John A. Lindquist
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Scholastic Background
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I'm Still Here.But my real home – where cool and scientific heads have always prevailed and mirthly pleasures abound – is way off 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. However, to almost-verbatimize the O'Neill character on Stargate SG-1, I have none of those pesky fish in my pond. (But it does have a lighthouse!) Spare time at home is filled with stuff like running off to Lake Superior (which is good in all seasons as might be hinted at here) and indulging in such treats as Kellie's patented sour cream pomegranate meringue pie. Why I felt I had to retire some years ago has long since dissipated. Even though the concept of retirement has become increasingly attractive of late, I am still here – if you don't mind – and I certainly ain't done yet. There are always many positive and compelling things going on with the subject matter at hand. Take a look at a list of items we have been teaching in Bacteriology (now Microbiology) 102 over the years. There is a framework behind all this; follow only the lab manual and you will wind up with a house of cards. 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. The students have an opportunity to learn a lot of basic microbiology in reasonably organized fashion from Day One, and this has always been so – no matter how short the amenities may have been in our various teaching laboratories over the years. What an insult to think otherwise. If you would like to see how well you can do on one of our old Bact. 102 finals, click here or download a pdf file of it here. Check your answers here. Ph.D. prelims could include a lot of this stuff. Happening as of 2007 – what with the recent and drastic funding cuts inflicted upon this and many other worthy courses – is the replacement of some of the in-lab exercises with web-based equivalents where it has been found appropriate to do so. Subject Matter is still number one, and armchair microbiology certainly does not rule. That would be criminal. Beyond the usual and expected study of chemoorganotrophic bacteria which include food spoilage organisms, general contaminants and many important pathogens, we also concern ourselves in Micro 102 with purple non-sulfur photosynthetic bacteria which are actually quite easy to enrich for and isolate, even from hailstones! Why stop with the traditional (1) respirers and (2) fermenters when there are also (3) phototrophs that need our attention? For a "general" course, we should also be doing something with the fascinating worlds of cyanobacteria and chemolithotrophs. Also, our old-school method of determining "oxygen relationships" has only limited application, appeal and ability to be taught properly. Why not simply teach how organisms generate their energy (there are at least five ways) and how one can test these processes directly? Relevant to this, a "white board" that developed during a recent laboratory lecture on general catabolism is shown here.
Certainly microbial consortia are a practical consideration for demonstration and discussion. In my explorations of sandy areas up north, I occasionally come across classic examples of cryptobiotic soil – those places where mixtures of chemotrophic and phototrophic microorganisms turn the inorganic into organic and initiate substrates for higher forms of life. These organisms are Nature's Terraformers – important in the early stages of the process wherein sand develops into topsoil. They can appear as clumps of steel wool and as velvety pincushions, and cutting one open (after one gets an official permit to collect a sample) reveals a core of sand. Click on the two nearby photos which were taken while visiting the Apostle Islands. Microscopically one can readily see fungi and also filamentous and unicellular algae and cyanobacteria. I have yet to check out what bacteria may be present. Aside from these "soil lichens," iron bacteria are another mixed group of organisms that I have been treating superficially (so far) on the web. Regarding the webworks, I am still pumping out the not-so-interactive reference material in an attempt to upload what little I know about bacteriology besides what is in the 2006 lab manual cited below. The catabolism page arose out of an attempt to summarize energy/electron/ATP generation in the Farm Microbiology Short Course (a bright spot in the school year) where lecture time is very short indeed. It is always best to summarize the basic strategy of any biological process first. For catabolism, then, further details can come along as time and relevancy to the course permit and include such things as specific intermediates and pathways, the internal electron transfers in fermentation pathways, and what photoorganotrophy really amounts to. Another web effort is the beta-galactosidase page which is hidden away here. More bacteriological concepts whose practical applications and interpretations tend to follow basic patterns include quantitation, media, isolation, identification, and the cycles of elements. (Google dilution plating, genotypic identification and cycles of elements and see what comes up on top – also proper usage of terms, for that matter.) These things are gone over in the web pages expanded upon below and also in the 2006 manual. The enteric bacteria are especially suited as practical examples to use in the explanation of differential media and genotypic identification, and that is where I tend to concentrate my interest concerning these organisms. I am no general enteric expert.
Here's a generality that seems to hold up well: All dilution plating problems are basically the same problem but with different variables. The same sort of thing goes when one is interpreting the various pH-based differential media. The solutions to these things need not be made unnecessarily complicated, and each particular medium or dilution problem need not be dealt with from scratch as a special case, for crying out loud. Once we can see the overall framework behind things, perhaps we can find a way to summarize everything such that it can fit on one side of a 5 X 7 note card! No lab protocol is perfect in its content or organization, and there is always a need for improving such things. Students can look at a manual protocol for an upcoming experiment and come up with a clarified flow chart to get the lab done efficiently. Also, with a good command of basic microbiology, any thoughtful instructor or student can come up with some really creative ways of doing and finding out certain things, and it is encouragement of that sort of thing that is behind the thought exercise here. So, enough with the deprecation of lab manuals (and oxygen relationships, for that matter). I am still doing HTML the old-fashioned way, building on what I taught myself back in 1997 when I discovered it was fun, easy and intuitive. Anyone can do it. My favorite HTML-checking web browser suggests that I move up to XHTML and stylesheets which would not be a bad idea, as the browsers of the near future just might not lower themselves to recognize HTML 3.2 any more! Here are a couple ancient items from the archives, rendered with the old state-of-the-art, speech-capable and still-available browser NCSA Mosaic 3.0beta4 for the Mac: The HTML Page and The Web's First Splammo Page. The latter – viewed not so well with Netscape Mosaic 0.93beta – is shown here. Remember the old browser wars of a decade ago? A 1997 website on the subject has been recently resurrected and can be enjoyed here. As for splammo, one can consult the Urban Dictionary site for the precise definition of this most useful word.
Where does the hardly-earned money go? Partly to fund badly-needed playtime and escapes into the real world such as what might be seen here. On the right are (1) a sunset taken Sept. 13, 2001 from the top of Bell Mound near Black River Falls, (2) a view of Jackson Hole, Wyoming taken in August, 1961 and (3) a similar view of the Smoky Mountains in North Carolina taken in May, 1975. A couple pages of Black River Falls area photos begin here, and the Apostle Islands area still ranks No. 1 on my list of cool places. Wisconsin has every bit as much photogenic scenery as any other state. Some more photos taken with real film: Click on the one 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. He also sharpened the saws for a major logging operation on Outer Island in the 1920s which is shown here.
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Lindquist, J. A. and J. J. Farmer III.
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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. (But aren't bears generally known to be pushy?) Here she comes to check out 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 and prosperous. A true joy to observe. Garbage cans have always been a natural attractant for animals. Here is Little Ollie down on one elbow checking 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 Maureen II (caught here with the bear camera), the albino deer who popped out of the woodwork in 2002, replacing the first Maureen who appeared as big as a horse and was first seen in our woods in February 1999 prancing through the snow. A couple photogalleries of Maureen II are here and here (she loved walnuts), and one of the first Maureen is here. If presented with an apple and a similar-sized scoop of mashed potatoes, Maureen II would take the mashed potatoes every time and just sniff at the apple. We lost her in a car accident in early November 2004, and whatever happened to her predecessor is a mystery. And we always have a woods full of the "regular" kind of deer. 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 across the back yard 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. Not finding a photo of such a thing anywhere, we determined that they shall be called blue fuzzy cherry gnats – although two authorities at UW-Madison have tentatively identified them from the photos as wooly alder 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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Current Home Weather ––» This always "new" (i.e., often-updated) homepage was originally placed on the web 1/28/97, found sanctuary on jlindquist.com in 2001, recently celebrated its Eleventh Anniversary, and was updated on 5/14/08 at 3:00 PM, CDT. |
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