Veiled Worry

  My fear of being buried alive began when Sister Eubestrabius told us the story of a man who was being considered for sainthood. The Devil's Advocate ordered the candidate's body exhumed. Hair was found under the corpse's fingernails. It was surmised that he had come back to life in his coffin. Naturally enough he went mad and possibly cursed God. Sainthood denied. You really shouldn't tell stories like that to young children. In fact I feel bad repeating it even now.
  Then our scoutmaster read us Edgar Allan Poe's The Cask of the Amontillado about a guy who gets his rival drunk and walls him up in the depths of his wine cellar. When I told my aunt about this she asked if I'd heard about the soldier who'd been found walled up in the fort on Castle Island in Boston Harbor. It was surmised that his enemies had done away with him. His disappearance was dated back to the time that Edgar Allen Poe had served as a soldier at the fort. Not that Poe was involved, but he probably heard rumors which inspired The Cask.
  I was just a kid, but I was already worried about being buried alive. My mother said that in these days of embalming, there was no way a person could survive the funeral. But lately I've opted for cremation to save money. Now I picture myself waking up as my coffin is being conveyed into the furnace.
  There's a school on the shores of Lake Superior where you can make your own coffin. I'm going to install a little popup flag that can be operated from inside. My will shall specify that no one gets nothing till someone from the family witnesses my coffin reduced to ashes.

Red-Neck Summer Camp

  The lead article in a recent New Yorker said that Donald Trump won the Republican primaries because he tapped into white discontent. Certain whites, those who jumped into marriage before college, and now find themselves old, divorced, and poor; have but three choices: alcohol; opioids; and suicide. The New Yorker calls this despair. But to those living it, it's just another day.
  David Brooks, the columnist, admitted in a recent column that he had been blindsided by the Trump triumph. His explanation to himself was that he had been hanging around too much with people of his own ilk. He wanted to do something about this but did not say how. Perhaps he'll lunch at Manhattan's Country & Western themed restaurants.
  Getting in touch with the lower depths takes time. It may be too late for Columnist Brooks. But not too late for his children. At the least, he needs to send his kids to Redneck Summer Camp. I know it sounds scary. But your child can start gently, in a Red county in a Blue state: e.g. Roseau County in northwestern Minnesota.   Your child will spend his or her week with a certified and screened family of the redneck persuasion. You'll surely shake your head over the duct tape hammocks  your child has crafted, and possibly throw up over the redneck truck stunts gone wrong your child took part in. But hey, your kid made it home, albeit with a first degree sunburn. As you sit by your child's hospital bed, there'll be time to debate with them whether liberalism is or is not a mental disorder.

Out of the Tar Pits

If you ever get out to Los Angeles, be sure to visit the La Brea Tar Pits. They're amazing. I first learned of them in a comic book at age ten. I already had a fascination with quicksand, but with quicksand, you can always grab an overhanging vine and you'll be ok. In the tar pits however, your a gonner. It was mostly mammoths and saber tooth cats that sank into the pits. Also dire wolves. Many dire wolves. As well as every other creature that roamed the area.
  Most animals are too cautious to step into a pit of bubbling tar. But during the winter the pits would crust over. Leaves would blow onto the crust and soon the pit had it's next victim. This was all shown in my book. First the mammoth would get stuck, then the saber tooth cat would attack the struggling mammoth and he was a victim too. Pathetic.  I resolved to visit La Brea even though my home at the time was 3,000 miles away.
  When my son passed through LA I insisted he visit LaBrea. He said it was just ok. He hadn't read the comic book at the right age. It took three trips to LA before I finally managed a visit to the tar pits. Our friend Ana was living in LA at the time and she got her dad to watch her three little girls while she drove us to the site. I imagined the tar pits would be off in some deserted part of town with just a road and a small visitor center, but I was wrong. The tar pits were surrounded by one of LA's many downtowns. We had to use a parking garage. Only a few acres remain of the original extensive tar bogs. Within a fenced area you can still see pits. A big museum displays the reassembled fossils. Out back there's active excavation going on at Pit 91.
 A photo in the museum shows the scene in the early 1900s. It was then the desolate scene I had imagined, with several oil drilling rigs in the background. For many years people had been using asphalt from the pits to patch boats and roofs. In the early 1900s scientists finally figured out the bones in the pits were ancient fossils. Animals had been getting stuck in the pits for 40,000 years. Most of the fossils were retrieved between 1913-14. They focused on the large animals and birds. In the late 1960s they started excavating again, concentrating on smaller animals, rodents, seeds, etc. It was cathartic for me to understand how all this came together. Only one human has been found in the pits. But probably the most haunting image was the dozens and dozens of dire wolf skulls lined up on back lit walls as though they were precious art objects, which they are.

Would you walk out here for a $100 bill?

Listen To Your Expert

  There's a non-descript little reed that grows in the shady lowlands of the woods that I usually ignore until the time of the black and white world of winter when I am able to cross the frozen river. Then I walk the deer maze trails through a miniature forest of 24 inch drinking straws. I've always wondered what the name of this plant was and recently uprooted one and took it to the local DNR station. The first guy I asked said, "Show it to Larry, he's our plant guy." Larry was in his cubicle, busy on his computer. "Horsetail," he said, barely glancing at my sample. "This doesn't look like the horsetails I've seen," I said, but Larry didn't seem to hear me. The horsetail I knew was fernlike. This was more of a rat tail.

  Someone had told me about an app that can identify plants. I checked the app store. One app was free and had three stars. The other cost ninety-nine cents and had five stars. I got the free one and took a picture of my sample. "Don't know," said the app, but it did make some wild guesses. I took a picture of some kale. "Salad lettuce." How about this blooming Christmas cactus. "Christmas cactus." One out of three isn't very good. "Would you like to ask an expert? Only $1.98." What the heck, I submitted my pic and password. "Please submit another pic from a different angle." I took a full length pic next to a ruler for scale. A couple of hours later the expert replied: "Since your picture has nothing to indicate scale, we can't tell what you have, but here are some possibilities for your area." Guess my second pic never arrived. My expert listed four types of horsetail of various heights. Horsetail number two, the Field Horsetail is 28" tall. So where's the fern? I checked Wiki. The female field horsetail, what I had, produces spores which then grow into the ferny males. The ferns can be made into a tea, good for diarrhea.

  A bit later I got an email from the app itself, asking me to rate this app. I think I'll leave them guessing.

Horsetails in Winter

The Literate Emoji

"University of Minnesota Research finds Emojis can often be misread."--Star Tribune

  Early Emojis were homemade: :) for happy, :( for sad, <<< go away. I refused to use these because I hadn't thought them up myself. It wasn't long before ready made yellow Emojis began appearing everywhere. The worst were the gifs, the moving ones, the laughing, the crying, the barfing ones. No way would I condescend. But then I noticed an emoji key for my texts and emails on my phone keyboard. The party animals I know would send three to four wineglass emojis. OK, I'll try one wine glass. Just one. Well my life didn't suddenly get worse. Neither did it get any better. At least no one showed up to confiscate my diplomas. I actually found the smiling emoji useful to terminate an exchange of texts that was going nowhere. 🙂  How do you respond to that? You don't.

  Now I read this study from a prestigious university saying that a smiley face sent from an Apple device may be received as a frowny face on a Google device. Son of a biscuit! Not only that, some people perceive a smiling face as patronizing or smirky. You just can't win.

  From now on, I'm going to spell out my emojis. e.g. "smiley face here," or "empathic face," or whatever the situation requires. Words are more subtle, more flexible than images. I can describe a smiley face with a quizzical, or querulous left or right eyebrow. My empathic face can also say, that's all well and good my friend, but shouldn't you really get a job? 🍷🍷

Palmville Joe

                         In The Middle Country

                                       (Sculptress unknown)
 
  I am usually content to enjoy life here in Palmville Township (pop. 42), but in early spring, having survived a long winter, I grow restless and long for the open road. I usually leave home early on my birthday (March 26)  and drive west into Dakota country. This year my birthday was on Easter weekend so I set my trip back a week.
  Now that I'm on the retirement track, I can come and go as I please. I started looking at the long range forecast which I know is mostly guesswork. Wednesday, April sixth looked sunny out west, though it might be raining at home. I'd be driving into the sunshine. Next I consulted the live music schedule at Laughing Sun Brewery in downtown Bismarck, ND. Bismarck is exactly 400 miles from Palmville; as far as I care to drive per day when I'm supposed to be having fun. Laughing Sun is a great little place if you like freshly brewed beer. They also have live music almost every night, mostly blues, folk, jazz, etc.  On Wednesday "Boston Steve (the last of the hippies)" would be performing. I gotta be there! I grew up in Boston. I pictured myself handing this guy a beer during the break and saying, "Hey Boston Steve, what part of Boston are you from?" As a hippie, he'd be around my age and maybe he'd be from my neighborhood and we'd swap yarns about good, old Rozzie and catch up on who was above ground and who was not.
  I got up early on Wednesday, kissed my wee lass goodbye, and fired up old Nellie, my 2006 Corolla with 180,000 trouble-free miles on it. Always an adventure. The long-range forecast for Roseau County was dead on: it was snowing and there were two inches of the wet, heavy stuff on the ground that will flip you in the ditch without thinking twice. I kept my speed to 50. I was the first set of tracks on the road to Strathcona and I was amazed at all the deer tracks in the fresh snow. I slowed to 45.
  The first signs of day appeared as I crossed the Red River at Robbin. I can't say the sky was streaked with light. It was more like a 15 watt bulb encased in wax. At least the road was clear as I persisted on through Grafton and Park River. It was rush hour now for people going to work in these prosperous towns. Beyond that I began passing through the not so prosperous towns. Most of these towns were settled a hundred or so years ago and they were important to the people who lived in and around them. Few people owned cars back then and the roads were terrible, so each town needed its own churches, a school, a bank, hotel, hardware and grocery stores, cafes...everything a person could need within a seven mile walk. As the roads and the cars improved, many of these towns sank into obscurity. Through some Darwinian struggle one town in the center of a 50 or 60 mile circle would emerge the winner and people would drive there for their needs. The weaker towns would gradually lose all or most of their attractions. The bank was the first to go, then the school would consolidate in another town. Next the grocery store would close and last and most lamented, the café would give up. But I'm painting too bleak a picture. Many of these shrunken towns still support a bar where you can get a pizza or a pickled egg. The church still has Sunday services with a circuit riding pastor, and almost always, the Senior Center will  have a few cars parked out front. As a senior myself I find this encouraging and sometimes stop in. There is always coffee on and the denizens are delighted to see a new face.
  I never like getting up at 4:15 a.m. but by the time I passed Adams and headed south, criss-crossing my way along less travelled roads towards Devils Lake, I started getting into the trip. I had left behind the flatlands of the Red River Valley and the rough country that edges the valley and had emerged on that high rolling country where you can see in all directions for many miles. This is where the cobwebby thoughts of winter get blown away and a health-giving peace settles upon my brain.
  Devils Lake is a most prosperous town. It even has Amtrack service. It was busy with kids headed to school. I passed out of town on the amazing causeway that was raised a few years ago above the swelling lake. Numerous birds rode the whitecaps that covered the lake. I thought I saw a distant flash of sun on the hills, but it continued overcast in my vicinity.
  I stopped at ten for breakfast in Harvey. When I stopped here last year and asked for directions to the café, I was told that there was a really good café in town, but that sadly it had just burned down. But they would be rebuilding. I found the place this day in a new cinderblock building on a side street. It looked like they had salvaged the sign from the old place. That sign was the only cozy thing about the place. The interior resembled a small auditorium. A radio talk show buzzed out of a bad speaker, possibly saved from the fire as well. There were only a few diners at this odd hour. "Coffee please." Ah, they have half orders of biscuits and gravy. I am a connoisseur of b.& g. I eat them all over the country, awarding stars (up to five) based on my own unique standards. This café received three stars. The biscuits were forgettable, and I only recall them to write this review. You can't just heap on the gravy in hopes that people won't notice the sadness of the biscuit. The gravy itself was pretty good, and it contained a small bone fragment. I awarded points for this as it indicated meat from a real cow.
  From Harvey I went out of my way a bit up to Anamoose in order to take new to me back roads into Washburn, home of the Fort Mandan Interpretive Center. Lewis and Clark built a fort near Washburn in 1804 and spent five months waiting out the winter. If the local Indians had not shared their food, the expedition may well have foundered. There is a replica of the fort nearby, though no one knows exactly where the original stood, the site probably now being under the meandering Missouri. The interpretive center is well done, very most interesting. The Lewis and Clark expedition took place over two hundred years ago, and though there were many, many artifacts sent back east, the vicissitudes of time have swallowed up many of them. Those that remain are jealously guarded. This interpretive center only had two. One was a button from an army coat, found during the excavation of a nearby Indian village. It is presumed to have belonged to a member of the expedition, possibly even to Clark. The button did not make the entire trip. The other artifact however did travel to the Pacific and back east. It is a small brass hasp from one of the journals used to record the trip. These several journals ended up in a scientific society in Philadelphia. In the late 1800s a scholar was given permission to take the journals home so he could edit them for publication. Crazy! This joker pried off several of the hasps and gave them to his buddies as souvenirs. Somehow this particular hasp made its way back to the authorities who kindly granted it to the Washburn Center where is sits under glass in a place of honor. That little hasp is the kind of thing I'll travel 350 miles to see.

                                                 (Boot of Clark, replica)

                                                    (The hasp, authentic)
 
  But Boston Steve awaited another forty miles down the road. I checked into my hotel at 3:30 and took it easy till showtime. The sun came out! Great. I liked that, because I planned to walk the 1.8 miles downtown so I could enjoy my beer with a clear conscience. At 5:30 I headed for town, but as I went out the door I banged my hand and my knuckle started bleeding. Dang! I returned to my room to staunch the flow, then noticed my whiskers needed trimming. The snipped hairs bedecked my clean shirt so I removed it. I was going backwards here. Then I heard a terrible rattling on my window. A heavy shower was drenching Bismarck. Now I was glad I had wounded myself. I would have gotten soaked. The rain soon quit and I carefully shut the door as I went out. There's a gentle downward slope towards the river and my path went through the grounds of the state capitol, a pleasant place to walk unless it starts to thunder, as it did now. I scooted through the grounds and headed for an alleyway, hoping I could duck under a carport if it started to rain, which it did with vigor. I spotted a three car garage with a wide overhang and scrunched myself against the door hoping I wasn't triggering a security light. A car passed up the alley and turned into its own garage across the way. Ten minutes later the rain quit and I continued on my way. One point eight miles is a long way when exposed to passing showers. I was still a good half mile from my goal when the rain began again. I was now in the older part of town. The houses had big porches, but there were lights on inside. I spotted a big spruce with tent like branches and darted in there, invisible to the world and perfectly dry.
  Now the sun came out for good and a beautiful rainbow as well. I made my way to the Toasted Frog, a place I know well, and ordered my favorite Vietnamese shrimp. "Sorry sir, we don't serve that anymore." I was disappointed, but I'm a trooper and got the scallops instead.
  Now it was time to meet my old Boston buddy. Laughing Sun Brewery is long and narrow inside, with tables along its length, and a short, low bar and small stage up front. You couldn't get more cozy. I took a seat at the bar and ordered their darkest, freshest brew. Boston Steve was just about to start, accompanied by a fellow guitarist who I'll call Bismarck John. Someone mentioned that Merle Haggard, age 79, had died that day. A hush fell over the crowd, then someone called for "Okie From Muskogee." "I don't have the words," Steve said. He motioned to an older gentleman, a regular obviously, to join him on the stage. With some effort this fellow got onto the stage, took the mike, and made Merle proud, if he was looking down on us just then.
  That was the last truly Country song of the night. Steve had a lyric book thick with pop songs of his and my day. He was pretty good on the guitar and John was even better. During the break I grabbed their mugs and got them refills. "So Steve," I said. "What part of Boston are you from?" "I'm from Portland, Maine, actually," he replied.
  OK. I get it. Maine Steve sounds like he's saying he's the main man. And if he went by Portland Steve, he'd be disappointing all the Oregonians. I suppose from Bismarck Portland looks like a suburb of Boston.
  I had a pleasant and dry walk back to the inn. Slept well. Had surprisingly good biscuits and g. at the inn's continental breakfast (four stars). Even talked to the chef. "I doctor up the canned stuff," she said.
  And so I hit the homeward road, enjoying the sun-kissed buttes and listening to my favorite road tape, "Dead Souls" by Nikolai Gogol. That great epic of the road.

                             (Cloudometer, downtown Bismarck)

  --Thanks to Joe Stenzel for encouraging me to add color to my blog.
 

Slippers On The Ground

  We seniors are sick of terrorism, but what can we do other than watch cable news all day and vote for the guy who says he'll drop the most bombs. Our enemy is young, fit and tireless while we are old, slack, and addicted to naps. The terrorists entice new recruits with videos of beheadings. I'm looking at a  recruitment video for a new organization called OMAI: Old Men Against ISIS. We codgers are certainly not going to the battlefield. We'd soon become fodder for a new round of beheading videos. Rather we will go to work at the nearest Air Force base where we will be trained to operate drones. Since we're not members of the military, we're not allowed to kill anyone. Our strategy will be distraction, annoyance, disaffection (DAD); things we're already good at. We'll be piloting mini-drones such as people are already using here to scare their neighbors. These drones are vulnerable to a well thrown roll of toilet paper, but our drones will use the latest stealth technology. We will fly onto the battlefield in Iraq or Syria and as an ISIS or an ISIL fighter is about to fire his rifle, we'll hoist his shirt over his head using old Three Stooges technology. When he frees himself, we squirt honey in his face to teach him life is sweet, don't waste it, punk. Finally, we'll leave him a flash drive with instructions on how to turn himself in plus a coupon for one year off his sentence.
  Congress has funded the OMAI program, less pilot salaries, however we can claim expenses on our tax return. And, depending on who wins the election, there might a free massage after the first hundred missions.