My house is around the corner from a library. The same library I went to when I was a kid; the library where I got my first library card. My first card was heavy, blue-grey paper and had the old “bars” logo for the Minneapolis Library on it. It also had my six-year-old handwriting on it spelling out my full name, hyphenated first name and all. I can remember bringing that precious piece of paper into the library where I would hand it and a stack of books to the librarian where she would press a button on a machine that, with a clunk and a buzz, took a picture of the book and my card, allowing me to take the books home. The red-headed librarian that was there when I was a kid still works there. The kids’ books are still to the left as you come in, and the “grown-up” books to the right. I sometimes wander into the stacks of children’s non-fiction and sniff the loamy aroma of dust-jacketed books and the air of my youth (don’t tell the red headed librarian, she might tell my mom).
I have loved books and reading as long as I can remember, and have no clear memories of not being able read. I remember my father reading chapter books to me at night and I remember reading Dr. Seuss to myself. I remember yelling downstairs when it was time for “lights out” that I was in the middle of a chapter and couldn’t I finish it, then getting five more minutes to read and reading fast enough to go into another chapter so I could repeat the process until my mother’s patience for the game wore out.
Over the past couple of years I have been watching through different eyes the process that leads to independent reading. It is a profound thing to watch, especially when you have forgotten how it was that you learned. First there is learning letter shapes and sounds and putting those together so you recognize the sound for each shape. Next comes putting those shapes and sounds in combinations that make new sounds. Eventually you get to sentences and books. It is amazing all the abstract things we learn that all come together to allow us to recognize a bunch of straight and curvy lines as words we understand.
Earlier this spring Daughter got her own library card, with her own full name spelled out in six-year-old handwriting. She was thrilled. It has its own purple card case and she loves that she can scan it under the bar code reader, scan her books, and tap the screen to get her receipt on her own (technology has advanced a bit since I got my first card). Because we are just around the corner there is a weekly request, easily fulfilled, to go and read at the library. I think Daughter loves the smell of all the books, and the thrill of understanding them, as much as I do. And what better motivation to keep reading than your own shiny library card and the ability to use it to discover new worlds?
What were your favorite books when you were a kid?
The results of last weekend’s word collecting project are in! We are not interested in enforcing “official” language rules here or criticizing people just because we can’t understand them, but there is a certain tone to the comments on Trial Baboon that sometimes begs for an explanation.
So it is in an effort to be gracious and accommodating to everyone that certain members of our online community decided to assemble a Glossary Of Accepted Terms (GOAT), both as a guide for the uninitiated and a reminder for regulars whose brain function sometimes promotes the practice of “self hiding” critical information (see the glossary). Some of these terms were imported from other places because they felt appropriate. Others were created on the spot.
After today, this collection will reside permanently attached to a link off to the right side of the main entry for easy access, should one need clarification or wish to add a new term.
Since all this work was done by readers, it qualifies as a guest blog.
A group guest blog, organized and led by Jacque and Barbara in Robbinsdale.
Babawesome – Awesome in a Baboonish way.
Baboondipity – An interesting coincidence occurring in Baboonville.
Babooner – One who participates by writing and/or lurking on Dale Connelly’s Trail Baboon Blog, formerly known as Radio Heartland’s Trial Balloon Blog.
Babooninomics – This can be summarized as, “Don’t spend what you don’t have.”
Babooniquette – A fairly gracious set of manners adopted by Babooners that is related to, but different from, traditional “netiquette” (e.g., a tendency to avoid all caps when writing…or in tim’s case, any caps at all; an understanding of how to agree to disagree by simply being nonconflictious; etc.). Babooniquette does not require that you know which spoon to use at the dinner table (or that you use any spoon at all), but it may require that you at least hum along to “You Are My Sunshine” when it is played.
Bipartispasm–Against their willful desire, politicians suddenly find themselves experiencing muscle-like brain contractions that influence cooperating and compromising for the common good.
Blogosphere – The world of bloggery, perhaps including other blogs besides TBB.
Brace (of pets) – Two animals. “We have three cats… A brace… refers to a pair of objects, so I have one and half brace of cats.” Larger numbers may be spoken of as the number of “head”, as in “I asked an old Indian in cowboy land one time how many cats he had. He squinted a bit and said, ‘Oh, maybe 30 head!’ ”
Brain Fade – The moment characterized by the question “Why did I come in here?”
Cheapatude – Extreme thrift, as in “We have resorted, in our retired cheapatude, to making our own cards with Steve’s photos and just writing inside.”
Cleaver – Especially creative in a Baboonish way (not to be confused with the ordinary “clever”).
Cliffy – The TB way of saying someone has overdone it on the explanation of the facts. Other examples welcome.
Conflictious – 1. A cross between “litigious” and “conflictual”, possibly making you a candidate for a session with BMB (See acronyms). 2. A delicious conflict.
Credit Card Camping – Camping by staying in motels or B & B’s along the route, as in “I’m no camper! We did credit card camping.”
Delurk — To fully participate by writing on the blog after a period of lurkitude, as in “Nice of you to delurk, Connie.”
E-mail Pack Rattery – Hoarding of emails, as in: “I tend toward e-mail pack rattery … I have countless personal notes from friends that I can’t throw away.”
Fei da, Ish da – The Norwegian equivalent of Oy Vey, as in “I remember my grandfather talking about the progression from uff da to fei da to ish da based on milking cows – ish da being what [barb] experienced … * (though it hovers near a fei da, definitely an ish da if you got splashed).”
* “ …[when Sugar, the visiting goat,] was standing nicely. then i got complacent and BANG! goathoof in bucket. 2 quarts of milk ruined and bucket contaminated.”
Goatswaggled – Physically outwitted by a goat. See also Fei da and Ish da.
Huh? – “I am completely at sea. Please repeat or clarify the last several posts.”
Idiotology — Aberrant political thought, as in, “I am afraid that much of current political discourse has sunken to the point where a lot of it can be described as “idiotology.”
Idiotocracy – The type of politics practiced by MB (See Acronyms).
Interwinkled – associated or connected, as in “Dale [DC] said a while back, humor is what we humans do to get a grip, and we get the grippe to naturally cleanse our innards. It’s all relative. And interwinkled.”
Jimming – a dinosaur baboon word having to do with the practice of double posting (now defunct, as the new blog disallows it).
Joke-A-Sphere — Where all the good jokes that you can’t remember have gone.
Junk Thought – Thought at the most outrageous point, at the greatest amounts of decibels. (See MB in acronyms.)
Lurkitude — Reading the blog from one step back, but not writing and participating; giggling, chortling, guffawing, and belly laughs optional.
Non-Fiction Situation – An event in which it is not prudent to alter facts, i.e. a trip to the tax accountant, where you say, “I swear this information is true.”
O-T – Off Topic.
Pizzle Rot – An exclamation of a Babooner’s frustration, as in “Oh, pizzle rot, my italics didn’t shut off.”
Prumpers, or Pah-Rumpers — Singers of “The Little Drummer Boy.”
Rannygazoo – 1. The run-around, or nonsense, as in, “I had to pass as Canadian so I could avoid all ‘rannygazoo’ with my visa status.” 2. A prank or joke; semi-archaic, from the 1940’s and PG Wodehouse novels.
Scroogitude – Behaving like Ebenezer before he experienced the Three Spirits.
Self-Hiding – The ability to hide something from yourself, as in “I’m getting to the point where I can hide my own Easter Eggs.” See also Brain fade.
Semi-Colonoscopy — The study of the correct placement of semi-colons.
Suspension of Belief and/or Suspension of Disbelief – A fudging of facts used in many situations, particularly by theater people; or re: TV, movies, etc.
Thurgery – Any surgery taking place on a Thursday.
timism – An ambiguity in which you are not sure whether there was a typo, or an intentional misspelling, as in “My favorite timism of the week is ‘Talk snout dysfunctional’…” (See Dec. 23, 2010 TBB for rich, complete discussion.)
Uff da – Norwegian for “Oy”. See also Fei da and Ish da.
Vishnuverheer – A neo-religion practiced by vacationers and post card senders.
“Whobody” Mail – that mail from people you know and like, as contrasted with “anybody” mail, the junk and bulk mail which gets largely ignored.
Whumping – Sound of a Baboon in the process of losing a conflict over finite resources.
Willywacky – as in: “Then you can position your reply, hit paste and Post Comment. If something goes willywacky you still have your comment intact.”
ACRONYMS
BMB – Billy Marty Barry BSOR – Bathtub Safety Officer Rafferty DC – Dale Connelly MB – Michele Bachmann RH – Radio Heartland TB – Trail Baboon TBB – Trail Baboon Blog TLGMS – The Late Great Morning Show
Thanks to everyone who contributed to the compiling of the Baboonish Glossary over the weekend. Our diligent wordsmiths Jacque and Barbara in Robbinsdale will sift through your contributions and we will announce an official posting of the work soon.
I have been enjoying the holiday weekend and working on another writing project. I’ll get back to business tomorrow. Fortunately, there is something nice I’ve been holding in reserve for just this moment.
Today’s guest blog is by Sherrilee.
I’ve always been the penultimate dog person. Since I was born, there has hardly been a day that I haven’t had a dog in my life, beginning with Snowball, a little white fluffy thing to Princess the Wonderdog. My mother never cared much for cats, so we never had one and I never missed not having one.
So it came as a surprise that from the minute my daughter could speak, she wanted a cat. (I don’t think “cat” was her very first word, but it certainly was one of the first ten!) I spent years putting off any discussion of getting a cat, although I did try to make conciliatory remarks occasionally like “Well, perhaps next year….” and “We need to do some research first about what kind of cat would be good for us…”. After many years of this, I started to think that maybe a cat wouldn’t be too bad, but certainly never considered it seriously.
When my daughter was six, we stopped at Petsmart on a Saturday to stock up on dog food. She, as always, headed straight over to the adoption area. After loading the dog food into the cart, I went to get her and casually ran my fingers across the cat cages. A black and white “tuxedo” cat immediately jumped up and rushed over to rub against my fingers and when I stopped to look at him, he looked right into my eyes. He had deep bluish-green eyes and he stared at me intently, unlike any other cat I knew. He seemed like a nice cat, but I was in a rush, so I collected my daughter, paid for the dog food and went home.
That afternoon as I worked in my studio, every commercial that has ever featured a cat ran on TV and that night I even dreamed about the cat. When I related this phenomenon to my best friend the next day, she said “It means you’re supposed to have this cat.”
Zorro!
I said “I was hoping to have a less chaotic time of life before thinking about getting a cat” to which she succinctly replied “When you run out of chaos, you go looking for more… go get the damn cat.” After I got done laughing, we went and got the cat.
He came with the name Zorro, which we have never changed. He is completely in charge of the dogs, has a wonderful growly purr, doesn’t do hairballs and is very affectionate. I’ve never been sorry that we have him and I’m sure when he is gone, I’ll get another cat, although I can’t imagine any other cat as fabulous as he is.
What have you done, out of character, which has turned out well?
As we head into what is, for many, a busy holiday weekend, Jacque takes the controls for a guest blog that is both a challenge and the beginning of an ongoing project.
To allow time for careful thought and reflection, this post will remain front and center until early Monday morning. The comments you recall and the new contributions you make will eventually become a permanent feature of our baboonish space.
For sometime now I have been threatening our blog-iverse with a Trail Baboon Glossary.
Barbara in Robbinsdale and I have been putting our e-heads together to gather a joint list of terms that seem quite unique to our on-line world.
Most of you know I am trained as a social worker. One of the topics that social workers study in both undergraduate and graduate training is the behavior and development of groups and social systems. It is my expert opinion that TB qualifies as both!
There is a process that groups follow which is fairly predictable.
Stages 1 and 2 are listed below:
1) Gathering as a Group, then defining the group as an Entity – the Trail Baboon on-line community
2) Forming Emotional Connections and Bonding as an Entity — this is typically the equivalent of a couple’s honeymoon. A particular culture is formed, including a language that distinguishes the group.
Well, we certainly have formed a Trail Baboon language that distinguishes the group. And it is long past the time that we define the terms so that we can move along into our next (uncomfortable) stage of development. Should we stall out on this developmental task, all kinds of disappointments may follow. Prepare yourselves, dear Baboons, because the next stage is:
3) Emergence of Conflict within the Entity.
Oh, my. What will we, as timid, conflict-avoidant Midwestern Bloggers do with this? If we were calloused New Yorkers we would just verbally blast each other and say “Gedoverit.” But we are not. So let us get on with naming the terms and defining them so that we can move on up our developmental group ladder. Defining terms might provide a containable venue for conflict over definitions. And it certainly is better than those traditional conflictual topics: sex, politics, religion.
I don’t want to talk about any of them.
So here is the list, but I know there are many, many more. The task this weekend is to pull up the unique terms that have appeared here, then define them for an ongoing feature – A Baboonish Glossary.
Lurkitude, or “In Lurkitude”
Idiotocracy
Cheapatude
Babooner
Cleaver
Baboonimonics
Or is it Babooninomics?
Credit card Camping
E-mail Pack Rattery
Non-Fiction Situation
Suspension of Belief and/or
Suspension of Disbelief
Take a moment to define any or all of these terms, nominate something already said but not listed, or coin something brand new!
Postscript from Dale:
You might have a dim recollection of something said once in the comments and nothing more to go on than that. Fair enough. Unfortunately, the “search” box in the upper right corner of our front page looks at main posts only, not the voluminous and always enlightening comments.
If you would like to search for a term in the comments, this is the easiest way to do it that I know of:
Go to Google and enter “site:daleconnelly.com” in the search box, followed by the term you seek. Here’s a screen shot of what you get for “lurkitude”.
Like hunting for Easter Eggs in our soggy back yard, you will find some treasures and some other stuff. Share the things that delight you, and have a wonderful weekend!
this weekend we will do an excercise in improv blogging.
the art of improv is cool but there are a couple of rules to have success.
never mind what you had in mind if the person before you throws a different direction at you you have to accept it totally and go from there.
i will put a final line on it at 12:01am and you can catch it on the next morning or if ben is up in the middle of the night he can read it then.
so heres a test of the group poem:
i write: i am a blogger and i’m ok anna writes: he blog all night and i blog all day clyde writes: his poodles named fido because its french steve writes: his ex wife is an awful evil wench
the rest goes off to lord knows where…..
its ok to change the tempo and go with something new
one fish two fish red fish blue fish
or the midnight ride of paul rever are ok to throw in…
take a line or a stanza and run with it.
if while you are posting the poem gets responded to by someone else it could get confusing but i think we can follow multiple directions with this group. follow one or the other ort both
cmon in the water is fine
for real this time:
i’m a baboon blogger and i’m ok
i blog all night and blog all day….
My father was proud of his intellect and his vocabulary. When I was a kid, my sister and I would try to stump him by picking out random words in the dictionary to see if he knew them. He was better at this than most, since he had studied Latin for law school and could weasel out the meaning of almost any Latin-derived word. We quickly learned to look for words with their origin in Greek – he wasn’t as good at those.
When I was in junior high, my dad decided that he didn’t like the words “get” and “got”. He thought they were “lazy” words and that it was a sign of intelligence if you could use other words in their place. If you slipped up and used “get” or “got”, he would said “What?” until you replaced the little offender. This led to some hilarious conversations when my younger sister decided just to use the word “obtain” all the time, even if it didn’t make sense. “Do you think we’ll obtain rain this weekend? or I’m going upstairs to obtain a sweater.” Finally in college I decided that I didn’t have to play anymore either and my dad had to give up trying to enliven my language.
So, it was these memories that I was thinking of when I happened upon Kickstarter.com. In response to the Mark Twain professor who is bringing out an n-word free Huckleberry Finn, the Kickstarter group is raising money to print an edition of Huckleberry Finn with the n-word replaced by the word “robot”. If you pledge a dollar or more, you get a hard-copy version of this book when it is finished. I coughed up the dollar immediately and just the fun of getting the e-mail updates has been worth the price of admission.
If you could get rid of a word, which word would it be?
As a seed saver I am dedicated to collecting, maintaining, and passing on seeds of vegetables and other plants that are rare and in danger of being lost. In the past, many families knew how to save and pass on seeds that they valued from one generation to another. This tradition is dying out. The Seed Savers Exchange (www.seedsaversexchange.org ) and other groups are making an effort to get the public more involved in seed saving. Saving the stories that are connected to seeds is considered by many seed savers to be as important as the seeds themselves.
I asked my Uncle Jake if he had any seeds that came from my Grandfather. He did have a jar of very old seed for a flat Dutch green bean that my Grandparents would slice up and make into a homemade product similar to sauerkraut. Unfortunately this seed was too old and wouldn’t germinate. Then I learned that my Uncle was willing to share some seed he had saved for many years. I am now growing and saving seed from a tomato and a bean that my Uncle got from his German neighbor. The tomato has fairly large, sweet, pink colored fruit that resembles some other tomatoes that originated in Germany. I call this tomato, Jake’s, in honor of my Uncle.
The bean is a very large white dry bean, which I call Large Navy. I like the bean because it came from my Uncle and because I haven’t seen another exactly like it. My cousin told me that this bean was used in cooking by my Uncle’s parents and I am looking forward using it myself. I gave my Uncle a copy of the Seed Saver’s Yearbook where my listing of the seeds I got from him is published. My cousin told me that his father would probably frame the Yearbook pages with those listings and hang them on the wall.
My Aunt Ida preserved a rose that came from my Grandmother. This is a large, very hardy, old fashion, pink rose. My Aunt told me that my Grandmother said the rose is an Austrian perfume rose. My Aunt also said that you couldn’t necessarily believe everything that my Grandmother had to say! I very much appreciate my Aunt’s sense of humor and somewhat sarcastic stories. She doesn’t hold back from speaking her mind and will say some things that might be a little offensive to some people and which I find to be very entertaining. She has some other stories I treasure about my Grandmother which are very funny and not entirely respectful.
Do you know any “heirloom” stories about your ancestors?
I pride myself in my ability to explain things both complex and simple. After all I have successfully explained alpha thalassemia major in Hmong and can go on (and on) about the likely association of immunoreactive trypsinogen to spontaneous intestinal perforation in extremely premature infants.
Why then does my family not always understand what I say?
After college graduation my parents left me in charge of the younger kids when they went abroad. They also left my college-age sister as an assistant since I was working full-time. One night I explained that the following night’s dinner would be a family favorite-chicken pot pie. I prepared all the constituents as my mother always did. I reviewed the assembly with my sister. “Just put the chicken, the sauce, and the vegetables in this pan, and cover it with the crust,” I said with great patience to my sister who wasn’t exactly a domestic goddess. When I asked if she had any questions, her response left me speechless. With all sincerity she said, “Can I leave the vegetables in the can or do I have to take them out?”……I picked up dinner at McDonald’s rather than risk eating her preparation.
Fast forward many years to when my son was in first grade. Because of his bone disease and frequent fractures he didn’t often dress himself. There were, however several days when I had the flu and a high fever and since he could walk I would send him to his room with instructions to put on clean underwear and the pants and shirt I had put out for him.
On the 3rd day I looked up from my delirium and noticed that his leg looked much more crooked than I had remembered it. I had hope that the giant bend in his femur was just a fever-induced illusion. I arranged to meet his physical therapist when she came to school that day to see Scott. The three of us went to the bathroom to slip off the sweatpants and look at his leg. I was surprised to see that my son was wearing 3 pairs of underpants. His response has become a family classic for failure to follow directions-“You didn’t say to take them off before I put on the clean ones.”
Seeing this message written in the snow, carefully laid out by someone adept enough to leap to the right spot to start the next letter, you can tell this is a message sent with care. A message with a story; a story one might find an obvious start to, given that this missive is directly below the heart-shaped “M+S.” But that seems too trite. Frankly, I think the “M+S” is there as a clever bit of misdirection. Here is what I think led up to the note in the snow:
Tomorrow is the last one, better do it right. One final job for Leo, then I’m on to the next adventure. Small thing, should be an easy acquisition. Not my favorite, but the price is right and a body does have bills to pay. It is amazing what people are willing to shell out to have me do the dirty work of getting something; high pay for challenging procurements. I am just a well-paid expeditor and shipper, a liberator of information and doodads.
And monkeys. Why did this last one have to be a monkey? Monkeys are noisy, foul and they steal my fruit. Last time I had a gig with a monkey he sat on my fedora, left scat on the top of the piano and tried to have his way with my Chewbacca doll. I wish I weren’t so good with monkeys. Small monkey, Leo said, a marmoset. A marmoset with a penchant for ping pong, killer skills mixing a dry martini, and other “unnamed” abilities the client wants. Stick him in your pocket and you’re good to go, Leo says. With something that tiny and my big duster coat to hide it, it should be an easy move from the lab to the meet up. Good thing I’m not a gin drinker or it might be tempting to keep this one around, just for kicks.
Dad said I should have become a dentist. Mom was hoping for an MBA. Four years of cultural anthropology and another two at chef’s school and I’m stuck ferrying bar tending monkeys for cash.
Focus. Get the goods, write a note in the melting snow, and get the final payment. Leave Leo to the foul play without me from now on. This is the last time, Mom, I promise. Your little Stevie starts grad school Monday.
Instead I will begin the process of moving our stuff, much too much stuff, to our new home, or as Thoreau described it, pushing my possessions down the road ahead of me. Fortunately it is only a 2.5 mile push from a 1600-square-foot ground-level association home to a 1200-square-foot ground-level apartment. For the next three days I will haul over boxes. Then the pros will haul our furniture on Thursday. “Why are you moving?” everyone asks, since it does not seem like much of a change. Not many seem to like our answers. After all, we are giving up home ownership, the Great American Dream.
Most of our reasons are not worth your time to explain, but one I would like to offer especially to you because I think Babooners, unlike almost everyone else, will understand it. You, see, we want to try on a new life style. I admit it is not much of a change, but it depends on how you, or rather we, look at it. And, alas, it as much of a change as we can manage at this point in our life. For six years we tried living in an association, Efrafa as I have called it on here, which is not as bad as I have hinted, but does not suit us. We imagine a freer life, with a bit more ready cash and predictable expenses and no maintenance responsibilities. My wife, the addicted viewer of HGTV, will have a new blank canvas to decorate.
The real challenge will be for both of us to envision and use this new space and location—plus our money, time, and creativity—to think in new ways about ourselves, our place in church and community, and our limited time on earth.
Thoreau in Walden explained that in his imagination he had owned every farm in the vicinity. He had organized each farm in turn, tilled it, planted it, and harvested it without the bother of actually owning it. Similarly my wife and I have often tried on other life styles in our imagination: renting an apartment in one of those old buildings on Grand Avenue or in Dinkytown, teaching in a rural Alaska village, owning a hobby farm, spending a year living only from a small motor-home and driving North America, flipping houses, or going to seminary together. Because my favorite reading topic is travel books and books about what it is like to live a different kind of life somewhere else, I have in my imagination lived hundreds of lives.
I believe Babooners will understand my explanation because so many of you have deliberately crafted a life style, whether in rural Carlton County, in south Minneapolis, western Dakota, or all the places and ways you live.
My question for you is simple:
What other life styles have you lived in your imagination?
Trail Baboon 