Category Archives: Uncategorized

Family, Food, holidays, Uncategorized

Lefse and Weltschmerz

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Our son sent me a text earlier this week along with this photo:

“This is how low I’ve had to stoop to mimic your lefse”.

“It tastes like mediocrity and sadness. As if some underappreciated Norse lady made it sacrificing quality for quantity. It causes me great Weltschmerz”.

I am sure that there are many people who gladly eat Mrs. Olson’s potato lefse and really like it.  My son is pretty spoiled. I am making lefse today and bringing several packages with me in my suitcase to Brookings on Monday.

I understand his Weltschmerz, his world weariness and melancholy, especially now that  Christmas is over and the new year looms ahead with all its uncertainty. I combat it with baking and catnaps.

Where is your Weltschmerz meter at these days? What causes your Weltschmerz? How do you  cope with the inadequacy and imperfection of this world?

 

 

100 Words, Food, holidays, home, Kids, Uncategorized

Favorite Meals

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Our daughter is home and is relishing being spoiled and waited on. She works hard as an intensive in-home family therapist in Tacoma  and is really burned out right now.  She doesn’t like sea food,  which is unfortunate  given how close she lives  to the sea,  and has been craving beef.  She and I are planning favorite meals for her while she is home.  Roast beef, garlic mashed potatoes, turkey chipotle chowder, and pasta with this special tomato sauce I make are her requests. It is good to have her here.

What were your favorite meals at home?  What didn’t you like?  What special meals does  your  family request?

Family, Gatherings, holidays, home, Kids, Uncategorized

Giving and Receiving

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Well, it is Christmas  Day.  We will rendezvous with daughter later this morning in Bismarck  and haul her home. Then we will open presents and she will presumably fall asleep until supper.

We have three presents for her under the tree, and one from her to  her dad. My present from her was a tomten with a 2 feet tall hat that doubles as an Advent calendar.  All we got for each other was our fresh,  mail order  Christmas  tree. Son and family will get their presents next week when we travel to Brookings. I appreciate  that in our family we only get each other simple, useful things. (Daughter believes it is essential that I get something tomten related every year). The cats got nary a present, as they  share the tree with us.

What did you get? What did you give? What were your best and worst Christmas presents ever?

 

 

Family, holidays, Nature, pets, Uncategorized

A Christmas Visitor

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I read with great delight a recent story about a family who found  a live Eastern Screech Owl in their Christmas tree. The little owl had apparently been the tree in their living room for about a week. They didn’t notice it when they decorated the tree.  Many of their ornaments  were owl shaped, so the hitchhiker blended right in. I was surprised it didn’t hoot or move much.

The family contacted a rescue organization  that caught the owl and fed it up and got it back into the wild. The woman who found the owl in her tree was pretty delighted and said she felt a pretty special bond with the little owl.  The native people Husband works with believe owls are portents of death. We all have different relationships with animals.

Any good owl stories? What animals have you had special bonds with? Have you ever had unexpected visitors?

Family, Gatherings, holidays, Theatre, Uncategorized

Worth Doing

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Gustav Holst is reputed to have  said, in reference to church music and musicians, that if something is worth doing, it is worth doing badly. I know I have reported this on the Trail before, and it was once again brought home to me last evening at our Lessons and Carols service.

It went quite well, actually, given that the new music and worship director had never done a service like this before, and that the bell choir director was miffed because she thought she and I should have planned it. I helped to smooth things out between the two of them and found as many readers for the lessons as I could. We had two 8 year old girls read lessons, and they did a great job. I also enlisted a very theatrical guy from the Episcopal church to read, as well as with our family lawyer and me and Husband. (I tried to get the UCC pastor to read, but she was having 16 people over for dinner last night).  We had an impromptu children’s choir for the first time at this service, along with a flute player, a clarinet player, our assistant pastor on trumpet, and  a violin player.  Husband sang a solo from a Finnish folk hymn Lost in the Night.  The choir sang and the bell  choir rang.  All the music was appropriate for the service, and the director curbed her tendency for evangelical  praise music.

We never had a dress rehearsal, but it all fell together. It wasn’t perfect, but it worked and everyone left in good spirits.  The bell choir director and the worship and music director  embraced after it was over. I hope as you read this you can think back to programs and pageants from your past.

What is the most elaborate thing you have planned?  Any stories from past pageants or programs?

 

books, Fantasy, Fifty Words, History, Travel, Uncategorized

80 Days

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Today is the anniversary of Phileas Fogg completing his trip  in Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 days. He left on October 2 and got back to London on December 21.  I haven’t read much of Verne, but I thought this  plot was fascinating and fun when I read it years ago

What route would you take to go around the world if you mainly took trains and boats and cars?  What would you want to see? 

History, Media, News, Uncategorized

Valor, Tragedy, and Scandal

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Our town was mentioned in the national news over the past couple of days due to an obituary.  I bet in the next couple of days it will make the national news due to a scandal at the local post office. Both stories involve the local newspaper.

Earlier this week our newspaper ran a moving and poetic obituary on a former resident, a Vietnam veteran, who died in a Veterans’ home in Montana. The story made the national news. If you read the article, it also provides a link to the actual obituary.

http://a.msn.com/01/en-us/BBY97ry?ocid=se

Then, late Thursday afternoon, the paper broke a story about thousands of pieces of mail being thrown in dumpsters behind the post office by postal employees.  I believe I have mentioned here my frustration with late or non-existent mail delivery.  Well, now we know what has been happening.

https://www.thedickinsonpress.com/news/4831203-Complaints-on-mail-delivery-at-Dickinson-prompt-investigation-newspapers-other-mail-found-in-dumpsters

Both these stories will elicit Baboon reactions and comments, so my question is simple:

Comment on these stories and your reactions to them.

Business, Family, Fitness, Kids, Nature, Travel, Uncategorized

Khaki & Backpack

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There is a Wyndham hotel right across the street from the Lima International Airport. Although Lima is a gigantic city of 11 million, it is just a quick stopover for many tourists who are on their way to the interior of the country to see Machu Picchu.  In fact, the Wyndham does a very brisk business for those arriving from the States at 12:30 and 1 a.m. in the morning, who then turn around to depart the next morning for Cusco and other cities farther south and east.  At 1:30 a.m. the front and bell desks are fully staffed!

There might be folks staying at the hotel who are NOT heading off to hike in the mountains, but you can’t tell by looking at them. Everywhere you look the view is khakis and backpacks.  At breakfast (which opens at 4 a.m.), even families are all dressed in khaki and even the smallest kids have backpacks (although you see more red and pink backpacks at this age).  Hiking boots and sturdy shoes always round out the ensembles.

It is such a ubiquitous outfit that our last morning in Cusco, I was startled (yes, startled) to see a group of five women at breakfast in extremely fashionable clothing. Tight leather-ish pants, a lacey red blouse and the little short black jacket of one woman definitely caught my eye.  And shiny red heels that were so high that if I were to wear them, I would have to super glue my feet onto them to keep from slipping right off.  She and the other four women looked lovely and very stylish, but definitely not in keeping with the khaki and backpack set!

What item in your closet do you wear the most?

Art, Movies, News, Theatre, Uncategorized

Calendar Cuties

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I just received the December 5th edition of the Rock County Star Herald, my home town newspaper. I was delighted to read a story about Generations, the local senior citizens center. The center started an ambitious campaign to raise 2 million dollars for a  building for senior activities which will provide meals and social activities for community seniors as well as for residents of all ages in the low income housing tower to which it will be connected.

The newest fund raiser is a calendar featuring,  each month,  a local  senior posed in a scene from an iconic movie. Costumes were borrowed from the local community theatre company, and a local photographer volunteered to take the photos. So, on the front page of the paper, there she was, Neva, the mother of one of my high school classmates, posed like Julie Andrews from The Sound of Music,  clad in that black dress with the white apron, standing in front of a mountain in the middle of the alpine meadow with her arms held out, ready to belt out The Hills are Alive.  George, director of Generations and a retired horticulturalist, posed as Forrest Gump sitting on the bench with a suitcase and a box of chocolates.

They got the idea from the Winona Friendship Center. It seems like they had a great deal of fun doing it. They are making plans for next year’s calendar.

What iconic film scene/character  would you like to pose as for such a calendar?

History, Science, Travel, Uncategorized

High Flyers

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Today marks the anniversary in 1903 of the first sustained motorized airplane flight by the Wright brothers in Kitty Hawk, NC. They flew 6.8 miles per hour. Orville was the pilot.  Wilbur ran along side. This is a photo of the 12 second flight.

It amazes me that their three-axis control system  which  allowed the pilot to actually control the plane in flight is still standard on today’s aircraft.

Our plane last month from Minneapolis to New York was pushed along at 600 miles an hour by some strong tail winds. The pilot made a point of proudly announcing this as we arrived well ahead of schedule at LaGuardia airport. I think the Wright brothers would be pretty amazed by that. I don’t know what the would think of the current state of commercial air travel.

How would you change modern air travel?  Be creative.