Scottish swans--apparently not royal

Why don't we have the president's swans? It would a lot better than other things the current prexy and his gang have given us. Or maybe we should bite the bullet and have a constitutional monarch. Then there would be some limitations on what the leader of the free world could do.

Back to the royal swans. Apparently the queen does not have jurisdiction over Scottish swans, but only those in England and Wales. Click on the title of this post for some arcane info. about royal swans.

Feline victories

Life is made up of small victories. I now have one of these in the cat medication department. After months of trying to give our elderly female cat thyroid pills, and failing, I found a solution. Literally. The solution is to have the medication ground up in a fish paste solution, and then drip it carefully--not too much--on each cat kibble piece. This sounds tedious, but it's significantly better than the previous efforts.

These efforts involved trying to get her to swallow the pill. Let's just say that for an indoor cat she has very sharp claws. Then we tried grinding up the pill ourselves and hiding the pill dust in cream, ice cream, chicken soup, anything. She would eat the delicacies, and leave the pill crumbs. Then I tried giving her the fish paste by itself, heating it up a little to release the irresitable eau de haddock. She would look at me and laugh, in her funny cat way. She's smart, for an old broad.

The fish paste mechanism costs $60 a bottle, and she will go through a bottle a month for what I hope is a long life. The vet warned us, menacingly, that if we didn't do something, she would die. And indeed, she was down to about five pouds, with a ratty looking coat. Now she's sleek, and while not precisely fat, she no longer looks like a cartoon alley cat.

It's worth it. She's a good cat. And, I'd probably do something foolish with that extra $60 a month, anyway.

Wisconsin in Scotland--Students Arrive

Apparently the pub directly outside the manor house in Dalkeith has a banner, Welcome University of Wisconsin Students, flying proudly out front. Conveniently located, the pub allows students to stumble home in about 100 yards. You can take the students out of Wisconsin, but you can't take Wisconsin out of the students....they drink wherever they are. The first official event for them was a one hour lecture on responsible drinking. All faculty were also required to attend....

Scotland Forever

Students arriving at Dalkeith are greeted by a piper. I suspect Scotland has raised more money from the tourism/piper industry than it ever did from coal or oil. But bigger even than the pipes is the Scots diaspora--from the 18th century on, an overwhelming number of people left Scotland for greener pastures (actually, any pastures), in Canada, the United States, and Australia. Scratch almost anyone in these places, and you'll find a displaced Scot. So maybe the students have a genetic thrill to the sound of the pipes.

Bush comes to Minneapolis

As part of his initiative for American competition, Bush showed up in front of a hand-picked audience of 3M employees yesterday. He said nothing, promised nothing, but had his piacture taken with the well-scrubbed, nice looking 3M types, several of whom were black. That boy never misses an opportunity to pander to almost anyone. That's why he's so popular with the hard right types--the plutocrats clear their throats, and GW bends over. It's kind of like a wind up toy--they cough, he bends....

Journey to the Northern Counties

OLGS has arrived in Scotland, and is exploring the castle. Joe High School (the swimmer) and I will join him in March--after the end of the Minnesota High School League's swimming season. Joe will attend Dalkeith High, which may be even less tony than Minneapolis South High. We shall see. There is apparently a pool....

Keep in Touch

My mother, who apparently sees this blog as a window into the lives of her children and grandchildren, complained that I hadn't updated these postings recently. I do wonder why I haven't. I am working incredibly long hours, volunteering at swim meets, and trying to read a book or two once in a while. But there's got to be a reason. Is it because there's nothing to say? Are world and national events so demoralizing that I shrink from tackling them, even at the most superficial level? Possibly, but right now I'm too tired to tackle even that.

I talked with a colleague who was at one time a stalwart in the Minnesota Atheists. This has to be a fairly small, but enthusiastic, affinity group. But she eventually backed off, even though it was pretty clear she still supported the aims of the group. "Too social", she said. Too many activities.

And that may be my problem. Too much going on that absorbs the attention but doesn't really produce anything, either materially or intellectually. I could tell you about all the swim meets that I've attended since I last discussed them, or OLGS's trip down memory lane in New York with Joe College Grad, his long-lost cousin, and his sister. I could describe what he saw at PS 107 when he visited Joe College Grad's first grade classroom. I could whine about the difficulty of figuring out whether I should keep working at an independent contractor, or go to Scotland for two months. I could complain about the noise where I work, a place that is devoted to legal publishing and writing, but where writers and client interviewers are housed among very loud sales types, who spend hours doing nothing and talking about it excessively while the writers who are actually developing the product have to apologize to clients over the phone about the noise. End of rant.

Upstate New York

Thoughts about blogging--you can see where your visitors are--sort of, although people coming in on MSN always come through Redmond, Washington. A few of my readers come from upstate New York, around Syracuse, Rochester, and Utica. After the Hudson River Valley, that area of New York is one of my favorite places. Parts of it are a little flat for my taste, but that's how I felt before I lived in Minnesota, and really knew what flat could be.

Otherwise, New York has it all. Snow, seasons, water, and a central position in American history. In fact, I wrote an MA history thesis on a little-known(but culturally important even today) aspect of US religious history that flowered in this part of New York. And there's the Erie Canal, which, as every sixth-grader knows, was critical to development of New York and the US.

I used to take the Lake Shore Limited from Poughkeepsie to Rochester. In those days the train arrived in Rochester in the middle of the night, and I was always worred about missing the stop and ending up in Buffalo. So I would wake up around Syracuse, and watch the lights from the Thruway and the tiny towns flash by. Those little towns have been there since the American Revolution and before, settled by Massachusetts Yankees who couldn't stomach the enforced rectitude and poor farm land of New England. That probably gave the place an interesting edge.

The only passenger train going across Minnesota is the Empire Builder, named for James J. Hill. That train, unlike James J. himself, is almost always late, sometimes by many hours or even days. The visonaries who built the railroad across upstate New York after the Erie Canal would have been horrified. But that was then....

You can't get there from Here

Every state in New England, at least northern New England, claims to be the grandpapa of this saying. A flatlander visiting Vermont, or Maine, or Massachusetts, or New Hampshire, so the story goes, asked a native how to get to the next town. The response, "You can't get there from here," delivered with the flat vowels and unpronounced r's of New England, has become legendary. Part of the reason it's legendary is because it's actually true, at least in spirt.

But the native had it all wrong. It's not, "You can't get there from here." Rather, the phrase should be, "If you don't know how to get there, you don't belong there." Exhibit A: if you are driving along a major city street, say in a large city (for New England) like Worcester, you will not be able to identify the street on which you are driving. You will see the names of all the cross streets, but the name of the street you're currently on will remain unattainable to you. You might luck out and see it on a diner sign, or a pizza parlor, or a grinder shop. But the city fathers in Worcester have decided that if you don't know where you are, you don't deserve to find out. And in this they are right in step with the rest of northern New England. No wonder the place has flat population numbers. People get lost, give up, and leave.

And have we talked about those things the English call roundabouts? Next time.

Home for the Holidays

I just had a moment of sheer terror. Joe College Grad assured me that he would call last night to provide flight info. There was no call--a late night buzz of his cell phone went unanswered. Then, OLGS tried to call him a few minutes ago. No answer. I had visions of Joe lying in an alley in New York, the cell phone ringing uselessly. Then I tried to call. He answered, and there was the noise of an airport behind his voice. He is flying out of JFK, on a DC-9 bound for Billings, of all places. He sounded bored, sleepy, and a little annoyed that we were bothering him. He sounded wonderful.

Death Penalty

There's been another state-sponsored death--this time in California. The victim was a gang leader who supposedly saw the error of his ways and spent his years on Death Row writing children's books and generally promoting a more positive approach to life than the one he espoused during his gang days. Some opponents of this execution cited Stanley Tookie Williams' turn-around as a reason to not execute him. And, while well meaning, they have it all wrong. Whether or not someone deserves the death penalty, or merits clemency in the application of that penalty, is not the issue.

Rather, the real issue is that the death penalty itself, and not its application, is wrong, wrong, wrong. It is unconstitutional, violating the prohibition of "cruel and unusual punishment." It makes us an outlaw among "civilized" nations, putting us among the ranks of places like Saudi Arabia, Singapore, China, and other monuments to barbarism. It weakens us as a culture, making us vengeful and petty. It is very expensive to administer. It has been demonstrated that the application of the death penalty is often based on incorrect evidence, poor lawyering, and racism. The list of reasons to abolish the death penalty is huge.

The reasons to keep it are few, and can easily dismissed. It has been shown that there is no deterrent effect. Many victims' families say that that the death of the perpetrator of the crime does not bring them relief.

And then there's the incredible inconsistency in the arguments. The proponents of the death penalty are often the same folks who beat their breasts about the right to life and the evils of the pro-choice movement. If life is so sacred at its beginning, what possible reason can there be for making an exception to end it at the behest of the state? There's some real faulty logic going on, as well as a sickening pandering to our most base instincts. Just because a few individuals would like revenge doesn't mean that we as a society should accomodate them--it has been shown that there is no social benefit, and a lot of social cost.

Minneapolis South High Swimming

Another swim meet. It's now the boys high school season, and after two weeks two meets have already taken place. It's going to be a rough season. All Minneapolis meets take place at Southwest High School, the only high school in Minneapolis with a pool. I try not to think of the facilities available to students in Minnetonka or Edina, or even Bloomington. The Southwest scoreboard and timers never work. There is no team bus to return to South after the meet, forcing students to beg rides. The team booster club provides the suits, pays for additional coaching and pool time, and generally supplies basics that are available freely to swimmers in richer communities.

There is something wrong with this picture. Parents in Edina and Minnetonka are presumably better able to supplement the swim teams' expenses, and probably don't need to do so (just guessing here, so correct me if I'm wrong). In contrast, Minneapolis parents generally are less likely to have extra money to support athletics, and need to do so if the programs are to continue. This is just one of the glaring inequalities caused by education funding in Minnesota. And while I am glad to support the swimmers, I would feel even better about it if I didn't have to.

South High lost the swim meet. Joe High School swam well, but there was some stiff, and unexpected, competition from one of the Southwest swimmers. And South lost a couple of its best swimmers from last year to graduation. But there's always next time.

Harvest Hope

Sunday, November 20, OLGS and Joe College are speaking in two different Unitarian churches half a continent apart about their experiences in Romania as pilgrims to a Unitarian Transylvanian village in the summer of 2005. Far from being a place where Vlad the Impaler is fondly remembered, the small farming villages of Transylvania exist in a kind of cultural twilight zone.

Hungarian-speaking in a sea of not-quite-hostile Romanians, the Unitarian villagers of Transylvania have an economy that is part subsistence, part modern capitalism. Many of them do not have indoor plumbing or electricity, but have cell phones and satellite dishes. There is a village bakery, as in medieval times, and a village tavern, where Joe College appears to have spent much of his pilgrimage time. There are beautiful high hills, a charming market town, and welcoming people. There appears to be little discussion of the vast economic gap between American Unitarians who visit and support these villages that represent the home of Unitarianism, and the struggle of the agricultural villagers. There also appears to be little analysis of the role of Unitarian churches in 21st century Transylvania--they are populated mainly by senior citizens.

And this is probably just as well. The purpose of the pilgrimage is not to bring people, kicking and screaming, into a market economy with American gender roles. Rather, the pilgrimage is designed to open rich American eyes to the diversity of our faith--and, despite barbs from cultural pundits like Garrison Keilor, it is a faith. Unitarians have a set of core values, and then branch out.

The church where OLGS is speaking this morning is an overtly Christian Unitiarian church, barely distinguishable from Massachusetts Congregationalists except for avoiding any mention of the Trinity. This is similar to the Transylvanian Unitarians. Co-oincidently, this Massachusetts church enjoyed the leadership of a minister from Transylvania for many years. Our St. Paul church, where Joe College will do his thing, is, for a non-Massachusetts UU congregation, pretty theistic, but that's as far as it goes. This is a big tent church, with recovering Catholics, mixed faith Jewish-Christian couples who have found a suitable compromise here, and lots of "cradle" Unitarians. It's all good.

And I'm waiting to see if OLGS tries to go back to Romania in the summer of 2006--there's an announcement of a history pilgrimage. How could he not go?

Unemployment blues

I've clearly passed the point where I think I'm going to get another job at the same level as before. Almost 11 months since I was "laid off" (dumped) for reasons best known to the folks in charge at the Minneapolis Public Library, I do think that there has been some underground lobbying against me. In short, not only am I depressed, I'm also paranoid. I've even begun to question the wisdom of my claim against the library--now that I've accused them of contract violations, I can't use any of them as references to get another position. I'm assured by everyone that these feelings are completely normal for people in my position. What "everyone" doesn't say is whether anything is ever going to change.

But, what they did to me, and a number of other people, was illegal. That certain knowledge keeps me going. Watch this space for more updates.

Claim activity this week:Minnesota Department of Human Rights assigned an investigator to my case, who appears to be honing in on some important issues. Of course, his questions this week require me to do a little work. Horrors!!!

Carpets and cats

Yesterday we rented the Rug Doctor to do the carpet in the master bedroom and associated stairs. Whoever thought that pale gray carpet was a good idea should definitely get checked out out at the nearest facility. And I confess it was I--I thought pale gray would be still masculine enough appeal to OLGS (Oldest Living Graduate Student) and pick up some subtle very pale blue in the curtains at the same time. I was wrong on at least one count--OLGS doesn't care about the carpet color. And since the rest of the decor is pretty haphazard, the alleged match to the curtains is insignificant in the scheme of things.

So I made a bad decorating decision. But at least one constituency in the household likes the pale gray carpet, and that's the cats. Specifically, they like to throw up on it. Rather than using the multicolored patterns of the living room Orientals, where the stains would blend in, they choose the pale gray as the best place to toss their little cookies. So, the vast expanse of carpet in our bedroom was covered with mysterious little irregular spots that would disappear for a few days if treated with grocery- store stain remover and then reappear.

The Rug Doctor worked fine. We'll see how long it takes for the stains to re-emerge, whether because of the cats or the lack of power in the Doctor's vibrating brushes.