Just one week until our annual pageant of turkey, trimmings and trying to get along with the relatives. I consider Thanksgiving to be the least compromised national holiday, staying closest to its original intent – gratitude – probably because it uses a timeless vehicle of expression – food. No matter what you might try to add to the festivities, it all comes back to a common table and an attitude of thankfulness. Even “Black Friday” pales by comparison.
Now might be a good time to take a nice, long walk with your turkey to explain the beauty and cruelty of the circle of life. This is still one of my favorite pictures in the whole blogging photo album – two friends take a stroll through the woods to commiserate about some impending bad news.
Of course, it’s guests that make Thanksgiving a time for sharing, so during the lead-up to the big day, I’ll be welcoming guest bloggers to Trail Baboon. Madislandgirl, Renee, Joanne, Jim, Sherrilee and tim have agreed to attend this time and they are each bringing a special dish. I won’t give it away completely, but expect lettuce, steak, bird a la grease, a chunk of old barn and one live elk. Mmm!
As always please be kind to our guests. After all, the only difference between you and them is that they volunteered this time. Next time the “cake catastrophe” (Joanne’s) could be on another foot – yours!
And speaking of being a guest writer, I’m making my first post-MPR appearance in another online venue this week with an article in The Line. If you sign up to receive this free, weekly online magazine, they will be forced to conclude that I am a genius. Just put your e-mail address next to the gray box halfway down the right side of the opening page. Simple.
Where are you happiest, as a guest?
Trail Baboon 
very nice piece about the microcinema, Dale – we’re both subscribed to the Line now. easy to do – and if they conclude you are a genius, then all the better!
i’m not much at ease as a guest; i spent so many years being away from home all day that i like being in our house now. just being home is when i’m happiest. and the Goats don’t travel that well –
a good and gracious morning to You All. out to a busy day.
Sugar and her daughter, Jellybean, are still not bred. i think they’ve decided to abstain. T is not happy.
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Maybe Sugar and Jellybean are uneasy as houseguests?
How did your your 2 new girls do?
Hope T learns to handle rejection, or it could be a long winter for him.
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They must be under the influence of Sarah Palin!
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You must mean that woman from Delaware. Near as I can tell, The Former Gov. has not had issues with breeding.
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Rise and Shine Babooners:
Well, gang, I scanned the Line’s front page and I am intrigued. I’ll look more during the day and evening. Congrats Dale!
At this point in my life I am happiest as a guest when I go to an art studio in Jordan to work and hang out with my friend who owns it. She is also my sculpture teacher. When I go there, I get taken care of a bit and get to work with my hands on art projects. It is relaxing and fun for me to visit with her and look at the stream behind her studio.
This is a fun question. It made me think a lot!
Off to the day. More later.
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Morning Booners!
I love to entertain so am very comfortable in that roll. But I can also bring a bottle of wine, a plate of brownies and sit back to relax with the best of them. I am always a guest on Thanksgiving as the teenager and I spend the day with dear family friends who “adopted” us many years ago. But I am also a holiday host; I give a big silly gift exchange party every December as well. Guess that means I’m happy being both guest and host!
Dale — hope your week is restful and restorative for you and your family. “See” you when you get back.
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Excellent article, Dale. I subscribed right away to what looks like an intelligent and lively publication. It is fun to learn a new name for one’s self: I am a cineaste, it seems, although I can’t pronounce it :).
Today’s question is easy. I’m most comfortable as a guest in a friend’s northwoods cabin. I can sum up all the cabins I have visited and loved. They will have an awkward floor pattern, the heritage of an amateurish renovation done decades ago when an indoor bathroom was added. The fireplace will feature river stones, and when a fire dances on the andirons the cabin fills with a spicy smell. The silver drawer has flatware of four or five different patterns. There will surely be a paint-by-number landscape on one wall, always regionally inappropriate, probably an Alpine scene. The living room library isn’t exactly au courant: Ben Hur, Peyton Place, Presumed Innocent and several Reader’s Digest compilations. Just beyond a screened kitchen window is a hummingbird feeder. Outside is a screened “bug house” where host and guests can chat in the evening, the sounds of loons mixing with the soft clinks of glasses with ice cubes. A sound system from the 1980s is surrounded with CDs featuring Ravel, Brahms, Sibelius and Mozart. The chairs are so deep and cushy you have to struggle to get up out of them. And all the day, the kitchen door bangs as barefoot children dash in and out to drink lemonade and deposit beach sand on the kitchen linoleum. They are followed by an old golden retriever with a swinging tail. The toaster makes a strange ticking sound when it is being used, an uneven clicking that led one guest to name it the “Al Quaida toaster.” Over the fireplace is a plaque with a Dardevle spoon that never caught a fish but did hook and land a guest from Iowa named MaryLou (weight estimated at 145 pounds) who walked behind someone casting from the dock.
Oh, the memories! I love such places and always feel at home in them.
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Sounds like a grand place to visit and be a guest, Steve. Love the description of what was caught with the “fish” that got hooked.
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You paint a vivid picture Steve, as always.
I think your description is a perfect scene setter for a movie – something gentle and smart and not blockbusterish at all.
Harry Potter and the Lake of Memories?
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Harry is about the only guy on earth who is not welcome to visit my cabin, Dale. I like his friends a lot, but his enemies really trash the place before they die. Oh, and I don’t invite that “Murder She Wrote” woman for obvious reasons. I don’t have enough good friends that I can sacrifice one every time she shows up.
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Delightful. I can smell the fire on this frosty morning (hope that isn’t really my toast).
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i want to go steve. what a wonderful picture you paint. the screened room fo rthe bugs, the paint by numbers and the fieldstone fireplace. and i always want the chiar as described everywhere i go but seldom find it. sounds welcoming.
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I do not like being a guest.
I had a friend, a graphic designer before the job was done on computer, who used to have a very rustic cabin on a bluff above Superior south of Beaver Bay, hidden from the road. It had been built in part of pieces of old buildings from St. Paul. For instance the decoration above the fireplace was an elevator floor indicator (the old arrow pointing at a dial sort) and the roof beams were a mishmash from various buildings. He had some panels out of a lobby, some mailboxes from another lobby and sone stain glass pieces. He did all of this in the 70’s before this was a high end thing to do. He had pain virutally nothing to ge the pieces. Much of the stuff was art deco, but not all. It was rustic and sophisticated, ugly and attractive, warm and cold.
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Sounds wonderful, Clyde, would love to see it.
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What a pleasure to read about, Steve. Thanks for the visuals.
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tell t i understand
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tmi, tim 😉
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ill think about it before i ask
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I came to your blog via The Line. Good to know you’re alive and kicking. I will always miss the Morning Show and am thankful that I have nearly the full set of Keepers CDs to get me by.
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Welcome, Caroline. If you come by here regularly and say hello now and then, you might find that takes away some of the sting of losing the Morning Show.
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Thanks for the hello, Caroline. I will always miss the Morning Show too! When you say “nearly the full set” of Keepers, what is missing?
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Welcome Caroline…. you’ve found a great place to be a guest. Hope you come hang out at our baboon sanctuary often!
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ditto Caroline. This is a very fun playground, and occasionally a place of emotional support!
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Hi Caroline!
Welcome– and interesting how those of us already here found ‘The Line’ through Dale, and some of you there found Dale!
Serendipity?
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I love going to my aunt’s house for Thanksgiving. As a kid our family would pack into the car and head north to Brainerd for MEA, parts of winter break, maybe a week during the summer, and darn near any other excuse we could find, it seems. My cousins and I would hike and play by the Mississippi River, which meanders on its way south nearby – though we had to be careful behind this house those folks had mean, barky dogs, and that house was creepy, and but this house didn’t care where we were… There is a small cemetery the opposite way from the river, and as kids my cousins and I would romp through there, too (still wondering if it was wrong to stand on the ginormous polished granite bible memorial and do silly things in the reflections in the granite). In the fall we would sometimes rake a big pile of leaves up and spend the afternoon running and jumping into them – and then have a big bonfire of the leaves in the evening.
My aunts house is one of those places that is comfortable, a home. There is always plenty of food, and usually a few out-of-the-ordinary tidbits for munching that she has found at a local bakery or farmers market. The house is not decorated to a fare-thee-well but instead is an uncluttered mix of things acquired through a lifetime of enjoying family, friends, travels, and life. It’s not a fancy house, but it is a home where a good family gathers and enjoys each other and celebrates. Where all are welcome and have a comfortable place to be (including the dog, who might just nestle next to you on the couch). And that is good.
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I always loved going to my aunt’s house in Pipestone. It was a huge old place with a really wonderful attic where my cousins and I could find great old things to play with. She also had a huge Persian cat named Kitty who was fun to annoy. My aunt was a wonderful cook and made marzipan fruits that she painted with food dye to look like the real thing. She also made enormous ginger cookie stars decorated with icing and glittery sprinkles. I have the recipe but I never seem to make them like she did. The children always had to eat sitting on the stairs between the first and second floors, using one stair as your table and the stair just below as your chair. This left the adults free to sit at the dining room table. The older cousins had to look after the younger cousins and make sure they didn’t spill or step on somebody else’s plate. It was a big deal when you were old enough to graduate to the dining room.
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I love the Trylon. Been there many times for their movie festivals…Hitchcock, Harryhausen, Bill Murray, etc. Popcorn with real butter! Mmmm. Comfy seats! Ahhh. Good movies on the big screen (or as big as it gets for a theater of 50). YAY! Get the frequent goers punch card…10 movie admissions for $50. Can’t beat it!
And, if you guys don’t mind another plug, if you’re going to the Trylon, have dinner at Glacier’s Cafe & Custard, just down the street on Minnehaha and Lake. The food is great (the Glacier’s Goodie flatbread/pizza is stunningly good), reasonably priced, and the custard is to die for. Last time I was there, they also offered a free dish of custard with your Trylon movie ticket stub.
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excellent recommendation tgith. good to hear from you as always. real popcorn is all need to hear. thats a place that understands the true meaning of life
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How is your computer, tim? fixed? New one?
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computer cme back to me working at 10pm thursday night. fully intact. wheww…
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Thanks for the recommendation, TGITH. I’m always on the lookout for more ice cream. The same building that houses the XY&Z art gallery (the entrance/lobby to the Trylon) is getting a coffee shop too. Peace Coffee. They were hard at work laying tile the night I went to the Koerner film.
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Minnehaha and Lake – my old stomping grounds. Floating World Cafe used to be good (I like their Saikoro Donburi). I’ll have to find some way of remembering to hit up the Trylon when we’re back in town at the end of the year. Custard!
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Morning all! Still 70 degrees and sunny in Zimmerman. Wonderful news about your new on-line gig, Dale! I have subscribed. I noticed in the bio at the end of the article that you are doing voice work somewhere; may I ask where? Being an audiophile, I have been in withdrawal from lack of hearing your voice, live, for quite a while.
Not having any immediate family close by, we have often been the guests of friends for Thanksgiving. At one of the gatherings, the youngest daughter (who was about 18 yrs old at the time) of the hosting family, Angela, asked me if I would please get a jar of olives. I went to the pantry, which was in another area of the house, and found what was needed. When I came back into the kitchen, Angela was staring at me. I stopped in my tracks wondering what the problem was. She said “You knew where the olives were without having to ask me!” I said yes, I did, didn’t I? She smiled at me and said, “Family.” I smiled back at her. It was a very happy Thanksgiving.
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We are often hosts for friends as our families live very far away. We love cooking for others. It is interesting that in our town, newcomers like us (even though we have been her for 20+ years) tend to flock together, and people who are natives stay close with their families. In the 20 years we have lived here , we have only been invited to eat at the homes of newcomers, never at the home of anyone who is a native. Our friends who have moved here from somewhere else have had the same experience here.
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love the newcomers aspect at 20+ years and counting
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Morning!
I think one of my sisters house is always a favorite for me… just a comfortable place…
Thanksgiving is going to be tough this year… we’ve lost a few people this year, including the woman who always made the turkey, so… will be a rather different get-together…
Busy day here…
Bye!
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time to remember those past times
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Thanks for the stories above! I agree that relatives’ houses are among the most comfortable — spent many T’givings at my Grandma’s, and we cousins knew every closet, nook, and hiding place — were allowed to roam even in the basement where there was a fruit room, a room filled with old newspapers, and a coal room with a shute up by the window.
But my favorite way of being a guest was when we had our VW camper, and could bring our own bedroom with us wherever we visited. I’ve probably mentioned this before, but you’re welcome almost indefinitely if people don’t have to rearrange their lives for your presence.
These days I like going to my mom’s senior residence, where we rent (for a song) one of the guest rooms. We get to hang out with her all day, say goodnight at 9:30 or 10, and are on our own till 9:30 or 10 in the morning. Just lovely.
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Hey all… who recommended “Little Heathens”? I couldn’t find it in the archives… but whoever it was, thank you. Just finished it.
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me
pass it on
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I had it from the library… so whoever has the real copy, hope you enjoy it!
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The copy that Clyde sent to me went home with Jacque after the Blevins Book Club Meeting, and I believe she has it now. Thanks again Clyde.
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SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, pass on the library book 🙂
Glad you liked it. Comes close to my family history in Iowa, like so many of us.
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I have it, but have not yet read it. Thanksgiving weekend……
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Good afternoon to all,
I’m trying catch up after returning home from being a guest of the Orange Mighty Trio at their gig at the Red Stag and staying over night in the Cities The trio was without their piano player which gave them an opportunity to play with Kip Jones, a violinist, who sat in as a replacement. Kip was great and fit right in with the band. I feel that I was a guest of the group because I got in on the free drink deal offered to the band by the Red Stag and visited with them when they weren’t playing. I guess I would have to say that was a very happy place to be a guest.
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An addition to my above comment. My son-in-law, Zack, was the one who invited Kip to play with him in the Orange Might Trio minus one and picked out the tunes that the band played with Kip and he deseves a lot of credit for creating the setting for the happy place I visited.
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i was hoping i would be able to get to it and disappointed that i was not able. keep me informed as to next appearances if you would jim. i want to see them.
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Great job, Dale! Congratulations on the new gig!
I’m most comfortable as a guest at my friends’ house: Gordon and Michelle’s. They live far out in the country south of Nicollet but north of Judson, way on the top of an oak-covered hill that overlooks the Minnesota River. They have a spacious and comfortable home and often have friends over for potlucks, bonfires and music. We practice there frequently and I feel at home there.
Of course, I also enjoy spending time at my Mom’s but that’s just a little less like being a guest.
I’ll be hostess for Thanksgiving this year. I hope my niece and nephews like coming to Auntie’s house as much as some of you Baboons have enjoyed going to your aunt’s 🙂 !
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Dale,
I’ve bookmarked The Line for perusal later. Wahoo! Is there a way to indicate that I’m giving them my email address in support of you?
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Dale, nice work. I will look forward to reading your future offering in The Line.
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Ditto.
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I poked around on The Line a bit tonight. Very impressive — I sent links to several others!
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the line looked good. the film club reminds me of the old piper film club i have referred to in past blogs as a kid where i spent my friday nights trusting the guy ( never learned his name) to turn me on to something worthwhile and he always did. i will look into this one but today my challenge is getting the friday night to open up. my kids have much busier schedules than ever did and i am not sure my parents would have been the taxi driver i have become. looking forward to the experience.
nice article dale. you sure write good.
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