Today is an aviation milestone day. In 1927 Charles Lindbergh landed his Spirit of St. Louis plane in Paris after his 33½ hour solo flight across the Atlantic. Then five years later on this day, Amelia Earhart landed near Londonderry, Northern Ireland after the first trans-Atlantic solo flight by a woman. The combination of a little shorter route and five years of advancing technology, it only took her 17 hours.
My first thought when I saw these two feats on the same day was that it was a concidence, but it was only a fleeting thought. I’d bet money that Amelia planned her flight very carefully to arrive in Europe on May 21.
It does make me think about explorers and adventurers who put their lives on the line because I don’t care how talented Lindbergh and Earhart were, they were absolutely taking their lives in their hands when they took off. Aviation was still a relatively young science, machines broke down at an alarming rate and then there’s the whole “across the ocean” thing.
Personally I’m not a daredevil. The scariest things I’ve ever done were hot-air ballooning in Africa and zip lining in Costa Rica. The balloon experience came available on a Fam trip (which is a trip that hotels/suppliers pay for in the hopes that travel industry folks will then sell their products); I just had a feeling that this would be a once-in-a-lifetime thing and I should get over my fears and do it. It was fabulous. The zipline was another matter. It was done with a client, more or less under duress and I was terrified the whole time. When we got to the part of the course where you didn’t zip, but swung on a rope from one platform to the next, the two guides had to come back for me and basically force me to swing by reminding me that there was no other way to get down than to finish the course. Bungee jumping is not on my list, nor is sky-diving. I simply cannot imagine myself stepping out into nothing. Nope.
So congratulations today to the memories of Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart for heading out across the Atlantic and taking that big step for aeronautics!
What’s the scariest thing you’ve ever done? And did you do it on purpose?
Wrapped up another academic year by celebrating commencement this past Wednesday. I will be employed at the college until June 2 as I have some rentals coming through. I’ll be going to half time to allow myself a little more time farming while I still finish up odds and ends at the college before starting back this fall.
The oats are up! And I see the neighbor’s corn is coming up. Mine will be coming out any day now.
We’re at 452 GDU’s – ‘Growing Degree Units’ for our area for 2025. About double what normal is considered. I did get some corn planted last weekend and the co-op spread the last of the corn fertilizer and I’ve gotten all the fields dug up at least once. Mechanical tillage helps with weed control, and I was afraid if we got too much rain the next few days the weed population would explode. There was a few late nights with me and Bailey in the tractor.
I planted oats and grass in the waterway that was built last fall. A little rain would be nice and helpful, and it would be especially helpful if we didn’t get any heavy rain for, well really, the whole summer, but at least the next couple of months until it is established and gets some good root structure down. Before I could get the waterway planted there was a couple of logs out there that needed to be picked up. I had told Kelly “We’re only doing the ones as big as my head and 4 feet long.“ But, of course then it’s hard to pass up the ones as big as my arm and 2 feet long. And if you’re gonna pick up those, you may as well pick up the ones as big as my wrist and a foot-long.
Kelly picked up a lot more sticks than I did just because I was in the tractor dealing with other stuff. She did several loads like this.
Kelly and I celebrated our 35th wedding anniversary on Monday. It was a pretty low-key celebration as I spent the day at the college getting ready for commencement and she was working. Back in 1999 I wrote a card for her, wrote on the front not to open until 2025 and tucked it in my dresser. I kind of forgot about it over the years and every now and then I’d find it again. I know I looked at it just a few months ago, and then I put it… “somewhere safe”. It took me a good half an hour to find it on Monday. Life was sure different for us 25 years ago. I kind of wish I had written more about just what was going on in our lives. I’ve wondered if I should do the same thing again? Do I dare do I make it for another 25 years? I realize no one is guaranteed tomorrow, and as we are both in our 60’s now, 25 years might be pushing our luck.
I planted corn Saturday and Sunday.
The load in for commencement was pretty uneventful this year, both for me and the IT guys hanging a large projector, screen, and setting up multiple cameras, and the sound system. Monday was the biggest part of that job for me as I picked up the rental lights, got them hung and cabled, and set up the laptop and lightboard to control them.
It kind of turns into a free-for-all on Monday and as I parked, I thought ‘Well if this doesn’t completely sum me up”:
Tuesday was stage decorations, curtains, banners, flowers, my floor lighting for all those things, and finalizing cues, and making sure everything worked. Wednesday morning was a walk-through, a nurse pinning ceremony, the main event at 6 PM, and it all came back down and packed up in about two hours and I was home by 10 PM
The obligatory ‘Head in the clouds’ photo:
I’ve got a lot of stuff to put away back at the theater, and I’m still checking my budgets and verifying expenses the Business office has compared to my Excel spreadsheets and catching up on things that I’ve let slide the last couple weeks. Depending on the weather, I may get out and do some more fieldwork this weekend. I might be able to finish planting corn if everything goes smoothly.
Chicks are growing and doing well.
Found a couple deer antlers while doing fieldwork.
And that one field that always ALWAYS grows big rocks came through yet again. Kelly and I dragged it home behind the gator. It took a long bar, two shovels, a chain, a 20’ long ratchet strap, and Kelly’s ingenuity, but we got it home and added it to her collection. “What are you going to do with it?” asks my one sister. We’re gonna admire it! …what a question… like everything needs to be practical.
You can tell it was a busy week because I needed a pen, pencil, red sharpie, and chrome ‘dress’ sharpie.
SIGNS WITH RED AROUND THEM ARE OPTIONAL. TRUE OR FALSE?
In the past Renee has mentioned that she has post-it notes stuck around with ideas for the Trail. This doesn’t work for me because if I’m out and about, by the time I get home to the post-it notes (of which I have many….), I’ve forgotten what I wanted to note. Yep – seriously sad. I remember that I thought of something but for the life of me, I can’t conjure it up when it’s time to write.
To make up for this I use a post-it note app on my phone. I have a bunch of separate notes and one of them is my Trail note. You’d think this would solve my problem but….
Looked at the app three days ago and one of the entries is “first fire”. That’s it. Nothing else. It took me the last three days to figure out it must have to do with YA making the first fire of the season in our fire pit last week. Of course, it doesn’t explain WHY I put this note in the app. There really wasn’t anything different about this fire except that it was the first one this year. YA is still in charge of the fire. She has a stash of newspaper and different piles of wood in the back corners of the yard – one for kindling sticks, one for larger sticks and one for logs. She makes the fire, feeds the fire, pokes the fire with her special fire-poking stick.
I’ve searched my memory and I can’t think of one single reason why you all have to read about our first fire. So maybe it was something else? A metaphor for our current world situation?
What do you think I should be writing about with the theme of “first fire”? How do you remind yourself of stuff?
The sad news in our neighborhood is that my next door neighbors (the ones with the two little girls I adore) are moving. Not too far away, but moving nonetheless.
This has meant a lot of activity next door. Cleaning and organizing the place – a big job with two girls ages 5 and 9. Moving lots of stuff to a storage place. Marie’s elaborate cardboard box car is actually on my front porch right now. Lots of showings and two Sundays of open houses. Phew.
They had an offer on Friday so Monday was the official inspection. First there were two different plumbing trucks – the funniest name for a plumbing company I’ve ever seen – The Sewer Rat. Then at about 10 a.m. I noticed something on the sidewalk right outside their front porch. I wasn’t 100% sure but I thought it was a drone. Fairly small.
I was so curious – why in heaven’s name was there a drone sitting on the sidewalk. I wasn’t curious long – a young man came around the corner, got the drone going and started flying it over the house. He was inspecting the roof! I probably would not have thought of that as a use for a drone on my own.
As I was watching I started thinking about why drones are called drones. I was thinking of a dull, monotonous sound – maybe what drones sound like when they’re flying? Apparently not… the internet says based on the male worker bee, the drone. I might have thought of that eventually.
Have you ever operated a drone? If you were going to, what would you use it for?
I went to the post office to buy stamps. This happened awhile ago, so I was looking for stamps for Christmas cards.
I looked at the bulletin board that had the available stamps displayed. There was a design I liked, with a deer, a rabbit, a fox, and an owl in winter settings. Appropriate for Christmas or Solstice, or whatever.
While I was waiting in line, my thought was that I would ask for the stamps with the woodland creatures. It’s a design theme that’s been trending in recent years.
As my turn was approaching, the postal worker behind the desk turned and called out to the back room, “Hey, Judy – can you bring me some more of the critters?”
I felt inordinately delighted by this. When it was my turn, I asked, “Could I get a book of critters, please?” and it made me happy for reasons I can’t quite put words to.
My post office receipt had a QR code that took me to a survey, and I gave my postal worker top scores.
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My guess is that I’ve thought more about jury duty than most folks. With my dad being a trail lawyer and our shared love of Perry Mason, I’ve known about juries from childhood.
About 35 years ago I got a summons for jury duty but despite sitting patiently in the basement of the Government Center every day for a week, I didn’t get impaneled. On Friday afternoon they released me and said I didn’t need to return.
Right before Christmas I got the Summons in the mail. Things have changed somewhat in 35 years (doh!). The biggest change is that you don’t have to show up on Monday morning and sit all week. You get assigned a group number and twice a day you check online (or call in) to see if your group needs to go in. One thing that hasn’t changed much is the stipend. It’s not enough to pay for parking downtown (which is just outrageous) so if you are on a fixed income, if you drive and park, it’s like you’re paying to get on a jury. I took the bus.
My group didn’t get called in until mid-day on Thursday (12:15 notice that you have to be at the Government Center at 1:30). The waiting area is now on the 24th floor and is referred to as “The Jar”. Hmmmm. There were 33 of us in the room; orientation took 15 minutes and at 2 p.m. they pulled the first group of 22. That left 11 of us, not enough for a jury. I assumed at some point 10 folks would come back and then there would be enough of us if they needed to call a new group. Nope, at 2:15, the 11 of us left in the room were sent home and told we didn’t need to come back in the morning or the following week. Our service is complete – we won’t be eligible again for 4 years. (This puts me above the required age limit so I can decline with no reason if I get called again.)
45 minutes of jury duty. I spent more time on the bus than doing my civic duty. And if you add all the time I spent researching how it works these days, rates at downtown parking ramps, bus routes and senior discounts not to mention the weather….. way more prep time than jury time.
I’m not begrudging the time – I do actually think of it as my civic duty. I know I wouldn’t want to be on trial and have it go wrong because you couldn’t find enough folks for a jury. Although I do think it would have been more fun to actually get impaneled and see a real trial!
Yesterday I had to stand in the check-out line at Target; I was getting a giftcard for YA and I’ve never managed to do self-checkout successfully with a giftcard. There was only one cashier working the regular check-outs and the line was pretty long. The woman in front of me had a cart full of items, including a bunch of veggies which the cashier had to look up one by one. At one point the cashier asked to see her ID – it was a six-pack of something. This woman was clearly a senior citizen: completely white hair, hearing aids, cane on the side of her shopping cart. If I had to guess she had to be at least 80. The cashier looked at her license and typed something into the cash register. The line behind me got longer as this happened.
I understand that there are probably laws and/or corporate policies that lead to asking every single person for ID in these circumstances, but truly, carding an 80-year old woman at Target? And considering that I never get carded at the liquor store here in Minnesota or even buying liquor in Wisconsin (wine advent calendars at Aldis), I’m guessing it’s a Target policy and cash register programming enforces it. Sigh.
As I was heading to my car, it occurred to me that the woman’s purchase couldn’t have been alcohol. In Minnesota you can only buy alcohol at a state-licensed liquor store.
People watching at the airport is almost as much fun as at the State Fair – if you’re not stressing out. I take a page from my mother’s playbook and always get to the airport with way too much time so I’m not usually too worried about time in the TSA line.
There was a pretty long line on Saturday so there was plenty to watch. The most interesting was the young couple in front of me. When I first noticed them, the young man was wearing a fairly large, stuffed backpack and handling a big carry-on as well. The young woman was unencumbered. Before I had a chance to process that, she tried to take over carry-on duty. He wouldn’t let go of the bag. She was mad. She ripped it out of his hands and if looks could kill, he would have been a goner. Then he made two really bad mistakes. First he tried to take the bag back and when she spoke to him in a stern voice, he smiled. I wanted to say “ooh, buddy, bad move” but I didn’t need to. She blasted him and they didn’t speak for minutes until they got right up to the TSA desk. I didn’t see them again.
Our plane wasn’t at the gate on time – late from its last stop I assume. There was a red-haired woman who was just freaking out about this. Not enough to get security called on her, but enough that all of us in the waiting area heard every word. She somehow seemed to think that the gate agent could magically make a plane appear. After venting her spleen she wandered off; I didn’t see her come back. There weren’t any other flights that were leaving any time around the time of our flight so I don’t know what she did. Maybe she had a couple of stiff drinks and was the last one onto the plane?
Of course when the plane did come and we were all loaded, the pilot made an announcement about some outside door flap being frozen. Twenty minutes they said, which is airline speak for “at least an hour”. We were going to St. Louis, so I’m guessing from the flurry of panicked phone calls, there were quite a few people with connecting flights. The woman in front of me was positively melting down about it. I wasn’t connecting although my sibling gathering was planned for that afternoon. No meltdown from me.
We made most of the hour up in the air so I was in time for the sibling gathering but not enough time to stop at the deli to pick anything up for the party!
I can’t remember the last time I set out of the house to go shopping for Christmas presents for our family and loved ones. I spent much of my morning yesterday scrolling through the Amazon lists and other lists of things our son, daughter, and daughter in law wanted and conveniently sent to us. A few clicks, and their gifts were on the way. Later this week I will fill the treat boxes for our far flung friends and family and get them to UPS to deliver.
Husband and I told the kids we didn’t want any presents this year as we don’t want more possessions that we will have to move. I don’t think either of them listened to us, and we will get books at a minimum. I also told daughter that bubble bath and toiletries were good options for me if she really wanted to get me something.
Right now I don’t have the time or the energy to go physically from store to store in a mall or in a big box store shopping for people. Is that a sad commentary on our current state of affairs, or something to rejoice over? I am not sure.
How does your family gift one another? What are you hoping for this Christmas?
When I was nine, the St. Louis Arch was completed. Not the whole she-bang (viewing room, elevator, greenway, museum) but the structure of The Arch. It took 2½ years from breaking ground until October 28, 1965, when the last piece was put in place.
Although my family was actually living in Jefferson City at the time of the completion, we were St. Louis folks through and through. The Arch was a big deal back then and we had been down to the site a couple of times during the build; it was exciting to see the two legs each inching up.
As a child it seemed impossible to me that they could build each leg separately and actually have them meet in the middle. The day that they put the last piece in place, joining up both legs, it was big news and as a family we watched it on television. Here’s a short version:
At the time there were a lot of folks who thought once they put the last piece in place, The Arch would just fall down. My father was not in that camp, asserting every time it came up in conversation that it would be an engineering marvel. I guess he’s right – it’s been standing 59 years now. Growing up mostly in St. Louis, I’ve actually been up in the Arch about a dozen times; it was always on the agenda when folks visited from out of town. Since it’s my “home-town” monument, I’m pretty proud that it’s still standing!
Any monument you think is particularly impressive? Or not?
Trail Baboon 