Porch Beer

Now that spring has decidedly arrived it is seasonably conducive to sitting on the porch to have a cold one after quitting time.  

Not every day - but most days.

Doggo approved...

 

The Oriole Ranch

 

 

Made with real fruit juice.

No artificial colors, flavors or preservatives.

Gluten free.

32 oz bird food.

$1.99 at Econo Foods.

Jar number 5 so far for the 2026 season. 

Friday Music

Distinguished as possibly the only father and son rock band duo Tom and Ian Spanic had a moment in the sun in the mid 1980s thru the early 1990s.  They gained national attention in 1990 after they filled-in on Saturday Night Live  as a last-minute replacement for Sinead O'Connor.  This was followed-on by  appearances on Letterman, Conan O'Brien, MTV, Entertainment Tonight, World Cafe, Morning Edition and more.

Known for solid performance on their Fender Telecasters their rockabilly vocals were eerily evocative of the Everly Brothers and Buddy Holly.  After an album on Permanent Records in 1988 they signed-on with Rounder and the rest was history for a couple of local boys previously known only around Milwaukee and Waukesha.   

The group remained active until Tom's death in 2016. 

The Spanic Boys - Face The Facts..... 

Sunrise

Yesterday evening I posted a couple of photos of a peninsula sunset.

This afternoon I bring you a video of a peninsula sunrise.

And you though trail cameras were only for wildlife....

 

All Wound-Up

I can remember this from my childhood.  We didn't have one as it was a luxury feature on your typical suburban lawnmower.  A neighbor had one however; and come to think of it, this was a technological marvel of the time.

The Briggs & Stratton wind-up starter, technically an impulse starter, was a mechanical alternative to the more common rope-pull recoil starters that persist to this day.  (My cursed rototiller has a rope-pull).  

Anyway, in the 1960's this breakthrough allowed a user to start a lawn mower without yanking on a rope multiple times.

The technology relied-upon a spring that stored energy as it was wound with a crank. Flipping a release lever allowed the spring to snap back, spinning the crankshaft much faster than a yanking on a rope and starting the engine.  The Briggs Easy Spin version incorporated a patented camshaft feature that kept the intake valve open slightly longer on the compression stroke thereby reducing the force needed to turn the engine over.  Spiffy.

A victim of their own complexity and as electric starters became more affordable this technology fell out of favor.  It persists - although you won't find it in your garage.  In situations where there is no electricity (lifeboats, military applications, generators, disaster relief) impulse starters are used for diesel engines.  

Speaking for myself, rope pull starters suck.... 

Sunset

From tonight there was this...

View to the northwest

And the reflection in the view to the southeast  

 

Lord Of The Flies

I read this book as a youngster. 

Written in the midst of the Cold War the power struggle on the island was an allegorical microcosm of the ideological divide between liberal democracy and the totalitarianism of communism.  

I suppose nowadays if parents allowed a preteen access to such literature they’d be turned-in to county social services.   Or it might already have been banned in your community as it has in others. 

Anyway, this is a riveting redo of a very dark tale of stranded schoolboys attempt to build a democratic society on a deserted island. 

Order quickly dissolves into tribal savagery and murder as they succumb to their primal instincts and a terrifying imaginary beast.

We got hooked after the first of four episodes.  Like I said; it’s dark.  View it at your own peril. 

British novelist William Golding’s Lord of the Flies….