Subliminal messages?

A neighborhood coffee shop changed owners and the new owner, Cafe del Sol, had an open house last weekend. They had free coffee, and they gave Judy a cup to bring home to me. Nice folks!
But the lid on the to-go cup struck me as ambivalent. One first view, it's a smiley face (how very 80s!) But if you look closely, there seem to be hands on either side of the face; is it Edvard Muench's "Scream"? Or the "Home Alone" movie? Or do I just have an over-active imagination?

Heee's Baaaccccckkkkkk!!!

It wasn't enough to give the Presidency to the President Dick Cheney in 2000; now Ralph Nader apparently hasn't felt that he got enough attention lately, so he's tossed his hat (his head?) in the ring again. OK, I'm anything but unbiased on this; look at James Fallows in the Atlantic Monthly.

So will Nader make any difference? I've been avoiding listening to any punditry on TV today (not easy...) but my thoughts are:
1. If Obama is nominated, Nader will make no difference at all. Obama is pushing forward; Nader is always fighting the last issues.
2. If Clinton is nominated, Nader won't make a difference. The people who will vote for Nader have so much ABC feeling (anyone but Clinton) and they won't vote for Clinton anyway.
My conclusion is that Nader is irrelevant, insignificant, and yesterday. Goodbye, Ralph...

Libraries

Remember Marian, the librarian? Her central role in The Music Man (set in Iowa, remember) isn't all that far from the important role that libraries play in public services in Iowa City and Coralville. Coralville has just opened a major expansion of the Coralville public library (photo) and Iowa City did the same a couple of years ago. It's great that residents of either city can get cards for both libraries.

One of the things that we really like about the Coralville library is their used book sales. They always have a table of books for sale (50 cents for paperbacks, one dollar for hardbacks) and they have an annual book sale; last week we picked up a dozen books there (enough for the next two or three trips). We love the libraries and are very, very happy to live where libraries are valued.

Words

I admit it -- I'm a word geek, and I'm not alone. Both my sons are fascinated by words, and since long before there was an "us", Judy and I have shared the joy of finding great words and funny word uses. Sometimes it's the word itself, and sometimes it's a peculiar way that words are used together. For an example of the former, a colleague once challenged me to spell "eleemosynary" and define it. I think he intended to challenge me, kind of like throwing the fastest pitch he could and seeing if I could catch it (for the record, I did). For the latter, I recently overheard the owner of a restaurant in Iowa City tell a customer "We're still organic, but we have a computer." The juxtaposition of organic food and using a computer struck me as funny, since the owner seemed to feel like he needed to justify having a machine.

If you're interested in words, you might want to look at Free Rice, Rinkworks, or the Merriam-Webster word-of-the-day sites to expand and perhaps challenge your vocabulary. Have fun, but beware -- it's catching!

Fresh snow

We had another snowfall yesterday and got perhaps 6" of fresh snow. This brings the snowfall total so far this winter to over four and a half feet. That may not sound like a lot if you live in Rochester (Hi, Nan and Walt) but it's a lot for Iowa; this is perhaps the fifth largest amount of snow on record here. And there's a lot of winter left...


Some freezing rain preceded the snow, and some very strong winds followed it, so travel was discouraged all day and almost all public activities were canceled. The picture shows the snow falling in the front yard, where it turned our deer screen into a big piece of lace, and in the back yard, where it made the woods quite magical. We were snug as a bug here and had a fire in the fireplace all day. We're again reminded of how very fortunate we are.

Birds

This weekend is the Great Backyard Bird Count, and I've been keeping track of the birds at my feeders in my yard. Many birds winter in Iowa, and I've seen several of them at my feeder: cardinals and blue jays; downy, hairy, and yellow-bellied woodpeckers; slate-sided juncos, tree sparrows, and house sparrows; goldfinches and house finches; chickadees and titmice; nuthatches; doves and starlings. Many of these were around over the last day or two.

There are other birds that don't come to the feeders but we see with greater or less frequency. There are lots of Canada Geese who don't have sense enough to fly south, there are wild turkeys who keep mostly to the deeper woods, and there was a pileated woodpecker who came by one day a couple of months ago. For years I'd been trying to see one, and it just flies to a tree in my yard that has some damage up high and digs for bugs for a half hour. Go figure.


And there are eagles, great wonderful bald eagles, who come to the few spots on the Iowa River that are ice-free all winter. These beautiful birds are commonplace to those who grew up near rivers in the upper midwest, but not to me. I always get a rush seeing one flying over our house or along a river. The photo shows a group of eagles along a winter river; it's an NPR shot, not mine, though we sometimes do see groups like this on the Iowa River. The best viewing in Coralville is probably from the Iowa River Power Co. restaurant. Although I can see eagles from the road or from a viewing point, it's nice to be warm, indoors, and having a good lunch while I'm enjoying seeing them.

Tracks

We had a fresh snowfall a couple of days ago, and so far the neighborhood kids haven't been out sliding down the hill in our back yard (which they're always welcome to do; what use is a hill in snow unless somebody is sliding down it?) So we've been able to see what the local wildlife is doing when we're not watching. We have both large animal tracks (several deer trails and a set of person tracks):


and small animal tracks (birds and bunnies):


Snow is great for showing you how many other creatures we share our space with!