It doesn’t matter that I’ve seen Princess Bride many, many times. Doesn’t matter if I can practically quote the whole movie. Every single time Peter Falk (the grandfather) says “As you wish” to Fred Savage (the grandson) at the end, I tear up a bit. Sniff, sniff.
What movie makes you emotional?
Husband and I are in Minneapolis attending the Association for Play Therapy annual conference. It is a very well attended conference with typically wonderful workshops. This week we will attend 25 hours of lectures related to all aspects of play therapy, and browse the terrific vendors of therapeutic toys and supplies.
Today we sat through 6 hours of a lecture that was quite disappointing, and not at all what was represented in the conference prospectus. The presenter had a very ambitious agenda, and was very knowledgeable, but wasn’t feeling well, and got off track and was distracted by questions from the audience. There were five objectives listed, and only the first two were addressed by the end of the day. Husband and I were drawing funny cartoons for each other by the end of the presentation.
I have higher hopes for tomorrow. My workshops go from 8:00 am until 6:30pm. Husband gets off easier, and only goes from Noon until 6:30pm. I hope we won’t be misled like we were today.
When have you been disappointed by false advertising?
Husband and I are in downtown Minneapolis. I haven’t been here a whole lot in my life, It seemed like such a huge and foreboding place when I was a child. We had a great meal, and it seems like a place I would like to spend more time.
What do you think makes for a great downtown?
I found this on You Tube yesterday – got to it from one of my favorite science blogs.
This is amazing to me for a couple of reasons. First off, it’s not just the work of laying out all the dominoes. You don’t just come in one morning and start randomly setting up dominoes. Something of this complexity needs to be mapped out ahead of time and I means seriously mapped out. You have to know exactly how much space you need, you need to know how much time it takes for domino trails to fall, you need to know how many of each color, you need to know how to set them up so you know what they’ll look like when they fall down… a pretty long list.
But I think one of the most amazing things is that you don’t really get to test this. It took a team of 19 individuals from around the world a week to get it all set up. There is no test-run. You pull the first string and then you hold your breath for the 12 minutes it takes. You really have to have confidence in your abilities to take part in something like this. I’m not sure I have enough obsession or emotional strength for it!
What feat of engineering do you admire?
what are you yelling
i didn’t realize i was singing i thought it was in my head
what are you singing
with eisenglass windows that roll right up in case there’s a change in the weather
we just got that record today
i like it
go to sleep you’ll wake up your brother
wha do you got for childhood flashbacks?
Today’s post comes from Steve Grooms
When I was a boy the most romantic and impressive form of transportation was the train. I grew up listening to the lonely nighttime screams of passing trains. A kid in my school was so involved with trains that he memorized data on all the train travel in Iowa. You could ask him any kind of question about trains. He’d barely pause before reciting details of train schedules.
I’ve never had that kind of mind. I’m a “big picture” guy, not a detail guy, someone more attuned to forests than to individual trees.
The closest I ever came to developing an esoteric interest was when I fell in love with a hand-carved carousel built a century ago. I was smitten to the point of reading a lot of background knowledge about carousels. It is a topic I can talk about at length. But in the end, I could not work up enough interest to become an expert about all the various makers of carousels in the country. A true lover of carousels would be fascinated by obscure little carousels that just look garish and cheap to me. My deepest affections were for one splendid carousel, not the whole category.
This comes to mind because my daughter is in the early stage of becoming immersed in a new interest for our family: ship watching. My son-in-law grew up in a lovely old home on the US bank of the St. Clair River. The St. Clair is deep enough to host the biggest ships sailing the Great Lakes. The river is, in fact, the only connection between the upper lakes (Superior and Michigan) and lower lakes. Any ship traveling far in the Great Lakes must pass close to John’s home, “close” meaning about a hundred yards. Now that our family lives in Port Huron, Molly has become fascinated with the ships we see here.
The photo heading this column is one I took in late September. The ship is the Federal Seto, a particularly lengthy “saltie.” It is owned by a shipping company based in Montreal. Since I took its portrait the Federal Seto steamed through Lake St. Clair, passed through Lake Erie, and then through Lake Ontario. After running the length of the St. Lawrence Seaway, today the ship has just entered the Atlantic Ocean on its way Rouen, France.
The major distinction between different bulk freighters on the Great Lakes is between “salties” and “lakers.” Salties are shorter than lakers and have higher sides. They move freely from lake to lake but also across oceans. Lakers, many of which are about a thousand feet long, cannot fit in the locks that connect the Atlantic Ocean with the Great Lakes. They work hard but always within the Great Lakes. In addition to being shorter and taller than lakers, salties are younger. The salty water of oceans is extremely corrosive, so salties rarely live longer than 20 years. By contrast, because lakers are not subjected to all that salt they can live many decades, even longer than a century.
Ship watching is popular hobby in this area, and there are many resources. Web sites track the movements of these ships. Many museums educate visitors about the shipping trade. There are books on ship watching, and newsletters. If you want to know the precise location and sailing plans for individual ships, “there is an app” for that. There are, in fact, several apps for smart phones that track these majestic ships at all times.
I was surprised by my daughter’s surge of interest in shipping. She has always had an active mind, but this is the first time she has immersed herself in a topic like this. Molly knows a great deal about Great Lakes ship traffic. She has favorite boats that she tracks with interest. She is highly excited by the fact a new ship being built in Europe will soon join the fleets of freighters already working the Great Lakes, and she will be sure to be on the porch of her mother-in-law’s home the first time it travels the St. Clair River.
Have you ever developed a fascination with an esoteric topic?
We are traveling by van for the next 10 days. We are going to a play therapy conference in Minneapolis. As we can’t bear to let produce spoil, we are taking along our canning equipment, jars, rings, lids, and boxes of ripening tomatoes. We must be out of our minds.
How do you pack for a trip?
I was happy to wake up on September 24 and find that the world hadn’t ended as David Meade, biblical numerologist, had predicted. I believe he recalculated after he found things were still the same on the 24th as they were on the 23rd, and predicted another date for our demise on October 15th. The rogue planet Nibiru, violating all physics principles, is predicted to collide with earth and set in motion all sorts of rannygazoo. We shall have to see what happens. I believe that is the date of Blevin’s book club. At least you will all be together.
It isn’t easy to make accurate predictions. Our world is so random that people search for certainty and cling to the idea that we can make sense of the universe. Consider poor Harold Camping, the evangelist and radio host who made multiple predictions of the Earth’s end in 2011, and who finally admitted in 2012 that he was sinful for even trying to make such predictions, falling back on Matthew 24:36 “of that day and hour knoweth no man”.
I am often asked as part of my work to make predictions regarding human behavior. Psychologists have a myriad of tests and ways of making such predictions, but it is never completely 100% accurate. I know that people who score certain ways on tests of cognition and memory probably have dementia. I know that people who score in certain ways on tests of emotions and personality probably have certain mental health diagnoses. I feel pretty certain predicting that parents with drug and alcohol use disorders who previously neglected and abused their children will probably do the same thing if they continue to abuse substances. I can predict, however, with almost 100% certainty, that if people are allowed to purchase machine guns, those guns will fired off. That is probably the easiest thing to predict, and you don’t need an advanced graduate degree to do so.
When have you been able to say “I told you so”?
Today is the birthday of our dear leader Dale!
We’ve talked here over the years of the gift that Dale has given us by starting the blog and setting a tone that we all appreciate. Now let’s make a list of what gifts we would like to give Dale.
Here’s a poem for Dale’s birthday – although not quite up to the standards of Poet Laureate Tyler Schuyler Wyler.
You’re honest,
decent, lovable,
and truly are first rate.
You’re charming,
unforgettable,
and clearly pretty great…
You’re dignified,
sophisticated,
gracious, sweet,
and kind.
You’ve got a lot
of talent
and a wit that’s
hard to find.
You’re cleaver, cool,
considerate,
and clean up really nice.
You’re worldly wise,
and wonderful
and full of good advice.
You’re fun
and entertaining,
not to mention
very smart.
You’re altogether awesome
and you’ve got a lot of heart!
What gift would you give Dale?
Our town boasts two large grocery stores in addition to Walmart. All three places have terrible produce, especially when it comes to summer fruit. We waited all summer for Idaho, Colorado, and Washington peaches, but they never arrived, leaving us with the second rate California peaches which always seem to disappoint.
Husband’s paternal grandfather was a door to door vegetable salesman in eastern Ohio from 1925 until 1968. He drove his truck up and down the roads and highways around Bridgeport, Ohio, shouting “Vegetables!” and selling produce he grew himself or bought wholesale in Wheeling. Husband grew up with great expectations for really nice produce, which is probably one reason we garden so much.
All summer we keep a look out for the fruit trucks that come through town, usually on the weekends. The Peach Man (who also sells Flathead Cherries) always parks in the small parking lot by the State Farm Insurance office and the Music Store. He is a local guy who drives out to Montana and Washington, fills up his truck with peaches and cherries, and sells them here and in the little towns around us. His produce is terrific.
We only got to the Peach Man twice this summer, and were feeling deprived when I noticed that one of his competitors, The Fruit Club truck, was in town one last time last Saturday. Off we went, and we came back with 10 pounds each of plums, peaches, and pears. They all ripened Monday, so we are making jam and freezing pie fillings. Sometimes you just have to go overboard.
What do you find hard to resist?
Trail Baboon 