Art, books, History, Nature, Stories, Travel

Its Own Magazine

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Turns out the Mississippi River has its own magazine. I have finally finished reading my latest issue of Big River, which covers news of the Mississippi River from Minneapolis, MN, down to Muscatine, Iowa. Its byline is “Covering the heart of the Driftless Area for 24 years,” although there is usually some news about the Twin Cities. (The Driftless area includes Hastings and Red Wing, as well as La Crosse and Prairie du Chien in Wisconsin, Dubuque and the Quad Cities in Iowa, Galena in Illinois.) It is published six times a year here in Winona.

I devour this magazine. First I read all the Big River News segments, which give updates on everything from the Gulf of Mexico’s Dead Zone to a new plastic pollution problem:  tiny plastic particles from people’s microfiber jackets. Besides environmental issues, these paragraphs cover items like a new bike rental system in Clinton, IA, and an expansion of the National Eagle Center in Wabasha. My favorite tells of a new happy hour in St. Paul – the Kellogg Park Craft Beer Overlook: 3 to 6 p.m., Tuesdays through Fridays till mid-October. This September-October issue also has a special sidebar detailing and picturing which ditch weeds to NOT PICK because some part of them is poisonous (poison hemlock, giant hogweed, wild parsnip, and cow parsnip).

Feature articles range from “A Tale of Two Neighborhoods”, about North Mpls. and Northeast Mpls, to a short two-pager on kestrels. For the exploring traveler, an article details sights and places between La Crosse, WI to Winona, MN. Restaurant and book reviews are regular features, as are lots of glossy ads – I don’t mind because they are for things and places that interest me.

I just checked, and Big River is available at Minneapolis’ Central Library, but only for “in-house” use. I’ll bring some back copies next time I get to BBC (Blevins Book Club – see top left of this “page”, under Blogroll).

What river, anywhere in the world, would you like to explore?

News, Science, Technology

Cause and Effect

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I have been greatly interested recently by pronouncements by certain individuals in the press attributing our recent weather disasters to homosexuality, gay marriage, Mitt Romney, Obama, and/or loose morals in New Orleans.  The capacity of the human mind to find causal relationships between totally unrelated things or concepts is fascinating.

According to Wikipedia  “In statistics, a spurious correlation[1][2] is a mathematical relationship in which two or more events or variables are not causally related to each other, yet it may be wrongly inferred that they are, due to either coincidence or the presence of a certain third, unseen factor (referred to as a “common response variable”, “confounding factor”, or “lurking variable“).”

There is a web site devoted to such correlations (www.tylervigen.com) where you can choose the variables to see how they may be statistically related.  I always knew that there was a strong, positive correlation between the price of Jamaican rum and the average salary of Methodist ministers. Did you know, however, that there is a strong positive correlation between:

The divorce rate in Maine and per capita consumption of margarine

The age of Miss America and number of murders by steam, hot vapours, and hot objects.

Per capita cheese consumption and the number of people who died by being tangled in their bed sheets.

Total revenue generated by arcades and the number of computer science doctorates awarded in the US.

What alarms me is that some people will believe anything and will try to find relationships between things that can’t possibly be related, just to support their beliefs or prejudices.  I, personally, try to remain rational and sceptical. I think I will go now and eat some bread crusts. I am trying to make my hair curly.

Come up with your own spurious correlations.

books, Family, gardening, Kids, The Future

What Were We Thinking

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We have lived in our house for 29 years. During that time we reared two children, and coped with two Welsh Terriers, one Fox Terrier, and 4 cats.  It is a modest, ranch style house of about 1200 square feet with an attached garage. The basement is finished.

Over the years we have upgraded the kitchen and done some cosmetic flooring changes.  We made the house and yard functional for our needs without much thought about the future. Well, the future is upon us, and I feel daunted by the things we need to undo and change in order to sell the house when I retire in 4 years. My main thought as I survey the house and property is “What were we thinking?”

The terriers dig up and consume the asparagus? Put a fence with steel posts and hog panels around the asparagus bed. Who cares if it disturbs the flow of the yard space and makes the back yard ugly.  Don’t worry how you will remove the posts and haul away the hog panels when it is time to dismantle the fence.

Need more garden space? Just dig up the front yard and grow veggies there. Who cares that no one else in the region will appreciate that scheme and will want a grass covered front yard to mow.

Need book space? Just attach brackets and shelving to an entire wall in the basement family room.  Then fill all the shelves with books. Don’t worry one bit about what you will do with all the books, or the damage to the walls when the brackets are taken down.

Closet doors in the entry way don’t slide well and get the way when you want to access things stored there? Don’t hire a carpenter. Just remove the doors and store them in the furnace room for 20 years. During that time, cannibalize the door slider hardware from them to repair other closet doors. Now, figure out how to put the entry way closet doors back on and find replacement parts for the missing hardware.

I figure we are looking at remodels of two bathrooms, wall repair and new carpets in the basement, lots of yard restoration, and the help of a patient carpenter who can just bite his tongue and not judge. I am glad we have several years to put things to rights.

What have you done, or what trends have you followed, that made you say “What was I thinking?”

Baboon Achievers, Family, Stories

Things I Am Being Forced To Do Against My Will…

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Today’s post comes to us from Jacque.

Recently I found a tablet in a small gift shop. It made me laugh. I bought the tablet for my sister for her birthday, then tore off a sheet for the blog, throwing it on my desk, then forgetting about it.  I found it today while cleaning off my desk during my post-surgical recovery period.  There was this list I had itemized of things to do while recovering, and cleaning off my desk was one of the items.  This little sheet, of course, was buried under the mountain of papers that needed sorting.  I hope it is posted in the header.

Writing this brief post and scanning the sheet are one of the things I Am Being Forced To Do Against My Will…

What are your items on this list?

Family, Kids, Nature

Looking at Clouds

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This post is from littlejailbird.

Barbara in Rivertown’s comment on Name That Carrot: “It’s kind of looking at clouds…” inspired this post.

My mom is a big fan of looking at clouds and seeing various things in them. She has told me, more than once, of how, when she was a kid, she liked to lie down outdoors and just see how many things she could see in the clouds. I suppose when you grow up in Iowa there is a lot of sky and clouds to look at.

This penchant for looking at clouds has apparently passed down to other generations. One day, when the twins (her great-grandchildren) and I were outside, they were looking up at the sky. We talked about what the clouds looked like. Twin 2 said, “I see a…BUTT!” and they both dissolved in laughter.

Tell us something funny that a child you know has said or done.

Family, Nature, Stories

Losing Peanut

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Today’s post comes to us from Crystal Bay.

RIP dear Peanut. Last night, as I was weeping knowing it was our last night together, the old guy walked up to me and licked my tears. He’s been hiding for days, but last night he came for what used to be our nightly ritual. He hadn’t done this in months as he grew weaker. He walks up to the cover I pull up to my chin, paws it down, then I lift it into a tent for him to enter. He then makes three circles before finally plopping down close to my face. I then kiss him a dozen times while repeating, “I love you, Peanut”. Every night for 14 years. I wish that I’d created more of a dialogue with him over all of these years, but this is all I ever said to him.

The vet showed up at 10 this morning. He was on my lap relaxing in front of a space heater he’s always loved. My dear friend, Bruce, was here, and right up to the moment of the quick-acting sedation shot, I kept asking if I was doing the right thing. Did he have more time to live? Should nature just decide when it was his time to die? Was he really suffering or just old and skinny? The sweet vet told me that I didn’t have to go through with it; that she’d come back another time.

He sprawled across my lap as she administered the sedative, and slowly got sleepier. “Peanut, I love you” over and over. I was still so ambivalent that I asked her if he could revive from the sedative if I changed my mind. All I could think of was how spending the last day and night with him was so painful that I couldn’t go through this process again a few weeks or even months from now, so she very gently inserted the needle and pushed in the medication which would stop his heart.

I held his limp body, crying my heart out. I had decided just this morning that I didn’t want to bury him after all because the vision of lowering him into a black hole was just too much. The vet brought in a small kitty bed with a soft little blanket. I placed him in it. And then he was gone from my life. A piece of me and a part of what’s kept my world in balance went with him. I wrote a letter to him:

Dear Peanut, I found you in the middle of Crystal Bay Road 14 years ago on September 1, 2003. Your little eyes were glued shut with infection and your back leg was crushed. I rushed you to the vet who said that you were, at best, 4 weeks old and doubted that you’d survive. I came back several hours later, and there you were, bright eyed and bushy tailed, eating dry kibbles.

For the next two months, I kept you on or very near my body 24/7. When with clients, you nestled on my shoulder. I took you grocery shopping in a tiny box, to my volunteer work, to lunch dates. And every single day, I kissed the top of your head a thousand times, saying, “Peanut, I love you”.

For the twelve years following my divorce, you were the only warm body in my world who alleviated my loneliness. No matter how my day had gone, you were there at the end of it with our silly ritual, letting me know that you loved and needed me. I thank you for that.

Your buddy, Izzy, is already searching the cottage for you. I’ve always cared for her, but she’s not you, Peanut. Perhaps, after the six years she’s been here, she’ll come out of her shell and show some affection and bond with me? Right now, she’s lying next to me on the foot stool by the heater, something she’s never done before. Only an hour ago, you were there.  She’s always deferred to you, even in this last year as you grew weaker, she’d box with you then suddenly jump off the bed out of respect for you.

You were my fur person, my devoted companion, and the only constant presence in my life. Thank you for the 14 years you graced my life.

I love you Peanut, Mama

What’s the name of your favorite pet?

Art, Business, Media, Nature, News, Radio, sports

Ostrich or Monkey?

34 Comments

today’s post comes to us from tim.

you know i am finally there.

i don’t want to listen to the news anymore…

houston had a flood. did you hear?

donald trump had a thought… did you hear?

not only did I hear it i can’t shut it off.

my tv station in the morning plays the same story every 15 minutes from 4 am until 7 when they hand it off to the new york team who tells the national story of the day 2 or 3 times before i can get away and listen to it on the radio.

then I see all the pop ups from internet news, yahoo, google, whoever I have on my email news blasts

from huffington post or email blasts from my senators or local political folks, or people I like to hear from.

i have begun to do podcasts and downloaded music to stay away from the antimotivational news

but the twins are doing good, the lynx are wonderful again cmon lindsey whalen… and the vikings don’t suck yet. the timberwolves should be really wonderful this year. the soccer stadium is going to be fun and

the joy through sports seems shallow but it is kind of like taking pride in the guthrie theater and the minnesota orchestra or the st paul chamber orchestra the voyageurs national park, minnehaha falls or the fact that we have winter.

lots to pay attention to out there in the world. the news knows what people say they want to know about but i wonder if there would be a place for the good news station on the dial. i know i’d tune in.

what do you love most about the trail?

 

Family, Food, gardening, Uncategorized

Name That Carrot

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Husband is now able to put some weight on his right foot, by using one crutch and his walking cast. Yesterday he was able to do some garden harvest; he came up with some lovely carrots and potatoes, and of course thousands of cherry tomatoes.

In past years we have unearthed some wonderful carrots – here is one we called Carrot Man from 2014…

And today I can’t resist taking a couple of pictures of one special (set of) carrot. I had a caption ready for it/them, but thought it would be fun to let the baboons come up with a caption

Do you have a special vegetable memory in your past?

Name That Carrot.