Category Archives: The Baboon Congress

The Baboon Congress

Recalculating A Life

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Today’s guest post comes from Steve Grooms.

Like Dorothy who was whisked away from drab Kansas to exotic Oz, I daily confront the complications of living in a new and strange land. I keep learning that things I thought were a normal part of the world were actually regional characteristics. For example, Midwest roads and streets are laid out in an orderly grid, crossing each other at 90-degree angles in predictable intervals. As a Flatlander, I took that grid structure for granted. I was amused but also reassured by Minneapolis’s alphabetical street names (Colfax, Dupont, Emerson, Fremont, Girard, Holmes).

That is not the way it is here. Where I now live, land is either Steep Stuff or Valleys. Virtually all development, including roads and streets, is concentrated in the valleys. But because the roads tend to be short and forced into certain angles by the lay of the land, roads and streets cross each other at all kinds of wild angles. What seem to be major roads peter out or wander into oblivion.
This is another way of saying that streets and roads in the West interact in all sorts of crazy ways. And it is another way of saying that it is a challenge to navigate here, especially if you are a Flatland-bred senior citizen.

I would not be capable of driving to my medical clinics or car repair shops or grocery stores or my daughter’s home were it not for the new woman in my life. I am utterly dependent on her to function in this city. Without her help, I would be a confused prisoner of my apartment, incapable of venturing past the gates of this gated community.

This new woman is the voice of my GPS unit. If I have to pick up prescription refills, I type in the address of the pharmacy in my GPS. Then this woman talks me through the trip to that place, turn by turn. She tells me how far I have to go before the next turn, and she counts down the distances with precise and predictable instructions.

I don’t know much about her. She sounds exceptionally sure of herself, and she is perfectly consistent. She isn’t bossy, although she does seem a wee bit put off when I fail to follow her instructions. When she gives me directions but I am impudent enough to do something different, her voice alters slightly and she mutters that she is “recalculating.” Soon she has a new set of directions based on my defiance of her original plan. I would hate to play poker with her, for she knows her own mind totally and betrays little emotion.

I’ve learned how to interpret her instructions. For example, when she tells me I’m two-tenths of a mile from the next turn, I understand that the turn is about two city blocks away. I can’t overstate my dependence on this woman. If someone stole the GPS from my Outback, I couldn’t leave my apartment for days until I got it (or her) replaced.

Who do you trust?

The Baboon Congress

Zorie Story

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Today’s guest post comes from Sherrilee.

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

Life With Father

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Today’s guest post comes from Renee.

“Renee! That damn dog is looking at me again!!”

I respond to my father’s plaintive cry and remove the dog from the dining room. The cat is allowed to stay. Dad forgives cats for everything. My father believes that our animals should enjoy the bounty of our table, and he shares bits of his meals with them. Dad also believes that the dog should know when he has finished sharing, and she should just leave the room. We explain that she doesn’t think that way, and that he has to stop feeding her from the table if he wants her to leave him alone. As you can see from the photo, she waits patiently nearby while he eats. That is still too much for dad. He says that when an animal looks at him while he eats and he doesn’t feed it, he feels like the people in the parable of the Good Samaritan who walked past the victim and didn’t help. So, I remove the dog.

It has been six weeks since my 93 year old, newly widowed, father moved in with me and my husband. Things have gone pretty well, aside from his strife with the guilt-inducing terrier. He personalized his new room with photos, furniture from home, and mementos, and made it a comfortable nook where he reads, writes letters, and listens to CD’s of his favorite radio preachers. He is appreciative and meticulously clean and tidy. He is frustrated by his diminishing physical strength and his inability to fix things. He is easily hurt by a sharp word, and we need to be very patient as he struggles to understand the complicated business and health issues we discuss. He is usually quite cheerful, though, and remains curious about the world and the people around him.

Living with my father is a balancing act of providing necessary care with as much autonomy as possible. I am thankful that he is independent with all his personal care. I help out by organizing his meds and taking him to appointments and handling his business. Things will change as his health deteriorates from his cancer and cardiac disease and age, but at this point we have a pretty good thing going. He has breakfast with us every morning. He loves French press coffee. We go to work and he potters around until lunch, when we come home to eat with him. We go back to work, and then one of us slips away at 3:45pm to take him to coffee with a group of retired teachers. One of the teachers brings him home, and we meet up with him around 6:00 for supper. He goes to bed pretty early. On weekends he watches us garden. He also planned and directed the transformation of our basement and garage into temples of Dutch order and cleanliness. We have a very Jake-centric household, but that is ok with us. I am thankful that my husband is supportive of our doing this. We are both very fatigued at the end of the day.

Every day when we leave for work we make sure Dad has a bowl of Lindt chocolate truffles on the counter, a beer or two in the fridge, lots of ice cream, and Radio Heartland streaming on the computer. He really likes listening to Jimmy Dale Gilmore and the Wronglers. He knows he is shamelessly spoiled, and repays us with stories. Here is a true one from home about people I know.

Old Johnny B was a farmer and horse trader from Magnolia, MN, born around the turn of the century. (His son Dallas is still alive and went skydiving two years ago on his 95th birthday.) Many years ago Johnny bought a horse from an old German farmer, and when he got the horse home, he put it in the corral and the horse proceeded to walk right into the barn wall. The horse was blind! Johnny confronted the farmer. “Why didn’t you tell me the horse was blind?” The farmer replied in his thick accent “I did! I told you he didn’t look so good!”

I think a story like that makes up for any amount of extra work we have. He has tons of stories, and we will keep the truffles and beer in good supply as long as he can enjoy them.

Share a joke a 93 year-old might enjoy. 

The Baboon Congress

Baby-Faced Leader

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I got chided on facebook for saying my grandson looks like Winston Churchill. I responded with the old joke that all babies look like Winston Churchill, which only got me in hotter water.

I will let you decide: does he look like Churchill?

Fortunately, which you cannot tell from this photo, his personality is quite the opposite of Churchill’s, who, by all testimony, was a very difficult human being.

Did Churchill look like Churchill as a baby? This is close as I could get.

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I did an image search to find baby pictures of the great man, and it turned up a host of human and animal lookalikes.

What is interesting is that one of the greatest, most charismatic leaders of history had such a baby face. We now understand that the normal human brain is wired to have a strong positive emotional response to babies and the characteristics of babies. Was that all part of his charisma and power or did he have to overcome it? He was such a polished speaker, who knows what rhetorical art he crafted.

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I look like a desert hermit, or like George R. R. Martin, but my bank account does not look like his. By the way, for $20,000 to go to a wolf sanctuary, Martin will write you into and give you a grisly death in the next installment of Game of Thrones.

What role does your face fit?

The Baboon Congress

Mary Poppins in Russia

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Today’s guest post comes from Plain Jane. It was originally part of a conversation on our companion blog, The Baboondocks, related to the sudden shift in King Juan Carlos’ job description. The question was “What is the best job you’ve ever abdicated?”

The best job I ever had was working as an au pair for the Bridges family in Moscow in 1964.

It was a fun job with lots of challenges, satisfaction and privilege. Certainly not a high paying job, but at $90.00 per month and free room and board, all the necessities were covered. The rest was gravy.

Taking care of three kids ranging in age from three to nine was a blast. Mary and Elizabeth, the two youngest, were early risers. By the time I’d get out of bed around 7 A.M. they’d already have played ballerinas for hours and left a trail of fancy dresses discarded on the floor of the hallway. After a breakfast of Danish pancakes, they’d be off to school and daycare, and I’d a have a few hours to do laundry and tidy up our quarters.

After school we’d explore Moscow on foot, by bus, train and embassy car. If I didn’t feel like making them peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch, we’d head for the embassy snack bar where a German cook made wonderful burgers, BLTs and the best German potato salad. Then we’d hang out on the embassy playground in the afternoon. Au pairs from Canada, Australia and several European countries lounging in swim suits on beach towels spread on the ground, watching their charges happily at play.

On days with no school, we’d pack picnic lunches and take the bus and subway to whatever destination struck our fancy that day. One such place was Gorky Park. There we’d while away the hours. Locals – mostly old men drinking Kvass and playing chess at small tables, and work crews of matronly, babushka-wearing women with big shovels for maintaining flower beds would give us curious looks – our brightly colored clothes in stark contrast to their drab hues. Other days we’d go to the Red Square, hike through the Kremlin or explore the banks along the Moscow River.

I’d take a lot of photos on these excursions. Pictures of David staring longingly at a toy train display at the Gum department store on the Red Square, or of Elizabeth posed in front of the Tsar canon inside the Kremlin walls. Snapshots of all three of them in swimsuits, munching on a picnic lunch on a weekend outing to the beach along the Moscow River.

After dinner, bath time and a little horsing around in their pajamas. Then the kids and I would pile into David’s bed for bedtime stories and singing. Of all her obscure childhood memories, Elizabeth wrote me a few years ago, the one that stands out as her fondest is of me singing “Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polkadot Bikini,” to them. To this day it a song that she often hums to herself when cleaning house. She says it cheers her up to remember that summer fifty years ago. And David told me that he still makes those Danish pancakes for his own kids on their birthdays.

That’s a legacy I’m proud of.

What lifelong habit have you inherited from a teacher or caretaker?

Songs, The Baboon Congress

Sweet Adeline, Surprisingly

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Today’s post comes from Clyde in Mankato.

When Harmon Killebrew died two years ago, I mourned a bit for my mother. She was a dedicated and savvy baseball fan. It occurred to me that Harmon’s death took away the last popular cultural link to my mother, who greatly admired his play and demeanor.

Then a few days after that my wife asked me, “Who was the Italian singer your mother was so gaga over?” “Jerry Vale,” I answered. Ah, there was one more pop culture link to my mother.

However, Jerry Vale died last weekend.

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Now to describe my mother as gaga over anything seems a large stretch, but in fact she was exactly gaga over Jerry Vale, not dissimilarly to Elvis fans. When I was in junior high I was puzzled and embarrassed by her response to a Jerry Vale song on the radio, which was quite common on KDAL radio in the late 50’s and early 60’s.

My mother’s name was Adeline, but no one ever called her Sweet Adeline, not even my father, who could be quite tender and loving to her, in deep contrast to his normal pattern of behavior. My mother turned into some other person when Jerry Vale sang, a person I never otherwise saw. It was not only his voice, but she freely admitted it was also the handsome face. Today I realize how delightful and just simply human was this sharp contrast in her character.

Ten years ago my son, who loves and collects all forms of music, told me he had discovered the perfect Italian crooner. He wondered if I had ever heard of Jerry Vale. I treasure that moment of the wheel turning all the way around.

http://youtu.be/3CL7sl3udiE

My father also had his contrast in character that embarrassed me back then. Looie was usually a coarse, harsh, angry, insensitive man, exactly like the father in my novelized version of my childhood. That same man loved to dance. He danced (meaning the old time dances like waltzes, polkas, and schottisches) with great relish and accomplishment.

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A group of people in our neighborhood, Knife River Valley, held monthly dances in an old school house. My father’s favorite was the broom dance, a form of musical chairs while dancing. If you were left without a partner after the music stopped, you had to dance with the broom. My father’s turns with the broom was graceful, in tempo, and unselfconsciously funny. Oh, how embarrassed I was! Luckily I later grew old enough to be left home alone or with my sister.

What unexpected contrasts did your parents have in their character? Or you?

The Baboon Congress

Southern Discomfort

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Today’s guest post comes from Clyde.

Twice in one day I received eye pings, that is discordant visual images it took my brain several seconds to recognize and decode.

The first happened while driving in Mankato; the vanity license plate in front of me read “M MORT.” What? Then I realized it was on a hearse, a Mankato Mortuary hearse no doubt. But isn’t “M MORT” just sort of a small “ewee”? Do they have another one called “M MINKY”?

The second happened about an hour later in Barnes & Noble. I was staring off into empty space; not into space actually but into the magazine rack a few feet away, which is by-and-large the mental equivalent of empty space. I read as the title of a magazine Garden & Gun.

What? Was this real? Had I misread? Nope. I looked closer and saw a subtitle “Soul of the South.” Hmm. The entire complicated cultures of the ten or so states of The South find their soul in gardens and guns? I do not like sweeping generalizations about nations, cultures, peoples, regions, but gardens and guns are a big miss for my experience of The South. But see it’s for real.

Then I looked lower on the cover and it read “The Hollywood Issue.” Now that’s more than a bit discordant. Has Hollywood ever represented The South as anything but tired old cliches? Or The Midwest, or New England? To Hollywood has The South ever been much beyond hillbillies, plantations, bigotry, and threatening ignorance?

What was on the cover? But of course, a woman showing cleavage.

Cover Garden & Gun

Anna Camp, whoever she is. Another actress of whom I have never heard, but I am ignorant in this regard. In a wedding dress–is that what that is–and cowboy boots. How did cowboy boots become Southern, anyway?

I scanned through the magazine. It is actually very slick, high-concept, visually very well done. It had few pictures of either guns or gardens. It did, however, have an extensive article with high-quality photos on how to make moonshine.

It was all too big a brain cramp for me. I went and scanned through Mad Magazine–much more in my frame of reference.

What would be your “_____________ & ____________” title of a magazine on The Midwest?

The Baboon Congress, Travel

A Slow Slog In Oslo

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Today’s guest post comes from Jacque.

​Hallo Baboons, from Norway.

This  blog comes to you from our apartment in Oslo after a somewhat miserable stay in this city.  

We have experienced an Oslo tour of various kinds of construction:  buildings from the ground up;  road construction and reconstruction, and some big mess of construction near the beautiful Oslo Opera House.  This construction tour in combination with the Norwegian Easter Holiday (Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Sunday and the following Monday) disrupted our time here–Museums are closed for re-modeling, transportation lines in vital areas are closed and sidewalks are gone which is rendering our beloved Rick Steve’s books useless.  
 
​We arrived Monday on a bumpy flight from Amsterdam which left me dizzy and nauseous.  Then we found a broken elevator in the building in which we rented a fifth floor apartment.  Climbing the five flights of stairs with luggage also left us dizzy and nauseous.  This will result in my request for a partial refund from the apartment owner.  Lou contracted a cold on Tuesday.  By Thursday, I had it as well.  

Oslo Opera House
Viking Ship Museum
Folk Museum
Construction!
Folk Museum

We had a somewhat frightening encounter with a mentally ill man on a tram.  He chose to rant in clear, understandable English about the Norwegian government, about refugees, about his music which he was blasting on a small, entirely too portable speaker system capable of maximum volume!  This Tram Driver stopped to reason with the guy, prompting most of the passengers to flee.  I swear the passenger was channelling the Norse Rush Limbaugh.

This experience was the ugly underbelly of travel!
 
​We did, however, have several wonderful days sightseeing: On Friday we took the train over the “top of Norway” from Oslo to Bergen.  This 300 mile trip was scenic and thrilling.  We travelled above the tree line through a glacier into ski-resort country. The Norwegian Folk Museum was interesting and detailed about the regions of Norway.  They also had a beautiful display of Norwegian Folk Art that seemed so….familiar.  And we met a Tram Driver who really should have been a tour guide somewhere.  He gave us an informative and knowledgable recap of Oslo on his break, which he chose to spend talking with us.    
 
 
​How would you create a great tourist experience for visitors to your town?

The Baboon Congress, Travel

Holland Days

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Today’s guest post comes from Jacque.

Hallo, from Amsterdam, Netherlands!

Holland, you see, is only a folk term because such a nation does not exist. But we had a wonderful time in a legendary, but folklore-only place.

Bicycles reign supreme in Amsterdam and rural Holland, having become a more reliable and nimble form of transportation than the automobile. The cyclists themselves ride like the wind. You watch for them or risk injury if you walk in the bike lane. Public transportation was top-notch.

People park ANYWHERE in Amsterdam, whether they are traveling via bike or car. The city itself is densely populated, housing people in townhouses and apartments. Public parks are available every few blocks, much like Minneapolis, for use by everyone. We found a delightful selection of beers, Dutch bakeries, restaurants, and Optical lens providers–one on every street corner. Do the Dutch have weak eyes?

We bought the supersaver bus tour which took us to the Windmills in Zaanse Schans by the North Sea and the Tulip Garden in Keukenhof in one tiring, yet thrifty day–ka-ching. The next day we were footsore and happy.

Informative museums featuring history (i.e. WWII, royalty, maritime) and art, were easy to access. But they were crowded with Dutch people and tourists alike. At the Vermeer and Rembrandt exhibits in the Rijksmusuem, we had to be both patient and aggressive (elbows) to get a look at the art. The Van Gogh Museum we saw on a weekday, which allowed us a more leisurely tour.

We were informed in perfect English by our Airbnb host, Otto, that no one speaks Dutch anymore–they speak English. And indeed they do. However, we were stopped repeatedly and asked for directions by other tourists who thought we were Dutch.

As to why people thought we were locals, we never did figure that out. Our host just shrugged his shoulders when we asked his opinion. Our only hypothesis is that it has to do with height. The Dutch people in general are tall (average man is 6’1″, average woman 5’6″). Lou and I are also tall – both taller than the average Dutch so maybe we look like we belong.

What helps you fit in?

 

The Baboon Congress

Three Cheers for Russian Artists Whose Names Just Will Not Stick in My Head

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Today’s guest post comes from Clyde.

Sandy and I went to the Museum of Russian Art recently, We went not only for the art itself, but so she can feel good about the Russian half of her heritage despite the recent behavior of Vladamir Putin. (I call this the MoRA half of her roots.) The museum is the perfect size for two old limp-alongs like Sandy and I.

TMORA

The MoRA has two fine exhibits right now. As one who works in dry media, like graphite, charcoal, and pastel, I throughly enjoyed the secondary one in the basement. And Eva Levina-Rozengolts’ story is compelling.

But the primary exhibit, which just opened, is spectacular.

It is the story of Raymond and Susan Johnson’s collecting of Russian art. The exhibit displays only a fraction of their large collection, which focuses primarily on late 20th Century Russian art. For this part of the museum Sandy has her Nordic Lutheran heritage covered because she has a strong connection to Susan Johnson’s family. (I call this the Mora half of her roots.)

facility

The placards for the art pieces explain Raymond Johnson’s collection process. He has made 81 trips to Russian and visited many of the artists in their homes. I find his taste in art stunning, but then I have long favored Russian arts of all sorts, even before Sandy and I married 49 years ago. Not only for his sake, but for the prestige of this under-appreciated museum, I hope his heavy investment proves to be rewarding in the same way that the Art of Institute of Chicago’s early investment in Impressionism paid off.

However, in any case, what an adventure he has had! I do not often envy the wealthy their lives, but I am jealous of and very grateful for what they have done.

If you had the money to built an impressive collection, what would be on your museum?