News, Poems

Why Astronauts Shouldn’t Drink

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Astronaut Scott Kelly spent almost one year in space. 

Now that he’s back on Earth, there’s some stuff to get used to, and he will be adjusting for a while, because spending so much time in micro gravity changes the body.  And perhaps the mind!

So I asked Trail Baboon Sing-Song Poet Laureate Tyler Schuyler Wyler to create one of his famous lighter-than-air word confections to honor Kelly.  TSW grabbed the necessary supplies and locked himself away in a backyard tool shed, staying there for 340 consecutive hours before emerging with this work of art scribbled on the inside surface of an empty box of Nut Goodies.

It’s final call at Bottom’s End.
A round of suds was bought
as misery engulfed my friend –
a grounded astronaut.

A man who spends much time in space
will change while flying high.
He gets a somewhat puffy face
and lighter in the thigh.

He’d been aloft for many days
but now was unemployed.
He came back full of cosmic rays
and longing for the void.

“I’d wake up as the sun went down
Sometimes, the other way.
It flickered as we went  around.
sixteen full times each day.”

“In orbit, friends, I stood so tall.
Down here I sag and bloat.
I walked on ceilings and the wall.”
Even my tears would float.”

“But now I’m held in place without
a chance of pulling free.
I miss the flying all about.
I miss the space debris.”

“My bones are calcium-bereft.
My muscles all got limp.
I’d gladly go back where I left
to be an astro-wimp.”

“Don’t be so eager to depart,”
I told him with a wink.
“Down here when men drink beer and fart,
the capsule doesn’t stink.”

He smiled the smile of one who’s known
an idiot or two.
“I’d go back even though I’ve flown
with guys more crude than you.”

And then he looked away as if
there was no more to say.
An astronaut who’s seen the sun
rise sixteen times a day

Where are you longing to return?

 

 

The Baboon Congress

The Man In The Window

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Today’s post comes from tim

mitch

i feel bad

real bad

a couple of weeks ago we had a police car pull up in front of the house and i told my son he was in trouble for parking his car on the streets of prestigious west bloomington and as he cursed the uppity neighbors who would call on a wonderful guy like him it became obvious that the cops were there for a different reason.

i had to go to a meeting but i got a call half an hour later from my family that a body bag came out of the house and the intrigue was too much to handle.

i have a hot tub between my house and the neighbors and i was doing my late night dip 4 nights in a row when at 1030 or so the alarm would go off on the truck in the driveway next door and not just for a couple of beeps of the horn either, it was a good couple of minutes of horn honk honk honking followed by mitch the next door neighbor coming out and shutting off the alarm but starting the truck then sitting in the truck with it running in the driveway for 10 minutes before leaving. i would finish my hot tub and go in wondering for a minute or two what that was about but getting on with my life. even the 4th or 5th night i found it odd but not odd enough to have me try to put together the puzzle.

i remembered the scene in rear window where the wendell corey as the cop tells jimmy stewart that he should allow other people the privacy they deserve. a lot of things appear odd when observed for the outside.

i started working the theory in my mind. the mom who i had met. kind of an aunt bea sort of woman had the son mitch who i met the day debbie first came to the house to unpack boxes in the kitchen. he came in the garage and gave one of those helllloooooo call out from his entry through the open garage door. i went to say hello and his intro was to say “ hi… my name is mitch. i live next door, do you want me to plow your driveway this winter?”

i laughed and said “no, we can cover this ourselves” (we had just laughed about how the driveway was barely big enough to park the cars on and how it would take 15 minutes to shovel after a foot of snow) mitch shrugged and waved goodbye as he retreated back through the garage full of unpacked boxes. mitch is a cross between a cave man and a troll who danced when he stepped and looked like a refugee from a russian circus troop. that was the last i saw of him other than as he drove off regularly in his truck.

my theories were based totally on my thought of the moment.

maybe he was a wild man who was needing to get away from his mom who was beating him and so he pushed the alarm button on his key ring until she let him go shut it off. he sat in the car until he couldn’t stand it any more then drove off to return after she had fallen asleep.

maybe she was the one getting beat up and she pushed the button so he would have to stop and go out to shut it off. he would sit and cool down until he drove off to return later and try it again when cooler heads prevailed.

then one day the cooler heads did not prevail and he killed her and was on the run, the truck had not been in the driveway for a week and so they hadn’t caught him.

the story needed a little adjustment when the junk inc truck showed up and took away 1 large piece of furniture like a love seat or an oversized chair . the windows on the house were opened to let the odors out both upstairs and down so the body must have been there long enough to start to stink.

people started showing up in the driveway and going in to clean and pack stuff up.

the comings and goings were the riddle and then the pickup truck mitch drove showed up.

so he wasn’t on the run… but wait it had duct tape over the rear window covering a hole about the size of a bullet hole made by a pistol or a rifle.

how did that fit into the equation?

my next theory was that mitch got shot and took a cab home or got a ride home and died in the basement. his mom must have been in florida on vacation and when he didn’t answer the phone she called the police who checked it out and discovered the body… but this was all conjecture.

we don’t know any neighbors and don’t know of a way to find out what happened. the other night my son devin looked up police reports for the house next door and found out mitch was a troubled guy who had been sited for carrying a gun while on parole as a felon and was in trouble for that.   a bit more research discovered his obit saying he had died unexpectedly on february 8th. that didn’t shed any light for me but my son said “died unexpectedly” is code for suicide in the lingo of police and obits.

so i feel guilty for dreaming up all the fantastic stories about the beatings and who did what to who. i feel bad for not being aware that the troubled guy next door was needing something and i was oblivious.

it makes you realize that there are people out there that you stand next to everyday that are in need of something, maybe a smile or a kind word or a job other than plowing driveways on a mild minnesota winter in order to make the demons move back a little

my family is glad we don’t have a felon who danes like a troll and carries guns living next door. i hadn’t thought of that. i just feel bad that a soul in need was next door and i didn’t even realize it.

i guess the reality is that i still don’t know anything for sure but it gives me a funny feeling every time i look in the window 50 feet away from the hot tub and realize he was so unhappy.

miss true heart, miss torso and raymond burr all lived outside jimmy stewart’s window in alfred hitchcock’s story. mitch lived outside mine.

different stuff touches us and makes an imprint. some good some bad some potent some just a little angle kiss.
what’s your favorite movie?

The Baboon Congress

Animal Tales Part I: Four Little Pigs

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Today’s post comes from Cynthia in Mahtowa

Once upon a time I had four pigs. They were wee things when they arrived, several hundred pounds when they left. I think I called all four of them “Peter Porkchop” to remind me why I was feeding them, Danish style, barley and milk. But while they lived on the farm, they were a delight and constant source of entertainment.

They shared the pasture with the several goats. The pasture, fenced with woven wire, did a good job of keeping them contained. But sometimes the gate between the horses and goats was left open and they were free to range into the (non)electric fenced area. So they took themselves for walks around the neighborhood. My neighbor, sitting on the ground, painting her garage doors, was startled to find the four at that time very large pigs staring at her.

The first time I took the new piglets for a walk in the woods with the goats, I learned that they would not stay with me and the goats, but instead wandered off on their own. And they did not return with us. A friend stopped by to see them that afternoon. When I told her I didn’t know where they were, she was astounded and wondered why I wasn’t out looking for them. I allowed as how there was 40 acres of woods and where would I start? “I figure they’ll come home at feeding time.” And so they did. Around 4:30 that afternoon here they came romping across the horse pasture. So I learned they always would return home.

But my favorite story about the four little now big pigs is this: They loved being in the goat barn, but as they got bigger there wasn’t room for them and the goats, so I would lock them out at night to sleep in their own shelter. When I opened the goat door in the morning, the pigs would rush in, grab mouthfuls of hay and race over to their shelter. Then I noticed they would run down to the woods and bring back sticks in their mouths. It made me think of the folk tale “The Three Little Pigs” and the houses they built. So…straw, twigs…my pigs were “building” two out of the three houses. Then one day I noticed one of them running around with a salt block in his mouth….ah, the house of bricks was now being built!

And I was the big bad wolf who had them for dinner….

And painted a portrait…which I sold to a woman in New York City where I hope Peter Porkchop lives on.

What folk tale have you seen play out in your life?

Music

Tally Me Banana

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Today is singer and activist  Harry Belafonte’s birthday.  He’s 89 years old.

Belafonte has done many worthy things as an outspoken champion of human rights.  I don’t know how he feels about it, but it seems unfortunate that he is best known for  singing a Jamaican work song that prominently features the world’s most politically loaded and inherently humorous fruit – the banana.

Working all night on a drink of rum is no small trick.  But you would want to be sure the tally man was counting your bundles fairly when it was time to go home.

And please, let’s not think about spiders.

What motivates you to do your work?

The Baboon Congress

Village Life in Bulgaria

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Today’s post comes from Jim Tjepkema

I have been keeping in touch by Facebook with a friend from Bulgaria.   He posts all kinds of information about Bulgaria on Facebook including the You Tube video found below.  This video about village life in Bulgaria reminded me of the villages I visited there as an agricultural volunteer.   I visited in person with a number of people who had a life style similar in many ways to the couple shown in the video.

Many of the Bulgarians living in the villages I visited own livestock, although they might not have as many animals as you see in the video.   Farms, like the one shown, are located in Bulgarian rural villages and are not scattered around the countryside as they are in our country.  Even farms larger than the one shown seem to operate out of farmsteads situated in villages.  When I was in Bulgaria they were trying to recover from their years behind the Iron Curtain when all the people who owned farms were forced to give up their land and work at cooperative farms.  However, during the Russian occupation people in the villages were allowed keep small plots of land and small numbers of livestock to provide themselves with food.

In the video you see the sheep return to the homestead for the evening.   I suspect that the sheep had been taken out to pasture by a herdsman from the village that looks after the livestock of the villagers during the day.  I saw villagers going to meet their livestock that was brought back to the town in the evening by someone who had been watching them during the day.   During the day I saw livestock being tended by shepherds as they grazed in open fields along the roads.

Apart from the sheep, some other livestock are shown that are being cared for including a donkey.  That donkey is probably used to pull a cart.   I saw people using donkey carts the way we would use a car or a truck, although some families did own cars and trucks.   The sausage, wine, and fermented cabbage shown in video were probably all products of the farm.   I think I was served homemade wine at every village home I visited.  Also, in many homes, I saw wood burning cook stoves like the one used by that older couple.

Village people in Bulgaria live much the same way small farmers lived in this country many years ago.  Most of the occupants of the villages are older.  Some are young, although it seems that many of the younger ones have moved to big cities.   As I listen to the campaign speeches of some of our Presidential candidates, I wonder if I wouldn’t be better off living in a Bulgarian village producing my own food and wine.  I believe that many places like the one shown in the video are now for sale because the older generation of people living in those places is dying off and the younger ones are moving to big cities.

If you decided you no longer want to live in the USA, where would you go?

The Baboon Congress

The Architectural Blues

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Today’s post comes from Clyde of Mankato

I was driving down the street the other day, minding my own business entirely, innocent of marring the world with anything but my car exhaust fumes, when I looked up and saw two men putting a new sign on a building.

Birkholz Building

Back when I was the manager of a small company, I almost rented half of this building. The Birkholz this is now named for, if I correctly assume who it is, is no relative. (Well, I know he/she isn’t because I have no relatives named Birkholz, except my son and my ex-brother.) The probable building owner’s wife is my eye doctor. If it is he, the building will soon start tilting radically to the right.

I bemoan that my name is on such a squat dumpy pasty-white building. However, Mankato has has a spate of new construction in the last few years, which makes the Birkholz Building look blandly attractive. Let me take you on a short tongue-in-cheek tour. Along the way, I am sure many if not all of you will disagree with my assessments. My architectural taste has long been held up to ridicule.

US Banbk

I think all will agree about this new atrocity. But I give credit to a bank for giving the world a bold middle finger architectural salute, as they so often do financially.

College

This was completed five years ago at a local Lutheran college. This building is most certainly awkward. It makes me want to turn Catholic. It was Mankato’s first major step into what I call “sore thumb architecture.” We now have literally hundreds of sore thumbs sticking skyward around town, the finest exemplar of which is this thing near Minnesota State.

Sore Thumb

The next three buildings are all just being completed.

 

These three buildings are all on the same block, turning their backs to each other, as they should. One looks like a crossword puzzle, one looks like a Legos construction, one looks like a glass outhouse. Diagonally across an intersection from the glass outhouse is this building, which, if you took off that golfer’s cap and replaced it with a cross, would look as if they worship money.

MinnStar

Then there is the church we attend. Notice I do not indicate any sense of involvement.

Bethlehem

This building used to look like a bottling plant, beer bottling no doubt. Two years ago they spent over $2,000,000, much of went to redo the front, adding the freight loading dock to the left of our view, the rusting crosses, the sore thumb to our right (had to be one of those), and the new windows and columns. This improved, they say, the narthex inside. I guess, but, my, oh, my, how sound does bounce off all that brick and glass. I think I better be quiet now.

How are you doing with post-modernism?

The Future

Spin Williams Redux – The Paradox of Time

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The recent discovery of gravitational waves and the relentless approach of Leap Day next Monday give me the distinct feeling that the fabric of space-time that surrounds me is now shredded and rippling in the breeze. Is today really today or is it this same day in 2012?  Because that’s when Spin Williams, Trail Baboon’s marketing wiz and resident genius at The Meeting That Never Ends first offered this mind-bending post:

I love Leap Day because it breaks the mold and gives us a peek at the future!

And the future I see is one where we are freed from the tyranny of the calendar! At The Meeting That Never Ends, we’re recommending that our clients invest heavily in anything that tracks, catalogs and manipulates time.

The next big growth area is not energy or financial services or Greek yogurt. It’s Time! Giving people control over their time is what freedom is all about! And we believe the world is moving inexorably towards a future where time is totally de-regulated and completely governed by the market!

For example, back in the day you had to be present in front of your TV set to catch a particular program at a specific time. If you didn’t obey the clock, you were out of luck. Today, it doesn’t matter when you want to watch – your favorite televised experience waits for you and provides itself at the touch of a button whenever you are ready!

I believe someday it will be the same with our calendar. No more February, March, April proceeding in their uninspired sequence of orderly days, one after another. That tired old system is entirely predictable and far too constraining.

The calendar of the future will be self designed and totally changeable. Everyone will still get 365 and 1/4 days each year, and in that year there will be 52 Mondays, 52 Tuesdays, etc. But if you want to live all your Mondays in a row and get them out of the way, that’s up to you! If you want to sell all your Fridays to a rich person in exchange for a large amount of cash and an equal number of their Wednesdays, you can do that! Conversely, if you want to burn through all your 104 Saturdays and Sundays starting on April 4th and finishing on July 6th, be my guest!

If you do this, of course you will suffer terrible consequences, but self-inflicted misery is also the hallmark of freedom!

Bottom line – people are hungry for liberty and time is the last great dictator – a heartless oppressor who is destined to fall. Mark my words – this will happen! The smart investor stays ahead of mega-trends, so place your bets and get ready for the Temporal Spring!

It sounds farfetched but I recall when Spin told me punctuation was unfairly rationed and a free American should get to have as many exclamation points as he wants. That came true for him, through sheer force of will!!!!! Could he be right about the rest of it?

What is time?

Food, The Baboon Congress

The Last Meal

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Today’s post comes from Steve Grooms.

Uh oh! The warden has just informed you that your last appeal was rejected.

You might have won a stay (or even a pardon) if Hillary had won. But President Ted Cruz filled Scalia’s open chair with Dick Cheney, and there went your chance for any mercy. Pizzle rot! You should have voted Democratic.

But there is an upside to this. You do get to choose your last meal. That’s something to look forward to, right?

What will this meal be? Some options are not open. You don’t get to pick that famous Chinese dish, 100 year old egg, starting with an egg laid this week. You’ve gotta choose something that will take a reasonable time to prepare. But it is nice that the warden doesn’t insist you pick a fast food dish. Whew!

My first choice for a last meal is something our family absolutely adored. Sad to say, it is no longer available. Our favorite meal for years was takeout from Caravan Serai, the first Afghani restaurant in the United States. Nancy Kayhoum was the owner and main cook in the 1980s and 1990s. About once a week we ordered her incredible combination appetizer (the Marco Polo) and then each family member had a favorite standard dish. Chicken kabobs for the grownups, gyros for the kid. It was heaven. When we opened the takeout bags, our home reeked of delicious herbs and spices for hours. But Nancy closed her restaurant decades ago, so that’s that.

It surprises (and mildly embarrasses) me that my next choice of last meal is something quite common. It was a meal I cooked myself, and once again it was something we had regularly. But it was so satisfying that it would be better than any other last meal I can think of. When my erstwife left the US to live in Europe, she would occasionally make business visits back home. This was the meal she asked me to serve her each time she was a house guest. It impressed me that a woman accustomed to eating in famous four-star restaurants all over Europe dreamed of enjoying again something we could cook at home.

What was that meal? It featured grilled round steak from Lunds, steamed broccoli drenched in a homemade Hollandaise sauce and oven-baked Tater Tots. The steak was Lunds’ dry-aged round steak, but for my last meal I would upgrade to filet mignon. And we should not forget one or two of those French baguettes from the Lunds bakery. Since we are not cutting corners here, we can add butter from the Hope Creamery. And to wash it down, let’s have pinot noir from Oregon.

It isn’t the meal my cardiologist would endorse. We have been told we shouldn’t eat too
much meat, and I don’t think Tater Tots make anybody’s list of health food. But hey, that’s what is so good about a last meal. You can chow down like there is no tomorrow!

We didn’t use to have desert with that meal, but this is a special occasion, so we’ll make an exception. While I remember some incredible deserts we ate while traveling (crème brulee in a London restaurant comes to mind) my choice for a last meal would again be prosaic. Give me a slice of pecan pie, with a generous scoop cinnamon ice cream on the side.

Oh, my, that was good. Hey warden, could I have seconds?

What would you choose for your very last meal?

The Baboon Congress, Words

mockingbirds

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Header photo of Old Monroeville courthouse by Andrea Wright via Flickr

Today’s post comes from tim

harper lee is dead

she went along very nicely for 50+ years after producing one of the greatest works of all time in to kill a mockingbird.she recently got brought back into the news as the author of the book the publisher rejected before the one they accepted where gregory peck has become permanently attached as atticus finch to be remembered forever.

i love that story

i can watch it again and again i have also read it twice which may not be a big deal for sherrilee but it is for me. i havnt read many books twice.

something about a book is different than a movie and very different than a tv show. it keeps me in focus and had the pictures that accompany the words come in through a different filter. they are implanted while the movie or tv shows are slid in alongside whatever is going on in my mind at the time.

harper lee grew up in a 30’s 40’s town where main street was over there and the neighborhood was over here and she wrote about the people she knew and the circumstances as they unfolded and it was all she ever really needed to do. i felt sad when i heard she had the other book released even though it had been around for 50 some years already done but not published.

i thought of her in a special way. the grand daughter of robert e lee, the writer or a truly rock solid story that will live on forever and able to stay a semi recluse without being a negative thing.  

i have thought about my idyllic childhood in the burbs of blooming with the cornfield next to me and the river a mile away and all the friends i needed to get through the different stages of lifes ever changing topography scotty bowman and ray dewberry when i was a pup, bill mccarthy and sean sinnott when i was an up and comer and my hippy friends as the adolescent years ushered in the end of sliding through life. all of a sudden life steered me instead of the other way around. i had payments and meeting then kids and responsibility. death of a salesman is not nearly as fun to read as to kill a mockingbird.

ive decided that a chunk of a lifes story is all that can be handled in one sitting. you cant write the history of the world without missing too much but you can choose a chunk and make it a good story like harper lee did

if you were gonna take a chunk and write about it how would choose it and why?

The Baboon Congress

A Way of Seeing, Part One

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This post is by littlejailbird.

Many years ago, one morning I came across some large spider webs that were covered in dew and were sparkling in the sun. As was my wont, I went crazy taking pictures of this somewhat ordinary thing, that looked beautiful to me. As I was doing this, a friend of mine walked up. He watched me, and when I was finished, he smiled and asked, “What are you taking pictures of?”

I was stunned. How could he not have seen this beautiful thing?

That’s partly why I like taking pictures. Sometimes I notice things that other people don’t see and photography gives me a way to capture some of those things. It’s easy to see the beauty of a sunset, but there are so many other beautiful things to experience if we would just slow down and look. When I first started photography classes this past fall, I had doubts that I could find beautiful things to shoot if I wasn’t up on the North Shore or some such place. However, I have found something about walking around with a camera causes me to notice beautiful things wherever I am, even here in the city.

Click on any of the images to see it in a larger window.

I enjoyed seeing other students’ photography in my classes because often they saw things that I didn’t see, or we saw the same thing, but with different perspectives. Everyone has a different way of seeing and I find delight in seeing what others see.

These photos I share here are some of my old shots, from a long time ago. The spider web shot is the same one mentioned in my story above. I will be sharing some of my more recent shots in another blog post someday.

What do you notice that others don’t see?