Tag Archives: Featured

Nature, Stories

Boathouse

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The first time Husband brought me to Winona, probably in summer of 1978, he introduced me to people in town, people out in the country, and one person in a boathouse (which is what residents prefer to call it, rather than houseboat). It was a tiny one room affair, compact and cleverly furnished, and I remember thinking how fun it would be to live there down on the river. It was so compact! I thought it would be similar to living in the trailer as we had those three summers I’ve written here about – very freeing to downsize, and get closer to nature.

I haven’t been aboard a boathouse since moving back here, but have driven on Latsch Island (in the Mississippi, between Winona and Wisconsin) – the boathouse community seems alive and well. I see that MPR recently did a short piece by Catharine Richert, based in Rochester on what it takes to live in a boathouse – not many residents tough it out for the entire winter. There are the animals (muskrats, turtles, snakes, spiders, mice, frogs) to contend with. Then there is the special “maintenance” invisible to landlubbers: ice buildup during the freeze-thaw cycle. The article states: “Unless the ice is kept at bay, water might flood in through a crack under a door or at the seam between the hull and an outer wall. It can pull the house apart, or under.”

But a close-knit community has grown up over the decades, demonstrating “ongoing communal learning with lessons passed on from houseboat owner to houseboat owner”, since there is no Boathouse Guidebook. Richie Swanson tells, for instance, of  ” ‘popping barrels’ — the ritual of forcing sealed plastic barrels under a houseboat to help it float, which Swanson said can take off a finger or a foot if you’re not careful. Swanson said the process is often a group effort among people who share a passion.”

A friend of mine is pictured toward the end of the article… in the purple slippers. She now lives in town, but keeps her boathouse for a work studio. I hope to see this place in person some day.

I agree with the article’s author, “It seems an enviable life for anyone who loves nature, except in those times when nature tries to take back the neighborhood.”

What is the closest you’ve come to living “with nature”?

Baboon Achievers, History, Stories, The Baboon Congress, The Future

Behind the Curtain

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today’s post comes to us from our tim

we begin month 3 of trail baboon part 2. he has been mia altogether now for most of the past year or two but he is the invisable man for 60 days running. are you out there dale??? send me a sign….or an entry…

then you to vs and renee, to jaque to volunteer to make it happen as a perpetual motion machine. the tragedy of the end of the late great morning show was buffered by the trial balloon and we were able suck it up and be thenakful that we had a remnant of the morning show with dale as the man behind the curtain then the essence or our mpr world got shut down and the closing of the dale connelly as an omnipitant leader. i told dale he didnt need to be an enigma and he said something to the effect of “theres nothing wrong with being an ieigma”

i love dale, i love the trail, i love the history and i love the fact that we made it… we transitioned to the next level.

my dad moved to leach lake and spent the first year looking for his coffee group. the good old gang who laughs at your jokes and cries at you pain and understand the difference. the trail is actually the closest group of friewnds i can imagine.

my first wife talked to her mom on the phone every day for 20 minutes and im sure she had a tough time when her mom died because of the gigantic hole it left, my current wife talked to her grandma every sunday and when her grandma started losing it and had to move from the farm to town and then to the nursing home it was a smoother transition to prepare for the inevitable end.

dale and his guest blog weeks — remember how important it was that we never miss a day? 5+ years and never a missed day. how did he do it? and timely and so creative. the jusice that required must have been an interesting premise to life for all that time

now steve writes one, clyde, vs, renee, jaque, bir, all of us.

thanks for the new start and rebirth of the original joy of the morning show the trial baloon and the trail baboon

other than the rebirth of the trial, what new start in your life has been the best?

Baboon Achievers, Family, gardening

Battle of the Boulevard

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Purple is my favorite color; you’d think that purple flowers would be my favorites as well. And for the most part, you’d be correct, except for the aromatic little purple flowers that are taking over my front boulevard.  Creeping charlie, also known as ground ivy, creeping Jenny, catsfoot and run-away-robin, is the bane of my existence.

In general I don’t care for ground cover unless it only covers the ground that I want it to cover. Unfortunately that’s not how ground cover works. I think of it as a virus that I’ve caught. I’ve gotten plants from so many places, that I’m not even sure where I caught the virus but based on where I first noticed it, it probably came from something I purchased at Bachmans. Tsk tsk.

I tried the easier poisonous route last summer and not only did it poison one of my peonies, it didn’t really work. So this summer is the battle of YA and I against the CC. On Sunday we spent about 5 hours weeding and half of that was an all out attack on the purple menace on the boulevard. I did the tedious around-the-flowers/bushes weeding while YA went for a more scorched-earth policy of ripping up whole chunks of sod, roots and shoots and all.  We talked about the fact that we’ll have to do this all summer and probably some of next summer as well.  YA must have concurred; I came home today to find a pile of CC pulled from the side of the house near our raspberries.  So I guess it’s official – it’s the two of us versus the creeping charlie!

When have you had to do battle?

Family, Fifty Words, History, Uncategorized

Fargo

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Today’s post comes from tim

 

fargo was my dads home and his dads home i was the big dog from the cities when i went to visit cousin dan did show me around like it was cool to know a guy from the cities this was at the time when flower power and mod fashion were the rage

tell me about your psychadyllic moments man

 

 

History, Uncategorized

Without Warning, A Growing Trend

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Today’s post comes from Bill in Minneapolis

Seemingly out of nowhere, big beards have become a thing. You might argue that beards have been always with us and certainly that’s true for most of living memory, but those were primarily modest chin covers.

Beards do go in and out of fashion. Apparently, in the century between 1730 and 1830, beards were not only unfashionable but rigorously opposed. In 1830, a Massachusetts farmer named Joseph Palmer was jailed for over a year as a result of an incident stemming from his refusal to cut his beard. He was denounced from the pulpit and in the street.

The beards I’m talking about here are startling, exuberant, prodigious beards. Biblical beards. Beards that haven’t been exuded since the nineteenth century. Jefferson Davis chin ponytails. Rip Van Winkle beards. Jubilation T. Cornpone beards. And I wonder, what started all this and why did it spread so widely and across generations? I didn’t get the memo.

Now I would be the first to admit that I am generally out of the loop and even if I had been aware of the trend, I wouldn’t have been a participant. My own facial hair, should I grow it, would be more along the lines of Robert Bork’s and nobody needs to see that, ever again. But it makes me wonder what triggered the movement toward extravagant hirsuteness (hirsutity?).

I sort of felt the same way about tattoos, when they became a thing. They’re ubiquitous now and scarcely attract notice but I never understood why they became newly popular and what the attraction was in the first place. If you do, explain it to me.

What trends have taken you by surprise?

Travel, Uncategorized

Hints for Riding the Rails

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Today’s post comes Barbara in Rivertown

 

Our recent train trip to the west coast was lovely and relaxing during the two days we traveled each direction. Here are a few tips to the uninitiated, while the experience is fresh in my mind.

Packing

– Have one carry-on bag with everything you’ll need for however long you’re on the train, including a fresh change of clothes. That way you can be free from pawing through your large suitcase – it can just stay in the vestibule with the others.

Earplugs

– Good not only for when you’re trying to sleep. They will not, however, help awakening at the lurching as the train crosses the track-merge connections. Not to worry, the rocking and the clickety-clack will (probably) lull you off to sleep again.

– Earplugs may also be good if you want peace and quiet in the Lounge Car. You could consider creating a “Megaphone Award” prize for each day aboard, to hand out to that one person in the Lounge Car whose conversation can be heard through the entire car. Alternately, you could just chime in with the conversation and yell comments back.

Eating

– If you have a roomette (or other sleeping quarters), three meals a day are included in the dining car. Although not a 4-star restaurant, the food is pretty darn good. (However, the same vegetable will be served with all entrees until the train turns around and heads back the other way.) Remember that you are not getting all that much exercise, and consider eating partial portions, or at least split the dessert with your companion.

– Unless you are a party of four and fill up the whole booth, you will be seated with other travelers, and will meet an array of interesting people at these meals. You may want to have a paper and pen available to exchange addresses with the most compatible of these.

Exercise

– It is amazing how many sore muscle you can get from a lot of sitting! Try and get up to walk around every hour – take a trip to some other part of the train. Beyond the Dining and Observation Cars (located in the center) are the Coach Cars – follow to the end so you can see the track recede as you watch where you’ve just been. Be sure to walk with a wide stance with hands held out to catch you when you fall against the seats, and understand that if this were being filmed, you would look like you have just drunk at least one bottle of wine.

What sort of travel tips do you have to offer from your journeys?

Stories, Uncategorized

Counterintuition

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Husband and I are in Fargo this weekend with a sofa in our van. We hauled the sofa to Fargo so that the moving company can take it and all daughter’s other furniture to Tacoma. Why, might you ask, would we haul a sofa 300 miles East when the moving company will drive right past our house on the way West  to Washington? Well, it apparently costs lots of money for a moving van to make stops along the way, so here we are in Fargo with a sofa.  This is counterintuitive to me.

It is also counterintuitive to me that I have to fly East to Minnespolis in order to fly West to Seattle.  That is what comes from relying on a peripheral airport in Bismark to fly anywhere.

We thought of some other counterintuitive facts on our trip today:

1. People with ADHD take stimulants to slow down.

2. Reconstituted juice has water taken out and  then put back in.

3. It is lack of moisture,  not cold temperatures, that is the limiting factor in our gardening in North Dakota.

4. It is easier for us to grow vegetables than grass.

5. The best way to get people to stop smoking is to load them up with nicotine patches and gum.

What is counterintuitive in your experience?

Nature, Uncategorized

A Moment of Silence. Maybe Not

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Today’s post comes from NorthShorer

 

What comment do I need to make about these guests beside my patio? Better than any fashion runway, huh? Oops. That was a comment.

I was going to suggest a moment of silence for the beauty lost in all the ugliness. But then that would make for a dull day on a blog.

What wonder–human or in nature–lost in ugliness, busyness, or confusion do you want to commend today?

Family, Uncategorized

Passing Time

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Today’s post is from tim

i had to fill out an application on line with what appeared to be a program that wasn’t quite right. it asked for my date of birth and when i went to type in my month date and year, it was obvious  the only way to get there was to click the little arrow on the top of the calendar back a month then another until i got back to the correct date. it was frustrating and after i had clicked back i discovered it called for another calendar for my wife so i tried to backdoor the form and lost the first one with all the typewritten name and details required in addition to the many, many many clicks on the birthday response.

this time a funny thing happened on my way to the finish line, i started being aware of where i was in my life as i did a reverse recount of my life, then again when i did my wife’s bd, and by the time i was done with my kids i had clicked past dates i hadn’t thought about multiple times. i didn’t stop and think but i slowed a little each time and as i went by the last time i had added enough memory each time that it was a deep dive in total

 

when was you last surprise positive experience

 

books, Family, Uncategorized

Reading

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I come from a family of readers.  My paternal grandfather was a farmer who read voraciously, and had shelves of books in his house. He had an entire set of Dickens, all of Shakespeare’s plays, and many, many history books and novels, which he picked up at farm sales during the Depression. When he died, I took the books, and my librarian cousin took the shelves, which were the kind used by lawyers that had glass fronts that opened up from the bottom.  I think they are called Barrister’s bookcases

Grandpa’s grandfather was a reader, too. He was named Martin Cornelius Freerks, and was born in Rysum, Ostfriesland Germany in 1827. He was a laborer there, and immigrated to the US in about 1851. He lived first in Pekin, Illinois, and worked as a drayman, which meant he was responsible for meeting passengers at the train station to haul them and their goods where they needed to go.  Family history indicates that he was often absorbed in a book when the train came in and would arrive late or not at all. “Ganz in boeken besiet” (completely lost in books) friends and family would say.  He eventually moved to Iowa and lived the last part of his life with my grandpa and his family. Grandpa said that Martin had “a whole roomful’ of books accumulated over the years.

I used to read all the time, but for some reason, perhaps due to life stress with my parents’ deaths, children’s transitions, work issues, etc., I stopped reading for pleasure about five years ago and filled my spare time with crossword puzzles.  I am trying to start reading again. Husband visits our local libraries regularly, and we have scores of books in our house. I just have to pick up something and start and apply myself. I typically like traditional murder mysteries, but I find them hard to appreciate now. I am impatient waiting for the plots to resolve. I don’t like suspense these days.  Perhaps I need to start with non-fiction and work my way back to previously unread novels.  I think it will be good self care if I do.

Daughter says she is going to join a book club when she graduates from college, and admits she has a book addiction problem.  Great Great Grandpa Martin would be pleased.

What are the pleasures and pains of reading for you? What is hard/easy for you to read? What do you want done with your books when you die?