Cleaning the Virtual House

French Road Connections looks different today, or perhaps it looks "retro" today, if you've been reading long enough.

Somewhere along the way, when I switched to the new version of Blogger, I "broke" my template. The main page read fine, in Internet Explorer, but clicking on an individual post, or trying to read in Mozilla, seemed to knock everything awry.

The dead of winter is the time to fix this sort of problem. I started by reverting to an old winter template that worked. I will be adding and tweaking features again in the next few days. So far I've been unable to put that rolling comments feature back into the sidebar, but the is a place to click and see comments at the end of every post. If you folks could oblige me by commenting, even if it's just a "hi", it would help me to trouble shoot.

People, Chickens, and Videocameras

Since I posted my “Yardbirds 2007” video to YouTube, I have been checking out what sort of chicken videos other people post. I’m not surprised to find out that other people are fascinated enough by chickens to video them doing chicken things. Lots of people document their rooster’s first crow, much like the baby’s first steps. I was surprised, however, to look at the background in these clips and notice how many people keep chickens inside of otherwise normal American houses.

And then there’s this one. Why on earth would you paint your rooster’s toenails such a pretty shade of red? There were lots of comments on this one, ranging from “How cute!” to shrill lectures on the dangers of nail polish. I figure there are a lot of different people in the world, many more than even I could imagine….

Looking Up

At Millennium Park, Chicago, October 2007

H.O.P. wrote, while watching people at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art,

I was thinking I didn’t know people could absorb themselves like that. The window was like a mirror. I was leaning over it watching people colliding with their reflections and when they did they vacuumed up each other.

I knew I had to post this picture, taken by Anna, of me looking up and spitting out another self, at the Kapoor sculpture at Millennium Park. I reckon it is in many ways the experience opposite to H.O.P.'s

Misidentified Chickens

Silver Spangled Hamburg Rooster

A commenter on my YouTube chicken video told me that I had misidentified my rooster, that he is really a Silver Spangled Hamburg. I had never heard of a breed called Silver Spangled Hamburg, but a quick Google search brought me pictures of the breed and they looked a lot like my rooster. He had come to us as the "exotic chick" bonus in our shipment from Murray McMurray hatchery, and I had identified him as an Egyptian Fayoumis (below) based on the descriptions in the hatchery catalog.

The Fayoumis has a more upright carriage and an upright comb, while the Hamburg has a rose comb and is a little heftier.

I had another, more more embarrassing, chicken misidentification experience with Harry Houdini, a chicken that I agreed to adopt during an early morning phone call. I thought that Harry was a confused rooster; she turned out to be a very fancy and flighty hen. I was so surprised to find a page of Brown Leghorns and see that my "rooster" was a hen!

Now I have a Buttercup hen, another Mediterranean type breed. She is also fancy feathered, but flighty and she seems always on the run from the rest of the flock.

How Cold Is The Big Lake?

OK, so it's getting so I do this every year. Last year, on December 26th, and in 2005, on December 13th, I published pictures from NOAA, of the current Lake Michigan surface temps. This winter has been closer to normal, with snow cover since Thanksgiving an ice on the inland lakes for Christmas.

Still, a look at the big lake, our main weather maker, shows that it is warmer each year. This is bad news for lake levels, as a warmer lake loses more water to evaporation. Ideally, we would like to see the big lake freeze over early and keep all of its water for a month or so.

It is easy to look at lake temps and point to global warming, but there is more going on. Zebra mussels have filtered the water to a new clarity, and sunlight is now penetrating Lake Michigan to greater depths than we have ever seen before, changing the physical characteristics of the lake.

We could also consider the sun. We had a sunny day on Christmas, and a sunny dawn today. We have been treated to more of our usual share of sunny days this December, although the sun doesn't rise very high this time of year.

We watched the sun set over frozen Lake Leelanau last night as we exchanged presents at my brother's place. The sun descends at an oblique angle, reflecting back and shining onto the clouds long after it has disappeared beneath the snow and ice. I don't know how you could have a photo of that sort of sunset, as it is really a series of scenes, with new and more improbable colors every time you glance up.

Christmas Eve

Anna, Shelagh and Liz, after church on Christmas Eve.