Category Archives: The Baboon Congress

The Baboon Congress

The Cat Came Back…Not Quite The Very Next Day

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Today’s post comes from Anna.

We recently adopted a cat. Or at least we took her into our house and are feeding her and attempting to keep her entertained. She has adopted our daughter, but is not at all sure about the dog and thinks the guinea pig should either be food or a toy (but she can’t get to him, so is frustrated). She will demand affection from the other two humans as well, but Daughter is the clear favorite. Like many kitties, our little tuxedo cat is full of sass. She is as likely to chew on your feet as curl up next to you purring and will chase a laser pointer in circles and up the wall until your finger cramps from holding the pointer.

She is also an escape artist. Young, not-yet-spayed cat + spring time = cat who really wants to be outside. The first time she got out we didn’t even see it happen – we thought we had heard her indoors, but she showed up a couple days later, strolling in from the back yard with the dog as if it were expected that the cat would be outside at 5:30 am. She recently got out again, but this time I saw her mad dash – in fact, I was anticipating the mad dash and still couldn’t prevent it.

addie2Our dog, bless him, is old and blind, so it can take a bit for him to navigate up the back steps and into the house. I knew not to open the door until the last possible moment to let him back in (this sometimes means he runs into the partially open door before figuring out where the opening is) to minimize the cat escape opportunities. Cat had been lying in wait, occasionally going to the door and meowing plaintively, clearly feeling it was unfair that the abhorred canine got to go outside but she did not. As soon as the door opened, even with me attempting to block her route, out she zoomed to freedom. She led me on a fine game of tag around the perimeter of the house and then made off for parts west (across the street) where I lost sight of her. After an overnight in the wilds of South Minneapolis, she is back in the house acting as though it is our fault she is hungry and a bit dirty.

Prior to her walkabouts outside, she had mastered the fine art of hiding in the most out-of-the-way spots in the basement. She also thought that hiding between the dining room curtains and the windows was a fine bit of camouflage, but it was much easier to spot her silhouette there and she always seemed indignant that I had uncovered her coveted lair-on-the-window-ledge.

In fairness, she was a stray before we took her in; a friend-of-a-friend found her hanging around their hobby farm and brought her in from the cold. A move to the big city is not going to immediately tame that touch of wildness, nor dampen her desire to return to the great outdoors (if only temporarily). I can only hope that once we have her spayed that this instinct is at least reduced. (See above comment regarding hawks. And possibly a fox.)

It’s a pity that a Go Pro camera would weigh as much or more than she does – it would be an interesting exercise to strap one on her and see where she goes.

Where do you go when you want to escape daily life?

The Baboon Congress

Campy Summer Camp, Part II

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Today’s post comes from Clyde of Mankato

The Fusing of Two Memories

When I worked at Camp House, my room was right on the shore of Lake George. Many mornings when I got up very early for work, a mist hung over the water. I fell in love with the mist and often rowed a boat out into it to lie back and drift in a slow circle in the calm air.

Once when I was very young, our family on occasion went fishing on Lake McDougal near Isabella. The boat ramp was beside a resort. One early wet foggy morning a little girl in a nightgown spun slowly in the wet grass with her arms outstretched.

When I wrote my collection of stories about Northeastern Minnesota, the two memories fused into this sketch.

Called by the Mist 1928, August

Prudence Patience, never called Patty as she wishes, is summoned awake before the dawn. It is not her mother who summons, nor her father, nor her three older brothers. Nor a human voice at all, a summons only she can hear, even in her sleep.

She pulls a long gingham dress over long blond hair and over her night dress. Next are wool mittens, knit by her other grandmother, not the grandmother who owns this lake resort managed by her parents. Next is her hat, her hat, with a big flower on the side but which she wears to the front, given to her by a guest in June. But no shoes—Prudence Patience is not a willing wearer of shoes in the summer.

In her bare feet she steps in silence down the stairs of the main lodge to the side door, the hinges of which creak when opened. Prudence Patience, a small nine-year-old, a “mere lady slipper of a girl” her father calls her, can ease through the door before the hinges reach their point of protest. “Mere lady slipper of a girl” is her father’s tease about her wildness as much as her slim body. Next, before she steps out into the cold northern air which attracts their guests, she has to slink through the screen door, which is below her parents’ bedroom. She knows how to grasp the spring to stop its elastic screech and how to ease the screen door back into its frame. On the lawn, she turns and walks backwards to see the tracks her dragging feet channel in the heavy dew. She knows her route so well she can do it backwards without turning her head. When she reaches the dock, her skirts are soaked, for which she has been often chided this summer and will be again before the mother and children move back into town for school—the school, where the mist will not abide.

It is the mist suspended between lake and clouded night sky which called her awake and invited her into its otherworld of no dimension.

Prudence Patience chooses the smallest rowboat, as she always does, for which she has been often chided and will be again, not for choosing the smallest rowboat but for using a rowboat alone. With short strokes of the oars she rows out far enough to be lost from the shore. She lifts the right oar into the boat and uses both arms to give several hard pulls on the left oar. The boat spins counterclockwise. She lifts the second oar into the boat and moves to the front seat to lie down in the dew with her head below one gunwale and her bare feet hanging over the other. In silence the boat drifts its slow rotation in the sodden air and mirror water.

Creatures of water live in the mist, she imagines, but she does not imagine their shape. The creatures of the mist are indistinguishable from the mist. Creatures of water live in the lake and are indistinguishable from the water. She wants the boat to ever spin, the mist to ever hover, the wind to never breathe, sounds to never speak. She wants to never leave here, to ever be here with dew and mist and lake and fog and rain.

The mist enshrouds her by condensing on on her clothes and hair. The mist condenses in her eyebrows and runs down her temples into her ears. O, let it fill her ears and melt into her mind! She will not move and break the spell! Her hands loll down beside the seat touching nothing. The mist condenses in her long pale eyelashes. O, let it run into her eyes like tears! She will not move and break the spell! She will dissolve into water. She will join the creatures of the mist and be unseen. She commands silence upon the lake, no sound of screen door or human voice or creature which will reveal east from west or south from north.

As she blends into the mist, she forgets to hold her spell to hold the silence. A loon vibrates its plaint from their nesting ground in the reeds near her dock. She exhales. She forgets to breathe in! Another loon calls from a different direction. The spell is saved! She is lost again!

She breathes in and surrenders to the empty moment. A fish jumps by her head, telling her nothing, nothing at all.

She drifts on in her circle. Or does not. It no longer matters. Time tendrils into the mist. Time condenses on her skin. Time drips from her feet. Mist and time condense in her eyes blurring form. From the stern of the boat a blue heron clatters its beak. She is indistinguishable from the mist! Being of the mist, she feels not cold, she feels not wet.

The mist and time condensing in her eyes cannot shield her from the increasing light. The screen door slams! Her father calls, “Little Lady Slipper, come back off the lake.”

It has ended. He can see her. The mist has arisen and will return as rain.

In the lodge her mother tells her to get out of her wet clothes and hurry back to eat. As punishment, she will help with the laundry. She always helps with the laundry. At breakfast Prudence Patience sits in silence, regretting her return to solid form, coddled and teased by her family, who will again laugh at her if she again tells them she became water and chose to live with the creatures of the mist and not the creatures of the lake.

©2016 Clyde Birkholz

Is the summer you a creature of sunshine or of the fog, dew, mist, and rain?

 

 

Food, The Baboon Congress

Taco Confundo

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Today’s post comes from Ben Hain.

I don’t understand the popularity of late night Taco Bell. I mean I’m right there in line too, Just why is everybody else here??
What is the appeal of Taco Bell late at night??

It can’t be just the food is it?

Dairy Queen is open right next door and I should’ve gone there! But I thought I needed something a little more nutritious than ice cream. So it’s 10 o’clock on a Thursday night and I am the ninth car in line. We’ve been here at 11:30 at night and been the 12th car in line. And the parking lot is full of cars too. I don’t understand –what is the appeal?

And why hasn’t the local franchise owner opened another one of these restaurants?

Rochester, a town of 100,000 people, has two Taco Bell’s; One out north and one downtown. One night Kelly got so fed up with the line at this one she went to the north one.

And there was a line there too!

I drove by Snappy Stop, but as I’ve had that a few times lately, well, I guess I was in the mood for Taco Bell. But there wasn’t a line at Snappy Stop. (Anybody know what Snappy Stop is? It’s just a drive-through burger place in a little building about 10’ x 20’. Hamburgers and hot dogs is all they do. Oh, and ice cream sandwiches. And their hamburgers are really good. Like Five Guys good.)

I dictated this while waiting in line. I’m still the seventh car in line at Taco Bell… Shoulda gone to Snappy Stop. Or Dairy Queen.

Seventeen minutes later I have my food. I could have gone home. But this chicken quesarito was really good.

I don’t understand.

What don’t you understand?

Family, The Baboon Congress

Campy Summer Camp, Part I

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Today’s post comes from Clyde of Mankato

I am surprised by how often summer camp appears in movies. As a result I wonder if summer camp is a more common experience than I realize. Of course, here in the Midwest it is tied to church camps. How common is it on the coasts, in the South, on the prairie? I don’t know.

My favorite movie summer camp is very campy indeed, Addams Family Values. What a delight Christina Ricci is as Wednesday. “You sent us to camp. They made us sing.” In one of Ron Howard’s first movies, The Courtship of Eddy’s Father, he plays a boy who is sent to camp, falls in love, and runs away, which covers a few cliches. I suppose we could include Dirty Dancing in that list of movies. I had a few friends at the University of Chicago who had Borscht Belt experiences.

One summer camp is tied into my life, Camp House, near Brimson. In my childhood it was owned by the D.M. & I.R. Railway Employees Association. I was sent there in about fourth or fifth grade. I remember it cost only $12 a week as a result of funding by the railroad. I did not like it. There is a picture of me with my mother on the Sunday visit. I am not going to share that photo. I do not look happy. You see, my mother told me that I was staying for a second week. Somehow half of the $12 was being paid by the railroad or Employees Association. I do not think my mother could turn down a bargain. My sister attended as a camper once or twice.

Oddly, I returned the summer before my senior year to work as an assistant to the maintenance man, my first job. About him and that experience I could tell a few tales. My sister was a counselor during the four weeks of girls camping that summer. It was special to have her there. We were very close back then. We had many late night talks. I was surprised then and am surprised now that my father released me from helping with the haying. I made up for it the next summer when he went to Michigan for work and I did the farm alone.

The winter after I worked there, the Employees Association was disbanded and the camp was sold. It became a Lutheran camp and still is. My children attended it two or three summers and loved it. My daughter has gone family camping there twice with her children. Three generations are thus tied to Camp House. For three years my daughter served on the board that oversees Camp House and other Lutheran camps.

A common sub-genre of movies is about camp counselors, often as gathering a few years later. I have only seen part of one of those movies. It struck no chord with me.

In the header photo, taken about 1955 by my mother, the building farthest the right on the lake is where I slept for ten weeks. Campy Summer Camp, Part II will reference that building.

Did you attend a summer camp, wish you had or wish you had not?

The Baboon Congress, Words

On Being an Expert

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Header image from the public domain; source: Andrea Rauch

Today’s post is from Chris in Owatonna

Most of us go through life developing talents, skills, and interests that add to our enjoyment of life or pay our expenses. Some are happy doing relatively simple jobs, happy with their high school diploma or G.E.D., happy to be in the middle of the bell curve of expertise.

But some of us strive to become an expert at one thing: a field of study in college or beyond, a sport, a career, a hobby, a craft, an artistic discipline. Some earn a degree, or a license, or a certificate, or validation from adoring fans if they become rock stars or award-winning actors or world-class athletes.

The other group of strivers usually become experts by default. Often it’s simply for the love of the subject.  Who doesn’t know someone who’s a walking encyclopedia on a certain subject, like a woodworker who can build furniture as good as the masters of centuries past? Or the good cook who tried new recipes, developed new ideas, found a passion for feeding people and then opened their own restaurant without even knowing there is such an institution as the Culinary Institute of America?

Intentional or not, I seem to have earned my expert stripe in an area I hadn’t thought possible until about six years ago–writing fiction.

Yep. Fiction. A novel in fact.

“Big deal,” you say.

And you’re right. There are millions of people in the world who have written a complete book but aren’t entitled to call themselves experts.

“Why?” I hear you ask.

Because they haven’t published the book.

For better or worse, I took that step and published my novel! For people to actually purchase and read. I still shake my head in wonderment as to how and why I came to this point in my life.

I didn’t earn an MFA or Literature degree. I didn’t take master class after master class and earn validation from other experts (most far with far more expertise than I’ll ever have).  I didn’t even answer an ad in the back of a tabloid and get an online degree from “How ta Write Good University.” Nevertheless, I’ve earned the right to  pretend to be an expert in the field of fiction writing because I crossed the line from talking about it and dreaming about it to doing it.

My novel Castle Danger is now available in print for order through your favorite local bookstore ( my preferred  way to purchase books), Booklocker.com, the Amazon and Barnes and Noble websites, or the trunk of my car. And I am available for book clubs, bar mitzvahs, coffee klatches, neighborhood block parties, or hardware store grand openings. 🙂

Now that I’ve written a novel I suppose I’m qualified to teach classes or give interviews  on “how to write a novel.” Strangers may regard me with a modicum of admiration or envy or jealousy or dubiousness (THAT guy wrote a novel?? Sheesh!) But I don’t feel any more an expert on writing than I did before I decided to put the darn thing out into the world for public consumption. I wonder if other experts with real degrees, validation, or money in the bank earned from their expert endeavors feel like a true expert. And can anyone ever know everything there is to know about a subject or field of study? I doubt it.

So my question for Babooners is: In what subject, job skill, artistic or athletic endeavor, or hidden talent have you become a de facto expert? Meaning no official recognition by governing bodies, licensing boards, piles of money in a Swiss bank account, or public acclaim and accolades?

 

The Baboon Congress, Words

Indie Bookstore Day

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Header photo by By Rcawsey – Own work, Public Domain,

Today’s post comes from Barbara in Robbinsdale.

For all you baboon readers who still read books with pages to turn, this weekend is your chance to celebrate your favorite independent bookstore. The Second Annual Indie Bookstore Day is happening on April 30 around the country.

Many folks are lamenting the trend that seems to be continuing – more people buying online from Amazon while even large chains like Borders go under, and Barnes and Noble closes, among others, its Mankato store (if I remember correctly a comment from Clyde).

This article from last spring’s first Indie Bookstore Day displays photos of indie bookstores all over Minnesota:

I’ve posted below some of the metro area’s independent bookstores, and a link to their IBD celebration info:

  • My personal favorite is Birchbark Books – 2002 23rd Av. S., Mpls. – because I used to work there.
  • But here’s an independent that I haven’t discovered yet:   Moon Palace Books – 2820 E. 33rd St., Mpls.
  • And there’s Boneshaker Books – 2002 23rd Av. S., Mpls. – “The shop specializes in progressive and radical literature & mdah; and children’s books. It also houses the Women’s Prison Book Project, which provides books to inmates across the country.”  I was not able to find anything on their website about IBD, but they celebrated last year.
  • And my favorite kids bookstore, Wild Rumpus, 2720 W. 43rd St., Mpls .
  • Magers & Quinn (new and used) Books – 3038 Hennepin Av. S., Mpls.
  • In St. Paul, there’s Garrison’s store, Common Good Books, 38 S. Snelling.
  • Subtext Books – 6 West Fifth Street6 West 5th Street, St. Paul.
  • The Red Balloon, 891 Grand Av., St. Paul.
  • Duluth has Fitger’s, which is as close as I can get to Mahtawa, Cynthia. It specializes in regional Northeastern Minnesota books.
  • A little farther afield, here’s an article about shops in Portland, OR, for Steve.

(Wes, I couldn’t remember which Ohio city you reside in.)

Of course, I’ve just scratched the surface, and I apologize ahead of time if I’ve left out your favorite independent bookstore. (Please add your favorites in your comments.) There are great used book stores all over, like Midway and 6th Chamber in St. Paul. Rochester and Mankato each have one.

What was the last book you purchased, whatever kind of book it was?

History, The Baboon Congress

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?

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Header image by Tim Evanson , CC BY-SA 2.0

Today’s post comes from Steve Grooms

Well, you don’t really have to guess, for you get to choose any dinner guest in the world, living or dead. Which person would you enjoy meeting informally, entertaining them in your own home?

Maybe there is someone from history you always wanted to answer a question.  Invite William Shakespeare for dinner, serve him some ale and then ask, “Hey, Bill, I’ve always wanted to ask: who really wrote your stuff?”

But be careful. In 1963 I asked former president Harry Truman a question about his decision to drop the atomic bomb (specifically, the second bomb). He blew a gasket. After reflection, I would do that one differently.

I’ve been thinking about whom I would invite to dinner. In April of 1962 John F. Kennedy hosted a White House dinner for Nobel Prize winners. Kicking the evening off, Kennedy said: “I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered at the White House – with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.”

Since hearing that, I’ve fantasized about dining with Thomas Jefferson. Given my history, that might be a dangerous choice, for I’d be tempted to ask the author of the Declaration of Independence why he slept with his slave.

That’s okay. I have other choices. Sticking to presidents for the moment, I would pass on Theodore Roosevelt (who was too full of himself) but would love an evening with his nephew, Franklin. To make FDR feel at home I might add his chubby buddy Winston Churchill. (And since this is a fantasy I don’t have to worry about how I could afford Winston’s bar tab.)

My first choice among presidents would be Abraham Lincoln. They say that Lincoln was a terrific storyteller who often embarrassed his stuffy cabinet members with stories that were funny and occasionally a bit earthy. And if Lincoln was coming to dinner, I’d sure want to invite Martin Luther King. I’ll bet they would hit it off.

Maybe you fear you’d be intimidated by hosting a great person. Not to worry. Invite Pope Francis. He seems like a great guy, someone who is approachable. He wouldn’t gripe if you served him less than a gourmet meal. He’d love a tuna casserole. In fact, he’d probably try to wash your feet.

Or would you prefer to host a small group?

Think about an evening spent in the company of Groucho Marx, Paul Wellstone, Pete Seeger and Walt Whitman. Or how about Eleanor Roosevelt, Abigail Adams and Molly Ivins? I don’t think the conversation would drag!

So . . . who’s coming to dinner?

The Baboon Congress, Travel

The Day of the Wild Dogs

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Today’s post comes from Verily Sherrilee

The safari experience in South Africa is amazing. At most camps there are two “runs” a day, one right at dawn and one as night falls. They pile you into large stadium seating jeeps and head off into the bush, complete with blankets and sometimes hot bricks for your feet. The drivers and guides know a tremendous amount about the animals in each of their reserves, including where the “cut line” is – the seemingly invisible boundary of each park.  They constantly radio back and forth with other jeep drivers about what animals they’ve seen and where they are.  It’s quite a ride.

Million2

On the last day of my trip back in 2007, the client wasn’t feeling well and decided she didn’t want to get up for the last run before we had to pack up and head back to Johannesburg. That left just me and the program Account Executive on the jeep. As we were heading out, our driver Million said that he had heard some chatter the day before from another reserve just to the north of our reserve that they had seen wild dogs. Solee Wild dogs hadn’t been seen for a couple of months on “our side” of the cut line but did we want to take a chance?  Million was very clear that #1, we’d have to hightail it up to the cut line in order to make it back in time for breakfast and #2, we absolutely could not cross the cut line so if the wild dogs were in the next park then we’d be out of luck. Account Exec and I both agreed we should go for it.

WildDog12

Luck was with us. We actually saw some animals on the way and then the whole pack of wild dogs was on our side of the cut line. As this wasn’t enough luck, the pack had quite a few pups. Million parked the jeep about 20 feet away and we sat still and quiet for over an hour, watching the dogs come and go from the clearing.  Some of the pups were very curious and advanced pretty closely on the jeep. All of my pictures were taken without a view finder as I’d dropped the camera the night before and damaged it; I just kept holding it out and clicking away.  My luck continued to hold as I managed to get several fairly decent shots that morning.

We practically flew back to the lodge and tried SO hard not to gloat to the client about our morning’s experience. I don’t know how successful we were.

When has luck been on your side?

The Baboon Congress

Time to Play

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Today’s post comes from Renee in North Dakota

  • Play is repeated, incompletely functional behavior differing from more serious versions structurally, contextually, or ontogenetically, and initiated voluntarily when the animal is in a relaxed or low stress setting. VanFleet, et al., 2010 p. 7

It has been a discouraging winter here, especially for State employees, what with the oil bust, lowered revenue, and budget cuts. My next door neighbor in the office is an extremely funny woman and we manage to lighten the atmosphere when we can.  We have fun playfully harassing the construction workers who have been our companions for three months. My coworker is pretty impulsive, and I have stopped her just in the nick of time from putting her footprint in wet cement patches the construction guys had put down to plug some holes in the floor. I also convinced her to not draw hearts and smarmy messages on the foreman’s truck windows in red lipstick, after he let us know his wife was a really jealous type. Everyone else at work has been sort of gloomy, until this week.

20160421_085453

Throughout the year, the five floors of our agency take turns having fundraisers in aid of the Agency Social Committee.The money helps pay for our annual Christmas party as well as funeral flowers for deceased  relatives. This week, 2nd floor staff raised money (I guess extorting would be a better word) by raiding offices and filling them with a flock of five foot tall, inflatable flamingos. You have to pay $5.00 to have them removed. You can recommend others to get “flocked” once you have been flocked. I had to ride in the elevator a couple of times this week with a flamingo remover, four fully inflated flamingos, and a couple of child clients who believe that our agency is a pretty magical place.

I observe play most days in my work as a play therapist, and much of the time it is pretty grim business. I know it is therapeutic for children to run over abusive parental doll figures with the toy police cars,  but I am exposed to this stuff all the time and it can be dispiriting  to watch on a daily basis.  It was gratifying to see my coworkers start to get out of the doldrums and really play with the flamingos. We know there is only so much levity you can display at an agency that provides addiction and mental health services, but the clients seem to enjoy seeing the flamingos get moved around. By Wednesday my coworkers were giving the flock costumes. My office neighbor and I gave one a head scarf and reading glasses and named her Lena. Another one was dressed in surgical masks and christened “Dr. Who”. Yet another was dressed up like a Ninja Turtle, the purple one whose name I forget.

Play is observable all around us. My terrier is always ready to play, even if it is not the way I would want her to play, as you can see from the photo. How fun! She steals a roll of toilet paper and then mom chases her all over the house!  A flock of crows in the neighborhood starts playing at 5:30 am, chasing and careening and cawing. It serves some purpose, like all play does. I just wish they were quieter. 5th floor denizens at my workplace were giggling over their fundraiser for next month. I wonder how they can top the flamingos. I hope it allows for continued play.

 

What can top a flamingo?

The Baboon Congress

Dreaming in Small Dimension

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Today’s post comes from Clyde of Mankato.

I was born too late. Just too late. Too late for the “Tiny House” craze. It all starts with my childhood and ends with my daughter.

My childhood had two tiny houses in it, more like cabins, but they could have been homes. Even then I dreamed that one day I would live in a small one-room house. I did not think that I would meet a wonderful big city girl who had no such dream.

The first of the cabins in my childhood was along the otherwise uninhabited road to our farm. It belonged to an old man who lived in town. His outhouse did not bother me; our house, at that time, had only an outhouse. What happened to it, you ask? His grandson tore it down and built a large 1970’s era split-level house. I cannot blame him. It has a view of Lake Superior from its higher floors. (The header drawing is of that cabin.)

The second of the cabins had only one twelve-by-fifteen room. “The Shack” we called it, built by my brother and a friend on the edge of our fields 600 yards from our house. My brother and his friend went off to the Navy, thus ceding use of the cabin to me and my best friend, the younger brother of the man who helped my brother build The Shack. Dennis and I often slept there, after peddling into town to buy a load of sugar for our night’s pleasure. It had no outhouse, simply lots of nearby brush. What happened to it, you ask? In reality nothing, by which I mean it has melted itself into the ground. In my imagination it is the primary setting of my second novel. However, for the demands of the fiction, I tore it down and replaced it with a modern small home, but not a tiny house.

Our house on the North Shore was small, barely 1400 square feet. We did not find it lacking, in part because of our view over Lake Superior. Today we live in an apartment of 650 square feet, which we find cozy and perfect. When Sandy and I watch the TV shows on tiny houses, she always exclaims how small they are and how she could not live in one. I always dream the tiny house is mine. My daughter and her husband have plans to build a tiny house as their only home when they retire.

The tiny house fad, it seems to me, says something about our culture. We rush to the extremes: 4000 square feet or 400 square feet. Why not something of 900 to 1200 square feet, for example?

Could you live in a tiny house, say 400-500 square feet?