All posts by Minnesota Steve

Gimpy old guy who loved Minnesota and yet left to live closer to his daughter and grandson. I enjoyed three mild winters in Oregon, then we all moved to Michigan. After two years there, I'm back in St. Paul. This is my fourth home in six years. I don't figure on moving again.
History, The Baboon Congress

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?

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Header image by Tim Evanson , CC BY-SA 2.0

Today’s post comes from Steve Grooms

Well, you don’t really have to guess, for you get to choose any dinner guest in the world, living or dead. Which person would you enjoy meeting informally, entertaining them in your own home?

Maybe there is someone from history you always wanted to answer a question.  Invite William Shakespeare for dinner, serve him some ale and then ask, “Hey, Bill, I’ve always wanted to ask: who really wrote your stuff?”

But be careful. In 1963 I asked former president Harry Truman a question about his decision to drop the atomic bomb (specifically, the second bomb). He blew a gasket. After reflection, I would do that one differently.

I’ve been thinking about whom I would invite to dinner. In April of 1962 John F. Kennedy hosted a White House dinner for Nobel Prize winners. Kicking the evening off, Kennedy said: “I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered at the White House – with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.”

Since hearing that, I’ve fantasized about dining with Thomas Jefferson. Given my history, that might be a dangerous choice, for I’d be tempted to ask the author of the Declaration of Independence why he slept with his slave.

That’s okay. I have other choices. Sticking to presidents for the moment, I would pass on Theodore Roosevelt (who was too full of himself) but would love an evening with his nephew, Franklin. To make FDR feel at home I might add his chubby buddy Winston Churchill. (And since this is a fantasy I don’t have to worry about how I could afford Winston’s bar tab.)

My first choice among presidents would be Abraham Lincoln. They say that Lincoln was a terrific storyteller who often embarrassed his stuffy cabinet members with stories that were funny and occasionally a bit earthy. And if Lincoln was coming to dinner, I’d sure want to invite Martin Luther King. I’ll bet they would hit it off.

Maybe you fear you’d be intimidated by hosting a great person. Not to worry. Invite Pope Francis. He seems like a great guy, someone who is approachable. He wouldn’t gripe if you served him less than a gourmet meal. He’d love a tuna casserole. In fact, he’d probably try to wash your feet.

Or would you prefer to host a small group?

Think about an evening spent in the company of Groucho Marx, Paul Wellstone, Pete Seeger and Walt Whitman. Or how about Eleanor Roosevelt, Abigail Adams and Molly Ivins? I don’t think the conversation would drag!

So . . . who’s coming to dinner?

The Baboon Congress

My Gum Problem

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Today’s post comes from Steve Grooms.

I was a weird sort of kid. I wasn’t comfortable with other kids my age. If I saw someone walking toward me on the sidewalk, I’d cross the street, pretending to be on an urgent errand. You could call me “shy.” “Weird” might be more accurate.

One reason for avoiding other kids was that I talked to myself as I walked. I told stories,
improbable fantasies in which a kid who looked like me did heroic acts. I engaged in conversations and arguments. And I brooded about various issues.

An issue that troubled me especially in the 1950s was chewing gum.

If there is data to show how many kids chewed gum back then, I haven’t found it, but far more kids chewed than now. Almost everyone chewed. In some schools at the start of the day the teachers ran a gum patrol, walking around with tissues and ordering kids to get rid of their gum. Some kids bluffed by claiming they weren’t chewing. If they later got caught, the consequences were not pretty.

I looked down on kids addicted to gum. The act of chewing gave them a vacant, bovine expression. I wasn’t alone in this. In Hollywood films from that time, if the audience was meant to see a character as shallow and stupid that character would chew gum.

My real problem, however, was with used gum, discarded used gum. Nobody had a good way to dispose of stale gum after the flavor was gone. Some kids just spat it out wherever they were. If you walked the sidewalks of my home town you inevitably would step on a sticky, icky lump of old gum. It would adhere to the sole of your shoe, a repulsive gluey blog that you didn’t dare touch.

Kids spat out their gum because we all knew how dangerous it was to swallow gum. It was common knowledge that gum had magical powers to defeat our bodies from digesting it. Lumps of swallowed gum wouldn’t break down but would drift in our bodies, inevitably lodging in the worst possible place: the appendix. There the swallowed gum would join all the other gum you had swallowed in your lifetime, stretching the appendix until one day—kablooie—the appendix would blow.

Death by Dentyne!

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
A horrifying discovery!

And even that wasn’t the worst of my chewing gum problem. What I hated most of all was the way kids parked used gum on the underside of restaurant tables, school desks or the counters of soda grills. If you ran your hands along the under side of a table you would discover a densely packed minefield of discarded gum, all dry and hard, stuck there forever. To my mind, this was more disgusting than picking your nose in public.

And the under surfaces of virtually allrestaurant tables were covered with these nasty little gum boogers.

This depressed me. If young people were going to be so gross and lazy, I reasoned, how could anyone believe they would solve really difficult issues? I wanted to believe that my generation would get some things right that previous generations had screwed up. But all those wads of dried gum mocked my idealism. Modern kids were obviously disgusting slobs.

Now let’s move ahead about sixty years in time.

About a month ago I tested my sense that things were better. I cautiously slid my fingers under a table top in a restaurant, feeling for lumps of old gum. No gum. None! I tried it again at a different restaurant. And another. No gum. None at all!

I have proved—to my own satisfaction—that teenagers no longer defile tables and counters as they once did. Mankind has made a giant stride forward. That leaves some challenges still needing to be worked out—issues like world peace, economic justice and global warming—but I have high hopes.

When have you worried about something that turned out to be no problem?

Food, The Baboon Congress

The Last Meal

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Today’s post comes from Steve Grooms.

Uh oh! The warden has just informed you that your last appeal was rejected.

You might have won a stay (or even a pardon) if Hillary had won. But President Ted Cruz filled Scalia’s open chair with Dick Cheney, and there went your chance for any mercy. Pizzle rot! You should have voted Democratic.

But there is an upside to this. You do get to choose your last meal. That’s something to look forward to, right?

What will this meal be? Some options are not open. You don’t get to pick that famous Chinese dish, 100 year old egg, starting with an egg laid this week. You’ve gotta choose something that will take a reasonable time to prepare. But it is nice that the warden doesn’t insist you pick a fast food dish. Whew!

My first choice for a last meal is something our family absolutely adored. Sad to say, it is no longer available. Our favorite meal for years was takeout from Caravan Serai, the first Afghani restaurant in the United States. Nancy Kayhoum was the owner and main cook in the 1980s and 1990s. About once a week we ordered her incredible combination appetizer (the Marco Polo) and then each family member had a favorite standard dish. Chicken kabobs for the grownups, gyros for the kid. It was heaven. When we opened the takeout bags, our home reeked of delicious herbs and spices for hours. But Nancy closed her restaurant decades ago, so that’s that.

It surprises (and mildly embarrasses) me that my next choice of last meal is something quite common. It was a meal I cooked myself, and once again it was something we had regularly. But it was so satisfying that it would be better than any other last meal I can think of. When my erstwife left the US to live in Europe, she would occasionally make business visits back home. This was the meal she asked me to serve her each time she was a house guest. It impressed me that a woman accustomed to eating in famous four-star restaurants all over Europe dreamed of enjoying again something we could cook at home.

What was that meal? It featured grilled round steak from Lunds, steamed broccoli drenched in a homemade Hollandaise sauce and oven-baked Tater Tots. The steak was Lunds’ dry-aged round steak, but for my last meal I would upgrade to filet mignon. And we should not forget one or two of those French baguettes from the Lunds bakery. Since we are not cutting corners here, we can add butter from the Hope Creamery. And to wash it down, let’s have pinot noir from Oregon.

It isn’t the meal my cardiologist would endorse. We have been told we shouldn’t eat too
much meat, and I don’t think Tater Tots make anybody’s list of health food. But hey, that’s what is so good about a last meal. You can chow down like there is no tomorrow!

We didn’t use to have desert with that meal, but this is a special occasion, so we’ll make an exception. While I remember some incredible deserts we ate while traveling (crème brulee in a London restaurant comes to mind) my choice for a last meal would again be prosaic. Give me a slice of pecan pie, with a generous scoop cinnamon ice cream on the side.

Oh, my, that was good. Hey warden, could I have seconds?

What would you choose for your very last meal?

Family, Stories, The Baboon Congress

Daddy, We Need to Talk

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Today’s post comes from Steve and Molly Grooms

I think every parent dreads the day when a child asks “that question.” I sure did. And yet it is almost inevitable that some day your child will come to you to ask the question you have avoided for years. And you can’t avoid it any longer.

“Daddy, I have a big question. You have to tell me: Is Santa real?”

This crisis of faith occurred for me when I was in fourth grade. I was playing with classmates during recess when I overheard a conversation that shook me up. One of my more cynical classmates was explaining that Santa Claus was an elaborate fiction. All that stuff about flying reindeer and delivering presents down the chimney was just a lie.

I didn’t join the conversation, but I began debating the issue in my head. I was that kind of kid.

By coincidence, a few weeks later I joined my dad as he ran an errand at his office at Collegiate Manufacturing, his employer in Ames. His office was in the third floor of the old Masonic Building. Because it was three stories tall, that building was one of the tallest structures in Ames.

While Dad fussed with his paperwork, I wandered over to the window on the north side of the building. Ames had a white Christmas that year, getting a drop of about five inches of snow the day before Christmas Eve. I was already experienced in woods wisdom at that age, having played outdoors for years. Looking out over rows of homes I suddenly knew the truth. Every home below me had an unblemished coat of snow, with no marks of sleigh runners and no reindeer footprints. Santa was a fraud.

All that came back to me when I became a parent and began teaching my daughter about Santa Claus. I bought books for her that showed in detail how Santa did his miraculous work. But when she turned nine I could tell she was beginning to harbor doubts.

Just before Christmas that year, the Pioneer Press Dispatch ran a huge color photo of Santa’s sleigh flying through the night sky. At the head of the team of reindeer was one that had a bright red nose. Molly stared at that photo in silent wonder for several minutes. She finally said, “And I was beginning to think Rudolph wasn’t real.”

Weeks later, right after Christmas, Molly came to me with a serious expression. “Daddy, we need to talk.” A group of friends at school had been debating Santa. Some believed in him. Some did not. Molly volunteered to resolve the matter, saying, “I’ll ask my dad.

He always tells me the truth.” The group agreed to let her research the question by talking to me.

With mixed emotions, I told her. As I remember, I made a big deal of the fact “Santa” was a fiction but Christmas love was not. Rather than debunking Santa I told Molly the love of parents was the true Christmas miracle. She instantly joined the great conspiracy to perpetuate the Santa story with younger children, and it touched me to see how hard Molly worked to preserve the secret with kids who still believed.

All this comes to mind because I just got a note from my daughter. For readers who might not know, Liam is my daughter’s five-year-old son. I’ll let Molly finish this story:

Liam came home yesterday, helped himself to a Christmas cookie and said, “Mom, we need to talk. About Santa.”

Santa and Liam - two real guys
Santa and Liam – two real guys

My heart sank. “What about Santa, Hon?”

Liam crammed the rest of the cookie into his mouth, dusted his hands off on his pants and said, “Well, it’s more about his wife.” He leveled a very mature almost-six-year-old look at me and said in a conspiratorial whisper, “She’s not really real, you know. That’s what they say at school.”

After 15 minutes of discussion on the merits of having a wife to look after the elves and reindeer, not to mention to work as an attorney or teacher so that you can essentially run a non-profit for the world’s children, we decided she must really exist after all.

As he left the kitchen in a trail of crumbs and with a red and green sugar cookie mustache, my heart almost broke.

Stay young, little one. Treasure what could be, as well as what is. Believe in magic and your own heart. And dang it–Listen to your mother, not your friends, for just a little longer…

Do you recall how you learned about Santa? Or how you told a child?

Songs, The Baboon Congress

What’s Your Christmas Album?

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Today’s post comes from Steve Grooms

I grew up in central Iowa in the 1950s, a time when public schools performed Christian music like Away in the Manger and Silent Night. When choir directors heard me sing they quickly nominated me to be the narrator for our concerts. Since my family didn’t often go to church, I learned the story of baby Jesus’ birth by telling it to audiences of proud parents at school concerts.

My sense of Christmas music was further defined by what played on the radio in our living room. Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole, Judy Garland, Burl Ives and others performed such pop music classics as I’ll Be Home for Christmas and White Christmas (many of the tunes having been written by Jews working in the pop music industry). I heard (but never came to like) novelty Christmas music by Alvin and the Chipmunks or songs like I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus.

As a child, I had a silly running battle with one Christmas tune: Santa Claus is Coming to Town. I hated that song with fervor that is hard to understand. When I heard “so you better be good for goodness’ sake,” I was outraged because clearly “goodness” was not involved, just greed for Christmas presents. Why that affected me so deeply I will never know.

In the Grooms household my mother preferred the pop classics in a style she called “mood music.” Mood music (a forerunner of “new age” music) was atmospheric stuff meant to be played softly in the background. Her favorite, by far, was an album by Jackie Gleason (who was also a bandleader). Gleason’s Merry Christmas album was a light jazz treatment of Christmas music performed in a deeply nostalgic vein for people who liked to celebrate the day weeping wistfully in their eggnogs. The first big shock I experienced after getting married was learning that my bride considered my family’s Christmas music embarrassingly banal and beneath contempt.

In my first Christmas as a married man I was introduced to her Christmas music, which was all about choirs performing classic European religious Christian carols. Many of the tunes were created in medieval times. Her Christmas music was usually sung in vast cathedrals, so it had a lot of echo, and many songs featured the piercing purity of the sounds of boy sopranos. The audio highlight of Christmas for my wife was the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols performed each year at King’s College.

In short, her Christmas music could not have been more different from what I’d known as a kid. At first I was humiliated by her disgust for my old Christmas music, but I quickly embraced the beauty of the more traditional choral music my in-laws loved so much.

Still later, I acquired great fondness for Celtic music. Inevitably I began enjoying performances of Christmas music performed in that style by folk and Celtic musicians. At some point I had to add the music of the Charlie Brown Christmas show to my list of favorites.

It all becomes mixed together. I have known so many Christmases that my tastes are eclectic and inevitably mixed with memories, good and bad. I fell in love with one album during an extremely emotional Christmas, the worst of my life. George Winston’s December album became a classic in the winter when we discovered our old cat had cancer. My daughter’s last evening with him was spent holding him in her crib while the December album played over and over in the night.

To hear Christmas music now is to be reminded of earlier times, with all that was sweet and terrible about them. Like Scrooge, I am haunted by Ghosts from Christmas Past, and they come with a soundtrack.

What is your favorite Christmas music?

The Baboon Congress

George and Babs Send Their Regrets

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Header image: Joey Gannon from Pittsburgh, PA (Candles) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

Today’s post comes from Steve Grooms.

We are approaching the date of my erstwife’s birthday. That triggers a rush of memories, some sweet and some harrowing. (Apologies to Baboons who might remember this story from an earlier post.)

Early in any couple’s married life the newlyweds might need to blend two different family celebration styles. This became a challenge for me. My family went nuts at Christmas but hardly acknowledged other special days. We did little for Thanksgiving, less for Halloween and absolutely nothing for Easter. My new wife’s family celebrated as often and as gaily as possible. Life in that family was a succession of hearty parties.

The sharpest clash of styles related to birthdays. My in-laws exploded with joy at birthdays. They put on celebratory dinners, baked fancy cakes, presented cards and exchanged cool gifts. In my family the birthday star chose his or her favorite cake. And that was pretty much it. No cards. No candles or candy letters on the cake. The gifts were modest, too. When I turned ten, for example, my mom gave me two dollars to spend at our local dime store.

You see the potential here for hurt feelings. Early in my married life I had to acquire the habit of celebrating special days. And in fact, I enjoyed that. I never forgot our wedding anniversary. The big day that tested my memory was November 7, my bride’s birthday. That one refused to stick in my memory. Who knows why? But, with the help of a watch I programmed to remind me of the date, I was always ready with gifts.

In October of 1989 I traveled to South Dakota to hunt sharp–tailed grouse with a guy I barely knew. To save money, we camped out, sleeping on the prairie without even a tent for shelter. That should have been fun, but we experienced a freak shot of winter weather. It got so cold I couldn’t sleep until I invited Spook, my English setter, to spend the night tucked in with me in my sleeping bag.

I was so distracted by the preparations for the trip that I totally forgot my wife’s upcoming birthday. By then the magic watch was broken, so it didn’t warn me. I didn’t even remember later, while we hunted the frozen prairie. If the error had been scored in the Olympics of Marital Screwups, I would have earned a perfect ten.

When I got home again I walked into a home so frosty I could have cut the air with a knife. I slept in the basement. Things were so chilly I was tempted to invite Spook to share my sleeping bag again. In desperation I gave my wife a novel that I had bought earlier, intending to give it to a friend. This novel had earned a rave review from Alan Chuse on NPR. But my wife knew I had bought it for our friend. It wasn’t wrapped. And when she read the first few pages, she hated the book.

That horrible birthday became a “teachable moment,” which is a nice way of saying the memory of that birthday fiasco was forever burned in my memory. In 1990 I began planning for her next birthday several months before the date. I bought several sensitively chosen gifts. I had them gift-wrapped. I got a nice card. I planned a special meal with plenty of wine . . . good wine, not the plonk we usually drank. I invited several close friends to the birthday party.

I covertly borrowed my wife’s address book to copy contact information for every friend she had in the world. That was many people. Of course, her close friends already knew her birthday, but I contacted all those second-tier friends scattered over the world, people who liked her but might not know her birth date. I urged each one of them to give her a call on November 7. And they did. Her phone rang over and over all day long. That was the best gift of all.

My finishing touch was to invite the President and First Lady to her party. In 1990, Potus was George H. W. Bush and Flotus was the Silver Fox, Barbara. They weren’t our favorite politicians, to tell the truth, but I was going to make every effort to make this party memorable.

Toward the end of October I took an interesting phone call from Cynthia Hemphill, head of the White House Protocol Office. Speaking in the cultivated tones of a Seven Sisters college grad, Ms. Hemphill said she wasn’t sure how to respond to my invitation. She didn’t recognize my name, which led me to assume she didn’t read many Midwestern hunting and fishing magazines. Without lying, I allowed her to conclude I might be a fat cat Republican supporter.

I told Ms. Hemphill that I knew the Bushes were busy folks. George was saving the Free World, a big job, and Barbara had just co-authored a book with Millie, the Bush’s springer spaniel. I described how miserably I screwed up the last birthday celebration, adding that I hoped it would be a nice touch to invite some special guests this year. I hinted to Ms. Hemphill that a note of regret from the Bushes would be welcome.

In addition to the gifts at the birthday party, my wife got to open a note from George and Barbara Bush. They wouldn’t be partying with us that year, but they wished her well.

How do you celebrate special days?

The Baboon Congress, The Future

Chicken Little Was a Silly Optimist

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Today’s post is by Steve Grooms

Something terrible is going to happen in the Great Northwest. The approaching danger has a pretty name: “Cascadia.” Cascadia refers to an earthquake that will devastate 700 miles of Pacific coastline from California to British Columbia. That quake will be followed by a massively lethal tsunami.

Here is a little Cascadia Q and A:

How sure can we be that a bad quake will hit here?

Scientists are absolutely sure of this prediction. Quakes registering 9.0 happen in this region about every 250 years. That pattern has persisted as far back in time as geology lets us see. The last big quake struck in the early 1700s, shortly before Europeans arrived. That means no quake has occurred while European settlers have been here, so people in this region have no memory of what a bad quake is like. After the next quake and tsunami, scientists say, the northwest coast will be “unrecognizable.”

When might this happen?

Scientists still cannot predict the timing of quakes with any specificity. They agree that the next quake is seriously overdue. One authority calculates there is a 40 percent chance that Cascadia will hit in the next 50 years. As I consider those odds I hear the gritty voice of Clint Eastwood asking, “Do ya feel lucky, punk?” “Nooooo, Clint! Nooooo, I don’t feel lucky at all!”

How bad will it be?

Seismologists expect a big quake, with Richter ratings close to 9.0. Cascadia will probably be a twin to the quake and tsunami that obliterated coastal areas of eastern Japan in 2011. That disaster tsunami killed about 16,000 people. FEMA planners anticipate at least 13,000 deaths as a result of Cascadia.  When it happens, Cascadia will immediately become the worst natural disaster in the history of this country.

How prepared is Oregon?

Experts give Oregon a grade of F-plus. For example, of Portland’s eleven bridges, only two were built with quake-proof engineering. Because of publicity about the coming disaster, there is some hope that local government will begin addressing the region’s vulnerabilities. But the culture of this region is skeptical about government and collective action. Some leaders are campaigning hard for better preparation. So far, they have lost every battle to spend money now to save lives in the future.

The real issue isn’t what will happen to me in a Cascadia disaster. I’m an old guy with serious health issues. I won’t be living long in Oregon or anywhere else on this planet. It would be silly for me to panic about something I can’t prevent and which probably will not occur while I am here. And yet I believe everyone is responsible for planning sensibly for future crises, even those that seem unlikely to happen soon. My greatest concern is for my daughter’s family and for the region as a whole. My daughter’s home in southeast Portland is old. I doubt it can withstand the shaking of a quake, although it lies as bit beyond the reach of the expected tsunami.

 

Cascadia_earthquake

My apartment sits near the top of a small mountain south and east of Portland. The soil under these buildings is solid. The elevation puts us safely above any possible tsunami. These apartment buildings were constructed in 2000. They had to conform to building codes reflecting a modern awareness of the threat of quakes.

If I survive the quake, my problems will just be beginning. Our electricity goes out when the wind blows. Quake survivors will have no power or telephone service for weeks after the quake. There will probably be no drinking water or (ugh!) functioning toilets. All banks and financial systems will be shattered. The local transportation system, already fragile and inadequate, will be in chaos. Highways will buckle, bridges will collapse and the tsunami will flood much of the coastal area with debris and corpses. Grocery stores and pharmacies will be looted within hours of the quake, with no chance for re-supply. Emergency vehicles will not be able to move on streets and highways. Any relief will have to come by helicopter. Most disaster relief will be focused on the areas hit most severely. Survivors will have to make do, somehow, for a period of two to six weeks.

Questions abound. For example, should I deplete my retirement fund to purchase six weeks worth of water? Where would I keep it? A sizable swimming pool lies a dozen steps from my apartment. Will it survive the shaking? Could residents drink that water? Who will establish and enforce order so neighbors don’t plunder each other’s goods?

I am more puzzled than panicked. Nothing in my lifetime has prepared me to respond to a threat like Cascadia. The event, when it comes, will be almost unimaginably tragic. And yet, although it is “overdue,” it might not come for several decades. My dilemma is figuring out how a thinking person can plan effectively for such an event, preparing for extreme chaos while keeping things in perspective. Surely there is a sensible middle ground position somewhere between irresponsible oblivion and total panic.

When I was a Minnesotan I knew it was always possible that a tornado could chew my home to pieces, but the odds against it were reassuring. Now, as I try to prepare for what is often called “the big one,” Minnesota winters suddenly don’t look as threatening as they once did!

How should Steve respond to the threat of Cascadia?

The Baboon Congress

Baboon Redux – The Bear That Ate Jerry

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Header image:  Selsdon Wood Nature Reserve, CR0 (Philip Talmage) / CC BY-SA 2.0

Today’s post by Steve Grooms was first published in 2010.

In early June of 1967, I took a Boundary Waters canoe trip with my roommate, Bill, and his California friend, Jerry Voorhees. Bill was a tall, arrogant fellow who enjoyed barking out commands to Jerry and me. Although I was twenty-five at the time, Bill called me “Steevie,” because he knew it annoyed me. It amused Bill to order Jerry and me about like the drill sergeants he’d suffered under in Army Basic Training.

Jerry is harder to sketch. A plump fellow with thick glasses, Jerry was no athlete and less of an outdoorsman. He was on the canoe trip because Bill ordered him to be. Jerry was a sweet, accommodating soul who lacked self-esteem. Bill didn’t help Jerry’s composure with all the abuse he heaped on Jerry, calling him “fat” a dozen times an hour and mocking Jerry’s stammer. Jerry’s father had been a liberal New Deal congressman in California who became famous because he was the first politician to have his career trashed by mudslinging lies from young Richard Nixon.

The trip was more fun than it might have been. I caught a trophy northern pike whose memory still thrills me. We were out in the bush for six days. When we got back to Grand Marais, we were stunned to read that the Israelis and Arabs had conducted a whole war in our absence, the “Six Days War.”

Other than that, the most memorable moment was provided by the bear.

We slept three across in our little tent. Jerry, as the omega trip member, was stuck between Bill and me. Our heads were at the back of the tent, our feet by the door. It was rather tight in there.

We had gone to bed one night after dinner. It was fairly late, late enough that the loons had finally gone silent. Spring peepers trilled from every puddle in the woods. Jerry snored softly. Bill tossed in his sleeping bag.

I had almost fallen asleep when I heard the bear. Something was shuffling around our campsite, something with heavy feet. We had not been careful enough to run our food packs up into the trees, which should have concerned me. Stupidly, I wasn’t afraid.

Instead of being scared, I was enjoying the moment because I knew Bill heard the bear. Bill’s breathing changed, becoming fast and ragged. I had been with Bill in a violent storm once, and I knew how terrified he could be when he felt himself threatened. I grinned into my pillow, picturing Bill on the far side of the tent, his face a mask of terror. Jerry snored on.

“Jerry! There’s a bear!” hissed Bill.

“Snaaaaark,” said Jerry.

“Jerry, dammit! There’s a BEAR!”

“Snoooooooooooop!” said Jerry.

I pressed my fist into my mouth to keep from laughing out loud.

That’s when Bill snapped. In total panic, he grabbed Jerry with his left hand, clamping down on Jerry’s right thigh like the Jaws of Death.

Jerry, dammit, THERE’S A BEAR!”

“I KNOW! I KNOW!” screamed Jerry, now very awake. “And he’s GOT ME BY THE LEG!”

That’s when we broke into laughter. The three of us hooted and whooped until our pillows were soggy with tears and our tummies ached. Whatever the creature in our camp had been, it obviously fled in panic when we began roaring with laughter.

Jerry later explained that he was awakened by the vice-like grip of Bill’s hand on his leg. “I thought he was going to eat me right up,” said Jerry, “starting with the sweetest meat.”

What terrifying moment are you able to laugh about now?

The Baboon Congress

My Political Journey

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Header Image: Dwight D. Eisenhower Library [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Today’s post comes from Steve Grooms.

My first political act came in 1952. I was ten. I sat on a city curb waiting for the appearance of the famous man who would soon be running for president. In my right hand I clutched a pennant that proclaimed “I Like Ike.”

And I did. Who wouldn’t like the avuncular, smiling war hero who had defeated the mighty German army? My parents were conservative Republicans. And, really, they didn’t have much of a choice. All their friends were Republican. My dad’s boss was Republican, which alone would have settled the issue for us. Everyone knows your political affiliation in a small town, and only a fool would endorse what his boss considered the “wrong” party.

My father, always the storyteller, filled my young ears with spooky images of Democrats. He told me Franklin Roosevelt allowed the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor to happen so the US would have to enter the war. Dad rejected Roosevelt’s “socialistic” economic policies. As poorly as my father regarded FDR, he had a much lower opinion of Eleanor Roosevelt. She was much too outspoken for a woman, and her embrace of political outcasts made him queasy.

While I considered myself a Republican until I went to college, it didn’t take long for the GOP to lose my vote. In my first week on campus, my dormitory fellows and I watched Richard Nixon and John Kennedy debate on television. To my eyes, Richard Nixon looked shifty and mired in the past. JFK seemed young, vigorous and sophisticated.

In that debate, Kennedy suggested the Republicans had allowed the Soviet Union to get ahead of the US in missile design. That charge came up weeks later during the beauty pageant to pick Miss Grinnell, our candidate in the Miss America contest. A pretty blonde in a swimsuit was asked her opinion of “the missile gap.” “This country could not possibly be behind,” she said, adding “And I’m sure we’ll catch up real soon.”

By the time I left college, I knew my core values defined me as a progressive, somewhere to the left of the Democratic party mainstream. And then Vietnam happened. Night after night, I shook with rage as spokesmen for Lyndon Johnson’s government went before television cameras to lie about the war. For me, the Vietnamese war was a radicalizing event that lasted eleven years.

I haven’t changed my basic convictions much in the decades since the US fled Vietnam in panic. I was ambivalent about the first Gulf War but unequivocally hated the second. And yet the passing years have made me relatively humble. I no longer burn with self righteous conviction on any issue. I describe my political affiliation now as “progressive,” whatever that means. The Democratic Party lost my heart long ago by neglecting common folks, choosing instead to cater to the wealthy, as if the other party weren’t already shamelessly sucking up to the most privileged sector of this society. I vote for Democrats because they are the least objectionable of the alternatives I find on ballots. I dream of a leader who would seriously address social and economic injustice. I yearn for a leader who will actually reverse the abuse we continue to heap on our environment. But I’m not holding my breath.

Oddly enough, I have had a dream featuring almost every president to hold office in my lifetime. In my Clinton dream I told him how deeply he had disappointed me. In a recent dream, a president chased me through a spooky Victorian mansion, shooting at me with a pistol. I wasn’t concerned, though. I remember thinking, “I’m good. That’s only George Bush trying to kill me!” My favorite presidential dream featured a conversation I had with Jimmy Carter. As we spoke, Carter’s face sort of melted, and right before my eyes he morphed into Eleanor Roosevelt. I remember thinking, “Gee, Dad was right all along. Jimmy Carter is just Eleanor Roosevelt come back to haunt him again!”

What has your political journey been?

The Baboon Congress

We’re Number 6!

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Today’s guest post is by Steve Grooms

It seems some southerners just can’t let go of the Stars and Bars, the Confederate battle flag. They consider it a symbol of a romantic past. Historians tell us it is a romantic past that never existed, but romantics do not let facts get in the way of convictions. And yet, who are we to feel smug about anyone else’s flag? The Minnesota flag is hardly an example of beauty and positive values. There is actually a scholarly group that studies flags and critiques their design. The American Vexillological Association rates the Minnesota flag as sixth in the country—and that is sixth from the bottom,  not the top!

When it comes to rankings, Minnesota almost always ranks best or close to best. But it is an official and undeniable truth: our flag sucks. Our flag ranks somewhere like political ethics in New Jersey, environmental protection in Louisiana, or public schools in West Virginia.

Ouch!

More to the point, our flag is highly offensive to Minnesotans whose ancestors were here before Europeans arrived to “discover” the Mississippi River (right where it had always been), chop down the white pines and extirpate such critters as elk, wolves and buffalo.

The flag depicts a European settler tilling his field. His holds a plow, although his rifle is nearby. He looks over his shoulder at a near-naked Indian on horseback who carries a spear. This odd scene is Minnesota? Well, it was when the flag was adopted in 1893, just 21 years after the tragic conflict between the Dakota and the state’s pioneer settlers.

According to a historian quoted in a recent Star Tribune story:

“The image of the pioneer, a peaceful man who has laid down his gun and is plowing his field, is juxtaposed with the image of the Indian, who may still want to fight (his spear is at the ready) but who seems to be riding away.

“The pioneer/farmer is using a plow, a symbol of civilization. The white man is depicted as a ‘doer’ who is entitled to the land, trees and water, empowered by the concept of Manifest Destiny. The Indian is the vacating tenant. A peaceful transition is suggested, but this ignores the tense and problematic history of conflict between European settlers and Indians, such as the complicated history of treaties and the Dakota War of 1862.”

I have other quibbles with the flag:

The logo declares, “L’ Etoile du Nord.” French, of course, is the native language of Minnesota.

The Indian is seen as riding south (which we know because of the position of the setting sun). And yet we know that Sioux survivors of the Dakota conflict were forcibly relocated to a bleak bit of land in central South Dakota. They didn’t ride there but were shipped out on boats like prisoners of war.

The river shown in the flag is widely presumed to be the Mississippi. Oddly, it runs west to east.

The pioneer is shown pushing his plow by hand. We could ask our farmer friend, Ben, how well that would work. I believe we are meant to be inspired by the stump in the field because it represents something like civilization. I am more inclined to see a stump as a symbol of the pioneers’ heedless abuse of nature.

The seal celebrates the beauty of Minnesota’s mountains. Somehow, like the little town of Lake Wobegon, the famous Minnesota Mountain Range fails to appear on modern maps.

The flag celebrates farming and logging, the most important industries of 1893. But gee, there are so many important businesses now that the flag fails to recognize. Shouldn’t the state flag have a Cheerio on it to acknowledge our food companies? Why is there no pacemaker on the flag? No Post-it Notes? No brewery? Shouldn’t our flag include the logo of Minnesota Vikings, or at least the Twins?

How about those flowers circling the plowing scene? They do nothing for the overall design, which is as cluttered as a teenager’s bedroom. Flags should look good from a distance, even when flapping in a wind. Our flag looks like something designed by a committee, a committee of folks who flunked the only art class they ever took.

What we have is a flag that is politically offensive and factually goofy. I could live with that if it were pretty. But, alas, our state’s flag is vexillogically challenged. What we somehow inherited is a flag that flag experts consider “a really, really, really crappy design.”

If it were yours to design, what would Minnesota’s flag look like?