Category Archives: Uncategorized

books, Family, Gatherings, home, Kids, Stories, Uncategorized, Words

Serial Bliss

26 Comments

Today’s post comes to us from Minnesota Steve.

There aren’t many things better than discovering a great book, a book so good you hate to turn the last pages because you never want it to end. One thing that is better is discovering that the great book you just finished is one in a series written by the same author. The pleasure you are feeling is repeatable.

One afternoon when I was about ten I discovered a book of stories by Arthur Conan Doyle in the Ames Public Library. The first of them, “A Scandal in Bohemia,” introduced me to the complicated figure of Sherlock Holmes and to the thrill of reading mysteries. When I understood there were more Holmes stories, I couldn’t believe my good fortune.

There is a lot to like about book series. You can start subsequent books in the series knowing you like that author’s style. You often go into subsequent books already knowing some of the characters and the setting. Series offer writers the chance to develop themes in depth and do a better job of telling stories. When I begin a book by a new author I don’t know if I will eventually feel the time I spent with the book will be rewarded. When you are chewing your way through a good series, that isn’t an issue.

I’ve just begun exploring a new series. Following exhortations from my daughter, I just read the first novel in Louise Penny’s beloved Three Pines series. Penny’s crime novels feature charming Canadian locales and the comforting presence of Chief Inspector Armand Gamache. Louise Penny has a warm and whimsical view of life and people. While her novels are driven by the need to explain a murder, the people who fill her books are human and mostly likable. Penny’s vision is deeply rooted in community. My daughter enjoys Penny’s humor. I was surprised to find so many “Easter eggs” in the form of unexpected observations about life and people. The series currently includes 15 books. Penny adds about a book a year. When my daughter met Louise Penny last year at a Detroit book signing event, she was not surprised to find Penny is modest, witty and gracious . . . just the sort of person who would write such appealing novels.

I’ll have more to say about good book series in the Comments section.

What book series have you enjoyed? What did you like about them?

Art, Family, gardening, Nature, Seasons, Uncategorized, Weather

Autumn Gardening

44 Comments

You all know that I love gardening in the spring and summer. And that I am horrible at gardening in the fall.  I’m not sure but I think it’s too much delayed gratification.  Anything you do in the fall isn’t really going to give you results until spring.  Or maybe I’m just worn out after the spring and summer hours pulling, hacking and digging.

In any case, over the weekend I had to FORCE myself to get out and do a little clean up and plant some bulbs and tubers. I added some more tulips to the front boulevard and also two patches of daffodils.  I moved my yellow and purple dwarf iris a bit (they were getting swallowed up by lilies) and I also added some Open Your Eyes dwarf iris tubers this year

I had put this off over the last couple of weekends, using YA’s accident/surgery as an excuse and, truth be told, I have been very busy, but 2 weekends in a row, the gardening was on my list and just didn’t get done. So now I feel an immense sense of satisfaction and relief.  Why can’t I get myself to do gardening in the fall, when I know it will feel great when I’m done?

How do you get yourself motivated?

education, Fantasy, History, Movies, Nature, Science, space, Travel, Uncategorized

Aliens Among Us?

61 Comments

Back to my rant on reactionary headlines. Now I’m seeing news that some videos from quite a few years ago have been leaked from Navy archives, videos that the Navy says are “real”.  They show unidentified objects that have never been explained.  So now aliens exist and are among us according to the headlines.

Personally I’m not willing to say that we are the only life in the universe. As Matthew McConaughey says in the movie, Contact

However, I’m pretty sure that if there is other life in the universe, the human race doesn’t have it within itself to RECOGNIZE that life. I think that our definition of life is too small.  Even our definition of life is based on what we currently believe to be life:  “the condition that distinguishes animals and plants form inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity and continual change preceding death.”

I’m also pretty sure that any kind of life/civilization that can get to Earth is/will be way more advanced than we can imagine. So I’m not really concerned that the Navy video is really aliens – if aliens are here, they are advanced enough to keep themselves hidden from us.  For all we know, aliens do walk among us and we’ll probably never figure it out?

What place in the universe would you like to visit?

Family, Food, home, Nature, Seasons, Uncategorized

The Chestnut Tree

96 Comments

Today’s post comes to us from Ben.

The horse chestnuts are falling.

The walnuts are falling too and they make more noise when they fall. And boy, if they hit the deck it’s a good “Thud”. But hit the metal deck table? Wow, that’ll wake you up. “KABANG”! We have 4 nice big walnut trees that shade the deck. But they sure make a mess.

But it’s the horse chestnuts that I’m attracted too.

This is the one chestnut tree we have at home.

I planted it from a seed. Mom says she’s surprised it ever grew at all because I was digging it up every day to see if it had sprouted yet.

I would collect the nuts on Sundays along the sidewalk on the way from church. There were several chestnut trees next to the parking lot we used and in the fall I’d be lucky to find some left from the kids at the earlier services.

They’re just so appealing with their large size and smooth shell and the nice brown color. And they’re fairly easy to get out of the husk. Walnuts are messy and stain your fingers and they’re just dark brown and yucky. Acorns are kinda cool, but they’re small and sometimes hard to get out of the husk. But horse chestnuts. I get warm fuzzies just thinking about them.

Here’s part of what I collected. There doesn’t seem to be very many this year. Yet another victim of our cool, wet spring?

Here’s chestnunts in their natural habitat.

And the empy husk, which was almost as appealing as the nut itself.

I had the big yellow Tonka dump truck and I’d fill it with acorns I picked up while playing in the street. Yeah, Mom and dad told me to go play in the street. Not exactly; the oak trees are along our driveway so that’s where I had to go to collect acorns. I was probably about 9 or 10 years old.

I remember when I was about 4 or 5, mom and dad had just built the new house. There was a tree stump in the backyard that I played on. And it seems like there was an upended stump; all roots sticking out, I could climb up in there and find a place to sit in among the roots. That was fun.

I’ve lived here 55 years. A lot of trees have come and gone.

TALK ABOUT A TREE.

Art, Family, Gatherings, Music, Stories, Uncategorized

OH, sIT cLOSE!

42 Comments

At my mother’s residence (and nursing home) several weeks ago, she and I attended a concert in the Main Dining Room, where there is a baby grand piano. A collection of string quartets (and one trio) were performed by students from St. Mary’s University String Festival – a 10-day music camp for middle and high school musicians. 

http://camps.smumn.edu/project/saint-marys-university-string-festival/

The campers attended concerts of the Minnesota Beethoven Festival, whose dates coincided with the camp dates, and a concert performed by the St. Mary’s faculty – aka the Lark Quartet. The students also gave two concerts, one as community outreach that acted as their dress rehearsal, which is what Mom and I saw.

I wasn’t sure if Mom would last the entire concert, and in order to position us with an “escape path”, we sat to the far left, but ended up quite close to the First Violin. Now that I think of it, I doubt if she had ever sat so close to a performer before. The first few offerings by the young musicians went well enough. Just when I thought she might be falling asleep, she sat up a little straighter and looked at me out of the corner of her eye – she was REALLY enjoying this, and was enthralled with watching whomever was in the first chair position. Not only did she last the entire hour-long concert, she talked to the students as they came around to greet us afterward, and said over and over how she had never seen anything like it before. She was charmed, and so were they.

I remember at the end of my first summer in San Francisco, I got to see the traveling Broadway show Hair, twice in one week. The first time was with tickets acquired in the usual way, and we were in the second balcony so got to see, essentially, an overview. Two days later my roommate and I were offered tickets by her friend who could not attend – these were in the Third Row Center… I will never forget this experience as long as I live.

When have you seen a performance “up close and personal”?

Which do you generally prefer – an overview, or a close-up experience?

Family, home, Nature, Seasons, Uncategorized

Four & Twenty Blackbirds

80 Comments

Today’s post comes to us from Ben.

The blackbirds have arrived. Or maybe they’ve just arrived en-mass. Kelly does not like them. She will go out at 6 a.m., slapping two boards together to scare them off. To me it looks like an exercise in futility. She’s thinking if she scares them off soon enough and often enough they’ll stay away. And I’m not sure – I can’t prove it *won’t* work. But I don’t think it is working.

It’s morning, she’s just driven off to work and the trees are already filled with cackling blackbirds. I’m sure it upset her no end; she knows they are mocking her now. But I admire her determination. The barn swallows have moved on so that’s depressing as well. Tonight when she gets home, she’ll be out there cracking those boards together.

We’ve even tried firing shotguns at them. Yep, they all fly away, but then they’re right back. Like turkey or deer. Or raccoons. Or a bad fungus.

The city of Rochester has also been fighting crows roosting in trees in the downtown area. So at least we’re not fighting the messy droppings of the blackbirds, just the noise.

“What wakes you up in the morning?”

Fantasy, Gatherings, Stories, Uncategorized

Full Moon Dream

23 Comments

I’m driving down the interstate and am drowsy. I jerk awake and it seems as if I am on a different road.  It is still two lanes in my direction (I feel like I’m going south) but there aren’t many street lights.  Seems more like a more rural highway.  I’m not sure how I could have gotten onto this road.  I see flashing lights in the distance and as I come to a stop, I see a grisly accident on my right.  It’s two mangled cars, but up on the hillside along the road, as if the intensity of the crash flipped them up onto the hill.

There are several cops and also mechanics at the stop. One of them uses a catapult-type contraption and shoots a spherical object up into the sky.  I’m not sure what it is.  While I sit in my car, I suddenly here a bang and feel something drop behind my head and catch in my hair.  I look up and there is a small hole in the ceiling of my car, about ¾ of an inch.  I get out of my car and show the hole to the cops and mechanics.

Suddenly I’m in a car repair shop and there are two mechanics telling me that it will take 30 days for them to get to the car and they’ll call me when it’s repaired. I tell them that they should call me when they are ready to work on it because I’m not leaving the car with them for 30 days.  They consult a bit and then say “well, if you can wait, we’ll do it right now.”   Then I’m rolling over and hitting the alarm.

As I’ve mentioned before, I subscribe to the “detritus swirling around in your subconscious” theory of dream interpretation, however for this particular dream, I’ve got nothing.

What do you think my dream means?

Art, Family, Food, home, Uncategorized

Tedium Terminator

35 Comments

Caregiving is many things but one of the side effects that you don’t usually hear about is the tedium. Maybe others don’t experience this but I can only run up and down the steps to fetch food and ice so many times a day before it starts to get tedious.  Stress baking and cooking didn’t help much either this weekend.  I’m even looking forward to going to the office.  Yikes!

So I was thrilled when I heard from a girlfriend that her newest grandbaby came a week early and is healthy and at home already. Thrilled for two reasons: a healthy new grandbaby is always thrilling AND I now have a project to work on.

I’m making baby blocks and I have to know the baby’s name before I get started since the number of blocks and paper squares depends on the number of letters in the baby name. Once I got going on the blocks I remembered that  I needed to make a couple of thank you notes for YA as well.  I spent a couple of relaxing hours in my studio and now I feel better.  Guess I need to come up with some projects to work on the next couple of weeks!

Do you have any go-to tedium terminators?

100 Words, Art, Fantasy, Gatherings, Music, Songs, Travel, Uncategorized

Strawberry Fields Forever

40 Comments

In the news today, Strawberry Fields, the spot that sparked John Lennon’s imagination and led to their great song will be opening to the public soon. You will be able to walk the gardens and grounds and there is a visitor center with interactive exhibits that highlight Lennon’s early life.

According to the story, about 60,000 visitors gather at the gates to Strawberry Fields every year.

What spot inspired by song would YOU like to visit?

Business, Family, holidays, home, Kids, Medicine, Uncategorized

Binder Heaven

43 Comments

Binders are my thing. Give me a good binder with tabs any day.  I have a binder for my other book club, for poetry that I’ve printed off the internet, for directions, for recipes and for Solstice planning.  Vacations and special events like the solar eclipse also get binders.  I made a binder for YA’s college search and another one for college financial aid.  Luckily at work, I need a binder for each program and I also have a binder for assorted things I need to keep track of.

YA’s injury has generated massive amounts of paper: emergency room paper, orthopedic paper, worker’s comp paper and insurance paper. Every time we leave the house for an appointment, I get handed the folder.  I joked on Tuesday that I was going to put it all in a binder; YA snorted.

So I was surprised yesterday morning when she said “can you put all these papers in a binder?” I didn’t know how serious she was and although I agreed, I didn’t have the project on my immediate radar.  She asked again at 5 p.m. and then 8:30.  At that point I grabbed an unused binder (yes, I have a stash) and some tabs (yes, I have a stash) and we worked on it together.  She sorted out all the papers, I labeled the tabs and 3-hole punched everything.  As she wheeled herself back to her room with the completed binder, I felt a warm glow.  Two binder gals together!

How do you like to organize your papers?  Do you think our society will EVER be paperless?