Tag Archives: Featured

Art, books, Family, home, Kids, pets, Stories, Uncategorized

Locked Door Mystery

67 Comments

Many of you know I have a complicated relationship with mystery writing. If I figure out the murderer too soon then I’m impatient with the other characters for not getting to it earlier.  If the author doesn’t give me all the clues so I can’t figure it out on my own, then I’m irritated beyond belief.  So it was interesting to me that I got hooked on a British series called Death in Paradise on Netflix a couple of weeks ago.

I realized after watching a few nights worth of episodes that the writers of the show rely very heavily on the locked-door mystery – in which the murder happens in a room or building locked from the inside. Locked-room mysteries almost always fall into the category of “author not giving you all the clues” so they are not my favorite.  But this week I have my own locked-room mystery.

On Tuesday night, I went into my studio with a box, which I put on my desk. Left after 5 seconds and shut the door behind me. Thursday morning, YA texted me “what happened in your studio?”  She then texted that it looked like one of my shelves had fallen down.  When I asked her to send me a photo, I got the above.  Yikes.

When I got home and saw the destruction in person it was clear that a lot more than a shelf falling down had happened in that room. Clearly one shelf, with the attached ribbon rod had come down and everything on it, but quite a bit of the items on the stable shelf had come down as well:  assorted mountains of paper, the box of orange ribbons, a large bin VERY full of individual beads, envelopes, paints, you name it.

But the mystery is how this happened. Normally when Nimue gets locked into a room, you remember letting her out because you’ve been looking for her. She doesn’t usually meow or make a noise to alert you, you just have to search.  She hasn’t been missing this week; neither YA nor I recall opening doors to look for her.  If we had been home, the noise of the shelf coming down would have been noticeable. It certainly seems like her kind of mess… maybe she jumped up on the one shelf and as it went down, she scrabbled onto the other shelf in a panic, knocking things down willy-nilly.  I thought maybe a squirrel loose in the room, but how would the squirrel have gotten in and then out?  Someone breaking into my house to mess up my studio doesn’t seem likely.  YA sleepwalking?  There’s no place for anyone to stand while making a mess like this and the mess is all things that fell, nothing else.  And since the studio is right across from my bedroom, I’m pretty sure that would have woken the dogs and me.

Like those mysteries in which the authors don’t give you all the clues, this one may be a mystery until the end of time!

What projects do YOU have scheduled this weekend?

Family, Gatherings, Nature, Stories, Uncategorized, Weather

Cold Weather Stories

35 Comments

Today’s post comes to us from Ben.

I was at a funeral a few years ago. Probably this time of year and it was very very cold. At the graveside there was only a handful of people. The minister is a friend of mine and he was wearing a long black robe. Afterward, I asked him if he was wearing his long johns under there. He said, “I’m wearing everything I own under here”.

Come to think of it, I’ve been at the graveside for a few very very cold funerals. My mom says when her father died it was so cold the minister basically said, ‘Ashes to Ashes Dust to Dust Amen Let’s go’.

I have two personal cold stories.

The first was a below zero day with a wicked -70’s windchill and something broken on the feed bunk. I wore about 5 layers to fix it. As I recall, it wasn’t terrible and only took me an hour to fix. But anything outside in that kind of weather is terrible.

And back in 1996, daughter was 7 months old and was taking her colds very seriously at that age. She spent a week in NICU (Neo-natal intensive care) the first week of February and we had one of these cold waves. I won’t call it a ‘polar vortex’ because that term wasn’t around then. It was just cold.

Kelly spent most of the week at the hospital. I was still home dealing with chores and milking cows. (Curiously, I don’t recall where her older brother was. He may have been home with me or maybe he was at Grandma and Grandpas house.)

One night it was -42. I took a picture of the old, analog thermometer that hung in the mudroom. The one with the lead you ran out the window and it had the red liquid in it. And I remember thinking it’s a good thing it’s this style because the electronic ones only go to -40. And that same night an owl came into the garage and perched in the rafters. Somewhere is a picture of that too.

I’ve always thought, below -20 it just really doesn’t matter anymore.

Even at that, a barn full of cows is about the coziest spot in the world. I miss that.

What’s your favorite / worst cold weather story?

Fantasy, History, Media, Music, Nature, Science, space, Uncategorized

Surfing Pluto

22 Comments

It’s amazing what happens sometimes when you’re surfing the internet. I started with my daily dose of Sci Show Space, which led me to Gustav Holst’s Suite of Planets.  I realized that Holst wrote The Planets before Pluto was discovered, so he can’t be blamed that after 1930, he was missing a planet (of course now he’s OK again if you want align yourself with the Astronomer’s Union).  Over the years composers have “added” to Holst’s work with various songs about Pluto.

There are serious attempts like Pluto, the Renewer by Colin Matthews):

and very silly (yet funny) pieces, like For the Planet Pluto by the Music Tapes:

And I particularly like this one, Plutonian Nights by Sun Ra:

Then my lunch break was up and I had to get back to work!

Any unsung heroes in your life?

Fantasy, Fifty Words, Travel, Uncategorized

Fantasy Vacation

35 Comments

One of my best friends is spending January in Panama with her husband and she’s been sending me daily journal updates of their days and activities. I’m not sure I want to spend a month away from home but the daily stories are making me a little envious.

Where would you like to spend a month?

Family, Fantasy, gardening, Kids, Nature, Stories, Travel, Uncategorized

Perfect

44 Comments

Today’s post comes to us from Port Huron Steve.

I recently posted about discovering several hundred scanned slides from trips my erstwife and I took in the United Kingdom in 1974 and 1975. Most of the original slides were good, but the company that converted them to digital files did poor work. After being scanned the images were badly underexposed and had harsh tones. I spent five weeks editing the slides, making each image look nice, or at least much nicer.

Last Friday night my daughter invited me to her home to deliver a marathon slide show. I presented about 500 edited slides and explained the circumstances of taking them. I talked so long I lost my voice. As my daughter drove me home I realized, with some surprise, that I had just experienced a “perfect” evening.

This surprised me because I am not comfortable calling anything perfect. That is such an absolute word. My experience of life keeps showing me that everything we experience is good or bad in relative terms. I am skittish about absolute words and absolute judgements.

And yet the slideshow evening could not have been better. For a storyteller, an ideal moment involves telling stories to an adoring audience. For a photographer, sharing images with people who are thrilled to see them is total joy. For an old storyteller/photographer what could be better than an evening sharing old images and their stories with family members?

Actually, I learned that there is a way that such an evening could be even better. Something already “perfect” can become nicer.

On our first British Isles trip my erstwife and I spent three days in the Cotswolds. The Cotswolds are a region of England where the countryside and the villages are unimaginably charming. Visiting there feels like stepping into a Beatrix Potter storybook. Perhaps the most appealing Cotswold town is Bourton-on-the-water. Its homes and shops were built centuries ago with locally quarried rock. The architecture is consistent, dating to the same period, and perfectly charming. A little stream runs through the heart of town, with stone bridges arching over it. The honey-colored stone used for all buildings is offset by many by countless lush flower gardens.

Bourton has a famous model village. Local craftsmen created a perfect model of the town that includes all the homes, churches and shops just as they looked in the 1930s. Each building was recreated with meticulous detail at a one-to-nine scale. Topiary trees and shrubbery line the tiny stone buildings. The stream is there, of course, along with those cute bridges. While the model town is accurate in scale, a few buildings have been given big windows so visitors can peer inside to appreciate how perfectly the interiors have been duplicated.

Because the model village occupies a significant area, logic dictates that the model village has to include a miniature model of the model. And it does!

The cherry on top of my perfect evening was watching my grandson grasp the concept of an infinite regression of models within models. “Wait, Grampy,” Liam cried. “So the tiny town has a tiny model of the town in it? Whoa! That’s awesome! And does the tiny model of the model have its own tiny model?”

Yes! Of course it does! Liam’s smile improved an evening I thought could not be better.

What kind of day or event would be perfect for you?

Family, Food, holidays, home, Kids, Stories, Uncategorized

Birthday Raclette

25 Comments

YA loves cheese more than almost anyone I know. When we came home from China, I was prepared for the possibility that she would be lactose-intolerant; Asians have a higher percentage of lactose-intolerance than Caucasians.  I never needed to worry about it; as soon as YA began to eat solid foods, cheese was one of her favorites.

Cheese sandwiches, cheese fondue (her godmother makes a wicked fondue), cheese sticks, lasagna, curds, nachos.. if it has cheese, count her in. After I experienced raclette (melted cheese poured on top of food) in Switzerland, I got a raclette machine for us.  Pretty soon YA had an opinion on the difference between Swiss raclette cheese and French raclette cheese (she prefer the Swiss as it has more “bite”).

Every year for our Family Day celebration, she chooses a fondue lunch at the Melting Pot in downtown Minneapolis. She likes the original Swiss fondue recipe followed by a dessert fondue.  So I shouldn’t have been surprised when she requested a raclette lunch for her birthday celebration – despite the fact that we almost never eat any meals together these days due to our conflicting schedules.

We had a nice salad of greens, pomegranate seeds, pears, walnuts and vinaigrette then the raclette! We like our melty cheese poured over cauliflower, little potatoes, baguette and also sweet gherkin pickles.  It was a wonderful lunch and I was happy to stay inside rather than go outside in the freezing temps.

Do you/did you have a favorite birthday meal request?

Stories, Technology, Travel, Uncategorized, work

Lost & Found

41 Comments

On Wednesday I ran three errands over my lunch hour. When I got back to my desk, my cell phone was not in the pocket of my purse where I normally keep it.  My very first thought was that I had left it at one of the errand locations.  But then I thought about it and remembered that I hadn’t taken it out of my purse at any of those places.

Maybe it had fallen out of my purse in the car or on the way from my desk to the car. I went out, searched all through the car, including moving the seats forward and back to check underneath.  Then I looked again.  I emptied out my purse twice.

Then I decided to re-trace all my steps and drove back to all three of the places I had been over lunch. Weirdly, in all three places, the same spot I had parked in earlier was open when I arrived.  I looked in the spots, looked under the cars on either side, went into each establishment and asked if anyone had turned a phone in.  Nope.

Sadly I returned to my cube and over the next half hour discovered that my phone did not have any tracking capability turned on and then further discovered that for my particular phone there didn’t even seem to BE any tracking capability. I took a deep breath and suspended service and then called the phone company to see if perhaps they could track it from there end.  All the while the cost of getting a new phone was running through my head and I was starting to make a mental list of all the information stored in the phone and how I was going to have to re-assemble it somehow.

While I was on the phone I thought I’d empty out the purse one last time. As I set the empty purse down on the desk, it “thunked”.  I felt around and could feel the outline of the phone at the bottom.  It was between the purse and the lining!  The pocket that I normally put it in had a phone-sized hole and the phone had fallen through.  The gal on the phone with me was really nice to me, reactivated my service and wished me a good rest of the day.   I was so relieved, I could feel the weight falling away from shoulders – I almost shed a tear.

I got duct tape from the maintenance department and taped up the hole before I left the office.

What was the last thing you lost? Or found?

100 Words, books, Food, space, Uncategorized, Words

Riled Up by Language

39 Comments

Yesterday I got all worked up (again) when “pescatarian” defined as a vegetarian who eat fish. If you eat fish you are not any kind of vegetarian.

So I was happy to read this footnote in Death From the Skies by astronomer Phil Plait:

“One of the best ways to tick off an astronomer – and it can be fun sometimes just to see how he reacts – is to mix up the terms meteor, meteoroid, and meteorite.  The very best way to tick off an astronomer is to call him an astrologer.”

Guess I’m not the only one who gets riled up by language.

What are you NOT?

Business, Fantasy, Food, Gatherings, The Baboon Congress

Beaded Warthog Pub Fare

72 Comments

The baboons have banded together to open a pub – The Beaded Warthog. Now we need a menu.  Here’s a favorite I’d like to serve:

Toasted Cheese w/ Chow Chow

1 nice slice of bread, maybe sourdough
A couple of pieces of cheese – gouda would be good
2-3 Tbs of chow chow relish (or a nice chutney)

Lay the cheese out on top of the bread.
Toast the bread until it’s toasty and the cheese a little bubbly.
Spread the chow chow over the cheese.
Enjoy!

What would you like to serve at our pub?

Nature, Seasons, Uncategorized, Weather

Seeing Things

28 Comments

We had snow and ice fog on Saturday, and it stayed  foggy all night.  We came out of church Sunday morning to find the skies had cleared leaving a  thick coating of frost on the trees. Every branch and tree needle was outlined in white.  We take the same route home from church, past the college with its trees, past a pine tree covered butte that rises sharply a couple of  blocks from our house.  I  have seen these same trees for 30 years, but the frost and brilliant blue sky illuminated them to make it seem I was noticing them for the first time. In an hour the wind came and blew it all away.

What have you been noticing lately?