Seen on the Street

What can I say....

Silverback

If you grew-up in Milwaukee you know exactly who this is.

 

click on images for a closer look

 

Samson arrived at the Washington Park Zoo in 1950 as a baby with another baby gorilla called Sambo.  They came from Africa as a gift from the Pabst Brewing Company.  Shortly after their arrival both of these lowland gorillas came down with serious colds and almost perished. 

 

When the Zoo moved to its current location on Blue Mound Road the Primate House was the first building opened to the public.  Both Samson and Sambo moved to their new quarters on October 2, 1959.  Sambo died one month later, Nov. 2, 1959.  At the time both Samson and Sambo were estimated to be 10 years old. 

 

Samson was one of the zoo’s most popular residents and my childhood memory of him was his enormous girth (topping out at 652 pounds) and his propensity for charging and striking the glass enclosure of his cage.  An entire generation of school children grew-up terrified of this impressive silverback gorilla. 

 

Samson died November 27, 1981 of a heart attack.  The Milwaukee Public Museum recreated Samson in an exhibit: Samson Remembered – with his likeness crafted by Wendy Christensen. 

 

 

You can learn more about the history of the Milwaukee Zoo's most famous resident here.

Friday Music

Originally written as a prayer this song was released as a single from this Irish singer/songwriter’s album Avalon Sunset in 1989. 

Not so remarkably it has been covered by other performers including countless numbers of wedding performers and bands.  The romantic ballad rose to number 12 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary charts.   

Have I Told You Lately – Van Morrison….

A Dozen of Trouble

From time-to-time I can be more than a little snarky about all the deer around here.  For sure there are too many deer and excepting for an occasional nocturnal raid on the garden or the shrubbery they stay out of the yard for the most part.  They're skittish.  Becoming too habituated to people is not a very good idea for wildlife.

My pal - The First Mate - shared with me a photo he took while visiting family in Colorado this summer.

click on the image and count them yourself

Looks like they have a bigger problem.  I counted twelve in this photo.  In the yard.  In broad daylight!  And elk are larger than whitetail deer.

The Useful Idiot

Good morning readers.    

Today’s post has nothing to do with the current drama surrounding the impeachment investigation.  Nor the spin and finger-pointing from both sides.    

This post is not about my continuing chagrin over how normally rational, honest, religiously-minded and generally upstanding individuals continue to defend and make excuses for the mendacious, faithless, dissembling, dishonest and equivocating individual who passes as our president.    

Nor is this post about my historical disdain for Donald Trump. 

To that end - let's be perfectly clear.  Since I first became aware of the existence of Donald Trump more than three decades ago I was struck by his sleaziness.  I have always considered him a con-man.  He has no moral center.  He is a liar, a cheat and a grifter.  He is draft-dodger.  He is a skirt-chaser.  What he is not is a role model for anyone’s children and grandchildren.  There is nothing he has done since moving to the White House, nor is there anything I can think he might do, that will cause me to change my low opinion of him.  Long, closely-held opinions die hard.  And this old man is entitled to this one.  

Today’s post is about something I have shared with anyone who has cared to listen to me for more than the past three years – about the time that Donald Trump began his quest for the White House. 

Here it is - I believe Trump (and the family business) have been laundering dirty money for some unsavory individuals from what is left of the Soviet Union.  Do I have any evidence or proof of this?  No, of course not.  All I have to go on is my general sense of his lack of character and an educated hunch having spent almost forty years in the financial services industry.  I also take some pride in the people I surround myself-with and I place a premium on character.  Character counts.  Donald Trump would never be welcome in my circle of friends.  Trump makes my ‘Spider Sense’ tingle.  

By now you’re probably thinking – Geez, Swamp, you’ve really gone off the rails with some wild conspiracy theory cooked-up in your own imagination.  Too much time on your hands, eh? 

Nope.  I've been talking about this since Trump commenced his campaign.  Nothing new here. 

Consider this:  Donald Trump lost vast sums of money over years after seven bankruptcies.  His credit was worthless.  Wait, he had no credit.  No U.S. bank would lend him anything.  It was likely that Russian oligarchs provided the capital he needed – and these Russian mobsters coincidentally needed a mechanism to ‘legitimize’ their illicit gains.  Launder their money.  Real estate development is almost the perfect vessel for laundering large sums of cash generated by organized crime. It’s a criminal enterprise – yet Trump agreed to do so without qualm – yet knowing it was a crime.  

There are three steps to laundering dirty money - Placement, Layering and Integration.      

I’m no fan of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi but I think that she’s on to something when she claimed - All roads lead to Putin. 

The Russians hold all the evidence and they’re holding it over Trump’s head like the sword of Damocles.  All of the Trump family wealth hangs in the balance as do prison sentences for some of them.  And as a consequence, Trump does the bidding of Putin or any other Russian oligarch. 

Don’t take my word for it though – modern day Russia is nothing more than a vast criminal enterprise that produces nothing of any consequence for the world economy or the advancement of its citizens.      

So when you observe small snippets of evidence of those roads leading to Putin it is likely because gangsters are adept at recognizing a weak and vulnerable individual.  Does anybody really believe the Russians are not proficient and skilled in recognizing – and cultivating – a useful idiot when they see one?

Up-Nort

One of the Smartest Birds Ever

This is a nice series of three burst photos captured by the trail camera closest to the house. 

click on images for a closer look

Meet Corvus brachyrhynchos - the American Crow. 

A common, year-round, resident here on the peninsula this is an all-black bird – including plumage, legs and feet and beak.  The raven shares some similarities with the American Crow but is measurably larger.   

The third photo in the series illustrates one common field mark differentiated this bird from a raven.  It is a fan-shaped tail.  The tail of a crow is squared – ravens have a wedge-shaped tail. 

Crows are typically found in large groups and ravens travel in pairs.  Crows caw and ravens croak.  This bird mates for life and can live up to twenty years in the wild.  A highly social bird - juvenile siblings assist in the raising of chicks. 

Decidedly intelligent - this bird rates right up there in the intelligence quotient with mammals such as chimpanzees and dolphins.  Proportionate to body weight their brains are roughly fifty percent larger than our own.  A raven is even smarter. 

The sight of a dead crow tends to attract as many as a hundred live crows.  Strangely they will not touch the deceased and will not scavenge their own.  Is this a funerary rite?  Scientists have suggested that the mass gathering is part of a survival strategy – namely to learn about the threat in the encounter of a dead crow and subsequently avoiding the location even in the presence of food. 

This is a bird capable using simple tools, mimicking other birds and human voices, reading traffic lights, recognizing faces and collectively defending one-another. 

Although a flock of crows is called a murder the term is rather undeserved as this bird is really quite family and community oriented. 

You can learn much more about this fascinating bird here.