All posts by reneeinnd

Media, Music, Songs, Uncategorized

Royal Mail

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Husband and I ordered some classical audio cd’s from Amazon recently. I usually like to order from Archiv, but everything there was on backorder.

Our selections were fairly eclectic, ranging from choral music by Arvo Part and Henrik Goreki, to a cd by Brooklyn Rider, a string quartet, playing with an Irish fiddler.

When you order from Amazon, you never quite know where the products are coming from. Three of the cd’s we ordered came from overseas. A London /Decca recording of Chopin nocturnes played by Vladimir Ashkenazy came from Japan. It arrived speedily, several days before even the US cd’s arrived. It is a lovely recording, but all the liner notes are in Japanese!

Two of the cd’s are coming from England. One is from Banbury, Oxfordshire. The other is from Stockport, in Cheshire. That particular cd is being shipped by Royal Mail. I have no idea what that means in terms of speed of delivery, but it sounds so impressive! I imagine it being delivered by someone in a Beefeater uniform.

Any interesting shipping or delivery stories? What music have you discovered lately? What would you like to receive via Royal Mail?

home, Media, Mysteries, Uncategorized

Great Ideas, Lost

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Husband and I have 4×6 inch note pads lying around all over our house. Husband is an inveterate list maker. I want to have pencil and paper handy whenever a potential blog topic comes to me.

I decided to straighten up a bit last weekend, and I found a bunch of blog topics listed on the note pads that I can’t, for the life of me, remember what I was thinking when I wrote them down. Here are a few examples:

Hydrologic Engineer

Dentures

The Ludicrous Life

What Would Ian Altman Think

Naps

Wondrous Vs Wonderful Life

Boccherini at work

I think I need to put a few more details about what I am thinking instead of just writing the topic or title.

How is your memory these days? Come up with some esoteric blog topics. Looking at the above listed ideas I forgot about, what questions would you pair with them?

Music, Uncategorized, work

Musical Chairs

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Our bell choir is aging. We have a few members who are in their 30’s and 40’s, but most of us are 60+. The younger players tend to be more agile, and play the smaller bells that require more speed and dexterity. That leaves the treble and bass bells to us slower and steadier players. I play the G and A below middle C. Husband plays the C and D below middle C.

We have five octaves of bells. The bells increase in size as they get lower, and our lowest bell is the F one and a half octaves below middle C. Those bottom bells are huge, and have to be rung with both hands. (Usually, a ringer has at least one bell in each hand. Not these low bells). Our director asked me this week if I would mind switching to the lowest bells, since I am the least arthritic of any of the other older players, and the current player is having too much arm and had pain to continue in that position. I said I would be happy to, but I might invest in some wrist supports.

I shall miss G and A, but it’s nice to have new musical challenges sometimes. I suppose it is a compliment to be the least orthopedically challenged older player in the group.

What are your challenges as you age? What promotions did you experience at work, and how did they work out? What are your experiences in musical emsembles?

gardening, home, Uncategorized

Simple Gifts

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Husband and I finally had time last weekend to see to the garden to trim the irises, peonies, and day lilies, roll up the soaker hoses to store them in the basement, and take down the bean poles and tomato cages. It has been very cold at night here, with lows of 20°F.

Despite the cold, the spinach and chard have thrived over the past few weeks. Our next door neighbors, whose children help us in our garden, love chard. I only grow it to make a couple of Italian pie of greens each summer, and freeze some for pies in the winter. We always have more than we need, and the neighbors take the fresh chard we gladly give them to extended family gatherings where they cook it up and sprinkle it with vinegar. It is their family delicacy.

I thought I had picked the last bit of chard a couple of weeks ago, but during our garden clean up I noticed that the remaining chard had grown some pretty big leaves. I asked the neighbor if he could use some more, and he and the children came over and clipped the chard to the ground for one last autumn feast.

Husband visits a couple of our Lutheran congregation members who reside in an assisted living community to bring them communion. There is always an exchange of their homemade pickles and slices of pie for our pesto sauce and pastries. Simple gifts that mean so much.

What are the simple gifts that are precious for you to give and to get? Have any of your pets brought you “gifts”?

animals, Farming Update, Health, Uncategorized

End of October

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We got 0.4” rain Thursday night. Made a puddle where I throw out corn and the ducks appreciate having their drinking water 5 steps from the food.

It’s gonna get cold next week. I better take the outside faucet out of the wellhouse and move the pressure washer someplace heated. I supply straw to a neighborhood strawberry farm to cover their berries in the winter. They took 150 bales right off a wagon this summer and now they’re ready to cover the berries and will need another “15-50” bales. And another person near them wants 15 bales so I will take 60 over on a trailer tomorrow.

I saw Lowes the other day, selling regular size small bales of straw (not the mini- decoration bales) for $13 / bale. Wowzer! I need to raise my prices.

I haven’t had time to do any farming the last few weeks. The neighbors are all crazy busy combining corn and doing fieldwork and doing all that stuff they need to do. I’ve got a show to open (Will be open when you read this) plus the finishing touches on the theater remodeling project (Open house on the 6th) and a Lab quiz Monday in Geology class (identifying rocks and minerals) so studying for that plus regular class homework. So, I don’t have time to farm anyway for a couple weeks yet… what I have to do when I get time is get the new gear box put on the brush mower and finish working on the grain drill and other things on my home “To do” list.

Duck update – Missing the old, balding, poofy one… down to 6 poofs. And it’s hard to say if the old one died or got snatched. The five black and white ones are still there, the 4 cream colored ones are still there, and I have a hard time getting a good count on the brown ones; 20 or 21 but they’re still there.

We have 3 guinea fowl on the farm. They’re terrible mothers; lay a nest of 20 eggs and get up and walk away after the first 6 or 8 hatch. Usually a cold rainy day in October. Last week one day, first cold night with freezing temps, there she is with 6 babies.

The three seem to be cooperative parenting. And the 6 babies have made it a week now.  But don’t hold your breath.  We could catch them and move them inside… but that takes a while and it’s more chores and I just can’t take it on right now. We had been taking about getting more guineas next summer anyway.

I was at the doctor this week; nothing serious, just ‘old man skin’ and had a couple spots frozen off. Lost my only wisdom spot… guess I wasn’t using it enough.

I mentioned the other day I’ve had music of ‘Pink Floyd in my head all week. Still there. I’ve been listening to a lot of that. Loud. It’s better that way.

Here’s some of the neighbor’s cows at our place.

Did you ever think you were going to get old? How does it compare to what you imagined as a kid?

Family, History, Media, Movies, Uncategorized

Disaster!

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Today is the anniversary of the Wall Street Crash in 1929 that started the Great Depression. My great grandmother had invested in some Texas oil company stock and lost a good bit of money. My parents would often talk about the closing of the banks. It was a huge disaster for them and really influenced the trajectory of their lives.

I have never been a great fan of disaster movies. I just don’t like the suspense. I think the worst one I ever saw was a fairly modern one in which the magnetic poles changed position, and the North Pole was somewhere around Minneapolis, and all the oceans flooded dry land, exposing new dry land, and anyone who survived was on this one ship which contained survivors and all that remained of Western Civilization. I have no idea how or why I came to be watching it. I was most tolerant of disaster movies when I was in high school. The Poseidon Adventure comes to mind.

What are your favorite or least favorite disaster movies? Which movies to do think are real disasters? How did your family fare in the Great Depression? Why do you think that disasters are such popular fodder for entertainment?

History, home, Kids, Uncategorized

Forts

101 Comments

My van was in the shop last week for new brake pads. My office building is a mile down the same road as the dealership, so it should have been a straight shot for the driver of the courtesy car to get me and take me back to the dealership to retrieve the van when it was finished. There has been extensive construction work on the road, however, so he had to take me the winding, back way through a new housing development behind my work and the dealership.

The driver was younger, a mid-30’s guy who doubles as a mechanic, and he told me that he grew up in an older section of houses also right behind my work. He even pointed out his parents’ home. He remembered when the area of the new development was just tree shelter belts and bare plains. He reminisced with great wistfulness about the trees that were no longer there and all the “forts” he and the kids in the neighborhood would make among the trees and how they would raid the other forts and all the fun they had.

This put in mind all the forts my cousins and I would try to erect in and around the trees in the groves on their farms, trying to nail boards together to make structures and how exciting it was to sit in them. (Here, they are shelter belts. In Minnesota, they are groves).

Children love forts, even if they consist of blankets thrown over the sides of end tables. I remember my mother throwing a blanket over the sides of my crib, and how oddly satisfying that was. I couldn’t have been more than 3. Our children, too, loved blanket forts, and any small enclosure they could erect and escape into. We even had a book about innovative ways to make forts.

What are your memories of forts? Why do you think children like forts? Did you or anyone you know ever have a tree house? Any good tree climbing stories?

Music, Songs, Uncategorized, work

Working Music

81 Comments

Writing therapy progress notes and psychological evaluations is tedious work for me. I need music while I write. In fact, I have music playing in my office unless I have a client in the office with me. I usually listen to classical music, although lately I have streamed Radio Heartland, too. A counselor friend of my son insists that classic honky-tonk music is the best accompaniment for him to write therapy progress notes. Husband needs dead silence or else he gets distracted when he writes.

Many years ago, the office administration staff at my agency were delighted when our Regional Director at the time phoned to let staff know where he was on a drive back from Fargo, and then forget to turn off his cell phone. He proceeded to sing (well, bellow) along to a rather raucous country western song on the radio about true love. The administrative secretary put it on speaker phone so all the staff could hear him. When they teased him about it, he said “Well, I really missed my wife”.

We listen to classical music or the XM Radio 40’s channel or jazz channels when we drive together. Lately I have revisited CD’s by Solas, Salsa Celtica, and Le Vent du Nord on my way to work. Something about the right music makes me really ready to start my day.

I have a long list of CD’s I intend to spoil myself with for Christmas, mostly classical recordings. I am particularly interested in recordings of music by Ludovico Einaudi, a modern Italian composer. Check him out if you aren’t familiar with his work.

What music helps you think and get things done? What are some new recordings you have discovered? What music annoys you? What music makes you sentimental?

Health, Medicine, Nature, Uncategorized

A Glass of Water

75 Comments

Today’s post comes from Steve

A week ago I was hospitalized in an obscure room of Saint Paul’s United Hospital. My doctors were divided. Some wanted me to avoid all liquids. Some wanted to hydrate me immediately. Hours went by with all sorts of tests, and meanwhile I kept getting more desperately thirsty. I couldn’t talk because my tongue kept getting stuck to the roof of my dehydrated mouth. And then the decision came down: I could drink as much as I wanted. They serve cold water in paper cups in that hospital, with most of the space filled up with soft, easily crunched ice. I went on a crushed ice binge that was so joyful I almost wept as I chewed.

We should never take good drinking water for granted. The Saint Paul city water I get from the tap has won prizes for palatability. I keep a jug of it in the fridge, and it is a treat. Great water is the start of great coffee, which I appreciate. When I moved to Happy Valley, a suburb of Portland, the local water reeked of chlorine. I couldn’t bear drinking it, and coffee made from that water was grotesque. I had to install a filtering system before I could tolerate that water.

I was guilty of bad planning once, shortly after we moved to Oregon. Some family and friends decided on a whim to hike up a trail to a mountain peak overlooking Crater Lake. The trail was not short, and it ascended rapidly. We all began suffering from thirst in the 90-degree air. We finally hit the crest and could enjoy the view, but we all were in distress because we were so thirsty. Bright spring water bubbled out of the hillside. Water never looked so delicious, and yet we knew the prettiest spring water could be filled with giaradiasis, the dreaded “beaver fever” bug. As I recall, half of us were strong enough to resist the most tempting water we had ever seen. And in the end—which with giardiasis usually involves both ends of the body—nobody who drank that water got sick.

I was even thirstier than that once. I made a plan to “through-hike” the Superior Hiking Trail. Through-hiking means you start at one end and walk to the other end of a big trail. A day after hiking south from Grand Marais turned bad when I got confused by the trails. The Superior Hiking Trail itself is not terribly large or obvious, and on that afternoon I got lost when a bunch of smaller trails intersected with the SHT itself. It was August, blazing hot, and all streams along the trail were low. I knew I was in trouble when I began hearing traffic from Highway 61, which should have been well below me but was not. And then I found myself hiking the shoreline of the big lake.

Superior is so big and clean it is safe to drink in most places. Those places do not include shorelines, but I was not in a position to be picky. Out of my mind with thirst, I threw my body along the shore, plunged my head in the lake and began inhaling. I was there a long time. When I got up it seemed to me the lake had lowered a few inches, but I couldn’t be sure.

On the first BWCA trip I took with my father, we camped a week on a Lake called Bichu. It is a pretty place. But our campground did not give us access to water except right near shore, and my dad discovered that the lake water by the shore was absolutely filled with wriggling aquatic life. He solved the problem by dumping in enough grape Kool Aid so we couldn’t see the bugs we were drinking. That trip taught me several lessons about my father’s outdoor camping limits, but none were more memorable than the water that we drank, water surging with life if you allowed yourself to look.

Have you ever had especially good or bad water? How did you cope? What do you do now for drinking water? Ever get really, really, really thirsty? Have you found a way to justify drinking water from single-use plastic bottles?

2021, animals, Food, gardening, holidays, Nature, Seasons, Uncategorized

The Quiet Time

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Husband and I were struck by how quiet it was as we travelled to South Dakota on Saturday. It is a remote area, so there never is much traffic, but it seemed as though there was much less than normal. We saw herds of cattle and sheep, a few mule deer, and some eagles, but people were absent. Wheat had been harvested, and hay was put up. There were a few fields of unharvested sunflowers. There wasn’t much activity at any of the farmsteads that were close enough to the road for us to see. It was as though everyone was inside taking it easy.

Husband commented that the weeks between the middle of October until Thanksgiving in November is his favorite time of year. Everything seems to slow down. There isn’t much snow, the garden is done, and we have time to sit and breathe after a busy summer and fall. Yesterday I was able to take stock of my Christmas baking supplies (I needed glacéed citron, orange peel, lemon peel, and cherries, as well as sliced almonds for Stollen). As a child, I suppose that December was my favorite month because of Christmas, but now I appreciate a time that I can stay home and be a little more still. We have decided to not put up a Christmas tree this year, as we will not have any company and are spending Christmas in South Dakota with our son and his family. That will make for a more peaceful December.

What are your favorite times of year? Got any holiday plans in the works?