Today’s guest post comes from Clyde.
I am a devoted re-reader of the 1974 book Staggerford by the Minnesota writer Jon Hassler.
I admire the honest but still satirical image of the professional life of a secondary English teacher, which Mr. Hassler once was. It has a delightfully real and satirically-portrayed faculty party and faculty meeting. Also, equally honest is the portrayal of the sad lives some students are forced to endure. As a lucky side-light for me, I have met the teachers who were the models for two of the characters in the book. He got them exactly right.
But when I re-read it every two years or so, I more and more admire the character Agatha McGee, the main character’s land lady. Miss McGee is old-fashioned and conservative, in the true sense of the term of one who does not want things to change, ever. She is a devout Catholic who still uses her ancient Latin Missal. When she passes the peace in church, a modernism she resents, she says “Pax.” She is a sixth-grade Catholic school teacher who dresses and runs her classroom the way teachers did in the 1920’s. She is dark and broods over rain, sin, and the moral laxity of modern poetry. She later becomes the main character in two subsequent books which have never quite worked for me.
As a dedicated change agent in education, and one open to modern adaptations in religion, I should dislike her. But instead I am drawn to her and the clarity and wit of Hassler’s descriptions of her. I suspect he feels a similar contradiction in his attitude towards her. It is the strength of her convictions, her underlying humanity, and her take-charge-in-a-leadership-vacuum ability which so strongly affect me.
I hope I am a better liberal, well, moderate liberal, for having met her.
When have you come to respect, admire, or even love someone, real or fictional, whose opinions or attitudes contradict your own?
Trail Baboon 
I have an abstract sense that there is a certain timeliness to this post, Clyde and Dale.
I despair of ever getting all the things read that I have heard about here.
And the answer to the question: I was a serious news junky in the 90s-I think living in DC will do that for you. Friday nights would find me settled in with the PBS line-up of commentary. The first person I thought of when I read this question was William F. Buckley. I couldn’t agree with him much of the time, but his arguments so civilized and intellectually presented, and he was an advocate for the importance of music in education-that alone was enough to gain my admiration.
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I had nothing to do with this blog appearing today. I threw this together, as you can do doubt tell, when Dale got hired at KFAI and hinted that he need some guest blogs. That must have been at least three weeks ago. Then about 10 days ago he emailed some of us that he was going to use our offerings. At first I could not figure out why he did not put my effort on Wednesday right after theirs, but waited for today.
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I’m struggling here because my best answer arises from a relationship from my Match.com days, and anything I say about it will be Too Much Information. There were three of us in a triangular relationship: the lady, the atheist (me) and God. In the end, I got my butt kicked by God :).
It might be a little easier to mention a character in fiction. When I was 18 I fell under the power of a novel called By Love Possessed and its main character, Arthur Winner. I have struggled with that book all my life because I’ve come to understand that the central character (whom I find so likable) is a sort of conservative crank who rejects most of my dearly held values. I’ve finally made my peace with the book after about ten readings. I know what I accept and what I reject. But the last laugh is for the author, James Gould Cozzens. I have rejected much of his basic values and world view, but he has forever changed me, with one result that the voice of my inner dialogue is HIS voice and much of my way of seeing the world is–whether I like it or not–his.
Looks like I should add Staggerford to my reading list. Thanks, Clyde! Good to hear from you again.
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I’m with you, Steve, on adding Staggerford to my reading list. I’m sure about By Love Possessed. Would the apprently good writing skill offset the seemingly backward point of view of the author?
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I mean I’m not sure about By Love Possessed.
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Jim, it is a classic novel with dated values. I still read it every two years or so. The plotting is amazingly complex and sure-footed and the sensibility of the novel is exceptionally intelligent. And yet, yes, it is frustrating and disappointing to find such an elegant structure is built over a foundation of shabby, dated values. I often recommend the book to others–as I do to you–but with caution that the author wrote in 1960 as if he had a 19th century world view.
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I have read Staggerford and agree about Miss McGee and the other characters. I had really conflicting emotions about her throughout the book. The characters were very real – exactly what one would expect to find in a small mid-western town. The novel goes along quietly but with a building tension.
Clyde, I found the book in the bookstore on Front St. in ‘Kato. It was very tattered. I sent it to my mom, who also read it and sent it on to my aunt.
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Good morning to all:
Thanks for sharing your thoughts about Agatha with us, Clyde. Very well done. I am constantly in contact with people I admire who don’t share my political beliefs through my work in sustainable farming. I am slow to tell many people about my political beliefs because of all of the red baiting and other efforts to discredit any one to the left of liberal. Some very good farmers that I admire are also conservatives and I am not sure that they would understand my position on politics.
I work with many politically conservative farmers on improving agriculture because we agree that conventional agriculture is in big need of change. Maybe I should talk politics with them because sometimes there is more agreement between people on the right and left than anyone would think possible. The right and left can sometimes be in agreement on the need for big changes in the way our government operates.
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RIse and Groan Baboons:
I cannot think this morning–I awoke with a sinus infection returned and have a headache.
Maybe later.
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Jacque, may you never come to admire your sinus infection!
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So sorry, Jacque. Get well soon.
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Feel better soon, Jacque. That’s no way to spend the July 4th weekend.
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Get well soon, Jacque! No fun in any kind of weather.
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Interesting, Clyde! Thanks. for this one. My dad cmes to mind. HE commented once that the older he got, the more conservative (politically) he got. Fortunately or unfortunately, his financial worth was greatly enhanced by the Reagan era policies, which was part of it. He didn’t always agree with Rush, but thought he was interesting. We finally agreed to disagree on many things, and ended up not talking about politics for the most part. But he was a kind usually fair man, an excellent counselor and administrator in the schools. He just didn’t always stay open in his later years.
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I head to Iowa and the conservatives this weekend. I am practising my eyeroll and the words, “I can’t even talk about it”. This is my only hope of not having my head explode.
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Good luck, MiG. Try saying this: “I could agree with you, but then we’d both be wrong.”
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hey, MIG – if you pass Decorah after saturday afternoon, give a listen for some very loud bleating. that would be Freya and Terra hoping Alba can hear them, poor little buggars. it’s so fun at kidding time and it’s so hard at selling time.
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We will go by them both coming and going. I’ll roll down the windows and listen.
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You all get to enter my baader meinhof (thanks Margaret for this phrase) world this morning. Here we are talking about adapting and learning to get along/respect others with whom we don’t agree. Then I go to a site that I check out each morning for some comic relief…. and what do I find???
http://thisisindexed.com/
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excellent
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Does anyone remember what day baader meinhof was introduced here? I think I need to get it in the Glossary…
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It was just a few days ago…. the Lucretia Borgia day.
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It was the blog on Uncommon Knowledge.
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…oh, and about Staggerford. My dad seldom read fiction till I handed him Staggerford. He was hooked on Hassler’s books after reading the description of monitoring 6th period Study Hall in one of the early chapters. Said it was exactly right. For a while, I knew what to get him for Christmas.
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The movie, Sweet Liberty, with Alan Alda, came out in 1986. Movie folks come to town to film part of a movie based on a book by a historian (Alan Alda). The historian is in a quasi-committed relationship but has an affair with the visiting movie star. When I first saw this, I was on the historian’s side. His first relationship wasn’t that defined, people ought to be free to do what they want… yadda, yadda, yadda.
Fast forward to 1990, when my marriage imploded (my ex thought that his life would be better if he had an affair with another woman). Late one night during this time, I saw Sweet Liberty on TV and I was completely incensed by the behavior of Alda’s character. Completely. I thought he was a sleeze, lower than pond scum. Same move, same characters, completely different reaction.
I don’t have any other examples of how my current life status affects my view of characters, real or imagined, but I expect that if I did an analysis, I would find more instances like this.
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Ouch.
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Hear you.
I still can’t see Out of Africa, although it was once my all time favorite movie. I look at it on the library shelf, pick it up, then put it back.
I do love Sweet Liberty, though-and if I remember right, Alan Alda does figure it out in the end (which is good, as I adore Alan Alda-possibly even more than Harrison Ford).
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Interesting how having been the “victim” of infidelity changes your perspective, isn’t it? And how it changes your opinion of a man. Is there any possible way to forgive or respect someone like John Edwards?
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clyde, staggerford takes me back 25 years. is that possible? i started with staggerford and quickly buzzed through all the hassler i could get my hands on. the portrayals that hassler does are where he excels. the stories have just enough going on to keep it a page turner but there is a quaity about hassler i find in few authors. when i read hassler i feel like i am curled up in the corner and just on a mellow inner journey. he does that for me better than just about anyone. i have never put my finger on what it is but i know its there all the way through his writings. my folks good friend from up at leach was a close friend from jon’s st johns days and we were kept abreast of his last years and the pain he endured before dying a year or so ago.
i am in business and have the challange of being surrounded by right spectrum thinking people all the time. i find that now that i am entering a world surrounded by 60 year olds i have grown up with, (could we really have become friends 25 years ago) the mind set seems to be getting locked in without a care as to the logic or reasonableness involved. i find that most often there is not so much a difference of thought involved just a difference in perception. last night on the capital steps the speakers were saying things like “i want everyone who comes to ask for aid to get everyting that they ask for, tax the top 2%” well i can see where the top 2% would be a little peeved if the destination for their tax contributions was destined to end up in the hands of every person that asked for it. democrats need to get a platform that allows people who back party to say so without sounding like the state is your deep pockets great aunt who will bail you out no matter how screwed up your life gets. the other side has their whackos and they keep them primarily behind the microphones on talk radio fear mongoring shows trying to create rating points by pointing the finger at twisted fact filleting mind mush that they thrive on. most conservatives would be happy to cover what needs to be covered if they could ge tthe straight story. we have gone from the mother country who welcomes all to the ugly guard dog who wants all the losers to go away and find somewhere else to take up their lives, helping poor folks is a nice thing to do. being told to take a valium and reduce the spending to cut the programs that support them is not a good answer as some of our conservative leaders would suggest. the divide is getting wider but at least the prospect of having the whacko right speak as a voice of their own offers new hope for middle ground. the emergence of the tea party will make a middle ground presentation appealing. check the time magazine editors spot on mpr last night a 9pm and enjoy a voice of reason. i will get his name and check back, i am computer handicapped this week and not able to switch back and forth to get reference stuff while posting.
jacque feel better.
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tim, your post reminds me of this bit that I have hanging up in my cube:
“If the life of a river depended only on the rainfall within the confines of its own banks, it would soon be dry. If the life of an individual depended soely on his own resources, he would soon fall. Be greateful for your tributaries.” Dr. William Arthur
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Excellent quote VS.
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Nice thanks
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The problem is not one of both sides being more less equally unreasonable. There is an agenda being played out across the country of generating budget deficients and using ithis to privatize government. This agenda is being backed by some very exploitive big bussiness people such as the Koch Brothers. When social services and some ot the other things that governments do are reduced and there is an opening for private interests to take over, the services by the private sector are often more expensive and not as good. This because the private companies are more interested in profit than they are in service. It should be no suprise that being critical of unions and under cutting them is also part of the agenda pushed by the same people that want to privatize government services.
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This is very true and exemplified by the private group homes that opened after the Regional Center closed. People with mental and physical challenges were once cared for by well-trained, well-paid, motivated people. Now they’re cared for by poorly-trained and low-paid people who aren’t so positively motivated. There isn’t enough funding and no way for the home owner to make much of a profit… you can see where this is going.
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Looks to me like an opportunity, take ir on and do it right
You would have no competition
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Private services replacing public services might work at times and create opportunites, but the oposite has also been the case. For example many people agree that the health insurance companies have a much higher cost and less service than government insurance like medicare and there are other examples. I think a mixture of private and public is good if the private sector is doing a good job.
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yes, and ditto for our public school system.
It is becoming more and more the case that the only thing that matters is the generation of something called “profit”. Decency, craftsmanship, integrity, justice all are merely considered to be “frills”, profit is all. This does not speak well of us as a society.
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Couldn’t agree more.
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here is the guy who was on fresh air with terry gross last night. best presentation of democratic platform i have heard in a long time.
What Does A ‘Post-American World’ Look Like?
America’s dominance on the world stage is fading, says commentator and CNN host Fareed Zakaria. He explains why the U.S. is now lagging behind other countries on key indices such as patent creation and job growth — and what that could mean for America’s economic future.
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Fareed Zakaria is another columnist whose columns I read regularly in Newsweek. He’s a keen observer of the political landscape, and always has something challenging to say.
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David Brooks is a conservative (Husband says: in the true sense of the word) that I can listen to. He is calm, he states his ideas without a rant, he is extremely knowledgeable. I caught the last 15 minutes of him on Midday yesterday, Aspen Ideas Festival, and intend to listen to the rest of it:
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/06/30/midday2/?refid=0
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agreed. i tuned in in the middle and didn’t recognize his voice but his clear thinking was unmistakable.
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Agree. I read David Brooks’ collumn all the time to get a reasoned view of how a conservative sees issues.
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One of Brooks’ points, at least in a story I read about this, is a point I made as an educational consultant: we make it too easy for kids and award/reward anything and everything kids do. If everything is excellent, then everything is mediocre. I have been often snapped at for that point of view, including on here. So go ahead.
A point about liberal teaching: almost every liberal teacher I knew believed we needed to have high expectations for kids and worked to hold kids to those standards, and then were willing to relax those standards as needed for specific kids for various reasons. Not really sure what liberal and conservative means teaching because many of the conservative teachers also do the same, except may be for the part about relaxing the standards at need. I guess the difference lies mostly in the content you think kids need to learn.
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Yes, and the idea in this piece is we’ve let “self-esteem” get way over-rated.
I’m at the library now, for as long as they’re open. This is the weather when I start to rethink my “no A/C” policy at home.
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I agree, Clyde, awards/rewards become meaningless when everyone gets one. At the alternative school where I worked, the philosophy of the principal was that EVERY student (I use the term loosely) should receive an award sometime during the school year. Staff would routinely wrack their brains to come up with some plausible excuse to give a student an award to meet this expectation, with the result that it diminished all the awards. It was obvious, to the students as well, that whatever distinction awards might have had in the past was lost when awards were bestowed on students who rarely showed up and made precious little effort when they did. Worse, in my estimation, was that students receiving these unearned awards had the expectation upon leaving school (not necessarily graduating) that future employers would applaud them for merely showing up.
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i heard the other day that the grading system at schools has changes and that today 60-7-% of the grades given are a’s. what the hell does it mean if 70% are getting a’s?
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spell check should be required
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The job of my coworker, the fish hatchery supervisor, was deemed a core function of the state yesterday. The DNR chose very well in this regard.
This person really exists in real time and is my coworker and my neighbor. This is a very small town. I’ll call him Francis for the purpose of this story.
Since I moved to Waterville, I’ve had a hard time fitting in. Francis is a local guy – he grew up here and has always worked exactly where he works now. I was pretty open about my slant to the left when I arrived. People from Waterville resist change like it is the Bubonic plague – and all I represented to them was change.
Francis is very serious about his work. He will tell you that he is there to work. He doesn’t care about expense reports, special training, workplace coffee parties or brown-nosers. He hates changes in his job but change has been the only constant for the last 10-15 years.
We had to start moving the muskies out right away on Monday because core functions had not yet been decided. Fisheries trucks from Detroit Lakes and Hinckley came to Waterville for muskies. Two private hatcheries also came and purchased muskies from the state. Francis was in a foul mood. The muskies weren’t big enough for these transfers. He planned to come in during the shutdown, whether he was paid or not, to care for the remaining fish. Then we got the e-mail instructing us not to come back at all during the shutdown. We can be disciplined if we are found at our workplace. Francis’ mood went from bitter to foul. Conversations with him can be difficult when he’s in this kind of state. Really, there are few people who understand his level of dedication to his work.
I always liked him. I could understand him. I was always able, at the same time, to see the need for progress and adaptation in our workplace. He strongly resisted it and he still becomes angry when change comes around that he’s uncomfortable with (most change). We have come to respect one another and we can really pitch in together and make things happen now. After years of working together, I know he trusts me and I rely on him for his ability to make the right decision. We support each others’ decisions and we tend to agree on most things now. It’s been an evolving process but he makes me proud to work there.
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Nice story, Krista. I respect you for your ability to work with someone like Francis. You surely have opened his eyes (even if just a little) to the way people he doesn’t initially respect can prove to be good people.
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Krista, one of the only good things about the shutdown is that you’ll probably be on the blog more. I enjoy reading your thoughts.
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I was having the same thought!
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Krista, good job of putting a very human face on this. You and Francis have found a way to work together because you know you must. The sooner our elected officials figure out the same thing, the better off we will all be.
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I agree. Part of what we’re talking about here is TRUST. When you know you can depend on someone to do what they have committed to doing, it goes a long way toward respect. Francis has come to trust that though he may prefer to do things the way they have always been done, he knows he shares your goal of doing the best possible outcome. Good for you for having established that kind of relationship. We’re all better for it.
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Thanks to all of you for being here, and for your lighted candles and your prayers and kind words. You’ve made a challenging time so much better!
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I have a friend whose every value is an upside down version of my own. Or at least that is what he says. Jon is the most bigoted, right-wing, foul-mouthed racist I’ve met (unless he is having us all on, which is probably the case). You just don’t know with Jon. He talks non-stop, saying more outrageous things in a minute than you’d hear from a regular bigot in a year, and he is the funniest man I’ve met.
We had a gathering of outdoor sportsmen after a sharptail grouse hunt in Pierre, South Dakota, once. The political atmosphere of Pierre is somewhere right of Rush Limbaugh. I’m always careful about what I say out there.
After everyone was in a good mood from the beer, Jon rose to propose a toast. To me. “Gentlemen! Gentlemen! I rise to toast Steve Grooms.” [applause and hooting]. “Word has just come to me that Steve is one of them [words failed Jon for a few moments] liberals like you might of read about in the papers. I mean, Steve apparently believes that Indians and ni***rs and women are real people just like you and me! But Steve is my good friend, and I’ll not hear a word against him. Steve, that was good shooting today. You are a credit to your race!”
I blushed until my ears burned. Jon and I have a complicated relationship.
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chuckle, chuckle…
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I’m afraid that Jon is one of those people who’d send my blood pressure into the danger zone!
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An e-mail is headed toward your mailbox. You might want to handle this one with tongs, as the language is pretty rough.
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One more and I’ll shut up. Clyde, this is such a rich subject. I love finding the bigot in my liberal friends and the liberal in my bigoted friends. I treasure the complexity of human nature that makes almost everyone interesting. A friend once said that Garrison Keillor had made a career of poking fun at the inconsistencies of liberals.
A film rich in its observation of human nature is the black and white classic, “The Last Picture Show.” The central notion of the film might be that things are not what they seem, nor are people, but all are worth knowing in a careful, loving way.
The film was the debut for Cybill Shepherd, who plays a hometown beauty queen who is learning to use men to get what she wants. She quickly reveals herself to be a cynical bitch with no values except a desperate desire to advance her selfish interest. So we don’t like her much. But then we find out that she has been more or less trained to be ruthless like that by her mother, Lois Farrow, played by Ellen Burstyn. And we are prepared to hate her even more because not only is she cynical but she is creating a monster by the way she is raising her beautiful daughter. And then in a final twist, we come to see that Lois’s values are just a natural response to the tawdry, male-dominated world of west Texas in the 1950s. It is hard, ultimately, to blame her for what her world has taught her to be.
The Cybill Shepherd character defends her relationship with a local boy, Duane, who doesn’t impress her mother.
CS: “Well, you married Daddy when he was poor, and then he got rich.”
EB: “I scared your daddy into getting rich, beautiful.”
CS: “Well, if Daddy could do that, then so could Duane.”
EB: “Not married to you. You’re not scary enough.”
And that makes it clear that there is no end in sight to the sad spectacle of people using each other in a mostly doomed effort to find happiness. Great film.
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Steve, you have an incredible memory when it comes to books and movies. How the heck do you do it? Such details never stay with me. Sigh.
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I’ve got help with movies. There are two film sites on the internet that I visit daily.
One is MRQE (Movie Review Query Engine). It is a compilation of movie reviews. If you are interested in a film, zip over to MRQE and read three or four reviews from people whose taste you trust.
Details on “Last Picture Show” (such as that dialogue) come from IMDB, the International Movie Data Base. It provides a treasure trove of information about films, and it is worth the small amount of time it takes to learn to use it. The site includes filming locations, musical references, memorable quotes, trivia and other information.
Both sites are highly recommended.
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Ahhh, so there is a secret to it! Thanks for the info, I’ll check it out.
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I’ll second IMDB.com. I use it all the time for reference. Didn’t know about MRQE, thanks for that Steve.
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I think we have to keep hoping that we aren’t doomed to fail in finding happiness. Life is good in many ways and not so good when we look at all the problems in the world. What is most worring is that there often doesn’t seem to be much movement toward solving our problems. Never-the-less, positiive change does happen and some times very rapidlly, so I see no reason to give up hope.
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Thanks for saying that, Jim in CG. This has been a tough day all around.
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One of the people I miss the most from my old job is the old school Wm F Buckley-esque Republican who sat across the room from me. He and I could talk cars (I was enough of a gear head to keep up – and he was a huge fan of Formula 1 racing), kids (and their need to get dirty, try things, fail, be outdoors, be creative), religion (he was mostly agin’ it), and politics. I truly enjoyed the conversations we had during the run-up to the election of Barack Obama – he told me why he didn’t like Obama, and I talked about my misgivings about his chosen candidate. All reasoned, thoughtful discussions. No flaming rhetoric – just a nice discourse and exchange of ideas between people who liked each other but disagreed. Miss having him around.
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The summer after high school I hung around a little with Deb, a girl who was on a path to trouble. She did get into trouble – pregnancy and drugs – and left Minnesota for awhile. I went to St Olaf and to technical college for nursing and was working at the Faribault Regional Center when she returned. She had changed completely.
She became a nurse too, and we worked together on the second floor of the hospital. We had long talks about our very different ideologies. She told me that she prayed and prayed and that Jesus finally sent her husband to her apartment door. He was an evangelist and was there to save her poor soul. They fell in love and have since had a large, happy family of their own as well as adopted two kids from Africa.
I didn’t like evangelizing – still don’t – and I told her. She feels that it is her duty to Jesus to save every soul that she encounters, including and especially my heathen one. We don’t agree on this point and never have, but we both enjoyed our conversations about it, and to this day I’ve never found another friend like her. She is intelligent, beautiful and totally committed to something I wholeheartedly disagree with. I believe it is the tension in these relationships that helps us grow to be the best we can be.
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Nice story, Krista. I find that religion very often is the area in which I don’t agree with some of my friends.
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i’m always happy (and a bit pleased with myself) when i come to like someone with whom i’d not agree on most politics/religion/agriculture topics. the difference is, to my mind, the two parties are willing to think a bit and not just recite things memorized since age two.
thanks, Clyde, for an interesting discussion today. fun to read the stories and thoughts.
it’s 80 here – hot for Blackhoof. Terra and Freya enter the world of REALLY HOT tomorrow when they move to Decorah. hope there’s a swimming pool in their pasture. 🙂
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Hey everybody–
It has been interesting reading all week. Thanks as always for the stories.
I haven’t had much to contribute because I just haven’t had that many vacations and my head doesn’t work the right way for Haiku’s. In regard to this whole gov’ment shut down I’m just disgusted with the whole bunch of them. But people have short memories. I’ve been threatened with being ‘thrown out’ often enough on the township board by people you never see again that I have a hard time believing anything is really going to change.
And I’m hot. It’s 92 here and we don’t have AC and I worked up a sweat just cleaning eggs this morning.
Running some errands this afternoon involving two places in two different counties from here, so planning a long car ride with plenty of meandering involved.
TTFN–
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I will never forgive Hassler for writing my book– a man who comes back to his hometown to teach English in the high school he attended in northern Minnesota–that’s my life.
Some details on the book you may want to know. The town of Staggerford is really Park Rapids, which is where Hassler did teach a couple years. But it is not his hometown. He based some of the characters on real people there, as many of my many friends and former colleagues from PR can attest. For those reading it for the first time . . . the ending, well, be ready.
Yes, study hall, is one of the trials of teaching. I used to love how the bright and creative kids could always find ways find ways to escape study hall, a task at which I was a willing co-conspirator.
And grading 105 essays every week on the same topic. That is one of the reasons I escaped English teaching.
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Yes, be ready for the ending. I don’t want to give it away but I literally had to pick myself up off the floor.
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This is way off topic and requires some explanation, such as knowing about Google Maps and Street View.
On Google Maps or Google Earth or Google Planet (not sure which names apply anymore) you can look at anywhere on the earth from the air, as a map or a photo. And in some places, most major US cities, you can engage Street View, which means you can go down to the street level and pan 360 degrees. Of course, you can only do this where they have collected the data by camera. We were once by Stanford U. and my son was trying to find a restaurant, so he engaged Google on his phone and used that feature to find the restaurant by it’s store front. The silicon valley area is the most heavily included, such as from San Jose up to San Francisco, and they update it regularly in that area.
My son and his wife live in San Jose and regularly drive by the Google headquarters in San Jose. My son had figured out where their street view camera is there. So every time he drives by it, he waves at the camera.
If this link works, you will see my son waving in the white car.
http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=37.337357%2C-121.896508&spn=0.012932%2C0.027874&z=16&layer=c&cbll=37.337306%2C-121.896625&panoid=heQgAC9Ah4gmAqaSQ8opcQ&cbp=12%2C333.57%2C%2C2%2C6.44
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Yep, there he is.
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Fun! Hi Clyde’s son in the white car!
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I did not make clear that Google only every few months updates this pan shot. It is pure dumb luck he appears there.
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Ha ha… this is great!
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OT: Just received the new issue of Mpls/St. Paul Magazine. It has an article about Arne Carlson being on a mission to tell voters that Tim Pawlenty hasn’t earned their vote for President. Go Arne! Now who can we get to do the same for Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin?
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I’m counting on MB and SP to provide all the requisite signals without any outside help.
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SP is history. MB wants to do for America what fellow Waterlooian John Wayne Gacy did. The seeds of destruction for MB’s campaign are in her mouth.
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I’m just hoping the electorate is paying attention.
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I have read several of Jon Hassler’s books. My mother actually had him as an English teacher before he became a famous author. It was in a small town in northwestern Minnesota. I think he writes about what he knows.
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I have done a lot of work with the Jon Hassler Theater (jonhasslertheater.org) in Plainview, MN where Jon spent a few years growing up. I could just never connect with his books though.
They used to do one Hassler play / season. A few of his books have been adapted to the stage.
I see the new website doesn’t list past productions so you’ll just have to trust me on that one…
They did ‘Grand Opening’ a couple times, ‘Staggerford Murders’, ‘Dear James’ a couple times, ‘Simons Night’… I know there were others I forget…
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I love gospel music, although I’m not a believer. I’ll Fly Away, Beulah Land, Sit Down Servant,, I’ll Cross Over Jordan Someday…although the sentiments contradict my own beliefs, I find great beauty in the hopefulness and the celebration. As the writer Julian Barnes puts it, “I don’t believe in God, but I miss Him.”
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nice sentiment linda. i tend to let view get in the way of enjoyment and miss what you are able to enjoy.
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