Tag Archives: Featured

Nature, Science, The Baboon Congress, Uncategorized

Lyme’s

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Today’s post is from Barbara in Rivertown

I found out early this morning that I have Lyme’s Disease. It is a relief that there is a reason for the red blotches, headaches, fevers, and lethargy I have been experiencing for the past few weeks. I will start a series of antibiotics this evening with dinner.

You’ve probably heard plenty about Lyme borreliosis and the ticks that carry it, often the tiny deer ticks. But just in case you don’t know much detail of what to look for, here are 11 of the common symptoms, according to a site called Daily Health Lifestyles:

  1. Rash
  2. Fever
  3. Headache
  4. Pain in extremities
  5. Lethargy
  6. Pink eye
  7. Memory issues
  8. Arthritis
  9. Droopy face
  10. Insomnia
  11. Heart problems

Wikipedia has this to add:

“Lyme disease is transmitted to humans by the bite of infected ticks of the Ixodes genus.[6] Usually, the tick must be attached for 36 to 48 hours before the bacteria can spread.[7] … The disease does not appear to be transmissible between people, by other animals, or through food.[7] Diagnosis is based upon a combination of symptoms, history of tick exposure, and possibly testing for specific antibodies in the blood.[3][9] Blood tests are often negative in the early stages of the disease.[2] Testing of individual ticks is not typically useful.[10] ”

I am glad there is an antibiotic to help me deal with this disease.

Do you have a tick/insect story to tell?

Family, Food, The Future, Uncategorized

Party Down

32 Comments

Today’s post comes from tim

my daughter had a graduation party this weekend when she described what she wanted it sounded strange as it turns out it was very nice she wanted to have a waffle bar and a barista serving espresso oh what about scones and muffins no she said maybe donut holes and how about some French roast coffee and the amaretto hazelnut flavoring maybe if you said but I think chai tea is a better choice the barista asked me to show him how the espresso machine worked and that was that…he was busy non stop and chai tea was a hit along with espresso cappuccino and latte grandpa from Chicago handled the waffle bar and took great pride in knowing exactly how much of the batter should go into each waffle maker strawberries raspberries blueberries chocolate chip jams marmalades and whipped cream rounded out the entire offering  there was a little table with a wooden decorated imitation steamer trunk to put cards to the graduate in and a memory book to jot down heartfelt messages to last through the ages there was an area to take pictures in front of a back ground sheet holding up a Mardi Gras mask or a 2017 identifier on a stick The rain held off until 245 for a party that was supposed to end at three and everyone who was remaining scurried to their cars and left in short order in by 305 we were picking up the yard The table folded down nicely the table cloths got washed or throwing out depending on the weather they were cloth or paper the table got moved to locations that made sense when there weren’t clusters of people spaced sporadically about the yard and everything was wonderful except…

by the guest login book and the waffle buffet my wife had purchased gala table centerpieces with stars and iridescent streamers and must have also received Little pieces of  confetti in the shape of a graduate hat these little pieces of confetti were the size of the stars they used to get on your homework paper back in the old days they were very similar if not identical to the stars used to get on your homework paper back in the old days it occurred to me that those confetti stars are made in such a way that they will sit in the landfill without degradation for a lifetime they are put on the table as kind of a cutesy afterthought and thrown away without a concern or a thought about how they came to be placed in the landfill and how long they would remain I walked by the garbage can in front of my garage door and saw one of those little graduation hats sitting on the concrete and knew that if I left it there it would be there two years from now when I am celebrating my last daughters graduation party I feel bad when I take a perfect moment and find a little detail to bitch about but it seems to me that that’s what’s wrong with the world is that nobody thinks about the little details of making a meaningless piece of confetti out of everlasting material instead of biodegradable material

The oil companies Third World countries and developing nations all find a reason to worry about it later I hope my daughter and the people who are graduating today learn from the mindless guidelines that have been left by our generation for them to tweak

how do you keep from letting a little disturbances screw up your day

gardening, Stories, The Baboon Congress

Garden Updates

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Jacque, VS, LJB,  submitted garden photos.  I added some, as well.  All I can say is that I have garden envy.  There is a lot to be said for warmth and rain.

From Jacque, we have:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here are VS’s bales:

 

While LJB sends these beauties:

 Black Currents

 

 

Clematis

 

 

 

 

 Borage

 

 

 

Hydrangea

 

 

 

 The herb garden

 

 

Twin Two’s Marigolds

 

 

 

It has been cold and dry here In ND, and the garden is behind.  Some things are coming along, though.  The roses in the feature photo at the top are some Morden roses in our front yard. It has been a good year for roses.

 The peas

 

 Red Currents

 Tomatoes

Iris (Beverly Sills)

 

The beans and their extraterrestrial poles

 

How is your summer shaping up?

 

 

 

Family, Stories, Uncategorized

Powerful Possessions

51 Comments

This post is from littlejailbird.

As many of you know, I have twin grandsons (I also have two other grandchildren but they live several hours away so I don’t see them as often). I will refer to these 3-year-old boys as Twin One and Twin Two in order to protect their privacy.

These glasses you see in the photo are powerful glasses. While they may not have lenses, they can still enhance a certain little boy’s vision.

Twin One uses these glasses when he watches TV (things like Daniel Tiger) because, as he says, “They help me see better.” And the other day, he said, as he headed upstairs after dark,“These glasses help me see in the dark!”

Twin Two sometimes wears these glasses but he does not seem to gain the same benefits from them as Twin One.

Do you have any funny or interesting stories about people using their imagination?

Family, Stories, work

Cleaning the Tool Bench

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My father brought all his remaining tools with him when he moved in with us the last five months of his life.   He gave lots away before he left Luverne, and took pride in how he arranged and organized his tools in his new home in North Dakota.

Since his death, we haven’t kept the tool bench as neat as Dad would want it. To be honest, it has been a disgrace for a couple of years, and Husband decided that today was the day to straighten it up.  The feature photo is a before picture. Dad didn’t care that he had duplicates of many of his tools, and we just keep them the way he displayed them.

 

As you can see from the photo, we will never need to purchase a socket set for the rest of our lives.

The coffee containers are full of drill bits, screws, nails, wall anchors, sand paper, garden staples, utility knives, nuts, bolts, washers, holders to use on the peg board, and just about anything anyone could need at a tool bench.

I am glad Husband took the initiative to get this done. I hope we can keep it this way for a while.

It is the weekend. What would your parents want you to accomplish before Monday?

 

 

Fifty Words, Food, gardening, Nature, Weather

Strawberries!

28 Comments

I’ve yakked about strawberry picking before, so I’ll save the word and just show this year’s pictures.

What’s a perfect Saturday morning for you?

History, sports, Stories, The Baboon Congress

Football Camp

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I took the photo for this post from my office window earlier this week.  Our building looks out on the college football practice field where a high school football camp was in session.  It is always rather entertaining to see them run around, skip, hop, and tackle while the instructors scoot around on golf carts.  I can hear the grunts and sounds of  tackle impacts all the way up to my fourth floor window. There must have been a hundred players.  Their buses fill the college parking lot.  Many come from little towns from Montana or the eastern part of North Dakota, and get to stay in the college dorms for the duration of the camp. We can hear them clatter past our building in their cleats on their way to the practice field.

You can always tell who the local campers are, since they drive their own vehicles, park along the drive up to my building, and then strip down to their skivvies while they change into their football uniforms.  We drive past them on our way to our parking lot. Some have the decency to go behind the large spruce trees that line the drive, but most just stand there in their shorts while they change.

I never went to a sports camp in high school, but trips for speech and music were both fun and stressful at the same time.  I hope the boys at the camp had the same sort of experiences.  I have worked at my agency for 18 years, and I have seen the local campers  in their underwear every year. They sort of signify the arrival of summer, just like the return of the swallows to Capistrano.  I think, though, that I would find the birds more interesting.

What are some of your high school camp and activity memories?

History, Nature, Stories, The Baboon Congress, Travel

Tips for the Trail

52 Comments

We’ve been completely on our own for almost six months now – our followers are up and we’re managing to keep daily posts going. Dale had a few unwritten rules for the trail and I thought it wouldn’t hurt if we spelled them out.

It is a baboon congress, so it’s not a very long list.

#1. Be kind.

#2. Don’t worry if you reply in the wrong place

#3. Avoid publishing any email addresses, phone numbers or addresses. (We do have more than 5,000 followers, so this is a just in case)

#4. Pass on the right

#5. Don’t worry if you are Off Topic!

#6. Try to find photos that are licensed for re-use.

#7. Be kind.

Do we need any other tips for the trail?

gardening, Nature, Uncategorized

Toad in the Hole

55 Comments

Today’s post is from Jacque

OKOKOKO. I will start this acknowledging that the little critter in the picture is a frog.  But “Toad in the Hole” is a vastly better title of this post than frog in the hole.  So there it is.

Every summer we share our front patio area, just outside the front door, with the local frog population.  And every summer a frog takes up residence in the spout of the watering can that I keep out there for watering plants or putting water in the dog bowl.    Saturday morning I was weeding and cleaning up the flowers after the big wind and rain storm last week end.  The dogs were in the yard with me.  I always keep water available for them.  As I attempted to pour the water, it was obvious it was clogged.  And yes indeed, it was the annual frog.

It eventually popped out of the spout into the dog water dish.  Bootsy immediately started lapping water, seeming not to care a bit if there was a frog in her water.  It just stayed there for awhile.  Later it returned to the spout, and I asked Lou to tip it forward to get the picture.

These frogs are a wonder.  There are many of them.  When my mother would visit in the summer, she loved sitting out there and watching them, too.  That was the cheapest entertainment ever.  I do not know how the frogs decide who gets to hang out in the spout.  I suspect it is first come first serve.  They seem to change colors, blending in with the bricks in a dull brown, or turning a bright green.  And when they croak, we swear Godzilla is there on the patio with us (see VS’s recent Godzilla in the garden fantasy post).  In the evenings, there is always one that sits behind the porch light, croaking.  Godzilla in your ear.

What is outside your front door?

 

History, Stories, Uncategorized

The North Platte Canteen

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The North Platte Canteen

Imagine that it’s between 1942 and 1945, and you have enlisted in one of the armed forces – Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Army Air Corps, Coast Guard. You are traveling cross country on a troop train, perhaps headed to boot camp – maybe never been away from home before. Since you boarded, you have been sleeping in your seat, had no showers, and had only K-rations to eat. As you approach North Platte (pop. 12,000) in west central Nebraska, you are told that at the next stop, you’re not only allowed to get off for 10-15 minutes, but encouraged to do so while the train takes on water and fuel. You see the sign CANTEEN above the depot entrance as the train approaches the station.

When you enter the Canteen,  you see ladies serving at tables crammed with food – (from among) sandwiches, apples, small bottles of cold milk, coffee, cakes & pies, cookies & donuts, hard boiled eggs, sometimes even fried chicken. Women of all ages are serving, and the youngest ones are carrying baskets of cigarettes and candies out on the railway platform. One inside table has complimentary magazines (“Free to Service Men”) – Life, Look, Liberty, Saturday Evening Post, Readers Digest, comics, movie magazines.

You eat as much as you can in the allotted ten minutes – you are allowed take your coffee or milk on the train, as the cups and bottles will be collected by the conductor and returned to the Canteen. Before you leave, though, one of the ladies gives you a hug, and wishes you well on wherever your journey may take you.

What was the motivation of the North Platte population? (Of the hundreds of small towns along the troop trains’ route, this was the only one we know of to perform this service.) Shortly after Pearl Harbor, as Uncle Sam was entering the war, folks in North Platte heard a rumor that Nebraska National Guard’s Company D would be coming through North Platte on a west-headed troop train. Friends and family of the men, to the tune of 500 citizens, had come to the station with gifts for “the boys.”

As it turned out, it was the Kansas National Guard’s Company D, not Nebraska’s. After an uncomfortable minute or so, one young woman, Rae Wilson, said essentially – “Well, I’m not taking my cookies home,” and offered them through the window to the Kansas boys. This same woman then wrote a moving letter to the editor of the The Daily Bulletin, which included these lines:

“We who met this troop train… were expecting Nebraska boys. Naturally we had candy, cigarettes, etc., but we very willingly gave those things to the Kansas boys…  Smiles, tears and laughter followed. Appreciation showed on over 300 faces. An officer told me it was the first time anyone had met their train and that North Platte had helped the boys keep up their spirits.

I say get back of our sons and other mothers’ sons 100 per cent. Let’s do something and do it in a hurry! We can help this way when we can’t help any other way. “

Rae Wilson                           (who became the Founder of the Canteen)

Bob Greene writes in his book Once Upon a Town, “Most of the older women who worked in the Canteen had sons in the war. It was like a healing thing for them to work there.” (This book is also the source of Rae Wilson’s letter above.)

So it started as a small endeavor:  fruit and sandwiches, cookies and cakes. Ultimately, 125 surrounding communities participated, and a total of 55,000 (mostly) women. They met every train for more than four years, sometimes as many as 32 trains a day. On, i.e., a hospital train where the men could not disembark, the women boarded the train with baskets of sandwiches, apples, milk. The Canteen was staffed by volunteers who gave their own rations for the baking ingredients. It probably helped that these were rural farming communities, where things like eggs, flour, even pheasant (in season, mostly) for sandwiches were sometimes readily available.

For more details, see this link for a fascinating six-minute recap .  In the end, it is estimated that six million service men and women came through that Canteen.

When have you been the recipient of unexpected hospitality?