The party's over, thanks everyone!

We like to call it “My Birthday Week.” A happy time when you can justify any little selfish thing, with a "But it's my birthday week!" Sadly, even Birthday Weeks must come to an end. You’ve made mine special with all the wishes and nods and memories. Don’t know how many more of these I’ll have, but this was one of the best. The Pride Cake was a fun, free finish to our birthday dinner downstairs, but the tops was when my loved ones circled around and told stories about our best times together, and seeing my healing bride laughing uncontrollably until tears came to her eyes. These are the good times I shall never forget. 

So thank you,
for whatever your part. 

The sun has set on a wonderful day.

They came for the fireworks, stayed for Paul's ice cream

We watched seven fireworks displays from our Crow's Nest patio vantage point last night. 

Weather was perfect, overcast and we watched what seemed to be a more extravagant than usual program at Mystic Lake and Valleyfair.  

We had invited the neighbors who don't have the same vantage point, and enjoyed identifying the various city displays and separating them from the amateur attempts all around the city.

Overcast clouds created a magical background, reflecting brilliant colors in the lower reaches.

Joining us was Marty, who also often watches the Twins ballgames with Kathleen and Stan, our nephews Alex and Aaron, and a family from the fourth floor that we've enjoyed, Elizabeth, Paul and their son, Sander. 

Paul got an ice cream maker for Father's Day and made good use of it last night, treating us to scoops of banana and chocolate homemade delights.

You asked what I want for my birthday? At 76?

What do I want for my birthday at age 76?

Not much, really. I'll make a list.

1. I’d like the Twins ballgame to be on the same station every game, and for  greedy Major League Baseball to quit selling their loyal followers as pawns in the incessant battles for media dominance. Apple TV? Peacock? Fox 9? Bally? Pay per View? Where? What time slot?

(Love the day when you could press WCCO, and hear a long 10 second pause before Herb Carneil would break in with a simple: “Strike two”  or a remark from Halsey Hall. Calm pastime. No ratatatat endless commentary from old players rehashing their careers and repetitious theories.)

2. I wish there were 50 channels on television and I could just buy the five that I watch. I think that I buy 1000 of them now, carrying dismal old offerings or fake real tv just to access what I want with difficulty. 1000 channels and nothing to watch. Unbundle!

3. I want our oligarchs to treat their customers as number one, and not make them wait in line, talking to artificial intelligence. Pay big for quality customer contact. Don't seek the cheapest help. Cut cost elsewhere.

4. I wish news stations would not be controlled by marketing departments, so that they could just tell us what they know, instead of making us guess, and tease us through the next ten or so 15 second commercials. I don’t want to “find out who.” Just tell me.

5. l wish to reduce food prices by not displaying thousands of choices.

6. I wish I could control my laptop and phone, and didn’t have to constantly re-learn them due to upgrades and improvements done for “my convenience.”

7. I wish people wouldn’t wrap fresh fruit and vegetables in separate plastic bags, when they are already wrapped by nature and priced by the grocer.

That’s what I want for my birthday, and I promise I won’t ask for anything else.

 

Intelligence. Is it bigger than a bread box?

 Measuring raw intelligence, like measuring any other subjective three-dimensional entity, challenges scholars to an eternal conundrum. What is it? Who decides? 

Nevertheless, science keeps trying, refining its wandering methodology, keeping up with the times.

My siblings and I, and others, got tested for our supply of intelligence in grade school. The results were withheld, ostensibly because someone thought we were better off not knowing. But child mythology holds that my sister Linda was somehow able to break through the ropes and holds a unique knowledge of them.

The discredited questionnaires and problems are heavily skewed to the European culture, and therefore give questionable results, but just enough to provide ammo for a garden-variety white supremest. So, like the bygone skull-measuring techniques, I’ve never given them much credence.

But, 60 years later, it would be fun to know the results of that grade school test, at least to compare myself to other privileged white folks of European culture, who took the same quizzes years ago.

So Linda, is it true that you got a look at those scores and squirreled them away or is that just a family myth? It doesn’t change anything, our lives are what they are. But, with the internet holding forth on everything, it would be entertaining to know, just so I could enter the number into some nonsense internet comparisons.

_________________________

Postscript: Indeed, she has the numbers. She graciously but cautiously shared  mine, and inkled others. I promised not to tell. So let the fun begin, and let the internet soothsayers and gurus tell me the inner-hidden-deeper-secret-meanings to all this foolishness. 

Thanks for the info, Linda. Sorry about your score. Just kidding.

I have great words, no really

For all his faults, Dad had a great vocabulary. Like Donald Trump, he knew all the words, great words. Only Dad really did know the words, and used them daily and generously on us.

Dad knew virtually nothing about fishing, hunting, the internal combustion engine, baseball, popular music. He knew nothing about dancing, girlfriends, prom, smoking, drinking, football, curse words, but he knew those things were bad and forbade all of them. So Dad was pretty much useless in my development as a teen. He actually wanted me to become a minister, of all things, exhibiting a horrible lack of insight.

But he did have a fantastic vocabulary, and every day he used it on us, unsparingly. So often when I do the daily New York Times crossword puzzle and have to dig back into all the synonyms he put into my brain, I have to acknowledge that fact. I still know little about women, fishing, hunting, the internal combustion engine, etc, but I have self-taught many other skills and have done ok at some of them. 

And I am one helluva crossword solver. Thanks, Dad.

An old spy wonders

 Dear Solveig,

It was as forbidden as rubber-necking on our party-line. Everybody did it. First off, rubber-necking or listening in on other people’s conversations, was, of course, frowned upon. But it was great entertainment if you were bored and had no tv. An internet of random gossip in the 50s that stretched from farm-to-farm on one skinny wire. 

So why did the phone company introduce the “snooper button” on the 1958 or so models, that encouraged you to listen in without being heard? Sort of a half-mute button that let you listen with impunity to your neighbor's personal soap opera without ever being detected? Instructions were to pick up the phone, and if anyone was using it, politely hang it up, and let them finish their private conversation. Simple party-line etiquette. Yeah, right.

But that’s not what I’m wondering about today. Our gifted mother used to give lessons in the music room, keeping the big sliding oaken door shut, while her student sat at the grand piano and plunked out that week’s private lesson. Took about a half hour and then the next student filed in. Mom worked from home, long before it became popular.

Meanwhile, their parents, siblings or others would sit idly in our combination living-dining-waiting area. This room was closed off by a four-panel oak door, latched from the kitchen side, where six kids washed, cooked, churned butter, ate or did whatever else needed to be done. It was not spacious.

That dividing oak door had a shrunken panel in it that was slightly smaller than its opening, leaving a crack, a slit, just wide enough to spy on the people waiting in the living room. It was forbidden to look through it of course. Everybody did it, of course. It was great entertainment, especially when two adults were having a personal conversation.

Maybe not everybody could do it. So Solveig, my little sister, I was wondering? Were you ever tall enough to peek through the forbidden crack? Did you ever use a stool? I know that big Susan Ahlberg was just tall enough to look through from the other side, as a very tall blond alto junior, taking voice lessons. I know she peeked at us washing dishes once.

I have no idea why this question comes up 70 years later, but I was sorting through some memories and this question arose. Please help.

Your six foot brother, Stan.

--------------------------------------------

This morning, Solveig responded:

Enjoy the entries and passage-of-time perspective. Have an answer to today’s question, but am too exhausted to battle further with Mr Google who has verified my email address twice and phone number once with passcodes, but still doesn’t accept me. 

So I answer directly:

As a child who was seen and not heard, I specialized in observation.  Did I observe thru a crack in the door?  You betcha!  Got some of my first data on how people interact if they aren’t Rolfsruds. How? By pulling over the nested pair of benches tucked under the fold-away table on the yellow-speckled linoleum in that small room of many functions and stepping up for a live reality show. 

Another source was Mama Jo Elness’ phone conversations. I would position myself nearby when she picked up the receiver on her wall candlestick phone. I learned sophisticated phrases like “By the way” and “the wall has ears.”  Mama Jo was savvy to her quiet borrowed child and when her conversations got interesting, she switched to Norwegian. I understood why and I knew there were secrets I’d only learn if she told Papa Si at night when she didn’t see me listening. 

Helped me get a BA degree in Human Growth and Development with an emphasis in Behavior Modification. 

Good source

What Is It? What's it Called? Name it.

There’s something about a plant that makes you want to name it. We enjoy looking at flowers, magnificent displays, but invariably someone will ask. What is it?

Okay, I’m one of those who will ask the question, be told a name, then promptly forget it, asking the same question again when it is seen again.

No more.  This morning I downloaded a free plant identifier app, Plantnet, goofed around with it for a while, and now I am prepared to answer the floral question: What is it?

You may already have the same app, or perhaps you’re a lucky sort that can remember the names of the flora that abounds around us. Or maybe you don’t care, or don’t need to name. Whatever.

Anyway, while biking around the pond today, I noticed again the very common plant I see every where. Ditches, pathways, meadows. I always thought it looked like alfalfa, ready for its first cutting. 

To confirm it, I pulled over today under a huge elm (?) and took a picture of this weed? ground cover? alfalfa hay? Since I was out of range of any wifi connection, I just stored a picture for future identification.

What is it? It's not alfalfa.

It's Crownvetch. Purple crown vetch. Coronilla Varia L.

Anybody name this tree?

Postscript from Wikipedia:

Crownvetch has been identified as an invasive in several midwestern states. It is very hard to eradicate once established.^[8]

It is also a common host-plant for the moth.

 

The Road Not Taken

Contemplation station. Triker has paused and parked along Staring Lake.

Whenever taking the 2.3 mile nature trail around Staring Lake in Eden Prairie, I can’t help think of my old friend Tom Lapic. He was my Chanhassen Villager editor back in 1990, and I think the most unique ever.

If ever he had an issue that we needed to talk over, he’d suggest a nice long hike around this convenient lake, the perfect size to work out most any problem.

He was a 30-something, junk-food vegetarian bachelor at the time, a failed priest (sorta, I teased), a tree-hugger, and, gasp, a proud liberal when radio-talk was systematically vilifying that word. In short, a very interesting character, who was aware of his unique viewpoints and conscientiously strove to find a balance in the newspaper for his conservative, white, suburban audience, who came to respect his honesty, fairness, and diligence.

I was happy for him and impressed when U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone asked him to come to work for him. Tom asked me what he should do, as we rounded our lake, and though secretly I wanted him to stay, I had to advise him to follow this opportunity and make the most of it. He did. Until, as many of you know, Tom was killed in a 2002 campaign plane crash with his boss, near Eveleth, Minnesota.

He had lousy feet, and his dogs were barking that day. So we took a fork in the trail, one less traveled, that shortened our usual distance, made it easier. And our problem solving was over for the day any way.

Today, thinking of the road not travelled and such, I wondered, had he not chosen a different career path that day, would we still be taking that nature trail and working out problems, enjoying the magnificent passage around Staring Lake?

I know. I know. But I can’t help it. I do miss the man.

All color is no color

 “Don’t worry about bright summer colors,” my sister advised. “Your plants will carry the colors, and you can change them at will. “

She was right. We picked patio furniture color from a basic palette of gray and black, delivered last season to our roof
top nest on top of our building.

It took a year of disasters to figure it out, but we finally settled on the sturdy moss rose, also known as Portulaca. Our rooftop deck is a bit like a desert, bright sunshine, no shade, windy and forbidding at times, calm and still at others. The only consistent fact is that mosquitoes have yet to find this 7th floor haven.

We tried petunias, vines, and all sorts of posies to no avail. But our moss rose, with its short stems and thin succulent leaves, complements the gaily colored bloom, and is perfectly adapted to this odd environment.

Thanks, Becky, we might have purchased a neon purple patio set, you were right, we’re now looking at the colorful flowers, not furniture.