The Baboon Congress, Travel, Uncategorized

Elite Hotel

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Today’s post comes from Renee in North Dakota

I think one of the most fun things about traveling is finding interesting hotels and lodging to stay in. We had really good luck with our lodging for our recent Europe trip. All the places were unique and had interesting and unexpected features. I mentioned the Merrion Hotel in Dublin in a previous post about Bruce Springsteen. Here is some information about some other hotels we stayed at.

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In Bremen we stayed at the Design Hotel Uberfluss. I love the name. (It was hard to find a place in Bremen the week we were there due to an international conference on the medical management of open wounds. Just what I would want to learn about!) The Uberfluss is situated along the Weser River in central Bremen near the old city. It is ultramodern and decorated in white and black with funky looking light fixtures. The rooms have enormous windows that open like French Doors if you turn the handle one way, and tilt open from the top if you turn the handle the other way. During construction they discovered a section of the original town wall of Bremen, circa 1300, and preserved it in the basement. Artifacts like medieval shoes and jewelry, also excavated by the wall, are on display in the lobby. I found that fascinating.

We were in another, similar hotel called the Varsity, in Cambridge, England. It was located on the River Cam, and we could see people in punts with poles on the river. It was very peaceful.

Glasgow brought us to a lovely restored Georgian town house called the Glasgow 15 Bed and Breakfast.  It was beautiful and more like a hotel than a B and B. The breakfasts were huge. Two doors down was a plaque on a house where Sir Joseph Lister, the father of antiseptic surgery and the namesake of Listerine, lived and did research. Glasgow was full of memorials to scientists. Kelvin, he of the Kelvin Scale of temperature, has many statues and things named for him.

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In Scotland’s western highlands we stayed in a very old hotel 6 miles out in the country near Oban. It was called the Knipoch Argyle. In 1592 a Campbell, then the Thane of Cawdor, was brutally murdered in the dining room. We had a great meal there.

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The Wiechmann Hotel in Amsterdam was probably the quirkiest place we stayed. It is in a narrow, three-story,  19th century building on the Prinsengracht Canal a couple of blocks from the Anne Frank house. Our room was on the top floor. There were 46 narrow and winding steps to our room, and no elevator. Those stairs were killers, and once I got downstairs I didn’t want to go back upstairs. There was a large German Shepherd who slept near the front desk. On the wall behind the front desk was a gold record, a gift to the owner from Emmylou Harris. It is the gold record she received for her second album, Elite Hotel. I guess she stayed at the Wiechmann and really liked it. Johnny Rotten and the Sex Pistols also stayed there too,  but I can’t think what they would have brought the owner except mayhem.

What is the most memorable hotel you’ve stayed in?  

 

 

The Baboon Congress

Hope’s Ride to Winona

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Today’s post comes from Barbara in River Town

On a pleasant Wednesday evening in late June, with a “little” help from some nephews, Husband and I filled the front half of a 15-foot U-Haul truck with the remainder of our stuff at the old house in Robbinsdale, and slept one last time on the screen porch of that house (since most of the rest of the house was empty). On Thursday morning, we drove over to my mom’s senior residence and spent the morning loading the remaining U-Haul space with HER stuff. Then we all headed off – Husband in the truck, Mom and me in a full sedan – on an adventure to the Southeast, and we landed in Winona, Minnesota.

My mom, whose name is Hope, is 90 years old. She has put up with my moving her four different times since Dad died in 2006, and is nothing if not intrepid. This is the second time she’s come to a new residence “sight unseen” (either she really trusts me, or she just has no choice). At this point she doesn’t remember all of the places unless she is prompted with a photo. She is, in a word, amazing – and always ready for something new, some fresh adventure.

We were stymied on Highway 100 by construction for a frustrating while, then finally eased out of the city. Once we got past the stoplights along Hwy 55/52, and found the roller coaster hills of Hwy 50 between Hampton and Red Wing, we were sailing. She was enthralled by ALL the scenery – even planes overhead and the refinery at Rosemount. She especially loved seeing the patchwork fields; she noticed every pretty church steeple, the pink and yellow vetches along the sloping ditches, the farm houses, the Round Barn just south of Red Wing.

But once we had reached the Mississippi River, it was the bluffs that captivated her. They are totally blanketed right now with trees of the richest greens – it looks like you could reach out and squeeze them like a sponge. They reminded Mom of her native Sioux City, IA, also long a great river – the Missouri. She couldn’t take her eyes off them, and kept commenting on their beauty.

So imagine Hope’s delight when, a few hours after setting out, we got to her new apartment at St. Anne of Winona, and the view from her windows is… the bluffs of Winona.

What’s the best view you’ve had from a window in a place you’ve lived?

Family, The Baboon Congress

My New Roommate: A Grandson

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Today’s post comes from Crystalbay

A few days ago, my 21-year old grandson, Conner, approached me about living here for a while.  My first reaction was, “Oh no!!  What if it doesn’t work and I’ll be in the position to tell him to leave??!!”.  It was a beautiful summer afternoon and, as we sat together on the lake swing, I decided to take the risk.

Conner, a formerly heavy pot smoker and a somewhat aimless kid, had gone to the U of M for two years, then dropped out, saying he hated it there and wanted to be a personal trainer.  The whole family worried that this young man was lost.  He took a pricey personal training course.  Still, we wondered how this slender kid could possibly make a career out of a profession in which so few can succeed.
That was then; this is now.  Conner just won a national natural body building competition one month ago out of 70 men older than himself.  He’d worked out for a year and sculpted his body into near perfection.  When I saw him on that stage, I couldn’t believe the transformation.  His career “stock” shot through the roof, and he now has enough clients to make a solid living.
When he moved in a few days ago, he made the upstairs his own, putting my furniture in the closet, rearranging everything, vacuuming, washing floors, putting his own posters on the walls, etc.  Since then, he’s mowed the lawn, gone on errands, put every single dish in the washer, taken the garbage out, and introduced me to new Netflix series.
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Every morning, he makes his bed even though no one goes upstairs but him.  We respect each other’s space and, thank God, he has no interest in watching TV.  Each day, we find time to sit on the lake swing and share everything from our day to childhoods to politics.  I must admit that I’m doing my best to shape him into an ardent progressive. I did worry about feeling invaded after so many years of quiet solitude, but now find myself looking forward to him returning from his day.
I sense that this is a very important summer; more than previous summers.  The new but growing bond is forever.  Without this opportunity, I may never have known my grandson.  I’m even thinking about how much I’ll miss his daily company when he moves on, but I’ll enjoy the moments we have for now.
Yesterday, he asked if I’d teach him how to play the piano.  Today, I asked him to come to a nearby fitness club and create a free weight lifting routine for me. He and my daughter are competing in the same contest in August. He’s now proposing that he, his mom, and I could compete together one day.  Imagine that; three generations! I’d win because I’d be the only one in the over-70 class. Our daily routines blend together seamlessly and our gratitudes for the smallest exchanges, a hug, a peanut butter sandwich, music he’s introducing me to, and, most of all, our appreciation for sharing this most beautiful piece of earth.
Yes, this will be a summer to remember.
Science, The Baboon Congress

Team of Eight

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Today’s post comes from Verily Sherrilee

I’m one of those folks who can’t quite get over the fact that Pluto has been demoted from planet to dwarf planet. I’m not a complete fanatic; I haven’t cried over it and I haven’t written any poison pen letters to Neil deGrasse Tyson whose Hayden Planetarium was the first to build an exhibit with the Pluto demotion for all the world to see. Although to be completely honest, I DO own a t-shirt that says “Pluto. Revolve in Peace. 1930-2006.”

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I was not thinking about Pluto this morning until I went to the post office to replenish my postage stamp stock. They know me pretty well there and know that I’m always looking for new and fun stamps. When I said I needed stamps today, the clerk said, “Oh I have some new ones to show you.” and pulled out some national park stamps and also a sheet of stamps with the eight planets. They’ve very pretty but I couldn’t resist a “poor Pluto” comment.

EightPlanets2The clerk laughed and said “Wait, you’ll appreciate this” as he disappeared into the back. A minute later he returned with a four-stamp sheet with Pluto and the New Horizons spacecraft (the one that did the close flyby of Pluto recently). At this point I was laughing as well, knowing that I am clearly not the only one out there who is still mourning the loss of Pluto from our team of nine. Of course I had to buy a sheet of those as well. I’m not a stamp collector or saver but I might have to make an exception for the Pluto stamp!

What can’t you just let go of?

History, The Baboon Congress

Too Good to Last

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Today’s post comes from Renee in North Dakota

One of the reasons we traveled to Bremen, Germany in May was to visit the towns where my mother’s family came from.

My maternal great grandmother’s family came from a town a few miles south of Bremen. The family last name was Cluver, and they came from Verden, a town with about 25,000 people. It was a very important place in the Middle Ages. Charlemagne slaughtered 4500 Saxons there in 782 for sliding back to pagan worship after they had been baptized. I imagine some of them were my relatives. The town was closely connected to the Old Saxon Law courts nearby. The town was considered a Free Imperial City of the Holy Roman Empire. A medium size cathedral,  built  between the 12th and 15th centuries, was home to a Prince Bishop from 1180 on, from whom my Cluver ancestors enjoyed great political patronage. That relationship also caused the eventual downfall of the family.

We have extensive records on the Cluvers. They were very wealthy in the centuries before the Reformation. Northern Germany is flat, low,  and swampy, and the Cluvers possessed the knowledge and ability to drain wetland so that it could be used for growing crops.  The Cluvers often loaned money to the Prince Bishop of Verden as well as the Prince Archbishop of Bremen. The bishops rewarded the Cluvers with land,  allowed them to live on grand estates that they owned, and used their influence to further the Cluver’s business and political aspirations. Things went well until the Reformation and the 30 Years War, when Sweden invaded and occupied the area and the whole region became Protestant. The Prince Bishops were ousted from power.The Cluvers clung tenaciously to the Church and refused to convert, I believe as much out of greed as from religious conviction. They didn’t want to abandon the cash cow that gave them so much prestige and power. I gather that they were pretty annoying and rebellious toward the occupying Swedes, who retaliated by killing as many male Cluvers they could find. Eventually, the family lost most of their wealth and lands, and became small Lutheran farmers like the majority of their neighbors.

It is hard to describe the feelings I had as I walked in the cathedrals of Bremen and Verden and saw the monuments and tombs of my ancestors.  There is a quite large and elaborate tablet from 1457 on the wall near the north Tower in the cathedral in Bremen in memory of Segebad Cluver. I wonder how he would feel knowing how things turned out. Greed can be pretty destructive. I also saw acres and acres of good farmland, though, so I suppose the family contributed something to the area that lasted.

What is a a gift or opportunity you’ve come to regret?

 

 

The Baboon Congress, Travel

Seeing Museums

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Today’s post comes from Renee in North Dakota

Husband and I have vastly different ways of processing information. I scan my environment accurately but hastily, taking in only what is pertinent and ignoring the rest. In Rorschach Inkblot terms, it means I have tendencies toward underincorporation, and I may fail to notice something important.

Husband, on the other hand, readily admits he is a super overincorporator. That means he tries to take in all the details he sees without regard to importance. It is as fraught with error as underincorporation, as a person can only process so much information before becoming overwhelmed.

We went to several museums on our recent vacation, including the Rijksmuseum, the British Museum, London’s National Portrait Gallery, Westminster Abbey, the Kelvingrove Museum in Glasgow, and Trinity College Library to see the Book of Kells. Westminster Abbey is a place of worship, but I think of it as a museum as well.

The practical implication of our differing information processing styles meant that by the time we finished with our first museum, I felt great sympathy and kinship with the woman I wrote about earlier who killed her husband with a blow to the head with an ornamental stone frog.

I flit through museum rooms, not concerned about seeing everything but zeroing in on what catches my eye, or what I had planned to see, then moving on. I always plan to come back another time, on another trip, to see what I may have missed, to take in more details of what I saw before, and maybe see something new. I want to relish what I see without cluttering my mind or my emotions. I find museums profoundly moving. Husband tries to see every exhibit, to read every placard, to not miss a thing.  He hates being rushed. This was really a problem in Westminster Abbey, as we had to stop and read every blessed memorial and grave stone in wall and floor. He even tried moving some of the folding chairs that had been placed in Poets’ Corner to make sure  he didn’t miss anybody. He certainly is thorough.

I am happy to say we made it through trip and museum without any bloodshed. In Husband’s defense, he had never been to any of the museums we visited, and maybe that overincorporation tendency thrives with the unknown. We started to plan our next trip that may take place in the next few years, and I will try to work on my impatience and maybe suggest to him a more selective approach to museum viewing.

We shall see.

 

When it comes to incorporation, do you over or under do it? 

The Baboon Congress, Words

Hot Rails and Rising Bollards

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Today’s post comes from Renee in North Dakota

Our recent trip to Great Britain and Ireland helped me develop a renewed love of the English language. I learned some new words on our trip to Europe, words for technological advances I had no idea existed prior to the trip.  I also developed an appreciation of how funny ostensibly stuffy writing can be.

20160523_164429I noticed in our hotels in Dublin and Great Britain these pipe contraptions affixed to the walls in the bathrooms with a placard letting us know they were Hot Rails. They looked like towel racks with knobs and dials on them, and they were, in fact. loaded with towels. When you turned the dials, the pipes filled with hot water, which warmed the towels and made them toasty warm. What a lovely idea, and why don’t we have them readily available in the US?

I also noticed official traffic signs warning of Rising Bollards. What wonderful words! What would you imagine Rising Bollards to be? These signs were frequently placed in narrow streets near hotels where it would have been possible to drive or park a vehicle, and where there was often nothing that could have been construed as a Bollard or anything else. A quick rising_bollardssearch of the internet revealed that a Rising Bollard was a steel post that was lowered into the ground and that would electronically rise so as to prevent someone from parking or driving a vehicle in the area. It could also be lowered at whim. I don’t know who was responsible for raising the bollards, or under what circumstances the bollards would be raised.  We read in the London Times about someone who was suing their municipality for raising the bollards underneath their Volkswagen, smashing into the engine and causing untold damage to the undercarriage of the vehicle.

The Times of London was extremely funny.  I don’t know if the writers and editors intended it to be that way, but there were the most odd  stories that made me wonder if it was all made up. The story that sticks in my mind was a half page article about a woman who confessed on her death bed that she killed her husband 18 years earlier by bashing him on the head with an ornamental stone frog.  She wrapped his body in a tarp and hid it in their shed. No one questioned his disappearance, and she spent the next 18 years telling people that she had got away with murder and that people were really going to be surprised at what they would learn once she died. No one   bothered to say anything about her odd pronouncements until after she died, and people were strangely surprised when the police found his corpse in the shed. She kept the weapon,  too. I found it delightful that a photo of the stone frog was prominently displayed in the article. I don’t know if the journalist did this with tongue in cheek. I can’t help but think so. I love the power of language.

Describe a charming cultural oddity. 

 

Family, The Baboon Congress

Remembering Someone

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Today’s post is by Steve Grooms

One morning around 1955, George Grooms—my father—woke up with a smile. He had been dreaming. In this dream my dad was walking the sidewalks of our town when he noticed a distinctive dog sitting on the curb. The dog was some kind of hound, a bloodhound or basset. It had a long, pendulous nose and droopy ears. The most memorable thing was the dog’s expression. The dog seemed utterly grief-struck.

In the dream this melancholy dog looked at my father and spoke one short sentence.

“Cheer up,” said the dog.

Cheer up?   What a bizarre comment! The saddest dog in the universe had just told my dad to cheer up!

Dad rushed to his office without talking to anyone. He began sketching the melancholy dog before his memory of the dream faded.

My father was a genius at imagining unique toy animals and then figuring out how certain shapes of fabric could be sewn together to form a three-dimensional stuffed toy.

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Designing stuffed toy animals is one of the most obscure jobs in the world. My dad was once considered one of the two or three best designers in the world.

This dog resisted the design process. The body was easy, but all the prototypes Dad created looked jolly or cute. None had the tragic look of the dream dog’s face. Dad knew that the problem lay with the eyes. No matter what eyes he put on this dog, it looked idiotically cheerful.

Then Dad did something totally original. He fashioned eyelids that could be sewn in place to give his stuffed dog a sad expression. This was a radical innovation in the 1950s.

At that time stuffed toys were generic objects meant to be given to undiscerning infants. Stuffed toys were designed to be inexpensive. But my dad was an artist, and the artist in him knew this dog had to have a distinctive face for it to connect with people.

Those eyelids were the first of many innovations he would develop to create stuffed toys with vivid expressions. My dad’s company sold these stuffed toys under the name “personality pets” to highlight the way they differed from cheap, generic stuffed toys.

There was never an issue of what this dog would be called. Cheer Up appealed to children and adults, becoming the first of my dad’s designs to be famous. Cheer Up came in several forms (sitting, lying prone, lounging on his back) and several sizes.

Several years ago I was invited to attend a special meeting of the Ames Historical Society. The society was premiering a film that celebrated my father’s company.

Collegiate Manufacturing had been a significant employer in Ames for over 40 years.

The day before the film was shown I was invited to the home of a man who had a wonderful collection of stuffed toys from Collegiate Manufacturing. It was emotional for me to wander his basement gazing at hundreds of stuffed toys designed by my dad.

Monkeys, dogs, tigers, giraffes, horses, skunks, turtles and other critters stared at me from Don’s display shelves. I grew up knowing these toys but had not seen any of them for nearly 60 years. While I recognized many, I was most moved by Don’s collection of Cheer-up dogs. He had about three dozen Cheer Ups.

Don repeatedly urged me to take some toys as a gift. I was touched by his generosity, but I turned him down. I had no right to anything he had collected.

A day later we had the historical society meeting. When the meeting was over, I rushed to my car to start the long drive to my Saint Paul home. Don ran to catch up with me, shoving a box in my hands. “Don’t refuse me again,” he said. “I could tell by your eyes which ones meant the most to you.” The box held three Cheer Up dogs in the three poses that had been most popular.

My father died in 1999, and I heard that Don died a few years ago. Yet both live on in memory and in the friendly form of the little Cheer Up that sits on my bedroom dresser.

Most mementos honor the memory of a special person. My Cheer Up celebrates the memory of two men with good hearts.

Do you have a memento that helps you remember someone special?

The Baboon Congress

Free Range Bicycles

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Today’s post comes from Renee in North Dakota

There are about 850,000 people in Amsterdam, and more than 1,000,000 bicycles.  Bremen was rife with cyclists, as well. It took skill to discern what part of the sidewalk was for bikes and what part was for pedestrians. We saw families on bikes, babies in infant seats perched precariously between handle bars, and dogs in baskets attached to the front frame.  People of all ages, even very old people, rode bikes to get places and go shopping. No one wore helmets.

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We marveled at the freedom Bremen and Amsterdam parents gave their children. There were unsupervised children all over the place, riding to and from school and the shops, with no hovering adults to be seen.  Daughter-in-law commented that she wished US children could have a similar lifestyle. I read somewhere that German  parents encourage and expect a great deal of independence  and self-sufficiency from their children, and that “free range” parenting is the norm there. Risk taking is thought to teach safety.

I am sure that there are bad people in Amsterdam and Bremen, and that bad things happen to children there, but no one seemed to let that change their behavior or restrict their children’s mobility. I told this to some of the more hovering parents I know, and they were appalled, yet curious.  There is a dignity in risk.

How risky are you? 

 

The Baboon Congress, Travel

Bowling With The Boss

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Daughter and Husband planned the last half of our recent trip to Europe. Our trip ended in Dublin, where they  booked us into a really swanky hotel called The Merrion.  It is the sort of place where the Bell Captains wear top hats and the housekeepers lay out soft mats and bedroom slippers on either side of the bed when they do up the room. It was really grand.

We arrived in Dublin by ferry from Holyhead, Wales.  The streets were really crowded and it was hard to find a taxi. We strolled around Trinity College and down Grafton Street and it was wall to wall people.  We were told by the travel agent that we were lucky to find hotel rooms in Dublin the weekend we were there, as she was told by someone that there were lots of things going on in town. Those “things” turned out to be:

  1. The Irish Open
  2. Josh Groban in concert
  3. A very important soccer match
  4. Bruce Springsteen in concert Friday and Sunday evenings.

Everyone seemed to be talking about Bruce Springsteen. Nils Lofgren and Stevie Van Zandt were playing with him, and the newspapers had the whole play list for the concerts, which took place in a large outdoor arena that held 65,000 people.  One taxi driver told us that there were 100,000 extra people in Dublin just for those concerts.

As we were checking into our hotel, I heard a man asking after a female guest who was “a member of the Springsteen party”, and I realized that Bruce was staying at The Merrion, too. That explained all the people with cameras milling around outside the hotel.

We never saw Bruce, but we heard about him from some delightfully gossipy taxi drivers. They confirmed that he was indeed at The Merrion, and gave us a running itinerary for him, letting us know that on Saturday morning he worked out in the gym around the corner from the hotel, and that on Sunday morning he went bowling.

Bowling? Now, in all our time in Europe, I never saw a bowling alley. Did he go lawn bowling? Can you imagine Bruce Springsteen lawn bowling, upsetting the octogenarian bowlers in their white lawn bowling get ups? Why would he go bowling? Why not a short trip to the coast or to some castle, or a private view of the Book of Kells. Maybe he could have gone to church. If I were Bruce Springsteen, would I want to go bowling? I just don’t know.

W.W.Y.A.S.D?  (What Would You (as Springsteen) Do?