The Baboon Congress, Travel

The Cruise

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Today’s post comes from Barbara in Robbinsdale.

The final part of our trip to France in the spring of this year was an 8-day Viking River Cruise. (I am saving the 2nd leg of the trip for Veterans’ Day.) Imagine our delightful anticipation, having seen all of Viking’s TV ads showing the glorious scenery and culture that is yours while on board this vessel. We were to meet the cruise ship at Avignon in southern Provence – a wonderful place by any measure.

The cruise went like this:

Because of high waters on the Rhone R. (early snow melt on top of ample rains); authorities wouldn’t let cruise ships travel under the bridges, and our cruise ship was unable to GET to us in Avignon. Viking put us up for the first two nights at Hotel Novetel; there was a lot of complaining from previous cruisers about the hotel’s food, a mere shadow of what we would finally experience on Viking. We were able to do our walking tours of Avignon and Arles – we traveled by bus instead of boat to Arles the second day.

We were, on Day 3, bussed to our stranded ship in Vienne, where we got to unpack in our cabins, and started to at least experience the luxury of the cruise ship, even if it was stationary. They did allow us to cruise upriver on Day 5, from Vienne to Lyon – we were ecstatic, but learned the following morning that we were stranded again, this time in Lyon.

Cruising was wonderful for the four hours we got to do it. Food, drink, and life on the boat were fabulous, and we met some great people. We did see almost all the other scheduled sights by bussing from either Vienne or Lyon.

But lots of riding on busses. Hmmmmm.

Tours and sights:   Palace of the Popes in Avignon (plus a lot of wandering on our own, since we were there a day and a half on our own). Arles – Van Gogh territory and a Roman Amphitheater. A winery or two, Vieux (Old) Lyon, and they’re not kidding about the Vieux… 15th century homes, and traboules (detailed in my July 15 post). In Beaune, we got to see the original Hotel Dieu, which I will write about some other time.

When have you spent too long on a bus?

The Baboon Congress, Words

The Mystery of S.A.L.T.

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Today’s post comes from Barbara in Robbindsale.

A couple of weeks ago in mid-August, I noticed something on our kitchen wall calendar penciled in on Wednesday morning, “SALT.” It is in my writing, and is apparently an acronym for something I wanted to attend. On checking further, it also appears in mid-September, mid-October, November, and December. I have been racking my brain, and I have NO IDEA WHAT THIS IS. I’ve hunted through the various little “rat-piles” that lie around the house for leaflets announcing various events. I’ve looked through old emails and through my list of “Favorites”.  And I finally entered S.A.L.T. into my search engine to see if something rang a bell. Here’s most of what showed up:

  • Salina
  • Speech Application Language Tags
  • State and Local Taxation
  • Strategic Arms Limitation(s) Talks/Treaty
  • Short and Long Term
  • spending a lot of time
  • Serum Alanine Aminotransferase
  • Salt and Light Television
  • Southern African Large Telescope
  • Supporting Arms Liaison Team
  • Sloping Agricultural Land Technology
  • Special Altimeter
  • Society for Applied Learning Technology
  • Subscriber Access Line Terminal
  • Save A Life Today
  • Skin-Associated Lymphoid Tissue
  • Same As Last Time
  • Seminars About Long-term Thinking
  • Seminars About Long Term
  • Society of American Law Teachers
  • Sloping Agriculture Land Technology
  • Student Action Leadership Team
  • Scottish Association for Language Teaching
  • Society for Accelerative Learning and Teaching
  • Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts
  • Subscriber’s Apparatus Line Tester

Although some are interesting, none of these seems be what I was thinking of attending, but it’s kind of refreshing to know they exist.

I’m pretty sure it’s nothing urgent, or I would have remembered it!

What’s been the most crucial thing you completely forgot?

The Baboon Congress

Parlor Tricks

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Header photo by Carfax2 (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

Today’s post comes from Madislandgirl

There has been much talk here lately about practical skills and gardening prowess.

I’d like to pause a bit from all that Midwestern utilitarianism and make note that I have recently achieved a goal I have been working on for years.

Yes indeed my friends, I can now tell you in order the entire line-up of the English/British monarchy from William the Conqueror (or Bastard, depending on how you feel about him) to the current reigning monarch. In fact, I will go so far as to claim I can also tell you pretty much what their relationship to the previous monarch was.

I’m no good at rote memorization, in fact, I balk at it. But give me enough time to read enough historical fiction and biographies, and I have this line-up well in hand.

The recent airing of Keepers by Request reminded me of two other projects of equal utility I have been working on for some time now.

A) I can do a fairly creditable rendition of the chorus of All I Want is a Proper Cup of Coffee, at speed, at least in the car by myself, but I’m almost ready to go public with that one.

2) I’m still working on counting the 18 Wheels on a Big Rig in Roman Numerals. Hopefully I have that mastered before my child graduates from high school (so I’d best get cracking- I hang up around I-X, X, X-I, so I figure I am halfway there).   You can see how it’s really done here:

Do you have an utterly pointless skill you are working on for the sheer joy of it?

The Baboon Congress

Tomato-zilla 2

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Today’s post is from Renee in ND

Well, as I promised, here are my photos of our tomatoes, plants and fruits. You can see that the plants are as tall as I am. They are ripening quickly, and I think I will be up really late the next few nights canning and making tomato sauce. So there, Sherrilee!

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We planted 16 tomato plants this year-far more than any couple with grown children who live hundreds
of miles away should ever plant. 8 Brandyboys and 8 San Marzano II’s. Husband likes to roast and then freeze the San Marzanos. Daughter has a particular tomato sauce that she likes me to make and freeze.

The two largest tomatoes in the photo each weigh over a pound. I have lots more, just as large, ripening as we speak. I am a quietly competitive person. I want to win, but I rarely admit it. I wrecked my right foot in a 2k run-walk several years ago because I was determined that I would reach the finish line before the heavily pregnant marathon runner. I had bad shoes and pushed myself and now I have a large bunion on my right foot that gives me twinges at times.

I want to grow the most and the biggest tomatoes. It was nice to see the variety of tomatoes that Sherrilee grew, though, and maybe I need to rethink my priorities. Maybe I need to grow unusual tomatoes. Hmm? We’ll see.

At what do you have to win?

Baboon Achievers, Songs

Back In The Saddle Again

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My friend Mike Pengra is very good at his jobs. He has several, but for the most part they all boil down to doing the same thing – Mike makes other people sound better.

As a producer, editor, music-picker and scheduler, Mike supports classical music programming at Minnesota Public Radio, and is the lone human behind the robot-powered rootsy music stream, Radio Heartland.

He’s also the drummer in a band called City Mouse.  In the music world, the rock band drummer is a character who is both essential and undervalued, so the role suits Mike well. He makes everything OK and distributes the credit elsewhere. Somehow people feel more competent when Mike’s around, and he’s too kind to reveal that it’s his doing, not theirs.

This is why everybody likes Mike.

Mike and I worked on Radio Heartland a few years back, and for a good stretch before that we were teammates on the weird three-legged stool that was the MPR Morning Show, Mike playing the silent partner like the multi-talented Silvester Vicic and the saintly Nora McGillivray before him.

Mike contacted me a few weeks ago and said a group of demanding baboons had made a bunch of music requests, and he wanted some help feeding tunes to them.

I don’t host radio shows anymore, but I was happy to oblige this time, knowing that as soon as I walked into Mike Pengra’s studio I’d become two times funnier and at least ten times smarter.

And believe it or not, that Mike Pengra magic still works.

You can listen for yourself to a Baboonish Request show today at noon, and again on Sunday evening at 7.

 

 

The Baboon Congress

On Flight 666 to HEL

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today’s post comes from tim

i am superstitious.

i heard the comment that i never miss a day on the blog and sure enough i missed two days in a row for the first time in however long because of the stupid busy schedule i had in front of me.
i went to the saints game the other night with my kids and my son said the pitcher had a no hitter going through 3 and sure enough the next pitch was hit for a bloop single into right, then later he said the pitcher had not had someone get a good swing at it the whole night and the next pitch was a home run for the bad guys.
we won the game but only because my son shut up. im convinced.
i will not do the number 666 or i will pass on an opportunity if it is there or be suspicious if it shows up.
13 gets my attention
heres a news item  remember from a while back when a friday the 13th happened.

(NEWSER) – Would you board flight 666 to HEL on Friday the 13th? For superstitious travelers, that might be tempting fate. But Finnair passengers on AY666 to Helsinki—which has the 3-letter designation HEL—don’t seem too bothered. Today’s flight is almost full. “It has been quite a joke among the pilots” says one Finnair veteran, who will fly the Airbus A320 from Copenhagen to Helsinki. “I’m not a superstitious man. It’s only a coincidence for me.”

The daily flight AY666 from Copenhagen to Helsinki falls on Friday the 13th twice in 2013. Some airlines, like Scandinavian Airlines, take superstitions seriously and don’t have a row 13 on board. However, the negative connotations are a relatively new phenomenon for northern Europeans, and Finnair and other regional carriers like Norwegian and Estonian Air keep row 13. As one expert on comparative folklore points out, “Less than 100 years ago, the number 13 did not have this sinister meaning; it’s quite recent in the north.”

id knock on some wood, turn around 3 times and throw some salt over my shoulder. my kids say break a leg before they go on stage, i notice baseball players who wont step on the line going on or off the field.

you?

The Baboon Congress

Joy Garden

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Today’s post comes from Jacque.

Several weeks ago I was posting replies on the Trail Baboon from “art camp.” My intention was to produce a blog about this experience immediately.  However, when I sat down to write it I was greeted with a case of writer’s block, at least on that topic. Rarely am I speechless, but there it was, speechlessness. Now the words are flowing again.

The class was held at Maureen Carlson’s WeeFolk Center for Creative Art in Jordan, MN where she has studio space and a dorm on the second floor.     The class itself was taught by artist and teacher, Lindly Haunani from the Washington DC area.

The art medium of the class was polymer clay, a material with which I often work.  It is small, portable, and requires ordinary tools to shape it.  When you go to an art store or an on-line site to purchase polymer clay, it looks like this, sold in little bricks:

Premo ClayFrom the bricks of clay we formed a blended color palette with a technique called “Skinner Blend” which was the color basis of our project of the week, “Joy Garden.”  My blend looked like this:

Skinner blend Palette

Lindly taught us her techniques and allowed each of us to create our own version of a Joy Garden. I had a photo of an unusual tree stump which inspired my work that week. The stump is at the local dog park where I found it, then snapped a picture:

tree stump

The human figure in the stump inspired this figure made from polymer clay. The stump at the base of the Joy Gardener is a reproduction in polymer clay of the stump in the dog park:

unnamed (2)

Other students in the class produced projects in the same theme.   However, each project reflects completely individualized ideas which inspired the projects, the styles, and color palettes.

What inspires you to create?

Poems, Words

Why I Don’t Eat The Coleslaw

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Header image by Amanda Wood via Flickr

I have been thinking about and reading lately the voluminous works of Ogden Nash, a silly poet who was taken seriously. How he managed to become widely known by working in the disrespected field of light verse is still perplexing. Nash died in 1971. There has been no one like him since.

You hardly hear about Nash today. People have a way of vanishing. Even the most accomplished artists and statesmen can quickly become inconsequential, postmortem.

But during the many hours I’ve spent standing in the supermarket checkout line, one thing I’ve learned that you can stay relevant if you manage to perish under a cloud of suspicion.  If you can’t do that, at least make your exit in some unconventional and potentially memorable way.

It turns out Nash died after eating “improperly prepared” coleslaw, although few details about the incident are available online. The official cause was said to be Crohn’s Disease, aggravated by side dish.

Here is where we might identify some fame-extending mysterious circumstances. How could Nash, a well-known hypochondriac, so casually imbibe a lethal helping of such an unhelpful multi-layered vegetable?   Was he force-fed into oblivion?  Or was it intentional?

In pursuit of the truth,  the public demands a dogged persistence.
But all it will get right now is doggerel.

Did Ogden Nash know?

Did Ogden Nash, with his last breath,
decide to die a funny death?
His final meal – some stringy gabbage
hid the reaper ‘mongst the cabbage.
Did fate, ironic, choose to slay him
with this side of gastro-mayhem?
Or did Nash select this gaffe
to seal his doom with one last laugh?
One last punchline – Woe betide
all those who chews coleslawicide.

Describe the circumstances of your ideal, intriguing death.

The Baboon Congress

Melons to Medora

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Today’s post comes from Renee in North Dakota

Husband and I recently volunteered to provide Friday supper and Saturday breakfast and lunch at a retreat for approximately thirty people affiliated with Western ND Synod of the ELCA. The attendees were candidacy committee members and spouses, candidates for rostered ministry, seminary faculty, and the western ND bishop and synod staff. The retreat took place at the Badlands Ministries Bible Camp near Medora in the ND Badlands.

The camp is about 10 miles south of Medora in a new location near the Bully Pulpit Golf Course. Medora has no grocery store, so we hauled in everything we needed for the weekend meals. We had never seen the kitchen at the new retreat center, so we also hauled in all the pots, pans, and cooking equipment we might possibly need. It proved unnecessary, as the kitchen was marvelously equipped, but we were prepared for anything.

We started planning the menu weeks before the event, choosing quantity recipes that could be prepared ahead of time and frozen. This was our penultimate menu:

Supper

  • Charcoal grilled hamburgers from grass-fed SD Lutheran Herefords, with all the trimmings
  • Potato salad (Mrs. Untiedts’ recipe from the Grace Lutheran Cookbook from Luverne)
  • Coleslaw (Mrs. Iveland’s recipe from the Grace Lutheran Cookbook)
  • Watermelon
  • Breakfast
  • 3 kinds of egg bakes from Duluth’s own Beatrice Ojakangas’ casserole cookbook
  • Cantaloupe and honeydew melon
  • Toast
  • Homemade jelly
  • Juices
  • Coffee

Lunch

  • Smoked brisket
  • Butter chicken
  • Curried mixed vegetables
  • Rice
  • Naan
  • 2 peach crisps
  • Pecan bars

We also had a variety of chips, dips, raw veggies, fruit, quick breads, sodas, water, and unlimited coffee for people to have between meals. (And butter. Lots and lots of butter. And ice. 60 pounds of ice to keep the sodas and water cold in a large cooler.)

 

I had a strict food prep schedule for the weeks before the retreat, with multiple lists for what we needed to do. We were well on schedule, not even daunted by our dishwasher breaking and being unusable for the two weeks prior to the retreat.

The week before the retreat I got irrational, worrying that we didn’t have enough food for lunch on Saturday. This worry coincided with a monumental decision by husband about bratwurst. Husband is from Sheboygan, WI. He is a slow and deliberate thinker. After twenty eight years of ND bratwurst, he announced that he would now only eat bratwurst that were authentically local Sheboygan brats, like those from Miesfeld’s Market in Sheboygan. What is more, he decided that the only buns worthy of such brats were the hard rolls from the venerable City Bakery in Sheboygan. That led me to say, “Why don’t we phone Miesfeld’s and order some brats for the retreat! You can grill them the night before!”

Fifteen pounds of Miesfeld’s Grand Champion brats were duly delivered by air freight, along with three dozen City Bakery hard rolls. Husband lovingly grilled the brats over charcoal, staying up until 2:30AM tending the fire. “I always thought I could grill brats in my sleep, and now I know I can!” Later that morning we loaded everything in our van and headed to the bible camp.

We really didn’t need quite so much food, as several people backed out of attending at the last minute, and the thirty people we catered for turned into eighteen very well fed souls. I am happy to say that all the dishes turned out the way we planned, and it was all good.

We loaded up the van with the leftovers on Saturday afternoon, giving away what we could, including seven melons that we couldn’t possibly finish ourselves. It is good we bought a new freezer. We call it the Lutheran freezer. It is full of Grand Champion bratwurst and hard rolls.

Husband is content.

Describe a memorable feast you provided, or consumed.