The Baboon Congress

Group Discount

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Today’s guest post comes from Renee in North Dakota

It is only to be hoped that the recent Supreme Court decision to legalize gay marriage will have a salutary effect on the price of admission to the McCrory Gardens in Brookings, SD, the largest public garden in the region outside of Omaha and the Twin Cities.

Admission used to be free, according to my son and daughter-in-law, but was increased to $6.00 and the 25 acre Formal Garden site fenced in and closed each day after 8:00pm due to public safety concerns and vandalism in the wee hours of the morning. Locals were quite unhappy with the decision to put up a fence and limit access. The 45 acre arboretum remains unfenced and open 24 hours a day.

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We traipsed around these most beautiful gardens during a recent visit to Brookings. This August marks the 50th anniversary of the gardens, named after a former Horticulture professor at South Dakota State University. The site is on the campus and is affiliated with the Plant Science department. 40,000 annuals and perennials are planted each year, and I imagine there are scads of Horticulture students and budding landscape architects who have worked like navvies to maintain and improve the gardens.

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There is a children’s hedge maze, a cottage garden, AAS field plots, a rock garden, and wonderfully designed garden plots dotting the landscape at every turn, loaded with annuals and perennials and shrubs and vines. The cottage by the cottage garden is a former gas station. I found it quite charming and I included a photo of it. The site also boasts of the largest selection of maple trees in South Dakota. The leaves in my other photo are from a Harlequin maple tree.

The linden trees were in bloom, scenting the air with an elusive, sweet perfume that took us quite a while to identify. Staff were setting up for a garden wedding, and we could see the bridal party having photos taken. I wonder when the first gay wedding will take place there? Perhaps the increase in weddings will help lower or even abolish the entrance fee. One can only hope. Gardens are always changing and shifting with the seasons, and so does the social fabric, even in the Dakotas.

You have 70 acres, a large budget, and an army of eager and willing horticulturists. What kind of garden would you have?

 

The Baboon Congress

The Parade

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Today’s post comes from Verily Sherrilee

 

I love parades; I always have. I love the floats, I love the military guys with all their flags, I love the Corn Queen’s Court waving from the backs of convertibles. Growing up in St. Louis, we went to see the Shriners’ parade every year; the flowers, the clowns, the bands – I adored it all. I even love the parade every afternoon at the State Fair.

So it was fortuitous that twenty-five years ago, I bought a house in Tangletown. This is the one neighborhood in Minneapolis that defies the grid layout that the rest of the city enjoys.  And it is also one of the neighborhoods that has an annual Fourth of July parade.

We gather at Washburn High School – everybody in their red, white and blue attire. Kids decorate their bikes, trikes, scooters and wagons for the parade. Dogs wear their best festive bandanas and there are always balloons galore. The fire engine arrives and the fire fighters pose for photos with the excited kids. Then the engine starts up, someone usually has John Souza on a boom box and we head out, weaving our way through the streets of Tangletown.  Neighbors who aren’t parading sit on their porches or front steps and wave as we go by.  After 6-8 blocks, we end up at Fuller Park where we have a fabulous party. Games and prizes for the kids, a band, kegs of root beer, hot dogs. Everybody brings their blankets and picnic lunches.

It’s a wonderful way to begin celebrating the Fourth – laidback and fun. And close to home!

How would you design your parade float?

The Baboon Congress

We’re Number 6!

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Today’s guest post is by Steve Grooms

It seems some southerners just can’t let go of the Stars and Bars, the Confederate battle flag. They consider it a symbol of a romantic past. Historians tell us it is a romantic past that never existed, but romantics do not let facts get in the way of convictions. And yet, who are we to feel smug about anyone else’s flag? The Minnesota flag is hardly an example of beauty and positive values. There is actually a scholarly group that studies flags and critiques their design. The American Vexillological Association rates the Minnesota flag as sixth in the country—and that is sixth from the bottom,  not the top!

When it comes to rankings, Minnesota almost always ranks best or close to best. But it is an official and undeniable truth: our flag sucks. Our flag ranks somewhere like political ethics in New Jersey, environmental protection in Louisiana, or public schools in West Virginia.

Ouch!

More to the point, our flag is highly offensive to Minnesotans whose ancestors were here before Europeans arrived to “discover” the Mississippi River (right where it had always been), chop down the white pines and extirpate such critters as elk, wolves and buffalo.

The flag depicts a European settler tilling his field. His holds a plow, although his rifle is nearby. He looks over his shoulder at a near-naked Indian on horseback who carries a spear. This odd scene is Minnesota? Well, it was when the flag was adopted in 1893, just 21 years after the tragic conflict between the Dakota and the state’s pioneer settlers.

According to a historian quoted in a recent Star Tribune story:

“The image of the pioneer, a peaceful man who has laid down his gun and is plowing his field, is juxtaposed with the image of the Indian, who may still want to fight (his spear is at the ready) but who seems to be riding away.

“The pioneer/farmer is using a plow, a symbol of civilization. The white man is depicted as a ‘doer’ who is entitled to the land, trees and water, empowered by the concept of Manifest Destiny. The Indian is the vacating tenant. A peaceful transition is suggested, but this ignores the tense and problematic history of conflict between European settlers and Indians, such as the complicated history of treaties and the Dakota War of 1862.”

I have other quibbles with the flag:

The logo declares, “L’ Etoile du Nord.” French, of course, is the native language of Minnesota.

The Indian is seen as riding south (which we know because of the position of the setting sun). And yet we know that Sioux survivors of the Dakota conflict were forcibly relocated to a bleak bit of land in central South Dakota. They didn’t ride there but were shipped out on boats like prisoners of war.

The river shown in the flag is widely presumed to be the Mississippi. Oddly, it runs west to east.

The pioneer is shown pushing his plow by hand. We could ask our farmer friend, Ben, how well that would work. I believe we are meant to be inspired by the stump in the field because it represents something like civilization. I am more inclined to see a stump as a symbol of the pioneers’ heedless abuse of nature.

The seal celebrates the beauty of Minnesota’s mountains. Somehow, like the little town of Lake Wobegon, the famous Minnesota Mountain Range fails to appear on modern maps.

The flag celebrates farming and logging, the most important industries of 1893. But gee, there are so many important businesses now that the flag fails to recognize. Shouldn’t the state flag have a Cheerio on it to acknowledge our food companies? Why is there no pacemaker on the flag? No Post-it Notes? No brewery? Shouldn’t our flag include the logo of Minnesota Vikings, or at least the Twins?

How about those flowers circling the plowing scene? They do nothing for the overall design, which is as cluttered as a teenager’s bedroom. Flags should look good from a distance, even when flapping in a wind. Our flag looks like something designed by a committee, a committee of folks who flunked the only art class they ever took.

What we have is a flag that is politically offensive and factually goofy. I could live with that if it were pretty. But, alas, our state’s flag is vexillogically challenged. What we somehow inherited is a flag that flag experts consider “a really, really, really crappy design.”

If it were yours to design, what would Minnesota’s flag look like?

The Baboon Congress, Weather

The Minnesota 10

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Today’s guest post comes from tim

35 years ago a guitar teacher told me we only get 10 perfect per year in minnesota and they are all in april and may before it gets hot and buggy.

i observed that he was correct and have been keeping track ever since. 10 is about right with the exception of a summer 3 years or so ago when we had 100 perfect days. no rain so no bugs or humidity made for the nicest summer ever but the drought was another issue.

i have discovered along the way that when you are thinking about the really hot or the really cold days here in our weather driven world that there are a max of 10 hot days and 10 cold days per year too.

it helps put it all in perspective

what do you hate? tolerate? and appreciate?

The Baboon Congress

The Oracle on Has Left the Building

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Today’s guest post comes from Clyde.

So Dale is on sabbatical, bless him.

Sabbatical is an Old Testament word and concept. In Leviticus God orders that every seventh year the land is to be given a solemn rest. I doubt that happened very often. Giving up a year of food does not seem possible. In Deuteronomy God says every sabbatical year, seventh year, you are to forgive all debts and make special efforts help the poor. I doubt that happened. So, you see, a sabbatical is supposed to last a year, but, please, no one tell Dale.

Dale in Hammock

The day of rest, the Sabbath, is based on the same word. A couple guest blogs back I mentioned Minnesota’s attempt to pass blue laws, which perhaps would have made Sunday more of a day of rest. I hate it as a law, but I appreciate the concept of Sunday as a sabbatical.

When a pastor takes a sabbatical, she/he is sent off with a blessing ceremony. Our lead pastor is on a three-month sabbatical. During his ceremony his stole (the long cloth that drapes around the neck and down the front) was hung over the pulpit, which seems vaguely funereal, or as if the stole is pointing a finger at him saying “get right back here and do sermons for us to ignore.”

Sabbatical seems a wise concept, for both the land and the people. It implies a rebirth, new growth, re-creation. Our modern use of the word recreation is such a small application of the word. Recreation is important, of course, but is is far from re-creation.

The concept exists in many cultures, such as the Aborigines’ walk-about, which, too, is a small word for a large concept. The Navajos and other American Native peoples have ceremonies designed to re-create a person.

Often I have tried to re-create myself and failed. I always end up the same person I disliked before, which is home turf for us Lutherans.

I am a little afraid of a re-created Dale. What will the nicest guy we know become?

How would you re-create yourself?

The Baboon Congress

Those Wascally Wabbits

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Today’s guest post comes from Jacque.

As I child I loved the Beatrix Potter book Peter Rabbit. I loved the story; I loved Mama Rabbit’s warning to stay away from Farmer MacGregor’s garden; I loved adventurous, naughty Peter with his snow white tail; I loved the drawings; I loved sitting on Dad’s lap listening to his low voice recite the book one more time.

Farmer MacGregor, the anti-hero wearing overalls and carrying the fearsome pitchfork, was the recipient of all my fear and scorn.

He was mean.

He was Peter’s enemy.

He did not understand Peter at all.

Soon thereafter, Bunny Rabbit on Captain Kangaroo appeared, tormenting Mr. Moose with his rainstorm of ping pong balls. I thought that was so funny. Bunny Rabbit was my secret friend. Mr. Moose was a perfect foil who just never caught on to Bunny’s smart tricks.

Later in childhood Bugs Bunny arrived, carrot in hand, ready to torment Elmer Fudd. “What’s Up, Doc?”   Elmer Fudd was just such a Fuddy-Duddy, never smart enough to out smart Bugs. I loved Bugs.

As a child I was on the side of the Rabbit, wherever the rabbit appeared.

Well, not anymore. I am now Mr. Moose, Farmer MacGregor, and Elmer Fudd all in one.

My vegetable/flower garden in fenced in, the flowers in the flower garden carefully protected, all to prevent rabbit carnage. Despite all this the rabbits chewed away a coneflower this spring. They almost destroyed a yellow button flower that came over the prairies on the covered wagons with my ancestors, as well as a coral bells. These are all hardy perennial plants which are nearly impossible to destroy, and these wascally wabbits nearly got them all.

Last year we witnessed a genius baby rabbit who learned how to traverse the rabbit fence around the vegetable garden. Lou and I stood there watching as the baby bunny scaled the rabbit fence straight up to a hole large enough to allow him/her through, then slithered into the garden. We then knew exactly who devoured the seedling radishes, beets, carrots, and kohrabi. After opening the gate, I charged into the garden, startling the bunny who then left the enclosure the same way he or she entered.

A tiny 5 pound critter reduced me to rage and blind frustration. My perspective shifted and the souls of Mr. Moose, Farmer MacGregor, and Elmer Fudd entered my being. I yelled “What’s Up Bunny?” at the departing tail.

What has caused you to experience a shift in your perspective on an issue?

The Baboon Congress

Strawberries!

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Today’s guest post comes from Sherrilee

I’m not sure why I first started picking strawberries every year; now it’s a tradition that I don’t want to do without.  The strawberry picking window is pretty small – usually a couple of weeks in mid-June.  This year the weather has been perfect and berries are right on schedule.

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Strawberry picking day starts out early; we always try to get to the fields by 6:30 a.m.  Once the sun comes up, pickers descend on the fields… sometimes the fields can be picked out by 10 a.m.  And the early morning is cooler for picking.  Young Adult and I pick in rows next to each other – she is not a dedicated picker, but understands the concept of “as soon as the boxes are full we go home”.  Of course, an integral part of strawberry picking is strawberry tasting.  The berries were sweet and juicy this year.

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Once home it’s time to process all the berries.  This year we did 14 jars of freezer jam and froze about 16 pounds of smoothies over the winter.  And it was a strawberry orgy for three days straight: strawberry cake, strawberry peach pie and lots of bowls of fresh berries with whipped cream.   My mother was not a canner; I am entirely self-taught and I really enjoy it.  So when I found this poem by Joyce Sutphen, it didn’t remind me of my mother, but maybe someday it will remind the Young Adult of me.

Canning

It’s what she does and what her mother did.

It’s what I’d do if I were anything

like her mother’s mother – or if the times

demanded that I work in my garden,

planting rows of beans and carrots, weeding

the pickles and potatoes, picking worms

off the cabbages.

Today she’s canning

tomatoes, which means there are baskets

of red Jubilees waiting on the porch

and she’s been in the cellar looking for jars…

There’s a box of lids and a heal of golf

rings on the counter.  She gets the spices

out; she revs the engine of the old stove.

Now I declare her Master of Preserves!

I say that if there were degrees in canning

she would be summa cum laude—God knows

she’s spent as many hours at the sink peeling

the skins off hot tomatoes as I have

bent over a difficult text.  I see

her at the window, filling up the jar,

packing a glass suitcase for the winter.

Joyce Sutphen

(from First Words: Poems, by Joyce Sutphen, Red Dragonfly Press, 2010)

Do you have a seasonal tradition?

The Baboon Congress

The Fix Is In

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Today’s guest post is from Linda in St. Paul.

I’ve never gone to college, because I’ve never been sure what kind of degree I should work toward in this way-too-modern world we live in. If I could design my own course of study, I might choose to pursue a degree in The Almost-Lost Art of Fixing Things.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve been an avid fan of the Fix-It clinics in the Twin Cities metro area. Volunteers gather in a community meeting place and invite residents to bring in stuff that needs fixing. In a spirit of helpfulness, these volunteers bring an amazing array of tools and expertise to bear on the problems of our lives – the once-useful, now broken, torn, malfunctioning things that are one step away from becoming junk. Whatever you have that has one foot in the landfill, there is someone there with a sewing machine or soldering iron at the ready, just waiting for you.

The salvaged saucepan, simmering.
The salvaged saucepan, simmering.

As I write this, I have some rice simmering in a favorite saucepan that was salvaged not once, but twice. I fished it out of a “FREE” box at a garage sale years ago and mended its broken handle. Last month the handle gave way again, and this time the old bolt that had been holding it in place was so rusted I couldn’t remove it to replace it. The saucepan became a candidate for Fix-It attention.

All zipped up.
All zipped up.

At the Longfellow Park Rec Center, a volunteer named Gary supplied a center punch and a metal-cutting drill bit that dispatched the offending bolt. It was just a matter of replacing the hardware, and my saucepan was back in business. At the same clinic, volunteer Corey helped me take apart a moribund TV remote and clean the battery connections to bring it back to life. At past Fix-It events, I’ve had help reviving a recalcitrant smoothie mixer, a worn extension cord, a wobbly gazing ball stand, a noisy oscillating fan, and a non-responsive leaf vac. Not to mention the chainsaw that was adjusted and several wonky zippers put right.

No one makes any money off these repairs, but there is a satisfaction payoff that can’t be adequately quantified. A job well done doesn’t necessarily have a price tag.

What lost arts would you like to revive?

The Baboon Congress, Words

We’ve Got Your G.O.A.T.

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Today’s guest post comes from Barbara in Robbinsdale.

Ah, Babooners are a word-loving bunch, and if they don’t find the word they seek in the common lexicon, they will create their own. To keep track of these, we occasionally update our “Glossary of Accepted Terms” , or G.O.A.T.

This acronym was coined by our Alpha Baboon, Dale (he of the CAP – see ACRONYMS, below). For the uninitiated:  when we started this “dictionary”, we had a couple of goat farmers among our personnel (welcome back, Cynthia), which explains a little. Jacque and I collaborated on the first one, and I’ve kept it going, sporadically. Here we are past Summer Solstice of 2015, two years since the last update in May of 2013.

Sometimes the newly created word is the result of a typo; others are just sheer cleaverness . The dates are left in, in case you have a lot of time on your hands and wish to find out what the HECK was going on at the time.

I now have a system – copy and paste the new word into a M’soft Word file with all the information I’ll need, and then edit like crazy when I’ve collected enough to make a post. It appeals to my love for making order out of chaos.

To visit the Glossary, go to top right, under The Trail Photo.

Here are the latest additions:

Accidentalics – i.e. “Ooops… unintended italics.  Do we have a word for that?”   December 16, 2013 at 11:12 pm 

Achedemic – Learning something the hard way, as in “she seems to be heading off in more achedemic directions…”          September 3, 2014 at 8:17 am 

Binoculookers – a device that helps you see farther than you usually can. For instance “Then she asked her dad if she could ‘use his binoculookersto view the bear in the night sky’ ”.   February 23, 2015 at 12:10 pm 

Crimea River – a river in Crimea, OR a sad song. “If you’re aim is to turn this geopolitical episode into a musical, don’t forget to include Crimea River as one of the numbers.”  (unfortunately, I lost track of the date for this one.) .March 24, 2014 at 7:40 pm 

Disphasia – the condition of being out of synch with others of your generation  (did I get this right, Clyde?), as in “The gap has created some interesting disphasia in our life.”   June 23, 2015

Distraughtitude – The condition of being distraught, as in:  “I’m sure that the distraughtitude of the usual suspects will probably be more pronounced.”   June 3, 2015 at 8:09 am

Experience Loyal – An alternative to being  brand loyal:   “I am experience-loyal  Give me a good experience, and I’m bound to come back.”   November 25, 2013 at 11:58 am 

fauxtimming  November 25, 2013 at 3:34 pm – “a disorder having to do with the inability to remember to capitalize and or punctuate. on occasion there may be a hand held device that intercedes and give the impression of english etiquette but it is an illusion. it is called fauxtimming. [timism] * and fauxtimming are not taught but can be easily implemented with any standard keyboard and a computer that has a disarm feature on its spell checker.”       October 6, 2014 at 11:16 am

Hygge, hyggelig – A Danish word that doesn’t have an English counterpart:  “Hygge” is part state of mind, part physical coziness that includes comfort and warmth, and good smells. As we get close to Christmas, a batch of gløg, a few Christmas cookies, soothing music and, again, a lot of lit candles help make things  hyggelig  …”       December 21, 2013 at 8:03 am

Mingy, minginginess – “Being skimpy, paring everything just inside of “enough”. Rhymes with stingy, and means about the same but not quite, as there is also an implication of deception-pretended generosity. (This is actually in the dictionary, folks.)”  October 22, 2014 at 11:36 am 

Mushroomisticism – slow cooking a mushroomy dish for hours at low heat.  “im tackling suaces as my next challenge, that and mushroomisticism.” February 5, 2015 at 7:49 am

Multi-nontasking – looking around and seeing all the things one hasn’t managed to get done. August 1, 2013 at 7:15 pm       i.e. “I can sit with a cat on my lap while listening to a ball game.”  August 2, 2013 at 12:03 am

Procrasti-tasks – “things you don’t want to do, but you do them to avoid something you want to do less. For example, if you have laundry to fold which has been sitting for days but you also have a grant request to write, suddenly the laundry is folded.”   January 12, 2015 at 10:37 am

timism – (from G.O.A.T.) – An ambiguity in which you are not sure whether there was a typo, or an intentional misspelling, as in “My favorite timism of the week is ‘Talk snout dysfunctional’…” (See Dec. 23, 2010 TBB for rich, complete discussion.)

To-do-plegia – Wikipedia uses “plegia” to describe paralysis in which all voluntary movement is lost.” To-do-plegia involves a to-do list, as in “I need lots of good energy sent my way this week. … [to accomplish] the to-do list…”     September 8, 2014 at 10:31 am 

Turbo-mouse – A rodent capable of monumental achievement, say, climbing with a malted milk ball to a place 12’ off the ground.   “My apologies to the turbo-mouse if I am not giving credit where it is due.” November 25, 2014 at 6:23 am 

Unfronding – In response to Dale’s hand-weeding description: I need to confront the weeds personally, face to frond”, there was this comment: “These days we call what you do unfronding the weeds.” August 5, 2013 at 7:06 am        DC: “Hah! Just think, I could have wasted all those hours on Facebook instead!”

Weasel words – Product description lingo that disguises some aspect of the contents of a food, as in “If a product is described as chocolatey, that’s an almost certain indicator that there’s no actual chocolate in it.”   February 28, 2014 at 11:29 am

Worm wigs – a very creative typo that created this mental image:  “I wonder if I wore a worm wig if that could solve my winter composting problems – I could have compost-eating worms right on top of my head.”   March 27, 2014 at 1:12 pm

Yikes meter – a measure of… take your pick:  outrageousness, offensiveness, or unbelievability that causes a Baboon to say “Well, that’s way up there on the yikes meter.”   March 22, 2015 at 9:58 pm

ACRONYMS:

CAT – I admit to having Compulsive Acronym Tendencies     February 21, 2015

CRAPO – Calendar Reactive Anniversary Pile On   November 22, 2013

When you feel compelled to make a list, what’s on it?

 

 

 

The Baboon Congress

The Wrinkled in Time

65 Comments

Today’s guest post comes from Clyde.

A warning: do not ever give me wife any of your prized canned goods. She will turn them into a decoration.

Several people over the last thirty years have given her canned jellies, pickles, vegetables, salsa, and mixed concoctions of uncertain origin and purpose—not one of which we ever opened, even the mystery jars. They held a prized place long past their rot-by-date. Surely it is the effect of reading too many Country Living magazines, and its fifty clones. In the perfectly-circular orbit of these magazines and their TV equivalents, old things are decorations, if not in their natural state, then in some re-purposed form.

Lamp Window

For all those thirty years I have shook my head in puzzled bemusement at this, an internal shake of the head only, being the wisely silent partner in our interior decorating. Over those same thirty years, and a few years before that, we collected a variety of household objects de fonction which were the working elements of my childhood. They were not collected to give me the warm glow of nostalgia, which some have, but to be objets d’art, to provide ambiance and grace, or color or poise or form or whatever are the components of interior design.

Rain Lady

It is hard to imagine any objects of current manufacture being used in interior design in 2053 or on the The Antiques Roadshow, 2113. What will the magazine of 2053 be called? What word will hold the charm that the word country does today? I suppose by then suburban will hold a certain cachet, depending on where people will be living, assuming that they are, living that is.

But why is: if old things are perceived as prized decorations of beauty and interest, why aren’t old people?