Beautiful porcelain insulator

Close side view.  Note thickness of copper wire.

Side view, with thick copper wire.

View from the base.  Partly glazed.

Found this on the beach last week. Wondering if it was tsunami debris.  Yes, I know it wouldn't float, but you never know what's connected to what, especially with the line of thick copper wire.


But --

Got this answer from Bill Meier, at a neat insulator collection site.  Check it out.  It's pretty cool!

Bill:

Top view

"You have a typical porcelain insulator, produces in the millions or more likely billions. I wouldn't expect it the least bit uncommon to find one at the bench. They are all over everywhere!

Since there are so many around, I find it very unlikely it came from far away... I'd saw from a utility pole probably within a few hundred yards away! Used for low voltage electric power.

Regardless, given the weight it would sink and it doesn't have a lot of surface area to "push" it and I would find it extremely unlikely to have come from Fukushima. A piece of wood perhaps... Consider it like a rock in the water... could that travel thousands of miles?

Given I'm sure there are thousands within a mile where you found it also makes all the less likely, even of the physics supported the theory of the transportation of it." 

There are some pebbles from the beach lodged in the spaces underneath, but I decided not to start poking at them.  Better they remain in place than that I chip the glaze.

Thanks, Bill!

SOCIAL EXPERIMENT

Dan and I pick up the Clallam Bay beach as we're walking, or at least the mile or so on the east side of the Clallam River.  We're not civic-minded; we just don't want to look at it.  We've hauled off all manner of crap over the years, from tiny to huge, from unknown scrap of plastic to bags of human shit to old rusty lead pipe to an ancient rusty compressor to a complete toilet (we had to break it up and carry it away in pieces).

Dan with all the garbage we found on the entire beach behind him.  Now.  In 2003 when we moved here?  Just imagine.

Yesterday, in passing the Clallam River park bridge, we placed some garbage at the head of the attached ramp, to pick up when we got back, to dump, as we've been given permission, in the park dumpster.  I make no assumptions about whether any of the following people thought a raggedy chunk of fiberglass and a broken tin roof fragment belonged to anybody or was other than junk:

Three catch-and-release trout fishermen.  Stepped over it.

Two blimpish white boys who gave us a dirty look on the beach (we have black hair).  Went around it.

Three aware-looking teenagers. Probably not aware of the junk.

The other side of the river, where we normally can't reach, not even at high tide in summer, now.  Somebody on that end -- and I suspect the owners of the Three Sisters of Clallam Art Gallery and their friends and family -- is keeping it as clean as we keep our end.  Somebody on the road to Slip Point is picking up everything we used to pick up.  The worst pickup on the beach is found 100 feet from the end of the bridge, during the summer.  The attachment is removed during the winter.  Draw your own conclusions - and say "Thank you," if you know those people.

Dead Whale

Hiked to 2nd Beach on the Olympic Peninsula yesterday. Resting against a log in the sand, I couldn't stand the pain in my back teeth any more.  Thought it might be that place that needed flossing, was delicately working at it when a ghastly smell floated by.  

At first I thought it was something old stuck in my teeth; you with deep places in your teeth know how it is when you dig out an ancient shred of meat and it's gone bad.  I dug a little more and the smell oozed by again.  Realized it wasn't me; got up and began to look around.  

About ten feet away, a five-foot long black woody-looking mass displayed the remains of baby-whale-size vertebrae.  Might have been what was left of a head.  The crows were happily bouncing about on this bounty.  I stood back, breathing through my mouth, and tried to be respectful; it's  a whale, after all.

Two guys showed up who were camping down the beach.  One of them had a shovel, and they had a very determined look.  When they found the dessicated mass, their attitude was exactly that I'd seen in a guy on the beach viewing a piece of dead whale before:  "How DARE it rot on MY beach!"

What's up with that? This is nature; stuff dies and washes up. Stuff rots.  These two testicles just glowed with a sense of righteous outrage.  Maybe they wanted a mint on their pillows.

As I walked away, I saw them covering it up, and some pretty disturbed crows.  All I could do is laugh.  And laugh.

Smoggy today; literally.  The British Columbia forest fires are combining their smoke with our August fog to provide us with our own version of a London Peculiar.