Category Archives: Uncategorized

2022, books, History, Nature, Travel, Uncategorized, Weather

Into the Unknown

46 Comments

In October of 1915, Ernest Shackleton’s ship, The Endurance (oh, the irony), was crushed by pack ice in the Antarctic and then sank.  It had been trapped in the ice for 9 months.  In August of the following year, a rescue ship arrived; all of Shackleton’s crew had survived.

The news from Antarctica this week is that after 100 years, the wreck of The Endurance has been found – nearly 10,000 feet under those frigid waters.  It didn’t move too far in 100 years, it was found just four miles south of the location recorded by the crew when she sank.  According to the search team, it is “in a brilliant state of preservation” and is even sitting upright. 

I’ve read a handful of books about various exploration voyages, some about Shackleton, some about others.  I also see several stories in National Geographic every year about someone heading off into the unknown to do something that no one has ever done before.  None of these stories makes me want to do this kind of thing.  Even today, 100+ years later, I can’t imagine how awful it must have been to be trapped on the ice of Antarctica, listening to the timbers of your ship creaking then finally breaking.  You’d have to be fairly certain at that point that you would never see home/family/friends again.  I don’t even like to set up the tent out of sightline from the car! 

I used to think of myself as adventurous, based on all my travels, but after reading these stories about wandering out into the unknown, I’ve decided my level of adventure tolerance is much lower.  I can live with that.

Have you ever ventured into the unknown?  The partly unknown?

Family, Food, Uncategorized

Sentimental Attachments

28 Comments

Husband has a sentimental attachment to the old wooden spoons he likes to use for cooking. I think they are filthy havens for germs and bacteria. He thinks I am cold hearted and unreasonable. I have tried enticing him with attractive, laminated bamboo ones. He likes them, sort of, but we can’t find them in just the right size to replace his smallest wooden spoon. The same goes for the silicon spoons- they are just not the right size.

I suppose I have sentimental attachments to silly things, too, like my mother’s old costume jewelry that I never wear, or my father’s china pug figurine. I would think Husband cold hearted and unreasonable if he wanted me to get rid of them. There was a very funny article in the New Yorker this week by Patricia Marx about ways to get rid of your possessions. She laments all the possessions we Boomers have, and how our children don’t want them. I do hope my children don’t have a sentimental attachment to the wooden spoons just because their dad did, and they toss them when we are gone if I haven’t managed to toss them out first. That pug figurine, now, is something special!

What silly things so you have sentimental attachments to. What do you look for in a kitchen spoon? What is your favorite kitchen spoon?

2022, books, Fantasy, Mysteries, Uncategorized

Color Me Surprised

29 Comments

I’m surprised and embarrassed. 

Surprised because two weeks ago I discovered by accident that Andre Norton, a prolific science fiction/fantasy author was a woman.  I didn’t have a clue.

The embarrassment is because not only do I read a lot and consider fantasy one of my chosen genres, but I worked in a bookstore for six years.  Six years of shelving Andre Norton titles with my own hands and not knowing.  How could I not know this?  And despite knowing the name and the genre, I have to admit I’ve never read any Norton.  I’m really don’t know why – it probably has more to do with the fact that at any given moment, there is a list of about 100 books that I’m thinking about as “next on the list”.  I just never got around to her. 

Her very first book wasn’t in the Hennepin County Library, but I did get it from InterLibrary loan, so we’ll see if I go for more after I read this one. 

But I’m still flummoxed that I didn’t know she was a woman.

What’s a big surprise you’ve had recently?  Extra points if you feel like you should have known….

animals, Business, Farming Update, Nature, pets, Seasons, Uncategorized

Early March Farming

40 Comments

Today’s farm report comes to us from Ben.

Pants! I’m wearing pants. I can’t button pants with only one hand (I’m not sure anyone can) so it’s nice to have two (almost) working arms again and have pockets and I have my flashlight and micro Leatherman and all my accessories. It’s nice.

Not much happening here yet. We are into the first mud of the season. Every time the dogs go out, they come back with muddy feet that need to be cleaned off. Humphrey is pretty good: he waits on the step, “foot” means he gives me his left front paw, “other foot” is right paw. Bailey sure wants to be a people dog, she loves people. Every time I come home she will be on the step with a paw in the air so she can climb in my lap; a problem when she’s muddy. Front door or side door, she runs ahead of me and gets up on the edge to look into my eyes. That’s her in the header photo. We got her from an Amish family. Her mom is a Blue Healer, Dad was a Pomeranian. She’s just over 3 years old.

Allie, the Queen of them all, finally used her new pillow.

She’s all attitude for 15.

The chicken’s feet are muddy which means the eggs are muddy (unless I get them before they step on them to lay another). They are enjoying the warmer weather and taking dust baths in the pen.

The driveway is getting mushy, snow is melting fast, and that one room in the basement has got a little bit of water on the floor again. I put the extension on the gutter downspout for a few weeks while the snow is melting off the roof and the water in the basement goes away.

The duck pond is getting bigger every day as the ice melts, but it’s going to be a month yet before I can reset the drain outlet and regain the 6 inches of depth they’ve lost due to a leak. It’s just a homemade pond, made when the tile guy was replacing a drain tile, he just excavated a hole and dumped a little dirt at the end to make it pond up. Didn’t take much for the water to cut a trench and to that I added a piece of PVC pipe, but it’s still hard to keep it sealed up at the end. We’ve got good green clay, known as Decorah Edge for the outlet. It just needs an hour with a shovel.

The other morning, I went out to do chores and the ducks were not in their usual place at the pond. Then they weren’t in their second usual place with the chickens, nor their third usual place under the trailer. I found them in their fifth usual place out behind the pole barn. And a few hundred yards beyond them, coyotes are howling. Saw a coyote some 400 yards away and took a shot at it. He jumped and spun in circles about three times and then trotted off. The ducks came home, back to the usual spot without any casualties. I wish you would stay closer to home ducks.

Spring also means the yahoo’s are dumping ditch trash; the township guys have picked up 2 batchs of trash in the last week. First load was just plain junk and trash. Second load was two box springs, two different size mattresses and a door. Idiots.

Which body part would you like to be bionic and what features would you have?

2022, Art, books, Family, Media, Movies, TV, Uncategorized

Death on the Nile

63 Comments

You probably all know that I’m a bit of a grouch where movies based on books are concerned.  And for some reason especially where Agatha Christie is concerned (I’m not really sure why).  The Albert Finney Murder on the Orient Express is good, very close to the book.  The Kenneth Branagh version – meh. 

But my favorite AG movies are the Peter Ustinov Death on the Nile as well as the David Suchet version from the PBS Poirot series.  The PU leaves out the secondary plot but the DS messes with the characters’ motives.  But I love them both and we won’t discuss how many times I’ve seen them (great background for while I’m in my studio).

I’ve known for many months that Kenneth Branagh’s Death on the Nile was looming and the trailers that I found online were a bit alarming but nonetheless YA and I ventured out last weekend to see it.  Maybe I would be pleasantly surprised; after all it’s a fabulous story, how could you mess it up? 

As YA and I drove to the theatre I promised her that I would not talk during the movie as I know she hates that.  Then she said “and if you don’t like it, no big sighs”.  Guess she’s been to that rodeo before!  We bought our snacks and settled down in our seats.

I knew in the first 5 seconds that we were in trouble.  It won’t be a spoiler alert to say that Agatha Christie NEVER gave Hercule Poirot a backstory.  And a jazz nightclub in Paris?  Nope.  And I can’t even talk about how far off script the various characters were.  I suppose there is something to be said about bringing a fresh coat of paint to something, but Branagh completely disassembled the furniture before adding paint.  And I’m pretty sure that no tourist boat in Egypt in the 30s was staffed with scores of young, white women in shorts. 

I will say that the visuals were stunning.  And I will give the movie makers their due on Abu Simbel.  They show the temple right at the water’s edge, which is the original location.  (The temple was moved to higher ground in the mid-60s.)  The PU version didn’t get this right and the DS version didn’t even have an Abu Simbel scene. 

It was SO hard not to sigh and then it turns out that I could have.  As we left the theatre, YA said “who was the murderer”; she had fallen asleep.  When we figured out how far back she had fallen asleep, I could have sighed for at least 20 minutes!

Any remakes that make you shudder or that you like better than the original?

2022, animals, Family, Health, Kids, pets, Uncategorized

Cone of Shame

30 Comments

Last week Guinevere took a flying leap off the back porch steps in her never-ending pursuit of squirrel removal in our back yard.  Not that this pursuit has ever shown any positive outcomes.  When she came back in, she was limping a little and leaving a little trail of bloody spots on the kitchen floor.  When YA and I wrestled her to the ground to take a look, it turns out that she had ripped one of toenails partly off below the quick.  Ouch.

Neither I nor YA was brave enough to clip off the nail so YA carted Guinevere off to the vet where they applied a little anesthetic and loped it off.  Of course that turned out to be the easy part.  Guinevere, like most dogs I assume, just could not leave the toe alone.  I’m sure after the drugs wore off, it hurt so she reacted as animals do.  Licking.  And licking.  After not long a time, she had licked her little pad raw and she didn’t show any signs of stopping.

At night we were able to wrap her foot and leg up within an inch of its life (antibiotic ointment, bandage, sock, lots of painter’s tape) but during they day, she had the wrappings off within minutes.  YA found a cone of shame up in the attic and brought it down to try to keep her away from the foot.

This turned out to be awful for the dog and for me (dog spends more time with me at night).  When we put the cone on her, she was beyond paralyzed.  She wouldn’t move, wouldn’t lay down and after about a half an hour, she started to breathe a little heavily.  Her eyes said “please, please save me” and I couldn’t stand it; I took the cone off, made her get on the bed with me and re-directed her every time she took a lick.  This went on for DAYS.  And do we even need to say that repetitive noises (like a dog licking its paw) drive me up a wall? 

Finally at the 10-day mark, she has mostly stopped bothering the toe.  The quick appears to have covered over and her pad is now longer licked raw.  I’m not sure who feels better about this – Guinevere or me?

Have you ever had to be cruel to be kind?

2022, Business, Media, Mysteries, News, Uncategorized

The Hat

53 Comments

Melania is selling her white hat. 

Apparently this is big news and you can find it spun in several different directions.  Personally the most interesting thing about this news item is that I don’t remember ever seeing a photo of her wearing it.  I suppose that shouldn’t surprise me; for the past 5-6 years, I’ve really worked hard to stay away from the news.  Too much coverage and drilling down was just making me anxious and miserable, so I quit.  I look at CNN usually just once a day and the StarTribune every few.  I do Facebook but not too much (I’ve actually only posted once) and no other social media platforms.  It’s actually made me feel better.

So back to the hat.  In all the photos I could find, she wore it so far down that you couldn’t see her face most of the time and I’m not sure how she could see either.  But it is a very striking hat.  I wouldn’t want to give up a hat like that although I’m not sure where I would wear it these days.  It would be a little out of place at Target and Trader Joe’s.

Tell me about something of yours that you’d like to auction off.

2022, education, Fantasy, Media, Science, space, Uncategorized

Dinosaurs to the Moon

39 Comments

I wasn’t on the trail much over the weekend; I was following a livestream on YouTube.  (I can’t even imagine what I would have thought if I had read that sentence 20 years ago!)

15 years ago, after reading a book by John Green (I think it was Looking for Alaska), I started following him and his brother, Hank, on their YouTube channel called VlogBrothers.  Hank is the brainchild behind SciShow, another fabulous channel and together the brother have created multiple other channels and platforms.  They manage and ship creations by a variety of artists, from their DFTBA (Don’t Forget to be Awesome) warehouse, among many other things.  Their following is called Nerdfighteria and I have to say that they were a big factor in my finally being able to own my nerdiness and feel that it was OK to admit to my smarts.  I say it calmly but it was actually a fairly big turning point in my life.

Both John and Hank are thoughtful, kind and generous – the year I started following their vlog, they decided to do a weekend event on YouTube to raise money for good works.  They invited people to send in videos to the channel to support charities; we would watch and vote on the videos and, if we could, send in money.  At the end of the weekend, they split up the money among the top voted groups.  And they did a livestream the entire weekend to encourage folks to watch the videos, vote and donate.  They called this Project for Awesome. 

And 15 years later, it is still awesome although a little more cohesive these days.  The first 24 hours of donations go to a couple of specific organizations that Nerdfighteria have supported for many years and then the second 24 hours of donations gets split up among the top groups whose video have been voted on.  Lots and lots of perks donated by various online creators.  The livestream is a little surreal… YouTubers setting up goals and challenges.  My favorite is Destin whose vlog “Smarter Every Day” I have watched for years.  Donations during his 2-hour stint get you a plastic dinosaur magnet with your name on it that gets sent to the moon on an electronic pulley system. Honestly I don’t even know how to describe it.  Suffice it to say it’s just hysterical and the donations just blast in during his time.

Anyway, I watched quite a bit of the livestream, including staying up too late both nights and then watching early in the morning.  As the project rolled toward its end, donations again ramped up as John and Hank finished up the livestream with a lot of thanks and champagne poppers and confetti.  About 15 minutes before the end, the counter clicked over the $3 million dollar mark.  I have to say I got a little verklempt.

The happiness that I get from being part of the nerdfighter community makes me think a lot about the Trail and my baboon companions there.  I am not a serious member of the group and I only know one other nerdfighter personally but as a group they follow their leaders… they are kind and thoughtful and generous as a whole, exactly like those I know on the Trail.  No nastiness, no name calling, no mud slinging.  Wish I could spread that feeling out to the whole world.

Tell me about some other nice, thoughtful, kind folks you know!

2022, books, Gatherings, Uncategorized

Oh Good, A New Library

49 Comments

Husband and I were treated last week to a “field trip” with some friends to one of their favorite Winona hangouts – the Winona State Library AND adjoining Coffee Shop. This building has only been around for 20-odd years, so was not here during our last time living here, and we had not yet seen it.

The Darrell W. Krueger Library, named for a former WSU president, is located on campus, overlooking the bluffs. It is spacious, light and airy, with several clusters of comfortable chairs, where we eventually alighted.  After shedding our coats to claim one of these on the second floor, we headed down to the coffee shop for hot chocolate with whipped cream, and were surprised at being allowed to bring our to-go cups up to our sitting area. We sat and talked quietly for a bit, and then I skimmed some nearby stacks to just get a flavor of what all is there, and found a fascinating book on the history of cookbooks. I will come back another day and find it again.

Everyone we encountered in the library was masked. There were several students scattered at tables, carrels, or the comfy chairs, but I was surprised that it wasn’t more populated on a weekday. And I have to wonder, knowing how many books must now be available to students electronically, how long libraries like this will be relevant, and what will happen to all these “hard-copy” books in the decades to come.

We had a lovely time, and Husband and I returned a couple of days later to get our own WSU Library cards. It is another place for us to spend some time on wintry days.

Do you have a favorite library (past or present) that you would show to others?

Any good library memories or stories?

2022, animals, Farming Update, Nature, pets, Theatre, Uncategorized

Farming in February

50 Comments

Lost a few ducks the last few days… don’t know what happens: the dogs don’t seem to act like anything is amiss, yet there’s one less poufy and one less cream colored duck. And there used to be 19 mallard type and now there’s only 17. They’re still avoiding their pond for the most part, which is odd. Unless that’s where the “Disappearances” are happening. (They may be ducks but they’re not dumb.)  There’s no signs of struggle, and the only tracks I see are deer. And bunny poop. The poor ducks; when it’s gets cold the poufys get to be looking pretty poorly. And one cream colored one had a frozen chunk of something hanging off it one day. Last Sunday was so nice the poufy ones got cleaned up and the frozen chunk fell off. 

And then one day it was sunny and they were down in the pond over the noon hour and hungry and wanted to eat. You can see the duck butts sticking up as they eat corn off the bottom. 

Maybe it’s just night time they don’t want to be down there.  
I’ve talked about the coyotes before and how many ducks and chickens they take. I heard some of the neighborhood guys were hunting coyotes and got 20 or so.  Which you’d think would be good news for the ducks, but evidently not. 

Our dog Humphrey- he’s such a good dog. And polite. He’ll take a drink, then come to us to burp him. It’s so weird. We pat his chest, he burps, and then he’ll go lay down. He does need the sensitive stomach food. We’ve always said he’s a delicate flower. 

Bailey: she’s the one burying her treats in the snow or dirt and eating dead things and she loves playing in the snow.

 

My shoulder is good. I go to the doc Monday to get stitches out and start physical therapy. I’m hoping to lose the sling but I kinda doubt PT will say that yet.
It really hasn’t been bad. I did Velcro myself to the wall one day. This thing has so many straps and so much Velcro and I sat down on the bench in the entryway and stuck myself to the Velcro on the sleeves of my jacket. Which was still hung on the wall. Can’t reach the hook, can’t reach the Velcro. It was kinda funny. 

I’m back at ‘work’ work and I’ve been lighting the musical ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ at the college. It’s a dark musical. I’ve got some pretty looks, even though it’s not exactly a “pretty” show.

It’s not a college production; we don’t do musicals (they’re too expensive). This is a local group renting the space.

CAN YOU STAND ON YOUR HEAD OR  WALK ON YOUR HANDS? 
GOT ANY STORIES ABOUT MAKING BODY NOISES?