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GeneralJust for Fun volume 4

8th Dec 2023 14:18 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

The last volume was getting a bit long so think it is time to start a new one.

I found this piece in a wash near us yesterday. It actually comes from the Johnson Mine a number of miles away.

When I saw it I picked it up and thinking it may work, I rubbed it. I was thinking of Aladin's lamp but no Geanie came out. Oh well, it sure was a little cute piece and will go into our rock yard.

8th Dec 2023 17:06 UTCTony L. Potucek Expert

That's a bit of stretch....

8th Dec 2023 17:48 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

Well, Tony, if you don't like the lamp, maybe a gravy boat!!

8th Dec 2023 17:49 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

Well, the lamp almost worked, I nearly conjured up a bear, climbing up the rock above the lamp.

9th Dec 2023 19:30 UTCTony L. Potucek Expert

Ye gads! You're killing me, man!

9th Dec 2023 21:04 UTCVivian Zitek

Maybe the real genie was the adventure you had along the way.

9th Dec 2023 22:00 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

Well, this is the "just for fun" thread and it seems I have a lot more active imagination. I see all kinds of images in nature and this one just looked at me and said, "pick me up". Comes from writing a lot of short stories in sci fi and so much more.

9th Dec 2023 22:43 UTCVivian Zitek

I'm the same way — I primarily write science fiction & creative non-fiction, and I greatly enjoy being a little poetic in how I think and write about things. I can also see this one as being an ironing table with an iron on top of it.

30th Jan 2024 18:33 UTCKevin Conroy Manager

Seen in the men's room at the Just Minerals Show in Tucson!

30th Jan 2024 22:55 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

Not bad Kevin, if it only be true!!

31st Jan 2024 12:00 UTCHerwig Pelckmans

What do you mean, if only be true? Don't you feel smarter after a few beers?? ;-)

Especially good Belgian beers will do an excellent job!! ;-))

Great contribution, Kevin!

31st Jan 2024 15:25 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

This has a little story with it. Friends just went collecting at Duquesne Arizona on a friends claim, with permission of course. They stayed at our place and Mary had me get out something an antique collector friend had traded me for something in our museum he had to have.

It is an old, light purple, glass electric cover over an electric meter. I have no idea where he got it but it was fun for us because of the old ghost town Duquesne we have ourselves collected often in past years.

This is actually from the Duquesne Electric Company of Pittsburg Pennsylvania, and I have no idea how the friend got it but with our local town of Duquesne, we love it.

Second photo shows a closer view. Hard to get a photo of the name in the glass.

31st Jan 2024 15:27 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

Close up of the lettering. The glass cover is 16cm across and has the light purple color from the age of the glass. The company has been in business for over a hundred years from what the internet stated.

So, for mineral collectors who know the wonderful quartz Japan-law twin crystals from there, a bit of a name connection and no idea where the town here in Arizona got its name from but it is the same.

31st Jan 2024 18:11 UTCSteve Ewens

Rolf,

Generally Speaking.

From about 1885-1920, glass makers added manganese dioxide to their glass in an effort to produce clear glass. Apparently, many consumers and home canners wanted to be able to view the natural color of preserved foodstuffs. Prior to this time, most glass had a green tint to it.

When glass with the manganese oxide is exposed to the sun and UV radiation over lengthy periods of time the formerly clear glass turns various shades of pink/purple.

I am sure you are aware of this, but it may be new information for some members.

Steve

1st Feb 2024 00:40 UTCJeff Weissman Expert

Rolf, dous yous prnonc 'Duquesne' liksa Pitsburger, 'Du-kan', or otherwise?

1st Feb 2024 13:08 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

Eh?

1st Feb 2024 15:21 UTCJeff Weissman Expert

Sometimes my sister and I fall back into our Pittsburgh and/or South Philly accents so that our kids can't understand what we are saying. In Pittsburgh, we pronounce Duquesne as "du-caine", I was wondering if it is the same out in Arizona? In contrast, there is a town near Pittsburgh called Versailles, which is pronounced, in Pittsburgh region, "Ver-sails" and not the French pronunciation.

1st Feb 2024 16:24 UTCHerwig Pelckmans

The pronounciation of (even well established) French words by Americans can be quite amusing. Sometimes they don't even know the words were originally French. But hey, who knows it all? :-)

1st Feb 2024 16:31 UTCJeff Weissman Expert

Herwig, you are better off not asking people from Pittsburgh, PA how to pronounce anything, you'll get three different versions...

2nd Feb 2024 14:40 UTCTony Albini

Same in Connecticut!

1st Feb 2024 16:43 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

Jeff, the Eh was an answer from Canadians and NE people who often come in our place.

Here in Arizona Duquesne is pronounced just as you do du-caine.

Now the main fun we have here in Arizona is with people from out of the area who try to pronounce the Native American names for various places, boy that can be fun to hear.

As a kid in Germany, my father spoke a dialect called Kolch, a very local dialect spoken in Cologne and even though I spoke German, I had no idea what he was saying. Mary had lived in Arkansas for a short time as a young gal and said she had a real hard time understanding what they were saying as well. Those regional ways of talking are interesting.

Now, having grown up in California, some from places like Boston ask me what my particular dialect is and I have to laugh since the way people talk in California is a good bit different than places where dialects are quite pronounced. So, what does one call a California speaker?

1st Feb 2024 16:58 UTCJeff Weissman Expert

Rolf, so what does one call a California speaker?

or, asking in Canadian: so what does one call a California speaker, eh?

1st Feb 2024 17:38 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

Jeff, in Germany, the people who speak a clear form of Germany with no dialect they call "high German" but in the US someone who speaks with no dialect, who knows!

1st Feb 2024 17:43 UTCUwe Kolitsch Manager

my father spoke a dialect called Kolch

Actually Kölsch (also the name of a German beer).

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%B6lsch

1st Feb 2024 18:33 UTCFrank Mersch

Uwe, don't call it beer ;-)

Frank

(duck and cover)

1st Feb 2024 18:33 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

Thank you Uwe for the spelling correction on the Kolsch, didn't live there since 1957 and believe me, you do forget a lot over those years.

Yes, I do remember it was also a beer.

Another addition, a friend from Bavaria visits us now and then and one visit he went from his "high German" to the dialect his folks spoke and he completely lost me.

One time visiting Germany again as a late teen, took a Rhine river trip and on the ship were folks speaking something I understood bits and pieces of, they turned out to be from London and spoke Cockney! Boy, another place I hardly understood them.

1st Feb 2024 18:38 UTCUwe Kolitsch Manager

(duck and cover)

No need - I don't drink beer ;-)

1st Feb 2024 20:47 UTCPavel Kartashov Manager

No comments.

1st Feb 2024 21:22 UTCA. A. Faller

None necessary.

1st Feb 2024 22:05 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

Boy Pavel, I could use some of those, both the bar and the finished product! Great laugh with your post.

1st Feb 2024 23:41 UTCPavel Kartashov Manager

Mr. Grey to Mr. White: Hey, are you thinking the same thing I'm thinking?

2nd Feb 2024 13:38 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

Pavel,

This actually happened to a friend in Arizona. They had a hummingbird feeder with sugar water above the front door entrance and in summer the nectar feeding bats also drink from the feeders. When they got up early, before light, they needed to refill the feeder for the birds to get up soon. As he reached up to take down the feeder, he had his mouth open while looking straight up, as in your cartoon, and a bat was still flying to the feeder and it "pooped-peed" as it turned around and that stuff landed right in my friends mouth!!! Not good of course.

Luckily he worked at a local cave giving tours and since there is a lot of bat activity in the back cave where he gave some tours, he had gotten rabies vaccine a few years before but went to the doctor after that bat incident to get a rabies booster.

Pays not to look up with mouth open when changing a bat/hummingbird feeder when bats are still flying around.

2nd Feb 2024 22:45 UTCPavel Kartashov Manager

If you look at the map of the Kamchatka Peninsula, then in its very south you can see a completely round lake. This is the Kurilskoe caldera Lake. In its eastern part located small island Al aid's Heart (Alaid island located 80 km south in Pacific, but here is its heart - story connected with local legends). This is the top of the extrusion needle (taking into account the depth of the lake) 680 m high.

In September 1985, we were offered a float on a small boat "Dora"-series on this lake. And we asked the captain to sail around the Alaid's Heart. He agreed. The boat was small, but its engine was very loud. When the boat approached the steep cliffs of the island, the sound from the engine gave a very powerful echo. And there was a small bird's market on the island. Couple thousands seagulls took off from the island, startled by the sound.

We immediately realized how it would all end and began to be the captain to sail away from the island as soon as possible. But the speed of the boat was too low. There was nowhere to hide on the boat - a small canopy protected only the captain. A cloud of seagulls accompanied us for about two hundred meters. When we returned to shore, we had to clean dozen kilograms of fresh guano from the boat. I'm not going to say anything about clothes, but we had cleaning it out even of our ears.

This is this damned island.

3rd Feb 2024 14:08 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

Pavel,

Your seagull story reminded me of my High School time in Pacific Palisades California. The large open lawn in the middle of the school was the place all the kids would go and sit during lunch. At first it was a nice place to eat until the seagulls found that the kids always left stuff lying around for them to eat. Well, this got to the birds realizing if they flew over and pooped on the lunch eating kids they ran off, leaving a lot more food lying around. It got to be a bombing run for the gulls and chasing off the kids, who left their stuff lying around, then swooping in to feast. Didn't take long for the kids to stop using the lawn for lunch. It was fun to watch from the sidelines as the gulls did their little bombing runs. Smart birds actually to figure this out.

3rd Feb 2024 10:16 UTCMarco N. Gabriel

Have fun!

3rd Feb 2024 10:17 UTCMarco N. Gabriel

'His Fortune On The Rocks' by Don Rosa from 1988

3rd Feb 2024 14:10 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

Marco

Great comics and fits the comic strip perfectly.

6th Feb 2024 20:25 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

There was a thread on a Berlin meteorite and I didn't want to put this on that thread but thought it would be fun to post here. I call these "meteorwrongs" and they are slag from the Douglas Arizona smelter where Bisbee ores were smelted. They were used on many of the local railroad beds as ballast. The material is extremely hard and durable but it does not always stay along the railroad and washes down the local washes and ends up as one black rock in the middle of the normal material of the area which is a lot lighter in color. We have had many folks come in hoping they found a meteorite only to be sad when I show them the ones in the cactus garden that are the same and explain they are slag. I even did an article in our local paper one time to explain the are "not" meteorites.

17th Feb 2024 16:48 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

When taking a daily dog walk, I like to pick up any trash I find on the walk and this 4x3cm piece of glass was lying on the open desert near us and I picked it up to put in my trash bag but looked at it in the sunlight first and saw the rainbow colors so put it in my pocket instead.

For some reason, some of the glass that was tossed out in our area over a hundred years ago, has gone through a number of changes lying in the intense sun for many years.

I have never quite understood why the glass gets such wonderful rainbow colors with age and anyone has any ideas, would love to hear any.

Next photo is the photo under my microscope.

That piece turned from a piece of trash to a little treasure under magnification.

17th Feb 2024 16:51 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

This is a 4mm view under my microscope and the colors were amazing, kind of reminded me of the opal play of colors. This is just one tiny section and the whole piece was a bunch of these kinds of areas with multiple colors. The other thing was the inside of the glass also seemed to have a bunch of tiny rounded whitish spheres. Who would think that trash glass from long ago, would be so pretty under a microscope!

20th Feb 2024 14:28 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

Just for fun, we live near Benson Arizona and it is an early historic place for trains. There were three separate early train tracks that went through Benson because it was the east-west corridor and along a river for water. Along one of the earliest tracks, the narrow guage railroad that went through here, I found this railroad uniform button, so a nice discovery of Benson's history. It is now in our museum display in our shop, along with pieces of the old metal plates which held the track. Will add a photo of that also.

20th Feb 2024 14:30 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

This is one of the 1800's old plates from the narrow gauge railroad that went through the area and I often call this my "cool rust" objects. Desert climate has allowed these old plates and other metal objects to survive longer than in wet climates.

The history of the railroads here also ties into the mining done here in Cochise County early on.

18th Apr 2024 13:33 UTCPavel Kartashov Manager

Tytamskem (YouThereWithWhom) - the ancient Egyptian goddess of jealousy.

18th Apr 2024 15:41 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

Pavel,

I'm Jealous of the hair stylist she went to!

18th Apr 2024 18:28 UTCKevin Conroy Manager

I'm amazed that they had cameras, and this photo has survived in pristine condition!

18th Apr 2024 22:22 UTCLalith Aditya Senthil Kumar

And the fact that they spoke Russian!

19th Apr 2024 15:59 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

Just walking past our cactus garden and saw this sandstone piece we had picked up some time ago and just happened to notice the Goul in the lower right corner. Had never noticed this before and thought I share this fun object/rock.

23rd Apr 2024 19:45 UTCMartin Rich Expert

Sign on private house. No comment!

23rd Apr 2024 20:08 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

Very Funny/Not Funny, depending on how you feel about dogs and what they leave behind.

26th Apr 2024 14:07 UTCPavel Kartashov Manager

I need your keys, dolls and a theater...

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