Category Archives: Media

2023, Fantasy, Media, Mysteries, Travel

You Gotta Be Kidding Me…

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I don’t spend much time looking at “the best things to buy” kinds of online ads, but yesterday afternoon, while lazing around watching re-runs of Columbo, I clicked on a “Unusual Items that Everybody Wants” lists.  Not sure what I was thinking.

The first item that made my jaw drop was a wristband that you use when you wash your face… to catch any water drips before they run down your arm.  Not sure why this is needed in life unless everybody washes their face differently than I do.

The next items that stopped me in my track was the “purse organizer” (above).  My very first thought was “who has 8 purses”?  Silly question since I sleep in a room next to someone who most likely have more than 8.  I’m sure she’s not alone.  Me?  One purse for everyday use and one fabric “State Fair” bag with a turtle on it that is the perfect size for what we need to take to the fair (money holder, coupon booklet, collapsible cookie holder, aspirin, address labels…).   If we weren’t State Fair aficionados, I would just have one purse.

My second thought was how in heaven’s name would you explain either of these items to someone living in the Middle Ages?  This was followed by a huge number of things that I can’t imagine trying to explain.  If you are suddenly transported to the year 1435, you probably shouldn’t mention ANYTHING about the times in which we live.  It’s a perfect way to end up on the 1435 version of the loony bin.  It never goes well in any time travel book I’ve ever read.

What would be the hardest thing to explain about our world to King Henry VI?

2023, books, Family, Food, home, Media, Uncategorized

The Curator

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We find recipes from numerous internet sources, and are rarely purchasing cookbooks these days. I subscribe to the The New York Times Food app, and that has tons of great recipes as well. We like to have paper copies of the recipes, however, and a week doesn’t go by that we aren’t running recipes off on the printer.

Husband loves putting the recipes in plastic slip covers and filing them in their respective three ring binders. He has the binders labeled. There is one large binder devoted solely to rye breads and sourdoughs. I am not allowed to rearrange the binders. That is his role.

When a sufficient number of new recipes have accumulated on the buffet, Husband puts them in their binders, culling older recipes we either didn’t like or never made in the first place. There are fewer and fewer of those. His devotion to the recipes does not extend to our bank and tax papers, however, and it is my thankless task to organize those.

How do you store your recipes? What is your filing system for important papers? What kind of a librarian or museum curator would you have been?

2023, Media, News, Uncategorized

What’s In The News?

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I have lived in my current town since 1987. It is a fairly small community in an isolated area, and over the 36 year we have lived here, I have come to know lots of people in town and in the communities in the surrounding region. I can tell where many people live or grew up just by knowing their last names. I also know the family histories of many people here through my work as a mental health professional at a regional human service center. There are scads of large, Roman Catholic families out here, and everyone seems to be related to or connected with everyone else.

One of the first thing I do every day when I get to work is check out the on-line jail roster at the regional correctional center in town. It is updated daily. Our town and the small towns around us have a multicounty facility where anyone in our region who gets arrested is incarcerated. This is partly nosiness as well as important information to have if anyone I am currently working with or a member of their family has got into a spot of trouble with the law. They even have the mugshots and information about the arrests and charges. The facility holds about 50 people. I have recognized as many as six people at one time on the roster.

The next thing I do is to check the websites of the two funeral homes in town to see who died. This is pure nosiness, but in a small community it is important information to know what families are grieving and/or if I have to go to a funeral soon. World affairs often take a back seat to local news in my day to day life. I am considering subscribing on-line to the New York Times just to broaden my news horizons. I already subscribe to their cooking app, so I think I get a discount on the news sections. We have the Rock County Star Herald (Luverne, MN’s paper) and the Bismarck Tribune delivered to the house.

Where do you go to for news? Subscribe to any news sources? Do you have a paper delivered to your house or apartment?

2023, books, Gatherings, Media, Mysteries, Stories

Six Degrees of Separation

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Today’s post comes to us from Cynthia!

“Six Degrees of Separation” is the idea that all people are six or fewer social connections away from each other. As a result, a chain of “friend of a friend” statements can be made to connect any two people in a maximum of six steps.

 I recently listened to Garrison Keiller’s “Writer’s Almanac” after many years of just reading at the printed version.  Maybe I haven’t listened since it went off the air. While listening I remember 1975 when I first discovered and loved Garrison’s radio show. We went to several of his live versions before and after it went national. But before it went national, I was visiting with a school friend and our English teacher in Cloquet. In the middle of the conversation my friend mentioned Garrison. She knew him! She had been the editor of the University of Minnesota’s monthly literary magazine, Ivory Tower in 1963 and 1964, and Garrison was her assistant editor. I was so happily astounded that I knew someone who knew him…Six Degrees of Separation!  When I finally met Garrison while working at MPR in Duluth, I asked him if he remembered her. Of course, he did. They reconnected again not too long ago. And she and I are still close friends.

 Another “Six Degree” tale to tell:

One of my favorite MPR classical music hosts was Australian Stephanie Wendt. I met her in person when she was the host of an event in Duluth and I was her “assistant.” She is also a classical pianist. She married a choral director and they moved to Sweden. We were Facebook friends and then I joined her blog where she posted beautiful photographs of where she lives. I recently asked a friend, Gunilla, who lives on the farm in Mahtowa she inherited from her uncle. She also lives and is a pastor in Sweden: “Is the town where my online friend, Stephanie, lives close to where you live?” Gunilla said, “Yes! I know Stephanie! She and her husband were just at and often are at my church!”

Do you have any “Six Degree of Separation” tales to tell?

2023, Food, Media, Nature, Words

Peppered!

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One of my friends, Julie, is a freelance writer. She writes about a wide gamut of topics and she appears on the Eating Well site quite a bit.

Last week she penned a piece about why there aren’t ever green peppers in the multi-pepper packs you find in grocery stores. It’s a great bit (well, I think all her columns are great) and it included some fun facts about green peppers. This is quoted with her permission:

Fun Fact One: Peppers botanically are considered to be fruit, because their seeds are stored inside, but they’re culinarily considered a vegetable, like cucumbers.

Fun Fact Two: You can tell which peppers are male and female just by looking at the outside. “Males have three lobes, and females have four, sometimes five,” Schueller says. “The females produce more seeds, and that tends to make them less sweet. So if you like sweeter peppers, look for fewer lobes.”

Fun Fact Three: The peppers we call chile peppers all have spiciness, measured in Scoville units from mild to very spicy. But bell peppers don’t have any heat, and they ended up being named “bell” because a) they aren’t chile peppers and b) they’re shaped like a bell.

I had no clue that there were female and male peppers – not sure it will make me happy the next time I’m dicing up peppers for some dish.

If you’re making stuffed peppers, what do you like to put in them?

2023, Business, home, Media, Technology, Uncategorized, Weather

I Saved The Day

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Saturday was blustery and rainy here, a good day to stay home and clean and cook. I made some Tuscan white bean and chard soup, and Husband made goat leg in the tagine.

We stream MPR classical when we are home. About 3:00 the music went silent. We had lost wifi and the Internet, and our land line phone went dead. I waited about 20 minutes for it to go back on, and then phoned the local phone company that provides our cable, land line, and Internet. First I talked with an Internet guy who transferred me to a phone woman. I guess phone service takes priority over Internet service and he thought I would get better results talking to the phone person. She had me unplug and then restart the modem that controls all the services, but that didn’t help. She then transferred me to a very nice man named Leonard, who said we probably needed a new modem, and that he would get in his truck and come right over to replace it.

All the support folks I spoke with said there were no reports of service interruptions in my neighborhood. We waited for Leonard for more than an hour when he finally phoned and said that something on top of a utility pole at the end of our street had melted, and that he and another guy were fixing it. All their custmers in our neighborhood had lost their service and I was the only one who phoned to report it. Husband took the dog for a walk and saw Leonard and his coworker up the pole fixing whatever it was that melted. By 6:30, everything was working again.

I am waiting for the neighbors to hold a parade in my honor for saving the day. I also am impressed with the local phone company for sending out service technicians on rainy Saturday afternoons.

What are some positive and/or interesting customer service experiences you have had? Have you ever saved the day?

2023, Art, Media, Uncategorized

What’s My Logo?

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I am the chairperson of the regulatory and licensing board for psychologists in my state. We are all appointed by the governor. They are entirely volunteer positions. We receive no remuneration for our services. The Board is self funded by fees our licensees pay, and those fees mainly go toward secretarial and legal services. There are only seven of us on our Board, as well as a secretary from an agency we contract for services. I am proud of the work we do protecting the public and efficiently licensing providers in our state.

Our Board must abide by State procurement rules for acquiring goods and services. Because of my role as chairperson, I get all the emails from the Office of Management and Budget Procurement Office that the head of every State agency receives. I was tickled last week to get an unintentionally funny email from the Procurement Office asking if we were interested in purchasing clothing for our agency that had our logo on it. If we were, the Procurement Office would send us a list of vendors who could provide the clothing and logos at State approved rates. They suggested we set up a room where employees/members could go to purchase the clothing. I should mention that we don’t have a logo.

Husband thought we should order berets. (He is the Board complaint investigator by virtue of being married to me, and the Board not having anyone else who would do it pro bono. ) I thought mortar boards would be fun. I also thought our logo could be a brain with lightening bolts coming out it. As there are so few of us, though, it probably wouldn’t be cost effective to put in an order.

Did you ever wear special clothing for your workplace? What do you want your logo to be?

2023, Food, Media, Music, Uncategorized

Classical Ads

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I was at home on sick leave yesterday and had ample time to lie on the sofa and listen to MPR. I was tickled to hear the Oscar Mayer Weiner song played on Performance Today. The announcer commented that the Oscar Mayer song catapulted the company into national prominence.

The link between advertising and classical music was fascinating. There were apparently two competing harp manufacturers in France in the early 1900’s. Debussy was commissioned by one, the Pleyel company, Ravel by the other, the Erard company, to compose pieces for harp that the companies could lay claim to and use to promote their harps. Both pieces are favorites of mine.

Neither company manufactures harps any longer, but the musical pieces remain. I wonder how long Oscar Mayer will make wieners?

What is your favorite brand of wiener? What are your favorite and least favorite advertising jingles? Know any harpists?

2023, Business, Media, News, Uncategorized

Nutcracker!

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This is another tidbit of news from the Rock County Star Herald, the weekly newspaper from Luverne, MN.

After considerable discussion, angst, and protest, Luverne’s Board of Appeals and Adjustments approved the variance request for a 73-foot-tall nutcracker on South Highway 75.

The nutcracker motif is an attempt by a faction of some of the more forward thinkers at the Chamber of Commerce and supporters of the very elderly woman in charge of the Rock County Historical Society to capitalize on her donation to the museum of thousands of nutcrackers she used to keep in her home. She taught with my mother, so I am sure she is in her late 90’s.

The city wants a way to allure people to town to look at the nutcracker collection and spend money and move to Luverne. I suppose nutcrackers are interesting to some people. Hard to say how appealing this will be. It has been quite a city controversy.

What mascot or symbol would you like erect outside your town? What have been interesting controversies in your community?

2023, Family, History, Media, TV, Uncategorized

Banners

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My home town of Luverne, MN got some press many years ago as one of the communities featured in the Ken Burns documentary The War. There is a Veteran’s nursing home, as well as a really nice military museum in the courthouse. I believe my paternal grandfather’s First World War gas mask is displayed there. He served in with the US Army Engineering Corps in France. When my cousins and I were young we would play with that gas mask and take turns wearing it. It was pretty weird and fascinating. Luverne loves its veterans.

Today I will mail an application as well as a 8 x10 photo of my father in his Second World War Army Air Corps uniform to the Luverne Chamber of Commerce so that his photo and rank can be displayed on a banner on Main Street. The Chamber is putting up 82 banners of veterans on all the lamp posts. They also do this every year for the graduating high school seniors. I think this is swell.

Any veterans in your families? Whose faces would you want to see on banners on the lampposts in your town?