worked 3-11 shifts and missed out on Halloween festivities.  Personally, I had to change out of my Minnesota Vikings jersey because that uniform isn't scaring ANYONE nowadays...

Time out

It's been a long time since I've had a proper vacation from blogging.  I'm going to use this next week to carve pumpkins, watch football, eat leftover Halloween treats, and reconnect with family.  I'll see you-all in early November.

The Finseth Bandstand at St. Olaf College

My family's ties to St. Olaf go back all the way to the school's founding, when my great-grandfather Ole Knut Finseth was one of three farmers who comprised half of the "incorporators" of the college in 1875. As a youngster I visited with my uncles on many occasions for homecoming football games and marvelled at the beautiful campus and the pretty girls who went to school there, but when my own college decision time came, I headed east.

As a result I don't remember ever encountering the Finseth Bandstand, pictured above with a note written by by grandfather Knut Olaus Finseth:

"Built in the summer of 1910 Marcus B. Finseth paid 1/3 toward this BandStand.  I paid for Victor's part and mine.  Material and labor was reasonable then near 40 cent per hour.  It will be improved on this year or next 1961.  Total cost was $1250."

Music has always been an integral part of the life of students at St. Olaf.  Nowadays that aspect is focused on the St. Olaf Choir and its concerts, but at the turn of the last century band concerts were popular events.  When I Googled "Finseth Bandstand" I found only one hit, which linked to some memories of a student of that era:

How romantic the spring open-air band concerts in the Finseth bandstand were. Ida Marvick always sang two songs on such occasions, and we thrilled to her lovely voice. It seems to me that the moon always shone during those concerts. The air was full of springtime and the moonlight made soft patterns on the grass. We girls usually had a boy friend hovering near so that real romance filled our hearts. Lovely evenings they were.

This second photo shows more detail of the bandstand, including the fine (Norwegian) woodcraft.  My understanding from informal and secondhand sources is that in more recent decades the interest in and need for a bandstand declined, the concerts held there became more lively, and musical nights at the bandstand became known as "Sinfests at Finseths."  I believe the bandstand was finally demolished to make room for new construction on campus.  And so it goes.

If there are any Oles out there who can clarify the details, I'd be pleased to read your comments and  memories.

Carrot

I think next year I either need to till my garden a little looser and deeper, or else thin the carrots after the seeds start to sprout.  It's no tragedy; I was growing the carrots as food for Black Swallowtail butterflies - which never found the plants.  Now I have to eat the carrots.

I think I'll leave some in the ground, because I found this today:

Most of the plants you named are true annuals; that is, they last one season and then die even if protected from frost. Carrots, however, are biennials; if you leave the roots in the ground, the tops will flower the following year and produce carrot seed for you (although the second-year carrots themselves will have turned bitter). It’s a fun garden project to leave a few carrots in the ground to go to seed, and the Queen’s Anne’s lace-like flowers are superb attractors of beneficial insects!

I can sympathize with the Titanic steering error

Word came this week that one reason the Titanic struck the iceberg was a steering error:

The error... happened because at the time seagoing was undergoing enormous upheaval because of the conversion from sail to steam ships.

The change meant there were two different steering systems and different commands attached to them. Some of the crew on the Titanic were used to the archaic Tiller Orders associated with sailing ships and some to the more modern Rudder Orders.

Crucially, the two steering systems were the complete opposite of one another.  So a command to turn "hard a starboard" meant turn the wheel right under the Tiller system and left under the Rudder. 

More details at the Telegraph and at the New York Times.  Now for my personal context...

In the late 1950s my family went to Florida for a winter vacation and visited the Daytona Beach area.  In those days it was permissible to drive one's car on the beach [?is that still true?].  Because the car was not on a highway, my father decided it would be o.k. for me to steer the car while sitting on his lap.  As we zipped down the beach, he told me we were going to get too close to an ice-cream vendor's shack, and told me to turn steer toward the left. 

At about seven years of age, I had no experience steering cars, but plenty of experience steering a boat (those of you who grew up in the upper Midwest will understand...).  The boats we rented at the lake were 16' wooden boats with 7.5 horsepower Evinrude outboard motors.  Because it was a rear-mounted outboard,  to turn the boat to the left, you pushed the tiller to the right.

And that's what I did with the car, turning the steering wheel to the right.  Dad fortunately still had control of the brakes.  I would have forgotten all about the incident, but was reminded of it on many occasions as I grew older.  

Photo credit to Heyns57.

Whipholt beach, Leech Lake, Walker, Minnesota

Nothing special in this brief video; posted only because it brings back ~50 years of pleasant memories.

The map coordinates are: 47.0500,-94.35720.  Looking straight ahead (due north), it is over 13 miles to the opposite shore.  You definitely don't want to be on this part of the lake during a big storm.

Freezer corn = Dandelion wine

In his third novel, published in 1957, Ray Bradbury extolled the virtues of dandelion wine:

"Dandelion wine. The words were summer on the tongue.
The wine was summer caught and stoppered."

For our generation here in the Midwest, frozen sweet corn serves the same purpose. This morning when we went to our favorite local farm to get sweet corn, we heard the sad news that today's would be the last crop of the year.  So we got a couple dozen extra ears to freeze.

Here's the recipe, courtesy of Stoneman's family farm in Fitchburg, Wisconsin:

16 cups corn cut off raw with a sharp knife from about 20 ears of fresh corn.
3 cups water.
One half stick of butter.
3-4 tsp salt.

Combine all ingredients in a large kettle.  Bring to a boil and simmer 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Cool and do NOT drain.  Package in Ziplock freezer bags.

Yield:  seven 2-cup packages.

The top photo shows the corn after I had shucked it - beautiful bicolor ears with the corn so fresh that it's sweet raw without cooking or adding butter.  It'll be frozen tonight and we'll save it to haul out when the first blizzard hits this winter.  After shovelling knee-deep snow in sub-zero wind chills, we'll come in to enjoy a taste of summer