Category Archives: The Baboon Congress

Baboon Blog Redux, The Baboon Congress

Baboon Redux: Zorie Story

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Today’s re-post comes from Verily Sherrilee

A 2016 note from the author:  My company is doing its usual “Summer of Love”.  The dress code is relaxed and flip flops will be an acceptable footwear for the next three months.  I don’t really have anything new to say about my massive flip flop collection, but if you’re looking for things to re-run for the holiday weekend, we could re-run my flip flop bit from a  couple of years ago.

My father’s sister, Joan, spent a couple of years in Japan, teaching English. I was four when she came home, bearing exotic gifts. One of these treasures was a small black enamel chest of drawers; since it wasn’t to my parents’ taste, I lucked out. For reasons that I’ll never understand, it was always referred to as “the Chinese chest”. I still have it; it lives in my dining room and now I’ve raised another generation to name it incorrectly.

The most enduring gift, however, were the zories; she brought 2 pairs for me and 2 pairs for my sister. I had never had anything like them and nobody else I knew had them either – not the older, traditional Japanese style with tatami soles on wooden platforms, but plastic zories. White. If my mom had let me, I would have worn them everywhere.

My parents were ecstatic because they discovered a perfect gift for me for any occasion. Zories weren’t popular foot ware when I was growing up, but they did manage to find zories in places like Ben Franklin and Woolworth’s. I didn’t know anyone else who wore zories; in fact, I was in college before I knew that everyone else in America called them flip flops!

The last 15 years have been zorie-heaven for me. These days you can get zories in any color, any design and they are CHEAP. I have an Old Navy account so that every year I am eligible for their $1 flip flop sale. I have white zories, blue zories, purple, yellow, coral. I have fourth of July zories, Halloween zories, Christmas zories, flowers, stripes. Four years ago my company started a super-casual summer program – the dress code is pretty much thrown out. This means I can wear my zories to work every day in the summer.

As the Old Navy sale was approaching this year, I thought I would do an inventory of my zories to see what colors I could add to my collection. I pulled them all out of the closet, paired them all up and laid them all out, beginning with the white and finishing up with the black.

Then I made my fatal error; I counted them. THIRTY-EIGHT!!! I own 38 pairs of zories. 38! I didn’t go to the sale this year.

I may not go next year either.

What do you have too many of?

 

The Baboon Congress

Minnesota Conservation Volunteer

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Header image: Male wood duck by John Bowden from MN Conservation Volunteer Facebook Page

Today’s post comes from Barbara in Robbinsdale.

For the past maybe 20 years, we have been receiving a little magazine called the Minnesota Conservation Volunteer, which celebrated its 75th year in 2015. It is an amazing publication, measuring just around 5” x 8”, issued bi-monthly. Each issue features richly illustrated articles on conservation efforts in Minnesota, and various outdoor activities, from fishing and hunting to snowshoeing.  Regular departments include:

–          “This Issue” – a summary of the issue’s main article

–          “Letters” from readers

–          a “Young Naturalists” segment, used by science teachers across the state (all Minnesota schools and libraries receive MCV)

–          “Minnesota Profile” – two of the last pages in each issue, highlighting a plant or animal you may or may not recognize

–          and my favorite, “Natural Curiosities” – questions from readers about some unexplained natural phenomenon seen, often, in readers’ back yard, and answered by the staff

Once or twice a year there is a “Sense of Place” issue, in which the material is connected to a particular landscape.

The website’s “About MCV” section describes the magazine thus:    “Minnesota Conservation Volunteer is your guide to wild Minnesota. This flagship publication of the Department of Natural Resources delivers in-depth, in-the-field coverage of the state’s outdoor news and conservation issues. The MCV mission is to encourage conservation and sustainable use of Minnesota’s natural resources.”

Although I believe you can still receive MCV free of charge, it is readers’ contributions that keep MCV magazine, together with its education and outreach projects, afloat. And it is unique – “[n]o other state conservation magazine has this model of reader support.”

I am always amazed by the photography accompanying the articles – I have cut out photos and made little books with them for children in my life. I save my MVC issues (which measure about 5” x 8”) on a bookshelf, and am having a hard time discarding them even though I am moving. (Let me know if any baboons would like some back issues.) I will make sure that my Minnesota Conservation Volunteer subscription follows me as we move to Winona.

What is your favorite magazine/periodical, either paper or electronic?

The Baboon Congress

I Changed My Mind

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Today’s post comes from Barbara in Robbinsdale

Well, I Changed My Mind

Husband and I got a call on Monday from the Winona realtor who has been working with the seller of “our” house (See East Side, West Side).

Let’s call this House A. He said, and I quote, “I don’t want to complicate your lives, BUT…”  Turns out another east end house we had looked it has jumped back on the market – the newly divorced woman who had bought it has figured out (just before moving in) that she’s not ready to be a homeowner. Let’s call this House B.

When we viewed House B a couple of months ago, we were instantly ready to make an offer, until we found an offer had already been made, and it was no longer available. It was exactly what I was looking for in a house – smaller, so we’d have to downsize; lots of light; hardwood floors; gas stove) – and has several features not found in the House A, the house we thought we were buying. (House B is still on the east end of Winona, close to our friend Walken and a community of people we know, just not quite as close as before. It is only a few blocks from The River.)

MEANWHILE, the Seller of House A has, in the last 10 days, discovered she would like to back out of the sale, for a number of reasons we don’t need to go into here. I have to wonder how many times this situations occurs – a seller reneges on offer to sell, and the buyer gets to have a house they wanted, after all, which just happens to be available again. (Remind me not to go into real estate.)

So in short:

  • We will travel to Winona early next week for an inspection of House B, after which we will probably make an offer, when we are legally released from our offer on House A.
  • We will have to re-do several change of address notifications we have already sent.
  • We need to tour our current house again (House C?) and see what else we can discard, as House B is considerably smaller than House A.
  • We are still planning a move to Winona on June 8, with several of our late son Joel’s friends helping us load the U-Haul the evening before…  We just don’t yet know WHICH HOUSE we’re moving into.

What has been your most dramatic Change of Mind?

The Baboon Congress

A Modest Request

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Today’s post comes from Clyde of Mankato

A couple years ago I did a guest blog about parking issues near us. I can today report nothing has changed.

I am still parking a tiny Scion amidst the behemoths. Why are there so many monster trucks in this area? I call it Testosterone Town.

There are still 28 handicap parking spots in front of Scheels Sporting Goods and only two in front of Barnes and Noble.

It is still chaos in front of Target with the handicap parking right by the door at the busiest place where pedestrians stream right behind you, beside you, in front of you, and pretty soon over you. And my neck is worse making it harder for me to turn around to see.

Cub Food still has no cart corral near the handicap parking. The corral is still dead in the middle of the parking lot. I can report one change here. A few people without legal right think it is acceptable to sit in the vehicle, often a behemoth, with the motor running only half parked in the end handicap spot.

No one is listening to me.

Why don’t people just listen, you know?

The Baboon Congress, The Future, Travel

Road Trip!

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Today’s post comes from Verily Sherrilee

I’ve been thinking this about California becoming the first state to legalize self-driving cars.

I was thrilled to hear this when it was first in the news, although careful attention revealed that it’s just the testing of the cars that became legal.  We still have a way to go before self-driving cars will be chauffeuring our kids to their ballet lessons and baseball games without us.

Where roadways are concerned, I am the most directionally-challenged person I know.  A friend of mine loves to tell the tale of the time I got lost in a church parking lot.  In my defense it was dark when we came out from the concert and the parking lot had quite a bit of one-way directional signage.  It’s always been this way for me, but the advent of MapBlast and GoogleMaps seems to have made it worse the last few years, as if having the printed paper in my hand somehow eggs on the traffic/street sign gods.

I keep a 3-ring binder in my breakfast room with printed directions to most of the places in my life. I grab the sheets out of the binder when I need them and put them back at the end of the trip.  Some of these directions are not used anymore; I have finally memorized how to get to the Teenager’s pediatrician and it got too dangerous for my pocketbook (& my waistline) to go to St. Agnes Bakery once a month.  Some of them were used once and have never been used again, like the gym in Big Lake where there was a gymnastics meet 3 years ago.   I’ve added quite a few pages in the last couple of years:  BiR, BiB, tim, Jacque & Lew, Steve, Caroline.   Many of the sheets have been spindled and mutilated from repeated trips in the car; some of them have coffee stains.   I even added alphabet tabs to the binder last year to make it easier to find the directions I want.

I expect that I’ll have this disability the rest of my life. I just hope that self-driving cars will come with GPS!

Where do you want your self-driving car to take you?

 

The Baboon Congress

Packing is Such Sweet Sorrow

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Today’s post comes from Barbara in Robbinsdale.

Without realizing it, I have come up with a little system for packing up the goods. (For the novice reader of this blog, Husband and I are moving to Winona, MN in June.)  Part 1:  I have been through each area of the house once, armed with an empty box or bag with which to remove the obviously unwanted items. This first round wasn’t so bad – when you’ve lived in a place for 27 years, you’ve forgotten half of what’s in the back of closets, under the basement stairs, in that bottom drawer. “Oh, I kept these skirts?” or “I don’t even remember ever having this calendar from 1984!”

Basement is ground zero – the holding tank, as it were. There is a “sawhorse table” where the stuff from above is dropped off until it can be boxed and carted away. There have already been several trips to Valu Village and Half Price Books; for each meeting or gathering I go to, I bring along a bag of something for people to paw through (just ask the Babooners who attended Book Club at Occasional Caroline’s in April).

But now I’m starting Part 2 of this system, sorting through a second time as I actually pack it in a box. This takes more time and thought. Hmmm, do I still really need three mixing bowls that size, and does the one from my grandma win out over my favorite color? Will I ever really play all this piano music again in this lifetime?

Luckily, I have help:  I’m almost finished reading a best-selling book by Marie Kondo – The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up.

There are many good ideas here, as well as some quirkiness, as she almost gives her possessions human feelings. But the most profoundly useful tactic is her insistence to work by category, rather than room by room. Say my category is “candles”: I travel thought the house and gather ALL the candles into one place, one pile; and then pick up each item to evaluate, based on whether or not it brings me joy.

This is what I want, to have all my possessions be things I use and/or love. So now there is a box of candles leaving, and a box of candles coming with us. And I feel almost euphoric after discarding – there is something about lightening up that… well, actually lightens me.

When have you needed to create a system on order to complete a task? 

Did it work?

The Baboon Congress, Words

Who Are YOU?

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Header Image by John Tenniel [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Today’s post comes from Steve Grooms.

When Alice tumbles down the rabbit hole, one of the many peculiar creatures she meets is the caterpillar. After initially ignoring her, the caterpillar asks Alice a rude question: “Who are YOU?” Who indeed! Alice struggles to answer. She has already experienced so many bewildering changes she no longer knows what to say.

Who are you? To some degree, it is a trick question. The question implies that there is a definite answer, and that simply isn’t true. We all have multiple identities. They change and evolve as time passes. Many of us claim identities that don’t quite fit the facts. Some of that is innocent, in a way, since we often deceive ourselves about this issue.

For much of my life I had an identity that seemed credible to others and was comforting to me. Then one day, like Alice, I experienced so many changes that I totally lost my ability to answer the caterpillar’s question. I have spent almost two decades developing a new answer to the question. By now I have constructed a new identity, using pieces left over from the wreckage of former identity but mostly based on fresh insights.

There are conventions to help us answer people who ask us who we are. A century ago it was common to identify by referring to church affiliation or participation in service clubs. One of my grandmothers identified as a Methodist. The other was a proud member of the Loyal Order of Moose.

In earlier times people were identified by where they lived. Biblical scholars claim we know much about Jesus if we remember he was a Nazarene. I have recently learned that I am (and always will be) a Minnesotan.

Most people, when asked who they are, start by referring to their occupation. I am intrigued by the ways this varies. For some people, it is impossible to separate their identity from their work. For others, how they make money has nothing to do with their true character. Increasingly, people define their identity by their recreational interests.

Many people—but I think especially women—define themselves in the context of their immediate family. Ask who they are and they answer with information about their husband and/or children. And yet for some people, the roles of wife and mother are irrelevant to any useful understanding of their unique identity.

I smile to remember how my father characterized himself the night he met the woman who became his wife (and, a bit later, my mother). He said he was an artist who rode in cavalry charges on weekends. Both facts were true. What he did not say was that he became a cavalryman as a way of proving he was not gay. To be fair, he was probably not
sufficiently self-aware to know that about himself at the time.

Modern understanding of personality has been impacted by therapy so profoundly that many people use concepts from counseling when expressing their identity. Who are you? One answer that might be useful is provided by Meyers-Briggs. In that context, I am an ENFP on a good day but an INFP on a more typical day.

It is relatively easy to describe identities if we are allowed to use an unlimited number of words. What is far more challenging is compressing the description until we are left with a handful of essential truths that reflect the essence of a person.

As an example, let me introduce my friend, the 92-year-old woman I write each morning. Who is she? She is a reader, a donor and a traveler. There is far more to know about her, of course: mother, widow, former university administrator, avid student of history, and so forth. But I suggest “reader, donor and traveler” define her unique and essential character. Anything I might add to a definition of her personality would have to come after those first three characteristics.

Reader. She reads voraciously, especially history and social commentary. The word “reader” also reflects a commitment to lifelong learning. Her greatest fear is that she might lose her sight. Books have been her main source of solace in the years since her husband passed away.

Donor. My friend addressed a midlife crisis by simplifying her life radically. She and her husband sold their South Minneapolis home and built a primitive house in a valley in southeast Minnesota. Their new home had no bathroom, running water or furnace. It was such a cheap place to live that my friend and her husband could donate to causes close to their hearts, two people of modest means expressing generosity on a scale normally associated with wealthy people.

Spiritual voyageur. My friend was raised as a judgmental sort of fundamentalist Christian. With the passing of years she became more tolerant and progressive. An abhorrence for sin morphed into a compassion and a deep concern for social justice. My friend often refers to her “voyage” as a person of faith. To her, it is the single most consequential fact of her life.

The caterpillar became a butterfly, although she is too modest to claim that.

Who are YOU?

The Baboon Congress

Mail Truck Muddle

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Today’s post comes from Renee in North Dakota

My friend Janelle from work has all the luck. She is keenly observant with a sensitive radar for the absurd, and notices more funny things in the world than anyone else I know.  She recently told me about something she witnessed only a block or two from my house and  oh, I wish I had been there.

Janelle stopped after work to see her brother. They were standing out front of his house talking to one of the neighbors when she noticed that there were two small Postal Service trucks delivering mail. Now, this is odd in itself, as the mail in our neighborhood is delivered around noon, not after 5:00 pm, and there are never two trucks working in tandem. The mail carriers parked on the same side of the street, and each got our of their truck and walked ahead to deliver the mail. When they went back to  get more mail, they traded trucks and each drove the other’s truck down the block, as though they were leap-frogging, trading vehicles as they went. Just then, two large mail vans pulled up, and their drivers got out and started delivering more mail to houses that had just had mail deliveries from the first two carriers. The drivers of the small trucks turned their vehicles around and drove back to the larger vans. The street was blocked  with mail trucks. All the carriers got out of their vehicles and yelled and waived their arms around with angry gestures. Then they all returned to their trucks and drove away. At this point neighbors came out of their homes and looked through their mail and traded mail with one another, as much of it had been delivered to the wrong addresses!

I can’t even begin to guess what was going on in this scenario.

Can you explain what was happening?  

 

 

The Baboon Congress

Derby Day!

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Today’s post comes from Verily Sherrilee

One of the bylaws at my workplace is that it be a fun place to work. Every summer we have a splendid program called “Summer of Love” with some afternoons off, food trucks out on the lawn, bands and a relaxed dress code.  We even have a party room in Building 2!   The rest of the year is sprinkled with other fun events and this week we celebrated the Kentucky Derby.

DerbyDay1To get ready for the event, my department decided that we wanted to make Derby Day hats for the celebration. Instead of our regular department meeting, we gathered in one of the rooms here with our hats, silk flowers, ribbons, toile and glue guns.  An hour later, we were transformed from everyday worker bees to queens (and kings) of the hive.

The party room was set up with a photo both, bean bag toss, beer pong and ping pong. We had mint juleps (a little strong – I could hardly get through just one), finger sandwiches and little pecan pie tartlets.  There was also a fun set-up for “betting” on the Derby horses.  The top ten forerunners each had a sheet with their picture, their stats, their jockey, etc.  Then they each had a big glass vase; there was one glass vase for all the long shots together as well.

DebryDay3 As we entered the party room, we each received two tickets to bet on our choice.  I bet one of my tickets on the long shots and my second on Destin, a three-year old gray born in Kentucky.  His jockey is Javier Castellano.  I chose him because I follow a science-blog done by a guy named Destin. If there had been a woman jockey I would have chosen her or if there had been a really interesting jockey name, I could have dumped a ticket in that vase.  So even though I was adorned like I was ready for a day at the races, I still placed my bet based on the name of a science jock.

How do you pick `em?

Music, Radio, The Baboon Congress

The Essential Albums

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Header photo by Will Folsom via Flickr.  License CC 2.0

Today’s post comes from Barbara in Robbindsale

The radio station The Current, KCMP (89.3 FM – MPR’s answer in 2005 to the fact that a hefty chunk of  its listeners were middle aging), has taken on compiling the 893 most essential albums of all time.

Back in mid-April they asked listeners to help by sending in their votes for individual listeners’ “top ten” albums.

What constitutes an Essential Album? According to Jim McGuinn, The Current’s program director, these are the albums that, if your house was on fire (and there was no such thing as an iPhone), you would run in and grab before they burned. They are the albums that may have changed your life, or perhaps that got you through important life changes; the albums you would want with you on a desert island along with that volleyball.

The station received around 8,000 votes from listeners all over the world – with over 14,000 albums receiving at least one vote.  Beginning Thursday morning May 5, the choices will be unveiled and played from 8 a.m. – 7 p.m. each weekday through next Thursday May 12, and over the weekend from 10 a.m. – 6 p.m. The Current expects to unveil album #1 around 7 p.m. on the 12th. I should add that this is during their spring pledge drive.

Even though The Current’s voting is over, let’s do a Baboon poll:

What are your top 5 – 10 essential albums?