Five Hundred Random Thoughts

You know what would be cool? A map of all the towers in the U.S. TV and radio towers; cell towers.

Some towers are covered with a lot of stuff. Some are austere. In stormy weather they look scary.

I like how they're often wildly out of place with the surrounding architecture. A bunch of strip malls and this huge thing.

From my back window I can see a tower, but only in winter, when the leaves are gone. In the spring it slowly gets covered up.

At night, their blinking red lights are a little spooky and mini-hypnotic. Near a tower would be a good place to start a science fiction novel or have a date.

I also like old pictures of radio towers with lightening bolts coming out of it.

Instead of a map, I think an atlas would be better. It would convey more information. One page would show concentrations of towers across the USA (and Canada), weighted by height. Like one of those graphs where there are spikes. Of course, I'd want some statistics: tallest (by state), oldest, one with the most stuff on it. Most interesting name. Northernmost one. Surely there are at least 50 people interested in this (mostly guys, I'm thinking.) For all I know there's a Yahoo news group. I'm sort of afraid to check.

If I was traveling I would definitely take this treasure-filled book with its multiple map inserts with me. If I was in a new town, walking around, or taking a cab, I would have my book out and see some of these towers that until then I had only read about. I could take a tower tour. Maybe meet up with other tower enthusiasts.

Water towers -- they're just always out there. They're always been there. The ones that were there when I was a kid haven't moved, or changed. No one really knows much about how they work. They're kind of Edward Hopper-ish, sometimes in parts of towns that you only see in the medium distance from your car window. Once I was walking around my neighborhood. I got to about a mile from where I lived, and I saw a water tower — a smallish, suburban one. Like a moth drawn to a flame, or maybe more like one of those guys with a metal detector drawn to a shiny object, I walked toward it. It was basically between two back yards. There was a fence around it. That was pretty much it.

It's called a "beeline," but actually, don't bees tend to take a more circuitous route?

Today I was driving in my neighborhood, going slowly -- we have lots of kids and animals. A gray squirrel darted out in front of me. He was determined to get to the other side of the street; there may have been something very important there. I gently applied the brakes. He made it across safely, bounding across the road into the neighbor's yard, and scurrying up a tree. It was warm out and he seemed like he was enjoying his day. Fare thee well, my little furry acrobatic friend.

When I explain to someone how we get milk (because most people have only the vaguest concept), especially if the person is young, and I explain that we have to impregnate the cow each year, so that the cow will give milk, and then we take the calf from his or her mother when the calf is only two days old, and then the calf gets no more milk after that, so that we can have it all...and when I explain that the male calf is then chained and put in a veal pen, where he gets no exercise, and is fed an iron-deficient formula to make his flesh turn pale, and is slaughtered four or five months later to be sold as veal...and when I explain that many dairy cows do not graze in pasture but are kept chained inside barns...and when I explain that we give most of them hormones that boost their milk production but cause painful udder infections...and when I explain that when the cows' milk production drops, we kill them...I feel like I am explaining the facts of life to children. People usually react with "I didn't know that," "really?" and with wide eyes. Sometimes they shake their head slightly in disbelief.

I think the dairy industry prefers that consumers remain ignorant, clinging to their child-like storybook notions of how milk is produced. With the dairy industry's commercials and ubiquitous pictures of happy cows in wide-open pastures, it seems like they are trying to keep people stupid, because once people find out how cruel dairy is, they may be less inclined to buy the product.

To the new planet that was recently discovered past Pluto: welcome!

Why is there something instead of nothing?

A house rabbit standing on his hind legs to check things out -- that's cute!