Here’s a note from Tamara Kant-Waite, past president pro-tem of the Future Historians of America:

Dear Prospective Primary Sources,

The last time I wrote it was to encourage you to treat everything you touch as if it could be a valuable future artifact – something to be cherished and studied and puzzled over by the scholars of nexter-year. I’m back to make the point again because the future of our representation of the past is at stake! Our precious objects have lives that run parallel to our own, but many of those smaller metallic trinkets will last a lot longer than we do.

That belt buckle you’re wearing, for example. To you it may be a mere link in the ensemble that holds up your pants, but to Future Historians that hunk of metal could represent a tremendous breakthrough. A buckle that’s not at all like it was just found buried in Alaska and is being touted as proof that people migrated across a land bridge that linked present North America with Siberia! Imagine! Who knows what YOUR belt buckle, found 1,500 years from now, could prove? It might become the only piece of evidence that ancient upper Midwestern peoples who traded in the industrial/retail area near the Woman Throwing Hat Statue migrated, perhaps on a daily basis, out to the suburbs.

It’s hard to tell what parts of our built up and manufactured world will last, but real things tell stories. So spend some time today paying attention to the genuine objects that surround you. And then take some of these precious items out in your yard, and bury them.

Why? Because they will be received as gifts by Future Historians who may otherwise be condemned to sorting through our permanent e-mails, perpetual Facebook pages and indelible tweets. That’s bound to be dreary work. Which is why these yet-to-be-born historical investigators will silently thank you for your blessed offering of something tangible to examine.

Yours in the Fullness of Time,

Tamara

She has a point, but it’s hard to guess which of my most durable things might make a worthy discovery for the scholars of tomorrow. It would likely be the most mundane thing I have, which does not narrow the field much since everything I have is mundane.
A nail clipper, perhaps?

What will the archeologists find most interesting when they sift through the site of your house 1,500 years from now?

The Tom Keith Hurrah on Saturday night was, as promised, a giddy romp. There were songs and jokes. There was cross dressing, juggling and magic. And Baboon(er)s were in the audience, alongside some other animals, if I could believe the sounds I heard people making.

To the right you can see our representatives from the Trail, courtesy of PlainJane from the West Side and her husband (the photographer). From left to right in the back row: Jim (Joanne’s husband), PlainJane, tim, Joanne, Anna, and engrossed in his book verrilee sherrilee’s s&h. In the front row, also from left to right: Linda, verrilee sherrillee,
and madislandgirl.

The smiles in this photo are an important sign of artistic success. The people who put the show together, Garrison Keillor, Dan Rowles, Kate Gustafson, Sue Scott and a host of other hard working APHC staffers and associated artists, insisted that the Fitzgerald theater be a eulogy-free zone for the night. There not much that words can add when you bring out the bagpipes, as they did for the show’s finale. What is it about that instrument that gives people permission to cry? Maybe the intensity of the sound simply drives emotions out of hiding, I don’t know.

And if that wasn’t enough – Pies Were Thrown. Or at least Pies Were Pushed Into Faces.

I wish I had a picture of the actual pies and the willing victim, along with some video of the hilarious clean-up process. Perhaps those will surface eventually here. For the audience, it was a delight, and a fitting tribute to Mr. Keith, who always wanted to please the crowd with laughs and amazements and then send them home happy. On Saturday night at the Fitz, his friends did just that.

Who deserves a pie in the face?

A few kind Baboons have announced their intention in recent comments to wait in line for tickets to the Tom Keith Hurrah! this afternoon at the Fitzgerald Theater.

You should have a nice enough afternoon to stand around with your strange friends and friendly strangers. We expect sunny skies and a high in the mid-50’s. I know only a few things about the show itself but from what I’ve heard you will see sights that are not likely to be repeated. It will make the Sunday papers and people will talk about it for years. No solemn occasion, the goal is to do a show that the funniest guy in town would have loved. Tom appreciated the direct approach to humor. You may remember he went light on the subtext and heavy on the slapstick.

Having said that, I can’t imagine Tom waiting in a long line for anything. He was generally unimpressed with whatever was being handed out at the end of a queue, doubly so if a whole bunch of people thought it was something special. The presence of a crowd just about anywhere was a sign to him to turn around and head in the other direction. The one exception was any case where he was appearing in the show. It wasn’t that Tom thought he was worth the price of admission (though he was). It was simply a matter of fulfilling an obligation. He had a job to do.

There is a time in a typical American life when a person is willing to stand for hours and even camp out overnight, if necessary, to gain admission to a much anticipated concert or event. The urge fades with time. Maybe it diminishes in synch with the willingness of one’s friends to devote the better part of a day to getting in the door. There is a social aspect to standing in line together that, in the best cases, breaks down barriers. People chat, save spaces for each other, commiserate. On occasion it turns ugly, like when the rain starts and there’s only one narrow awning to stand under, or when someone budges.

Ultimately the quality of your line-standing experience is determined by the strength of your legs, the condition of your stomach, and the dispositions of the people around you.

Share your standing-in-line strategies and experiences.

Here, as usual, is a special Election Day message from the lone US Congressman whose district has been drawn to include ONLY the water surface area in his state – Minnesota’s Loomis Beechly.

Greetings Constituents,

Today is Off-Year Election Day, so I’m urging everyone who is having an off year to get out there and vote. If you do that, we should have a 100% turn out!

Yes, not just 99%. Because even the super-rich are having a rough time of it. Not moneywise of course. Their greatest problems are reputational. Most people don’t think highly of the rich to begin with. Common folks believe they would do a much better job of being rich than the rich folks do – a better job in that they’d be more approachable, more sensible and more charitable.

Don’t be so sure.

As a Congressman representing all the water surface area in Minnesota, I have regular dealings with rich people about the licensing of their mega-yachts and pleasure craft. Mostly they tell me that our boat registration costs are too, too high. And it’s not just about saving a few dollars. I’ve discovered that a lot of the money going to pay for those expensive boat licenses could be spent on political campaigns instead. That’s a wise re-allocation of resources, so I’m definitely looking into that, but don’t get the wrong idea. I’m not being bought to enable some tycoon’s self-indulgence. The super-rich are no more selfish than you are. However, they are more successful at it.

What can I say? They’re achievers.

Anyway, all this talk is confusing and stressful. Why not take out your frustration by voting on something? You could put a mayor or a city councilor or a school board member out of work. Or, you could help them keep their jobs. Or you could give someone else a NEW job. It’s all about making a difference. Sometimes you just have to stand up and say “I matter! Even if I don’t know what I’m doing!”

So go to the polls and cast your random, uninformed vote today. This is a great year to do it, because I’m not running for anything and the next twelve months will be full of crazy messages that are blurted out by candidates who are under the influence of think tanks, PACS, Super-PACS and six-packs. Think of it – for a full year, everything that’s said in every form of media will be intended to influence one or more segments of the voting public. Will it be aimed at you? Don’t you want to be wooed? Who doesn’t! If you can’t be rich, you should vote, at least.

Become a voter– today is your last chance to get an oar in the water before the year of seduction begins. Why endure such a long conversation that isn’t about you?

Respectfully,

Congressman Loomis Beechly

As usual, the Congressman makes a weird kind of sense. So consider voting today.

What kind of rich person would you be?

Dear Dr. Babooner,

I’m running for President of the United States because I think I’m a pretty good person. I have a lot of radical ideas that make perfect sense to me, so I figured my passion and certainty would be enough to get me elected if people would only give me a fair chance. But as soon as I got started with my campaign I discovered that I had to hire a bunch of other people to do the things I didn’t have time to do. And believe me, that’s a lot of things! Running for President is a lot more involved than raising 852 foster children, which I’ve done and which I thought was the busiest kind of work a person could have. Surprise!

And just like children of all kinds, the campaign workers have started to snipe at each other and call each other names and say that they got pushed and their foot was stepped on and somebody took their favorite hat and somebody else said out loud at school that they smelled like poop and now their life is as good as over and they’re going to have to run away!

When selfish children start to pick on each other like this, some people automatically blame the mom, saying she’s a lousy parent. That last part could be true, but even the best possible mom can wind up with whiney, petulant children. It doesn’t automatically mean she’s bad – only that she chose to get deeply involved with people whose brains are still developing.

Now some of my critics are saying I shouldn’t be President because my campaign workers are fighting. I find that really, really frustrating and I want to speak out because I know the whole story of what goes on behind the scenes. And what I want to say to those critics is that if you can’t something better than a few squabbling children as your reason why I should never be President, you aren’t trying hard enough.

But of course I can’t really say that, since it would be self-defeating.

So Dr. Babooner, do I keep quiet and take a mild bit of heat, or do I lash out at my tormentors and take the blazing inferno?

Sincerely, Mrs. B.

I told Mrs. B that she’s complaining about the wrong thing. Negative attention is still attention, and if the alternative to making things worse is being forgotten, you have to go ahead and make things worse. Even a casual, oblique, half-sympathetic reference to you as part of a clubby little blog written by a clueless dolt might be worth a vote or two, and you really can’t afford to throw any of those away.

But that’s just one opinion. What do YOU think, Dr. Babooner?

This came in late last night from Spin Williams, visionary and permanent chair of The Meeting That Never Ends – a rolling idea development and dealmaking workshop.

Here at the Meeting That Never Ends, we were delighted to hear that Asian Carp have probably made it into the Twin Cities area. That is a wonderful thing for a city to have – immigrants! And while their mysterious rituals (they leap out of the water!) and puzzling ways (they never stop eating!) may seem strange to you, it is that very sort of thing that gives a moribund culture an injection of vitality that can keep it fresh and alive. So, congratulations!

Complainers and isolationists will tell you that the new carp are dangerous because they upend the environment by multiplying faster, eating all the food and crowding out fish that were already in the river. In the business world, we call that “competition”! If those long-time fish are getting complacent about reproducing and have lost the “edge” necessary to fight for food, perhaps they deserve to be overwhelmed! Nobody guarantees you the right to be a big fish in a small stream forever! Somebody’s always gonna come along and knock you off your pedestal if you don’t stay sharp!

Rather than try more ineffective efforts to stop the A.C.’s, we at TMTNE decided this is a great time for Mississippi River watchers in the Twin Cities to do some outreach to those beleaguered local fish. Offer some training and personal coaching. A motivational speech or two could work wonders. Tell them to get off their scaly butts and start going fin-to-gill with these showy, airborne newcomers!

There are all sorts of opportunities to do this work, especially with the prevalence of catch-and-release fishing. It turns out that Twin Citians are already logging a lot of “face time” with our denizens of the deep in that moment after the fish is caught and before it’s tossed back in. Why not add a step and make it Catch-EMPOWER-and-Release? It should be second nature to all Minnesotans. Whenever we take a native fish out of the river, we should give it the support and encouragement it needs to get back in there and fight for resources. Remember – anyone on land OR underwater can up their game, given the right kind of kick in the tail!

I have a feeling if anyone could write a motivational talk that would work on a bluegill, it would be Spin Williams.

When have you been moved by a speech?