Alan from Ann Arbor is asking about the winner of Morenci’s Battle of the Bands. In short, no one you’ve ever heard of. But since it’s Alan, he just might know the name. It was Kevlar with Zach Phillips, Chris Cornelius and Lucas Johnson. They had a guest member for the weekend - Sage Satterfield from Cedar Falls, Iowa. His house was flooded out so he came out to visit a cousin in Morenci. Kevlar turned to the blues for this performance.

The winning band was based on popular vote, with each audience member given one ticket. Zach P felt confident since he had a family reunion in town last weekend. Sure enough, Kevlar won big.

Some bands were a little a weak, but it was great just to see and hear them set up and play. Probably everybody’s least favorite was the guy from Adrian who just walked back and forth screaming into the microphone. No idea what he was shrieking, but his fortitude was impressive.

Which Sly brother is that on the right - Trevor? He’s an arm wrestling veteran who has competed at Morenci’s festival several times. The competition was scheduled last night at the Town & Country Festival. Tonight comes Redhill, a country/rock group from Detroit. I’ll give them a high rating. They performed last year and did a great job in front of a smallish crowd. Today’s crowd looks smallisher yet.

What I’m hearing now is the many bands warming up for the battle. It’s going to get loud down at Wakefield at 4 p.m.

Morenci’s summer festival made it through Day 1 without a storm, unless you happened to be down at the park around 2 a.m. The odds look good for a mostly dry Saturday, too, especially this afternoon.

We had .61 of an inch overnight for a monthly total of 5.87.

In other weather news, the North Pole has a 50/50 chance of the first ice-free summer in human history.

How many gingko trees are there in town? The big one is at the back of Oak Grove Cemetery. I think there is/was one at the old Hammontree house on Main Street. I have a small one in front of my house, courtesy of Virginia Shoemaker, and she has at least one. It’s a common street tree in Manhattan and there are people who don’t like the smell of the fruit. There’s even an an organized group, the Anti-Ginkgo Tolerance Group. From the New Yorker:

We are here to solve the problem of the Ginkgo tree commonly known as vomit trees. . . . The Ginkgo tree is widely known by most people but not by name. Walking down the street on a beautiful October evening your moment of tranquility is rudely demolished by the smell of old cheese and vomit.

Big Shorts. That what the locals are calling the new Chinese TV headquarters in Beijing. There’s a slide show of photos by Iwan Baan on the New Yorker’s website. Paul Goldberger writes about the changing skyline there:

In Beijing, the latest trend is architecture that will force the world to pay attention, and the result is a striking, unmistakably twenty-first-century city.

Take a look to see why it’s Big Shorts.

Here’s a photo of Swamp Milkweed Leafbeetle Eggs. They’re really beauties. They were taken by Wayne at Sparkleberry Springs in Georgia.

I don’t know if this is the time to look for eggs up here in the north, but hold on. I’ll be right back.

Mine are empty. I’ll have to enjoy Wayne’s.

You have to see this to understand it. A modular table tennis table that can accommodate up to 12 players.

There was mention here a few weeks about vultures hanging out on the west edge of town. This morning I learned that vultures like to congregate on railroad tracks as the sun warms the metal rails. They warm up their feet, I was told.

Daughter Rosanna noticed this buzzard paragraph on a Louisiana state park website:

Vultures do not have many predators. But if an enemy does approach, the vulture will face its enemy and projectile vomit. This cool bird also has a unique way to stay cool: it will urinate on its legs. The urine also helps kill any germs picked up while treading through a carcass.

When I was in Fayette this morning, someone told me how his relative used to judge where a tree would fall if cut down. It was something about cutting a stick to eye level height and having someone hold it for you straight up from the ground.

Then you lay down on the ground and sight up to the top of the tree. You keep moving further and further away until the top of the tree is lined up with the top of the stick. Wherever your head is, that’s where the top of the tree will end up.

Did you follow that? I’d love to see someone do it. It just seems as though it would be so silly to watch.

I told this to someone else - still in Fayette - and he had a much simpler version. Hold a pencil out in front of you with your arm outstretched. The top of the pencil should be lined up with the top of the tree. Mark with your thumb the base of the tree. Then you just turn it sideways - thumb mark at base of tree, tip points to where tree will reach.

He said this is the classic artist’s method.

Our hail was rather insignificant compared to an area of Rhode Island where snowplows were called out. Now that would warrant three photos on the back page.

Wired magazine has a feature on the five fastest roads in the world. The U.S. entry is in Florida. It starts off this way:

South Florida’s I-75 cuts across the Everglades with a pin-straight stretch that mocks law-abiding drivers with its monotony. But those seeking the outer limits of speed will take pleasure in its broad visible…

In print, the article goes on to mention there are few places for a cop to hide. An interactive map is offered.

Wired asks for suggestions of other public speed strips. What’s available locally? Based on Fulton County court reports, it looks like people enjoy opening up on U.S. 20 - until they get caught and end up in the newspaper.

Walking to work yesterday, I towered over two big ant maneuvers. It’s the little red ants who are busy doing something. Huge collections of them swarming around the sidewalk.

But that was nothing. In front of the Observer was where it was really happening. The crack between two sidewalk sections was brown (red) with hundreds of them. What’s going on? An impending earthquake? Eviction notice? War is imminent?

Yesterday I read something about phosphorus supplies (as it applies to matches and fertilizer):

But the real lesson here is not the danger of over-reliance on Chinese imports. It’s the disparity between the international and Chinese domestic prices for fertilizer chemicals. As with energy, the Chinese government keeps the price of fertilizer low domestically to keep costs down for farmers. Which means that phosphorous mining and chemical companies can make much more money by exporting their products than by selling them locally. Thus the export duty, designed to close that window.

Today I read about nitrogen:

Tom Philpott is right to highlight the tremendous ecological debt we’ve built up by depending on nitrogen fertilizer to run our crop production system. Depending on mined and fossil-fuel produced nitrogen for our food is no more sustainable than depending on peaking oil and mountain-top removed coal for our energy.

I remember making fun of this in By the Way a year or so ago when another California paper made the move:

An Indian company will take over copy editing duties for some stories published in The Orange County Register and will handle page layout for a community newspaper at the company that owns the Pulitzer Prize-winning daily, the newspaper confirmed Tuesday.

Maybe I can get someone from Mumbai to handle sports for me.

Who’s going to do it first - the U.S. or Israel? Rumors abound that Pres. Bush will handle it before he leaves office. This CBS story tells how Israel will start the bombing if the U.S. doesn’t, but also suggests that the Israeli air force can’t handle it alone.

According to the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, attacking Iran will turn the area into a fireball.

And to think that one of the two Presidential candidates makes a joke about it, singing “Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran.”