Berry Berry Good to Me

I have the luxury of living near an agricultural research center, so even though I live in a "city," a short walk of five minutes puts me among cattle pastures, corn fields and a swamp (er, sorry, wet-lands). And I've been doing more walking there, which makes me more attentive of the flora and fauna than people who just sachet through in their Hummers (which I do too, sans Hummer).

I did not realize that the road-side is filled with berries! Last weekend there were a goodly number of mulberries and black raspberries that looked ripe (the left and middle photos). The mulberries were pretty decent sized, but the raspberries are just tiny little buds. I have to admit that I snacked on the ripe ones, which I quite enjoyed. There is a huge patch of blackberries (the right photo), but they are definitely not ripe yet. When they are, I will definitely be there to partake, thorns permitting.

Wednesday I stopped briefly to take these photos (but not to take fruit), and just at that moment a service security guard pulled up and asked me what I was doing. I figured I would get a scolding, but what actually happened was she first assumed I was a USDA worker (!), and then she warned me to look out for deer (!). Not as one nature lover to another, and not for any health reason, but just to beware that a deer might jump out and spook me! How considerate.

As a kid I used to sneak-and-snack on neighbors' berry patches that were hanging over the sidewalk. My dad and I were even more brazen at the local university, which planted Service Berry trees around the campus library (we knew them as Juneberries). We would troop to the library with buckets and come back with them full! Juneberries are a little like blueberries, but a little fleshier. Curious college students would stop and ask questions, assuming we were university staff cleaning up toxic plant material. Little did they know. I'm not really a nature-boy, but I know a few good berries when I see them. I am guessing some friends must have even more berry experience than I do.

Footnote: the title is a play on a friend's play on words.

I'll Fly Away

Here I am wrangling my little insect friend on the set of the next blockbuster movie hit, The Butterfly Whisperer. Thank goodness my camera was ready just then.

Update: now I know it's a "Red-spotted Purple."

New Shoes

Apparently I am now equipped for the hybrid sport of soccer-bowling.

A Tarnished Silver Lining

I'm watching a television show on PBS called Haley's Hints. It's pledge week and they seem to be running a scad of 1-minute household hints all together. Here are some of the hints:

• Cleaning pet hair from your couch with kitchen gloves;
• Opening a tight peanut butter jar with a rubber band as a gripper;
• Removing tarnish from silver with water softener and table salt;
• Storing old gift wrapping paper and wallpaper rolls in panty hose!
  

These are pretty cool hints. Technology and wealth have created tremendous benefits to our society, but they also have created the strangest of little problems that need to be solved. Like, "what the heck will I do with all this old wrapping paper and panty hose?"

I wonder, what would a third-world person think if they saw this show? American culture is pervasive. Perpetual TV re-runs of Dallas and Webster have guaranteed that, so the rest of the world knows about western proclivities. While Juan is sorting coffee beans in his hut, he can dream of the time when he can clean his own silver.

Now please excuse me, I need to buy some panty hose.

Mountains of Uselessness

I usually let my incoming (physical) mail stack up quite a bit before I pay attention to it. That may not always be a good thing when it comes to paying bills on time... I realized just now why I resist paying the bills. It's not the pain of actually paying the bill, but rather the hunting through mountains of crap mail to find the good stuff and real bills. The photo above shows three weeks of junk on the left, and the important stuff on the right (it's almost imperceptible).

It doesn't stop with the two or three "Pennysaver" fliers per week. Nor does it stop with the actual junk mail. Nor the credit card offer from United Airlines every week for the past three years! No, even when I open actual bills, there is more junk mail inside. My phone company keeps urging me to sign up for DSL service even though I tried them, their service quality was crap, and I canceled my account with them. Thank goodness my family doesn't send me junk mail too!

I probably get more than 500 pages of junk material per month. That's a whole ream of paper! In comparison about 20 pages of that is stuff valuable to me: letters from friends or important bills. If we are ever serious about becoming a "green" society, we really need to get rid of junk mail. With over 105 million households in the US, there are probably about 3 million tons of paper going to waste every year.

We talk about email "spam" filtering. I would really like to have physical junk mail filtering as well. But unlike spam which usually gets filtered at the receiving end, I think junk mail should be filtered at the sending end. I get so much repeat junk mail, it would make sense to have a little box on the envelope marked "⊗ RETURN TO SENDER, DON'T EVER SEND ME THIS CRAP AGAIN."

I realize that this is not a new topic, but I just had to vent for a moment. Now I know how Andy Rooney feels.

Police Release Me

Yesterday I was waiting at a traffic light to turn left. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. For three full cycles I waited with another car in front of me while all the other traffic directions were allowed to pass, but we were not. Finally both of us realized that something was wrong with the traffic light (or the sensor), and decided to turn left against the red light, when the way was clear.

Of course, a police car appeared out of nowhere immediately and chased after us. Not surprising since it's next to a police station. I pulled over, but the police car zoomed past and snagged the first guy. At first I drove away, but eventually I realized it wasn't fair for the other guy to get tagged for a defective traffic signal¹, so I drove around and talked at the officer. I say "talked at" because he wasn't really interested in hearing anything I had to say. After I explained my version in twenty words, he ignored me for about fifteen seconds, and then blurted some kind of joke (I guess) which was meant to get me to leave (I guess). Me, being Mr. Slow-on-the-uptake, took a little while to figure this out. I did park and give my phone number to the guy being cited, in case he needed a witness for court.

Later the guy in the other car did call me to thank me. It turns out the officer did not cite him for a moving violation, but did write a citation for some other minor infraction. It turned out mostly okay.²

The thing that ticked me off was that we could have been waiting at that light for 20 seconds, or 20 minutes, and no matter when we finally decided turn, that cop could have showed up just at that moment. Police officers do a great service to our community, which I appreciate. In principle he did the right thing for pulling (one of) us over. On the other hand, it's pretty unfair that citizens should be punished for a defective traffic signal.

¹ - The other man was African American so I was a little concerned he would be arrested for DWB, while I got a free pass.
² - The other man wondered if the traffic light problem was a set-up. It is the end of the month. Did officer have to meet a quota?

Secret Easter Service

Goddard was swarming with Secret Service agents during the visit of the Queen. It turns out that they are locals: their training facility is just north of Goddard. Many Goddard people have seen a mysterious black SUV if they leave the Center on Soil Conservation Road. That SUV is guarding the Secret Service facility. Let's take an interactive tour:

A B C D E F G

Click for detail: Fake Town | Fake Airport | Driving Range | Performance Range | Underground Storage | Obstacle Course | Black SUV

The fake town and fake airport are for "real-life" exercises involving urban and airport situations. You can see that there is a simulated half of Air Force One, but not the whole airframe. I've seen a television program where agents were shown practicing various security activities (VIP arriving by airport, bombing in an urban environment).

The driving test range appears to have different kinds of paved street configurations, presumably for practice cornering and turning. The "performance" range, as I called it, is probably for high performance manuevering practice, like "J-turns" (you can even see the turn guide lines painted on the tarmac). It also appears to have a heli-pad.

I'm guessing that point E is some kind of underground storage, perhaps for munitions (especially considering the Jersey barriers obstructing the entrance). The obstacle course is not so obvious, but it's easier to see on Microsoft's Live Map of the location, and it contains a bunch of different swings, pits and balancing obstacles. It looks challenging!

Finally of course, the Black SUV (or maybe it's a van on the day this photo was taken) is present near the intersections of Soil Conservation Road and Powdermill Road.

There are probably other Easter Eggs to find, it just takes some diligent scanning. For example, the old Beltsville Agricultural Center airport is just to the southeast, and I believe the Secret Service uses that for training as well.

By the way, none of this is particularly secret. All these maps and satellite photos are available to the public via Google Maps, and several of the locations listed above were showcased on a recent Sixty Minutes story about the Secret Service.
This map brought to you by GMapEZ and Google Maps.