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Scholastic Background (a lifetime in school):
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One summer session and two semesters to go.
My real home – where cool and scientific heads have always prevailed and mirthly pleasures abound – is up in the hinterlands of Northwest Wisconsin: A genuine old-growth forest and partly navigable wetland, filled with a variety of forest and swamp creatures, some photos of which are below. Spare time at home is filled with treats and adventures such as indulging in Kellie's special formulation of pomegranate meringue pie and hitting the road to obscure geographical spots written about by the old, forgotten explorers. One such area comprises the real headwaters of the Mississippi River that flow and seep into Lake Itasca and continue on to the Gulf of Mexico. Why just do the slippery, skull-cracking walk across Itasca's outlet when you can seek out extreme sources such as Howard Creek whose head starts the longest perennial course of open water through the Mississippi River to the Gulf (except for tributaries of the Missouri, one must note at least parenthetically). Lake Superior is good for all seasons as might be hinted at here, and there are a few weeks in most years that we can truck on over the ice road to Madeline Island as seen in this movie taken with my pocket-size dashcam. Sand Island once supported the northernmost community in Wisconsin and lately has become my favorite island of them all. Some photos are here and here. Coming belatedly soon are photos of an excursion to Devil's Island. At weekend's end (sounds sad, doesn't it), I make like Odysseus in reverse – leaving fair Ithaca to return to Troy to slog through another week's tour of duty. [insert winky face here] As for what I've been piloting over the past decade, my sleek and trusty Mitsubishi-built 2001 Dodge Stratus Coupe (shown here on April 28) continues its commensurate journey well past the moon and some asteroids, having hit 400,000 miles on April 27. Speaking of the workplace, here is a list of items we have been teaching in Microbiology (formerly Bacteriology) 102 at UW-Madison for many years. The subject certainly matters. There is a framework behind all this which one may not find in a lab manual. The overall theme of this course has been what bacterial cells do and how they fit into the scheme of things. What they look like is relatively insignificant, although one might think they really should be twice their size in order to account for all their doings.
On this job, I have just wrapped up Semester No. 133 (counting summer sessions), and enough blather about my work-related activities and general attitude (which really hasn't been too bad) can be found here. Occasionally something interesting shows up on my (Petri) plate like an interesting green alga from my expeditions to the actual headwaters of the Mississippi River. It's always reasonably fun to isolate purple non-sulfur photosynthetic bacteria from rain, snow, icicles and hailstones and then see if any can produce hydrogen. Adding stuff to the web continues to be enjoyable. I am still doing HTML the old-fashioned way, building on what I taught myself back in 1997 when I discovered it was intuitive and easy. (Go to your browser's source viewer and check it out.) A marketed HTML editor finds no place in my desert island emergency kit. Anyone can do it; just keep the code clean and modular. My favorite HTML-checking web browser suggests that I move up to XHTML and stylesheets which may not be a bad idea, as the browsers of the near future just might not lower themselves to recognize HTML 3.2 any more! As for old browsers, I remember getting a lot of enjoyment using the old state-of-the-art and speech-capable (and still-downloadable!) NCSA Mosaic 3.0beta4. By the way, here is the Web's First Splammo Page.
Where does the hardly-earned money go? Partly to fund badly-needed playtime and the aforementioned escapes into the real world – an additional example of which is shown here. On the right are photos (taken with real film!) that show (1) a sunset taken from the top of Bell Mound near Black River Falls on Sept. 13, 2001 when dark clouds in general were no longer just on the horizon, (2) a view of Jackson Hole, Wyoming suitable for calendars and postcards that was taken in August, 1961 and (3) a similar view of the Smoky Mountains in North Carolina taken in May, 1975. The Apostle Islands area has always ranked high on my list of cool places. Wisconsin has every bit as much photogenic scenery as any other state. Click on the photo below which shows some Lindquist generations (circa 1915) immediately preceding mine. Among the three kids in the front row, spot the future school principal and architect, the future farmer, and the future aerospace engineer. In 1920, my grandfather Clarn (on the far right) built a barn on his farm near Hayward; click here for a recent photo. Later in the '20s, he sharpened the saws for the Schroeder logging operation on Outer Island which is shown here.
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- The traffic-halting snowstorm near Osseo, Wisconsin on November 10, 2006.
- Videos of important geographic sites at the Itasca State Park, Headwaters of the Mississippi River: Hernando de Soto Lake, Nicollet Creek's headwaters, and a short stretch of Howard Creek.
- A visit to the site of the old Lullabye logging camp on Outer Island which fluorished in the 1950s.
- The Brass Note on Beale Street is awarded to James Griffin (lead singer of Bread among many other accomplishments) on November 20, 2010.
- More videos from the trip to Memphis: A "glory" as observed from a jet airliner and the Memphis riverfront in drier times.
- Pelicans flying above the beach at San Diego, California.
- Driving the Madeline Island Ice Road with Beethoven.
- The historic Brule-St.Croix portage along the swamp that drains out both ways.
- A quick look under the ice of the Namekagon River in the early spring.
- Below the Mauston dam on the Lemonweir River, observing strange ice formations, sturgeon spawning, and various other wonders. (Play it loud!)
- A flooded highway in Dane County. (Play it louder!) A still photo of the area is shown here.
- Bacteriological movies so far: Tube-to-tube transfers and Streak-plating.
Back to the Animal Farm:
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Up in my neck of the woods, various interesting animals have been observed including Domino the black squirrel who could chew through wood and plastic and destroy all kinds of "squirrel-proof" bird feeders, Little Ollie the good-natured teddy-bear type who was unjustly accused of taking down our feeders, and a big mama bear with triplets who got caught in the act performing a precision pulling operation to take the feeders down. Here she comes to examine the source of the flash, only to take a most unflattering self portrait. For photographing these shy creatures at night, I use a wide-angle camera with an automatic motion detector. Genuine forest animals – wise to the ways of the great outdoors! Bright, motivated, self-aware, professional, prosperous and innovative. A true joy to observe. For the truth about black bears and some great videos, go to bear.org. Garbage cans have always been a natural attractant for animals. Here is Little Ollie down on one elbow scanning the bottom for the serial number, and here is one of our rather large raccoons. Delighting all who saw her strolling through her domain was this genuine albino doe who appeared as big as a horse and was first seen in our woods in February 1999 prancing through the snow. A photogallery is shown here. A couple years later, she disappeared and a smaller albino doe showed up in her place, appearing more goat-like. She is caught here with the bear camera, and a couple photogalleries are shown here and here. She especially loved walnuts, and if presented with an apple and a similar-sized scoop of mashed potatoes, she would take the mashed potatoes every time and just sniff at the apple. We lost her as the result of a car accident in early November 2004. The "regular" kind of deer are all we have now, and they are still fascinating to watch. The ravens can put on a good show, sometimes spending a lot of time passing things real and imaginary from one to another. Here is a male tanager soon to acquire his scarlet plumage for mating season. And here are some very young birds at the communal bath trying to figure out their new world. In the summer, we often see insects bouncing around like tiny blue balls of cotton – traveling in a small pack, flying skillfully against the wind and landing preferentially on raspberry and black cherry leaves. When we first noticed them in the back yard about a decade ago, we decided they shall be called fuzzy blue cherry gnats, and I searched the literature in vain for their true identification. Lately an increasing number of photos and descriptions of such insects are showing up on the web, so what we have here is one of many species of wooly aphids. My Mom loved sitting by the picture window and watching the animals emerge from the woods. Here is her photo of twin bear cubs resting in the back yard. |
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Life is far more important than what you do for a living. | |||||
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This homepage was originally placed on the web Jan. 28, 1997 and found sanctuary (from hackers and webserver failures which used to plague all my web content) on jlindquist.com in 2001. Latest updating of content herein was on May 22, 2013 at 1:45 PM, CDT. Bacteriological Email: lindquis @ bact.wisc.edu |
The weather back home:
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Vamos a torcer de nuevo, como lo hicimos el verano pasado.