Tag Archives: Featured

The Baboon Congress

If They Don’t Like You, It ‘s a Good Thing

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Today’s post comes from Jim Tjepkema

I was told at the start of the school year by a person offering advice to substitute teachers that “it’s a good thing if the students don’t like you”. The person who said this was a school principal who thought the main role of a sub was to maintain strict order in the classroom. During my years as a sub teacher there were many times when I had my patience stretched thin. However, I was more or less able to avoid the heavy-handed approach suggested by the advice from that principal.

I thought I was prepared to do substitute teaching because I had been involved in helping with programs at a small private school. I was wrong. My first day of substitute teaching in a grade school was a disaster. A very mischievous boy took over the classroom and led the other kids in creating problems during most of the entire school day. From that experience I found out that I needed to learn a lot more about how to maintain order in a classroom.

One of the most important things I learned was that I should immediately confront trouble makers, like the one who gave me a bad time on my first day. Many teachers told me that if a kid will not behave I should send him or her to the principal’s office and I did follow this advice on some occasions. When you have more than one problem kid in a class it is not so easy to get things under control. One time I was asked to sub in a classroom filled with a small group of kids that were all troublemakers. I had to put up with them because I wasn’t ready to send all of them to the office. Another time I asked the principal to come to the classroom to get a very bored bunch of kids to calm down after they had given me a hard time on the previous day.

There were some other tricks I learned such as always sharpening pencils for grade school kids. If you let them do it, you will have a long line of kids waiting to sharpen pencils including some pencils that don’t need sharpening. I was willing to put up with a little bad behavior although I did tell my classes that they shouldn’t do anything that would prevent the students that wanted to study from studying. I remember the many very tedious days I spent sitting in classrooms when I was a student and had some sympathy for kids who were having trouble doing what is expected of them as students.

Once I made the mistake of asking for help from the principal who told me it would be good if the kids didn’t like me. She handled the situation by screaming at the students using a very loud angry voice. That is something I wouldn’t do, although it is a technique that can bring a classroom under control. To top off that bad situation, she also screamed at me. I did make the mistake a few times of being too hard on sensitive kids and I regret doing that. For the most part I was able to develop a good relationship with the students, even the difficult ones. I liked them and they liked me.

Do you have any advice for substitutes?

News, Science, Travel

Embracing Rush Hour

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With so many people and (lately) nations agreeing that we have to reduce our carbon output to preserve life as we know it on this planet,  it is reasonable to expect that we will all be driving less in the future.

Except that there’s no way we’re going to be driving less.

Humans, especially American humans, are too much in love with their cars and the ease of personalized combustion-engine-powered travel to give up these convenient machines anytime soon.

Technology may make our cars “cleaner”, though even the most advanced electric vehicles simply trade emissions created at the tailpipe to emissions created at the power plant.

And while computer-driven cars will certainly be more fuel efficient thanks to the removal of the lead foot from the equation, there is some thought that unless we get the laws right, autonomous vehicle technology could result in more miles traveled (and gas burned), not less.

Here’s a startling look at Rush Hour from a director named Fernando Livschitz and his company, Black Sheep Films.  Livschitz did the opening credits sequence to Stephen Colbert’s new show on CBS.

RUSH HOUR from Black Sheep Films on Vimeo.

Hilarious and terrifying, in that it feels like someone is going to die but you’ve gotta love the music and the timing.

Describe a close call you had on the roadway. 

The Baboon Congress

2015 Was the Year That …

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Today’s post comes from Barbara in Robbinsdale

There was a fun article in the Dec. 27 Mpls. Star Tribune about the eventual demise of the annual Christmas/Holiday Letter, since so many people are getting a play-by-play look at each other’s lives on Facebook. “Status updates may have removed all the surprise about what the children are up to, but they have all of the shelf life of a brown banana.” The writer, Paul John Scott, appreciated one of those letters he still receives, from a person who “has managed to boil his family intel down to four lines of text…”

I sent out the cheery Christmas letter that included all the fun stuff (and for each item below, I’ve left out the sad or stressful parts) from 2015:

  • trip to France, and later to California
  • singing and dance events
  • Husband’s finding a Mathnasium gig to fill the extra hours in his week
  • Nephew & Family’s visit after Christmas (they’ve taken a side trip out of town for a couple of days, which is the only reason I’m writing this)

If I had to condense it to one sentence, I think it would be:  2015 was the year we first traveled to France. (Alternately: 2015 was when we finally got the ping pong table out of the living room.)

If you were to sum up 2015 with a sentence about the  most important thing that happened in your life, what would it say?

Or if you’d like to muse on the year that’s just arrived:

What would you like to write next December as a one sentence wrap of 2016?

 

Stories, The Baboon Congress

The Egg Carton

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Today’s post comes from Verily Sherrilee.

I found the egg carton today.

About 30 years ago I began throwing a holiday party – a silly gift exchange. I’d been to one at a co-worker’s and thought it was a lot of fun. Then 28 years ago I met Alan; he’d been hired as the loss prevention specialist at my company. He had just moved back to the Twin Cities with Julie and their three daughters so I invited them to the party that year. After a lot of gift swapping, Alan got stuck with a red plastic camping egg carton. As I was cleaning up I found it stuck back behind a couch cushion.

This began a 28-year campaign of dumping the egg carton back on each other. EggCarton1 It’s been delivered in a box of flowers, left in an Easter basket, sent to an office via a software company in Boston, buried in an ice lantern, left under a mattress, in the dog food barrel, left in the laundry room of a new house. It’s even been to Sweden and Switzerland!

Twenty-eight years ago it was just a prank; I didn’t know at the time that it would also be the beginning of a wonderful, life-changing friendship. Alan and Julie are kind, generous people, sharing their lives with me and Young Adult all these years. We spend our holidays with them and it’s been a joy to see their three girls grow up, get married and start families of their own.

I had a full house at this year’s party and I was pretty sure I would be in possession of the egg carton by the end of the night, even after I frisked Alan and Julie at the door. The last two weeks have been spent poking into cabinets, opening drawers, checking under the sofa, even looking into the dog food barrel again. This morning I took all the ornaments off the tree and as I pulled the lights off, I found a package wrapped in green paper and “decorated” with greenery boughs – the egg carton!

I’ve now sent off the obligatory “You Rat!” text and am busy thinking up how I can dump the carton on them!

Do you have a “new year” ritual?

Poems, Words

What Rhymes With Affluenza?

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Header image from free Photobank www.tOrange.us / CC by 4.0

Around water coolers everywhere, the strange tale of the “Affluenza Teen” is all the rage right now.

Ethan Couch, while still a minor, sought to evade responsibility for causing four deaths while driving drunk by using the defense that his pampered upbringing left him unable to tell the difference between right and wrong.

He managed to avoid jail time with an extended probation, but when it began to look like he would be prosecuted for violating the terms of the probation, Ethan and his mother fled to Mexico.

Yesterday, Tonya Couch was returned to the U.S.  Ethan has appealed his extradition and will remain in Mexico a while longer while authorities work out the details.

He will most certainly be returned, to much fanfare and derision.

When Trail Baboon singsong poet laureate Tyler Schuyler Wyler learned of this  sad (but uniquely American) story, he thought the topic was weighty enough to be worth at least three limericks.

I
Affluenza is quite a disease.
When you’ve got it, you do what you please.
but the symptoms ain’t bad
if your mom and your dad
keep on paying the lawyers their fees.

II
A pampered young man and his mum,
were so careless and reckless and dumb.
they made national news
which essentially proves
too much cake makes a good child a crumb.

III
A young Texan explained, in his view,
He was over-indulged as he grew.
The disease that he got
made him easy to spot.
As the guy with the privileged flu.

What’s YOUR excuse?

Family, The Baboon Congress

Tomte Trouble

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Today’s post comes from Renee in North Dakota.

I have always liked Scandinavian design in textiles and folk art, and I often shop at The Stabo, a Scandinavian store in Bismarck and Fargo. My daughter finds this embarrassing. “Mom, you aren’t Norwegian. You’re Dutch and German! Why do you shop there? Why do you like that stuff” I tell her that my ancestors are the people of Beowulf, and that something in the designs speaks to deep yearnings that must come from beyond the mists of the long distant past (well, not really, but if she wants to think I’m weird, I’ll play along).

My daughter takes particular exception to the tomte I have purchased-figures in different shapes made out of wool with luxurious beards and red hats. These are made from the wool of sheep raised on the Swedish island of Gotland. I keep them, along with a couple of Yule goats and straw girl, on top of our media cabinet in the living room all year long. Daughter warns me that I am to stow the tomte and goats in a closet the first time she ever brings a beau home to meet the family. I ask “What if he is Norwegian or Swedish?” She says it doesn’t matter, and the weirdness must be hid in favor of good first impressions.

20151230_120851

Imagine my surprise this Christmas when I received this hefty fellow from my daughter. Now, I like tomte, but this guy is almost too much, even for me. Unlike the others, he has hands and thumbs, and I blame him for the dishwasher breaking down after Christmas. I didn’t put out the rice pudding, you see, so I suppose he let me know his disappointment by preventing the water from draining out. I mentioned this to daughter and she said “Good. Serves you right”.

I don’t think I need any more tomte after this. I have no more room, in any case. I am touched that daughter purchased something for me that I like but that she professes to loathe. Maybe something in the design speaks to a deep yearning in her. If so, the weirdness may continue long after I am dead and gone.

What do you love that others can’t abide?

News, Science

Crows Got Tool Talent!

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Thanks to cameras attached to the tail feathers of some New Caledonian crows, researchers have now observed the birds building tools and using them in the wild.

These elusive creatures were seen fashioning hooked stick tools to root out food – a remarkable discovery that sheds a bit of light on animal thought processes.

Or if it doesn’t, at least it shows us animal thought as interpreted via the cranial processes of humans like study author Jolyon Troscianko of the University of Exeter, in England.

“In one scene,” Troscianko said, “a crow drops its tool and then recovers it from the ground shortly afterward, suggesting they value their tools and don’t simply discard them after a single use.”

This is a likely explanation. But it is only one, and it assumes crows think like us, which may not be the case! I can think of at least three other options.

  1. The crow dropped its tool, forgot about it completely, and then in an “aha” moment, picked a hooked stick it suddenly found at its feet.
  2. The crow dropped the tool on purpose to fake out the potential food, and then grabbed the tool again when the mistakenly relieved morsel slithered into a more exposed location.
  3. The crow dropped the hooked stick when it realized it had a camera stuck to its tail and it was giving away the company secrets. And then picked the stick up again when it thought, “oh what the Hell,” if I keep acting like I’m committed to the hooked stick, they’ll never find out about all our other crow-made tools, like the cawk gun.”

Hard to know exactly what is going on in the tiny mind of a clever crow.

If scientists pasted a camera to your tail, what tool would they see you use?

The Baboon Congress

A Festival of Four Pageants

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Today’s post comes from Renee in North Dakota

“Are you ready for Christmas?” This has been the standard greeting between folks out here lately, replacing “How about those Bison?”, or  What do you think about the weather?”   In my world, being ready for Christmas means that the lefse is made the weekend before Thanksgiving, all the baking and cleaning are done soon after, and the house is decorated by December 1.

This year, none of this happened, and the Tuesday before Christmas my home was not decorated, the presents had not been wrapped, the tree was in a box in the garage, and I hadn’t done much, if any, baking or cleaning. Since the first week of December, husband and I have either attended or participated in four Christmas “pageants” that have taken us away from home and  complicated or enriched our lives, depending on our moods at any given time.

Pageant One was the traditional Concordia Christmas Concert in Moorhead to which we wore our Norwegian sweaters and heard lovely and perfect choral singing.  It didn’t take too much out of us, except that it took us away from home for a weekend and we couldn’t do much Christmas preparation. I managed to bake 12 dozen cookies for a cookie exchange at work, but that was about all I got done.

Pageant Two took place as week later in a much more modest venue on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Here we helped distribute Christmas presents and food to about 500 people at a mission called the Dream Center. We played music with our Native friends and I helped read the Christmas story at the gatherings. I don’t know how relevant they found the story, given that they are struggling with poverty, homelessness, and hunger, but the children loved the gift boxes and the elders loved the gift bags and hams that were given out. This took us away from home for four more days, and no Christmas preparations took place at home.

Pageant Three took place one week after the Pine Ridge trip in the Sodbuster Room at the local Elks Lodge for my agency Christmas party. In addition to being a member of the Social Committee responsible for planning this soiree, I played my bass guitar in our agency  band, and this, of course, meant evening rehearsals that also kept us from making preparations at home.  We played everything from Stephen Foster (Hard Times Come Again No More) to Mavis Staples (I Belong to the Band) to Bachman Turner Overdrive (Taking Care of Business), with a Diana Ross medley somewhere in the middle.

Two days after the party, we played in our church bell choir for both Sunday morning services and at an afternoon Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols service. I was asked by the bell choir director to design the bulletins, and this, of course took me away from Christmas preparations at home.

Well, Christmas is upon us. Our children arrived and they decorated the tree and the house. They helped shop, and planned and will help cook Christmas dinner.  The house is clean enough, and I finally got to sleep past 7:00 a few mornings this week. I am grateful that we are safe and together, and I guess that is the most important thing.

Merry Christmas, Baboons. Now, if I could only get “Stop in the Name of Love” out of my head, I could say that life was almost perfect.

Describe your role in a memorable Christmas pageant.

 

Uncategorized

Cookie Church

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We are ALL Dr. Babooner

Dear Dr. Babooner,

I have been on my feet in the kitchen for three days straight, faithfully baking the eleven different kinds of Christmas cookies my family expects to see displayed on the table when we sit down for our holiday meal.

Each cookie type calls for a specific set of ingredients and requires that I perform a carefully choreographed ritual that usually involves standing at the counter, kneading the dough, kneeling before the oven,  wearing the ceremonial mitts,  and arranging the finished offerings in a sacred tin.

At the meal, my cookies are the final course before we head off to church.  But at that point I’m sore from standing and exhausted from the cookie-baking effort.  I feel like I’ve already been to worship and I’d much rather take two ibuprofen and have a nap.

Does that make me a heretic?

Confusedly,
Aching Baker

I told Aching Baker she is NOT a heretic because all of her rituals seem perfectly ordinary and are widely practiced whereas heretics go very much against the grain. Also, “heretic” would be a good name for a twelfth type of cookie – probably something with a big fat walnut in the middle.  

But cookie baking is a form of personal sacrifice, and if she is concerned that not going to church after all that work will somehow count against her in the final tally, I would like to suggest that a good long nap is also form of sacred meditation.

But that’s just one opinion. What do YOU think, Dr. Babooner?

Family, Stories, The Baboon Congress

Daddy, We Need to Talk

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Today’s post comes from Steve and Molly Grooms

I think every parent dreads the day when a child asks “that question.” I sure did. And yet it is almost inevitable that some day your child will come to you to ask the question you have avoided for years. And you can’t avoid it any longer.

“Daddy, I have a big question. You have to tell me: Is Santa real?”

This crisis of faith occurred for me when I was in fourth grade. I was playing with classmates during recess when I overheard a conversation that shook me up. One of my more cynical classmates was explaining that Santa Claus was an elaborate fiction. All that stuff about flying reindeer and delivering presents down the chimney was just a lie.

I didn’t join the conversation, but I began debating the issue in my head. I was that kind of kid.

By coincidence, a few weeks later I joined my dad as he ran an errand at his office at Collegiate Manufacturing, his employer in Ames. His office was in the third floor of the old Masonic Building. Because it was three stories tall, that building was one of the tallest structures in Ames.

While Dad fussed with his paperwork, I wandered over to the window on the north side of the building. Ames had a white Christmas that year, getting a drop of about five inches of snow the day before Christmas Eve. I was already experienced in woods wisdom at that age, having played outdoors for years. Looking out over rows of homes I suddenly knew the truth. Every home below me had an unblemished coat of snow, with no marks of sleigh runners and no reindeer footprints. Santa was a fraud.

All that came back to me when I became a parent and began teaching my daughter about Santa Claus. I bought books for her that showed in detail how Santa did his miraculous work. But when she turned nine I could tell she was beginning to harbor doubts.

Just before Christmas that year, the Pioneer Press Dispatch ran a huge color photo of Santa’s sleigh flying through the night sky. At the head of the team of reindeer was one that had a bright red nose. Molly stared at that photo in silent wonder for several minutes. She finally said, “And I was beginning to think Rudolph wasn’t real.”

Weeks later, right after Christmas, Molly came to me with a serious expression. “Daddy, we need to talk.” A group of friends at school had been debating Santa. Some believed in him. Some did not. Molly volunteered to resolve the matter, saying, “I’ll ask my dad.

He always tells me the truth.” The group agreed to let her research the question by talking to me.

With mixed emotions, I told her. As I remember, I made a big deal of the fact “Santa” was a fiction but Christmas love was not. Rather than debunking Santa I told Molly the love of parents was the true Christmas miracle. She instantly joined the great conspiracy to perpetuate the Santa story with younger children, and it touched me to see how hard Molly worked to preserve the secret with kids who still believed.

All this comes to mind because I just got a note from my daughter. For readers who might not know, Liam is my daughter’s five-year-old son. I’ll let Molly finish this story:

Liam came home yesterday, helped himself to a Christmas cookie and said, “Mom, we need to talk. About Santa.”

Santa and Liam - two real guys
Santa and Liam – two real guys

My heart sank. “What about Santa, Hon?”

Liam crammed the rest of the cookie into his mouth, dusted his hands off on his pants and said, “Well, it’s more about his wife.” He leveled a very mature almost-six-year-old look at me and said in a conspiratorial whisper, “She’s not really real, you know. That’s what they say at school.”

After 15 minutes of discussion on the merits of having a wife to look after the elves and reindeer, not to mention to work as an attorney or teacher so that you can essentially run a non-profit for the world’s children, we decided she must really exist after all.

As he left the kitchen in a trail of crumbs and with a red and green sugar cookie mustache, my heart almost broke.

Stay young, little one. Treasure what could be, as well as what is. Believe in magic and your own heart. And dang it–Listen to your mother, not your friends, for just a little longer…

Do you recall how you learned about Santa? Or how you told a child?