Science, Travel

Something New Under The Sun

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We have had an impressive run of discoveries in recent weeks.

From the soon-to-be simple parlor trick of making matter out of light, to the location of a prehistoric underwater volcano that helped form the island of Oahu, scientists have been uncovering all sorts of wonders.

And even as far too many of Earth’s creatures disappear forever, we are finding new ones to hound into oblivion. A distinctive sea anemone was just identified, and you’ll be delighted to know there is a vicious mantis in Rwanda that’s as scary as anything from Jurassic Park.

Not to be outdone by such a pipsqueak, the already-extinct dinosaurs have just wowed us again by producing a creature that was probably as large as a seven story building!

But my favorite discovery story of the week is this study in persistence:

In 1936 a scientific researcher discovered a particular kind of snake on a remote Mexican island and cataloged it for the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

You’ve gotta love the pluck of these old explorers. Here’s what William Beebe wrote about that initial moment of contact:

“We walked on, flashing the light all around. Not far from the water on the black lava I saw a small dark brown snake. It seemed to be unlike the one I had found in daylight, having lines of black spots on the body, so I picked it up and cached it in my shirt.”

Naturally. Who wouldn’t do it just like that?

Tromping around an exotic place in the dark and stuffing strange snakes into my shirt is definitely on my bucket list, though I’m saving it for the very last thing. And clearly I’m not the only one who feels this way! Almost 20 years after Beebe felt a wriggle in his blouse, a return expedition tried and failed to find the aforementioned snake and wrote off the original discovery as a mistake. Maybe they didn’t turn over enough rocks, or perhaps their pockets were already full.

Fast forward to 2013 and another effort has validated the first discovery. Overcoming obstacles like limited access (you can only get to the island under military escort) and visibility (the creature is nocturnal and lives on an island almost 700 miles from shore), National Museum of Natural History researcher Daniel Mulcahy has learned that the elusive Clarion Nightsnake really exists!

Of course we love our new creatures to be exciting and dangerous, but based on the latest descriptions (brown, with some black spots) and historically nonthreatening demeanor (excessive shirt-friendliness), it’s on-again, off-again status may be the most interesting thing about the Clarion Nightsnake.

What’s your greatest discovery?

Uncategorized

Lonely City Seeks Mappiness

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Today’s post comes from living and loving correspondent B. Marty Barry.

First, a word of assurance to all the people out there – although I’ve never met you, I do care about each and every one of you very, very much.

That’s why I can sense a problem – namely that some people are feeling really delighted and emotionally validated by the decision yesterday from NFL owners to send the Super Bowl to Minneapolis in 2018. Of course it makes me happy to see people happy and it’s always wonderful to feel good about yourself.

But I’m concerned that we have loaded too many eggs into our basket of civic self esteem.

Some people are saying this single event will make Minneapolis a world-class city that will finally be recognized as being “on the map” in the eyes of those who apparently don’t spend much time gazing at maps – otherwise they would have found us by now!

I seem to remember the very same result was promised in connection with the Super Bowl Minneapolis hosted in 1992 at the then-fabulous Metrodome. Didn’t that create a sufficient level of on-the-mapiness? Apparently not! The Metrodome is now a dirty hole in the ground and we’re still longing for someone (anyone) to award us that elusive “world-class” status.

Every day as part of my mission to bring happiness and self-sufficiency to distressed people, I hear these wounded souls talk about a burning hunger to see approval in the eyes of their fellow beings – especially the kind of approval that comes from others they have never met in far away places they have never seen.

It is because of this urge that I sit in a chair back behind my clients while they talk to me. I have found that not being visible to those I try to help makes me much smarter (in their eyes) and it raises the value of my favorable opinion by about 20 points.

To be so needy is very human, I think. But if I’m being completely honest, it’s also a little tiresome and somewhat pathetic. But I’m not thinking of anyone in particular when I say that, and of course I’m not here to judge. It’s just that I don’t understand why we are suddenly so giddy to have a Big Date with the NFL – an organization that counts its conquests in Roman numerals (XLVIII so far) and readily admits to having “franchisees” in 26 cities around the country! Franchisees! How cold! And yes, we’ll be in the spotlight on February 4th, 2018, but so what? What happens next?

I’ll tell you! The very next year that same significant occasion will be held at some other franchisee’s place and we will be forgotten!

Yes, it’s nice to be chosen. Our date will leave lots of money here, but we will also spend a pretty penny on new infrastructure – primping and improving and getting ourselves ready. Maybe too much? Time will tell, but already I can see that we are quite eager to please!

Let’s re-visit this next time. Until then, why don’t you set aside a morning and spend it locating yourself on as many maps as you can find! The more often you hear yourself say “I’m already there,” the healthier your perspective will be when it comes time for the Big Date.

Whose opinion matters?

Songs, The Baboon Congress

Sweet Adeline, Surprisingly

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Today’s post comes from Clyde in Mankato.

When Harmon Killebrew died two years ago, I mourned a bit for my mother. She was a dedicated and savvy baseball fan. It occurred to me that Harmon’s death took away the last popular cultural link to my mother, who greatly admired his play and demeanor.

Then a few days after that my wife asked me, “Who was the Italian singer your mother was so gaga over?” “Jerry Vale,” I answered. Ah, there was one more pop culture link to my mother.

However, Jerry Vale died last weekend.

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Now to describe my mother as gaga over anything seems a large stretch, but in fact she was exactly gaga over Jerry Vale, not dissimilarly to Elvis fans. When I was in junior high I was puzzled and embarrassed by her response to a Jerry Vale song on the radio, which was quite common on KDAL radio in the late 50’s and early 60’s.

My mother’s name was Adeline, but no one ever called her Sweet Adeline, not even my father, who could be quite tender and loving to her, in deep contrast to his normal pattern of behavior. My mother turned into some other person when Jerry Vale sang, a person I never otherwise saw. It was not only his voice, but she freely admitted it was also the handsome face. Today I realize how delightful and just simply human was this sharp contrast in her character.

Ten years ago my son, who loves and collects all forms of music, told me he had discovered the perfect Italian crooner. He wondered if I had ever heard of Jerry Vale. I treasure that moment of the wheel turning all the way around.

My father also had his contrast in character that embarrassed me back then. Looie was usually a coarse, harsh, angry, insensitive man, exactly like the father in my novelized version of my childhood. That same man loved to dance. He danced (meaning the old time dances like waltzes, polkas, and schottisches) with great relish and accomplishment.

Anniversary 2

A group of people in our neighborhood, Knife River Valley, held monthly dances in an old school house. My father’s favorite was the broom dance, a form of musical chairs while dancing. If you were left without a partner after the music stopped, you had to dance with the broom. My father’s turns with the broom was graceful, in tempo, and unselfconsciously funny. Oh, how embarrassed I was! Luckily I later grew old enough to be left home alone or with my sister.

What unexpected contrasts did your parents have in their character? Or you?

Uncategorized

Ice Out!

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Today’s post comes from Congressman Loomis Beechly, representing Minnesota’s 9th District – all the water surface area in the state.

Greetings 9th Districters!

Finally, we are in the season when things in the fabled 9th have literally become more fluid as the ice has been declared “out” over almost the entire district, give or take a few of the far, far northern lakes where pond hockey continues almost to the 4th of July.

This relative warmth relaxes and releases things.

As your elected representative I have been frozen, just like you, through most of the winter. I see that I have only produced three formal press statements since last November!

Critics say this has to do with my management style – namely that my staff hates working for me and they’re frustrated over constantly shifting positions and policy decisions. But I prefer to think of my office as a high-expectations environment where my demanding standards can surprise some under-prepared and off-balance assistants.

Yes, there is a lot of turnover in my office. But that creates opportunity for fresh-faced young people to learn first-hand how disheartening the world of work can really be! So if you know any youth who need such a lesson, have them contact me ASAP, since I’m doing pretty much everything on my own right now!

I’m not complaining. As many highly driven, financially successful business leaders like Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling will tell you, spare-time pursuits like self-reflection and second-thoughting are highly overrated. If you have something to say, why not just get it out there, unfiltered?

Accordingly, here’s the big news – with the softening terrain there will be an influx of visitors from exotic distant locales like Chicago and Denver. And with them come jobs! It would be wrong for me to take personal credit for the seasonal uptick in employment, but job numbers are looking better nationwide, as long as you don’t look at the other numbers that aren’t as encouraging.

That’s welcome news that might not have happened if there was a different person representing you in Washington. How so? Previous staffers have discouraged me from “going public” with this line of reasoning, but my logic has been upheld in literally dozens of time-travel scenarios. Changing one historic detail puts everything else in flux, so consider these items linked – I am in office and tourist dollars are on the way. End of story!

And with those visitors comes an increase in work all across the 9th district to guide, feed, lodge, entertain and clean up after our guests! And by “we”, I mean “you”, since I don’t deal personally with tourists even though I am a people person! Most of the people I schmooze are funders and power brokers – folks just like me who happen to have things that I need, like money or a vote. So of course I love them and we get along famously!

Ordinary tourists are more like demanding constituents who have many urgent needs and not a lot to offer in exchange. I realize that may not sound so good, so disregard it if you’re starting to feel mad. We’re a little short staffed right now, and having to handle your tirade will not make things any easier down at the office.

Besides, I could use the relief. It’s spring!

That’s all for now. God Bless America and so forth!

Your Congressman,
Loomis Beechly

Does it help things to speak freely?

News

Watching The Cat

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I don’t think you are allowed to have a blog today if you won’t at least consider using the occasional viral video that millions of people can’t stop watching or talking about, such as this one featuring Tara, the Amazing, Avenging Family Cat of Bakersfield, California.

I’m a dog person and always will be, but even I’m impressed with this cat, who was 100% in the right and wound up playing the hero we would all like to be, but mostly aren’t.

For those who scan the daily headlines for a clear and just moral cause to motivate some radical action, that dog represented this cat’s WWII moment. She was the Greatest Generation and there was only one Right Thing To Do.

She will throw out the first pitch at a minor league baseball game on May 20th. Not really, of course, but she will get a rousing ovation, I’m sure.

The other fascinating aspect of all this is what appears to be a sophisticated, fixed camera, surveillance system around the house that records what it sees – thus the multiple angle shots of the event as it unfolds.

Is having such a system a necessary feature of the dark future that awaits all of us?

I’m not talking about using cameras to prevent crime. I’m talking about the urgent necessity of using cameras to capture a viral video that will catapult your family to temporary global stardom and validate your family pet for her quiet heroism.

And not just around your home – in your car, your workplace, and on your hat. (Look for Hat Cams to become popular very soon. It’s time!) Some children are already very closely watched. We are probably not far from marking the first normal-length human lifetime to be captured on video from start to finish.

But that can’t happen unless cameras are always rolling, and the latest models are cute as all get out!

What unrecorded event from your life would you like to have on video?

News

Media Merry-Go-Round

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The F.C.C. has opened a four month comment period on proposed rules for handling traffic on the internet. The debate will be about media and power and access and whether there should be a fast lane on the freeway of ideas.

Ultimately it is all part of the struggle to capture a moment of your attention.

This is nothing new, of course. In the years just before there was an internet the contestants for a piece of your mind were the printed word, radio, television, and any real flesh-and-blood person who might be standing in front of you at the moment. In a head-to-head face-off, television always won, of course. Print was too flat, radio too thin, and real people were not as shiny or attractive as whatever was on the screen.

Though raiding parties were sometimes sent from one camp into another.

In my online wanderings this week I tripped over this ancient TV clip about a quirky St. Paul based radio show. What seemed odd back in 1979 still feels like a weird and somewhat academic examination of a vanquished form of media. And aside from the strange calming effect of seeing an exceedingly smart man with a truly wonderful beard talk quietly into a large microphone, I was struck by the complete inability of a television program to capture the essence of the thing being examined. But then, maybe they didn’t really want to capture it.

And then there was this brave attempt to profile a different radio program that, as I hear about it now, seems impossibly dull!

My recollection of the reason why this report even happened is that TV at the time was trying to become a morning habit for people who were accustomed to turning on the radio when they woke up. The strategy was to flatter a wide selection of radio hosts through a series of live visits, hoping the “we’re on TV” giddiness of the DJ’s would send their listeners scrambling to the tube for a glimpse of their previously unseen heroes, possibly never again to return to that humble box of wires once it hit them that television stations were doing morning shows too!

I think it worked – a little bit at least. Morning television certainly took off, but nothing has been as good as the internet when it comes to getting attention. Neutral or not, it is grabbing increasing numbers of ears and eyeballs while TV and radio are losing their audiences.

How bad is it? Pretty much everything is online now, including the only remaining evidence of what radio sounded like when it was filtered through the perceptions of TV people who thought they were stealing the whole game, just before they found out that the game had changed, entirely.

What captures your attention?

Uncategorized

The Not So Lazy Days of Summer

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Today’s post comes from perennial sophomore Bubby Spamden.

Hey Mr. C.,

Even though school is almost over for this year, the work never ends for us kids!

That’s right, it’s summer job time again, which means me and my friends have to sweat bullets to come up with a fresh list of reasons for why we don’t have summer jobs!

This is good practice because it helps build up a life skill – deflecting unwanted questions.  And that’s tougher now than it was in the olden times, like two years ago. Back then all you had to say was “tough economy” and everybody was like, “Well, yeah!”. But now you say “tough economy” and they say “I heard it was getting better”.

And maybe it is, but not for teenagers!

People always think we can go get work in some fast food place, like there are suddenly thousands of open jobs as soon as school lets out because teenagers are hanging around all day to eat more and more fast food in the summer. But we don’t eat more fast food because we don’t have any money because we don’t have jobs. And if the fast food joints hired us so we could have money, then we could buy the food but we wouldn’t because we can already eat the spillage and wrong orders and leftovers behind the counter during our shifts!

Economics sure gets complicated!

The only other people who would have more time to go to a burger joint between June and September are the teachers, but when they place an order with a kid behind the counter who is also one of their students, the teachers kinda expect to get their fries upsized for free. And the kids do it because who knows if that teacher is the one who will hold your whole future in her hand when she decides whether you got a “B” or a “C” on that essay?

That takes a real mental toll, trying to decide if it’s ethical to bribe a teacher with french fries. It’s almost as taxing as writing and rehearsing that no-job excuse.

Speaking of which, here are some of the best ones I’ve heard so far:

  • I’m going to summer school to (catch up on / get ahead of) my regular classroom work.
  • I’m doing super-honorable extracurricular volunteer stuff to pad my college application and make me seem like I’m a much better person than I am.
  • I’ve taken an unpaid internship so I can get experience being overworked and under appreciated.

People tell me that last one will really prepare me for life in the adult world, but they’re all good excuses. One bad thing, though. They all require extra explaining because adults will pepper you with questions like: Where are you going to summer school? What are you studying? Where do you volunteer? What colleges are you going to apply for? Where is the internship? How awful is that boss? Etc, etc, etc.

More work for us, because making up things is hard, especially when the stories have to be believable.

So whenever you see a report that says American teens don’t want to work, you should ask us what we’re doing with our time this summer. You’ll see us working pretty darn hard to deflect that question!

Your pal,
Bubby

I told Bubby that I agree – using your brain to be coy can be great practice for life in the real world. Unfortunately, the only field I know of where you can get paid specifically to deflect questions is politics.

How do you answer the uncomfortable question?

Poems, Science

A Polluter’s Lament

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Featured Image taken by Dori (dori@merr.info)

Last week’s White House National Climate Assessment was remarkably blunt about the reality of our situation – that we are already experiencing the effects of an environmental shift.

For some of us in the baby boom generation who have been following this issue for a long time, this comes as a surprising development. Yes, we had heard that our habits of consumption were contributing to a potential catastrophe, but it always felt our role was simple – to create the problem and then to start a conversation about how later generations would face it and solve it.

Sorry about the mess, guys. Good luck!

Now this latest report seems to suggest the we are not going to be able to skip out on the check after all. Any chance I can go back and un-drive all those miles and un-click all those switches that let the power flow?

I didn’t think so. Would a poem of atonement help? I asked Trail Baboon sing-song poet laureate Tyler Schuyler Wyler to write one up, and he agreed because every stanza could include a reference to death – his favorite subject.

The warming fields and rising seas
The melting ice and dying trees
The drying lakes that will not freeze
This all has come up by degrees.

We’d heard it was a thing to dread.
And by our habits it was sped.
But also was it often said,
It won’t get bad ’til we are dead.

But now they say it has arrived!
Not something still to be derived
for our descendants to survive.
It came while we are still alive!

Our sadness, is, of course, profound.
For glacial ice now in the sound
and forest creatures elsewhere bound,
and us, that we remain around.

What have you witnessed that you thought you would never get to see?

The Baboon Congress

Southern Discomfort

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Today’s guest post comes from Clyde.

Twice in one day I received eye pings, that is discordant visual images it took my brain several seconds to recognize and decode.

The first happened while driving in Mankato; the vanity license plate in front of me read “M MORT.” What? Then I realized it was on a hearse, a Mankato Mortuary hearse no doubt. But isn’t “M MORT” just sort of a small “ewee”? Do they have another one called “M MINKY”?

The second happened about an hour later in Barnes & Noble. I was staring off into empty space; not into space actually but into the magazine rack a few feet away, which is by-and-large the mental equivalent of empty space. I read as the title of a magazine Garden & Gun.

What? Was this real? Had I misread? Nope. I looked closer and saw a subtitle “Soul of the South.” Hmm. The entire complicated cultures of the ten or so states of The South find their soul in gardens and guns? I do not like sweeping generalizations about nations, cultures, peoples, regions, but gardens and guns are a big miss for my experience of The South. But see it’s for real.

Then I looked lower on the cover and it read “The Hollywood Issue.” Now that’s more than a bit discordant. Has Hollywood ever represented The South as anything but tired old cliches? Or The Midwest, or New England? To Hollywood has The South ever been much beyond hillbillies, plantations, bigotry, and threatening ignorance?

What was on the cover? But of course, a woman showing cleavage.

Cover Garden & Gun

Anna Camp, whoever she is. Another actress of whom I have never heard, but I am ignorant in this regard. In a wedding dress–is that what that is–and cowboy boots. How did cowboy boots become Southern, anyway?

I scanned through the magazine. It is actually very slick, high-concept, visually very well done. It had few pictures of either guns or gardens. It did, however, have an extensive article with high-quality photos on how to make moonshine.

It was all too big a brain cramp for me. I went and scanned through Mad Magazine–much more in my frame of reference.

What would be your “_____________ & ____________” title of a magazine on The Midwest?

Uncategorized

Ask Dr. Babooner

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Dear Dr. Babooner,

Almost 20 years ago I had a prolonged fling with a powerful married man. I was silly and he was foolish and it got into the press (because he was kind of important) and it almost cost him his job. But he survived the scandal and is still taken seriously today.

I, however, was mocked and scorned and I lost all the jobs that I might have had – ever. The only real employment I could get from that moment on was in the global punchline industry. As the unpaid butt of a billion jokes, I heard my name mentioned everywhere as I saw my once-promising future become bimbo-ized. So rather than hide and weep I went on TV to talk about it with Barbara Walters and sat for interviews so someone could write a book on the whole incident from my point of view.

Then I tried to make handbags for a living and when that didn’t work out, I hosted a reality show but people were only interested in the much more dramatic reality show I had lived through. So I didn’t say much for a long time, hoping it would all blow over. But now I’m back and guess what? Nothing has changed! People are acting like I’ve never talked about it at all and that I’ve been in hiding all this time, even though I’ve been desperately trying to get attention for something (anything!) else.

In spite of it all, I’m still ‘that girl’ even though I’m 40 years old!

I can see clearly now how things will go unless I’m somehow able to re-write the end of my story. But how can I do that? Should I change my name? Should I do a total makeover and move to Madagascar? But disappearing won’t do anything to salvage my name, and of course politics is completely out of the question.

Please, Dr. Babooner, point me in a direction that will head me out of this eternal dead-end!

Sincerely,
Saucy Beret

I told Saucy Beret she is completely out of luck if she hopes to write this “shameful episode” out of her someday obituary, because as a somewhat famous person her obituary is already partly written and it’s in there for keeps! Her only hope is to minimize the dalliance with an outsized, separate accomplishment of some significant sort. I recommend finding a cure for cancer, which would not only give her something to talk about besides her youthful indiscretions, it would also tangentially benefit a few other people she’s never even met!

Short of that, her only option is to grin and bear it.

But that’s just one opinion. What do YOU think, Dr. Babooner?