All posts by reneeinnd

News, Stories, Technology, Uncategorized

Playing Post Office

41 Comments

The recent oil boom  took a toll on our regional mail service. The Postal Service lost workers to the oil field and had trouble finding replacements. Mail in the rural areas often wasn’t  even delivered on a regular basis. I remember having mail delivered on Sunday, or late at night. Our mail carrier wore a head mounted flashlight like spelunkers wear so he could see.

Things are still a little shaky at the Post Office even with the oil field bust and more people applying for postal jobs.  A friend of mine recently overheard a veteran postal worker railing about the incompetence and poor work ethic of the newer postal service workers. We have had our mail delivered to the wrong address or had the wrong mail delivered to our address.  It used to be that if our mail was addressed slightly inaccurately, say 10th Ave NW instead of 10th Ave W,  they used to deliver it to us anyway.   Now it gets sent back to Fargo where it languishes for a couple of weeks until it is returned to sender.

I can only hope things will improve.  Until then we and our neighbors will continue to bring wrongly delivered mail to the correct addresses and assume the mail will just take longer to get to its destinations.

How is your mail service? Got any good Postal Service stories?

 

 

History, Media, News, Technology, Uncategorized

Security Clearance

60 Comments

I have watched with some amusement and alarm the struggles of certain White House aides to get security clearance. Changing their stories and accessing lapsed memories hardly makes them look trustworthy.  Crystalbay’s unfortunate experience with a on-line scammers is another reminder of the dishonest among us.

How do you judge someone’s honesty? Have you ever been scammed? What is your favorite story or movie about con people?

Family, History, News, The Future, Uncategorized

On His Way to the Glory Pasture

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I was reading the obituaries in the local paper this week and the following caught my eye in an obituary of an older man who had been a rancher and avid rodeo participant : “___________   went through his Last Chute Number on his way to the Glory Pasture.” It was surprisingly poetic for our paper and certainly spoke of the unwavering faith of the cara defunto.

Billy Graham went to the Glory Pasture this week. I had no idea he was still alive. My paternal grandfather was very insistent  in the days before his death to remind my dad and uncle to make sure their mother “didn’t give her money to any of those TV preachers.” He viewed them as charlatans.  Grandma was raised Baptist and joined the Methodist Church because there was no Baptist congregation near their farm. She was happy as a Methodist but loved watching TV preachers in her later years.  Grandpa didn’t like it and never gave money to any church, much less anybody on the TV.

The Reverend Graham’s  brand of salvation never appealed much to me, being perfectly happy as a Lutheran, but it certainly did to others. In 1978, 70,000 people showed up over three days to see him in Fargo.  He must have spoken to some need in their beings, and I certainly am not being a critic of him or them. I like to think of my grandparents and Mr. Graham and the bronc buster all in the Glory Pasture having a real nice time.

What do you hope your  Glory Pasture is like? 

 

 

Family, Food, Uncategorized

Leftovers

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Husband and I have vastly different ways of dealing with leftovers  in the kitchen. I just eat them until they are gone.  Husband  gets bored with them and tries to improve them.  Last week he made some Italian bean soup. The recipe made a lot, and after a couple of days he added rice, leftover cooked yellow zucchini, green beans, and a jar of home canned tomatoes.  Instead of having six cups of bean soup that we could have finished in a couple of days, we  had  10 cups of minestrone that I am still eating.  The minestrone was pretty good, but most of his renovated leftover aren’t very palatable, and he ends up eating them for a day and them throwing them out.  I call those creations “glop”,  since that is their consistency and their appeal, and I am often afraid to eat them.  He has never been able to appreciate my argument that what he does just makes for more leftovers.  Boredom trumps volume, I guess.  Now, if you will excuse me, I am going to heat up some minestrone.

How do you manage leftovers? What are you afraid to eat?

 

Fifty Words, History, Media, Speeches, The Future, Uncategorized

Choosing Your Revolution

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Today’s post comes from Chris, Reneeinnd’s husband.

Listening to late-night radio as a student at the University of Wisconsin- Madison,   I heard Gil Scott-Heron’s  “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”:

If you were to create a revolution, how would you go  about doing it?

Family, pets, Uncategorized

If I Could Talk to the Animals

39 Comments

My friend Deb  is dog sitting her son’s 15 year old Boxer, Marilyn.  Deb also has a 16 year old Fox Terrier named Ellie.  Marilyn  is a regular guest at Deb’s house and knows the house and the inhabitants very well. Deb talks to both dogs in a way I find terribly funny. They respond to her in ways that makes me think that dogs are even smarter than we already give them credit for.

One night this week,  Deb was awakened by Ellie pawing at her arm and whining. This can mean that Ellie wants food or that something is wrong. Deb told Ellie “Lie down and go to sleep! You can’t have any treats.” yet Ellie persisted, so she told Ellie “Show me what’s wrong.” Ellie led her to the kitchen, where she found a horrible mess. All the lower cupboards had been opened and all their contents swept onto the floor. Peanut butter containers had been chewed open and the contents devoured.  Marilyn has been known to do this before, but she can only open one side of the two-door cupboards.  Both sides had been opened. This means that someone else (a certain Fox Terrier) helped open all the doors.  Deb yelled “Marilyn, come here! You know you aren’t supposed to open the cupboards”!  Marilyn came over and glared at Deb and blew out her dewlaps, and grumbled “row row row row row” the way Boxers talk, and blew out her dewlaps again.  Deb told Ellie “You go in your bed!” and Ellie slunk to her dog bed with her tail down.

The next morning, Deb gave Ellie her favorite treat-two ice cubes, and Marilyn stole one. She chewed only half of it and spat out the other half onto the hardwood floor because her mouth got too cold.  Deb didn’t see it and stepped on it. Deb was quite annoyed and  told Marilyn “You pick that up and put it on the carpet if you are going to eat it!” Marilyn turned her head away from Deb in an insolent  way and blew out her dewlaps. Deb repeated her command. Marilyn glanced at her, and again looked away insolently and blew out her dewlaps.  After a third try,  Marilyn picked up what was left of the ice cube and took it over to the carpet to finish it.

How did that dog know to take the ice cube to the carpet? That is a complex command involving at least two concepts. It isn’t something Deb says to Marilyn on a regular basis, so she didn’t learn it through repetition.  Marilyn is usually a pretty sweet and compliant dog with Deb,  but they have differences of opinion at times. I love hearing about their arguments. Deb says that she never wins because Marilyn always gets the last word by blowing out her dewlaps as she walks away.

How do you talk to animals? What would they tell you if they could talk to you?

History, Stories, Uncategorized, Words

Turn of Phrase

86 Comments

On this date in the year 600, Pope Gregory the Great decreed that the proper thing to say when someone sneezed was “God bless you”. I told this to a friend, a practicing  Catholic, who said ” Who died and put him in charge!? Why are we still listening to him? We should find something new to say!” I was at a loss for her being somewhat offended by Pope Gregory, but I found her response delightful.

What are some of your favorite (or not so favorite turns of phrase)?  Make up a new one if you can.

 

books, History, The Future, Uncategorized

Everything Old is New Again

51 Comments

Husband read this to me the other night. It is from Ron Chernow’s biography of Ulysses S. Grant. He is describing a 19th century railroad baron. Remind you of anyone we know?

With his handsome blond mustache, bloated frame, and  diamond rings, the flashy Jim Fisk was the antithesis of the saturnine Gould. The son of a Vermont peddler, he collected prostitutes and chorus girls no less promiscuously than he bought railroads and steamships and exulted in the attention his flamboyance aroused. Such was his roguish charm that people were captivated even as they were horrified by his total lack of scruples. As George Templeton Strong sketched him: ‘Illiterate, vulgar, unprincipled, profligate, always making himself conspicuously ridiculous by some piece of flagrant ostentation, he was, nevertheless, freehanded with his stolen money, and possessed, moreover, a certain magnetism of geniality that attracted to him people who were not particular about the decency of their associates ‘.   Chernow, R. (2017),  p 673.  Grant. Penguin Press: New York.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.  What trends from the past would you like to see again?

Food, holidays, Uncategorized

Carnival

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Today is Shrove Tuesday, when all our sins are forgiven, and when we need to eat pancakes and all the cream  before Lent. Husband and I celebrated early and had Norwegian waffles on Saturday.  Shrove  is the past tense of shrive, which means to confess one’s sins, repent, and be forgiven and absolved. Pancakes are powerful. Germans eat pastries called Fastnachts for the same effect.

We visited Montreal several summers and stayed in the Old Port. There we purchased carnival masks made in Venice in a lovely book store near the Notre Dame  cathedral.  We tried to find Renaissance Commedia dell’arte masks instead of the  fantastical masks you can find in more commercial venues.  We managed to get a zanni mask. A zanni is a servant who sometimes has a long  nose. The longer his nose, the more ignorant he is. The mask reminds me of a plague mask. His name is the derivation of our English word “zany”.

A couple of Harlequin (Arlechinno) masks. He is another zanni, but with a shorter nose. He is a somewhat clever servant character:

 

And two Columbine (Columbina) masks.  She is Harlequin’s love interest and a very perky, very clever servant.

 

Our local Catholic School district has  a major fund raiser they call Mardi Gras every year in February. It involves games, entertainment, and lots of good food. It is open to the community and region.  People are most unhappy since the new bishop in Bismarck decided a couple of years ago that all the money raised had to be sent to the diocese, and he would decide how much of the money should get sent back to the local Catholic schools and how much would be used for diocesan expenses.  Sounds like a perfect Commedia plot.  I am sure the clever servants would get all the money back, further any thwarted love interests, and show the bishop to be a fool.

What does the word carnival mean to you?  What is the appeal wearing a mask? What kind of mask would you like to wear?

The Baboon Congress, Uncategorized, work

On Being Funny in Unfunny Places

24 Comments

I will retire in 2021. I set as my goal for the next three years to be as appropriately funny at work as I can.  I love my agency.  We have had a rather rough time over the past couple of years. We are understaffed and stretched to provide mental health and addiction services to an increasing number of people. There are new service initiatives and an  electronic health care  record system that will  start soon. Change is always difficult in government, even when it is positive change.  To complicate matters, in the past two years, five employees have been summarily  escorted off the premises and ordered to not return. This included our top administrator, two senior supervisors, someone from my department, and an administrative assistant.  It has been a little grim. We need cheering up.

I find that pointing out the absurd,  the silly, and the comically sweet  goes  over quite well.  I never tease or get personal. I  find that humor seems to liberate people and makes them bolder.  We need our staff to not be afraid of being leaders in their daily work.  No one seems to be annoyed with me yet. I alternate humor with serious discussion and sound advice.

How do use humor in your daily life? When does humor work the best? When doesn’t it work?