Category Archives: The Baboon Congress

The Baboon Congress

Gratitude Letter

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Today’s post comes from Barbara in Robbinsdale.

One of our regular Trail Baboon readers and participants, Plain Jane, offered a comment on Saturday that has stayed with me all weekend.  She mentioned how wonderful it was to receive a written thank you from someone she had helped out in the past. Here’s most of what she wrote:

Fifteen years ago, Danny had returned to the Twin-Cities after finishing his degree at UCLA’s film school. The economy had tanked, and, of course, even if it hadn’t, the degree Danny had obtained wouldn’t necessarily make him a shoo-in for most job openings. I took pity on him, and offered him a job doing data entry into a computer system. He worked for me several months on a well-defined project. It was, at best, a menial job, but it provided him some income, a daily lunch, and probably most importantly, the chance to get out of his parents’ house.

His letter today took me by complete surprise. He has lived in Seattle since 2010, and I have had no contact with him since then.

Here’s his closing paragraph: “Margaret, when I reflect on the people I’ve been lucky to know during my life, you are unquestionably one of them. Please know that I will never forget your kindness to me.”

I’m touched, and gratified that some small gesture on my part has made a difference in Danny’s life. Be kind, you never know what small effort on your part will make a difference in someone’s life.

Every day we make hundreds of small decisions… most of which don’t seem that they will make any real impact on the world. At some point, though, we have each performed a kindness for which someone else is very grateful.

And in turn – we may each be thankful to someone else for an act of kindness – it might be something the person is not even aware of. When my son was in 6th grade, his experiences caused me to recall many details about my own 6th grade experiences. I ended up writing a long letter relating these memories to my 6th grade teacher, who had helped me out when I was the new girl at school. She was so moved by the letter that she eventually called me (being unable to write at that point), and we carried on a Christmas-card correspondence for years.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if everyone who has performed an act of kindness could know the impact it has made?

Recall an act of kindness you have performed or received that is worthy of a gratitude letter. 

 

The Baboon Congress, The Future

Winds of Change

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Header image by reynermedia on flickr / creative commons 2.0

Today’s post comes from Renee in North Dakota

If you believe everything you hear from Moody’s and Forbes, North Dakota is rolling up the sidewalks and blowing away. That isn’t quite the case, but some people have lost jobs and are leaving the area. Conservative legislators are talking about State agencies needing to make cuts due to decreased tax revenue. (All they will have to do is not fill all the unfilled positions in State Government and they can make up the shortfall). The lines are still long in Walmart, though, and traffic can still be a problem in town.

Two weeks ago, our County Commission approved a conditional permit for the construction of a wind farm south of town between Dickinson and Schefield. A week later, the same County Commissioners ordered a moratorium on the approval of any other wind farms. The rationale was to see how the wind farm company treats the landowners and the communities that could be affected by the turbines.

The wind farm is a very controversial topic in our county. A few months ago, this same company tried to get a permit to construct a wind farm just east of Dickinson. Those turbines would have almost surrounded two small communities. There was such division and strife and upset among the people who would have been affected that the County Commission denied the permit. They reasoned that community peace and harmony were more important than the revenue that the company would bring to land owners and the county.  The land owners in favor of the wind farm reasoned that they should be able to do what they want with their land, and what right had the County Commission to tell them otherwise. There are fewer land owners involved in the wind farm that was just approved, but letters to the editor from those impacted indicated that division and strife is happening in this case, too.

The first modern wind turbines in our county were put in place by the Holy Sisters at the Benedictine Priory east of town. One of the nuns was an engineer who reasoned that if they could supply their own electricity they could save money heating and cooling their enormous convent. She designed and managed the construction of much of the system. The Sacred Heart turbines are smaller than the ones that are being built now.  I tend to think of wind energy as “good” energy, making less of an impact on the environment, but the controversy in the county has made me see that having a bunch of wind turbines on your property could be a real problem. I guess that they are quite noisy, they cast shadows that can be visually distressing, and they can be hazardous to migratory birds. Some of the landowners may have a wind turbine as close as 1700 feet from their front door.  It also seems that wind energy companies are no more ethical or easier to work with than are oil companies. This is what the County Commissioners wanted to assess before they approved any more wind energy production.

It is hard to know what attitude to take regarding energy production. Oil pipelines leak. Oil tanker cars on trains explode. Fracking can contaminate the ground water. Coal plants destroy the atmosphere, and now wind farms cause division and strife in communities. The City of Dickinson just got an award from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government for its infrastructure prioritization policy for municipal building projects during our recent oil boom. Projects concerning life safety received the highest priority while those that affected all citizens and projects funded by outside grants came next. Someone made some good decisions at the right time, and I guess we will be ready when the boom comes again. It remains to be seen if our county becomes covered with wind turbines. I am glad I don’t have to make that decision.

Which way does the wind blow?

The Baboon Congress

ten event tim

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today’s post comes from tim

i was out walking the other day with the dogs and remembered that the spot where i was walking is the spot where as a 14 year old steve gross and i ran full speed in a moment of youthful exhunerance to celebrate life and the moment at hand. steve was a great track star and was the anchor leg on the 440 relay. on this particular day i beat him because i had the gods of physical nature allowing me to open it up to my full potential . i was a baseball guy and track always looked like a lot of work the people in track enjoyed it but it still looked like a lot of work. baseball was skill stuff with a theme and i loved baseball. i realized that in track i could do some things well but never the best in the world. there were faster guys, stronger guys, guys who would always be better than me at a particular event but what dawns on me the other morning is that i am a decathlete. jim thorpe in the 30’s , bob richards in the 60s bruce jenner in the 70’s all did it and i loved them for it. the decathalon is a series of events that add up to the best all around athelete possible. i was recalling the great feeling of being able to run so well on that day. i knw was quick but didnt realize i could run fast enough to beat steve ever…

The decathlon is a two-day miniature track meet designed to ascertain the sport’s best all-around athlete. Within its competitive rules, each athlete must sprint for 100 meters, long jump, heave a 16-pound shotput, high jump and run 400 meters — all in that very order — on the first day. On the second day the athlete runs a 110 meter hurdle race over 42 inch barriers, hurls the discus, pole vaults, tosses a javelin and, at the end of the contest, races over 1500 meters, virtually a mile.

my aha moment while out walking the dogs was that i am not a sprinter or a distance runner or a discus thrower or a high jumper but i am better than ok at all those things and when factored into the equation in the big picture i was a great combination of all the above guy. so it is with life. i am not the best at anything but i am pretty good at a bunch of different things. i have been asked why i dont focus on one area and become an expert at it and i always reply that i just cant to it. i need to check out all the options. i know a lot about a little and a little about a lot. i hope to be able to make that work for me in the overall big picture of life.

when i was young it had to do with math equations, bike riding and being able to hit a baseball, as i grew older it switched to being able to perform expected tasks for the people i worked with and trying to find a way to better myself in areas that interested me for enjoyment and goalsetting.
as i settle into my pattern i hope i have a program set up where i can maintain the required bobbing and weaving and find a way to make the world a better place along the way for myself and others.

if i can stay one step ahead of the devil and find a little joy along the way it will be a good race.my decathalon has less to do with atheleticn prowess and more to do with making other aspects of life work.

what are your goals for 2016?

The Baboon Congress

If They Don’t Like You, It ‘s a Good Thing

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Today’s post comes from Jim Tjepkema

I was told at the start of the school year by a person offering advice to substitute teachers that “it’s a good thing if the students don’t like you”. The person who said this was a school principal who thought the main role of a sub was to maintain strict order in the classroom. During my years as a sub teacher there were many times when I had my patience stretched thin. However, I was more or less able to avoid the heavy-handed approach suggested by the advice from that principal.

I thought I was prepared to do substitute teaching because I had been involved in helping with programs at a small private school. I was wrong. My first day of substitute teaching in a grade school was a disaster. A very mischievous boy took over the classroom and led the other kids in creating problems during most of the entire school day. From that experience I found out that I needed to learn a lot more about how to maintain order in a classroom.

One of the most important things I learned was that I should immediately confront trouble makers, like the one who gave me a bad time on my first day. Many teachers told me that if a kid will not behave I should send him or her to the principal’s office and I did follow this advice on some occasions. When you have more than one problem kid in a class it is not so easy to get things under control. One time I was asked to sub in a classroom filled with a small group of kids that were all troublemakers. I had to put up with them because I wasn’t ready to send all of them to the office. Another time I asked the principal to come to the classroom to get a very bored bunch of kids to calm down after they had given me a hard time on the previous day.

There were some other tricks I learned such as always sharpening pencils for grade school kids. If you let them do it, you will have a long line of kids waiting to sharpen pencils including some pencils that don’t need sharpening. I was willing to put up with a little bad behavior although I did tell my classes that they shouldn’t do anything that would prevent the students that wanted to study from studying. I remember the many very tedious days I spent sitting in classrooms when I was a student and had some sympathy for kids who were having trouble doing what is expected of them as students.

Once I made the mistake of asking for help from the principal who told me it would be good if the kids didn’t like me. She handled the situation by screaming at the students using a very loud angry voice. That is something I wouldn’t do, although it is a technique that can bring a classroom under control. To top off that bad situation, she also screamed at me. I did make the mistake a few times of being too hard on sensitive kids and I regret doing that. For the most part I was able to develop a good relationship with the students, even the difficult ones. I liked them and they liked me.

Do you have any advice for substitutes?

The Baboon Congress

2015 Was the Year That …

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Today’s post comes from Barbara in Robbinsdale

There was a fun article in the Dec. 27 Mpls. Star Tribune about the eventual demise of the annual Christmas/Holiday Letter, since so many people are getting a play-by-play look at each other’s lives on Facebook. “Status updates may have removed all the surprise about what the children are up to, but they have all of the shelf life of a brown banana.” The writer, Paul John Scott, appreciated one of those letters he still receives, from a person who “has managed to boil his family intel down to four lines of text…”

I sent out the cheery Christmas letter that included all the fun stuff (and for each item below, I’ve left out the sad or stressful parts) from 2015:

  • trip to France, and later to California
  • singing and dance events
  • Husband’s finding a Mathnasium gig to fill the extra hours in his week
  • Nephew & Family’s visit after Christmas (they’ve taken a side trip out of town for a couple of days, which is the only reason I’m writing this)

If I had to condense it to one sentence, I think it would be:  2015 was the year we first traveled to France. (Alternately: 2015 was when we finally got the ping pong table out of the living room.)

If you were to sum up 2015 with a sentence about the  most important thing that happened in your life, what would it say?

Or if you’d like to muse on the year that’s just arrived:

What would you like to write next December as a one sentence wrap of 2016?

 

Stories, The Baboon Congress

The Egg Carton

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Today’s post comes from Verily Sherrilee.

I found the egg carton today.

About 30 years ago I began throwing a holiday party – a silly gift exchange. I’d been to one at a co-worker’s and thought it was a lot of fun. Then 28 years ago I met Alan; he’d been hired as the loss prevention specialist at my company. He had just moved back to the Twin Cities with Julie and their three daughters so I invited them to the party that year. After a lot of gift swapping, Alan got stuck with a red plastic camping egg carton. As I was cleaning up I found it stuck back behind a couch cushion.

This began a 28-year campaign of dumping the egg carton back on each other. EggCarton1 It’s been delivered in a box of flowers, left in an Easter basket, sent to an office via a software company in Boston, buried in an ice lantern, left under a mattress, in the dog food barrel, left in the laundry room of a new house. It’s even been to Sweden and Switzerland!

Twenty-eight years ago it was just a prank; I didn’t know at the time that it would also be the beginning of a wonderful, life-changing friendship. Alan and Julie are kind, generous people, sharing their lives with me and Young Adult all these years. We spend our holidays with them and it’s been a joy to see their three girls grow up, get married and start families of their own.

I had a full house at this year’s party and I was pretty sure I would be in possession of the egg carton by the end of the night, even after I frisked Alan and Julie at the door. The last two weeks have been spent poking into cabinets, opening drawers, checking under the sofa, even looking into the dog food barrel again. This morning I took all the ornaments off the tree and as I pulled the lights off, I found a package wrapped in green paper and “decorated” with greenery boughs – the egg carton!

I’ve now sent off the obligatory “You Rat!” text and am busy thinking up how I can dump the carton on them!

Do you have a “new year” ritual?

Family, The Baboon Congress

Tomte Trouble

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Today’s post comes from Renee in North Dakota.

I have always liked Scandinavian design in textiles and folk art, and I often shop at The Stabo, a Scandinavian store in Bismarck and Fargo. My daughter finds this embarrassing. “Mom, you aren’t Norwegian. You’re Dutch and German! Why do you shop there? Why do you like that stuff” I tell her that my ancestors are the people of Beowulf, and that something in the designs speaks to deep yearnings that must come from beyond the mists of the long distant past (well, not really, but if she wants to think I’m weird, I’ll play along).

My daughter takes particular exception to the tomte I have purchased-figures in different shapes made out of wool with luxurious beards and red hats. These are made from the wool of sheep raised on the Swedish island of Gotland. I keep them, along with a couple of Yule goats and straw girl, on top of our media cabinet in the living room all year long. Daughter warns me that I am to stow the tomte and goats in a closet the first time she ever brings a beau home to meet the family. I ask “What if he is Norwegian or Swedish?” She says it doesn’t matter, and the weirdness must be hid in favor of good first impressions.

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Imagine my surprise this Christmas when I received this hefty fellow from my daughter. Now, I like tomte, but this guy is almost too much, even for me. Unlike the others, he has hands and thumbs, and I blame him for the dishwasher breaking down after Christmas. I didn’t put out the rice pudding, you see, so I suppose he let me know his disappointment by preventing the water from draining out. I mentioned this to daughter and she said “Good. Serves you right”.

I don’t think I need any more tomte after this. I have no more room, in any case. I am touched that daughter purchased something for me that I like but that she professes to loathe. Maybe something in the design speaks to a deep yearning in her. If so, the weirdness may continue long after I am dead and gone.

What do you love that others can’t abide?

The Baboon Congress

A Festival of Four Pageants

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Today’s post comes from Renee in North Dakota

“Are you ready for Christmas?” This has been the standard greeting between folks out here lately, replacing “How about those Bison?”, or  What do you think about the weather?”   In my world, being ready for Christmas means that the lefse is made the weekend before Thanksgiving, all the baking and cleaning are done soon after, and the house is decorated by December 1.

This year, none of this happened, and the Tuesday before Christmas my home was not decorated, the presents had not been wrapped, the tree was in a box in the garage, and I hadn’t done much, if any, baking or cleaning. Since the first week of December, husband and I have either attended or participated in four Christmas “pageants” that have taken us away from home and  complicated or enriched our lives, depending on our moods at any given time.

Pageant One was the traditional Concordia Christmas Concert in Moorhead to which we wore our Norwegian sweaters and heard lovely and perfect choral singing.  It didn’t take too much out of us, except that it took us away from home for a weekend and we couldn’t do much Christmas preparation. I managed to bake 12 dozen cookies for a cookie exchange at work, but that was about all I got done.

Pageant Two took place as week later in a much more modest venue on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Here we helped distribute Christmas presents and food to about 500 people at a mission called the Dream Center. We played music with our Native friends and I helped read the Christmas story at the gatherings. I don’t know how relevant they found the story, given that they are struggling with poverty, homelessness, and hunger, but the children loved the gift boxes and the elders loved the gift bags and hams that were given out. This took us away from home for four more days, and no Christmas preparations took place at home.

Pageant Three took place one week after the Pine Ridge trip in the Sodbuster Room at the local Elks Lodge for my agency Christmas party. In addition to being a member of the Social Committee responsible for planning this soiree, I played my bass guitar in our agency  band, and this, of course, meant evening rehearsals that also kept us from making preparations at home.  We played everything from Stephen Foster (Hard Times Come Again No More) to Mavis Staples (I Belong to the Band) to Bachman Turner Overdrive (Taking Care of Business), with a Diana Ross medley somewhere in the middle.

Two days after the party, we played in our church bell choir for both Sunday morning services and at an afternoon Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols service. I was asked by the bell choir director to design the bulletins, and this, of course took me away from Christmas preparations at home.

Well, Christmas is upon us. Our children arrived and they decorated the tree and the house. They helped shop, and planned and will help cook Christmas dinner.  The house is clean enough, and I finally got to sleep past 7:00 a few mornings this week. I am grateful that we are safe and together, and I guess that is the most important thing.

Merry Christmas, Baboons. Now, if I could only get “Stop in the Name of Love” out of my head, I could say that life was almost perfect.

Describe your role in a memorable Christmas pageant.

 

Family, Stories, The Baboon Congress

Daddy, We Need to Talk

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Today’s post comes from Steve and Molly Grooms

I think every parent dreads the day when a child asks “that question.” I sure did. And yet it is almost inevitable that some day your child will come to you to ask the question you have avoided for years. And you can’t avoid it any longer.

“Daddy, I have a big question. You have to tell me: Is Santa real?”

This crisis of faith occurred for me when I was in fourth grade. I was playing with classmates during recess when I overheard a conversation that shook me up. One of my more cynical classmates was explaining that Santa Claus was an elaborate fiction. All that stuff about flying reindeer and delivering presents down the chimney was just a lie.

I didn’t join the conversation, but I began debating the issue in my head. I was that kind of kid.

By coincidence, a few weeks later I joined my dad as he ran an errand at his office at Collegiate Manufacturing, his employer in Ames. His office was in the third floor of the old Masonic Building. Because it was three stories tall, that building was one of the tallest structures in Ames.

While Dad fussed with his paperwork, I wandered over to the window on the north side of the building. Ames had a white Christmas that year, getting a drop of about five inches of snow the day before Christmas Eve. I was already experienced in woods wisdom at that age, having played outdoors for years. Looking out over rows of homes I suddenly knew the truth. Every home below me had an unblemished coat of snow, with no marks of sleigh runners and no reindeer footprints. Santa was a fraud.

All that came back to me when I became a parent and began teaching my daughter about Santa Claus. I bought books for her that showed in detail how Santa did his miraculous work. But when she turned nine I could tell she was beginning to harbor doubts.

Just before Christmas that year, the Pioneer Press Dispatch ran a huge color photo of Santa’s sleigh flying through the night sky. At the head of the team of reindeer was one that had a bright red nose. Molly stared at that photo in silent wonder for several minutes. She finally said, “And I was beginning to think Rudolph wasn’t real.”

Weeks later, right after Christmas, Molly came to me with a serious expression. “Daddy, we need to talk.” A group of friends at school had been debating Santa. Some believed in him. Some did not. Molly volunteered to resolve the matter, saying, “I’ll ask my dad.

He always tells me the truth.” The group agreed to let her research the question by talking to me.

With mixed emotions, I told her. As I remember, I made a big deal of the fact “Santa” was a fiction but Christmas love was not. Rather than debunking Santa I told Molly the love of parents was the true Christmas miracle. She instantly joined the great conspiracy to perpetuate the Santa story with younger children, and it touched me to see how hard Molly worked to preserve the secret with kids who still believed.

All this comes to mind because I just got a note from my daughter. For readers who might not know, Liam is my daughter’s five-year-old son. I’ll let Molly finish this story:

Liam came home yesterday, helped himself to a Christmas cookie and said, “Mom, we need to talk. About Santa.”

Santa and Liam - two real guys
Santa and Liam – two real guys

My heart sank. “What about Santa, Hon?”

Liam crammed the rest of the cookie into his mouth, dusted his hands off on his pants and said, “Well, it’s more about his wife.” He leveled a very mature almost-six-year-old look at me and said in a conspiratorial whisper, “She’s not really real, you know. That’s what they say at school.”

After 15 minutes of discussion on the merits of having a wife to look after the elves and reindeer, not to mention to work as an attorney or teacher so that you can essentially run a non-profit for the world’s children, we decided she must really exist after all.

As he left the kitchen in a trail of crumbs and with a red and green sugar cookie mustache, my heart almost broke.

Stay young, little one. Treasure what could be, as well as what is. Believe in magic and your own heart. And dang it–Listen to your mother, not your friends, for just a little longer…

Do you recall how you learned about Santa? Or how you told a child?

Songs, The Baboon Congress

What’s Your Christmas Album?

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Today’s post comes from Steve Grooms

I grew up in central Iowa in the 1950s, a time when public schools performed Christian music like Away in the Manger and Silent Night. When choir directors heard me sing they quickly nominated me to be the narrator for our concerts. Since my family didn’t often go to church, I learned the story of baby Jesus’ birth by telling it to audiences of proud parents at school concerts.

My sense of Christmas music was further defined by what played on the radio in our living room. Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole, Judy Garland, Burl Ives and others performed such pop music classics as I’ll Be Home for Christmas and White Christmas (many of the tunes having been written by Jews working in the pop music industry). I heard (but never came to like) novelty Christmas music by Alvin and the Chipmunks or songs like I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus.

As a child, I had a silly running battle with one Christmas tune: Santa Claus is Coming to Town. I hated that song with fervor that is hard to understand. When I heard “so you better be good for goodness’ sake,” I was outraged because clearly “goodness” was not involved, just greed for Christmas presents. Why that affected me so deeply I will never know.

In the Grooms household my mother preferred the pop classics in a style she called “mood music.” Mood music (a forerunner of “new age” music) was atmospheric stuff meant to be played softly in the background. Her favorite, by far, was an album by Jackie Gleason (who was also a bandleader). Gleason’s Merry Christmas album was a light jazz treatment of Christmas music performed in a deeply nostalgic vein for people who liked to celebrate the day weeping wistfully in their eggnogs. The first big shock I experienced after getting married was learning that my bride considered my family’s Christmas music embarrassingly banal and beneath contempt.

In my first Christmas as a married man I was introduced to her Christmas music, which was all about choirs performing classic European religious Christian carols. Many of the tunes were created in medieval times. Her Christmas music was usually sung in vast cathedrals, so it had a lot of echo, and many songs featured the piercing purity of the sounds of boy sopranos. The audio highlight of Christmas for my wife was the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols performed each year at King’s College.

In short, her Christmas music could not have been more different from what I’d known as a kid. At first I was humiliated by her disgust for my old Christmas music, but I quickly embraced the beauty of the more traditional choral music my in-laws loved so much.

Still later, I acquired great fondness for Celtic music. Inevitably I began enjoying performances of Christmas music performed in that style by folk and Celtic musicians. At some point I had to add the music of the Charlie Brown Christmas show to my list of favorites.

It all becomes mixed together. I have known so many Christmases that my tastes are eclectic and inevitably mixed with memories, good and bad. I fell in love with one album during an extremely emotional Christmas, the worst of my life. George Winston’s December album became a classic in the winter when we discovered our old cat had cancer. My daughter’s last evening with him was spent holding him in her crib while the December album played over and over in the night.

To hear Christmas music now is to be reminded of earlier times, with all that was sweet and terrible about them. Like Scrooge, I am haunted by Ghosts from Christmas Past, and they come with a soundtrack.

What is your favorite Christmas music?