Category Archives: History

Art, Baboon Achievers, Family, History, Stories, Travel

In Search of My Irish

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Today’s post comes to us from Jacque.

By the time you read this, I will be in Ireland. I could not get my head around how to tell one of these stories. It is cruel and overwhelming and unbelievable. It stopped me cold when I started to write it.

The group I am travelling with is a group of polymer clay artists who have been the students of our teacher from Jordan, MN, Maureen Carlson. She has for years had a teaching studio where people came to learn from all over the world.  One of those students is an Irish priest Father John.  Maureen closed her studio nearly 2 years ago to semi-retire.  He cut a deal with Maureen—let me come over for lessons one more time, and then the next year you can bring a group to the retreat center I run in Ireland for another 5 day lesson.  She said SOLD!  I was invited to attend.  I said yes.

Weirdly, this retreat center is located in the Irish county where my ancestors emigrated from in 1841 to Canada, County Down. That is my mother’s side.  You can the read the story of my great grandfather at this link:

https://www.bookemon.com/book_read_flip.php?book_id=278253

That story is stereotypical. The Newells wanted a better life.  They emigrated to Canada, then Iowa to homestead and did very well.  I hope to travel to see the old stone house the Newells lived in on the sea.  It is still there, 25 miles from the retreat center

The story I found in Ancestry.com on my father’s side knocked my socks off. I had no idea.  This is located in the county north of Down, in Antrim where Belfast is located.  I understand the Irish hatred of British after this one.  Sorry this is so long.  Here we go:

“The year was 1548 and it was in Ireland and it was time to pay Taxes to England . Ever year England would send a small army of tax collectors to Ireland to collect taxes, The people of Ireland had very little money and never enough to pay taxes to England . The tax collectors had been given the right from their King Edward V to take any thing of value to pay the taxes owed. It was the practice of King Edward and Mary Tudor to take Children in payment of the taxes. The children were taken to England to be trained as domestic servants and bonded labors.

This small village called Antrim, in the Ulster Province and of the MacDonald Clan was no different than any other village in Ireland everyone had to pay taxes one way or another, And this is where my story begins, Young children ages 12 years and older that looked in good health were taken from the family clans as payment for the taxes.From the time that the tax collectors picked the first children until they had over 100 children to go back to England it would take lest a week to 10 days. The children would be put into carts and wagons and most of the time their hands were tied to the racks on the carts to keep them from running away.

One young boy that came from Antrim was called James Antrim. His last name was from where he came from. He was being trained as a cord winder and rope maker. James Antrim was a hard worker and he learned well he also learned to read and write that would help him to get ahead in life. He lived and took his training at the family mansion of Sir Thomas Wyatt . During the five years of training young James Antrim had a hard time at first until his hands and arms got stronger, then he was as good a rope maker as there was.

It was on a spring day on a weekend that James went to the market with three men that he came to see for the first time a young lass with red hair , James had to know more about this young women. James found out that she was a cook’s helper at this master’s house and that her name was Colleen O’Shay . This was the first time that he seen his wife to be. The servant’s Masters was willing to let their servants have relationship with other household master’s  servants.  With the hopes that it would lead to a marriage. This way the servants children would be under the master ‘s care and they would become servants also and it would be cheaper than going to Ireland and bringing back young children to train .

Our ancestors were two of these servants that were married and two of their children came to Salem , Massachusetts, America in 1635. they were Thomas Antram and his wife Jane Batter, . And Thomas sent two of his sons John and James back to England in 1679 to bring friends and to raise funds to buy land in New Jersey. Our Ancestors were early America Pioneers.”

I hope that in our 5 days of touring we get to the Antrim area, as well. I want to know more about this practice of taking children for taxes.  It is guaranteed to create hard feelings that last for hundreds of years. It makes me think about how much I hate taxes sometimes.  Several times, while I owned my practice, I had to reach down deep to pay my taxes, but never did I have to make this kind of sacrifice—a 12 year old child.  I cannot come up with a question for discussion for this one.

What would you suggest as a question?

Art, books, History, Nature, Stories, Travel

Its Own Magazine

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Turns out the Mississippi River has its own magazine. I have finally finished reading my latest issue of Big River, which covers news of the Mississippi River from Minneapolis, MN, down to Muscatine, Iowa. Its byline is “Covering the heart of the Driftless Area for 24 years,” although there is usually some news about the Twin Cities. (The Driftless area includes Hastings and Red Wing, as well as La Crosse and Prairie du Chien in Wisconsin, Dubuque and the Quad Cities in Iowa, Galena in Illinois.) It is published six times a year here in Winona.

I devour this magazine. First I read all the Big River News segments, which give updates on everything from the Gulf of Mexico’s Dead Zone to a new plastic pollution problem:  tiny plastic particles from people’s microfiber jackets. Besides environmental issues, these paragraphs cover items like a new bike rental system in Clinton, IA, and an expansion of the National Eagle Center in Wabasha. My favorite tells of a new happy hour in St. Paul – the Kellogg Park Craft Beer Overlook: 3 to 6 p.m., Tuesdays through Fridays till mid-October. This September-October issue also has a special sidebar detailing and picturing which ditch weeds to NOT PICK because some part of them is poisonous (poison hemlock, giant hogweed, wild parsnip, and cow parsnip).

Feature articles range from “A Tale of Two Neighborhoods”, about North Mpls. and Northeast Mpls, to a short two-pager on kestrels. For the exploring traveler, an article details sights and places between La Crosse, WI to Winona, MN. Restaurant and book reviews are regular features, as are lots of glossy ads – I don’t mind because they are for things and places that interest me.

I just checked, and Big River is available at Minneapolis’ Central Library, but only for “in-house” use. I’ll bring some back copies next time I get to BBC (Blevins Book Club – see top left of this “page”, under Blogroll).

What river, anywhere in the world, would you like to explore?

Baboon Achievers, History, The Future, Uncategorized

Am I Old Yet?

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Yup, I am officially an Elder. It was announced in the last couple weeks. First a young waitress called me “Sweetie.” Then when handing me my annual fair gyros, the vendor said, “Here you are, My Dear.” And yesterday when I called to make a doctor’s appointment, the nurse ended the call with “Honey.”

No one (much less a stranger) in my previous life as an adult has ever used such endearments to address me. I can only attribute it to my being 75 and it’s “safe” (or is it patronizing?).

P.S. When I was in pre-op before hip surgery a nurse told me I was a “poor imitation of a 75 year old.” Have I aged that much since May?

How do you mark the various stages of your life?

Family, History, Nature, Uncategorized

Museum Memories

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Today’s post is by Steve Grooms

My heart sank months ago when I read that the Bell Museum at the University of Minnesota would be destroyed. Built in 1940, the Bell had unique charm, with an ivy-covered façade and Art Deco styling. The Bell housed a fascinating set of displays featuring fish, mammals, reptiles and birds of Minnesota in natural settings. The most spectacular of its displays were the large dioramas depicting sweeping scenes in which taxidermy animals interacted with each other and with their habitat. A particularly poignant display showed a family of passenger pigeons. Once a super-abundant bird whose flocks darkened the skies over Minnesota, the passenger has been extinct for over a century. The only passenger pigeons I’ll ever see were those in the Bell.

The story in the paper said the old building was aging so badly it had become an unsafe environment for employees. Decrepit plumbing frequently flooded the basement. Because the paintings that formed the backdrop for the dioramas were painted right on the walls, they could not be removed and installed in a new location. Reading that story was like hearing that a friend had an inoperable cancer.

My erstwife and I were University students when we met, so we often ducked into the Bell in between classes to talk. The Bell was cool on hot summer days. We enjoyed many movies that the University Film Society projected in the Bell’s theater. Every other building on that vast campus is a serious place where people debate academic issues. The Bell could hardly have been more different. It was beautiful, natural and visually exotic.

After administrators explained why it would be impossible to move the museum’s displays to a new location, public support for the Bell was so strong that the University was obliged to change its mind. Someone finally found enough money (about 50 million dollars) to protect its displays and move them to a new museum on the Saint Paul campus. That lovely campus is where wildlife management is taught, making it an appropriate home for the Bell’s dioramas.

An excellent story about this move, written by Briana Biersbach, was recently published on MinnPost, an online Minnesota news site: https://www.minnpost.com/education/2017/08/bell-wheels-how-minnesotas-only-natural-history-museum-got-minneapolis-st-paul

My daughter and I used to roam the Bell together so I could share my love for the natural world. The Bell was a sort of zoo where we paid nothing to enter and where animals were close-up and easy to see. Molly grew up knowing what the inside of a beaver lodge looked like because the Bell included a beaver lodge among its displays, a clever display that offered a view of the lodge both above and below water. Molly and I enjoyed studying the dioramas to see how cunningly their creators had blended the painted backdrops with the taxidermy foreground displays. When Molly got older we played more challenging games, such as “can you spot the chickadee?” or “what kind of owl is skulking next to that tree trunk?”

Molly especially enjoyed the Touch and See room, a place where kids were encouraged to explore wildlife in a hands-on way. I have a photo of her as a toddler kneeling to examine books in that room. Before her is a book about wolves. Several years later Molly and I would both write books on wolves that were published in the same month.

We were in the Bell one Saturday afternoon when my toddler daughter had an intellectual breakthrough. The Bell has a diorama showing a family of black bears. While two cubs frolic nearby, the mama bear captures a fish. A gorgeous, multi-hued brook trout lies in her paw.

Molly was thunderstruck when she spotted that fish. At the time her favorite bathtub toy was a blue plastic whale. Molly suddenly made the connection between that toy and the fish in the bear’s paw. The world of her bathtub and this world of animals were connected by that little fish. It was a sort of Helen Keller moment when Molly understood that objects could be categorized and understood. Pointing at the brook trout, Molly began howling, “Whale! Whale! Whale!”

One of my favorite college professors was passing by at that moment. I was tempted to explain why a little girl would call a tiny brook trout a “whale,” but he was grinning so much I let it go. He had raised several children of his own, and perhaps he had guessed our story.

I am not likely to see the new home for my beloved old museum. It opens in 2018. But I know better than to say it “never” will happen. If my family moves again we will land in Saint Paul, and I’m sure my grandson will enjoy the old dioramas.

Have you ever had a special moment in a museum

Family, History, Stories, Technology, Uncategorized

Long Lost Relations

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I received an unexpected request for family tree information last week from a woman in Canada.  According to Ancestry. com, she and I are DNA matches and are likely 5th to 8th cousins. Her great grandmother and my Great Grandfather Lunzmann were siblings. I never knew he had siblings, but there he was on her tree, the youngest of about six children. I had never really ever looked for his siblings, and searched  instead for earlier ancestors.

I am very happy that my long lost relative contacted me, since I know very little about the Lunzmann family.  I know about my great grandfather’s life after 1900, but not in the 30 years before that and not his family life in the small village he came from in Mecklenburg , Germany.

This is one time that I welcome the intrusion of new technology in my life . I don’t always feel that way about it.

What about the latest technology do you find charming? What do you find alarming?

 

 

Food, gardening, History, Nature, Uncategorized

National Zucchini Day

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Today’s post comes from Barbara in Rivertown

Last week after our t’ai chi class, one intrepid soul brought out her garden bag, to see if anyone would like some… what else?… ZUCCHINI. She was able to shed a couple of them, and proceeded to tell us that August 8 is “sneak some zucchini onto your neighbor’s porch” day.  I thought perhaps she’d made that up, but a little research shows that, indeed, Tuesday August 8 is National Zucchini Day, known in some circles as Sneak Some Zucchini Onto Your Neighbor’s Porch Day.  This site states that “Desperate times call for desperate measures. It’s time to sneak over, under the cover of darkness, to your neighbor’s porch, and unload some zucchini…”

Those of you with veggie gardens know what I’m talking about. This year I have given zukes to half a dozen people so far; I think I’m caught up with our four plants at the moment, but more are on the way. I thought I was doing well when I discovered, on the ground back by the fence, a real “baseball bat”. I decided to leave it on the neighbor’s back stoop, with a note saying “Just kidding, I’ll come back for it”, because they have their own plants, and I want to keep them as friends.

Here are some fun facts about zucchini for the curious, found at

  • Zucchinis are 95 percent water, with just 33 calories in a medium-size squash.
  • One zucchini has more potassium than a banana, supplying more than 10 percent of your daily need.
  • Summer squash is rich in carotenoids, powerful cancer-fighting antioxidants that are mostly found in its skin. So be sure not to peel your squash. And buy organic to avoid pesticide residues.

I just checked the garden, and found a good sized green torpedo hiding on the ground… next year I’m campaigning for yellow squash – tastes the same in my book, and you can actually see them!

When have you sneaked around after dark, for any reason?

History, Media, The Future, Uncategorized

200 down

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Today’s post comes from tim

 

Its been 6 months and hard to believe

The things that come out every day

The embarrassing premises incredible ugliness

Simply wrong things in every way

 

The sidemen and toadies the yes men galore

Looking over their shoulders for cues

The lies have become so much a part of the image

Were numb to the garbage he spews

 

I long for the elegant words to describe

The world in a nutshell we had

Instead of the tweets the trash talk and threats

And the pointing the finger from a man who’s gone mad

 

We stand at the crossraods, the result of the times

Where corruption and lies lead the way

The integrity of a whole nation is less

In a most unamerican way

 

I think this has taught us a lesson for sure

But the damage that’s done is far reaching

The whole ugly American persona weve witnessed

Is fantastic for how not to teaching

 

Impeach or hang in there its hard to decide

I can’t wish that Mike Pence were boss

The whole ugly mess is a travesty royal

What adverbs mean feeling the loss

 

The whole human race should go down on one knee

and vow to never allow it again.

There isn’t a question of if we will heal

But im not sure I can wait until when.

 

6 months puts us 200 days down the road

Another 1000 left before the election

I saw that they’re bashing bernies wife in their prep

Just in case he becomes our selection

 

Please lets all work together we are getting nothing done

Implore the majority brats

Didn’t they note nothing done in the 8 years preceding

When their directive was precisely that

 

Back in the day we’d compromise down a path

And the chips would be allowed to fall

You didn’t get what you wanted but you got what was fair

And America won overall

 

It will make us much better in the long run I hope

My mantra keeps telling myself

Lets hope this experiment dies a quick death

And the results go back on the shelf

 

It seems highly unlikely that these guys will ever

Be considered our superiors again

Their world’s made of toadies and yes men galore

But do you really want to go out and vote for them?

 

Do you like Al Franken as President?

 

 

 

Art, History, Music, News, Songs, Stories

RIP Michael Johnson

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today’s post comes to us from tim.

http://www.rollingstone.com/country/news/bluer-than-blue-singer-michael-johnson-dead-at-72-w492020

i was a huge fan of michael johnson’s rooty toot toot to the moon and other on his there is a breeze album in 1972.

he encompassed all the attributes of the ideal performer. great ability, great artistic sense, very pleasant personality. I saw him play in a small auditorium at normandale jr college ( full house was probably 60.) ansd at the guthrie and then i think i saw him a time or two at orchestra hall the day after christmas in kind of a celebration of one more year and we are still here. even when he moved to nashville and was having reasonable success as a singer songwriter he considered minneapolis st paul his home

he was originally from denver but was so loved in the twin cities that he felt this was his true home. a year ago I saw him play at the dakota which is a wonderful small intimate club downtown and it was great. he forgot a few lines and was embarrassed by it but getting old is part of the deal. I saw him play at the hopkins theater ahttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYttaL_AHLwnd he was as much into telling stories about his life and observations as he was about playing the next song. I had told my daughter emma that i wanted to have her take classes from him at mcnalley smith in stage presence. i took a master class from him at mac phail and was very impressed with his gentle direction and basically the philosophy that when you perform you are offer your audience a gift. once i heard him say that i understood why i enjoyed his stage presence so much. that was it.

when I thought of how I would like to be seen when on stage he is what I came up with.

who are some role models you’d want to emulate?

 

Baboon Achievers, History, Nature, Stories, Weather

Inside / Outside

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I love walking through a door into the outside. I noticed this about myself several years ago – a whiff of fresh air, a little breeze and I take a big breath and feel a sense of joy. Sometimes I even open my arms and take an even bigger breath.

Is it claustrophobia? I don’t consider myself to be severely claustrophobic – no problems navigating life, although I’m not sure how long I would last in a full elevator stuck between floors. The idea of crawling into a tunnel (like Phillippe in Ladyhawk) gives me the creeps and I’ve abandoned a book once because all the action takes place in a deep cave (Blind Descent by Nevada Barr). No problems with planes, no problems in crowds.  I have done caves of my own free will, although I’m really not happy while I’m underground.

But I don’t think its claustrophobia; I just think I like going outside. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

What about you? Inside or outside?

Art, History, Music, Radio, Stories

Songs That Make Us Cry

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Today’s post comes to us from Steve.

So many issues ultimately come down to a chicken-or-the-egg controversy. For example, do we cry because sad music causes tears to flow? Or is it more that we get in such a funk that we play music we know will cause the waterworks to kick into high gear?

Some music makes me weep, and sometimes it is the same music that sends other folks into crying jags. But it gets complicated. Some songs that are sure to send many folks running for a box of tissues have no effect on me. I’ve read that Adele has done wonders for the sale of Kleenex, but she doesn’t get a sniffle from me. And I’m an easy weeper.

I just read an article that tries to explain why only some music makes us cry. If you are interested, the article is by NBC News, and here is the link: //https://www.nbcnews.com/better/health/why-do-certain-songs-make-us-cry-ncna784801

What songs—if any—make you cry? I vaguely remember an earlier discussion on Trail Baboon that got into this. One surprising finding was that there is a song about a boat (of all things) that makes Baboons bawl. I’ll admit to being one of them. Here is an interesting You Tube video. It has an unusual intro that is worth listening to:

My strong hunch is that another song that makes me cry is one that also affects other Baboons. I think I’m the person who introduced Dale Connelly and Tom Keith to Eva Cassidy. I sent them a CD and a note to say that her songs make me cry, especially this one:

Of course, Cassidy died far too young, and I’m sure that is part of her impact on me.

I have long admired the special ability of Bonnie Raitt to sing what I call “heartbreak songs.” She sings many songs that involve a compassionate person talking about heartbreak in terms that seem utterly authentic. For me, heartbreak songs coming from Bonnie Raitt have more credibility than they could have from any other singer. I was touched when Raitt admitted, in a Scott Simon interview, that singing one of those songs in concert has a serious physical and emotional impact on her. As often as she has sung them, when she delivers one of those songs she is left drained and has to turn to other kinds of music in order to recover. Here is one of my favorites:

Some songs are so sad it isn’t a wonder that they make us cry. As a teen I learned to be careful where I was when I heard a song about a dead dog. So it is hardly surprising that a song like this next one would make people cry:

I mean—Clapton is singing to his dead kid, wondering if they would recognize each other in heaven! That’s pretty emotional stuff! (Pardon me while I blow my nose!)

One of the saddest songs I’ve ever heard was written by a very funny and impish guy. But I have it on good authority that this song also moves many people:

Seeing other people cry can make us cry. Here is an interesting example of that:

And—just to keep this post from being too heavy—here is a song so over the top and manipulative that I can’t imagine a normal person crying after hearing it. There is sentiment . . . and then there is maudlin weepy excess. A song that was designed clumsily to yank our heartstrings was one of Elvis Presley’s early hits. And here he is . . . with a bit of a spin. This is actually the (now dead) comedian Andy Kaufman singing one of Elvis Presley’s sappiest songs:

I need a tissue! No . . . after that one, I need a shower!

What (if any) songs make you cry?