Today’s guest post comes from Steve Grooms

It should not have surprised me. When my daughter Molly began to talk, she started telling her mother and me the same things we were always telling her. Kathe and I talked to Molly almost nonstop, and much of the time we were explaining the world to her.
I should have expected that Molly would begin explaining the world to us.

“All these lights along the road?” Molly would say, her voice rising as if to form a question. “They put them there so the cars don’t bump each other in the dark.”

One day Molly spotted a poster of Garrison Keillor—Garrison with his distinctive face and beard. “When you see a face that looks like that,” Molly said to me in a helpful tone, “then you know that it is Garrison.”

We took Molly to a Lebanese restaurant one night. She was silent, her eyes wide as she took in the novelty of a restaurant that didn’t serve American food. She finally said, “It is a good thing they have this restaurant. All the people fighting the war . . . when they get tired they can come here and have their own kind of food.” Molly was responding to the fact that every night’s TV newscast featured film of civil war in Lebanon.

While explaining the universe to us, Molly almost always added her stamp of approval. She described the world as a place that was laid out in a pleasant and logical way. “They always put the cookies in the same place in the grocery store so kids and parents can find them.”

I used to reflect on the word she used so often: “they.” “They” made sure that water came out of our taps—hot and cold—when we twisted the handles. “They” put Christmas lights up at our shopping center. “They” made our world, and Molly appreciated their work. Beaming with contentment, my daughter savored the comfortable life that “they” had created for just for us.

This delighted me for years. Then I began to worry.

Yes, “they” had created a world that served our needs and delighted our senses. But “they” were not to be trusted. Sometimes “they” did things for selfish or even evil motives. Sometimes they lied. Molly needed to temper her pure trust in them. My sweet daughter needed an injection of cynicism.

Perhaps only another Midwestern parent would understand what this cost me. I adored my daughter’s unalloyed trust in her environment. Something in me balked at introducing her to the venality of human nature. And yet it had to be done. Without an appreciation of how deceptive others could be, my daughter would be vulnerable to manipulation. I had to teach a trusting child to be cynical, at least a little bit.

But how? I chose to introduce my daughter to cynicism by picking on a fat target: children’s commercial television.

One day when we were watching a cartoon show sponsored by a line of toys, I told Molly that people who wanted to sell stuff created commercials that made the toys look better than they are. “That truck probably broke right after they filmed that commercial,” I said. I showed her how tricks in film technique made the toys seem more dramatic than they were.

Molly was aghast. But she soon got in the spirit of things. When we saw other commercials, she would seek my approval by suggesting ways the sponsors might be lying to us. She began finding fault with what “they” were doing.

One morning when she was about six I went into Molly’s bedroom wake her up to face another day at school. My daughter lay on her back, eyes closed, arms splayed out like Jesus on the cross. When I rubbed her tiny chest, she spoke in a sleepy mumble. From the corner of her room the clock radio was blaring morning news.

“Daddy? What is the very best thing for you when you get up in the morning?”

Like any sensible parent, I was terrified by that question. She had been thinking about some issue and had a very particular concern. I wanted to be careful with the answer to this question, for this was not a harmless random question.

“Why, Molly,” I finally said, “the very best thing about getting up in the morning is that I get to see you and Kathe again.”

“Oh, they lie! THEY LIE!” said Molly, eyes still closed. “That just shows how they lie. On the radio they just said, ‘The best part of getting up is Folger’s in your cup!’”

What is the best part of getting up?

Today’s guest post comes from Jim in Clark’s Grove.

I like to explore nature and it has occurred to me that it would be interesting to study and document the animals than can be found in my yard or near the place where I live. So far I haven’t put a big effort into studying this nearby fauna, although I have noticed some things that I found interesting. Also, there were some creatures, which would not usually be thought of as wild life, which made an unexpected effort to populate my yard.

I am always amazed at the wide variety of birds that can be found in urban areas. My bird feeders, like most bird feeders, attract a fairly wide variety of birds. I am especially pleased that the number of Chickadees has increased this year. Many years ago there were large numbers of English sparrows coming to the feeders and now they seemed to have been replaced by House Finches. I don’t like seeing large flocks of either of these two kinds of birds because they are aggressive and are more or less an invasive species. I’m glad to report they haven’t been able to push out my more preferred visitors.

In the spring I see birds that are brief visitors as they migrate through our area. I particularly like seeing the tiny Kinglets that seem to like to rest in our yard on their way north. Of course, spring also marks the return of local birds that live in the south during the winter. I especially like to hear the singing of Wrens and Chipping Sparrows that ring out as they come back to their nesting areas. In the summer I sometimes see flocks of Cedar Wax Wings that move through our neighborhood looking for fruit. I have even had a visit from a Yellow Bellied Sap Sucker that I saw drinking sap from a hole it made in a tree.

We have a fairly large number of squirrels. I spread some bird seed on a picnic table for the squirrels to keep them from attacking my bird feeders. Our yard is also the home of Short-tailed Shrews. Short-tailed Shrews have a somewhat poisonous bite. Mice are included as one of their prey. I saw these shrews for the first time when I was cleaning out my compost pile and one of them gave me a painful nip, but I guess I was just too big to bring down. I’m glad we have these mouse predators in our yard because mice occasionally invade our garage and damage stored items.

Finally, we had a tree house in our yard that was used by our daughters. Neighbor kids also played in the tree house and I was glad that they could make use of it after my daughters grew up. One day I saw two young girls there that were not from our neighborhood. They had apparently decided this was now their “nest” and had even started to freshen it up with some paint. Since I had no idea where these two “birds” lived and they hadn’t asked permission to redecorate, I told them that they should find another place to do their nesting.

Have you noticed any interesting or unusual local fauna?

Today’s guest post comes from Sherrilee.

I’ve always been a go-getter, as my mother would say. If I want something, I figure out a way to get it and if I’m doing something, I like to do the best job I can.

As my middle sister discovered early on, this is a difficult personality trait to have in an older sibling. As I had two years on her, everything she did or tried had already been done by me. After a few years it became clear to my parents that there were things she didn’t want to try because I was already doing them (piano, dance, reading…)

So when she showed an interest in drawing and painting, my parents really encouraged her and DIScouraged me. She got art lessons, she got art supplies, she got her artwork framed all over the house, I got bupkis. To their credit, I don’t think they were trying to discourage me in their efforts to nurture something that was all hers, but the result was the same. As the years went by we were more and more defined this way; I was the smart one and she was the artsy one.

In college, during a particularly rough semester, I was looking for something that would be easy and decided to take a beginning drawing class. It was a shock to my system that I wasn’t too bad and I had a great time in class.

After that it was as if a huge door opened for me. It seemed as if around every corner, there was another artsy-craftsy experience waiting for me. Since then I’ve taken on Ukrainian eggs, rubber stamping, tie-dye, silk screen, sewing, scrapbooking, glass etching, candle making…. it’s a long list. The teenager and I now make most of our gifts and I do cards galore every year.

In a bizarre twist, my sister decided in college that she “didn’t have time for art”. So now I’m the artsy one!

What passion have you discovered later in life?

Today’s guest post comes from Clyde.

As my wife’s permanent chauffeur, I spend much time in medical waiting rooms. Even though I have learned to bring my own entertainment, I have informally cataloged what is provided as reading and viewing material.

One clinic provides nothing because they believe that the reading material spreads germs. Two have taken out play areas for children on the same principle.

As a casual observer of marketing, I notice how the marketers have, as they will, found the captive audience. A few places provide the standard array of magazines, usually with a plastic cover over them on which are imprinted ads for the company which paid for the magazine.

Much more common is to devise ways to market medical services and products, almost entirely drugs, to the captives. Or is that victims? Let’s say patients or impatients, as is maybe more often the case. The two favorite media are TV screens and medical-interest magazines. The technology is slowly expanding. It usually extols the virtues of the organization holding you prisoner. Ads for drugs are also slowly creeping in.

I scan the medical-interest magazines before reading my Dickens or Hardy, two authors I read in waiting rooms because it takes an environment such as that to make them interesting. Most clinics contain two types of such magazines: a general medical health publication, or ill-health as I shall explain, and a magazine aimed at the focus of that waiting room, such as arthritis or neurology.

The content of these magazines has made two things clear. 1) No disease is real until someone famous gets it, or as second-best, the parent of a famous person. 2) There is a myriad of diseases of which I should be terrified, things of which I have never heard, which get catchy names as if Madison Avenue named them. Did it?

Overstatement is standard fare, especially on the cover. For instance one magazine on its cover suggested that all Boomers have a mysterious disorder called HepC, which turned out to be hepatitis C. The reason, as I read inside, is that we all, it seems, shot up drugs, shared toothbrushes, and participated in orgies. I guess I wasn’t invited.

The purpose of these magazines is ads for drugs, with long legal statements in very minute print, too small for most of the patients in the waiting rooms to read. Another Madison Avenue decision? The listed side-effects are more terrifying than anything Stephen King would dare write. All the ads tell me to ask my doctor about the drug, meaning to prescribe the drug. I tried to talk my wife into taking a list of the drugs in with her and asking her doctor about each of them. My wife has no sense of fun.

Doctors hate ads like that, and they hate articles which tell people that they have the latest dread disease. But I am quite sure the management of the clinic or hospital is placing them there and not the doctors.

The slowest passage of time known to humans is that spent in waiting rooms. People need distraction, but the content of the TV screens and the magazines seems to me so contrary to what people really crave or to the purpose of the visit.

What would you put in medical waiting rooms to distract and or comfort people?

It’s Spring vacation time, and so I have sprung. Just in time to escape Minnesota’s oppressive May-in-March loveliness for something hotter and more humid. In my absence, a Congress of Baboons has stepped forward to fill in. Thanks, gang!

Today’s guest posts comes from Aaron.

Hey Baboons,

I know it has been a long while since I was last here, but yes I am still alive and well. I hold no grudges against anyone here I assure you, it was nothing anyone said.

I am working on how not to procrastinate, and this blog entry is a good example. I am writing this early on Tuesday morning, before I get distracted with the hustle and bustle of the day. I am a serial procrastinator. I was the one who would wait until the last minute to do a big project in school (a history day project on Elvis comes to mind, it was fun, it just took a while to get there). Writing letters to relatives is another thing I put off, just because I HATE writing letters, I rather just send an email and be done with it, but recently I put a kind note to my grandma in the good old US mail, and you know what? It felt great to finally send it out.

Maybe that is why I haven’t been on here, I was procrastinating on being a brilliant creative person (I kid, this is not my big ego talking, heck I don’t have that big of a ego, although some of you would beg to differ). I think my method of not procrastinating is thinking about what the end product would do for the greater good, and also when people depend on me to actually follow through on something by a certain date or time (Dale needed this by Friday the 16th, and I didn’t want to find out what the Wrath of Connelly is like). So it’s good to be back here, and hopefully I won’t procrastinate on my Baboon duties (much).

What are some ways you fight the urge to procrastinate?