Of course there were clouds here on Saturday when the partial eclipse was gracing the late morning sky.
I got my fascination for astronomy from my dad. He loved following the space program and I remember when the Hubble started sending images back to Earth; he was enraptured. He sliced several photos out of Scientific American and kept them in a file in his living room drawer.
When I traveled to see the 2017 eclipse, I thought a lot about my dad. Of course, as much as he would have enjoyed the eclipse, I don’t think he would have enjoyed how I experienced it (cheap motel the night before, five hours waiting in a parking lot with other folks, huge traffic issues getting home). But it was fun to imagine sharing the observation with him, even when the clouds and rain meant there were only a few clear views that day.
For last weekend’s annular eclipse (when the moon is the farthest from Earth and you get a bright ring effect), we got only a partial eclipse here in the Twin Cities. Since I’m making a trek to Indianapolis next spring for that eclipse, I decided to stay home for this one and enjoy the partial. When the time came, I got my eclipse glasses and headed out onto the back stoop, which turned out to be a great vantage point. YA followed me out, laughing at how dorky I looked. She’s right; unless you’ve invested heavily, you’re stuck with rectangular cardboard frame glasses that resemble the cheap 3-D glasses you get at the movies. But then her curiosity got the better of her and soon she was standing out on the stoop with me, using another of my pairs of glasses (I have several). The clouds were moving in quickly but at the apogee of the eclipse, we did get several good views, a few seconds each.
A little later, she shared some websites she had been looking at which showed the eclipse from various locations in the west and southwest, where they could see the whole shebang. She’d been watching for over an hour! She says she doesn’t want to go with me to Indianapolis next year but I feel like at least for the day, I passed along a bit of my father’s interest in the heavens!
Our daughter has been very excited his past week to be playing with Legos. She is an adult. I had no idea there were Lego sets for grownups, but daughter found a store that sells them and has been assembling them as a relaxing hobby in the evenings. You can see one she put together in the header photo. Her most recent purchase is below. Lego has an entire line of kits for people 18 years or older.
She says there is a kit for a large replica of Rivendell from Lord of the Rings for $600. That one is out of her price range but it is tempting. I don’t know how she keeps her cats away from them but she says they leave the completed designs alone if she puts them on her bookshelf. I don’t remember having Legos as a child, but I liked building with wooden blocks and Tinker Toys.
What were your favorite building materials in childhood? What would you like to see Lego offer as a grownup project?
Husband has been the secretary on the board of directors for our local food pantry for the past three years. He has to type the minutes for the monthly meetings, a thankless task. His term is up this month. He typed his last minutes on Saturday.
Husband said he got the motivation for finishing the minutes by promising himself that he could bake some rye bread when he was done. He loves baking rye bread so much he considers it a treat. The bread was really good.
I had a dear friend who was a philosophy professor who would reward himself with a small glass of cognac and a good cigar after grading every twenty essays and papers. I always wondered if his grading of the first papers was somewhat different from the grading of the last papers. Freshman philosophy essays must have been pretty tedious to read year after year.
What motivates you to finish a tedious job? Ever had to write up meeting minutes? Did you ever take a philosophy class?
“Any idiot can face a crisis; it’s day-to-day living that wears you out.” – Anton Chekhov
Sometimes near the end of the day, Kelly and I hug, and sigh, and comment on the plain, old, day to day living. And then we go do something else that needs to be done for the day.
This weekend the Rochester Repertory Theater opens their 40th Season. There’s a celebration planned. Preparations for that have kept us busy for a while. Of course, there’s a committee and some people handled food, some set up lobby displays, Kelly found and organized old photos of shows and people. I mounted a TV in the lobby and some other misc things. It’s been really fun to go back through these old photos. I started at the Rep when I was 20. It was 1984. Of the four founders: Thom, Kim, and Michael had gone to college together. They brought in Jeanne, whom Michael knew, and the Rep was off and running. I came along shortly after that when I worked a show with Michael at another theater, and he invited me to help out at the Rep. Thom was one of my mentors. I learned a lot from him. Kim is the philosophical one. I learned a lot from him too.
Especially at that age! Do you remember all the stuff you did then? With the whole wide world open in front of you?? We did some crazy stuff. From the banner over Broadway, to the all night cast parties, to the floats in parades, and the acquisition of lumber. They are great memories.
We’ve all been there; young and broke and you did what you had to do to survive. It’s where I ‘courted’ Kelly. I had met her at the Rochester Civic Theater, but I got her to work on a show at the Rep. That way I knew where she’d be every night. (Another fun fact; the Rep was performing at the college that summer, in Hill Theater, where I now work. We joke we courted in the parking lot.)
But that fact we made it forty years. Wow. It wasn’t always easy, and there was talk of closing the doors a few times. Our Treasurer, Mark, had more than a few sleepless nights. It will be fun to catch up with people and visit with people we haven’t seen in 30 years. I was in some shows, as well as working backstage. When the guys gave me a key to the building, little did they know what they were getting in me. But I thought I was pretty hot stuff to get a key! I named calves after everyone. In those days before photoshop, I would make two copies and would cut out the calf photo and stick it on a photo of their theater office.
This was me in the show “Loot!”
Some of the neighbor’s cows came to visit one day. Our regular rental cows are about ready to go back home, so the guys are letting them come into the barn yard and will haul them out one of these days. So, when I saw a cow there, I wasn’t too surprised. But Kelly said it was an unusual coloring. It was an Oreo cow and I know we don’t have one of them in the pasture. Been a while since I had to chase a cow. At least it wasn’t midnight in a cornfield and chasing cows by sound. Been there done that and it’s a miserable experience. These two cows were already in the yard, so we just had to lock them in the pole barn, and call the neighbor, and he showed up with his trailer and one went in easy while the other one had to make 3 trips around the pen and scatter us a few times before she went in. I told them I didn’t miss chasing cows.
One morning as I made a sandwich for work, the bread drawer became too much even for me. I keep a supply of twist ties in there; never know when you might need one. But the crumbs, the excessive supply of twist ties (seriously, when’s the last time I used one??) and the package of tortilla shells that expired in June. Sigh. Cleaned it all out, vacuumed it, And, it made me happy. Sometimes we just hit our limit. Sometimes it’s the little things.
Picked up a stray dog for the township. She’s a sweetheart. I don’t know if we’re keeping her yet. Our existing dogs aren’t sure yet. Especially the chickens aren’t sure. No collar and haven’t found any missing dogs matching her description. I’ve told the deputies we have her. We’ll see. You’ll know if she’s still here next week.
Oh. The Farm update. A lot of neighbors are going on soybeans. Mine are still turning color and starting to lose some leaves. The rye is growing, along with the oats left in the field, (header photo) but at least it looks pretty good. The corn. It’s odd how there will be green plants right next to dried out plants. I’m not sure what’s up with that. Different maturity seed in the bag?
Fall is here. We’ll be completing the circle soon.
Over the weekend I was driving in the left lane on 66th when a white car pulled in front of me. I was started to grumble my usual sarcastic “Thanks for signaling” when I noticed the driver had his left arm sticking straight out of his window. After a bit I thought maybe he was signaling his turn but that seemed so ancient of a gesture that I was sure I was wrong. Then he signaled again with his arm when he moved over into the left-turn lane.
His brake lights were working fine so I don’t know if his turn lights don’t or if he just likes the breeze on his arm on a lovely day. What I do know is that using your arm for a turn signal, while it was taught routinely when I was a kid, is not taught now. YA had no idea what I was talking about when I asked her.
Do you have air-conditioning in your car? Or do you prefer opening the windows to get the breeze?
I took tires down to Millville MN last Saturday morning, then over to Plainview for parts.
A few days later, went back to Millville to pick up the tires. Millville is the location of Appel Tire; they’ve been fixing our farm tires, and replacing car or truck tires, since I was a kid. I’m not sure why or when dad started using them, it’s one of those family-owned business we like to support, and we have always used them.
If you’re in a hurry, it’s a bit of a drive; about 25 minutes from our place. But all country roads and usually not much traffic. And there’s about 3 ways to get there so it satisfies my desire for a different route each way.
One of the routes is a bit out of my way, but when it works, it’s worth the trip. Wabasha County Rd 11 goes off Hiway 63, through the village of Hammond,
where it picks up the Zumbro River,
and follows that to Millville. I go in the shop doors of Appel Service, (the doors are always open unless it’s winter), I talk to the guys working on cars, and then into the office. Joe is working today. It’s his grandfather that started the business in 1948.
Around the corner is Whiskey Dicks, and further on, the Stumble In, but that’s only open for breakfast and it used to be owned by a guy named Jim, who helped on the farm when my folks went to Europe for a three week vacation when I was 16 years old. They’d never been out of the country before–especially not for three weeks– and I’d never run the farm alone for 3 weeks! Whisky Dicks used to be the Lucky 7 and they had grape pop, but not anymore.
If you’re in a hurry, Appel’s will fix your tires while you wait. At least some of the of the lunch crowd have vehicles at Appel’s and the rest are locals. I was gonna just do a cheeseburger and fries, but the special was a chicken sandwich. Millville is way down in a valley along the river; looks like an offshoot of the driftless area. Cell service is non-existent, so that’s nice over lunch. A slice of butter toffee cake for the road and to share with Kelly. The sandwich and the fries were fresh out of the fryer and so hot I had to let them sit a while before eating. I admired the flour sacks and burlap seed bags stapled to the ceiling. A pool table took up the middle of the main room. I didn’t get over to the bar area. And the bathroom mirror made me look real good.
I made a loop around the cemetery on my way out of town, said Hello to some of the dead relatives and thought about them. Millville also has a gun shop that I’ve only been in once when I bought a shotgun at an auction.
Forty years ago, when I was measuring grain bins and fields for the ASCS Office, I’d drive a few of these roads. Driving to Millville that day I went past Larry’s place. He sold Pioneer seed and he had the first Cellular phone I had seen. Hooked to his truck and the lights flashed and horn honked when it rang, and he’d run back to the truck to answer. He was a lot of fun to work with. I drove past another place where I measured the grain in some bins, mixed up the numbers on a measurement, and the boss had to go back out there and verify. That’s just up the road from the place dad bought a lousy snow blower, and across the road from the guy everyone knew was a lousy farmer and how junky his place was and still is. Not too far from the place where the ladder fell over after I got inside the grain bin. I was able to get out and jump down. Forty years younger remember.
Closer to home is Norms, where I watched him pull a tractor stuck in 18” of mud with his pickup truck. Norm taught me how to drive a grain truck, too. “Drive this to Viola, kid.”
Crops are maturing. Been raining most of the week it seems. Rye is growing. We got 9 guineas, which is a surprise because we’ve only had 7 for a long time. Two must have been on nests. No word on the other chicks this week. One of the June pullets we ordered turned out to be a rooster. I’ve said sexing male or female chicks isn’t a perfect science. And they all look the same for 4 months. And now they’re in puberty and his voice is changing and he’s still learning how to crow. Imagine trying to figure out HOW to crow and your voice cracking at the same time. That’s what he sounds like.
The first phase of the bathroom project finished up yesterday afternoon. While it was the most anxious-making for me, it was also the shortest. The plumbing part. Now comes the long part – the contractor putting the bathroom back together again.
Plumbing went really well. Really only two issues: having to go next door to use the neighbor’s bathroom and the dog. The toilet usage problem is fixed, as I also had them fix the toilet in our bathroom basement, so from here on in, I don’t have to go next door. The dog issue will be easier from here on in as well. The contractor won’t be traipsing in and out and in and out as much as the plumbers. (At one point on Monday, there were six of them in the house at once!) Poor pup was just beside herself with all the coming and going. From here on out, I can keep Guinevere upstairs, in either my bedroom or my studio, out of sightline of the contractor.
I made cookies for the plumbers yesterday… they were working like Trojans and I was sitting on the sofa watching videos about Australian vets… it seemed only fair I should provide some sustenance. This is normal for me to do beverages or little snacks for folks working at my house. The plumbers were both shocked and it actually took me a bit to convince them that I really made the cookies for them. Apparently this is a rare occurrence for them. YA laughed when I told her that I had to practically force them to eat the cookies. “They just don’t know you” she said, “they’ll probably fight over you the next time somebody needs to come out.”
When I was a kid, we had a tv but we weren’t a big tv-watching family. Except for Sunday night. From 6-7 was Disney’s Wonderful World of Color, then from 7-8 was Bonanza and then 8-9 was the special treat – The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Normally that kind of show wasn’t something my folks encouraged, especially since it wasn’t over until 9 p.m.! Looking back I’m sure this was more for my father than for us kids, but since I benefited from it, I never questioned it.
David McCallum played Illya Kuryakin, an agent for U.N.C.L.E. (United Network Command for Law and Enforcement). The show was written primarily for Robert Vaughn who was a bigger star, but millions of starry-eyed pre-teens and teens made David into a popular star. The producers promoted him to co-star pretty quickly. I had a massive crush on him – I didn’t even realize until years later that he was Scottish, not Russian. I’ve re-watched all of the episodes over the years and David did a pretty credible job with the Russian accent.
I always enjoyed seeing him in some role or other, especially when he played the bad guy. I’m not a big NCIS fan so didn’t seem him in that role but I knew he was there. Good looking to the end.
I think I’ll have to look up The Man from U.N.C.L.E. to see if I can watch it online… would be fun to see him again in what I think of as his signature role. (Feel free to disagree with me if you want.)
½ large white onion (or one medium), chopped
1 green pepper, chopped
2 macho nacho peppers (a smidge hot), chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 Tbsp. olive oil
1 can sliced carrots (including liquid)
1 can yellow corn (including liquid)
¾ c. frozen peas
3 veggie bouillon cubes
3 brandywine tomatoes, chopped
Salt & pepper
1 tsp. Penzey’s Justice spice
½ tsp. chili pepper flakes
Chopped fresh basil
2 c. cooked rice
2 c. water (to make it soup)
2 veggie hot dogs (completely optional), sliced
I’ve told the story of the kitchen sink stew that I took to a church potluck – just threw in what I had and it was a big hit. Well, I did it again!
On my to-do list Saturday was “cook something”. YA and I are staring down the barrel of a large home-improvement project and have discussed some economizing so I decided to just use what I had on hand, from the pantry and the garden. Cooked the onion, pepper and garlic in olive oil, then threw in everything else… finishing up at the last minute with a couple of veggie hot dogs.
Not to toot my own horn, but it is FABULOUS. I mean, stand-in-front-of-the-fridge-with-a-spoon-eating-it-out-of-the-pan good. Even better warmed up with a piece of cornbread. Unfortunately YA agrees so it’s not lasting long. Hopefully I’ll be able to re-produce it again some day.
Yesterday was the first day of fall, and it was cool and cloudy, I noticed this week that the leaves were just starting to change color. The garden is finally slowing down. I am done canning tomatoes.
Fall has always been my favorite season. Not too hot, not too cold. (We won’t talk about the Ocober 5, 2005 snowstorm that shut the area down for three days and broke off hundreds of tree limbs.) I like the cooler nights.
Things at work always pick up in the fall, especially for those of us who work with children. Bad news at parent-teacher conferences means the phones start ringing at my agency from calls from frantic parents wanting help for their ornery children. Fall is a time of truth and reckoning for some of us.
What are your favorite things about fall? Any favorite fall songs or poems? Did your parents ever get bad news at parent-teacher conferences?
Trail Baboon 