Curlicue

Posted on January 2, 2023 by Katherine Wikoff

I tossed my phone charger aside on the couch after I unplugged it the other day, and this is what I saw😄

Kind of striking, that curl of white against the two jumbled, dark red blankets. So I used the phone I’d just unplugged to grab the shot!

Posted in Creativity, Photography | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

500 tabs and counting down (#499 “The Tim Ferriss Show” transcripts)

Posted on December 3, 2022 by Katherine Wikoff

Author and podcaster Tim Ferriss has amazing guests, and he is always so super prepared as an interviewer that the conversations he has with guests are really substantial.

However, I don’t usually like listening to podcasts because doing so is such a time-consuming activity. Plus, I think reading is probably my most preferred way of consuming information. Viewing documentary film/video is second, and listening to audio recordings is a distant third. Unfortunately, I often find myself without headphones or earbuds, which then makes it difficult to listen to anything in the presence of other people.

Luckily, Ferriss has an archive of transcripts available for all his podcast interviews. At some point in the last few years I opened one of those transcripts and, while I was at it, saved the page that serves as the “home page” for transcripts. That is, I kept the tab open so I could easily find it again😂

But now that I’m trying to do better in the open tab department (i.e., eventually not having any old ones open at all), I’m bookmarking it and hitting the “X” to close it out for good.

Only 498 more to go!

Here’s that (just closed😀) link to “The Tim Ferriss Show” transcripts: https://tim.blog/category/the-tim-ferriss-show-transcripts/

And here’s a link to one of my favorite interviews. It’s from two years ago, with actor Matthew McConaughey when his book came out: https://tim.blog/2020/10/19/matthew-mcconaughey/

(UPDATE, a day later—I just found another open tab with a different Tim Ferriss episode, this one a Q+A session from August where Ferriss answered questions from fans who had won a contest in connection with the 15th anniversary of The 4-Hour Workweek. Here’s the link: https://tim.blog/2022/08/16/the-tim-ferriss-show-transcripts-qa-with-tim-on-wealth-and-money-book-recommendations-advice-on-taking-advice-c-s-lewis-relationships-behavior-change-and-self-awareness-why-we-are-all-mostly/

So now I guess I’m down to 497!😀)

Would you like new posts delivered to your inbox? To subscribe, click here.

Posted in 500 tabs and counting down, Creativity, Learning | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Nature vs. Human — Two very different types of lines

Posted on November 29, 2022 by Katherine Wikoff

No judgment here as far as one type of line being better than the other. They’re just very different.

And each beautiful in its own way😀

Would you like new posts delivered to your inbox? To subscribe, click here.

Posted in architecture, Art, Milwaukee, Nature, Photography | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Schoonmaker Reef

Posted on November 23, 2022 by Katherine Wikoff

This is what a Silurian coral reef looks like, 425 million years later.

I parked in the back/side lot at my local grocery store this morning while shopping for Thanksgiving. (The main lot gets very crowded on the day before holidays.) In warmer seasons, tree leaves and other vegetation block the view of the actual rock that marks the remains of an ancient ocean floor, and in colder months it’s usually dark when I shop. But with this morning’s sunlight hitting the leafless hillside, there it was, and I could see it as I pushed my cart out to the back forty (which hadn’t gotten parked up with the overflow yet).

So I paused a moment to get a picture to share 😀

Here are a couple links with more info on the reef.

First, the Wikipedia article on the reef: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schoonmaker_Reef

Then also some old (circa 1997 and vaguely GeoCities-looking) web pages from the Milwaukee Public Museum: https://www.mpm.edu/content/collections/learn/reef/wauwatosa-front.html

And finally a nice, detailed article on the reef’s history from WUWM (the NPR-affiliated radio station of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee): https://www.wuwm.com/environment/2016-05-27/did-you-know-theres-an-ancient-coral-reef-in-wauwatosa

Would you like new posts delivered to your inbox? To subscribe, click here.

Posted in History, Milwaukee, Nature, Science | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

The Birds?

Posted on November 17, 2022 by Katherine Wikoff

There’s a big flock of birds—of starlings, actually. And I guess they’re not called a “flock” of starlings but a “murmuration” of starlings, which I learned from my Twitter friend Keith Freeburn, a photographer in Wales, last time I wrote a post about starlings.

Birds on a Wire

Anyway, this murmuration of starlings has assembled itself in our neighborhood over the past week or so. The birds fly as a single, shape-shifting group from block to block, gathering en masse in tall trees here, there, and everywhere. I was walking back up to the house just now from taking out garbage when I noticed the group starting to muster in our tall silver maple.

Whenever I see stuff like this, my mind immediately defaults to Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. As a young teen watching that movie on the late, late show while babysitting, I was left permanently scarred by what Jessica Tandy saw when she went to check on her neighbor after the initial incidents of troubling changes in bird behavior occurred.

Fortunately the worst these guys will do (I hope!) is create their traveling cacophony among the treetops and leave a mess of droppings in their wake below.

Would you like new posts delivered to your inbox? To subscribe, click here.

Posted in Milwaukee, Movies and film, Nature | Tagged | 2 Comments

When a picture IS a thousand words

Posted on November 10, 2022 by Katherine Wikoff

I subscribe to a lot of newsletters. Lots of topics, lots of industries, lots of different treatments. I’m just interested in lots of things 😄

One thing I subscribe to is “e news” from the Newberry Library in Chicago. The Newberry is one of the finest libraries in the world, IMO. I first learned of it when I was in graduate school and taking courses on Shakespeare and Renaissance literature. To me, as a book lover and PhD student in English, the Newberry was like this magical, near-mythical place. When I had the opportunity to present a paper there at a grad student conference, I felt I was hitting the big time.

The Newberry’s “E-news” that hits my inbox is always full of interesting articles on unusual topics. Exactly my cup of tea! And this morning’s newsletter had one article on such a creative topic that I wanted to share it with you.

Sadly, it appears that WordPress is not going to let me do the cool “embed” thing, where you can see the beginning of an article right here, which you can then click on to go to that site and read the whole thing. The best I can do is supply the link. Sigh. Don’t you hate it when technology refuses to let you do the cool things?

Anyway, here is the link in case you would like to click over and read the article. Basically it’s about a very old art form in which pictures are made up of words.

https://www.newberry.org/blog/microcalligraphy-pictures-made-from-a-thousand-words

If you live anywhere near Chicago and are up to visiting the Newberry library, you can go see the exhibit of calligraphy that inspired the article and includes examples of this “microcalligtaphy” art. Here’s the link to that exhibit, which closes at the end of December.

https://www.newberry.org/calendar/a-show-of-hands

Would you like new posts delivered to your inbox? To subscribe, click here.

Posted in Art | Tagged , | Leave a comment

What a difference different light can make!

Posted on November 9, 2022 by Katherine Wikoff

This post is a follow up to yesterday’s. I made another coffee run down the hill to Starbucks this morning. I think it was earlier in the day, so the sun was at a different place in the sky and hit the Juneau Village Towers at a different angle. Today the building is much truer to the usual brown and gray coloring. It’s so interesting to me that reflected light could fool my eye so much as it did, minimizing the brown and gray and creating an overall impression of “blue.”

Here are the two photos from yesterday.

Tall apartment building, Brutalist architecture

And here are the two pictures I took this morning.

Would you like new posts delivered to your inbox? To subscribe, click here.

Posted in Milwaukee, Photography | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Blue sky, Grohmann Museum, and Juneau Village Towers

Posted on November 8, 2022 by Katherine Wikoff

Took this photo yesterday as I walked back up the hill to my office in the Grohmann Museum (the building with the statues) from the Red Arrow Starbucks. The Juneau Village Towers (the tall building and the shorter, shadowed one immediately to its left) looked so BLUE, which was entirely due to reflected light. Usually that tall building is very brown and gray. Anyway, I liked the colors and thought it was sort of a pretty picture, so here it is, just to share a beautiful, early November afternoon in Milwaukee 😄

Tall apartment building, Brutalist architecture

Now that I take a closer look, though, I see that those windows aren’t actually reflecting blue after all. Those little glass squares have more of a dark gray hue. Well, maybe navy?But still, not the blue I thought I was seeing. Were my eyes playing tricks on me the whole time, like somehow holistically taking in the blue of the sky and causing me to perceive the building as “blue” when seen in context from a distance?

What do you think: Blue, or not blue?

Posted in Milwaukee, Photography | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

“When You’re Good to Mama” — Heard on a head-clearing coffee run to Starbucks

Posted on November 7, 2022 by Katherine Wikoff

I have so much work to do! But as I finished one project and faced the daunting prospect of beginning the next one, I forced myself out of the door because I knew it would be good for me to get some fresh air and coffee and put a little distance between one project and the next. And I was right. Whereas I felt paralyzed and almost unable to begin work 20 minutes ago, I’m now raring to go.😄

But before I commence work again, I thought I’d share this fun song that I heard while I was waiting for my coffee at Starbucks. Took me a while to recognize it, but once I was able to place it, I found the YouTube video and got a nice smile in the middle of my day. Thought you might enjoy a smile, too!

It’s hard to believe, but this Oscar-winning film (six Academy Awards, including Best Picture) came out in 2002—20 years ago! If you’ve never seen Chicago, I highly recommend it. It’s a musical but a bit different from the traditional Hollywood style and very imaginative in the way it presents its song and dance numbers. This YouTube clip will give you a feel for that. Here is Queen Latifah singing “When You’re Good to Mama.”

Would you like new posts delivered to your inbox? To subscribe, click here.

Posted in Creativity, Movies and film, Music, Popular culture | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Market Street, evening

Posted on November 2, 2022 by Katherine Wikoff

Taken after work tonight on Market Street, the one-block street that runs along behind the Campus Center at Milwaukee School of Engineering. The bright early evening sun was low in the sky, casting shadows down into the canyon created by the surrounding buildings.

Something about the light and the nearly leafless autumn tree just shouted “twilight “ to me. Twilight of the day, twilight of the year—although technically I suppose this light actually represents the “golden hour,” that is, the hour before sunset, not twilight, the hour after sunset.

It sure felt like twilight, though. Daylight saving time ends this weekend, and a week from now it will be dark when I leave the office.

You may have heard about recent efforts to make daylight saving time a year-round thing in the U.S. Apparently folks in Congress either have no knowledge of history or don’t care to learn from the lessons of the past. I am old enough to remember walking to school in darkness the last time we tried year-round daylight savings, in response to the first energy crisis, during the winter of 1973-74. We suffered through just a few months of that experiment before declaring it a failure and returning to the system we live with today.

Would you like new posts delivered to your inbox? To subscribe, click here.

Posted in Life, Milwaukee | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments