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Love (letters) for Sale

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I’m trying, with mixed success, to get back into the routine of writing every day. Even though the heavy lifting has just begun, it can help to catch your breath, so today I’m turning the blog over to Tamara Kant-Waite, Past President Pro-tem of the Future Historians of America.

I believe she has an inspirational message for us all!

Dear Prospective Primary Sources,

You may think you’re a dull nobody today, but once you’ve become part of the unalterable past, you and your things will turn into objects of fascination for historians of the future.

For example, on the lower east side of Manhattan, there’s a wonderful place called the Tenement Museum where the lives of poor immigrants of the 19th and early 20th century are immortalized through conservation of the building where they lived and worked. You can visit the dingy, crowded apartments that generations struggled to get out of! The people who lived in these tenements would no doubt be flabbergasted to see well-fed tour groups shuffling down their narrow hallways.

And I’m guessing when Elizabeth Taylor was 17 years old, in love, starring in the movies and writing ten page long gushing mushy letters to her fiancée, she wasn’t thinking about being dead and having those letters published in national newspapers and sold to the highest bidder.

But there you go. That’s what time will do – it magnifies everything. Whatever purpose you had in mind for that mundane thing you just did, you can be sure history will see it as a fascinating window into another era.

So remember, anything you touch today could become an artifact! Be attentive when you interact with things because that cherished object of yours could have a glass case in its future. Tomorrow’s archivists have just one request – be sure to develop a story about your object and by all means write that story down.

And please, for the sake of historians and auctioneers of the future, use paper.

Yes, e-mails are easier and they supposedly last forever, but the history that impresses us most has to do with things we can pick up and hold, carry around, frame, encase and send on tour. Nobody would buy a ticket to see King Tut’s blogs.

That reminds me – if you ever get the chance to completely cover something in gold, do it!

And remember – these historic objects and artifacts will need to be categorized by curators. That’s honest work for Future Historians of America, a group of people who are mostly unemployed at the moment, and in many cases not even born yet. So do something good today for the economy of tomorrow – write a crazy love letter to someone who you think would be shallow enough to sell that honest expression of devotion to an auction house.

Make it something special, and the scholars of nexter-year will make sure it lives forever!

You’re a dead celebrity. What have you touched or produced that collectors will want to buy?

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Upstaged by Animals

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Many thanks to Barbara, Anna, Clyde, Jim, Beth-Ann, Sherrilee, and tim – the guest bloggers who kept the conversation going in my absence. I spent a large part of the week with my family in New York City, getting my annual dose of subway grit, crowded sidewalks and car horn serenades.

We also saw some shows. One day had an “Animals in Wartime” theme, starting with a performance of “Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo”, Rajiv Joseph’s intense take on the madness and brutality surrounding the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Robin Williams played the tiger. In a brilliant bit of misdirection, he played the role like a tiger who was trying to look and sound enough like Robin Williams to get Midwesterners like me to buy a ticket. It worked! The rest of the play featured a lot of shouting, gunplay and profanity. It asked big, insoluble questions, like “How much control does God really have over a crazy world?” and “How long would I have to stand by the stage door to get Robin Williams to sign my program?” The whole experience was unsettling and thought provoking to a much greater degree than the classic musical revival that was our fallback option for the Wednesday matinee. Though to be fair, each play was set in an environment where “Anything Goes” pretty much sums up the rule of law.

The second play in our “Animals in Wartime” drama series was “War Horse”, a transplant from the National Theater of Great Britain. This one is based on a book by Michael Morpurgo with an ambitious goal of presenting World War I as seen from a equine perspective. That’s a tough assignment, but fascinating and meaningful on multiple levels, chiefly because the Great War was hell on horses. The development of barbed wire made cavalry charges suicidal, and artillery shells finished the grim job. This was another drama full of loud voices and gunfire, but it had something more – a huge heart and an amazing technical and artistic achievement in puppetry. Handspring Puppet Company created the life sized horses at the center of this show. “Joey” and “Topthorn” are each operated by three people. To call them technicians or anything less than actors would be unfair, since the trio that animates each puppet collaborates to bring a fully realized character to life.

I’m sorry I don’t have video of the actual performance, but if you get a chance you should try to see this show. There are some You Tube videos of the horse puppets in action at promotional events, including this one at an English racetrack.

Before technology made it possible to create virtual characters on a computer, one of the only ways to depict a non-human or exaggerated personality was with a puppet. From ventriloquist’s dummies like Charlie McCarthy and Howdy Doody to Shari Lewis’s Lamb Chop, Soupy Sales’ bodiless dog leg named White Fang and Jim Henson’s Muppets, our culture has a host of icons who can only move with the help of a hand up their back.

Name your favorite puppet.

The Baboon Congress

time to timprovise!

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Today’s guest blog is by tim

dale is a way and the blog will play

this weekend we will do an excercise in improv blogging.
the art of improv is cool but there are a couple of rules to have success.

never mind what you had in mind if the person before you throws a different direction at you you have to accept it totally and go from there.

i will put a final line on it at 12:01am and you can catch it on the next morning or if ben is up in the middle of the night he can read it then.

so heres a test of the group poem:

i write: i am a blogger and i’m ok
anna writes: he blog all night and i blog all day
clyde writes: his poodles named fido because its french
steve writes: his ex wife is an awful evil wench

the rest goes off to lord knows where…..
its ok to change the tempo and go with something new
one fish two fish red fish blue fish
or the midnight ride of paul rever are ok to throw in…
take a line or a stanza and run with it.

if while you are posting the poem gets responded to by someone else it could get confusing but i think we can follow multiple directions with this group. follow one or the other ort both

cmon in the water is fine

for real this time:

i’m a baboon blogger and i’m ok
i blog all night and blog all day….

next line?

The Baboon Congress

Machinery on the Mississippi

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Today’s guest blog is by Sherrilee.

My father was proud of his intellect and his vocabulary. When I was a kid, my sister and I would try to stump him by picking out random words in the dictionary to see if he knew them. He was better at this than most, since he had studied Latin for law school and could weasel out the meaning of almost any Latin-derived word. We quickly learned to look for words with their origin in Greek – he wasn’t as good at those.

When I was in junior high, my dad decided that he didn’t like the words “get” and “got”. He thought they were “lazy” words and that it was a sign of intelligence if you could use other words in their place. If you slipped up and used “get” or “got”, he would said “What?” until you replaced the little offender. This led to some hilarious conversations when my younger sister decided just to use the word “obtain” all the time, even if it didn’t make sense. “Do you think we’ll obtain rain this weekend? or I’m going upstairs to obtain a sweater.” Finally in college I decided that I didn’t have to play anymore either and my dad had to give up trying to enliven my language.

So, it was these memories that I was thinking of when I happened upon Kickstarter.com. In response to the Mark Twain professor who is bringing out an n-word free Huckleberry Finn, the Kickstarter group is raising money to print an edition of Huckleberry Finn with the n-word replaced by the word “robot”. If you pledge a dollar or more, you get a hard-copy version of this book when it is finished. I coughed up the dollar immediately and just the fun of getting the e-mail updates has been worth the price of admission.

If you could get rid of a word, which word would it be?

The Baboon Congress

Family Heirlooms

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Today’s guest blog comes from Jim.

As a seed saver I am dedicated to collecting, maintaining, and passing on seeds of vegetables and other plants that are rare and in danger of being lost. In the past, many families knew how to save and pass on seeds that they valued from one generation to another. This tradition is dying out. The Seed Savers Exchange (www.seedsaversexchange.org ) and other groups are making an effort to get the public more involved in seed saving. Saving the stories that are connected to seeds is considered by many seed savers to be as important as the seeds themselves.

I asked my Uncle Jake if he had any seeds that came from my Grandfather. He did have a jar of very old seed for a flat Dutch green bean that my Grandparents would slice up and make into a homemade product similar to sauerkraut. Unfortunately this seed was too old and wouldn’t germinate. Then I learned that my Uncle was willing to share some seed he had saved for many years. I am now growing and saving seed from a tomato and a bean that my Uncle got from his German neighbor. The tomato has fairly large, sweet, pink colored fruit that resembles some other tomatoes that originated in Germany. I call this tomato, Jake’s, in honor of my Uncle.

The bean is a very large white dry bean, which I call Large Navy. I like the bean because it came from my Uncle and because I haven’t seen another exactly like it. My cousin told me that this bean was used in cooking by my Uncle’s parents and I am looking forward using it myself. I gave my Uncle a copy of the Seed Saver’s Yearbook where my listing of the seeds I got from him is published. My cousin told me that his father would probably frame the Yearbook pages with those listings and hang them on the wall.

My Aunt Ida preserved a rose that came from my Grandmother. This is a large, very hardy, old fashion, pink rose. My Aunt told me that my Grandmother said the rose is an Austrian perfume rose. My Aunt also said that you couldn’t necessarily believe everything that my Grandmother had to say! I very much appreciate my Aunt’s sense of humor and somewhat sarcastic stories. She doesn’t hold back from speaking her mind and will say some things that might be a little offensive to some people and which I find to be very entertaining. She has some other stories I treasure about my Grandmother which are very funny and not entirely respectful.

Do you know any “heirloom” stories about your ancestors?

The Baboon Congress

Perhaps I Didn’t Make Myself Clear …

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Today’s guest blog is by Beth-Ann.

I pride myself in my ability to explain things both complex and simple. After all I have successfully explained alpha thalassemia major in Hmong and can go on (and on) about the likely association of immunoreactive trypsinogen to spontaneous intestinal perforation in extremely premature infants.

Why then does my family not always understand what I say?

After college graduation my parents left me in charge of the younger kids when they went abroad. They also left my college-age sister as an assistant since I was working full-time. One night I explained that the following night’s dinner would be a family favorite-chicken pot pie. I prepared all the constituents as my mother always did. I reviewed the assembly with my sister. “Just put the chicken, the sauce, and the vegetables in this pan, and cover it with the crust,” I said with great patience to my sister who wasn’t exactly a domestic goddess. When I asked if she had any questions, her response left me speechless. With all sincerity she said, “Can I leave the vegetables in the can or do I have to take them out?”……I picked up dinner at McDonald’s rather than risk eating her preparation.

Fast forward many years to when my son was in first grade. Because of his bone disease and frequent fractures he didn’t often dress himself. There were, however several days when I had the flu and a high fever and since he could walk I would send him to his room with instructions to put on clean underwear and the pants and shirt I had put out for him.
On the 3rd day I looked up from my delirium and noticed that his leg looked much more crooked than I had remembered it. I had hope that the giant bend in his femur was just a fever-induced illusion. I arranged to meet his physical therapist when she came to school that day to see Scott. The three of us went to the bathroom to slip off the sweatpants and look at his leg. I was surprised to see that my son was wearing 3 pairs of underpants. His response has become a family classic for failure to follow directions-“You didn’t say to take them off before I put on the clean ones.”

When did the message not get through?

The Baboon Congress

Leonard … It’s Over! – Steve

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Today’s guest blog is by Anna.

Seeing this message written in the snow, carefully laid out by someone adept enough to leap to the right spot to start the next letter, you can tell this is a message sent with care. A message with a story; a story one might find an obvious start to, given that this missive is directly below the heart-shaped “M+S.” But that seems too trite. Frankly, I think the “M+S” is there as a clever bit of misdirection. Here is what I think led up to the note in the snow:

Tomorrow is the last one, better do it right. One final job for Leo, then I’m on to the next adventure. Small thing, should be an easy acquisition. Not my favorite, but the price is right and a body does have bills to pay. It is amazing what people are willing to shell out to have me do the dirty work of getting something; high pay for challenging procurements. I am just a well-paid expeditor and shipper, a liberator of information and doodads.

And monkeys. Why did this last one have to be a monkey? Monkeys are noisy, foul and they steal my fruit. Last time I had a gig with a monkey he sat on my fedora, left scat on the top of the piano and tried to have his way with my Chewbacca doll. I wish I weren’t so good with monkeys. Small monkey, Leo said, a marmoset. A marmoset with a penchant for ping pong, killer skills mixing a dry martini, and other “unnamed” abilities the client wants. Stick him in your pocket and you’re good to go, Leo says. With something that tiny and my big duster coat to hide it, it should be an easy move from the lab to the meet up. Good thing I’m not a gin drinker or it might be tempting to keep this one around, just for kicks.

Dad said I should have become a dentist. Mom was hoping for an MBA. Four years of cultural anthropology and another two at chef’s school and I’m stuck ferrying bar tending monkeys for cash.

Focus. Get the goods, write a note in the melting snow, and get the final payment. Leave Leo to the foul play without me from now on. This is the last time, Mom, I promise. Your little Stevie starts grad school Monday.

Ever send a coded message?

The Baboon Congress

Trying One On

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Today’s guest blog is by Clyde..

I will not be joining you on The Trail today.

Instead I will begin the process of moving our stuff, much too much stuff, to our new home, or as Thoreau described it, pushing my possessions down the road ahead of me. Fortunately it is only a 2.5 mile push from a 1600-square-foot ground-level association home to a 1200-square-foot ground-level apartment. For the next three days I will haul over boxes. Then the pros will haul our furniture on Thursday. “Why are you moving?” everyone asks, since it does not seem like much of a change. Not many seem to like our answers. After all, we are giving up home ownership, the Great American Dream.

Most of our reasons are not worth your time to explain, but one I would like to offer especially to you because I think Babooners, unlike almost everyone else, will understand it. You, see, we want to try on a new life style. I admit it is not much of a change, but it depends on how you, or rather we, look at it. And, alas, it as much of a change as we can manage at this point in our life. For six years we tried living in an association, Efrafa as I have called it on here, which is not as bad as I have hinted, but does not suit us. We imagine a freer life, with a bit more ready cash and predictable expenses and no maintenance responsibilities. My wife, the addicted viewer of HGTV, will have a new blank canvas to decorate.

The real challenge will be for both of us to envision and use this new space and location—plus our money, time, and creativity—to think in new ways about ourselves, our place in church and community, and our limited time on earth.

Thoreau in Walden explained that in his imagination he had owned every farm in the vicinity. He had organized each farm in turn, tilled it, planted it, and harvested it without the bother of actually owning it. Similarly my wife and I have often tried on other life styles in our imagination: renting an apartment in one of those old buildings on Grand Avenue or in Dinkytown, teaching in a rural Alaska village, owning a hobby farm, spending a year living only from a small motor-home and driving North America, flipping houses, or going to seminary together. Because my favorite reading topic is travel books and books about what it is like to live a different kind of life somewhere else, I have in my imagination lived hundreds of lives.

I believe Babooners will understand my explanation because so many of you have deliberately crafted a life style, whether in rural Carlton County, in south Minneapolis, western Dakota, or all the places and ways you live.

My question for you is simple:

What other life styles have you lived in your imagination?

The Baboon Congress

Post Thurgery* Survival

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Today’s guest blog is by Barbara in Robbinsdale.

* Husband had open heart surgery on a Thursday in late January.

Please note – I am able to poke fun at this experience because:

a. There was no impediment to my staying home to nurse Husband. I can’t imagine the experience if he’d had to stay in, say, a nursing home …

b. Surgery was successful; Husband experienced no complications, and came through with flying colors.

c. It’s how I processed this one.

1. Visitors – Expect the unexpected; be prepared for anything. Some people won’t want to come anywhere near even a diagram of what happened to Patient. Others will enter with “Hey, can I see your scar?” the first thing out of their mouths.
Have a place cleared somewhere for flowers.

2. We may laugh at those airy little hospital gowns, but for a while Patient needs clothing that you can easily get on and off him/her. Hospital did not send a gown home with you, but you can fashion your own by taking one of Patient’s soft old t-shirts, slicing it up the back with a pair of scissors, and adding a safety pin. It won’t be as long as the hospital variety, so you’ll probably need to have Patient wear a robe over it, especially for visitors!

3. Pillows – Gather every pillow you have (and aren’t you glad you didn’t give half of them to Goodwill?) into a big pile near Patient’s bed. You don’t have a hospital bed anymore with the convenient push buttons. Every size of pillow you own will be enlisted at some point as Patient sits up, tries to sleep slightly reclined, and eats in bed.

4. Accept anything and everything people offer. This is not the time to practice Minnesota Nice: you don’t say, “Oh, no, you don’t need to do that” the first two times and accept on the third. You say “Yes, thanks!” the moment it’s out of their mouths, before they can change their minds.
(This IS hard to do all this accepting without immediately being able to reciprocate. When time allows, you will write thank you notes (even if some are by email). And when the tables are turned, you will reciprocate. If it makes you feel better, you can start planning now what food you will bring to them sometime.)

5. Alter your parameters about what constitutes a proper meal. With any luck you will have many meals given to you by kind, understanding friends and relatives. You will only have to supply, perhaps, a salad. See Illustration on left for a perfectly adequate salad.

6. Cleaning – If it’s big enough to endanger you or Patient, pick it up and toss it out of harm’s way. Everything else can wait. Keep in mind, though: a large enough dust bunny can be slippery.

7. It helps if you’ve kept a few toys from your kids’ childhoods, particularly that robotic arm “grabber thingy”, which Patient can use to reach things. Also a toy flute or recorder or kazoo (anything more pleasant sounding than a shrill whistle) by which Patient can summon you when you’re downstairs.

8. Self care – If you don’t get outside soon, you’ll go bonkers and then there will be two Patients and no Nurse. So enlist help from friends and relatives (anyone owe you a favor?) – preferably people whom Patient likes and trusts – to come in for a couple of hours at a time and relieve you.
Go get a massage, or see your chiropractor; stop at your favorite coffee shop and read something you don’t have time to read at home. Each time you go out will be easier, as you learn to trust that Patient will survive without you there.

9. Ego – You had one once; you’ll get it back again. For the first few days home, however, you won’t be needing it. This experience is an “ego-buster”. Whatever you had in mind for this week of your life can wait (even that newly re-discovered guitar). In fact, a lot of things can wait for a few of weeks, or even months. Your concept of What’s Important has just been radically altered. Patient needs you. Now. It’s a little like having a newborn, except that Patient will TELL you exactly what s/he wants and needs.

10. Although it may seem like there isn’t time, take some time now and then to just lie down next to Patient and listen to something like Dark Side of the Moon – some music that is meaningful to both of you. You’ll be amazed at how soothing this is.

What care giving and/or receiving wisdom would you add to the list?

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R.I.P. Arthur Hoehn

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Public radio audiences lost an old friend this week when Arthur Hoehn passed on, his life cut short by lung cancer.

Much has been made of his status as MPR’s first full time, professional announcer, and I suppose that’s an important detail. To be the first one in the door just ahead of a vast and distinguished crowd is a meaningful bit of timing, but Art Hoehn would have stood out had been the tenth one hired, or the two hundred and tenth.

For many years he was the overnight host, happily working a shift that most dread. While everyone else was asleep, Arthur would be gliding around the radio station in his slippers and sometimes his bathrobe, turning off lights to save energy and flipping over the accordion-fold paper after it had already chunk-chunked through newsroom teletype once, feeding it through again so the blank side could be put to use.

For lazy young journalists it meant you had to check the date on your copy. Coming in first thing in the morning to throw together a newscast, there’s a 50/50 chance the item you’re about to read on the air is three days old, even though it’s still warm from the machine. Take a look at the other side and say thanks to Mr. Hoehn for conserving the resources.

Arthur was the perfect companion for insomniacs and others whose internal clocks put them at odds with the world. Though I’m sure he could do it, he wasn’t the sort of announcer who would dazzle you with a sharp, sparkling monolog. Mr. Hoehn took his time. And face it, if you’re listening to a classical station at 3 am, chances are you’re not there for the energetic pacing. You’re in need of companionship, and Arthur was ready to abide with you.

He was the disc jockey who would be content to stare out the window as you both watched snow fall through the lonely beam of a streetlight. Today’s listeners are deprived of the eerie sensation of tuning in to a station to hear the sound of someone … um … thinking. He gave us deliciously long pauses – a rarity in radio but surprisingly effective as an attention-getting device. “What’s going on?” you wonder. An intake of breath. Another long pause. “Is he going to speak?”

Probably. What’s your hurry?

For all the forms of media we have at our disposal today and the 24/7 streams of programming that flood out of our computers, there are few places where gentle soul is given an open microphone and license to allow his stream of consciousness to meander. For a significant number of years, Art created that sort of comfortable space for his listeners. As one of the announcers who followed him to open up the next “day part”, I was grateful for his easygoing presence. No matter the type of work you do, it’s harder to get started when you’ve just walked into a space that’s cold and dark.

With Arthur Hoehn on duty, there was always a warm spirit in the house.