Author: S. M. Villa

The Mayflies of the Lakes and the Gnats of Put-In Bay

Albrecht Dürer’s 1495 engraving of a mayfly (so I forgot to take a picture of a mayfly). Sourced from Wikipedia.

This “two part” article is the second piece in the Great Lakes Series. Click here to read the introductory piece and click here for a link to my Uncle Kurt’s official blog to follow the trip in real time.

Part I: Mayflies

The mayfly is a curious little bug. I was introduced to them years ago, when I was twelve or something, at a summer camp in northern Wisconsin. They’re completely harmless and, generally, just about as stupid. At the summer camp they came in droves. Thousands appeared overnight and blanketed the ground, the walls, the doors, and everything in sight. Their survival instincts, to say the least, are lacking. Most bugs, regular flies for example, notice when someone is coming their way and will move to prevent their own death. Your average mayfly is not so clever—it has found its spot, as it were, and having found it will remain there even under penalty of death.

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I AM BECOME DEATH; DESTROYER OF FLIES … The Black, the Blue, and the Emerald Storms … A Close Call at Sea Involving Coffee

This three part article is the first piece in the Great Lakes Series, which consists of reports from the sailboat The Odyssey on a leg of its voyage—namely from Lake Michigan to Montreal. Click here to read the introductory piece and click here for a link to my Uncle Kurt’s official blog to follow the trip in real time.

Part I: I AM BECOME DEATH; DESTROYER OF FLIES

This machine kills flies. Photo by me.

So it turns out there’s a lot of flies out there on Lake Michigan.

On land I’ve tried my best to be something of a gentle soul towards all of the Earth’s creatures (excepting those I dislike) and will do my best to avoid killing ants, centipedes, spiders, and other various insects that might eat some of Earth’s more irritating creatures, i.e. mosquitoes. A moth once awarded me a blue ribbon, similar to that awarded to Pabst, emblazoned with the words “Friend to all the Insects.” This wasn’t true but I appreciated the sentiment. Even flies, one of the more irritating species of insect, I tended to spare

On the lake such a thing became a tragic impossibility. The flies had to die and die they did. I don’t know how many flies have now died by my hand. 50? 100? 1000? Probably not 1000, that would be a lot of flies, but certainly more flies than I ever wanted to kill.

My first experience with a lake fly was on the night before we set out whilst I lay in bed in my quarters on the Odyssey. The little creature had gotten itself into my room and was strutting about as I slept, rudely landing on my head on several occasions, and generally making a pest of itself. I rectified this not by killing the thing, for it seemed a petty thing to do at the time rather than the necessity that it would soon be, but by covering my head with a blanket. This solved the problem for the night. But there would be more flies to come.

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So I’m sailing through the Great Lakes to Canada

Anchored just off of Club Island (I think. Have a few pics like this from different islands) in the Georgian Bay. Photo by me.

In mid June or so my Aunt Sue stopped by the house with an interesting offer. She and my Uncle Kurt had been planning a fairly unconventional trip for a while—a sailing trip which would take them through the Great Lakes, up through Canada, down into the Atlantic and south along the East Coast, and then further into the Caribbean.

While I couldn’t do the whole trip—it will take about a year and I don’t have the kind of funds to be gone for that long—I let them know that I could go for a month or two. Because it turns out it’s kind of hard to plan anything resolutely with sailing as so much is dependent upon the weather we eventually put a physical location, the city of Montreal, which I’ve been told by various reputable sources is in Canada, as my point of departure.

It’s been a little more than two weeks since we set out from Winthrop Harbor, a small marina a stone’s throw from the Illinois/Wisconsin border. The ship, named the Odyssey, is a 40′ sailboat called an Island Packet 380 built for ocean travel. Since we left we’ve gone through storms on Lake Michigan, rested in Boyne City, MI, sailed through the Northern Channel in Canada, and south across Lake Huron. We’ve stayed at the rustic town of Bruce Mines in Ontario and peaceful, idyllic, port towns such as Little Current on the Manitoulin Island. We’ve anchored next to an island full of rattlesnakes (no, we didn’t go on the island because it turns out that rattlesnakes are not to be trifled with).

Our itinerary is rather chaotic. Everything depends upon the weather, whether or not there is nearby a calm anchorage, and upon the sometimes exorbitant fees charged per foot by marinas to dock. At the time of this writing we’re resting in Cleveland, OH. Thursday we leave to head north, back to Canada, and through the Welland Canal and the industrial locks there allowing one to circumvent Niagara Falls.

The articles following this prelude will cover some of the aforementioned locations and others. It will also give some handy tips on murdering flies (before you say I’m callous: these flies are vicious, unrelenting, and they bite—they’re a bunch of shitheads), stories regarding a series of storms which caught us in Lake Michigan, where to get a drink and sing karaoke if you find yourself in Bruce Mines, and a heartwarming piece about mayflies and gnats. Other topics may or may not be written depending upon the mood and laziness of the author.

If you want to track the trip in real time and well after I’m back in Chicago, you can check out my Uncle Kurt’s blog at this link. From there you can view the entirety of the trip, track the boat, and correct me when I inevitably put the wrong name to some island out here in one of my articles.

 

‘WAHL!’: It’s the sound you make with this horrible clipper

Pictured: A piece of shit. Photo by me.

The Wahl Manscaper is an awful piece of technology I cannot fail to recommend to those who love grooming and spend restless nights dreaming of devoting the rest of their lives to doing so. It’s the kind of thing that makes one regret the Industrial Revolution. What can be done in minutes with a razor can be stretched out for days or even months with this thing.

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Chuck Todd; Scum of the Earth

What are you looking at Chuck? Why so confused? Photo sourced from Wikimedia Commons
Almost a poem.
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NEIU Connected to Blue Bike Network…Divvy Lands on St. Louis; Brings Discount

Originally published in the NEIU Independent on Oct. 6 2015

If there’s any single experience common to the whole NEIU community, it’s the commute. On any given day — whether it’s on foot, by wheels or on rails — students, staff and faculty alike condemn themselves to an indefinitely long hiatus in public or private transit. Since its mid-summer arrival on campus, Chicago’s Divvy bike-share program can be counted among the transit options available to the community.

The new Divvy station replaced about two-and-a-half cars worth of parking space on the St. Louis and Balmoral avenues intersection just north of Bernard Brommel Hall (BBH). Equipped with the capacity to dock and recharge 15 bikes, it connects NEIU and the surrounding neighborhood to a total of 475 stations spread throughout the city — 175 of which, including the St. Louis station, were installed as part of a large-scale expansion launched last spring.

The expanded network spans some 18 miles between its northern and southernmost points. New stations can be found as far north as Clark and Touhy and as far south as Jeffrey Blvd and 76th street.

“I’m really happy it’s here,” said Matt Specht, Dean of Students. “For the longest time our students didn’t have any access because Divvy wasn’t this far north.”

Divvy’s Student Membership Discount, a deal reducing the annual rate of $75 to $55, was made available to NEIU students shortly into the fall semester. Graduate and undergraduate students are eligible, but there is no equivalent discount offered for faculty or staff.

Specht set up the discount with a representative from Divvy around the same time the bike-share network expanded into the area surrounding NEIU.

“The student discount has been set up for universities across Chicago,” Specht said. “So when they decided to come north of Lawrence (Avenue), it was natural that Northeastern be a part of their discount program.”

George Mason, a senior at NEIU, was in the market for a $1000 bicycle before he decided Divvy was ultimately more convenient and affordable.

“The $20 (off) is worth it,” Mason said. “Even the full price is worth it. I’ve saved a lot of time by doing Divvy, and a lot of money, and a lot of stress. A lot of students don’t make a lot of money, but our time is really worth something and Divvy helps out a whole lot with that.”

Some students, however, may be eligible to apply for Divvy For Everyone, a one-time, $5-annual membership available to individuals and families from low-income households. This discount was implemented alongside the bike-share program to extend the company’s commercial base into typically low-income neighborhoods and to attract customers finding Divvy’s base rates unaffordable.

D4E is only available to first time subscribers, so students may want to a see if they’re eligible first before purchasing a discounted student membership.

Other than the reduced annual rate, the student discount is functionally identical to a normal annual membership. Both memberships charge the same scaling overtime fees for trips longer than 30 minutes: Starting at $1.50 for any trip lasting between 30-60; then $4.50, for those between 60-90 minutes; and finally $6 for every additional 30 minutes beyond that.

The implication is that Divvy is best used for short trips — or for longer ones planned to take advantage of the bike-share network itself. The runtime of a trip is reset whenever the bike is docked at a Divvy station. This loophole is easily exploited, as long as a rider is within 30 minutes of another station, and can be used to make long distance trips without incurring overtime fees.

But data made available on Divvy’s website leaves some indication of the overall usage of NEIU’s St. Louis and Balmoral station.

Between the months of May and June, a total of 197 trips were made to or from the St. Louis Avenue station. Of those trips, 102 were departures and 80 were arrivals. Another 15 departed from St. Louis and Balmoral avenues and returned to that same station. The most common connection was with the Christiana and Lawrence avenues station located next to the Kimball Brown Line with a total of 56 trips made between them. By comparison, only 20 trips were made between St. Louis Avenue and the Clark Street and Winnemac Avenue station — the second most common connection.

“It’s good for point-to-point transportation,” Mason said. “With Divvy you don’t have to plan a bike ride. You can just be out at one point and have a transportation need, or just miss a bus, or not have the money for a cab — and you look to your right and there’s a Divvy station. It’s highly convenient. In fact, I cancelled the purchase of that bicycle and do Divvy now.”

The versatility of the bike-share program — or, at the very least, the industriousness of its users — evident through the variety of destinations, the duration of trips and distances traversed by Divvy riders. The longest trip beginning and ending at the St. Louis Avenue station lasted approximately four hours and 38 minutes. Another rider took only four minutes to get from St. Louis Avenue to Ridgeland Boulevard and Touhy Avenue.

But the value of the station is ultimately limited by its location.

The St. Louis Avenue station is situated on the Northwestern edge of Divvy’s operational network. While the nearest stations to the east are barely half-a-mile away, the closest station southwest of NEIU, on Keystone and Montrose avenues is about a mile and a half away. There are no stations at all directly west or north of the University and it’s likely to remain so until Divvy launches another major expansion.

The Divvy bike-share program is a private-public partnership owned by the Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) and operated by an American bike-sharing firm called Motivate — a private company responsible for the design and operation of similarly large-scale bike-share programs in cities such as New York City; Melbourn, Australia; Boston, Massachusetts; Washington DC; and Columbus, Ohio.

Playing a Game Wrong: Planetside 2

Originally published in the NEIU Independent on Jan. 27 2014.

There are varying degrees to which the rules of a game can be stretched. There are very good reasons you’ll never see Lebron James take to court on an ATV and the world is probably better for it. But outside of professional sports, in the relatively low-risk — though let’s not forget those unfortunate souls obliterated from starvation, sleep-deprivation, over-stimulation or dehydration on some ill-fated raid in World of Warcraft — realm of online video games it can sometimes be fun, sometimes more fun than intended, to throw up your hands and play a game the wrong way.

Planetside 2, since it was released as a free-to-play game in 2012, is one of the few games that promises something close to a full battlefield experience. In a moment you can run a field — tracer bullets, aircraft and heavy ordinance above your head dividing the night sky — step on a landmine, explode, hop in a small aircraft (or a large one, if that better suits your style) and fly off to the other side of the world to drop bombs and shout obscenities over a microphone.

The game spans four painstakingly crafted miles-wide continents. Battles rage on and between them with the potential for thousands of players to participate at any time. They have at their disposal, trucks, jeeps, tanks, bombers and four varieties of aircraft with which to gain the upper hand. You can be a sniper, battlefield medic, an engineer or a rifleman, among other roles — and the game encourages and rewards players for working in tandem to overcome battlefield obstacles.

That being said: There’s a lot of wasted space in Planetside 2.

Between and beyond every blood-soaked battle there are sun-drenched fields sparsely populated by trees. There are mangrove jungles and vast deserts marred by ravines and granite spires. There lie lush valleys and lakes nestled amongst the crags of resolute and forlorn mountain ranges. All of these were, ostensibly, hand-crafted — and there’s no logical reason to set foot in more than a handful of these locales.

Sometimes, standing atop a watchtower overlooking one of those valleys, you might think, “What if I was to leave this horrible war? Pick up my things and start a gentle cherry farm in that valley yonder, amidst the lakes and the trees and those glowing pink ferns that dot the land between them.”

This is a feature not supported in the game. There is no escape from the war. The man described above will spend eternity continuously bombed, bludgeoned, sniped, shot at point-blank-range and ground into the road by inconsiderate tank drivers.

Like urban-bowling — a devious and frowned upon sport outside of simulated reality — through pedestrians in Grand Theft Auto, exploring these oft-ignored regions of Planetside 2 can be a fun distraction from the trivial banalities of life. While you might hop online to jump deep into the ultra-violence, you could find yourself just as satiated driving the Jeep-like Harasser through fields of daisies or off-road desert fantasies.

There are few players willing to bother you in these distant and secluded stretches of the wilderness. In the real world, driving a Jeep off a monumental cliff or wandering mindlessly through an expanse of swampy desolation will likely end in fiery destruction or the mouth of a reptile. In Planetside 2, death is easily avoidable when vacationing from the glare of machine-gun fire and swooping predatory bombers. The worst that can happen is you’ll get bored.

On the Importance of Filler

Originally published in the NEIU Independent on March 31 2015.

A wise man once wrote: “Filler is the spice of life.” And, of course, he wasn’t wrong. Filler makes up some 90 percent of matter in the universe.

Siberia is filler, and without its desolate touch the geography of Russia would be a degree less impressive. Most of the world is filler according to Manifest Destiny, and it can safely be said that the Sea People, who neglected to record their history, name, or any documentation of their conquest of the Balkans, North Africa and the Near East promptly became filler for the civilizations following their path through history.

Dark matter is filler, and it accounts for most of the universe; spread in great and invisible clouds between clusters of galaxies.

This article is filler—nobody, not even its author, can deny that.

Filler is an inescapable part of our world, and as such should not be taken for granted.

Filler keeps your most precious treasures safe. Without the foam peanut, one of the Earth’s most notorious and environmentally destructive kinds of filler, millions upon millions of packages would be turned to useless rubble and lost in the dark recesses of UPS trucks and the luggage compartments of airplanes.

Your grandmother’s prize vase, a priceless relic barely saved from a herd of fascists during the Spanish Civil War, would now be a Frankenstein monster of duct tape, ceramic shards and Elmer Glue. It would never have inspired the awe of countless children, cousins and uncles — and it never would have earned her a new kidney on the Antiques Roadshow.

The good part of a Twinkie, or any kind of Danish for that matter, is the filler. Most of your selections at McDonald’s fill the time between a better meal, and most of McDonald’s food is actually made from some twisted kind of filler itself.

When there’s a hole in your apartment’s wall, you find something to fill it before the next time the landlord comes around. Maybe it’s plaster. Maybe it’s caulk. It might be a strategically placed flag or poster. In any event; it’s all filler.

Even people can be filler. Those who stand in front of you in line as you lug one of those webbed bags full of grapefruit, or those who bog down the Dan Ryan during rush hour—what are they if not filler?

This, in effect, makes filler of us all.

And why shouldn’t we be? Filler is important. You couldn’t drive very far if your tires weren’t filled with air, and the astronauts aboard the International Space Station would have a hard time working if it wasn’t filled with air as well. The world would be a drab and lonesome waste without filler, and we’re all better off for having it here.

From Detroit to Cochabamba…
The Crisis of World Water Rights

Originally published in The Independent at NEIU under the title Detroit and the Crisis of World Water Rights on September 9th 2014. I’ve since lightly edited the piece here and there, most notably adding (lol) after a certain sentence near the end.

There is no greater affront and no greater threat to human rights than water deprivation and privatization. Say what you will about terrorist threats, oil tycoons, militarized police, surveillance or big government—there is no substitute for water—and whoever controls water has unprecedented power over the populace at large.

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