Our former fearless leader was almost a prophet. Missed it by that much.
That one little a.
I sent this to Dale. He answered “I take no pride in being able to predict the Sherpa. All it took was cynicism + imagination. I’d feel better if I had prophesied something hopeful.
Unfortunately those who expect the worst are frequently right!”
We will keep mum about Dale’s own little Russian influences.
Heard a prophesy lately? Have one to make?
ND Highway 22 runs through our town north and south. In the middle of town there is a very old, ugly, railroad bridge which allows trains to travel above the highway so emergency vehicles can go under the bridge from the south side of town to the north side of town when there is a train. It is a very low underpass that invariably floods and is impassable during rain storms.
One of our friends who is a community organizer sort of person got funding for a mural to be painted on the railroad bridge. It took all sorts of Federal and State hoops to be jumped through to get the approval, and this week the mural painter arrived from California. He has done several murals in our town and our State. The local paper described the project thus:
The four underpass wall panels will comprise one large mural, more than 400 feet in length, celebrating North Dakota.The walls north of the underpass will depict the landscape of the Badlands.The east wall will show immigrating Ukrainians and the west wall will show cowboys, Native Americans and buffalo. South of the underpass, the west wall will depict Dickinson State University’s May Hall and the east wall will show historic downtown Dickinson and a modern pump-jack. (Dickinson Press, October 2, 2018).
The mural artist is enlisting local students and adults to assist with the painting. I think it is a wonderful project. How often do we get to legally spray paint on bridges?!! I just hope the Czechs and Germans from Russian don’t feel slighted that he chose Ukrainians instead of them.
Where in your community would you like to see an outdoor mural, and what would you like depicted on it?
Three clues:
Where is VS? Give me three clues to a place you’d like to visit!
I don’t fly as much as I used to, so it’s interesting to see what has changed and what hasn’t at the Minneapolis Airport every time I travel.
Construction. I moved here in 1980 and I believe that some portion of the airport and/or the parking structures have been under construction every single minute. Currently it’s the entrance to the parking shuttle area (and probably more, but that’s what I saw).
Check-in. If you’ve flown in the last few years you’ve experienced the little kiosks that guide you “gently” through the check-in process on your own. Now you even get to put on your own bag tags. A little embarrassing how long it took me to figure this out after watching ticket agents do this for 40 years. And you get to put your own suitcase on the conveyor belt, unless you run into an agent who is chatty and willing to do it for you.
Security. This has changed and not for the better. Long long lines (which I don’t understand – the only people going through security are ticketed passengers. Certainly the airlines know how many bodies they are expecting on any given morning, afternoon or evening? Why isn’t the security area ever properly staffed up?) By the time they finally diverted some of us to the other security area, which had been closed earlier, the line went the entire length of the airport.
More Security. No more plastic bins to put your stuff in. And no more taking your laptop, tablet, kindle, etc. out of your bag. But you still have to take off your shoes if you wear Birkenstocks that always make the security scanner go off.
Shopping & Eating/Drinking. OMG! Considering that the only things I ever buy in an airport are bottles of water and the occasional refrigerator magnet, it is mind-blowing how many shops (and expensive shops at that) and restaurant/bars there are in the airport. With the possible exception of rolls of toilet paper, I think you can get just about anything at the airport these days.
Connectedness (if this a word). Well, there are a lot more places to plug in and get online at the airport, especially in the international gate areas, but considering that every single person that I can see from where I am sitting is online somehow, it’s still not enough.
The changes seem to happening faster and faster so I suppose in a couple of years, this blog will be completely obsolete.
What changes would you like in future airports?
My daughter has been quite concerned about me because I have not been reading very much for the past several years. She thinks I have been depressed since my parents died. She is probably correct.
Daughter insisted that I buy at least one book on our trip to Washington. We stopped at a lovely independent bookstore in Kirkland, WA, where I purchased a murder mystery set in southwest France. Daughter chose David Sedaris’ most recent book of essays, along with four other books that I am sure she has finished by now. She insisted I take the Sedaris book home with me to read. It was very funny and poignant. He is one of her favorite authors. (Her Grade 5 teacher was rather concerned why we allowed her to read such material after she took one of his books to school to have for free reading time.) I like the murder mystery. Husband is reading VS Pritchett.
It is a long weekend and I feel like reading this weekend. I wonder what the Baboons are reading now. What will be next on your “To Read” list?
The 9 course meal we ate on Saturday night was completely sourced from a 100 mile radius of the restaurant. Given its location just east of Seattle, it was no surprise that salmon, geoduck, mussels, and oysters were on the menu. We also ate local lamb and pork. All the veggies like turnips, carrots, greens, cabbage, potatoes, beets, and cucumber came from the restaurant farm, as did all the herbs and flowers used in the dishes. (Day lilies, Marigolds, and Bachelor Buttons are surprisingly tasty.) There were lovely local mushrooms. All the wines had been commissioned from local vintners by the restaurant owners last year for the meal. Cooking fat was either butter, grape seed oil, or hazelnut oil. They grow quinoa locally, and we had that, too.
The restaurant owners went to the extreme, though, to make sure that everything we ate was from within 100 miles. That meant that they churned their own butter from milk from local cows, and planted a couple of acres of rye and wheat to mill their own flour for the bread. They collected clean local sea water to make their own salt. We had no pepper, but there were so many farm herbs in the food that we didn’t miss it at all. Lemon verbena provided all the citrus we needed. The biggest dilemma was what to use for locally sourced leavening for the hazelnut cakes we had for dessert.
They started out last year collecting mule deer antlers from within a 100 mile radius of the farm and grinding them to a powder. Horn is apparently a good leavening agent and made some pretty good cakes. It takes a lot of laborious, time consuming grinding, though, and they found an even better leavening agent in wood ash from the fire place. Who knew?
Plan a meal completely sourced from a 100 mile radius of your house. What would you serve?
Last Saturday we met a delightful young woman who was visiting the West Coast for the first time. She was a barrister from London, England, someone who argues cases in British courts, either for the prosecution or the defense.
We were dining at a lovely restaurant and herb farm in Woodinville, WA. The arrangements were such that we were seated with total strangers and were expected to converse with each other for the duration of our 4 hour, 9 course meal. We had a very congenial bunch at our table, and the conversation turned particularly lively when I asked the barrister if she wore a wig to court. “Oh, yes indeed!” she replied, and went on to describe the process of finding just the right wig for her work.
There are apparently several places in London where one can purchase court dress and wigs, all ancient and venerable establishments. The wigs are made from horse hair. She said the first question she was asked was whether she wanted a wig made from the mane or the tail. I gather the mane hair would be finer and more expensive. I don’t know which she chose. Next, they measured the circumference of her head, and then took her into a rather dark cellar full of cardboard boxes where they found the boxes with wigs in her size.
The next procedure sounds quite similar to purchasing a magic wand in the Harry Potter books. Clothed in her court robes, complete with her white collar and tie, she tried on one wig at a time. I don’t know how concerned she was with the particular look or style. It seemed that the distinguishing characteristic of the right wig was that it had to be one that did not slip or fall off when she bowed as low as she could bow. She said she got quite dizzy bowing repeatedly. She assured us that there were sparks and lightning flashes when she found just the right wig. She said hers was a short advocate’s wig with a slight widows peak.
What are the distinguishing characteristics of your work clothes? What costumes would you like to wear to work?
Since we left on vacation on Wednesday, I have replied to about 30 emails from the regulatory board of which I am the chairperson. Husband has had phone calls and emails from tribal court and from the addiction treatment center on the reservation where he works. Daughter is somewhat annoyed with us. I can’t blame her. Really, vacation should be more like this:
I do not plan to work after I retire. I need to keep telling myself this so that I don’t work after I retire. I need to spend retirement having photo ops with enormous, two-legged garlic bulbs.
If you are retired, is retirement what you imagined? If you are not retired, what do you imagine retirement will be like?
We leave for Tacoma in the morning. Tonight we learned a credit card was compromised and had to be cancelled. The tomatoes conspired to have a mass ripening, so I am putting up tomato puree. Why does this all happen when we have so many other things to do?
What preparations do you make when you travel? What glitches have you experienced while travelling or preparing to travel?
I ran across a little book belonging to my father INSTRUCTIONS for AMERICAN SERVICEMEN in BRITAIN 1942. It was issued by the War Department, Washington, DC. It is a delightful little manual for good relations when you visit Great Britain. I feel like I should send it back to Washington so they can reread it. Here are some of the headings:
NO TIME TO FIGHT OLD WARS
BRITISH ARE RESERVED, NOT UNFRIENDLY
DON’T BE A SHOW OFF
THE BRITISH ARE TOUGH
AGE INSTEAD OF SIZE
REMEMBER THERE’S A WAR ON
BRITAIN, CRADLE OF DEMOCRACY
WASTE MEANS LIVES
KEEP OUT OF ARGUMENTS
BE FRIENDLY, BUT DON’T INTRUDE ANYWHERE IT SEEMS YOU ARE NOT WANTED
IT IS ALWAYS IMPOLITE TO CRITICIZE YOUR HOSTS; IT IS MILITARILY STUPID TO CRITICIZE YOUR ALLIES
I think this is a nice quote ” When you see a girl in khaki or air force blue with a bit of ribbon on her tunic, remember she didn’t get it for knitting more socks than anyone else in Ipswich”.
Well, that sort of sums up a lot, doesn’t it.
Do you have any advice to add to the list?
Trail Baboon 