Think ‘windmills’ and Don Quixote comes to mind. The moving sails are imaginary dragons. But that was back in 1605 and things are different nowadays.
Windmills
Windmills are somehow romantic; so 
much so that even songs have been written about them. Remember The Windmills of Your Mind by Noel Harrison?
Technically a windmill is a mill that uses wind to drive a mechanical process like milling. The Jura in Switzerland seems to channel wind so it can get pretty windy. Because of that you would think historically there would have been a wide usage of windmills. Not so. Windmills are traditionally found in flat areas where the water isn’t forceful enough to create any energy. Switzerland has a lot of streams so when it comes to grinding, watermills outnumbers windmills. My guess is modern day Don Quixotes would have difficulty finding imaginary enemies to attack in Switzerland.
Wind Turbines
Capturing the power of wind for other uses, and not just grinding, has taken hold in Switzerland. That brings us to wind turbines. Wind turbines produce electricity. I’m not sure exactly how many wind turbines Switzerland has, the numbers I’ve seen range between 36 and 57. They produce about 0.15% of the nation’s electricity.
They have two major disadvantages as far as I can tell. One is that birds and bats can get killed when hit by them. The second one is that they make a good deal of noise. Because of that they aren’t allowed to be built within 300 m of housing.
Ben and I have actually looked into mounting one on our roof. Not the big ones but ones that are made for neighborhoods. But the bird, bat and noise problems exist. So, until they have been solved we will just have to do with collecting rainwater and sun.
Pinwheels, Whirligigs
As a child I always loved pinwheels also known as whirligigs. Pinwheels have no other function than to be pretty and to rotate in the wind.
Pinwheels can be made in 5 easy steps:
- Begin with a square of paper.
- Fold your square, corner to corner, then unfold.
- Make a pencil mark about 1/3 of the way from center.
- Cut along fold lines. …
- Bring every other point into the center and stick a pin through all four points.
On July 7, 2007 Ben and I collectively turned 100. It was a cool date (07.07.07) and a Saturday so we threw a party. While looking for decorations I bought some large pinwheels and strings of pinwheels that I thought would look good. After the party we decided to leave them up, so they spun the rest of the summer. Like I said, we live in a windy area so unfortunately they didn’t last much longer than that. But it was enough of a push for us to realize that it was pretty neat to have them in our yard.
There are some really fancy and pretty pinwheels. We bought quite a few of them only to have them torn apart by the wind. Slowly but surely we kept buying sturdier wheels and have ended up with metal pinwheels. They turn with the wind and can take a beating. But they tend to break loose and fly in high winds. So when it gets really gusty we take them down. After all, who wants to get hit by a renegade, rotating, metal pinwheel?
Ornaments and Works of Art
We had a neighbor who was obviously taken with pinwheels, too. He was a retired blue collar worker who enjoyed creating objects out of metal. Sort of like a ‘Pinwheel-Tinguely’. No two wheels were the same and he placed them all in his garden on the corner of a very busy road. As the years went on, his collection grew and grew. It got to the point that all you had to say when giving directions to your home was ‘near the pinwheels’. Everyone knew where they were.
Last year the neighbor died and his family sold the works of art. They were distributed all over Switzerland. A watch shop down the road bought one of the larger pieces. They said they had to because that was how they gave directions to their shop.
So, even if the collection no longer grows we still have a couple in town to remind us how pretty whirligigs are.
Getting back to Don Quixote , looking at the larger objects, yes, I could imagine them to be monsters of some sort. But luckily I don’t feel like I have to conquer them. Just look and enjoy.
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