The Baboon Congress

Fa La La La …

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Today’s post is by Sherrilee.

People hate me this time of year. This is how I got here.

As a newly married young gal, I had lots of ideas about how we would start our own holiday traditions and celebrate together. We agreed that we would spend the holidays on our own in Milwaukee as we both had grueling schedules (me in the bakery and him at grad school). It was right around Thanksgiving when his parents called; I could hear him in the other room sliding down the slippery slope. By the time he got off the phone, he had agreed to go home to Kansas City for Christmas. I made him promise that if we spent time with his family, we would split that time with MY family. On the 23rd I worked until 2 p.m., rushed home and we took a night flight to Kansas City. Spent a day and a half with his folks, then we flew to St. Louis on Christmas morning and spent a day and a half with my folks. Home on the 26th and back to work on the 27th. I hadn’t done holiday cards, done no baking, hardly purchased any gifts and no down time. I cried for 3 weeks.

As the year progressed, I promised myself I never wanted to go through that again. I bought holiday cards on sale in January, purchased gifts through the summer and even baked cookies in early November, putting them in the freezer. By Thanksgiving I was all done. The whole holiday season was less stressful and there was also no yelling and cursing at my Wasband. The next year I wasn’t at the bakery, but got everything done early anyway.

It’s been decades but I still work hard to get everything done by the beginning of December. It means being organized, thinking about it throughout the year and working on the projects months before the holidays. Even though I now celebrate Solstice and also now make all our cards and gifts, I still get done early and then thoroughly enjoy the whole holiday season. taking plates of cookies everywhere, going to every party I’m invited to and watching all of my holiday movies. I love it.

So go ahead and hate me; that’s the spirit!

What would it take to make your end-of-year stress vanish?

The Baboon Congress

Baboon Redux – Beer Bottle Lamp

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Header Image of bench made from skis by Victor Grigas /
CC By SA 3.0

Today’s post was first published in 2011,  by Jim (who used to be) from Clark’s Grove.

As an impoverished student I learned to do a lot of improvising. In those days I got by with shelves made from boards and cement blocks which were also found in many other student apartments. I even had a guide to living as an impoverished student that gave all kinds suggestions for living cheaply. It gave a recipe for cooking a tasty chicken dish to serve on special occasions, along with instructions on making your own beer, and talked about using colorful cloth to cover worn out sofas and other things.

Most of the improvised things from our student days have been replaced by items that cost a little more and don’t need to be covered with colorful cloth. The lamp made from an over sized beer bottle is no longer in use. The board and block shelves were replaced by less rugged shelves made with 2 by 2s and boards and those shelves were finally replace some that were purchased at a furniture store.

We are still making use of some used furniture that we refinished during our student days. One of these items is a Hoosier cabinet that we bought for next to nothing at a back street auction house. We painted this cabinet and used it for many years before stripping it and giving it a coating of polyurethane. We even found a source of hardware that matched the style on the cabinet and replaced a broken latch. This cabinet has a lot of interesting features and is still in use for storing dishes and other things in our dining room.

There are some other pieces of refinished used furniture that we are still using. Most of these refinished items came from relatives. They include and old arts and craft styled oak kitchen table. The legs of the kitchen table were not refinished and still are covered with the old wood finish and decorative stripes of green paint. We are also using a refinished dresser that might be made of maple and a small refinished table made from some kind of fairly good looking wood. An old oak dresser has been stored for many years in our basement waiting refinishing, but I doubt that I will get around to working on it and I think it will end up as a donation to the Salvation Army.

The most treasured remnant of impoverished student days is a homemade spice rack still being used in our kitchen that is seen in the picture. It was made from some rustic wood slats that came from an old wooden orange crate and is filled with sets of recycled glass jars of various kinds. This is one of the few times that my tendency to hoard all kinds of things, including used jars, paid off. It isn‘t a highly attractive item, but it has a ‘folksy’ look that keeps it from sticking out like a sore thumb. It could use some new better looking jars with better looking labels on them. This spice shelf is a well liked reminder of the days when we didn’t have much money.

It can never be replaced.

What’s your greatest low-budget improvisation?

The Baboon Congress

Baboon Redux – Over the River

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Today’s guest post, originally posted in November of 2011,  is by Clyde.

When we were raising our children, we lived in Two Harbors and my parents lived above the east end of Duluth, only about two miles from Hawk Ridge. Among the four ways we could drive to their house, our favorite was to take the Seven Bridges Road.

Here is YouTube of a song about the Seven Bridges Road:

In winter the Seven Bridges Road was plowed only part way up the hill. Thus for our traditional Thanksgiving Day drive to my parents house we would always take the Seven Bridges Road, assuming that it would ere long be closed. And a family tradition was born to sing as we passed over each of the seven bridges “Over the river and through the woods to Grandmother’s house we go.” As our children matured, one would always ask, “What’s another popular Thanksgiving song?” A question which still lacks an answer.

Why is that? Why are there not many popular songs for this second most American of holidays? Everything seems right for songs: the season, the purpose, the mood, the many items associated with the day. But no songs have arisen.

Also, serious writers of serious music, i.e. classical, often embody popular songs, i.e. un-serious songs, in their serious music. Have I missed it, or has no one used Lydia Maria Child’s “Over the River and through the Woods” in this way?

Another mystery: Her poem which provides the words to the song was called “A Boy’s Thanksgiving Day.” Why is her poem of her childhood memories called “A Boy’s Thanksgiving Day”?

Here are her words:

Over the river, and through the wood,
To Grandfather’s house we go;
The horse knows the way to carry the sleigh
through the white and drifted snow.

Over the river, and through the wood—
Oh, how the wind does blow!
It stings the toes and bites the nose
As over the ground we go.

Over the river, and through the wood,
To have a first-rate play.
Hear the bells ring, “Ting-a-ling-ding”,
Hurrah for Thanksgiving Day!

Over the river, and through the wood
Trot fast, my dapple-gray!
Spring over the ground like a hunting-hound,
For this is Thanksgiving Day.

Over the river, and through the wood—
And straight through the barnyard gate,
We seem to go extremely slow,
It is so hard to wait!

Over the river, and through the wood—
Now Grandmother’s cap I spy!
Hurrah for the fun! Is the pudding done?
Hurrah for the pumpkin pie!

Why the dearth of Thanksgiving songs?
Go ahead. Write one.

Food, The Baboon Congress

Fun in the Kitchen

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Today’s post comes from Barbara in Robbinsdale

The next couple of days will be very busy for people who like to cook, and who like to appreciate – by eating what’s cooked. If you’re not hosting the feast on Turkey Day, you may be contributing to the meal. In our case, we will be cooking on Wednesday, then transporting to Winona our favorite side dishes and a dessert, for a mid-afternoon meal with Friends on Thanksgiving.

For my part, I will refer to my two favorite cookbook authors, Laurie Colwin and Alice May Brock (of Alice’s Restaurant fame – the real Alice). My favorite things from Alice’s Restaurant Cookbook are the Stuffed Mushrooms on p. 104, and her irreverent attitude, which is (paraphrasing here): don’t get hung up on the details – improvise, don’t take it all too seriously. And I quote: “Wine and liquor are great for cooking, and also for the cook… in fact, more important for the cook…”

Laurie Colwin, a delightful writer who left us too soon, has just two cookbooks Home Cooking: a Writer in the Kitchen and More Home Cooking… (in addition to several works of fiction). Not sure what I like better, the stories about how she taught herself to cook, or the casual, irreverent approach to cooking. With chapters like “How to Disguise Vegetables” and “Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant”, she had me at the Table of Contents. What to do when you have too many red bell peppers? (“A large number of red peppers is a beautiful sight.”) Simmer in plenty of olive oil, etc., till you have what “some people might call… Red Pepper Conserve, but it will always be red pepper sludge to me.”

So I’ll bring my red pepper sludge, stuff some mushrooms, do something fun with sweet potatoes, and bring a pumpkin dessert. But I won’t get too serious about it.

Will you be cooking or appreciating this Thanksgiving, and what’s your favorite food to cook or appreciate?

Stories, The Baboon Congress

The Peanut Butter Conundrum

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Today’s post comes from Sherrilee.

My father wasn’t as funny as he thought he was.  Don’t get me wrong; he had a lot of wonderful qualities.  He was kind, thoughtful, intelligent, generous.  But Billy Crystal he wasn’t.

When I was a teenager, he would answer any call that came in after 8 p.m. with “Joe’s Morgue.  You stab `em, we slab `em.”  He thought this was endlessly funny.  My sister and I ended up getting our own phone.

I was thinking of him tonight when I opened a new jar of peanut butter.  When I was growing up, if you scooped out the first peanut butter from the center, he’d gasp “Oh, no, you took it from the center!”  Of course if the next time you scooped from the right side, he’d throw up his hands in mock-horror and say “Oh no, you took it from the wrong side.”  Then when you chose the other side… you guessed it, “Oh no, you didn’t take it from the middle!”  Every jar.  Every single jar.

He’s been gone for 13 years and while I’ve always missed him, it wasn’t until tonight that I realize I even miss his stupid peanut butter joke.

I scooped the peanut right out of the middle!

Who’s the funny one in your family?

Music, Songs, The Baboon Congress

Good Year For Earworms

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Today’s guest post is from Linda in St. Paul (West Side).

The Germans have a word for it – ohrwurm, which translates literally as earworm, that phenomenon of getting a song lodged in your head that plays over and over till it drives you to distraction. I fall victim on a regular basis. Often particular songs are triggered by everyday objects or activities, and this is never more true than when I’m working in a garden.

I can’t trim a rosebush without drifting into It’s Been a Good Year For the Roses. It’s usually the George Jones version, though it occasionally morphs briefly into Elvis Costello.

Tending a bittersweet vine is a sure way to conjure Big Head Todd and the Monsters. (“Bittersweet…more sweet than bitter…bitter than sweet…”)  If you don’t know it, you could look it up on YouTube. Consider yourself warned, though – it’s a sticky one, as difficult to dislodge as a ball of burdock seeds.

Buttercups invariably trigger All Shook Up. I explained this to a friend once and she told me I am lucky my mental jukebox goes to Elvis instead of The Foundations.

An especially virulent earworm is Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree with Anyone Else But Me. I cannot even walk past an apple tree without suffering an acute attack.

And then sometimes my brain takes an odd detour and arrives at destination I’m at a loss to explain. I spend a couple of weeks in the summer pulling a vine known as hog peanut. To my knowledge, no one has ever written a song about hog peanut. The song that surfaces from my subconscious to fill the void is the bebop classic Salt Peanuts, with the lyrics adapted: “Hog peanut…hog peanut…” in an endless loop. Can you hear it?

Winter is fast approaching, and the garden earworms will sleep beneath the snow for a few months, to return in the spring. The only thing I have to say is…it’s been a good year for the roses.

Share your favorite (or least favorite) earworms.

Poems, Science

The Back 40 Boneyard

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In a southern Michigan soybean field, a farmer found a bent fence post, caked with mud.  Which was no big deal, until he discovered it was actually part of a fifteen thousand year old pelvis of a Wooly Mammoth.

Wooly Mammoths, which are extinct, seem rather exotic for southern Michigan. Though the news accounts carried no suggestion that the farmer felt annoyed by this unexpected find, it had to be a pain in the butt to halt daily agricultural operations to bring in the archaeologists.

But Trail Baboon’s singsong poet laureate, Schuyler Tyler Wyler, became quite excited when I told him about this story, because he considers the Wooly Mammoth to be his totem animal.

Both STW and Wooly Mammoths are large, hairy, under-appreciated creatures whose unexpected appearance can sometimes lead to feelings of disappointment that the discoverer has not found a real elephant, or a serious poet.

STW’s latest work speaks of this in the hirsute behemoth’s lilting voice.

A farmer works for higher yields,
to see his family’s bread won.
But gets my carcass in his fields!
A crop!  Alas, a dead one.

My bones are no commodity
to trade on the exchange,
An old organic oddity.
low-salt, no cage, free-range.

To dig me up is more than play.
I’m ingrained in the ground.
Though true, I’m trespassing today,
‘Twas not when I fell down.

So now they’ve dug up my remains,
and inventoried fully:
Acres of soybeans, tons of grains.
One ancient Mammoth, wooly.

But I’ll make no apology
to that exhausted farmer.
His harvest – part mythology,
part prehistoric charmer!

Ever find a surprise in the dirt?

The Baboon Congress

Board Meetings

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Header photo by Sammydavisdog on Flickr via Creative Commons 2.0

Today’s post comes from Barbara in Robbinsdale.

I have recently joined the Board of Directors at Tapestry Folkdance Center. It is a three-year term, and I thought long and hard about this commitment that I have been avoiding for some time. With good reason – I am now on two committees, and feel like I must show up when there is, say, a seasonal Clean-up Day.

Some of our discussion topics seem very crucial (fund raising; how to get and retain new dancers), but then I looked at what was discussed at the G-20 Summit talks happened on November 15 and 16 in Antalya, Turkey. Here is one article providing a recap of all that was on the agenda:

  • Bolstering counterterrorism efforts
  • Responsible state behavior in cyberspace
  • Achieving strong, sustainable, and balanced global economic growth
  • Making global growth more inclusive
  • Addressing the global refugee crisis
  • Promoting high-standard trade and investment
  • Strengthening the global financial system
  • A modern, fair international tax system
  • Fighting corruption and promoting transparency
  • Supporting sustainable development
  • Addressing climate change and boosting clean energy

I’m trying to imagine covering these topics in two days. They must have had a really strict time “moderator”.

And for a little comic relief, there was a cat invasion:

Where do you find comic relief during a long meeting?

 

Poems

Calving Laws

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A very thorough article in the New York Times about the collapse of Greenland’s Ice Sheet was less than precise about the timeline for rising ocean levels.   Melting on this scale is unprecedented in human history.  University of California – Irvine professor Eric Rignot was quoted saying ‘‘‘We’ve never seen it. No human has ever seen it.’’

The problem is made worse by the fact that ice is complicated.

“Glaciologists remain vexed, for instance, by the physics of how ice cleaves off the edge of the sheet. As Rignot told me, ‘‘We don’t have a set of mathematical rules to put in a numerical model to tell you how fast a glacier breaks into icebergs.’’ He emphasized that discovering these rules, known as calving laws, could be all-­important. Richard Alley, a glaciologist at Penn State, told me: ‘‘Problems that deal with fracture mechanics — volcanic eruptions, or earthquakes, or things that involve the question ‘Will it break or not?’ — tend to be difficult. You ask, Will the ice shelf break off a lot or a little bit? Will the cliff left behind crumble? Will it crumble fast? Will it crumble slow?’’ So far, Alley says, we can’t be sure. But a formula might tell us in advance how fast the ice sheets might crash into the sea.”

After I told Trail Baboon’s sing-song poet laureate Tyler Schuyler Wyler about this unfortunate gap in scientific understanding of the effects of climate change, he immediately warmed to the idea of taking it on as an artistic challenge.

The great glaciers up in Greenland look serene and sharp and still.
But they’re melting at the speed at which great glaciers often will.

If you want to know how fast that is I’ll share this helpful clue:
Mammoth  ice chunks liquefy as quickly as they’re wont to do,

They will crack and pop and shift and drain from bottom to the top.
Getting worse exactly at the rate that ice shelves go “ker-plop,”

when they drop into the ocean with sufficient force to flatten,
and to cause enough displacement to submerge lower Manhattan.

To assess the speed precisely you can do this computation –
Take the age of your old Buick times the planet’s population

Then subtract the number of bike trips you took to work last May
from the setting on your thermostat on any average day.

Then divide this by how often you drive to the corner store
plus how long you let it idle while you run back in for more.

Add that number to the time it takes to soak in a hot tub
and you’ll know how quickly glaciers melt!

Glub glub, glub glub.

Glub Glub.

Where’s your favorite spot to view the ocean?

The Baboon Congress, Travel

The Stuff that Dreams are Made Of

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Today’s post comes from Renee in North Dakota

I am not much into dream interpretation, being a Dust-bowl empiricist sort of psychologist by training. My dreams are pretty understandable, not scary, just annoying and mundane, usually fueled by anxiety. My most recent stupid dream concerned the band in which husband and I play doing a gig at the Vatican, and I couldn’t get my bass guitar amp to play loud enough during Mass. How dumb is that?

Our sojourn into Indian Country has taught me, though, that when a person has a dream concerning American Indians, it is wise to sit up and take notice. Dreams are important means of communication in the Native community.  I have heard many a Native person say to someone “I had a dream about you last night. Thought I better come and check if you are ok.” I had a very strange dream a while back about Linda, one of our Native friends we were going to meet up with at a pow wow. The dream, which seemed strangely real, involved Linda, in great distress, trying to contact me to tell me that she wasn’t going to make it to the pow wow because she was ill.  In the morning we drove up to the pow wow grounds. I asked about Linda and was told that she was ill and was staying home. That was a really odd experience.

image003 (1)

The photo attached to this post is of the Hopi Corn God.  We purchased him at Mesa Verde, in the National Park gift shop. He isn’t made by the Hopi, but by Apaches for the tourist trade. I think that Kachinas are too sacred to the Hopi to make and sell. I set him in a place of honor in the living room when we got back home. One night I had enough of husband’s snoring (this was pre-CPAP) and I bunked up on the living room sofa. That night I had a horrific dream that the kachina was really, really angry. It seemed very real, and it was again hard for me to decide if it was a dream or if it was really happening.  He was about 50 feet tall and was moving toward me, stomping and stomping with his big feet.  It felt that he was going to stomp me to jelly. I woke up and found some dried field corn we had for the squirrels and sprinkled some around the kachina’s feet.  I haven’t had any more dreams about him, but I wonder what it was he was trying to tell me that night.  Probably that even Apache-made Hopi Kachinas are too sacred to be used as an ornament. I probably need to ask some our Native friends what I should do with him and how I should properly dispose of him if they think that necessary. Be careful if you have an opportunity to purchase Native artifacts.

You may have dreams.

What is your most worrisome artifact?