Tank Update #3: Population Explosion And A New Giorgio...The Green Slime...Aquacalypse Now...

Funny how a fish tank can mimic your life.  Maybe I don't mean that.  I don't know.

There is a blanket of blue-green algae over many of the rocks and on the back panel of the tank that grew back almost immediately after I spent a whole afternoon cleaning it out a few days ago.

One day probably a month and a half ago now my sons and I went to a small pond near our house.  I wanted to add some new fish to the tank, to see what would happen.  We netted what we thought were tiny minnows or fry of some sort, and didn't notice until we put them in the tank that they were pollywogs!  Some of the large Dace went right for them.  I did notice one escape to the bottom, but figured soon enough my Dace would remember their hunting instinct and eat it.  Weeks later I was counting the Dace as I often do, and there were eleven out of a possible ten.  I reached in and moved the rock the eleventh was behind, and it shot out halfway across the tank and then I could see the tadpole tail and bulbous body.  Either the Dace don't like wog, or this guy is a true survivor.  Later my son reported to me that there were TWO pollywogs.  One is a bit smaller than the first.  Maybe they are a tree frog and a green frog, or a toad.  We'll see what they turn into.  They will have to be released into the appropriate environment when the time comes.  I believe they eat algae, and they hide a lot.

But what about fish?

The river has been running very low all summer, and through snorkeling, we know there has been no stocking of trout.  Though the fishing is not good, netting small Dace is made easier by the drought.  I was able to catch fourteen fish one day recently, including a new fish just like the deceased Giorgio, a bottom skulking fish with a very camouflaged body.  In fact I thought the original Giorgio was an accidental catch, but there one was in about five inches of water, and I was quick enough to net it.  I think the original Giorgio starved to death, not being able to find suitable food in the artificial environment, but this new one didn't last long enough to confirm the theory.  The new Giorgio died just two days after entering the tank.  Possibly he was injured in the capture.  I think I will leave this species alone from now on.

A couple of the new fish are not Dace.  They look similar in that they have a stripe down their side, but it is less prominent and their coloration is more silvery and they have more visible scales.  Their head is more blunt and they have a downward-angled mouth.  They are about an inch long and seem at home with the Dace.  They tend to swim in longer straight lines than the Dace, who swim around all willy-nilly. I think they may possibly be fry of a larger fish that I have seen while snorkeling in the river.  If so they could grow to about six inches.  If they survive we will see.  So far they seem to be doing okay despite the debacle I am about to relate.

After adding the new fish it became impossible to count them as they swirled around in the tank, but the ensuing die-off is making it much easier to count them now.  About two weeks ago I found one of the smaller, new-batch Dace sunk to the bottom, then I noticed another dead, stuck to the pump intake.  This was cause for some concern, because it was one of the big, farm-raised "Henchmen"!  This was a healthy strong fish that had lived in the tank for almost a year, so it wasn't just death due to capture and new environment. No, something is killing them off.

I figured I'd better get rid of that blue-green algae bloom and change the water in case it was ammonia build-up.  The stuff can be scooped up easily with a net, so I got as much as I could out, then changed out two-thirds of the water and cleaned the pump.  I looked forward to happier, healthier fish, but they kept on dying.  They begin to float at the surface and gulp air, and they sometimes have kind of a gooey look to them and then they're dead.  One henchman gone, the crooked Dace, Hercules, most of the new batch except the two odd-species ones, all dead.  Last time I checked, there were eight fish, but that was yesterday, so no deaths today.

Hey, why don't you Google "Ich"?

Okay, so maybe what I said about the tank mimicking my life was not far off.  The fish live in their own Pediddleville.  Off to the pet store to get some ich treatment.

Hero The Badge

I am not a frequent flyer. The last time I flew overseas before this recent trip to Switzerland was when cell phones were rare and laptops were even rarer.  Now there are all manner of smart phones, iPads, and laptops, and instead of being at the mercy of whatever the airline chooses for an in-flight movie, you have a big menu of choices of things to watch, individually, on the small screen on the back of the seat in front of you.

Though it was a long flight, I had no interest in watching anything, but my eyes kept being drawn to the screen of the laptop of a woman sitting across the aisle and one row ahead of me.  It was work material she was reviewing, some kind of marketing presentation for a major American beer brand.  It drove me crazy that I would have any interest in bullshit like that, but I must say it was an educational experience.  It was educational not in the sense that I learned interesting facts about the beer, but that I got a glimpse into the mindset of that particular tribe.  My tribe is artists, musicians, writers, creative people.  This woman, who was probably quite creative herself, was from, or was trying to join, the marketing tribe.

The marketing tribe has peculiar ideas about the use of the language my tribe reveres.

My tribe uses the language to create, to inform, sometimes to fight.  The marketing tribe uses it to manipulate, to set up artificial realities that have only one objective.

The gist of the marketing scheme she was studying was that they were trying to establish a market of people who not only were loyal to their product, but who actually believe that an integral aspect of their "lifestyle" was consuming that product.  Fair enough, if that's your job, I guess.  So this lifestyle would consist of certain activities, preferences, and such, with an emphasis on good times--and always present would be this product.  To put it in my terms, these people, this market, would be a tribe.

The really twisted thing they did to my tribe's language was to refer to this whole lifestyle thing as a "badge", and the objective for the marketing tribe was to "hero the badge".  What the fuck?  Last time I checked, the word "hero" was not a verb.  I should talk, I guess.  I mean, "What the fuck" makes no grammatical sense either, but at least it's a recognized phrase, having a dramatic or comic effect.  These marketing people are just corrupting the language for commerce. I have been annoyed at how companies now "partner with" other companies or organizations instead of simply working with them. It's another example of this foolishness.  I guess it's supposed to sound more impressive to the average Joe when you "verb a noun", but I have a degree in English Literature, and it makes me cringe.

At some point she must have closed the laptop and maybe went to sleep, sparing me the eye draw.  Later I saw her, laptop bag in hand, at Baggage Claim.  We had gone from a clean, well designed airport in Europe to an old, oppressively warm one with stinky restrooms just outside New York City.  She may have been thinking Bud Light.  Here we go.  Hero the Badge.  I was still thinking Feldeschlosschen, Euli, Oufi, Warteck, Lowenbrau...We don't need no stinking badges!

Pediddleville's European Vacation

The following is an account, of sorts, of my recent trip with my son to the city of Basel, Switzerland.  He belongs to a junior fife and drum corps that was invited to the musters that were held there at the end of June.  It starts out more like a travelogue, but as it goes on becomes less detail-oriented, and more my own impressions of things. 

Installment #1 Sunday, June 24th, 2012

According to my iPad with cracked glass, it is 3AM in Basel, Switzerland, where we're headed.  Today has been long, and it will be longer yet.  Leaving JFK as the sun sets, we will see sunrise in just a couple of hours.  Compressed Time Travel.

We're on a British Airways 747.  Takeoff was delayed due to a malfunctioning air conditioning system, and it isn't much more comfortable in here now than it was when we got on, though the AC is running.  Maybe high altitude will help.

Hopefully our bus trip to JFK was not an Omen of how the trip will go.  Pediddleville Law, being similar to Murphy's Law, may be at hand here, but hopefully not.  Our group had chartered a school bus, which arrived twenty minutes late for the first dose of anxiety.  The driver never drove over fifty miles an hour all the way down I-95 from our starting point in Deep River, Connecticut.  She stayed mostly in the right lane, and even at this slow speed, certain driving behaviors that might be considered "reckless" or "clueless" were observed.  She kept veering into the rumble strips on the side of the road.  To pass the time and keep our mind off the heat, John, another father of a band member, and I were keeping a running tally of these variances.  If the rumbling lasted more than three seconds we often gave her two, three, or five points.  Then she grazed a Jersey barrier-20 points!  Damaged her side mirror on a toll booth-25 points!  She even asked if we, the passengers, knew the right way to JFK!  Emily, the teenaged Drum Major whipped out her iPhone and saved the day.

Getting cooler, just barely now, and everyone is settling in to movies and reading or sleeping, and oddly I think I smell pizza.  My son Owen has the window seat and is assigned UFO Vigil, but he's playing a game on his iPod.  Sunlight dark red on the horizon.  Soon we'll be in outer space and our truncated, but endless-feeling night will ensue.  Maybe I'll sleep.



Installment #2  Monday, June 25th, 2012

10:25 Greenwich Mean Time.  Stuck at Heathrow Airport for six hours awaiting a rescheduled flight to Basel.  As mentioned earlier, our flight from JFK was delayed for a malfunctioning air conditioner, then was delayed further after we boarded, simmering in our own juices, because of an unruly child who would not put on his seat belt.  His mother seemed unconcerned about this, or seemed to disbelieve that it was possible to belt him in, and so is now despised because we missed our connecting flight...


Installment #3 Tuesday, June 26th, 2012

Jet Lag plus C-Pap withdrawal makes for a hard night sleeping in a strange bed in Switzerland.  It would seem impossible that I could not sleep last night, but it sure did happen.  Actually I did sleep some--I know this because I remember dreaming about my job.  I'm an idiot even in my subconscious!

Earlier last night some of us went out to get a get a bite to eat and get a feel for the city.  We went to a falafel shop called Sam's Take-Away and ate at tables out on the sidewalk.  In my jet-lagged state and with a Feldeschlosschen in me, I remember looking at a passing tram at Claraplatz and thinking to myself "Already I know I love it here."  Owen is really enjoying it too, noticing the differences between here and Pediddleville.

Today we went with most of the group to walk along the Rhine and go to the spot where you can stand in Switzerland, Germany, and France simultaneously.  We then walked into Germany proper, and then crossed the Rhine on a footbridge into France.  Owen was feeling the pain of his ailment, so we left the group to have their lunch in France.  We caught a tram back to our hotel on Klingentalstrasse and went back to that take-away for our lunch.  Tonight we go to a welcome party barbeque outside the city at an old castle, which I'm sure will be a blast of beer and fife and drum jamming.

Installment #4  Wednesday, June 27th, 2012

Today toured the Roman ruins at Augusta Raurica outside Basel.  The kids seemed to want to just hang out together at the top of the colosseum for a while, and taking a cue from the obvious feeling of safety here, and knowing that most of them were good kids, responsible and smart, most of the parents went about sightseeing on their own or in small groups.  I got a little taste of a feeling I experienced once before, also in Europe years ago when I was traveling on the coast of Wales.   It was an exhilarating peak experience of realizing that nobody in the world who knew me, nor anybody who didn't, had any idea where in the world I was.  I may tell that story some other time, but not now.  Today was more of a remembrance of that, since there actually were many people close by who would be able to find me if they wanted to.  I was walking along a walkway through a barley field, here and there picking it and eating the raw grains on the way out to see the amphitheater--the place where gladiator fights had been held, when I had that feeling.

After that Owen and I had lunch together-Wienerschnitzel-then met up with others in the group.  In a beautiful island park in the Rhine, we waded in it briefly, then boarded a  river tour boat that took us North-downstream, through two locks, back to Basel.  The kids got a kick out of seeing the nude river bathers and people floating downstream in the strong current.  We saw nesting storks and Rhineland vineyards, and every hundred feet or so these small fishing shacks, each with a swinging boom and a net for trawling the swift current.

Had dinner in a great Pan-Asian restaurant that was reasonably priced, then later hung out drinking beer in the park across the street from the hotel.  Let's put it this way--in New Haven or New York City, just about everything we saw going on in that park would have drawn the Police, but it was a perfectly peaceful, safe scene.  I'm now having a hard time coping with how BACKWARDS the U.S. is, if you can believe that.  No crime here.  Why?  Because if you do the crime, you do the time.  For all offenses there are set penalties.  The people know this, and don't break the law.  They all behave like reasonable human beings.  Justice has nothing to do with how good or how well-paid your lawyer is in Switzerland.  Another example of this is that tipping is not expected, though much appreciated, so you don't have wait staff brown-nosing you for a good tip.  It's better this way, believe me.


Installment #5  Thursday,  June 28th, 2012

Night before last I finally got a good night's sleep.  Last night back to the same insomnia, interspersed with dreams about work again!  Seriously, what is wrong with this picture?  I barely got through my last few days at my job before vacation without going "postal", and here I am dreaming about it, when the sleep I AM getting needs to be restorative...

Italy won against Germany last night and the city was wild with cheers and car horns, and oddly, a man singing in Arabic through a bullhorn.

Yesterday, halfway through our time here we hit kind of a snag-and our first grievance with the Swiss-their supposed propensity to rip off tourists.  The Junior Corps and several others were to appear at what was called a "welcome party" as guests of the Muster organizers and as entertainment.  We were led to believe, or were not told that it was otherwise, that the meal was complimentary, but then found out that it would be eighteen francs for their meal of all-you-can-eat pasta!  Beer was pretty steep, too, at 6.50.  All the corps bagged out of it, leaving early, causing a row of back and forth umbrage.

We ended up getting pizzas and drinks and having a get-together in the park, then went swimming in the Rhine.

Installment #6  Monday, July 2nd, 2012

Lots has been happening.  Two musters, in Basel and Liestal, a suburb of Basel.  The history of Swiss Fife and Drum Corps musters begins in Deep River, Connecticut, where Owen's corps hails from.  Each year the Deep River Junior Ancient Fife And Drum Corps hosts the Deep River Muster.  This type of music originated in Switzerland, was adopted by Colonial America, then took on a life of it's own.  Years ago some Swiss groups came over to Deep River and got the idea to do musters in their homeland.  These kids have been revered like heroes here, except for one little misunderstanding referred to in my last installment, that was really the fault of our travel agent/tour director.  All hatchets have been buried by now, no international incident has occurred, and the corps ROCKED the muster in Liestal.  A giant tent full of beer-drinking Swiss and German people singing along with them two nights ago was a very proud moment!

Tonight we go to a farewell party.

Another thing that has happened quite a bit since the last installment has been the swimming in the Rhine River.  I say swimming, but mostly it's drifting.  The Rhine at Basel is a swift-moving, deep river, full of clean water straight out of the Alps.  Giant shipping barges and tour boats are often seen on it, and Baselers enjoy riding its current for hundreds of meters or even kilometers.  If you try to swim upstream, it's like one of those exercise pools where you swim and swim and stay in the same place.  There has been some very warm weather, and the late sundown here has made for some great end-of-day get-togethers to cool off, mingling with the locals, who sit on the bank drinking and smoking hookahs.  I picked a few choice stones from the bottom for the fish tank at home.

It'll be hard to leave here, but there IS Salmon River...

Camper Full Of Men?

Sportsmen, Coachmen, Dutchmen

I have often wondered  at the peculiar names of these campers, or as they are now called, RV's, emblazoning the front top of the vehicle for all to scratch their heads at.  Is the Dutchmen model supposed to be full of guys from the Netherlands?  Is Holland the birthplace of such a vehicle?  How many coaches of various sports can fit inside a Coachmen?  Or is this an homage to the days when coach drivers would all live together in the chuck wagon?

My point is, these names are plural for objects that are singular.  To illustrate my point, lets look at automobile model names.  "Jim drives a Ford Mustangs." doesn't sound right, does it?  How about "Hello, I'd like to buy a Cadillacs."  "What kind of mileage will I get in this Priuses?"  (Prii?) Yikes!

The notion that this could go on at a company that manufactures these vehicles for so long without the mistake being pointed out and corrected is baffling.  I imagine the aging president of the company asserting at the board meeting, "Damn it!  I founded this company, and you will NOT change the name of this camper!  How dare you upstarts correct my grammar?"

What is more baffling is what I found out when I researched this phenomenon on the Internets.  I figured that Dutchmen, Sportsmen, and Coachmen were all different models manufactured by the same RV company.  It would stand to reason, but it is not so.  Coachmen Recreational Vehicles was founded in Middlebury, Indiana in 1964, and they produced camping trailers called Coachmen.  It would appear that in 1972 KZ Recreational Vehicles was founded, also in Middlebury, Indiana.  Possibly this was split off from the Coachmen company.  They produced campers named Sportsmen.  Dutchmen Manufacturing Inc. was founded in 1988.  Their site does not mention a city.   They produce sport vehicles called Dutchmen, Aspen Trail, Coleman, Kodiak and others.  So this grammar anomaly exists at two, possibly three different companies!  Weird!

Lots of people in Pediddleville say they're going to "Walmart's", which is wrong, but understandable since it harkens back to the days when there used to be a store or two in every town in this country that was named after the family that ran it.  Elkin's.  Thatcher's.  Harry's.  Mom and Pop's.  But the Camper Full of Men remains a mystery...

Driving Alone At Night With The Music Privilege

The Law of Pediddleville dictates that I may not have full freedom to enjoy my choice of music in the car that I drive.  This has been a long-standing curse that I have endured and accepted with a sense of humor.  No matter what car I drive on a regular basis to work or anytime I go somewhere on my own, I usually drive the older, more beat-up of our two vehicles, and there is always some issue with the sound system in that vehicle.  The cassette or CD player stops working.  You only get one channel.  The knobs don't do what they're supposed to do.  You can only get the strongest of commercial radio stations.  I have soldiered through all of these unpleasantries in several different cars.  Pediddleville Law, being similar to Murphy's Law, makes it not worth fixing or replacing the sound system because the car won't be around long enough to warrant the expense.  So I endure with what I can get.  Since there is no chance of getting pulled over for a broken sound system, I endure longer than I usually do with a burnt out headlight.  Procrastination rules the Nation of Pediddleville, which gets its name from the one-headlighted automobile.

One night I was driving our better vehicle, a mini-van that has a CD player that actually works.  Though I didn't think to bring along any CD's, I found a burned CD-R copy of "With The Beatles" and "A Hard Day's Night" that I had made for my sons to listen to.  This is music so ingrained in my soul that I could listen to it in my head without any kind of sound system.  I do, after all, have a very good auditory memory.  So I was driving, listening to clear sounding music that I had chosen--Wow!  I had the The Music Privilege!  After I got close to home I realized that all this time I could have been listening to my friend DeadBob's radio show.  I was so into the idea that I had The Music Privilege that I missed out on something that I probably would have enjoyed more.

Well, the other day the car I've been driving crapped out.  This car had a dead CD player--radio only.  Now we'll be registering an old pick-up truck that I'll be driving.  You guessed it-no working sound system at all.  Thank God for the iPad I recently bought...the iPad my son dropped the other day and cracked the glass, and I didn't buy the insurance.

There's no place like Pediddleville...

Tank Update #2: Disappearance And Death...Hercules Joins The School...King Is Queen?

As Spring nears Summer, I remember one of the reasons for setting up the tank.  The previous summer had been difficult, for many reasons, but Salmon River was the one thing that redeemed it.  It's a wonderful, beautiful place to go, a minute from home, and free.  I had always wanted to have an aquarium with some type of local fish, and the idea was to have something in the house to remind me of that wonderful place through the winter, when I could not go there for recreation.  I imagined sitting there in the easy chair, watching the fish and remembering back to the warm days of fishing, swimming, and snorkeling with my family.  It wasn't so bad a winter as I expected, not like last year, but it was still nice to have the tank.

Down to ten Dace, the fish in the tank appear to be doing well now.  There have been a few interesting occurrences.  As reported earlier, Giorgio, the very camouflaged bottom feeder has died, though his body has never been found.  Could the Dace have eaten him?  Soon after Giorgio's demise, I noticed that I could only find ten Dace when there had been eleven.

The smallest of the Dace had been named Hercules by my sons.  He generally kept to himself, probably due to his size, while the rest actively schooled around, scarfing up the goldfish flakes when they were dropped in, but though he was solitary, I could always find him.  He would spend a lot of time alone near the bottom, not getting as much food as the others, but he has definitely grown since October.

One of the smaller fish had developed a problem--an apparent ruptured swim bladder.  He had a cavity where the rest of the Dace have a prominent bulge.  He would try to swim up, but couldn't stay off the bottom for long.  This fish would be a goner in the river.  He had a bent look near his head, and I wondered if he had gotten crushed when I was cleaning the tank.  He would try to rise, but quickly lose it and sink again, resting on rocks or on the gravel bottom.  After a while he seemed to be doing better.  He was still disabled, but could move, and was able to get some food.  Now he has made nearly a full recovery.  His spine is crooked, which is very evidently shown by the black stripe down his side.  The line is kinked just past the pectoral fins.  He'd still have no chance in the river, but in my tank, he's able to keep up with the school and doesn't seem to be struggling at all.

This still doesn't address the missing eleventh fish.  I thought maybe he'd leaped out of the tank and was eaten by my cat, but it was just a theory.  Hercules had been spending a lot of time in the far right corner of the tank swimming around a big rock with another flat rock laying on it, creating a hiding spot.  One day recently I spotted a strange looking white object at the bottom near this little cave.  It was curved and was moving.  It was the missing Dace.  He was paralyzed, laying upside down, unable to straighten out.  A mercy flush later and the tank had ten confirmed residents.  Almost immediately Hercules started swimming with the school again.  Had he been caring for this disabled fish, his work now done?

Another thing that I have seen, three times now, was a real surprise the first time I saw it.  One night I went into the room to look at the fish, and at first couldn't tell what was different-looking about King Dace.  The black stripe that runs the length of the body was much thinner, and the yellow stripe that lines the top of the black one was much thicker than normal, giving the fish an unusual look.  The fish actually seemed smaller than normal due to this colorization.  What was going on?  Some as-yet-unseen behavior was about to unfold.  King Dace started swishing around in a small gravel area near the front of the tank.  Soon, one of the larger other Dace started doing the same in the same area.  They were spawning.  Now the sexist misunderstanding came to light.   "King Dace" first, then the smaller male doing his business.  Just because she's the biggest fish doesn't mean she's the King.  I suppose the color variation was a hormonal thing, meant to attract the male.  The two of them did this several times, then when they were done, left the scene, swam around the tank, then returned promptly and began eating the eggs!

I've been feeding them goldfish flakes, and they seem to be doing well on them.  Certainly all of them have grown except for Queen Dace, who according to what I could find on the internet,  is full-grown at about three inches.  When I set up the tank there were two fish almost exactly the same size and were just over half as long as Queen Dace.  Now they are almost as big as Queen Dace, and it is sometimes hard to tell them apart.  These two fish I called "The Henchman" because they seemed to be the flanks to the King in my little aquarium society.  The way to tell them apart from Queen Dace is that they are more meaty, especially in the tail than she is, and I wonder if that is due to the goldfish flake diet that she didn't grow up on.  I wonder if The Henchmen will end up being much larger than her?

They Are Leaving The Things That Belong To Them At That Place

I've always thought that if I was a teacher, on the first day of class I would do a little exercise to separate the wheat from the chaff, as they say.  It would be a dictation of a simple sentence.  It is a sentence that consists of only five words.  Five common, heavily utilized English words.  Three of these words are homophones that a large percentage of people for some weird reason simply cannot use correctly.  Commonly, they use one of these three homophones for all occurrences of any of these three words in writing.  Here is the sentence:   "They're leaving their things there."

How many of them would begin scratching their heads as they looked at the sentence they had scrawled on their papers?  "There leaving there things there."  How many would find that sentence perfectly acceptable?