Guest blog by tim

its harder sometimes than others to give thanks.

this year the dems took a serious hit and the economy is in the tank and the global warming has us living in san diego mn through mid november (not everyone is with me on feeling this is a bad thing) …but the world just keeps on a turning for the better or the worse and all we ever get is older and around (kris kristoferson)

the blog is a thing i inherited from my dads tendencies i guess. my mom tells me he was just like his dad. they would both be at their happiest just wandering into a group of friends and chewing the fat. my dad would shut off the radio in the car on car trips calling it the conversation killer. my grandfathers wife died in a car accident 15 years before he did so he had 15 years in retirement in a house by himself and his response was to go out visiting. he would go have coffee at people’s houses, he was a teetotaler (son of an alcoholic) so the elks club and the corner bar held little interest but instead he developed a route where he would pop in and stay for 45 minutes and be gone, visit and move on.

my dad joined all the local community organizations not so much to make the world a better place but because the camaraderie was so special to him. the laughter and conversation at these events was wonderful to behold as a kid and thereafter it felt like the way life was supposed to be. i worked with my dad for 30 years and the biggest deal in his day was lunch. he would search out people who like to have lunch and discuss the world and business and the state of the state and after a couple of years i asked why we always went out. we could save 10 dollars a day by bringing a sandwich. He made it clear that some things in life have a value that a dollar amount could not be plugged into the equation on. we formed great friendships with many people exclusively because we had lunch with them 20 times a year for 5 years or more. the conversations always ranged from the state of the world to the state of the business, politics, family, life’s challenges. i was a bystander in many of these conversations but i learned the tricks of the trade.

Conversation… giving a bit of yourself and getting the same back in return. when my dad retired up to leech lake he was a lost soul for the first year looking for a coffee group in the morning and lunch group in the afternoon and a golf group during those summer months we all live for here in minnesota. as his health deteriorated and his brain went off to lala land he hated most of all the loss of his drivers license and his ability to get to those coffee groups. my mom would take him but my mom runs late and has errands to run that mean when she drops you the return may be in 40 minutes or 3 hours and 40 minutes. not the same as controlling your own destiny. he was put in two different nursing homes before he passed and his only comment about either was how nice the people were. you would always find him in the lunch room having coffee or in the tv room chatting.

so I come by my social blogging honestly. this group seems stronger today than when it was when it was tied to the morning show. the conversations go on into the day and night regularly instead of being done at 9am. i have great new friends and i keep learning more from and about everyone as we go along.

so on this thanksgiving day/week i want to give thanks for the people of the world that make you look forward to getting out of bed, our friends here and gone, and the ones yet to come. there are pluses and minuses to a blog. i can get up in midsentence and handle something that needs to be taken care of right now and i can also check in at night before the end of the day.

i laugh and cry and get to feel the pain of the season changes with clyde and jacque and the pain of having your husband laid off before the joy of the new job comes around (long wait joanne we are all elated) and bens trials with the sets and barb and Barbara, mig and jim and krista and elinor and kays return, tgith chitrader alanna and sudbury are always special to see on the good lol blog when they stop in, mike from albert lea, , joanne, and all. steve gives us a deep reaction tounge in cheek or heartfelt, dale keeps messing with us, i am amazed at how clyde keeps it all sorted out he remembers the little details of everyones lives.

and the world just keeps on turning for the better and the worst and all I ever get is older and around. words to live by. happy thanksgiving,

Guest Blog by Joanne in Big Lake

Growing up in a large family comprised of 6 girls and 1 boy, each of us has a dish that qualifies as a catastrophe for our initial forays into cooking for the family. My specialty started innocently enough. As I was the only child in public middle school while my siblings were still in the Catholic school system, I was home first. It seemed like a reasonable and grown up thing to start supper since Mom had started working fulltime by now.

My mother’s cooking consisted mainly of bland meat, overcooked frozen vegetables and plain boiled potatoes every supper, which just seemed sooo blah, I wanted to try something different. She was a wonderful, gracious, loving mother in so many ways, but the woman could not cook.

Pork chops came in big packages and they seemed fairly easy to prepare. Searching through all the exotic spices in the cupboard, I would read “good on pork” and slather that spice on the chops. Well, if a little is good, more is better, right? After exhausting all the spices that were “good on pork,” I proceeded to cook the chops as my mother had done.

After serving this inspired, savory dish to my family on several occasions, I was dismayed to learn that I was banned from the kitchen, much to my shame and dishonor. I still like to think of my special pork chops as a precursor to Cajun blackened meats cuisine – but whom am I kidding?

My other sisters’ flops included Apple Boilover, Bird a la Grease, Cake Catastrophe and others. Not to mention some of my mother’s signature bad items. Pie Crust. She made the worst piecrusts ever, but she continued to make them by hand. The extra dough she would give to us kids to play with, so we made extra special “cookie” treats for our dear father. We rolled them up with our dirty hands, decorated them heavily with Christmas toppings and presented these treasures to our father (because we wouldn’t eat them). My father, God bless him, had a stomach of iron and ate anything put in front of him. He would eat those horrible pie dough cookies (with lots of coffee as I recall), as well as anything else Mom or us girls served up. The man was a saint in that regard.

Nowadays, I can cook a decent, simple meal following a recipe. My siblings are all quite good cooks now. The oldest sister is a truly outstanding cook and does occasional catering. Cathy jokingly says that she learned to cook out of self-defense. My mother evolved into a much better cook without having to feed 7 kids on a shoestring budget everyday, but she was still a high heat cook. I never knew what eggs sunny side up was like until I met my husband (whose mother was a great cook). I guess I never recovered from my first flop and am still not confident in the kitchen.

Share your first memorable cooking catastrophe or culinary masterpiece.

Guest Blog by Madislandgirl

I love digital cameras, because you can just shoot and shoot and not worry about wasting rolls of film that when developed show a nice out-of-focus art shot of the back of someone’s head. My son prefers taking shots of interesting images as opposed to the documentary shots I grew up with (“here we are at Mount Rushmore!”).

A little while back, discussion on the Trail was about wabi sabi. There had also been a bit of talk about old barns and how they are disappearing from the landscape. This got me thinking persistently about what once was my grandfather’s farm.

And so it was that one weekend, the son and heir and I headed out to Scott County with the express purpose of taking pictures of my grandpa’s old barn. I figured this might be our last chance, as the family who currently own the place will be selling in a year, and I feel certain the barn will be coming down at that point. An electrical fire destroyed the farmhouse about 5 years ago, so this abandoned barn is what remains of “the farm” as I remember it.

The teenage son of the current owners was in the yard when we got to the farm, which solved my quandary about asking for permission to roam around the barn. He acquiesced to our request to take pictures in a way that made it clear that he thought we were nuts, but probably harmless.

I was seldom allowed near the barn as a child, I’m sure it was considered too dirty and dangerous for a “town girl”. My son wanted to go inside. It looked pretty stable, so I let him. We both managed to resist the siren song of the ladder into the hayloft, barely.

We had a great time shooting that barn, trying to figure out how some of the old equipment must have functioned when this was a working farm. My nostalgia for a past I could never recover lifted. This was An Adventure!

We were on a roll, so I decided I would try and find an old family cemetery on the other side of town. It is a corner of a cornfield and completely unmarked. I had been there exactly once before, 10 years ago with a toddler and I was not driving. Still, I was feeling cocky.

We headed out-of-town on what I thought was the right highway. I kept scanning the landscape for something that “felt right”. We came to a little town that I remember hearing of as part of the family lore and took it as a good sign, but had we gone too far? Kept driving. As we were driving, I thought I saw a little gravel track at an odd angle to the road-maybe? I decided to turn back and give it a try. The track was pretty well washed out. I parked near the highway and decided to hike in. If I got stuck out there on a fool’s errand, I would never hear the end of it.

My son elected to stay in the car with the cell phone to call the authorities if the farmer who had posted all those No Trespassing signs decided to mistake me for a pheasant-I had 20 minutes to get there and back or he was calling 911!

I hiked around the bend, thinking this was nuts, when I saw up ahead a small grove with something in it.

I had found what I was searching for.

Where are the places that hold your family’s history?

Guest Blog by Sherrilee

Most of my growing up years were spent in a big city in the Midwest, where the wildlife consisted mostly of squirrels and sparrows. So it was a big deal when we vacationed every summer in the northern part of Wisconsin at the family homestead. We saw deer from the car windows and even the occasional black bear at the town dump. When I was seven, an animal park opened up in St. Croix Falls, which was along the route my family always drove to get to Wisconsin.

Fawn Doe Rosa was (and still is) a place where you can feed and pet a variety of animals, from deer to ponies to geese and ducks. Always looking for a way to break up the long drive to and from up north, I’m sure my parents were delighted to find anything to get us girls out of the car and out of their hair for awhile.

That first year, when I was seven, my sister and I wandered all over the park. Except for dogs and cats, I had never had any interaction with an animal before and was a little leery of the deer, some of whom were bigger than I was. So I opted for the smaller and safer geese and ducks that abounded at the park. At one point, as I was feeding some geese along the little pond, a young elk spotted me.

Clearly understanding that I was the repository of food, he headed right for me, although I didn’t notice him, so intent was I on my task. My father, who was capturing our day with the camera, snapped a shot as the elk approached me, but didn’t feel the need to warn me. Of course, even though the elk was quite small (as elk go), he did scare me out of my wits and I stepped into the pond and got my feet wet.

It took my mother several minutes to get me to approach the poor elk, who was probably as scared by my antics as I was by his, but was willing to forgive me for my outburst, since I still had food. Within a little bit, I was petting him and feeding him, like he was no more different than the family dog.

I think about this day often, as the teenager and I still visit Fawn Doe Rosa at least once a summer. What would have been a scarring experience that scared me off animals for a lifetime, turned out to be the beginning of a lifelong love of creatures great and small. We trek out to our two zoos here several times a year, love the Wolf Center in Ely, visit any animal park we find along the way and I believe my love of animals may have rubbed off; the teenager has expressed an interest for a career with animals, although it’s still a little too early to tell.

Has being afraid of anything ever led to something good for you?

Guest Blog by tim

the blog for my day will have to do with the arts. this group more than the norm seems to have an appreciation for the arts or at least an acknowledgeable acceptance of it.
the photographers the drawings the painting the discussions are something that remind me I am not living in a vacuum.

art is the difference between the walls of the walker art center and the walls of super 8 motel. the difference between seeing a sunset and adjusting the rear view mirror to get that annoying bright spot out of your eyes. the difference between walking seeing listening to the poetry of the forest and the mindless preoccupied walk with to do lists and the agenda of the day clogging up the brain arteries.

art is what makes life beautiful. years ago i was in italy buying tile with a colleague who taught me to the ropes. he is a great business mind, a multi millionaire, the guy who taught me that it is not the age or experience that allows great things to happen but the mind, the vision and the ability to recognize how to make the opportunity of the day happen. a remarkable man with a heart the size of all outdoors but with an artistic set of blinders on that allow him to enjoy beauty and the world around him only in the rarest of moments. he prefers mcdonalds and kfc to fine dining in world venues because they are familiar . he prefers ramada and holiday inn to world venues because they cater to americans. we were in line to see the last supper as it was being restored in milan , and he wanted to leave because the line was 30 minutes long.i said are we going back to the hotel for a beer 30 minutes earlier than otherwise? art for him and many others is a nice thing and i am glad they have an appreciation of art but the understanding and appreciation of the world of the arts is not something they get.

this group gets that the artistic side of life is a very vital part of life. the poetry, the drawing, painting, the music, the photography is what makes the world go round. It used to drive me crazy to go to china because they had such bad music. the mtv equivalent was on tv everywhere over there but the music was horrible. It was like chinese people trying to be madonna with cutesy little tunes that were bubble gum and bouncy or toooo dramatic. today when I go i can stream the music of my choice of just hit the shuffle button on my itunes and listen to my music. I feel like my friend eating at macdonalds in one sense but I feel like I am doing it to make my world better, more beautiful.

What do you do to make the world beautiful?

Guest blog by Donna

Our school office regularly sends newsletters home to inform families about upcoming events, fundraisers, procedures, and other relevant items. A couple of years ago my colleagues and I were strongly invited to contribute to the newsletter by writing a few notes about the goings on in our classrooms. My turn fell on the week of my birthday, which made it very special … so special, that I submitted two descriptions.

Here’s the piece they rejected:

First graders in room 102 are learning about weather tools that can measure temperature, wind and rain. On Tuesday we taped crepe paper streamers to craft sticks and predicted which condition our tool would measure. Next we took our tools outside and observed what happened when we stood and held them above our heads. Then we tried walking, skipping and running with them. Back in our room we discussed our observations and concluded we had made the perfect tool for measuring how loudly we can scream and shout.

Next week we will take our inquiry a step further and design another weather tool. Scattered thunderstorms are forecasted so we will measure the intensity of lightning. Please send a wire coat hanger and pair of pliers with your child by Monday. Please include a pair of rubber-soled shoes for your child to keep in his locker, since we won’t know until we hear thunder that it is time to take our weather tools outside. Please sign and return the parental release form that you will find today in your child’s folder. And finally, a great big THANK YOU for helping your child explore the exciting world of weather!

“When is the use of satire inappropriate?”

A Guest Blog from Renee Boomgaarden

Recently we discussed our feeling about news stories, and I noted that there was very little in the news that I could tolerate, with the exception, I now must confess, of stories about animal rescue. I don’t mean shows about animal welfare officers rescuing pets from abuse and neglect-those shows just make me angry and upset. I mean stories about helping animals out of predicaments of their own making. You know the kind-goats stranded on bridges or with their heads stuck in fencing, bears who wander into town, get treed and tranquilized, and fall sleepily into the waiting nets of patient rescuers who transport them back to the woods, ducklings retrieved from storm sewers as their mother quacks anxiously nearby.

I think my favorite stories are those told friends and family. The story about the dog who decided it would be a good idea to roll vigorously back and forth over a decomposing porcupine (both smelly and painful) stands out, as does the tale of the poor, bored, Lakeland Terrier who spent hours independently chasing a ball back and forth over a paved parking lot until it had worn the pads off its paws.

My dad and my best friend tell the most memorable rescue stories. My friend grew up on a farm, and one day after checking the cattle she came upon a Great Grey Owl sitting on the ground under a telephone pole. She was able to walk quite close to it and saw that one pupil was quite dilated. It looked kind of stunned and she surmised it had had a head injury. She somehow managed to get it into a tall box in the back of her car and drove three hours to get it to a raptor center at the University of Minnesota. She never heard what happened to it after that.

My father loves dogs and has had his share of trauma with them over the years. He still speaks with sorrow over a favorite dog he had as a boy-a Rat Terrier named Diamond-who went down a badger hole and never came back up. It still bothers him. His all-time favorite dog, however, was Puggi the Pug, a dog he had after he retired. One day in early Spring, Dad and Puggi went to the city park in Luverne, right along the Rock River, to see if the ice had broken up. The river was still frozen over, but barely, and before he could stop her, Puggi ran out on the ice to get to some birds on the other bank.
A portion of the ice gave way and she went through and was pulled under the remaining ice by the strong Spring current. She was gone. Dad said he walked down stream about 100 feet and just stared, thinking to himself that he had lost his dog for good. His eye was caught by an old ice fishing hole in the middle of the river, and to his joy, up popped Puggi. She couldn’t scramble out of the hole on her own, so Dad laid out flat and advanced across the ice on his stomach. He grabbed Puggi and slithered back to shore. He figured she saw light coming through the hole as the current took her down stream and she swam toward it. He took her home and put her in a hot shower to warm her up. My mother was appalled at the risk he took, I don’t think he thought twice about going out on that ice.

What are your tales of animal foolishness?

Guest Blog by Barbara in Robbinsdale

Well, OK, we’re going to the Renaissance Festival. I haven’t been for about 10 years, since it’s crowded and hot and sticky and dirty and smelly… But Mario (my step-son) and the girls – Janaina, 4, and Elia, 7 – were here visiting, so we’ll go, on one of the last 90° days in August.

Surprise #1 – I’d forgotten how much fun it is to go to a festival with little kids: everything’s fresh and new! Once the girls see people in costume, they put on their fairy wings as we head to the flower garland booth staffed by the girls’ aunt Lyra, and Voilά! they have garlands. Two other cousins arrive and they get to do a few rides, including The Ponies and (with Mario) The Elephant.

Surprise #2 – We usually don’t stop to watch any of the various performers, but we get hooked by Tuey the Tightrope Walker/Juggler, who it turns out is also a pretty funny guy. Everyone gives rapt attention for a blessed half hour of sitting on benches.

Surprise #3 – I’ll bet the most memorable, though, will be the booth called Vegetable Justice. As is happens, Mario’s brother Jesse has the job of being pelted with tomatoes, while hurling insults at The Pelter. The little kids even get a turn throwing at Uncle Jesse, with insults coming back along the lines of “I’ll bet you still wet the bed!” Perhaps the wildest time is had by Mario and Jesse, when it’s Mario’s turn to nail his older brother again and again, deflecting insults probably best left unnamed. (Imagine if you had this opportunity with your own sibling.)

# No surprise – The food is still fair food, but if you look long and hard you can find some very good Spinach Pie.

A few weeks later, Husband and I head out for a Saturday at the Rock Bend Folk Festival in St. Peter, on the recommendation of Krista in Waterville. Not only is the weather infinitely better, a sunny day in the 70s. There’s also less ground to cover, as it’s contained in Minnesota Square Park, and has a cozy, small town vibe. We arrive before 2:00, have already missed a couple of groups. While Husband settles in on the blanket near the Pavilion (main) Stage, I go to the smaller Joyce’s North Grove Stage and look up Krista, who seems like a long lost friend; we’ll be able to talk more later.

Surprise #1 – What a line-up at the Pavilion Stage! Abalone Dots, four young women from Stockholm, Sweden singing and playing their brand of “softgrass”. April Vetch, who performs virtuoso step-dancing and fiddling (sometimes simultaneously), is a joy to watch. Willie Murphy in the evening as we were leaving…

Surprise #2 – …and City Mouse and Friends: “Good Time Music! Their folk-rock blues” had me mesmerized with a vibrant array of musical styles – what a range this band has! – so that I almost missed this tidbit during the introductions: …” Dave Pengra on bass, and his brother Mike Pengra on drums…” I sit up and stare at the drummer – could that be OUR Mike Pengra? I sneak in closer to where I can get a good look and… yep, that IS our Mike! It explains all kinds of hints from Krista when blogging about Rock Bend… You may like to know City Mouse was inducted into the Minnesota Rock and Country Hall of Fame in 2007.

Surprise #3 – Krista had been holding out on us! (She has since come clean.) Not only does she help make this festival happen; she also plays in an acoustic folk trio called Flathead Cats on the North Stage! She has a beautiful voice, and she plays guitar, a mean mandolin, recorder(s) or flute on some of the Celtic numbers, tambourine… Love their music, a thoroughly eclectic mix.

# No surprise: – The food is still fair food, but the Pulled Pork Sandwich is out of this world.

What’s your favorite kind of Festival? Do you have a Festival tale to tell?

A Guest Blog by Anna

Halloween in Minnesota is a dicey affair costume-wise. As a kid you need to be sure
that whatever you decide to wear will be recognizable either under a parka or over a snowsuit. It should also be something that will work on the odd Indian Summer evening in the 60s. As a result, there are a lot of ghosts and witches as the size and voluminous qualities of either costume lend themselves well to layering.

I think it was an act of desperation bred in part by lack of time on my mother’s part, but one year I went as “Second Hand Rose.” Sewing something for me was not an option, nor was Mom a fan of cheap store-bought costumes (the masks were horrid), and we certainly didn’t have a lot of money to throw at the problem. So Mom whipped open the closets and decided that one of her large, colorful dresses lent itself nicely to “Second Hand Rose” as a concept piece (and would fit neatly over a parka if need be). Two things that she had not thought of: the average kid growing up in the 70s doesn’t know “Second Hand Rose” from Attila the Hun. Also, explaining a costume at every trick-or-treat door gets old (apparently a lot of adults in the 70s didn’t know “Second Hand Rose” either, so it was good I had been schooled in the singing of my theme song).

Shortly after that adventure I quit trick or treating, at least until college. I went out sophomore year with some pals. We set the whole thing up with a short skit involving a safari and searching for the elusive Suburbanis Shopperus (“take pictures, these are rare”). Once again, having to explain at every door what we were up to got old (but it still got us candy, a few photo ops, and one offer of beer).

As an adult, Halloween parties were hosted by theater and Renaissance Festival friends. Not the sort of affairs where you can dress as a pirate or a gypsy. At these events I was variously: Elvis (with a friend as Priscilla), an Lutheran Church Basement Lady in search of a hot dish, and a pregnant alien carrying James T. Kirk’s love child. One year I “took myself to prom” in a fabulous pink tulle dress, teased and bee hived my hair to a fare-the-well to match the dress, and perched a bird on top of the whole works (friends who had arrived as a haz-mat team were kind enough to drape me in caution tape). With each of these I found if you have to explain it, it should be short and sweet, but best to have something that explains itself (see above: lessons learned as “Second Hand Rose”).

Now at Halloween I’m on the other side of the door, handing out candy to the neighbor kids. Daughter usually goes out with Daddy (in an easily recognizable costume). Barney the Basset Hound hopes that it isn’t a year he is required to wear fairy wings. And we all hope for warm evenings with nary a chance of frost.

What is your most memorable Halloween costume?