NiniaPimp Magazine

Weather radios are sort of a hobby of mine. There is just about no place I can go on my property that there isn’t one within reach somewhere. Six different brands are represented presently by what I own, including a more expensive Eton that is not my best radio. This small, (and I mean small) new line from Eton is a whole new animal to be sure. Its controls and design are very user friendly. And the reception on all channels, including the weather, is very loud and clear. Its true that the dial numbers for the AM FM are very small as some other reviewers have mentioned and can make it hard to tune accurately. But that is something common, as well as for me expected in a radio so small. What sets this unit apart from all the others I own in my opinion is its price and solar power. It is without a doubt the cheapest weather radio I have come across that is solar powered. Big, small, or otherwise. Even though one has been able to buy solar powered calculators at discount stores for less than $10 for years now, for some reason the weather radio industry has treated solar power as something still high tech and to be appreciated only in their most expensive units. My only other solar powered radio cost me over $60. The only possible down side that I should mention about this radio is that it does not take batteries. It would have been nice if they included that option. But they didn’t and its either the solar power or crank. This could be a very big negative for some folks who would feel comfortable knowing they could just stick some batteries in it if all else fails. Although 90% of the time the solar power is all you should ever need, if you will routinely keep this in a rather dark place, or happen to be lost out in the savage wilderness someplace with this radio in a continuous cloud cover, be ready to do a whole heap of crankin’. All in all, its finally nice to see a very reasonably priced unit that is solar powered and of a very quality build and design as well. I highly recommend the Eton for a portable unit that can be taken anywhere easily, powered effortlessly, and gives quality performance all in one package….

NEW YORK—According to evening commuters, 26-year-old web designer Kevin Hanley summoned every resource at his disposal Tuesday in an effort to appear more thoughtful and sophisticated, hoping to capture the attention of an attractive woman on the subway. “As soon as she got on the train, he sat up straighter, adjusted the angle he was holding his book at so he could show off the title, and started doing this thing where he would casually run his fingers across his stubble,” said a witness to the scene, adding that Hanley would also look off into the middle distance from time to time and smile as though he were contemplating something humorous or poignant. “And at one point, I swear to God, he even furrowed his brow and wrote something down in a little notebook.” When he gave up his seat to an elderly person in an effort to look chivalrous, the attractive woman appeared to notice Hanley at last, walking up to him, saying “Excuse me,” and maneuvering past him so she could exit at her stop.

Renewable energy may be chic, but that isn’t why America merits a windmill museum. It’s because of Billie Wolfe, a Texas home economics teacher. She liked old windmills, and thought they deserved a museum because prairie settlers couldn’t have survived without them. “The First Lady of the Windmill” died in 1997, months before the museum opened, and years before windmills revived as one of America’s desperate post-oil hopes — as wind turbines.

The American Wind Power Center displays its own working wind turbine (built 2005), the first within a U.S. city limit. It towers over dozens of older windmills scattered across the museum grounds, their wheels rhythmically creaking in the West Texas breeze (Lubbock is one of the windiest cities in the U.S.).

For farmers and ranchers, a museum of old wind machines evokes nostalgic feelings for a squeaking “prairie pinwheel” out by the barn. For everyone else, a creaking windmill is a cinematic device that suggests an imminent attack by aliens or monsters.

This impression is heightened in the museum’s giant room of windmills, over 100 of them, packed blade-to-blade in a kind of Steampunk vision of mechanical single-mindedness. The biggest wheels are 25 feet across, and you’re right next to them. We wondered if a breeze through the building might set the blades in motion, turning the museum into a human slice-and-dice. Tanya Meadows, the museum’s PR director, reassured us. “A wind that big would rip the roof off,” she said, implying that windmills would be the least of our concerns.

Part of the wind power mural.

The names on important windmill brands blur to the unschooled: Aermotor, Steel Star, Wonder Mill, Flying Dutchman. There are colorful wooden windmills and practical steel windmills, windmills with collapsible blades, windmills with directional tails, railroad windmills, industrial windmills, iron bucket windmills, freakish home-built windmills with nicknames such as “merry-go-round” and “battle ax.”

The museum even exhibits a haunted windmill, the last remaining “twin-wheel” in existence, which had a reputation for killing more than the usual share of windmill workers. “A big gust of wind comes along, spins it around, knocks you off the tower,” explained Tanya.

Barbed wire bird’s nest.

A side room contains the world’s largest windmill mural, 34 feet high and 172 feet long. A 15-minute recorded narration tells its story, augmented with dramatic lighting and sound effects. It took over two years to complete, showcases lots of windmills in an old-timey Texas setting, and doesn’t include any tornadoes.

Museum development director Glenn Patton walked us outside to look at the huge, turbine. With every turn of the blade it slowly generates energy and amortizes its hefty installation cost. Glenn regaled us with details about its hydraulics and yaw, but what we wanted to know was how many rungs were in the ladder to the top. Glenn didn’t know, but conceded that he’d been asked that question “about a million times.” Visitors who complete the museum’s Windsmith Academy (held during two days every three months) get a chance to climb 17 stories straight up.

The museum displays a couple of barbed wire bird nests, found on windmills on the treeless prairie. As for live birds, Glenn told us that they haven’t been bothered by the 160+ windmills at the museum — not even the turbine. “They just go around it,” he said. “If you’ve ever been in a car that hit a bird, you’ve killed more than we have.”

For $3,500 you can purchase a new, full-size windmill in the American Wind Power Center gift shop, 19 feet tall. It’s the largest souvenir we’ve ever encountered.

March 28, 2011

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Sight of the Week

American Wind Power Center and Museum, Lubbock, Texas [Mar 28-Apr 3, 2011]

SotW Archive

USA and Canada Tips and Stories

• Trona Pinnacles, Trona, California
• Sergeant Charles Floyd Monument, Sioux City, Iowa
• Car Bumper Deer, Springfield, Illinois
• Ferncliff Cemetery and Mausoleum, Hartsdale, New York
• Feature: American Wind Power Center and Museum, Lubbock, Texas

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We first heard about Eddie Martin and his folk art palace “Pasaquan” from some of our older relatives in Columbus, Georgia. Their recollections were alluring:

“That fellow, ‘Pasquale’ they called him, used to come into town dressed like a wizard.”

“They say he danced naked on top of the Empire State Building.”

“He trained snakes to guard his home.”

“He let his mule starve to death, because the mule wouldn’t go into the barn with all the crazy mirrors and wild colors.”

Eddie Owens Martin was born outside of Buena Vista, Georgia, in 1908. When he was 14 he ran away to New York City. Former (now deceased) Pasaquan site supervisor Gwen Martin told us that he worked as a waiter, a bartender, “studied dance, was a male prostitute, got into the drag queen scene… later he was a pimp and ran a successful gambling house.” He also traveled as a merchant seaman to distant ports, but he regularly came home to help his family harvest the cotton crop.

When his mom died in 1957 Eddie returned for good — because people from the future told him to.

Eddie later said that he’d been sick with a fever when he was visited by three very tall humanoids from the future world of Pasaquan. They chose him, they said, to be their envoy, “St. EOM,” the only Pasaquoyan of the twentieth century. Eddie’s job was to go to Georgia, make art, and live his life in a way that would show people how wonderful the future would be.

For the next 30 years Eddie did just that. He built room after room onto his mom’s little farm house, furnishing it with paintings and sculptures of multi-colored Pasaquoyans in their anti-gravity “Power Suits.” He covered the outside walls with mystic symbols, and filled the surrounding seven-acre compound with cement totem poles and lots of big heads, all brightly decorated with Sherwin Williams house paint. He used hubcaps and Tupperware as molds for the stucco insets in his undulating brick and concrete walls.

As St. EOM, Eddie wore serapes and necklaces; turbans, feathered headdresses, and pointy coolie hats. He braided his beard with corks and beads. He earned money by telling fortunes. Allen Woodall Jr., owner of the Lunch Box Museum in Columbus, recalled driving out to Pasaquan to have his fortune told in 1962. “You’d park outside and beep your horn,” he said. “If Eddie wanted to work that day he’d wave you in.” Allen paid ten dollars, and Eddie’s predictions for him all came true.

If you visit Pasaquan today, Eddie won’t be around — he shot himself in 1986. But the “Bodacious Mystic Badass of Buena Vista” has left behind plenty to interpret. His sprawling art site and home makeover still stands, tended by volunteers from the Pasaquan Preservation Society, visited by countless fans despite the local highway department’s tendency to remove its directional signs.

Visitors enjoy the weird energy of Pasaquan, although it’s probably a fraction of what was generated by the live Eddie experience.

Folklorist Fred Fussell, who gives tours of the site, said that, “Some people come here and say, ‘I can’t deal with this!’ They just kind of freak out; the vibes are too much for them.” As for the guides, “It’s like The Shining,” he said with a smile. “You spend time here, you start developing personality quirks.”

Pasaquan is equal parts mysticism, geometry, and snake handling. Eddie’s amateur concrete work is crumbling in spots, there are holes in the floor of the house, his paints are fading. But the preservationists have repaired areas damaged by neglect and weather, and plan more improvements to keep Eddie’s vision in good shape.

Eddie’s glorious future has thus far gone underappreciated, but perhaps some day we’ll tour Pasaquan as we levitate in our Power Suits. Either that, or the Pasaquoyans will have to canonize a new saint to carry on the mystic badass work.

Audio setup
Since our HTX-22HDX review sample was the plain 2.1 channel version, we initially thought it wouldn’t require any setup or speaker calibration adjustments.

As we listened we felt the subwoofer volume was too low, so we turned up the sub with a few taps on the remote’s Ch Sel button. As we continued listening we also noted movie dialogue was a little hard to follow. Since there’s no center channel volume adjustment possible in a 2.1 channel system, Onkyo offers a Center Image adjustment in the HTX-22HDX’s onscreen setup menu. The Center Image control attenuates the right and left channels’ volume to effectively raise the center channel volume. It improved dialogue intelligibility to the point where it was about average for a stereo or sound-bar system.

The setup menu also has a couple of potentially useful features like a user-adjustable Max Volume setting, and Power On Volume, with which you can predetermine the HTX-22HDX’s initial sound volume.

Performance
We started our HTX-22HDX auditions with Ben Affleck’s heist movie, “The Town.” Set in Boston’s Charlestown neighborhood, the film’s on-location scenes supplied a very realistic soundtrack for our listening tests. The gunfire exchanges between the robbers and the police in a garage at Fenway Park had good impact, and the screams of the wounded robbers echoing in the garage were chilling. But the HTX-22HDX’s subwoofer didn’t have enough power to produce the heavyweight sound of an armored truck crash and the massive thud when it flipped over. Turning up the sub’s volume and the EX Bass enhancement function didn’t help matters; the HTX-22HDX’s low-end power was consistently lightweight during all of our music and movie listening tests. The Zvox 430 HSD sound bar doesn’t come with a separate subwoofer, but that speaker produced more and better bass, and played louder than the HTX-22HDX.

With the HTX-22HDX’s two speakers set up approximately 6 feet apart, Diana Krall’s “Live in Rio” concert DVD projected a large, open soundstage that we judged as superior to what we’ve heard from most sound-bar speaker systems, including the 430 HSD. Krall’s piano, the acoustic bass, and the orchestral strings sounded fine, but her voice and the drums’ cymbals had a harsh, tinny edge, and the applause had an oddly hollow sound. Lowering the volume to a more moderate level tamed some of the harshness.

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ “Mojo” Blu-ray high-resolution DTS Master Audio soundtrack felt lackluster. The HTX-22HDX can play fairly loud, but rock music sounds strained when pushed. Dynamics were limited, though bass definition was reasonably good.

The HTX-22HDX is probably best suited to very small rooms (under 200 square feet), and for buyers who just want a small step up from built-in TV speakers.

Wrap-up
We almost always love the sound quality of Onkyo’s home theater systems, so we were surprised that the HTX-22HDX was underwhelming sonically. Although the design, feature set, and price are nice, it’s really only suited for buyers that don’t demand a big home theater sound.

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