I woke up this morning and said to myself, “I’m going to Park Point to take pictures of mushrooms in sunbeams,” and indeed I did (some sunbeams not included). Along the way I saw many strange and wondrous things, it was like The Odyssey. Pics below the fold:
I successfully transplanted these phallus impudicus (“impudent phallus,” aka the common stinkhorn) from one end of town to another in my diabolical plan to expand the range of this deLIGHTful species.
THIS IS A JOKE WE ACTUALLY LOVE MERYL STREEP. One night I dreamed my step-brother Martin in Kansas City called Meryl Streep a hack. When I told him about it, we both thought it was so funny, and cracked jokes about it for days. The result is this probably misguided video making fun of Meryl Streep WHOM WE ADORE
While on patrol I found these two big iron flower petal things not too far offshore, wedged among the rocks. They were about 50 feet from each other in around ten feet of water. I think they may be blades from a large boat propeller. Yes I wore a shark fin for this patrol — a couple years ago I encountered a three-foot muskie in this area, and felt it best I should shark up.
Duluth MN circa 15 feet deep: All clear
Beta-test/proof of concept/first annual; video to come. Making music underwater and projecting it on land with hydrophones.
Tischer Creek: I saw this dying 7-inch fish under a foot of water or so, seemingly pinned to a rock by a stick. I moved the stick so it could swim away if it wanted, but it did not want to; I only interrupted the dignity of its final breaths. So I left it to die in peace.
The other day was so warm I didn’t wear a wetsuit, just my Golden Age costume. Didn’t even wear my flippers because I felt natural. I was at the Duluth rock beach called The Ledges — you can see Richardson Island from there. Standing at a sheer drop, in one-foot-deep water, within a step you plunge in @7-8 feet deep. From there, a casual swim to 12-15? I vaguely fear the sight of large fish. Happens sometimes/nothing there this time but the boulders. Loons and mergansers hunt here though. When I came up after a minute my friend Stephen Bockbock said, “I was getting worried about you,” and I said, “I just went to Wisconsin for a second.” Someone said, “Rock.”
Lake Superior Aquaman pink flamingo seagull dive bomb attack, Duluth, Minnesota.
Thanks to citizen @wiscontron for bringing this to my attention. It reads “Lake Superior Aquaman” with a picture of a trident, then someone has followed that with “<- The Admiral Nelson of Great Lakes.”
In 1861, Minnesota Governor Alexander Ramsey was in Washington D.C. when the Confederates started the Civil War. He was in the Oval Office when Lincoln received the fateful telegram detailing the attack on Fort Sumter in South Carolina — the most serious in a string of Southern aggressions, including the seizing of Federal armories across Dixie. Heeding Lincoln’s call for troops, Ramsey walked right up to the President and said, “Mr. President, let Minnesota be the first state to commit 1,000 volunteers to answer this latest outrage from the disloyal states.”
Ramsey’s commitment created the famous fighting force known as the Minnesota First Infantry Regiment. They were the Civil War’s earliest northern enlistees, and they saved the Union at Gettysburg as every Minnesota schoolchild knows. On the third day of that pivotal battle, after Pickett’s Charge, Pvt. Marshall Sherman of St. Paul emerged with the scarred battle flag of the 28th Virginia Infantry. Virginia whines about it to this day but we’re not giving it back neener neener neener.
