Mother Goose in California

My dad has just published a new book. It's an alphabet book that takes classic mother goose rhymes and illustrates them using California landmarks, activities, and native flora and fauna. Every page is densely detailed and repays close scrutiny. For example, on the page for letter V, which shows a cozy rabbit family in a firelit cabin, the constellations in the upper corners are Canis Major and Orion---the domestic life of the rabbits is subtly shadowed by two threats, the dog and the hunter.

The book combines dad's attention to detail, his whimsical appreciation of nature, and his love of the local. It's fantastic.

Buy a copy from Heyday or from Amazon.

Here's a video of dad talking about the book.

Strategic Butter Reserve

Bricks of Wisconsin butter stockpiled at Solly's, outside Milwaukee.

The butter deployed on a Solly's butter burger:



The veggie version (which, when it was ordered, the waitress made sure we knew had no meat):

Return to the Schwartz House

We stayed in the Schwartz House in Two Rivers, Wisconsin with some old friends last weekend. The Schwartz House is a Usonian house, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1940. The inside of the house smells like the cedar that the ceilings are made of. The floors seem to be made out of smooth concrete and are warm to the touch. And you can use the fireplace:



We first stayed at the house back in November of 2005.

You can see more pictures of the place on Flickr.

Basketball Carnival

As discussed before, the most entertaining part of watching the Bulls is the variety of entertainment that runs out onto the court or descends from the rafters during breaks in play. This time, we saw t-shirts fired into the crowd from gattling guns, slingshots and bazookas, BMX bikers doing flips, drummers drumming on buckets, a dance competition between spectators, a karaoke contest (pictured above), a bull-shaped remote-controlled blimp (also pictured above), and a race between an animated cup of coffee, a donut, and a bagel.

The Bulls won, entitling us to free Big Macs.

Palm Springs Windmills

Touring Palm Springs' collection of windmill farms, we learned that modern windmills turn to face the wind and that there are five reasons that a windmill surrounded by turning windmills might itself not be turning:

1. Routine maintenance
2. It hasn't reached its minimum start up speed
3. It has reached its maximum speed and has switched off to avoid flying apart
4. It is obsolete and is being cannibalized for parts
5. The windmill is undergoing tests before it goes on-line

I forgot to ask why white is the default color for windmills.

The Hideaway

Overflow from the Orbit In goes to the Hideaway, about a block away. The Hideaway lacks a hot tub but it does have a grapefruit tree that supplies grapefruits for breakfast.