That's a good one!

 Emily shared a moment with a friend, long ago.

Top of the Food Chain

 Photo by Jordanne Scott

Meet the newest welder!

 

Our grandchild, Emily, just completed her freshman year at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, and no one could be more proud than we are.

While her major is that old favorite “undecided,” her bent is toward animation and associated crafts.

But the artistic curriculum is broad and she is now a qualified welder! And she has other workshop skills as well. Who knew?

She’s always had a creative, constructive will and constantly surprises us (and teachers) with unusual talent. She’s now grounded with a summer job, directing customers at a nearby overstock enterprise and supporting a car and a closet.

We so enjoy watching her grow and are so pleased with her mother’s job in raising the perfect grandchild. Oh yes. We’ll give aunt Marcy some credit too!

She’s pictured above at grandma’s birthday party.

Back from Hotel California

 Just returned from a lovely spring at our Hotel California, a casita provided me by long-time friend and employee, Hai Dang. The annual sojourns always involve some fun construction projects, the latest there is another nail salon for his enterprising wife, already the master of a very successful one near by.

He's learned the Japanese art of Komiko and has substituted the laborious intricacies with a smart laser cutter that takes direction from software, and not a shop master. The resulting panels are spectacular and truly will make the new salon a one-of-a-kind enterprise. 

Equally spectacular is nature's handiwork on the front porch, and I arrived just in time to see it in its full glory, and present it here.

And now for our own spring entrance, scheduled to appear shortly. C'mon already.

Lucky ladies

 My wife is a gambler, she took a chance on me, but that’s just the beginning of this story.

Her handle is St. Paul Katie at poker home games, where players soon learn not to underestimate little old ladies holding good cards. It’s a family thing, she played cards all her life. As a Lutheran, forbidden to own a deck of the devil’s tools or anything fun like a cap pistol, I tease that it is her Catholic upbringing that lead her down this path. 

She does as she wishes, plays blackjack tables, horses, and so on, but never too much to regret. The lottery is a never-ending must. a little chagrinned, she discreetly always has numbers from various games. She used to consult with her late brother, with that same family trait. I try not to bother her about it, and she reminds me that she doesn’t drink liquor and I have a lifetime of savings to show for it. Point taken. I try to say that she won the lottery already. Not funny.

This weekend, in the company of her daughter, the usual please. She bought a lottery ticket, and won. Won twice, it turns out. 

She relates her tale:

“When Marcy and I were at the convenience store and I was getting the ticket, the little Asian woman wanted to know if Marcy was my daughter. Marcy said ‘yes, we are mother and daughter.'

“Then Marcy says ‘I don’t get tickets because I’m not lucky, but my Mom is.’

“Then the lady says ‘Oh, you are lucky, because you have your mom. I wish I had mine.’

“With that we left the store and I checked my tickets. Of course I was stunned and said ‘Marcy, I just won $500!’’’

Showing more than the usual wisdom you find at a convenience store, the Asian lady had spoken truth. Two lucky women, perhaps one more lucky than the other, with $500 to spend.

The Letnes Luau

 

Welcome to the Tiki Hut Lounge

 Mai Tai? Tropical Smoothie? Mango? Pineapple crisps?

75 degrees, sunny and no bugs!

 Players on the lanai at St. Paul Katie's Poker Club 601 were rewarded with a Hawaiian-themed ambiance yesterday, the clubrooms being readied for the upcoming Letnes Luau Feb. 2. The veterans were not distracted, however, and stuck to their chips in a rousing afternoon of strategy, luck and bad beats. Tom "No Tell" emerged victorious and was followed by Two Buck Theis. Everyone had ample fun and will do it again, perhaps joined by some new players. 

Above, Front row,  Long Shot Laurie, St. Paul Katie. Back row is Two Dollar, Seattle John, and No Tell.

Nanners, Trips Queen, Miss M'liss, Little Bro, Grampa Gary, and others are the handles of potential players rounding out future tables. Many have not played since Covid, and look forward to working out the rust with a rousing game of Texas Hold 'Em.

A capital idea

 It was in the bowels of the Indianapolis Star that I saw my first photo typesetting machine. The Army has lots of Temporary Duty Training opportunities and I grabbed at this one, even though I knew I would be out of service by 1973, God and Nixon willing.

The machine was as big as a refrigerator, and inside its light-tight chamber, a couple of font strips spun madly around an axle, faster than a clothes dryer. A sharp beam of light, timed by something called a computer, shot through the spinning font strip, perfectly timed to expose photo paper with a single letter of the alphabet.

Our squad of Information Specialists from around the country gasped as eventually a cartridge of photo sensitive paper was run through a light-tight box of chemicals, resulting in a column of newspaper type.

Photo offset, huh. A miracle of ingenuity. Little did I know it would be life-changing.

Heretofore, my only experience was akin to that of Johann Gutenberg, stamping ink on paper via letterpress. As a high school newspaper sports editor, I had watched Bud Akers (I think that was his name) manipulate heavy lead slugs into a page of news at the Lake Region Farmer. I couldn’t help notice that a career of heavy metal machines and saws had apparently left Bud missing a few fingers.  I didn’t ask. 

The same Compugraphic refrigerator box was grinding and overheating at the Chaska Herald when I got out of the service and took the only job available to me: an editor at $6 an hour.

The emerging technology and the fast-growing suburb would create a space for me to grow and raise a family. Timing is everything. The new efficiency and innovation of the industry forced the consolidation of smaller papers, collectivizing them into chains and corporations, changing forever the ownership of local news, with profits leaving the community, after expenses were paid.

I was part of that revolution and benefitted from it, the ultimate result of capitalism and its mandate to merge and grow.

I innovated and took advantage of every opportunity presented by the digital age and it brought me a good life. Eventually, all typewriters were replaced, telephones were replaced, paste ups were replaced, floppy disks were replaced.

And then local newspapers were replaced.

Self-publishing enterprises on the internet followed new rules. It was the end of an era, spanning my entire career, lasting just long enough to retire me in comfort.

All the newspapers that I ran are gone now, there are new voluntary groups emerging who have realized what a hole in the quality of life they have left behind in their communities. They are bringing local news to the internet in a whole new way. I wish them well.