Category Archives: Mysteries

2024, animals, Art, Farming Update, Mysteries, Nature, Seasons, Uncategorized

John Barleycorn Must Die

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The weekend Farm Report comes to us from Ben.

I struggled with the question of “why” this week. Since I broke the brush mower last week, (did I mention I broke it? I talked about it rattling, and the bolts coming loose, and then… I don’t know what happened, but it started to shake itself apart. I couldn’t see anything obviously wrong, and I just parked it and walked away. I gotta deal with other stuff for a while and then I’ll come back to it.)

Consequently I was mowing weeds with the lawnmower and was asking myself why I felt the need to mow these weeds. There are some places I can justify, like in the oat fields the waterways are full of tall grass and weeds and they make it a problem for swathing, they’re a problem for combining, and they are a problem for baling, so it makes sense to mow them. But then I get off in the pastures or field roads and yeah, there’s some weeds that it’s good to take down like thistles, buttonweeds, (velvet leaf), ragweed, and wild parsnip, but if it’s just grass, why am I mowing it?

The larger question of “why“ can be applied to illness, sicknesses, the political party of your choice, or any host of things. 

So that’s what’s been on my mind.

Daughter and I also talked about making decisions and why that’s so hard sometimes. It’s a learned skill, isn’t it? 

Earlier this week, I was a bit anxious because I should have already been cutting oats. I was anxious about how the swather was going to run, I was anxious about the weather, I was anxious about how the Oats would do, and how to get it hauled to the place in Iowa. 

And let’s face it, I was scared. Scared the swather would break down, scared I wouldn’t be able to fix it, scared of just the whole thing. But eventually I put on my big boy pants, and started cutting oats. And yep, it quits after an hour and a half. It’s like it got a vapor lock or something. An hour later I can start it again and cut some more. And I’m working on a trucker, so we still just wait to see on the weather and how the oats does and it will all be OK, won’t it? 

 A few of the ducks were out one morning and having a good time in the taller grass, so the next morning we opened the fence and let them all out. Generally, that’s kind of how it works; They get out themselves and then we decide it’s OK to let them go.   And they are having a really good time in the deep grass and finding bugs and they look very very happy. I know I counted 26 ducks one day and then there only seemed to be 24, and the next day I counted 26 again. I don’t know how that works.

The dogs cornered a raccoon up in a tree for the third time in about two weeks. They appear to be fairly small raccoons so they must be young. I suppose along the same lines of me wondering where the ducks go when they get freedom, some raccoon mother somewhere is wondering what becomes of her children when they venture out on their own someplace.

The show in Chatfield that I’m lighting is “SpongeBob SquarePants The Musical”.

You’re probably not familiar with SpongeBob, we are all too old to have seen it as kids, you might be aware of it from Mall of America, or grandchildren, or neighbors, and it’s just silly fun. I haven’t looked too hard for a message in this musical. (turns out there are some!) I’m just making big bright colors. The woman who is designing some of the scenery, Vicky, did some really cool things with pool noodles and expandable spray foam. The guys who built the structure run a welding and machine shop and they can build just about anything. (They can fix my brush mower too!) It’s not done the way I would do it as a “theater professional” but it is certainly good enough for a show.

Driving to Chatfield gives me 20 miles of country roads to see how the crops are doing. There are a couple different ways I take to get there but generally, I take the straight shot back home on Hwy 52. Especially when it’s dark.

I started working in Chatfield’s Potter Auditorium in 1987 and I built the sets there for about three years, then took a break for a long time before coming back to light a few more shows. I feel a deep connection to this place. The people are great to work with. It is a true community theater in every sense of the word. There will be a big potluck lunch on Sunday before we have our first dress rehearsal.

WHAT MESSAGE OR STORY FROM A SONG HAS ALWAYS STAYED WITH YOU?  

2024, Food, Mysteries, Uncategorized

The Tipsy Steer

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I’m ashamed to have to admit it but I’m really not a very adventuresome eater.  When I find a restaurant or a particular dish that I like, I’m loyal.  I stick to it like glue.  There are often pangs of guilt involved in this.  Whenever I’m about to order my favorite, it occurs to me that I could try something else.  Maybe I would love it just as much.  But I rarely take the chance.

So when my friend Tony said we should have lunch on my side of town, I decided it had to be at a new place.  I spent a lot of time googling restaurants, looking at the menus, checking the ratings/reviews.  Finally found a place called the Tipsy Steer over on Hiawatha.  I will admit that the name was the hook but the menu had a good variety that I was sure would give Tony and me options.

We sat outside on the patio (overcast but cool so perfect weather for it) and then I found another selling point.  All of their different burger combinations can be made with a meatless burger option!  I love that although it does make it a much longer process for me to pick something.  I settled on a Pimento Cheese & Olive Tapenade with Roasted Red Pepper Burger.  They serve the burgers on metal platters with a nice helping of fries – nice presentation. 

The burger was fabulous.  I’ve never had pimento cheese OR olive tapenade on a burger before and I have to say it was an excellent combination.  It was messy, but we had plenty of napkins.  Tony had a straight up cheeseburger which he reported was great.  The fries were no slouches either.  We had grabbed to-do containers before the food even arrived – good thing – the burgers were huge – we needed to put half of them in the containers right away!

I was so happy to have chosen a new restaurant and tried something different.  Now the only problem is getting myself to try a different burger when I take YA there sometime soon!

How do you like your burgers?  Ever had a burger that you would consider “adventuresome”?

2024, books, Mysteries

Signals

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Photo credit:  Greg Messier

A librarian once remarked on the variety of books I was checking out (this was in the era before the automatic check-out stations).  I don’t remember what the particular books were, but it was probably a fair assessment; I’m like the moth – easily drawn to whatever light is on in my vicinity.

Last week The Green Bay Tree by Louis Blomfield arrived by my local library.  I will admit that it’s been on my Hold list for quite some time; after pushing off the hold date for quite some time, I finally decided it was time to either read it or let it go.  I read a biography of Louis Blomfield a couple of years ago – not sure what brought him to my attention – so that’s why I wanted to read Green Bay Tree – it was his first novel, published in 1924.

The day before I picked up the book at the library, the Italian word “semaforo” came  up on my daily Italian lesson; it means traffic light.  Since I knew semaphore is the use of flags as signals, I looked up the etymology to see how the Italians could get from signal flags to traffic lights.  (Turns out to be pretty easy as it comes from the Greek, sema = sign/signal and phoros = bearer.  I filed it away in my mental junk drawer.

Imagine my surprise when the next day, on page one of The Green Bay Tree, I came across this:

“Where death had touched the barrier it was possible to see beyond the borders of the garden into regions filled with roaring furnace, steel sheds, and a tangle of glittering railway tracks cluttered by a confusion of semaphore and signal lights which the magic of night transformed into festoons of glowing jewels – emeralds, rubies, cauchons, opals, glowing in the thick darkness.”

This sent me down a rabbit-hole looking for all the various types of signals that have borne the name “semaphore” over the years.  I won’t bore you with all of them but I did find this picture:

It’s called a railway semaphore, so it’s pretty clear that the Italians aren’t taking a big leap to call their traffic lights “semafori”.

As always I am blown away by the coincidence of coming across semaphore twice in two days.

Any words on the tip of your tongue this week?

 

 

 

2024, Fantasy, Kids, Music, Mysteries, Songs, Theatre, Uncategorized

Prince Among Men

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My little friend next door, Minnie, loves to sing and dance.  For the past two summers she had done a summer camp at the Lundstrum Performing Arts Center; this year they presented Annie Jr (just a shorter version of Annie).  Considering that it is all untrained kids and that they get the whole thing together in two weeks, they did a great job.

This was all that Minnie talked about for two weeks.  In addition to previewing the song/dance that she was in, she regaled me with stories of how things were progressing and who was playing what part.  There were several kids who had been in Little Mermaid with her last year and although I did see the show last year, I couldn’t have told you any of the players except Minnie. 

Of course there was also the post-production discussion the day after the last performance.  I commented that the young man who played Rooster Hannigan did a nice job.  He also had a great dance solo dressed as a street Santa in the N.Y.C. song.  Minnie quickly pointed out that he had played Prince Eric in Little Mermaid.  When I said I hadn’t remembered that, she commented that he hadn’t had to do very much to be the prince.  Then she added, almost as an afterthought, that princes don’t usually have much to do. 

In her world, all her princesses and princes are represented by Disney.  As I thought about it the next few days, I realized that Disney has, for the most part, not spent too much energy on princes.  Snow White’s prince doesn’t have a name, Sleeping  Beauty’s prince does have a name (and a bit of backstory) but doesn’t have much personality.  Cinderella’s prince is also pretty non-descript.  Ariel’s prince is a little bland and definitely clueless.  Belle’s prince spends most of the movie as a beast and Tiana’s prince spends most of the movie as a frog.  Merida has three princes, all of whom are a bit… lacking.  A few princes fare a bit better in their Disney representation but clearly it’s all about the princesses. 

I’m not too worried about this unfair portrayal – I doubt that young girls and boys are too damaged by this uneven treatment.  But I also don’t believe that Barbie dolls are inherently evil either. 

If you were to be a Disney princess or prince (or villain if you prefer) for a week, who would you choose?

2024, animals, Mysteries, Nature, Uncategorized

Murder Of Crows Mystery

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One nice thing about living out here is that no matter how hot it gets during the day, it almost always cools down at night because of the low humidity. That means we can turn off the air conditioning and open up the windows after midnight. Our town is also really quiet at night, with the only the occasional train whistle breaking the silence.

On Tuesday night I woke up at 3:30, turned off the air conditioning, and opened the windows. I had just settled back in bed when it started. Somewhere in our neighborhood, very close to our house, a bunch of crows began making a hullabaloo. First one crow would give voice, then four others would chime in. They were loud and raucous, and it went on and on for an hour and a half. They sounded really upset. I didn’t have the energy to get up and close the windows and turn the air conditioning back on, so I just put a pillow over my head, I finally fell back to sleep after they quit.

I believe Husband and the dog identified a possible motive for the crows’ behavior. Yesterday morning on their walk they came upon the corpse of a rabbit on the sidewalk near our house. The rabbit’s head was missing, and it looked as though it had been there for a couple of days. There is a small stream and slough several blocks from our house where a mink or weasel would feel quite at home. Minks and weasels decapitate their prey. I think the crows were sounding the alarm that a murder was being committed in our neighborhood. The crows have been quiet since Tuesday night. The next time they start a ruckus in the middle of the night I will have more sympathy for them and wonder who is being murdered this time.

What are night noises in your neighborhood? Any mysteries in your neighborhood? Any other creative theories for the headless rabbit or the crows’ alarm?

2024, books, Mysteries, Uncategorized

Sidewalk Marketing

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Walking through Tangletown early last week I noticed what initially looked like a DVD case on a house’s front sidewalk.  I didn’t think too much about it until I found the same things in front of other houses.  Turned out they were books – two different books in fact.  I was intrigued, not enough to pick up one of the books, but enough to while away at least an hour in cyberspace once the dog and I got home from our walk.

The author of the book is the member of a religious group, fairly fringe.  The books are proselytizing products; apparently this guy is filthy rich and has blanketed other neighborhoods and cities with these tracts.  His world view is fairly unappetizing and some of his beliefs are pretty unpalatable (to me anyway).  I read a few excerpts from the two books and I can’t believe that they would convince anyone to join their organization.

But what intrigues me the most is the lackadaisical way the books are distributed, especially considering how much money is being spent on the effort.  Most of the homes in this neck of the woods are on alleys; people tend to go in and out of their backdoors way more than their front doors.  In addition, the books seem to be tossed willy-nilly on front walks, not closer to the homes nor on the front steps or stoops.  It could be a long time before some of these tracts were discovered by their home owners.  In fact, just yesterday on our walk, Guinevere and I saw several of them still sitting out, clearly ruined by the various rains the last two weeks.  I don’t know all that much about marketing but this doesn’t seem to be a good ploy.  Not that I want to encourage this guy by suggesting better methods!

What do you call a sidewalk that swindles you out of your money?

2024, books, education, Mysteries, Uncategorized, Words

Rules of Engagement

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When I was in junior high I never did really figure out how to diagram a sentence.  In my mind’s eye I can still see the examples that the teacher had written up on the board but I’m pretty sure if it were ever on a test, I probably missed that question.  I think my grasp of the English language is sufficient without that bit of knowledge.  Although I couldn’t point out a dangling participle to safe my life, I do recognize the subjunctive.  In fact, I remember how excited I was that the first paragraph of Uprooted by Naomi Novik not only mentioned dragons but also used the subjunctive correctly.  Twice!

Correcting someone else’s English use isn’t a habit of mine; since I can’t claim perfect usage, I stop short of deciding if anyone else does.  In fact, I’m re-thinking the idea that anyone has perfect usage.  Bill Bryson’s Mother Tongue (which I just finished) has pretty well convinced me that most of the “rules’ that we think know were just made up (fairly willy-nilly) by folks whose only qualification was their strong opinion!

Imagine my surprise when I found that someone else obviously had a strong opinion about grammar.  I turned the page on a book yesterday to find the above edit.  In red pen in a library book no less.  I can’t imagine that anyone would care enough to do this. It’s clear what the author meant – I’m sure every single person reading this book knew exactly what she was saying.  Makes me think of a t-shirt I’ve seen online recently that made me laugh:

I doubt seriously if this “correction” will give other readers an “ah ha” moment.  No one will look at those red letters and say “Oh, I’ve been using that and because wrong all these years”.  So I’ve decided that I don’t care if the way the sentence is written is wrong by anybody’s standards.  I DO think it’s a heinous crime to write in a library book in red ink.  `Nuff said.

Do you write in your own books?  Margins or editing?

2024, Family, Food, Games, Mysteries, Nature, Uncategorized

Strawberry Patch Games

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Friday was my strawberry day.  I got to the fields just a bit after 6 a.m. and was a little surprised to see a mother/father/daughter combo in the strip next to me.  6 a.m. is normally not a kid-friendly time; I know I would never have dragged Child at that time of day.  (Of course, after she turned seven or eight, I never dragged her berry-picking again.)

The young kid in the next row was adamant that her dad (not her mom, just her dad) get every single good strawberry on their side.  She let him know, in a fairly loud voice, when he had missed one.  She would then pick it and show it to him before putting it into their flat.  The rate at which she was finding good berries led me to think that Dad was doing it on purpose.  Basically keeping her busy and allowing her to think she was “winning”.

When YA was young, I did occasionally let her win at some games.  Yahtzee, Cribbage, Aggravation – all those were fairly easy to lose.  Monopoly was a little harder because she could spot if I was doing something stupid.  Same with Checkers and Risk.  It wasn’t constant – just every now and then so she wouldn’t lose interest.  My dad NEVER let us win; in fact he sometimes went to extraordinary lengths to keep us from winning.  He thought it was a good lesson for us to learn how to lose – that classic “character-building” thing. 

Eventually I didn’t need to let her win anymore and it was about that time that she came home from daycare wanting the game “Mancala”.  It looked interesting so I got her a set and then lost every single game we ever played.  It took me forever to even figure out the rules and I never did really master it.  I think we will have it downstairs but it hasn’t been out of the box in years!

Have you ever purposely lost?

2024, Mysteries, pets

Hardware Mystery

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Normally when Guinevere and I are out walking, we wait until we are at a corner to cross the street.  A few days ago though, we crossed Lyndale in front of our neighbors’ houses, two doors down.  As we were just about across the street, I noticed a whole slew of washers on the street in front of their driveway.

As you can see from the photo, they are all different sizes and a few of them even have different finishes.  I was tempted to stop and pick up a bunch of them.  You can always use a washer – I had to buy one at the hardware store just a couple of weeks back.  But with the traffic and the dog on the leash I decided to take a pass on them.  Maybe the next time I need a washer, I’ll check to see if any of these are still lying about!

Any thoughts on how all these washers ended up on the street?

2024, Business, Food, Games, Mysteries

Reverse Jenga

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Part of my post-milkman life now includes just running out get milk. And if it’s only milk that I need, Aldis is my grocery store of choice.  Easy parking, fast in, fast out.  My shopping trifecta. 

Normally at Aldis I do self-checkout; even if I get more than just milk, I don’t have the much so usually can’t get myself in too much trouble.  But this past week, I was determined to use some of my surplus quarters (lots leftover from my day at the laundromat) so I parked myself in the regular cashier line.  I’m retired – I have time.

The couple in front of me had more groceries in their cart than I have ever seen at Aldis, heck that I’ve ever seen anywhere.  The child seat was full, the cart itself was practically overflowing and even the bottom shelf under the card was full of stuff.  It was amazing.  While they were unloading everything, the guy even went and grabbed a few more things from the freezer section.

The cashier was bound and determined to get everything back into one cart was she was scanning.  (I’m not sure why… there were plenty of empty carts next to her station.)  She stacked and wiggled and moved stuff around.  I was pretty sure things were going to start sliding off the mountain that had been created in that cart.  The woman looked at me with my two cartons of milk and gave me a “I’m so sorry” quasi-smile.  I laughed and said “it looks like reverse-Jenga”.  Everybody, including the cashier thought this was pretty funny. 

The total on their order was $312!  Considering that Aldis sells pretty much everything at a bargain price, you can imagine how many groceries it takes to hit the $300 mark.  And how funny it felt to cough up my $4.98 in coins right afterwards. 

Cash or credit card for your groceries?