Category Archives: The Baboon Congress

The Baboon Congress

The Good Place (and the Other Place)

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Today’s post comes from Steve Grooms

“The Good Place” is one of the popular new TV shows. It’s a clever comedy that plays with notions of what Heaven might be like. I’m not that clever. When I try to imagine Heaven, I end up hoping it would be a whole lot like the places I’ve already known and loved. That says nothing about Heaven but maybe a lot about me and my limitations.

But it is a hard concept for me to contemplate. I once heard about a lawyer who died and was whisked up to some fancy gate in the sky. There he is invited in to do his favorite thing on earth, which was golfing. Amazingly, his very first swing results in a hole-in-one. The next hole was the same, and so forth for the whole round. Every shot went in the hole. The lawyer confided to his caddy, “You know, I didn’t expect to get to Heaven. In my career I, uh, took a few ethical shortcuts.” The caddy turns with a devilish grin and asks, “What makes you think you are in Heaven?”

I remember Lily Tomlin’s thoughts on the Good Place. She was asked if we would have sex in Heaven. “Of course we will!” she said. “We just won’t feel anything.”

Mark Twain has a famous quote on the topic. When asked where he’d like to spend eternity, he said, “Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.”

It seems the cartoonist Gary Larson is an expert of Heaven and Hell, for he drew many cartoons on that theme. I’ve found about 30, and there may be more. One cartoon shows a bunch of devils laughs hysterically at notes from a Suggestion Box. In another a devil tells a new arrival, “Your room is right in here, Maestro.” (The room is filled with doltish guys holding banjos.) And in another cartoon a new arrival in Hell has just taken a swig from a coffee cup. “Oh man!” he says, “The coffee’s cold. They thought of everything!”

The more I try to imagine heaven, the weirder it becomes. I have to admit that drifting on a cloud with a harp singing the lord’s praise would get old in a hurry. Any place that has me singing is gonna be more like Hell than Heaven. I’m not the only one to wonder if things might get a little dull in the afterlife. In one of my favorite Far Side cartoons some fellow sits all alone on a cloud thinking, “Wish I’d brought a magazine.”

I’d like to think Heaven comes with a good cable TV package and no irritating commercials. I’m sure Heaven will have really fast internet connections. It would be great if I could eat ice cream all day and not gain weight. In my version of Heaven, in fact, scotch and wine would be health foods. Doctors would frown during annual checkups and ask, “Are you sure you are getting enough beer and pizza?”

And dogs! I want to say that Heaven just would not be Heaven unless it would return me to my dear buddy Brandy, the impudent springer spaniel who shared so much of my life. But right there I’m in trouble again. Before Brandy there was Danny, and a more lovable and loving dog never lived. After Brandy came Spook, the elegant gentleman who never did a single naughty thing in his life. Spook was followed by Katie, who loved me totally and helped me survive a difficult time. I can’t imagine Heaven without any of these dogs, but I can’t quite picture Heaven with all of them milling around my feet.

But while I can’t form a clear picture of Heaven, it is not hard to imagine my personal Hell. For me, Hell would be a windowless room with a telephone, computer and uncomfortable chair. I would be given some crucial task to perform, but to do it I’d have to gain cooperation from my bank, or a large software business, or an insurance company, or Social Security, or . . . you get the idea!

My personal hell would involve struggling to find phone numbers for businesses that don’t want me to call, so they don’t list their numbers. In my version of hell I’d spend hours “on hold” while insipid music plays in my ear. Periodically a voice would come on to say “Your call is very important to us,” which is a lie, a damned lie, actually. And then, after sweating an hour or two on hold I would get to one of those triage tapes that gives me four choices, only none of them will be remotely appropriate for the issue I’m calling about.

When home computers were just becoming popular it was tricky to connect to the internet. (Does anyone remember using a telephone modem? Remember the bizarre sounds they made, like R2D2 vomiting in an echo chamber?) In the early days of home computing, frustrated consumers would have to phone their ISP for help getting online. Before they could talk to a human being a taped voice would ask infuriating questions, like, “Are you sure your computer is plugged in?” Or the taped voice would say it wasn’t necessary to for me to bug a customer service agent with my issue. All I had to do was to log onto their helpful online database!

Now, that would be my version of Hell. And if the managers down there truly “think of everything,” when I walk in Hell they’ll hand me a notice telling me that there was a goof in the Registrar’s Office. I didn’t actually graduate, for I still have to take several more years of German.

What would be your version of Heaven or Hell?

The Baboon Congress, Weather

Toes `til it Snows

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Today’s post comes from Verily Sherrilee

Last week I decided to go to the gym on my way to work. To save time I threw on shorts and a t-shirt and packed my work clothes into my gym bag, slipped on my Birkenstock sandals and headed out. I needed to do a quick stop at the library to return a book before it went overdue; luckily the library is right on my way.

As I walked from the car to the library drop box, another woman pulled up behind me and got out to return her book. She had on a hat, jacket, gloves, long pants, shoes and socks. And there I was in my shorts, t-shirt and sandals. That’s when I realized that I have Minnesota’s weather in my blood.

I did chose Minneapolis based partly on the weather here. As a child, my family spent some of each summer and winter vacation in northern Wisconsin. Winter up here compared to winter in my home town is like those proverbial apples and oranges; I knew even as a 10-year old that I preferred cold and snow to mostly cold and mostly rainy. At the end of high school, I only looked at colleges in Wisconsin and Minnesota and after my wasband finished graduate school, we headed straight for Minneapolis without looking back.

I’ve been here ever since.

This year we’ve had such a nice protracted autumn that I still haven’t put away my summer clothing or brought out any of my long-sleeved items. I’m still wearing my Birkenstocks every day. A couple of days ago a friend of mind looked at my feet and said “Toes `til it snows?” My official new motto.

How to YOU prepare for the winter?

The Baboon Congress, Words

11/11

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Today’s post comes from tim
Image result for kurt vonnegut drawingsnovember 11th is kurt vonneguts birthday.
vonnegut and i are joined at the hip as soulmates.
 i love his brain. he is just enough of what he is to be perfect for me. not too much not too little. just right.
kurt always remembered nov 11 as his birthday and armasist day . armasist day was to celebrate world war 1 veterans. then we had world war 2 pop up and then the korean war. if you give every war a holiday the postal workers and government employees would be happy but we would be in trouble. the war based political machine we have in washington would end up with a new holiday every 10-15 years.
hey ww1 guys move over we are going to do a war dejour combo, spanish american war vets stopped , wwI is all done and wwII is walking real slow but korean and vietnam guys are getting there with just a little slower gait. granada, persian gulf, serbia, afganastan and iran are the latest.
from kurt:

I will come to a time in my backwards trip when November eleventh, accidentally my birthday, was a sacred day called Armistice Day. When I was a boy, and when Dwayne Hoover was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.

Armistice Day has become Veterans’ Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans’ Day is not.

So I will throw Veterans’ Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I don’t want to throw away any sacred things. — Breakfast of Champions

kurt wrote a book that was released just before he died that may be my favorite. man without a country. kurt talked about his uncle who was an exceptional guy.

“My uncle Alex Vonnegut, a Harvard-educated life insurance salesman who lived at 5033 North Pennsylvania Street, taught me something very important.

He said that when things were really going well we should be sure to NOTICE it. He was talking about simple occasions, not great victories: maybe drinking lemonade on a hot afternoon in the shade, or smelling the aroma of a nearby bakery; or fishing, and not caring if we catch anything or not, or hearing somebody all alone playing a piano really well in the house next door.

Uncle Alex urged me to say this out loud during such epiphanies: “If this isn’t nice, what is?”

― Kurt Vonnegut

we have all  at one time or another been put in a place where pain has played a  role in our lives. it is part of the human condition but particularly noticeable at times some times more than others. when these times are recent and numbness still hovers it is particularly important to take note of epiphanies large and small.

notice it and say it out loud today… and tomorrow…. and then again next week and maybe it can be a part of your awareness going forward. celebrate the small stuff and do it out loud.

you got an uncle or author or other person in your life that had a saying worth passing on?

The Baboon Congress

To the Moon, Alice

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Today’s post comes from Wessew
My car is now named “Alice”. On November 6, 2016, my 2007 Impala attained average earth/ moon perigee. According to the odometer, it had traveled to the point in the heavens that on average is closest to the moon’s orbit of the earth. I named her “Alice” in honor of the long-suffering wife of Ralph Kramden (Jackie Gleason of Honeymooners fame) who frequently threatened to launch her toward that celestial body.  If the Chevy reaches the orbit of Mars, 46.8 million miles, “Alice” will transgender to “Ray” in honor of The Martian Chronicles author, Bradbury. It seems unlikely that I will witness that event given the time necessary to achieve it. I think I’ll give “Alice” that opportunity by putting her disposition in my last will and testament. The person who gets the most monies must also take care of the car. Thereafter, my forebears can effect the renaming rites.
kimg0151
This is the first automobile I’ve had that has recorded such a distance. I bought it new, so all but 50 of those 225,884 miles are mine. Alice did reach the milestone of closest lunar approach to earth, the Beaver Moon, earlier then the actual event. On November 14, 2016 the moon will be at perigee 223,000 miles, the closest to earth it has been since 1948, an event not to be repeated until 2034. So either she is early or I am late with this article. In either case, she and I are well on our way to apogee. Also, I’m quite certain that my total mileage logged driving cars puts me on the return leg of a second lunar round trip so there is no need to quibble over a few thousand miles when were talking about nearly a million.
My driving career began with tooling around the farmstead in a 1948 Studebaker Champion. It was no longer road worthy and hadn’t been licensed for years but for the sake of driving practice it was perfect for my needs. My Dad had given it to me with the thought that I might become some sort of restoration mechanic. Well, that never happened, although it would be great to still possess what is now a classic automobile. We also had a 1964 Rambler station wagon with a push button automatic transmission. My sisters liked learning to drive with that car as it relieved them of having to shift gears using a clutch. Wimps!
Many makes and models have now come and gone. Most of the time they were good companions but the brand that caused the most trouble was the 1983 Renault Alliance. It was Motor Trend and Car And Driver magazines Car of the Year. Those publications have since apologized for their recommendations; hundreds of repair dollars and tons of frustration too late for me and thousands of victims. The gas pump failed. The oil pump failed. The transmission failed. The air conditioner failed. Even the radio failed. It never even made 30,000 miles. The model did make Car Talk several times and Tom and Ray had some sympathy for the people who owned that junk but none for those who made it.
“The Renault Alliance proved the adage that nothing bad will happen to the person who owns a French car, because it already has.”
What is the best thing to come out of France?
The Baboon Congress, Travel

When I Was a Cowboy

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Today’s post comes from Bill in MPLS

In the early 1970s, Robin and I and our friend Steve Carley drove to Calgary, Alberta for the Calgary Stampede. In truth, I was only vaguely interested in the rodeo. As it turned out, the rodeo wasn’t especially exciting; the problem was that the competitors were all excessively competent—every participant performed perfectly and the difference between them amounted to seconds or fractions of seconds.

The real reason I was in Calgary was because Wilf Carter was going to be in the pre-stampede parade. Wilf Carter, also known as Montana Slim, was one of the original singing cowboys. Carter was the first Canadian country music star. An unbelievable yodeler, Carter belonged to the ilk of Hank Snow, Jimmie Rodgers, and Gene Autry. Here’s a sample:

The Stampede was my chance to see him in person. He rode in the parade, in a convertible designed, I think, by the legendary Nudie Cohn. The header photo shows that car.

Nudie was a Ukrainian-born tailor who established himself making sequin-bedecked outfits for the likes of Elvis and Roy Rogers and later branched out to designing boots and even cars. Here’s what the interior of the car looked like:

pontiac_convertible

I was going through my cowboy phase then. I was collecting and listening to a lot of early cowboy/country music. You couldn’t get a shirt in those days in the style of the classic movie cowboys, so I was making my own cowboy shirts, with fancy piped yokes and cuffs, curved slash pockets with arrowheads on the corners and pearl snaps. Sometimes the fabric was atypical— hawaiian prints, for instance.

I was never really interested in the actual business of ranching or horses.. What attracted me was the lore and milieu of the singing cowboys. The imagery of the likes of Tom Mix, Ken Maynard and William S. Hart. At the time I was working on a series of drawings I called my Patsy Montana drawings. They had nothing to do with the real Patsy Montana or her songs. She was my muse and the drawings were more along the line of “Even Cowgirls get the Blues”.

In downtown Minneapolis in the 70s and early 80s, on First Avenue, just north of Hennepin, on the second floor, there was a record shop called Pyramid Records. It was a big open space with waist-high benches around the perimeter, on top of which were boxes of records, many of them cutouts, all inexpensive, and chiefly old country recordings and vintage jazz. The proprietor sat in an overstuffed armchair in the center. He seldom made eye contact and never conversation. When you had made your selection, he would reluctantly accept your money. I’ve heard that he just disappeared one night, leaving his entire record stock behind. But he had some incredible, obscure records on offer, if you were in that market. There was a label out of West Germany, CMH, that had reissued classic early country music, including Wilf Carter, Hank Snow, the Carter Family and Goebel Reeves.

I bought them all.

Eventually I moved on from my cowboy phase, though I’ve never lost my interest in either the music or the imagery. I’ve overlaid them with newer fascinations but not many carry the pervasive richness that that long-ago cowboy fixation carried for me.

I can’t judge the extent to which I am deaf to the popular culture and the extent to which I am willfully contrarian. Some of both no doubt. But those are traits I also savor in others. What interests me, what I look for, are the obsessions people nurture that aren’t delivered to them as a readily consumable commodity— obsessions that call for research, diligence, craft and expertise. It could be an art, in the broadest sense, or it could be a collection. It scarcely matters how arcane, how peculiar the obsession might be. After all, the more elusive the interest, the more dedication it requires. And the more dedication it requires, the more it can be uniquely yours.

So, how do you entertain yourself?

Family, The Baboon Congress

Grandpa Bob

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Header image of buckthorn by Mason Brock (Masebrock) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Today’s post comes from tim

grandpa bob was my first wifes dad

salt of the earth

high school teacher in milwaulkee

he grew up building houses with his dad in the 50’s and ended up getting a job as a school  teacher where he could just show up for work and not worry about business. he kind of trudged through his day.

somewhere in his career he got hooked up to be the guy to look after the field trips for the school kids in the milwauklee school district. he got to take them for walks in the parks and discover how to tell the trees by the bark and the leaves he got to be the guy who did the planetarium show and push the buttons and recite the planets and stars

he got to do lake michigan and the brewery tours he loved life.

then someone asked how bob got that job? did he go through the proper protocol? he got thrown under the bus. after years of loving his work he got put back in the classroom and he was so sad. because he was low man on the totem pole in teacher land ( i guess seniority didnt enter in) he got the class of underachievers from the toughest neighborhoods in milwaukee (milwaulkee has some really tough neighborhoods)   he was not a politically correct guy and the stuff that would come out of his mouth was alarming. he believed that the community he was asked to teach was unreachable. they didnt get breakfast so their brains didnt work.

his last remaining joy was walking in the parks around milwaukee that he had come to know taking the kids on field trips. that and going to high school plays. he loved going and went to 200 plays a year in school auditoriums all over the milwaukee area.

he had property all over northern wisconsin, 5 acres here 5 acres there. he had a favorite place around ladysmith where he had a spot on the flambeau river with white pines and  a natural beauty hard to beat. he would mow and tweak and groom the property. there was a small cabin next door with an owner who inherited it and didnt ever come and on the other side was a good ol boy who wold come up from new orleans every summer to be bobs buddy. they would sit and discuss the world and the woods and the good old days and every summer was better than the one before.

bob lived out of a pop up tent trailer that he would haul up in may and haul home in october every year. a stove, a bed and walls, who could ask for anything more.  his last year up there he decided to leave it up in october and simply come back in april and set up camp. when he came he found his neighbor in the cabin who had some mental illness issues has sold the tent trailer. he simply threw p his hands and walked away. too bad.  a bad way to end a chapter but the way it went.

when i divorced his daughter he was called on to winterize her house every year (putting on the plastic over the porch screens and raking the leaves and and to open it up again in the spring. he would stop over to borrow a wheelbarrow, a shovel   a hammer and chat for a while. i will always remember his response to a statement it way ‘yeah , yeah , yeah, ” kind of like he was going down stairs. descending  tones of yeahs in a row. he used his mantra to mull over his response and let you know he was listening and was aware it was his turn to speak in the conversation.

he comes to mind at this time of year as the leaves turn brown and fall off. and all thats left is the green egg shaped leaves of the hated intruder the buckthorn that takes over and chokes everything out. it is very sad to realize that the natural plants are being killed and choked out by the early coming out and the late departure of the buckthorn. i wuuld like to see a way to stop the takeover of the buckthorn and i think of bob everytime it comes up.

linda has the tree wrench for pulling the buckthorn up but it is hard work. i would like to find a way to clear an acre or a chunk of the woods in a weekend with a crew of volunteers to see what the difference between maintained and non maintained natural woodlands would be. ill bet it would make an impact. maybe in my sparetime

is there a trigger that reminds you of a time or place every time you see /hear/smell/taste it?

 

The Baboon Congress

Music and (My) Baseball

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Today’s post comes from Barbara in Rivertown

Until this week, the last time I watched the World Series was October of 2006, with my dad during his last month on the planet. Dad had lived his whole life in Iowa. Before the Twins started up in 1961, and since Iowa had no major league team, he’d adopted the St. Louis Cardinals. Lo and behold, they made it to the World Series!

The hospice nurses gave him a Cardinals cap and some strings of red, white, and gold beads; he and Mom would put on the beads, I’d wear the hat, and we spent several cozy evenings in front of the tube, cheering the Cardinals on. Although the Cardinals were not at all favored to win, they managed to pull it out game after game. (It really did seem like they won the Series for my dad.) I don’t recall a great theme song, and although there seem to be some recent songs composed about the Cardinals,  the only music I’ve been able to find from the 2006 era is a Budweiser theme Here Comes the King.

Fast forward ten years. I don’t think I would have cared much who won the World Series this year if it weren’t for Steve Goodman’s love for the Cubs. Not only did he give us “The Dying Cub Fan’s Last Request”

that we would hear on The Late Great Morning Show, at each spring’s baseball opener. Turns out he also wrote the song they now sing in the stands – “G0 CUBS GO!” Check out this tribute to Steve Goodman from NBC’s Mike Leonard in September, 2008:

The lyrics to the chorus are:

Go Cubs Go

Go Cubs Go

Hey, Chicago, what do you say

The Cubs are gonna win today

 A 10/31/16 article about Goodman in the Jewish Journal, by Gabe Friedman explains:  “Goodman’s two Cubs songs were closely linked to each other. Dallas Green, who became the team’s general manager in the early 1980s, was said to have hated “A Dying Cub Fan’s Last Request” with a passion. It was rumored that Goodman made “Go Cubs Go,” which was commissioned by the local radio station WGN, as saccharine as possible as a light jab at Green. The song’s simple chorus caught on, and the tune is now played at Wrigley Field after every Cubs win there.”

There are other songs composed for the Cubs in the past few years. Here’s “All the Way” (Eddie Vedder Cubs song w Ernie Banks)-Live-Wrigley Field, Chicago,IL-7/19/13…

 …and the Cubs Victory Song “By the Lakeside” by Katie Day:

 

Then there’s “(Bye Bye) Curse of 45” – Chicago Cubs 2016 Parody Song with Lyrics – Michele McGuire

Chorus:

Bye bye, curse of 45

Drive a goat on up to Wrigley and we’ll let it inside

These good old boys are gonna give it a try

Singin’ “This’ll be the year the curse dies…”

 I may be biased, but I deem them perhaps not as catchy as Goodman’s.

What music do you remember that’s related to a competition or sport (even if it’s from high school)?

History, The Baboon Congress

The Day the Music Died

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Today’s post comes from Wessew

For me the music died on Monday, October 24, 2016 with the death of Bobby Vee.

holly_poster

Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, J.P. Richardson (the Big Bopper) and pilot Roger Peterson left Clear Lake, Iowa for a flight to Fargo, North Dakota. They were to perform at the Moorhead, Minnesota Armory as a continuation of the Winter Party Dance tour. They never arrived as they died when the plane crashed into an Iowa cornfield, February 3, 1959. As news of the tragedy spread in the Fargo-Moorhead area, word went out for performers to substitute for the lost tour members. Fifteen year old Robert Velline and his newly formed group volunteered, were chosen to play and the show went on. The Shadows, as they called themselves on the spot, were well received and Bobby Vee went on to a stellar career before succumbing to Alzheimer’s disease. My parents attended that event. It’s not that they were big rock and roll fans but we lived just a short walk from the Armory in Moorhead and were acquaintances of the Velline family. So they went as a show of support for Bobby and his brother Bill, one of the guitar players in the band. My sisters and I remained at home with Grandma. I have no recollection of disappointment in being excluded from “making the scene.” Seeing as how I was only 6, the entertainment value would likely have been lost on me.

Over the years, the significance of the deaths and dance became more pronounced for me. Collecting the recordings was a given. I’m not big into memorabilia but if only Dad and Mom had kept those ticket stubs what a treasure they would be! I became a fan of Holly and Vee. Not so for my parents. It never seemed to matter much to them that they had been part of music history. I have been able to piece together a pretty good picture of what they experienced. They were in their late twenties so were a bit out of place among a crowd of teenagers. Not surprisingly, given my Dad’s two left feet, they didn’t dance at all. They did watch the Shadows perform but left early and didn’t see Dion and The Belmonts.

Time marches on and it is now the late sixties. KQWB radio began promoting a celebrity basketball team composed of the station’s DJ’s and a few college players. The advertising spot included a sampling of the backup singers for Bobby Vee’s hit record, “Rubber Ball” which in 1968 was now a golden oldie. They sang, “Bouncy, Bouncy. Bouncy, Bouncy.” KQWB 1550 was always on our car and home radios so we heard that little jingle frequently. Well, my Father swore that Bobby Vee had sung that song in 1959. The song wasn’t recorded until 1961 but no amount of evidence could disabuse him of the notion that he had heard it years before. The Vellines were no longer in our social circle, so there was no appeal to authority from that source. Now with the Internet, it is easy to prove how wrong he was but back when I was in high school, information resources were rather meager and it was probably best to let the matter drop in any case. But every once in a while the “issue” would come up. Dad would reaffirm his theory that many musicians play songs before they record them. The fact that Gene Pitney and Aaron Schroeder wrote the song, not Bobby Vee, leaves him unfazed. The mysterious song had become part of a conspiracy. The voices in Dad’s head are like a rubber ball going “bouncy, bouncy.”

Do you have a favorite conspiracy theory?

The Baboon Congress, Weather

Fall Gardening – A Love/Hate Relationship

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Today’s post comes from Verily Sherrilee

As most of you already know, I love my yard and my gardens. My long-range plan (no grass, all flowers) is coming to fruition in the front and in the back I’m enjoying planting in my bales and along edges until I’m out of dogs.

fallgarden1But as much as I love gardening in the spring and throughout the summer, I just run out of gardening steam in the fall. Right about the time the grass stops growing is when I quit wanting to garden. I always say I’m going to plant some more bulbs or move this patch of lilies to another spot or some other fall garden activity, but it never happens.  I only go out and finally bring in the hoses and do some yard clean up when the weather gets below freezing at night on a regular basis.  I even outsource the leaf raking to the Young Adult (for dog-sitting time).

fallgarden3Occasionally I’ll be forced into action. Last year before tim moved I ended up with about 18 big hostas from his yard. When I got home from his place, I took my gloves and shovel out immediately without even going in the house.  Got everything transplanted within a half hour because I was worried that if I went in the house and sat down I might not go back out. Same with items I got from Edith a couple of weeks ago.  But that’s the limit of my fall gardening energy.

So my autumn yard looks like a brown and rust version of my summer garden and my bales are breaking down. Every year I try to lengthen my “caring season” but so far I haven’t found a motivation that keeps me really engaged past the middle of September!

What makes you drag your feet?

The Baboon Congress

Seize the Moment

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Today’s post comes from littlejailbird.

In a comment on a recent post, Ben encouraged us to “seize those moments.” Coincidentally, I was in the middle of doing that very thing while he posted his comment. I left the chores and responsibilities (cleaning, laundry, paperwork) that were demanding my attention and went OUT.

I visited Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden (EBWG) and also the Quaking Bog (QB) across the road from EBWG. It was mostly deserted. I assume people weren’t outside because it was cloudy and drippy, and because the fall foliage experts have declared this locale as “past peak” (brown on the fall foliage maps, giving the impression that there is no longer any color in our lives, only drab browns and grays, and it will remain colorless until May).

Well, I’m here to declare this “past peak” business silly, because it was a day filled with color and beauty. Both EBWG and the QB have tamarack trees, and those trees glowed, bright and golden. Many trees still had leaves – some had just a few and others had a lot – and the various shades of russet, orange, yellow, and red stood out against the gray sky and dark tree trunks and branches. Many leaves had fallen and carpeted the path and lay on the water in pleasing, colorful patterns. I would have been content when leaving the garden if that had been all I saw, but when I went across to the quaking bog, all I could do was stand and stare at the beauty. Words and photos don’t do it justice…. the white birches and golden tamaracks… mushrooms growing in the moss…spots of boggy water littered with leaves….scattered golden leaves peeking through a curtain of small, bare trees…cattail rushes turning yellow with golden tamaracks standing just past them. All with the rain dripping down, bringing the colors alive. It seemed a magical place. I want to go back tomorrow, but I’m afraid the magic might be gone.

Have you ever been to a place that seemed magical or extra-special?