I spent an hour or so at Urgent Care yesterday (not a big deal – just wanted to be reassured that my self care was OK and to get a tetanus booster.
While waiting I noticed a woman go in and out of the UC door a few times; she was wearing a Darth Vader smock. Long gone are the days when everybody is required to wear white! When it turned out that she was the nurse who was going to rewrap my hand and give me my shot, I was elated. I told her how much I like her smock and she told me about her other Leia smock. We traded our favorite quotes from Star Wars. Since she is a Darth fan, hers is “I find your lack of faith disturbing.” I like that one but I do gravitate to Yoda “ Do. Or do not. There is no try.”
On the way home I was thinking about this encounter (which was really the highlight of my day) and how many times I use quotes from my favorite movies.
“On the side.” When Harry Met Sally
“Badges? We don’t need no stinkin’ badges.” Treasure of the Sierra Madre
“You know, assholes.” Blazing Saddles
“Candygram for Mongo.” Blazing Saddles (You’d be surprised how often you can make this work.)
“You overestimate both of us.” People Will Talk
“Snap out of it.” Moonstruck
“Be afraid. Be very afraid.” The Fly
“There will be blood tonight.” Princess Bride
“We are men of action. Lies do not become us.” Princess Bride (Note: I say this to myself. Not aloud.)
“You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.” Princess Bride (Again, never said outloud. And I say it to myself with Mandy Patinkin’s accent.)
“Now they’re practical.” Romancing the Stone
“Not exactly firing on all thrusters.” Star Trek IV
“Fun fun fun til her/your daddy takes the T-Bird away.” (yes, I know this a song not a movie, but, what the heck, it’s my blog post…..)
Any quotes from movies (or tv or book or songs) that you find yourself using in every life?
it had been mentioned earlier that maybe a group effort would be fun and i responded with a yes but as groups sometimes do it got lost in the shuffle
i am not as good as i could be at putting x on my calendar when i’m doing something so without a reference i signed up to do my delivery ditty on saturday night. i get dibs early because those spots tend to disappear quickly and friday and saturday nights are prime time so i had committed for 5-7 & 7-9 on saturday which would mean leaving rock bend about 4.
i looked up when it started and who was playing and discovered that the family who does a nice foot stomping version of old timey and appalachian banjo kind of stuff started things off at 12 and city mouse which is mike pengra’s band was at 1 with special guest pat donahue and then pat was to play on the little stage where krista used to work at 3.
the first group was good city mouse was great and pat donahue was a treat as an addition and pats solo performance on the songwriters symposium on the little stage was fantastic
i really like him and his songwriting talent is something i really admire
i went in packed light. i had a thermos of tea and a tea cup that’s it. i walked in 15-20 minutes early and looked to see if vs or linda might be there and not seeing them plunked down in a similar front row position to what we usually achieved. this was easy with one butt and a thermos as the required space criteria. after i got steeled in i noticed i recognized that many of the surrounding faces were familiar from years gone by.unfortunately the way these memories were tweaked was by the fact that after i was seated a bunch of folks showed up and set their folding chairs up in front of the front with no regard for the views they were blocking out who had gotten their prime spot by showing up on time and choosing unobstructed site lines.
i have a problem with the people who are so self important that they just do it and never think about what a crappy thing that is to do to someone else. bad enough on the freeway to line butters who go up to the front and cut in line in front of all us minnesota nice wimps who let them in but at a concert to block someone view is unforgivable . this was followed by an observation that maybe had been going on previously but i hadn’t noticed because of being there with a group but all around me people were in conversation while the music was playing. if the music got loud they had to raise their voices to be heard over the music. this combined with folks who stood and chatted with someone who they knew in front of a group they blocked the view of.
i felt like an old curmudgeon who was spoiling my own fun but it really bothered me
at the final ditty where pat donahue was on stage with two other songwriters i had front row seats and had talkers laughing and exclaiming and paying no attention on either side of me. there was empty turf between me and the stage and so me and my thermos went and laid down in the grass and a couple little kids cam and the their moms and sat down closely with me ans i thoroughly enjoyed the show glad i letting the talkers back there as they continued to expound
sunday i have scheduled a football bar b que get together at my house carte blanche this year an hour before kick off so my mom at age 92 has somewhere to celebrate her football enthusiasm, she had to leave at halftime to go to another meeting called by someone who is not football sensitive. it was a good gathering and i thought about heading over to bbc afterwards but as sometimes happens these things drag on and it was 430by the time things wrapped up
too late for bbc
too late to go catch the end of rock bend
i’ll probably put an x on next year and tri it again now that i know it’s the weekend after labor day but i may be
setting myself up for misery
it was easier with friends and wine but isn’t everything
what kind of calendar are you using these days to keep yourself on track?
I’ve started reading Snopes.com again because some of the stories flying around are just begging to be fact-checked. Yesterday I discovered the Lionel Richie and Tyra Banks have teamed up to create a new ice cream flavor.
Points awarded since I KNOW who Lionel Richie and Tyra Banks are – lots of news stories I see online these days are peopled with folks I’ve never heard of (and frankly, don’t WANT to ever hear of). The ice cream is called All Night Long and is vanilla with crumbled cookies, caramel and little chocolate fudge hearts. Apparently Tyra Banks has an ice cream line called Smize Cream. Who knew? I had to look up Smize – something to do with her signature smile when she was on that model show. I won’t be trying it any time soon as they only way you can get it is to have it shipped to you or to live in Los Angeles. I am not paying shipping for ice cream. Not moving to Los Angeles either.
Reading about this reminds me of when our own Beth-Ann won the Kemp’s Flavor of the Year contest with her Mini-Donuts Ice Cream (back in 2013) and when we all got together to celebrate and to try it out. I know that they only do the flavors of the year for 12 months, but I’d love to see Mini Donuts come back. I’m not even sure that Kemps did a flavor of the year this year or last?
Do you have a favorite ice cream? If you had an ice cream named after you – what would it be?
This has been a hard week for music lovers, with the deaths of Nancy Griffith, Don Everly, Tom T. Hall, and Charlie Watts.
I first heard Nancy Griffith at the Winnipeg Folk Music Festival in 1982. Husband heard Charlie Watts and the Rolling Stones in Milwaukee in 1975, with the Eagles. Ronnie Wood and Billy Preston played with them. Chaka Khan was also there. I heard Tom T. Hall on the radio ad nauseum as I grew up.
I loved the work Nancy Griffith did with the Chieftains. I loved she was a Kindergarten teacher. I also love her song about Deadwood, SD. It hits home.
Last week, someone at work referred to me as a “glass half-empty” kind of person. I was a little surprised, as I don’t think of myself as a gloomy Gus. I do work hard to keep my expectations low sometimes – especially for events or big occasions. That way, if something tanks, I’m not terribly disappointed. But if it goes well, then I am very happy – probably happier than if I had high expectations. So maybe I am “glass half-empty”.
Next week is the opening of the State Fair. I don’t need to bore you all (again) with my love of the State Fair but I am telling you, it is HARD to keep my expectations in line. YA and I did the mini (pretend) fair experience over Memorial Day and it was a good idea to not go into it with a lot of excitement. But even with that very blah experience under our belts, we’ve spent a lot of time in the last week figuring out which days, how many tickets, what new foods, when will the golden retrievers be there, where parking is this year. We bought our tickets and have even combed through the coupon booklets already. I have taken opening day off of work as well as a few other days. YA has also requested a couple of days off.
Considering the current state of affairs, it seems dangerous to get my hopes up. The Fair could just be a disaster this year.
But with all this activity and still a few days before opening, how do I keep my expectations low? Are you a half-full or half-empty type?
Working for the State of ND can be a pretty good deal if you stay long enough. They have good benefits and the option of participating in a 357 plan (the government version of a 401K plan). There is also a pension plan, and as it currently works, you can retire with a full pension when your age and years of service add up to 85. That means, depending on when you start, that you could retire well before the Federal retirement age for your cohort.
I reached the Rule of 85 on June 1st of this year. I have decided to not retire now and work three more years until I also can receive full Social Security benefits.
Husband reached the Rule of 85 in 2014, and promptly retired and started working on the Reservation. Just last week, he filled out another application with the State to work 10 hours a week at the Human Service Center in Bismarck. He is the only applicant. We presume he will get the job. That means he will be a “Double Dipper”, someone with a pension who also works part time for the State. He is excited.
I was tickled to read that Tony Bennett, age 95, has finally decided to stop touring and retire. I also understand that he has Dementia. How wonderful that he could work so long and like what he was doing. Husband feels he needs a real paycheck, not just Social Security and his pension. When I am done in three years, I want to be done. No extra work, nothing. Husband had better realize that I am not putting up with his working until he is 95!
How long did you imagine you would work? Is retirement a positive concept for you?What are your favorite memories of Tony Bennett?
I love having “aha” moments and I’ve had three recently, all from reading.
#1. 99% Invisible City by Roman Mars details a lot of the infrastructure that surrounds us in the urban environment, much of which we don’t notice and definitely take for granted. In discussing wireless towers, he writes: “As commercial cellular towers began to sprout up in the 1970s, diagrams depicting their coverage areas looked like blobby plant or animal cells pressed up against one another – hence the name ‘cell phones’.” I had never stopped to think about why we say “cell phones” so this was an amazing discovery for me. I stopped reading for a moment and reveled in the fun of it.
#2. This is Your Mind on Plants by Michael Pollan. This is the second book of Pollan’s that features discussion of hallucinogenics. In writing about mescaline, he alludes to the song Mellow Yellow by Donavan and that the meaning of the song is about smoking banana skins, believed in the 60s to be hallucinogenic. I can sing along to Mellow Yellow but never ever thought about the lyrics and what they might mean. (Turns out Pollan was actually wrong – Donavan was writing about an electric vibrator that he had seen an ad for – the equipment was called the “mellow yellow”.)
#3. A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor. This is an older travel book; the author walked from England to Constantinople in the days before WWII. After completely overdoing it in Munich at the Hofbrauhaus, he woke up with a “katzenjammer”. Now I remember the old comic the Katzenjammer Kids, but had no idea that katzenjammer actually means hangover. I’m not sure how “cat” and “distress” came to mean hangover, but it’s fascinating to know this tidbit!
Man, hot enough for you? I keep talking about ‘GDU’s… Growing Degree Units. But they only count for temperatures between 50 and 86 degrees.
The corn, and even the oats, got a little burned by the frost a week ago. Another week it will look better as it grows out of this, but right now, it all looks kinda rough.
Back in blogworld, it’s the first week of May and I’m getting ready to plant soybeans. After farming pretty heavy for a couple weeks I had to get back into the college for a few days. The last two springs, Covid did give me an opportunity to stay home and farm like I did before the college job. And it was pretty nice. I’m lucky that I have this job where I can sort of set my own hours. So, I’d do college work from home in the mornings, then take the afternoons off to farm.
I had the Township Road inspection one morning. Once per year, all five of us township supervisors gather in one vehicle and drive all our township roads making note of any road issues. Our township, Haverhill Township in Olmsted County, has about 32 miles of gravel roads. We put new gravel on 1/3 of the gravel roads each year and patch any area that might need rock. We check culverts, washed out road sides, ditches that have too steep of a shoulder, and generally make a game plan of things we need to have fixed this year. That takes the full morning and I got home about 1:00. Last year we didn’t ride together. It’s a good group of guys and we have a good time driving around and talking.
The music department had a small concert schedule for Wednesday evening. There is no band program, but there was the choir and the ‘World Drum Ensemble’ so they wanted to have a concert. The choir director is a new guy; I haven’t even met him. There were some last-minute emails, I roughed in some lights, put the choir shells up, pulled the piano out, and added some more lights. Sixteen years ago, when I started at the college, it was really frustrating to have concerts with no rehearsal. Now I’m kinda used to it. Obviously, rehearsals are better and make a better show, but I manage. It went well.
The next farm job is fertilizer for the soybeans. I use a broadcast spreader for that. Just like the one I used for oats. It’s almost the same fertilizer blend as I used for corn, and I have some corn fertilizer left in the wagon. I generally order extra because I know I can use it up on the soybeans. I pulled the corn fertilizer wagon out and get the fertilizer spreader lined up and I auger the corn fertilizer into the spreader. Fertilizer doesn’t slide very well, and it sticks together so eventually I will have to climb into the box with a shovel and move the fertilizer down to the auger. There’s no danger to myself, or of getting into the auger, as the door is only open about 3”.
Well, there is the danger that I can’t get back out of the wagon box or the ladder outside falls over. A few year ago, with a different wagon, I had to call the house and ask my son to come out and lower the wagon so I could get back out… he doesn’t let me forget that. But that doesn’t happen with this wagon because it doesn’t tip up like that one did.
Once it’s all transferred, it looks like rain so I don’t want to go too far from home. I think I’ll start around here and see what happens. I get started but it’s sprinkling a little bit and I go home and put the tractor and spreader in the shed. The rain doesn’t amount to anything and two minutes later I’m back out. I fill the tractor with fuel and decide to go to my rented land a couple miles away. It sprinkles a little bit, but not enough to be a problem.
Driving on the highway with farm machinery can be nerve-racking. People will pass at the most inopportune times. I have signals on the tractor, but you can’t really see them with the fertilizer wagon. If I’m going to make a turn, I kinda move to the middle of the road to prevent people from passing me, but that one person still does…what an idiot. I’m lucky I don’t have to drive on the highway very far or very often. If you’re following farm machinery on the road, please, give us some room, don’t pass in no passing zones, and for goodness sakes, don’t try to squeeze through between us on the shoulder and the oncoming traffic! It’s nuts what some drivers will do.
I saw a pair of geese and a pair of ducks over on the land I rent. Normally I only see golf balls in this field.
I’ve picked up a lot of golf balls over there. I enjoy the stuff rolling around the cab. Bailey doesn’t like it when she rides with me. Finished that and got back home and finish spreading fertilizer on the fields around here. It’s raining pretty good now and, starting to stick to the tires, but other than making a mess on the road, it doesn’t really hurt anything.
FYI, my ‘go-to’ snacks in the tractor are the Little Debbie Nutty Bars and Clif bars. Plus water. The cab is littered with nutty bar wrappers.
The next day I did some fieldwork, Brother Ernie came out and did some more and I got going on soybeans and had 21 acres planted at 9 PM. Twenty-one acres is nothing for most farmers. It’s a good day for me.
Soybeans can be planted in rows 7” apart, or 15” apart, or 30” apart. The total population is the same for all of them, it’s just more or less plants in the row. Generally, around 150,000 plants / acre. Soybean seed size changes year to year and the bag will tell you how many seeds / lb. I prefer 15” rows because the rows will canopy sooner and stop weeds coming up between the rows. However, there are some soybean diseases that thrive in damp, conditions, so 7” rows will stay damp longer than 30” rows. Six of one, half dozen of another.
I can use the corn planter (If I put special bean meters on the seed boxes) and that does the best job of seed depth and seed spacing (just like corn) except it’s only 30” rows unless I go over it twice, off set 15” to make 15” rows. That works, it just takes twice as long. (There are 15” row planters. It’s just $$,$$$) Or I can adjust the settings on the drill, plug up every other row, and do 15” rows with that. Seed spacing is “clumpier”, for lack of a better word, just due to how the drill feeds out the seed. But it works. And this year, just for something different, I plugged two rows, left one open, plugged two, open, ect, and I’m trying 21” rows. Yields are pretty much the same for 15” or 30”. So, what the heck, I just figured I’d try. I have some treated soybean seed and some non-treated. Just like I talked about with the corn, soybean seed is treated for insects and pathogens in the soil in case it sits there a long time before emergence. Typically, because soybeans are planted after corn, the weather is warmer, the soil is warmer, and the beans don’t stay underground too long. But you just never know. And since the seed was ordered in December, it’s another way to hedge my bets. You can see it here: non treated seed on the left, treated seed on the right.
A pretty good day, nothing broke, everything worked well.
Any concert or musical event you are looking forward to this year?What was the last concert you saw?
Last week was full of more social gatherings for us than we have had in more than a year. At an outdoor ceremony at a city park, Husband and other officers for the local food pantry accepted a cheque from the city for a new security system. Husband got to rub elbows with city officials, Rotarians, former university presidents, and other local worthies. He then did some church visiting to a shut-in couple we haven’t seen for months. It culminated in a wonderful party on Saturday night in Mandan at a city park about 10 miles outside of town at a man-made reservoir.
Dear friends of ours, the ones who gave us the Arikara bean seeds, celebrated their 27th wedding anniversary. They are a couple older than we are, in their early 70’s. He is Native American. She is white. They are both addiction counselors. They renewed their wedding vows with the help of family, friends, former colleagues, and an Indian Elvis Impersonator from Oklahoma. The party was held in a large, open air picnic shelter.
There was plenty of food provided by the couple and kept hot in huge electric roasters. Guests brought food, too. It was a real pot luck feast. There were about 50 people in attendance. The trick was keeping one’s self hydrated and the perishables cool, since the temperature, at 5:00 PM, was 103. I feared for Elvis in his white jump suit. He sang and danced and gyrated despite the heat.
Elvis was fascinating. He is a member of the Choctaw nation and also is an actor and traditional dancer. Our friend found him by searching YouTube videos under the name NDN Elvis. He sang to a prerecorded accompaniment so he didn’t need a live back up band. He also conducted the renewal ceremony. A former tribal councilman read selections from the Bible. There were flower bouquets, sage bundles, and sweet grass braids. Family had made a photo display of the couple’s years together.
The only thing that didn’t work out was the Indian flute player, Keith Bear. He is a rather well known Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation musician. You can find him on You Tube, too. He had to travel unexpectedly to the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota to help with the passing of a notable spiritual leader who was present at Wounded Knee. There always seems to be at least one thing that doesn’t go as planned at a big party.
Tell some wedding or anniversary party stories.What worked? What didn’t? What would you want an Elvis Impersonator to sing at your party?
We had a lovely time last weekend with our son and his family. We were busy with cooking and eating and visiting and all the things you do when there is a three year old in the house. Grandson loves to dance and has a pretty good sense of melody and pitch, so I thought it would be fun to introduce him to some classical music.
We have a CD of Peter and the Wolf and The Carnival of the Animals performed by the Vienna Philharmonic and duo pianists Alfons and Aloys Kontarsky, with Karl Bohm conducting. Both are narrated by Hermione Gingold. I love her voice and expressiveness. She sounds so plummy, except when she drops into Cockney when she gets to the part where the wolf eats the duck “And he swallowed her rye tup!” The Carnival text was some cheesy poems by Oden Nash, but even that was ok with her narrating.
Grandson loved the stories. We acted out the motions of the animals with the music. He thought being the wolf was the best, even better than being Peter. It is so much fun to howl and roar, you see, even when you are being taken to the zoo. He especially liked marching to the lion’s music and roaring, jumping like the kangaroos, and waltzing like the elephants. I told him to imagine that the finale of Carnival was music for the monkeys in the zoo.
As we were saying our goodbyes on Monday, Grandson rather spontaneously called out from his car seat “Thank you for the lions and the wolfs, and the elephants, Oma”. I was pretty touched, and thought we had a pretty good intro to some good music.
What was your first introduction to classical music? What are your favorite classical compositions? How would you introduce them to a three year old?
