Swinging Bridge

After spending several days on Mount Desert Island, we headed on down the road towards home. But there were stops along the way.

Including the Androscoggin Swinging Bridge.

Built in 1892 by the John A. Roebling company, the bridge is now a park. All but the suspension cables have been replaced.

The view from mid-span.

The view of Patty mid-span.

🌉  🌉  🌉  🌉  🌉

John A Roebling is perhaps better known for another bridge, one often for sale, and named after the place where I was born. The Brooklyn Bridge. Designed by the senior Roebling, the completion was overseen by his son, Washington Roebling, who, like me, has a degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. 

And also lived for a time in Troy, NY and Burlington County NJ.

A Big Boot

Thanks to Roadside America we've seen the worlds largest pistachio nut, pancake griddle, telephone, oyster, red cedar tree, transistor, dead polar bear, bronze wildlife sculpture, It's It, urban bat colony (this one was really cool), clothespin, and now ...

The worlds larges boot.

I know, it's worth a trip to Maine just for this.

It's a Big World After All

And also the worlds biggest globe.

41.5 in diameter, should you want to go bigger in your foyer.

Eartha, at the DeLorme headquarters in Maine.

A giant phone, boot, and globe. Why are you still reading this? Get up there already!

One Ringy-Dingy

While on road trips we consult the Roadside America app, which lists quickly things to see along the way.

Which is how we came to be at the worlds largest telephone.

This monument to ludditism is in the town of Bryant Pond, Maine. The last place in the US to use hand cranked telephones, doing so until 1983.

For what it is worth, the crank on this giant phone turns. Although it did not do so smoothly.

Steam Clean

That's some serious drying going on there.

Disturbingly Informative

"Disturbingly Informative", that's the motto of the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia. And it is pretty much spot on, as it houses a collection medical oddities and curiosities.

A small museum, an hour or two is enough to see it all. Alas, most is off limits to photography, although the reason given, respect for the humans whose remains are on display, rings a bit hollow. They are on display after all (and the Museum charges to see them; draw your own conclusion).

Photography was permitted in the main entrance hall and the Benjamin Rush Medicinal Plant Garden.

I like the second paragraph, "We request that you do not pick or eat any part of any plant in the garden." I wonder if they were having issues with visitors munching away?

"Hey Alice, try some of this Franklinia, it's delicious!"

(That's what the deer said about ours.)

I was not aware of the medicinal properties of Sarracenia (I wonder if they're permitted to eat the visitors?). Learned something new perhaps?

☣️  ☣️  ☣️  ☣️  ☣️

It was poison that brought us to the Museum. Science on Tap (motto: "eat. drink. science." I'm in!) was hosting an untapped event, "Science On Tap Untapped: Pick Your Poison".

This was the second thing I learned at the Mütter, if you bite something and die, that something was poisonous. If something bites you and you die, that something was venomous. Some very evil creatures are both!

You've been warned.

VLA

Green Bank Observatory was not the first radio observatory I've visited.

It was this one.

The Very Large Array, which in this picture looks rather small. Hinting at the immensity of the universe.

Unlike the Green Bank Observatory, this one had no restrictions on digital cameras. Cellphones needed to be turned off, although you could turn one on, in airplane mode, snap a picture, and then turn it off. I surmise these scopes are listening at different wavelengths.

No bus tour here, a walking tour instead. And we, that's Patty in her gray coat, were able to walk right up to one of the dishes in the array.

Another difference was that there was no 'radio quiet zone' here. Of course, this is pretty much the Middle of Nowhere, NM so there isn't the need for a quiet zone. At least not yet. And the array is situated in a large valley, the surrounding mountains blocking out much of the radio noise.

The worst source of interference is caused by a source I'm listening to as I type this, satellite radio. The dishes cannot be pointed within ten degrees of one of the satellites as the signal will overwhelm any astronomical source.

📡  📡  📡  📡  📡

We visited the VLA in December 2011. This was our first Christmas trip together. Our main destination was Bosque del Apache NWR,  to see the large flocks of overwintering birds. Maybe I'll blog about that someday ...

Weekend Wanderings ... Clerks

Clerks is a very funny movie, the first made by Kevin Smith. The action takes place mostly in a convince store.

This convince store:

Where Kevin was working at at the time.

What made the movie even more enjoyable was that some of the scenes were shot at places known to me. Like the Normandy Road overpass over Leonardville Road, two blocks from our family's first home in New Jersey. Or Posten's Funeral Home in Atlantic Highlands, NJ, the town I grew up in.

But I had never been able to identify the convince store. Based on the Normandy Road scene, I had thought it was further down Leonardville Road, in Cambell's Junction.

(Side note: Normandy Road is completely inside the Earle Naval Weapons Depot.)

Nope. It was in this very small strip mall in Leonardo. One that has obviously seen better days (and I was there to see them).

The corner store, which is currently empty and was apparently last a BBQ place, was Dodger's Soda Fountain when I was a kid, and I remember eating mint chocolate chip ice-cream and spinning on the seats at the counter. Fun times.

And next to the convince store, many years ago, my Mom and her friend Joanna owned a clothing store. The Blouse House. The store would later move to First Avenue in Atlantic Highlands. It went out of business many years ago. I have no idea how successful it was or wasn't. I do know that the alarm system in the store was the same they installed at the registrar's office at RPI. My student aid included a job in said registrar's office. And when it came time to explain to the non-student staff how to use the new system, they asked me to leave the room. Curious the things one remembers.

🎥  🎥  🎥

In the Bell Labs post, a wandering done on the same day as this one, I linked to the Wikipedia page for my high school, Henry Hudson Regional. And it was on that page I learned that my high school has eight notable alumni. Two world class trampolinists (it's a thing), a pitcher for the Colorado Rockies, and five people associated with Kevin Smith, including Mr. Smith himself.

Rather poor output if you ask me.

😵  😵  😵

Side note: Many years ago my friends and I were playing baseball at the ball fields across from my house in Atlantic Highlands. And these two guys came up to us wearing white shirts, black ties, black pants, and black dress shoes. Religious fanatics of some sort. And one of the questions they asked the very disinterested group of us kids was, "where do you go when you die?" to which my friend John Rosse, without missing a beat answered, "Posten's, he's my uncle." To which we all, excepting the fanatics, laughed hysterically.

Like I said, curious what you remember.

Weekend Wanderings ... The Spy House

Once upon time there was a house, the Spy House, in which drinks were served and Redcoats with loose lips sunk ships. Or so the story went. And that was the tall tale told to me, and many others, by one Mrs. Gertrude Neidlinger.

The actual story, while to the history buff is just as interesting, is much less fanciful.

But to a twelve year old boy tales of spies and Revolutionary War battles fired the imagination. And I ate this stuff up.

I remember going there with my boy scout troop and hearing these stories. Apparently Ms. Neidlinger told some ghost stories as well, but I do not recall those (I had no interest in ghosts).

As the tale went, this was a tavern (it was, but not during Revolutionary War times; tavern days would come much later) and the British had many ships in the Sandy Hook and Raritan Bay at New York City (maybe so?). The British sailors would come ashore to eat and drink. And the proprietor would pass info about the ships to Colonial troops. And while the owner of the house was on the side of the victors in this war, it was a house and home at the time, not a tavern.

Today the house is part of Bayshore Waterfront Park, in the Monmouth park system. Back then, it was a private museum struggling to stay afloat. And I was quite surprised when I visited this past weekend to see no mention of spying. It wasn't until I got home and went wandering on the web that I found the real story.

The New York City skyline in the distance. Much different looking than in Colonial days.

And today it is US Navy ships, like the distant one center left in the image above, that ply these waters, visiting the Earle Naval Weapons Depot.

⚓️  ⚓️  ⚓️

I grew up surrounded by military bases. Army bases at Hartshorne Woods and on Sandy Hook, which also houses an active Coast Guard base. The first house my parent's bought in New Jersey was on a road that ended with a fence across it. On the other side of that fence, which we kids would sometimes sneak under, was the Earle Naval Base. And Hartshorne Woods was immediately adjacent to my high school.

During the Korean War my Dad was in the army. And he was stationed on Sandy Hook and Cape Cod. Defending the east coast from the North Korean navy. History shows that he, and his fellow soldiers, were quite successful at this.

🎼   🎼  🎼  🎼

My Mom was a member of St.Agnes Senior Choir. And that choir made an album of Christmas music. In the late 1960's. On vinyl. Hipsters before it was hip.

If you look closely (bigafy!) you'll discover that Gertrude Neidlinger was the conductor of the choir.

And that my Mom was one of the Sopranos. Who knew?

🖼  🖼  🖼

Clown by Amalie Day

This masterpiece was painted by my sister, in 1971. And is currently hanging in my parent's garage. No doubt because it is too heavy to tape to the refrigerator.

My sister took painting lessons from a local artist. Travers Neidlinger, Gertrude's husband.

(This painting is available, let me know if you're interested. But act fast, it will be gone by the first week of May.)

Weekend Wanderings ... Bell Labs

Not far from the Horn Antenna was the main Bell Labs building in Homdel, NJ.

At the entrance one is greeted by a water tower in the shape of a transistor, the latter having been invented here in 1947.

The structure below is a memorial to Karl Jansky, the father of radio astronomy.

It is a stylized rendition of the radio receiver Jansky built and with which he discovered radio waves originating from the center of the Milky Way. As with Penzias and Wilson, Jansky found a hiss that he could not account for and meticulously worked out the source.

Alas, he published his discovery in 1933, in the midst of the Great Depression, and there was no money for follow up studies.

The building, which once housed the preeminent institution of scientific research, is now but an office complex. With a housing development, as seen in the background of the Jansky Memorial, taking up much of the former grounds.

⭐️  📡  🖥  🔭  ⭐️

Back when I was in high school, and this building was still a Bell Labs facility, I and three classmates learned computer programming here. I remember one session, where the instructor left us alone and we somehow starting printing and could not stop, paper continuously spewing out of the printer. I recall unplugging what I thought was the printer, but paper just kept coming out (I had unplugged the wrong printer). Finally the instructor returned, flipped a switch and the printing stopped, totally unconcerned with the paper. More interested in helping us figure out what went wrong.

Weekend Wanderings ... Horn Antenna

Once upon a time the universe went bang. And some thirteen billion years later, the device below detected the radiation from that event, known today as the Big Bang.

This is the famous Horn Antenna at what was once AT&T Bell Labs which the physicists Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson used to detect the cosmic microwave radiation generated by the birth of our part of the universe.

They were not looking for it. A group of physicists at nearby Princeton University (29 miles west) were. And got scooped. Eventually the two groups learned of each other's work and published together.

In 1978 Penzias and Wilson won the Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery.

Bell Labs was the research arm of AT&T, which had a government granted monopoly on telephone service in the United States until 1982. A consequence of being a monopoly meant that they could invest in basic science and thus today we have such things as the transistor, the C programing language and derivatives, the UNIX operating system and variants including Linux and macOS (an iOS), and more. But the breakup of the Bell System in '82 signaled the end of an era. Today, Bell Labs is owned by the Finish company Nokia, once a cellphone powerhouse.

💥  📡  💥  📡  💥

Side note #1: At the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum the is a metal trap, owned by Robert Wilson, and used to catch a pair of pigeons which had taken up residence in the antenna. When Penzias and Wilson were trying to determine what the noise they were picking up was they discovered the nesting pigeons and needed to remove them and their droppings (described by Penzias in the scientific paper as a "white dielectric material"). But the noise remained. The noise was of course the cosmic microwave background radiation, the echo of the Big Bang.

💥  📡  💥  📡  💥

Side note #2: Once upon a time I was a college student, working toward a degree in Physics (got it, BS RPI '82). And Penzias came to give a talk. I remember little of the talk. I do remember talking with him afterward, and hitting him up for a summer job at Bell Labs. Alas, there were no jobs to be had.

Not Gonna Argue ...

Vesuvius this isn't.

However, the owner, and man who had it made, was Vito Genovese.

And if he wanted you to call it Vesuvius, you called it Vesuvius.

🌋  🌋  🌋

It seems the notorious crime boss wanted a quiet getaway and chose Middletown, NJ as the spot. Mr. Genovese was born in Naples, Italy and wanted a reminder of his homeland in his retreat. So he had lava rock from the real Vesuvius imported and made into this 'model'.

Today, this is part of Deep Cut Gardens, in the Monmouth County Park system. In the "History of Deep Run Gardens" park brochure, it notes that, "In 1937, Genovese left the country, ending the project prematurely." What it doesn't say is that he was fleeing a murder rap. He went back to Italy, became pals with Mussolini, switched sides when it became apparent Italy was on the losing one, and eventually moved back to the US.

And lived in Atlantic Highlands, NJ. Across the street from where I lived. As he was sent to prison in 1959 and died there in 1969, he and I were never actually in Atlantic Highlands at the same time, although his family still lived in the house (rumor had it there was always an FBI car parked outside).

That is other than one day, that of his funeral, which was held in St. Agnes Roman Catholic church, of which we were apparently both parishioners (I recall seeing my grammar school classmates on TV, as the funeral was quite newsworthy). Here's an image of his hearse passing his house, my house was on the side of the street the picture was taken from (to the left, outside the frame; we lived on the corner).

🌋  🌋  🌋

You can read more about Genovese's Vesuvious at Roadside America, which is where I found out what it was, as there is no signage at the park.

Finger Lakes Trip

For as long and as Patty and I have been together, every Columbus Day weekend we've gone with a group of friends on the "Finger Lakes" trip. (Patty and friends were going before we met.) "Finger Lakes" is in quotes as the past few years the trip has not actually been to the Finger Lakes.

This year it was to Dauphin, Pennsylvania, where we rented a house on the Susquehanna River.

For the geographically challenged, Dauphin, is not in the Finger Lakes.

It was a nice house, although we spent more awake time out than in.

Nine of us, eight women and yours truly, spent a relaxing extended weekend hiking, bike riding, birding, and eating. There as a lot of eating. Very yummy.

That's a big house plant.

As this was my first trip after my back troubles I enjoyed hiking, my first significant jaunt since Glacier, and birding (we did not bring our bikes). And the eating, I enjoyed the eating (did I mention it was yummy?) ((and I don't need to go on trips to enjoy eating)).

Nor did we bring our kayaks. Alas, heavy rains had made the river un-kayakable.

It would have been nice to visit the Statue of Liberty, which is barely visible in the image below (click to bigafy).

The owners of the house did offer a motorboat excursion, but we declined.

Across the street from the house (and from this tree) was a small natural area, well maintained, although it was not clear by who (Mother Nature?). Frogs, birds, turtles, and dragonflies, and no doubt other critters, to say nothing of the plants, appreciate whomever it is.

It is the remnants of the Pennsylvania Canal, which once upon a time cut transit times form Pittsburg to Philadelphia to four days from one month. One of our house mates, Kim, is an archeologist and has done work on the canal. She explained that the trip was one way. The boats did not return to Pittsburgh, they were part of the cargo.

And all too soon the trip is over. A weekend is just too short.

Elani, enjoying a moment of solitude, and who does have two legs.

✈️  🚂  🛳

We've already booked next years Finger Lakes Trip, which is returning to its roots in the Finger Lakes region. I'm already looking forward to the wine tasking.

🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷

Merry Christmas

HO HO HO!

And on this holiday of holidays, remember to keep Santa in Christmas!