And it won’t be the last:
View from across Lake Lindenmyer
We actually were going to buy a house in the area of the Galena Fire back in 2008. Certainly not as big as the High Park Fire, but it’s just a reminder that we have to be very careful what we do here in the foothills. I believe this fire was started when a retired nuclear physicist was goofing around with his homemade electric fence.
Wow! Where did January go? OK, here’s some stuff from the December/January archive:
Slinky the Ball Python
This guy is on display at FCMOD but on certain days I get to take him out of his terrarium and show him off to visitors who are willing to get close enough to touch a snake. This is similar to showing the spiders and roaches at the GEC bug bash, and, well, somebody’s got to do it.
Wagonwheel Drive
This one street in town has a number of homeowners who get together and decorate the whole block. Some themes merge onto other properties and traffic along this area is increased by a factor of 40X. It helped that the location was printed in the local paper.
The Tree featuring Papa Dell’s Pizza and the ‘Argo’ rug
This past year’s tree was a 9.5 foot Picea from Oregon.
Ski lift at Eldora
Perhaps the Spring ski season will allow me to visit more locations around Colorado. There are rumors that we will be going to the Loveland ski area soon.
On the road again with Duncan Madog:
A new Store in Town
We all voted YES to Amendment 64 which legalizes possession, consumption, and cultivation of up to six plants for adults 21 years of age and older, and set in place the outline for the regulation of retail cannabis stores as the above new store hopes to be one of the first on College Avenue. The amendment also sets aside the first 24 Million dollars in Tax revenue from those stores for schools and education. The actual licensing regs won’t be on the books until sometime in 2014 so all of you out East of here needn’t buy your plane tickets to DIA just yet.
The Mason Corridor
2014 is also the year when Transfort will complete the BRT they call MAX. It’s a Bus Rapid Transit system that will run alongside the BNSF tracks between the FoCO downtown transit center and a new South Transit Center just south of Mason and Harmony Street.
Sonny Lubeck field and Hughes is so 2007
Well, maybe there will be a new stadium at CSU by 2015. A new stadium means that ‘better’ football players will come to CSU and then the RAMS will start winning some games like they did back in the Lubeck years. And why should people have to go way way over to Hughes (2 miles from town) when it would be more better right in the middle of CSU campus? Then again there are others who think the old Hughes Stadium is good enough. Why don’t they just build another BRT system to Hughes and save $200 million?
Part One: The concept of the Unibrow.
Oh, look! Someone vandalized this sign.
Those experts in the field of eyebrow fusion call this condition synophrys. It’s from the Greek σύνοφρυς (synophrys, “with meeting eyebrows”). There was this blog started in 2008 but didn’t get very far. Oh well, No Unibrows Allowed, then.
Part two: Man wearing CSU Plumbing hardware
In the twilight zone that is the Art Lab which has new stuff on First Friday. Of course Bloco em Foco does First Friday so I never go.
Lastly, Part three, The Pirate Accordionist
*Pirate Translator output
Near the bike trail:
No prams, pushcarts, baby buggys, strollers, go-carts, bicycles, railcars, hand carts, motor scooters, scooters, skateboards, tricycles, coasters, wheelbarrows, unicycles, segways or sulkies allowed. Horses and canoes are OK.
What a great idea! Collect some insects and pin them to a wall:
Cicadas surrounded by giant leaf insects and walking sticks
Atlas moths around a framed beetle motif
Giant clear winged cicadas around smaller colored winged cicadas around a rhinoceros beetle
More stick insects around giant leaf bugs with an assortment of beetles in the center
Finally alternating locusts and cicadas with a stag beetle center
This is just a small sample of the work by artist Jennifer Angus now showing on the walls of the Lincoln Center Art Gallery in Fort Collins, Colorado. The media are real insects collected from Thailand and Malaysia for the most part and each are pinned into the walls at the art gallery.
From the RM blog archives is this picture taken in February of 2009:
The old sign
It was just a pole with a blue wavy level indicator to let you know that that was one hell of a flood some 15 years ago.
Duncan Madog and the Black Sheep resting on the new sculpture
The grade school style water sign has been replaced with a more artistic and pleasing version (although I though it was a flying goose at first) and the pole is now a buffed stainless steel pyramidal spire with teardrops punched into the steel at regular intervals. And there is more: In addition to the top most water level are three more for comparison. The first level (right under the bike saddle) indicates a 10 year flood. The other two represent a 50 and 100 year flood. You gotta go up another 7 feet to see the top:
In Old Town Square, Fort Collins:
Yet Another Community Drum Circle
This was sort of a last minute assortment of drums and people to celebrate the longest day of the year at 5:09 PM on June 20, 2012.
Some people biked in with their drums
The Black Sheep with Congas in tow
The end is near or maybe a beginning of a new era. In less than one year the 2012 phenomenon will strike! Perhaps a 12 part series will get us in the mood. Locally, here’s what’s up:
We live next to one of the largest volcanoes known; A supervolcano as it is called. Read the writing on the wall: We’re boned!
The Volcanic Explosivity Index (EVI) of Yellowstone is 8.
It has been theorized that the last EVI 8 caused the last Ice Age on earth 75,000 years ago. If Yellowstone were to erupt, there would be no North America as we know it.
Some scientists are watching the bulge
The magma (see diagram above) is something like 30 miles wide and 10 miles deep. Of any and all the 2012 end of the world predictions, this one is the one most likely to occur. The Venus Transient, Galactic Crossing, Polar Shift, Planet X or any of the other so-called predictions have NOTHING on the Yellowstone Volcano. I think Jeanne and I will visit Yellowstone this Spring before it’s too late!
