Autumn Out With A Bang!

Here it is, the day before the Winter Solstice, the last day of Autumn. What do we get to mark the occasion? A blizzard. Snow started falling here in Parker at about 3:30 AM this morning, and by the time I went to work, it was already getting treacherous. I called it a day shortly after noon, knowing the drive home would be awful. I was not wrong!

Still, I made it safe and sound, despite people with no common sense, driving like maniacs. My little 4x4 Jeep did a good job, but even that was not so sure footed in this mess. By the time it all ends tomorrow afternoon, we expect up to two feet of snowfall. This is also very wet snow, unlike our typical Colorado fluff. The movie above was taken shortly before 2:00 PM, and it is expected to continue like that for at least another day! That is not static on the video, but sideways snow coming down very hard.

Looks like a white solstice and a white Christmas, even if only from the many inches of the stuff left on the ground by next Monday.

Ho, Ho, Ho!

Wisconsin's Historic Capitol

Interior of the dome from the rotunda.

Last summer during my weekend in Madison, I got to go to the Wisconsin Capitol. This is a very impressive building in many ways. The Capitol has four wings, giving the building the symmetry of an "X" shape. Built in the first decade of the 20th Century to replace the previous capitol which was destroyed by fire, the building boasts the largest dome by volume of any in the United States. It is also the only dome built only from granite. Two hundred feet above the floor of the rotunda is "Wisconsin Resources", a painting on the dome's interior by artist Edwin Blashfield, and the outside is graced by a gilded bronze statue, "Wisconsin", by Daniel Chester French. The Wisconsin Capitol is also the only capitol in the country built on an isthmus, as downtown Madison lies on a strip of land separating Lake Mendota and Lake Monona.

The interior of the capitol is crafted of various colors of stone, wood, and gilding, and is very aesthetically pleasing. Some of the stones contain ancient fossils.

In 2001, the Capitol was designated a National Historic Landmark. By state law, no building within a mile of the Capitol may be taller than the base of the columns which surround the dome, insuring the building's place in Madison's skyline.

The city of Madison is one of the more freethinking areas of Wisconsin, and home to one of the nation's most visible advocacy groups for protecting the separation of church & state. To counter officially-sponsored religious displays, every December, the Madison-based Freedom From Religion Foundation, places a plaque at the Wisconsin Capitol that reads:

At this THE WINTER SOLSTICE may reason prevail. There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.

The FFRF has also previously placed a similar plaque in Colorado near the creche mentioned in the post below about Denver's holiday lights, but it has been regularly stolen or vandalized. They eventually included the Biblical command, "Thou shalt not steal" on the back of the plaque.

There are many things to see there, but the Wisconsin Capitol building is well worth the time to visit when in the Madison area.



Interior stairwell near the North Wing.



Exterior of Wisconsin Capitol Dome.

Denver Holiday Lights

One of the annual traditions in Denver is the lighted holiday display at the City and County of Denver building (City Hall). This building lies across Civic Center Park from the Colorado Capitol building, and faces it. It is also just a short walk away from the U.S. Mint that manufactures our coins. On the way home from my company's holiday party at Coors Field tonight, I stopped to take a few photos. These are of the front of the building, which faces east. Here are two of them for you to enjoy.

The display has not been without controversy. The city has a creche on the front steps, which has raised First Amendment issues, but remains as part of the larger display. The display says "Merry Christmas" on one side, and "Happy New Year" on the other. When current mayor John Hickenlooper came into office, he proposed changing the Christmas greeting to the more inclusive "Happy Holidays", since the building belongs to all Denverites. The uproar was too much, so Hickenlooper relented, and "Merry Christmas" remains.

All controversy aside, the lights are breathtaking, and these pictures cannot really convey the impact of seeing them in person. Click on the photos to see a larger version.

Happy Holidays to all!

Prairie Dog

It is getting close to the start of winter here, and this little fellow is probably snuggly hibernating in his burrow tonight. Last summer, he came out long enough for me to get this quick picture of him.

The black tip on his tail tells us he is a member of the Black-Tailed Prairie Dog species, that lives in colonies, or "prairie dog towns" throughout the Great Plains of the United States. These little animals are not "dogs" at all, but a variety of ground squirrel. Their towns are a network of tunnels they create underground, with multiple entrances. They emit a high-pitched bark to warn the others when danger approaches. They are extremely shy.

They also can be somewhat dangerous in the wild, as the fleas they get tend to carry bubonic plague. While today's antibiotics mean the plague is no longer the "Black Death" of medieval times, I still wouldn't want to catch it.

There are other controversies about these cute little animals. As their tunnels can be a nuisance, as well as a danger to cattle stepping into the holes they make, some people poison them by the hundreds. This has caused animal rights activists to fight back, working to relocate colonies rather than allow them to be destroyed.

Here in Northern Colorado, you don't have to look far, even in urbanized areas, to find a prairie dog town. In captivity, they have a lifespan of approximately eight years.

The D & F Tower

My recent journey back to downtown Denver gave me the chance to shoot this photo of the famed Daniels & Fisher Tower, which stands on the 16th Street Mall. This landmark was part of the Daniels & Fisher department store, and according to Wikipedia, was the tallest structure west of the Mississippi at the time of its construction. Wikipedia also notes that it was modelled after The Campanile, or St. Mark's Bell Tower in Venice, Italy, and indeed it looks very much like its Italian sister. (CLICK HERE to see The Campanile).

Daniels & Fisher was acquired by the May Company, and starting in the 1950s, this historic tower became known as the May D & F Tower. When the old department store fell victim to the wrecker's ball around 1980, the clock tower was spared, and it stands vigilant over the passersby on the 16th Street Mall today, nearly 100 years after it was built.

Sweet Deliveries

Hammond's Candy Company is a longstanding Denver institution. Founded in 1920 by Carl Hammond, Sr., the company makes a wide variety of candy canes, lollipops, and other sweet treats, all by hand in their Denver factory. They have also been featured on the television program, Unwrapped on the FoodTV network.

I have visited them before, but earlier this month, I took my wife, my daughter-in-law, and my granddaughter to the annual Hammond's Christmas Candy Cane Festival. It is a good event for children and families, as there are activities for them, live reindeer, Santa, and of course, lots of candy canes and lollipops!

One thing that always catches my attention at the Hammond's factory is their old delivery truck, which is seemingly always parked out front. It is a bit of Hammond's history. I don't know the details behind it, but it was manufactured by International Harvester. I would guess from the look of it, that it is a late 1940s to mid 1950s model. Hopefully, it won't just be left to rust in the elements, but perhaps eventually be restored to its original condition. You just don't see many of these still around anymore.

The IH logo of International Harvester has another place in my childhood memories. They used to manufacture a variety of products, from farm implements, to trucks, and even household appliances. When I was a child, we had an International Harvester refrigerator that bore the IH brand. This was before the days of "frost-free". I can still recall my mother defrosting the freezer section of that refrigerator. How times have changed.

The Ultimate Authority

In a time where theocrats & theocons are meeting some degree of success in their efforts to transform America into a fundamentalist Christian version of Iran, it is refreshing to see the values of the Founding Fathers reflected in the town hall of the municipality where I live. Despite the fact that our freedom is largely because of the separation of church & state guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, there are many today who would institute a Christian government here. How they forget that our government receives its powers from "We the people"; that this is a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people", as President Lincoln reiterated in his famous address in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania and that kings supposedly ruling by divine right, appointed by God; are not an American value. Liberty's greatest enemy has been the rule of the church.

That rule gave us the Inquisition, the Salem Witch Trials, and the Dark Ages. Yesterday, the church threatened the life of Galileo, declared Copernicus a heretic, and burned Bruno at the stake. Today, the church remains the enemy of advancement and progress by pushing ignorance about Darwinian evolution and modern cosmology to be taught in public schools as science. It seeks to shut down stem cell research which could save the lives of millions, and alleviate the suffering of millions more; all for the idea that a fertilized ova has rights superior to those of a living human being.

Therefore, I am greatly pleased that the town of Parker, Colorado recognized the rule of the people on its Town Hall by posting the quote from James Madison that affirms that "The ultimate authority . . . resides in the people alone."

Coneys

Something I try to do is cut bad things out of my diet when possible. I don't go overboard, but given a choice, I will select dairy products from cows not given antibiotics or bovine growth hormones. I avoid heart-clogging transfats nowadays, and seek to limit my intake of products containing high-fructose corn syrup as a sweetener.

Still, there are some guilty pleasures in life that I won't give up. One of those is my love for a good, authentic coney island hot dog. I have yet to find one in Colorado that measures up, despite my search for such a thing. Yet there are some places around this great nation where I know I can get a coney that measures up to my culinary standards of taste, texture, and consistency.

Our first stop on this weiner tour is Curtis Famous Weiners at 35 North Liberty Street in Downtown Cumberland, Maryland. Serving the appetites of Allegany County since 1918, this is your quintessential, hole-in-the-wall coney dog joint. When I lived in Cumberland in the early 1970s, I lived on two things...Diatri's cheesesteak subs and Curtis' hot dogs. Curtis' claims to be the oldest business still operating in Cumberland. Their coneys are a delight for the hot dog lover!

Next stop is the original Coney Island in downtown Tulsa, Oklahoma. This is another establishment with a history, having been in business since the 1920s. Here is my typical fare at the Tulsa Coney Island; 3 coneys with cheese, onions, & coney island chili, a bag of Frito's corn chips and a large Pepsi Cola. This is pure delight. The Tulsa dogs are commonly eaten with a dusting of ground cayenne pepper over the top.

Finally, we end our tour in Houston, Texas, home of James' Coney Island. James has gone from being a downtown hot dog place, to a multi-outlet chain in the Houston area. You can get everything from a Chicago dog with sport peppers, to a corn dog. Don't waste your time on those pretenders, however. Go for the original chili-cheese coney with onions.

I know there are other good coneys to be had in other places, but these three are my favorites!

Downtown Cowboy

Denver is well known for its many displays of public art and sculpture. Since I don't get downtown much anymore, I tend to notice things that pop up between visits.

I don't know how long this cowboy guitarist mural has been gracing the side of this building near the west end of the 16th Street Mall, but it was new to me when I first saw it last week. I checked out the Denver Public Art brochure (available by CLICKING HERE) and found nothing about it.

This type of picture would not likely be found in cities of the east coast, but instead harkens back to Denver's part in the history of cowboys in the west. The singing cowboy and his guitar are integral to the mythos of the American West, and it is good to see this image silently serenading people walking or riding by.

Denver Union Station

Union Station in Lower Downtown Denver, Colorado is a beautiful old train station that is slated to be the centerpiece of a new residential, office, and retail development. Already, it is a transportation hub, served by the city's RTD light rail and bus services, as well as Amtrak trains to Los Angeles and Chicago.

This classic train station has long been a landmark for travelers and locals alike, and was once bustling with passengers going to points all over the country. Today, it is owned by the Regional Transportation District, and will be joined by new buildings housing stores, townhouses and offices.

In the basement of this beautiful train station, is one of the world's largest "O" scale model railroads, the Colorado Midland Railway, which is maintained by the Denver Society of Model Railroaders. This model railroad occupies 6500 square feet, and the trains traverse 4000 linear feet of track. The CMR was not part of the Union Station redevelopment plans, but it so happens that Denver Mayor, John Hickenlooper is a big fan. He led the effort to preserve the model railroad at Union Station, and because of his initiative, it will remain there for years to come.

Whether you are there as part of your travel or commute, or just passing through town, Union Station on Wynkoop Street is a place not to miss.

Western Maryland

Last week during a visit to my in-laws' home in West Virginia, I took a day trip to visit some old friends in Cumberland, Maryland. I lived in Cumberland back in the 1970s, and it is still one of my favorite places. Nestled in the hills of the Alleghenys, Cumberland is a very historic city. It was home to the headquarters of General George Washington during the American Revolution. It was also a major transportation hub in the early days of the United States, when it served as the western terminus of the famed Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, the eastern terminus of the National Road (now US 40), which ran from Cumberland to Columbus, Ohio; and eventually to Vandalia, Illinois. Cumberland is also a major rail center for the CSX (formerly B&O, C&O, and Western Maryland) rail line.

While I got to Cumberland too late to take any pictures there, my wife and I stopped along the way to have lunch at one of our favorite places. That place is Penn Alps in Grantsville, Maryland, located west of Cumberland in Garrett County. The grounds of Penn Alps contain the restaurant, an artisan village, and the old Casselman River bridge, seen in the photo above. Built in 1813, it was the longest single-span stone bridge in America at the time. It was actually made tall enough for the C&O Canal traffic to go under it, but the advent of the railroad meant the canal was never extended west from Cumberland. The bridge is also at the site where Generals Washington and Braddock crossed in 1755 on their way to Fort Duquesne (Pittsburgh, PA). An interesting side note: The historical marker references "Castleman's River", while all other signs in the area call it "Casselman River".

Just to the south of the Casselman bridge are two other bridges built over the years. First is the US 40 bridge, followed by the Interstate Highway 68 bridge over the Casselman River.

As I mentioned above, US 40 follows the route of the old National Road. Milestones were placed at points along the road to tell travelers the distance to major points. Not far from the Casselman River Bridge in Grantsville is one of these historic cast iron mileposts. A similar one that sat six miles to the east is now on display at the Smithsonian. CLICK HERE to read more about that one. According to the Smithsonian, these markers were cast in the foundry of Major James Francis, at Connellsville, Pennsylvania. They were put in place in the late 1830s or early 1840s.

If you would like to see a display with a photo of another similar marker in a photo from the early 1900s, you can download a PDF of the Maryland display for where the National Road left Maryland and entered Pennsylvania by CLICKING HERE.

There is so much history in the entire Western Maryland, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia area, that it is well worth making a trip there if you can.

America Wakes Up!

Somehow I feel like quoting President Gerald Ford is appropriate. "Our long national nightmare is over". Well, maybe not quite, but I cannot express the hope and joy I feel at knowing there are checks and balances returning to our national government. It is like, despite the Republican gerrymandered districts, despite the outcome of the elections since 2000, that the voters finally woke up from a long nap and realized what autocratic, one-party rule has done to our Constitution and our nation.

In a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton in 1887, Lord Acton made the oft-quoted statement, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely". With the GOP in charge of all the branches of government, we have seen the truth in Lord Acton's assertion. The Republicans developed an arrogance that resulted in an attitude of all or nothing. The "uniter, not a divider" sitting in the oval office, and his cohorts in the Congress did everything but unite us.

After the attacks of September 11, the country rallied around the President; and the world rallied around the United States. All thoughts about whether President Bush had legitimacy after the elections of 2000 went away. Over the last five years, the administration squandered both the goodwill of the American people and of the world at large. People understood when the United States went into Afghanistan in search of Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban regime that supported him. If the government had stayed focused on the sources of terrorism, I don't think there would have been much argument from anyone.

As we know, the President didn't stop there. He saw a justification to tie Iraq and his father's nemesis, Saddam Hussein, to the "War on Terror". No matter that Iraq never attacked us, nor presented any credible clear and present danger to America. Saddam was well contained within no-fly zones in his own country, sanctions were keeping him in check, and Hans Blix and his team of weapons inspectors were finally able to do their job.

Still, the President using various claims to rush into an elective invasion of a sovereign country, kept changing his reasons for pressing ahead into Iraq. Some of the ever-changing rationalization included:
• Saddam already had “Weapons of Mass Destruction”
• Saddam had plotted with Al Qaeda and would share his WMD with them
• We could not allow a hostile state of Iraq to control a large portion of the world’s petroleum supplies
• Saddam had invaded his neighbor, and would do so again if given the chance
• Saddam had purchased yellow-cake uranium from Africa in his drive to build nuclear weapons
• Bring freedom to the long-oppressed Iraqi people, who would greet our troops as liberators
In the build up to war, Secretary of State Colin Powell sullied his reputation by going to the United Nations, showing satellite photos of trucks, and backing the claim of the administration that these were mobile weapons laboratories. They were just trucks. Nothing more, nothing less.

Then we were told that the Iraqi’s would pay the financial costs of the war with the profits from the sales of their oil. Instead, a budget surplus has turned into a huge financial deficit for this country’s taxpayers. Billions of dollars of what Bush called “the peoples’ money” back in 2000, wasted, missing, and handed over to Vice President Cheney’s former company, Halliburton, in no-bid contracts in Iraq.

The Bush regime then went on to equate the President with the country; saying anyone who criticized the actions of the administration were “aiding the terrorists” and were not patriotic Americans. Opposite-speak became the order of the day; dissent was not patriotic, but treasonous.

The Constitution was put through the GOP shredder as well, starting with no-warrant wiretaps, and collection of everyone’s telephone call records, making every citizen a terrorism suspect. The FISA courts were deemed as interference in the President’s power.

Then, most shameful of all, a GOP reinterpretation of the Geneva Convention rules created a new category of POWs called “enemy combatants”, which made it fine for the US to torture and hold indefinitely. Habeas Corpus suspended, and now anyone the President declares to be suspect can be held without charges, without facing his or her accuser. The America who has stood up for human rights now sends suspected “enemy combatants” to secret torture camps in rogue states.

On the domestic front, the President’s GOP allies in Congress intimidated the Democratic oversight of the President’s appointments by threatening the so-called Nuclear Option. This would have been a vote by the Republican majority to eliminate the one tool held by the minority party, the philibuster. These bullying tactics allowed the GOP to castrate the Democrats and render them unable to fulfill their role in the checks and balances available under our two-party system.

I could go on and on, but the above examples are why I am absolutely ecstatic over the Democrats taking back the House of Representatives and the Senate. I am actually not a big fan of many things the Democrats do as well, but there needs to be brakes on the runaway Republican arrogance and authoritarian rule.

I hold no illusion that everything will be fixed. The President still holds a veto pen. Still, the voters have finally had enough, and have given a rare opportunity for the Democrats to re-establish our democratic republic and our Constitution. It is my hope that several things occur:
• The President will take the election to heart, and try to compromise with the Congress
• The Democrats, while providing oversight, will not try to overreach and end up alienating the voters. There is a great danger of winning this battle and losing it all in 2008.
• Eliminate the unconstitutional provisions of the Patriot Act and other legislation enacted by the GOP during the last few years that violates civil rights
• Work to craft as clean an exit as possible from the civil war in Iraq
• Prove to Americans that while we can never be totally safe, we can fight terrorism and defend our people without destroying liberty to protect it

For the first time in at least five years, I am optimistic about the future of our great nation. The voters have decided that one-party rule isn’t working. I look to our elected representatives of both parties to take this opportunity to restore sanity to our government. I hope they do.