Journey to the southland

OLGS, the three Joes, and I had a post-New Year's trip to the south. This was not a trip where we lay on a beach and drank pina coladas. Rather, it was educational, like most of the stuff that goes on here at the headquarters of domestic tranquility.

The theme of the trip was Civil War-Civil Rights. We visited Atlanta, Tuskeegee, Montgomery, Selma, Vicksburg and Memphis. We also had a non-program detour to Clarksdale, MS, home of the delta blues. Finally, we visited Maxwell Air Force Base to collect some info. about my dad's unit in WWII.

We did all of this in five days. And I've had enough barbeque, bacon, biscuits, grits and sugary tea to last a while.

Happy New Year

It can only improve.

A recent Pew poll suggests that our long national nightmare may be over, or at least having insomnia. We'll see.

PS-The city of Minneapolis cancelled the fireworks last night--too expensive in this era of no-frills government.

Fruitcake

What's the deal with fruitcake? It's highly fashionable to hate fruitcake. However, bucking fashion trends as usual, I love fruitcake. An old friend sent two large hunks of homemade fruitcake, wrapped in cheesecloth to hold the brandy. It is excellent, and I've been adding more brandy. It can't hurt.

My mother used to make a fruitcake that was pretty much nuts, dates and raisins. It was close to black in color and quite wonderful. And in days gone by, when I was into the DIY style of domestic achievement, I would make a fruit cake, trecking all over New York to find real candied citron and other delicacies. My roommate and I would soak all the fruits in cognac for several weeks before we put the thing together. We ate a great deal of the fruit before we actually baked the cake.

So try it--you might like it. Just stay clear of the store-bought stuff.

Urban wildlife

Never let it be said that the inner city has no wildlife. In addition to feral cats, squirrels, raccoons, bats, rabbits, skunks and the odd deer, we have bald eagles and opossums. On Saturday, in the midst of a blinding snow storm, an eagle soared above the Lake Street bridge. As we stopped for the light, old Abe checked us out through the sunroof window, circled around a few times, and decided we were not appropriate prey and flew up the Mississippi in search of better grub.

Then, on Christmas day, we were headed out the side door to visit a neighbor. When we opened the door, there was a large possum sitting right outside . He didn't seem inclined to move, so we left through the back door. He followed us up onto the neighbor's deck, leaving those distinctive possum footprints in the snow. He had a nice coat, but his face and tail were something only a mother possum could love. Apparently, they are not the brightest of mammals. Wikipedia says they have a "small braincase".

If Tom the cat were still alive, he would have protected us from the visiting fauna. Guess we need to look for a replacement.

Christmas Cards

People don't seem to send Christmas cards the way they used to. Or maybe I have the wrong circle of friends and relations. But I seem to remember that in the old days people would send and receive hundreds of cards. Everyone they knew, even slightly, would get a card.

I'm not talking about the pre-printed business holiday cards that law firms, accountants and other personal service folks send. I'm talking about personal, signed-by-a-human-being cards.

When I was a child, I used to count the cards my parents received. It was a large number, and every day in December it would increase, necessitating a recount. And then we would save the cards, chopping them up to make labels for the presents under the tree.

There are other uses for Christmas cards. Some people make decorations from the cards, stringing them around the fireplace, over a doorway, or some other attractive spot. Others donate them to a non-profit that uses them in some way.

I myself send Christmas cards to friends that I don't see very often. I neglect neighbors, relatives in distant states whom I never see, and professional and work friends. I use the Christmas card as a way to stay in touch. Of course, I also chop up those I receive for gift labels. The habits of youth last a lifetime.

Green Christmas

I was trying to put a cap on Christmas gifts for the family this year--but that didn't work. So instead we have a new rule--every gift must be used. Joe College has already made several trips to his favorite store, Goodwill. There are tradeoffs--while we're buying used stuff, driving around to all those thrift stores uses more gas. But it encourages creativity and means that we don't have to fight the crowds at Best Buy.

OLGS bought a skimpy tree because that was all that was left on the lot and he didn't want to drive to a tree farm. He justified this by stating that land used to grow trees could feed millions. What he neglected to note that the land on which trees are grown is generally unfit for any other agricultural purpose.

But I've discovered a whole new dimension to shopping.

Swim Time

Here it is again. Minnesota Boys High School Swimming. For the next three months, Joe High School will be the long distance guy for Minneapolis South High. The first meet is Wednesday--stay tuned. Today there was no practice. Rather, there was a chewing out by the coaches. Apparently some of the swimmers are getting out of the pool before the end of practice to avail themselves of the YMCA sauna.

Being a high school athlete is tough. Joe had wanted to take a class at MCTC, the local community college, but it will be hard to get there during the school day and still have time for swim practice. We'll see. But he is remarkably determined to take calculus before he graduates from high school. The only way he can do it is to take pre-calculus outside of the normal school day or year. Summer school, anyone?

Snow--here it comes

It's snowing. The weather guys are very excited--could be as much as ten inches. Yesterday I was wishing for global warming as the prairie wind blew into the University of Minnesota. Students were bundled up in multiple layers, watch caps and scarves. The sun was shining and everything looked deceptively lovely from the inside of Andersen Library. But that walk to the parking lot? Don't do it. Stay inside and read weather blogs.

Job loss cliches

What goes around comes around.

I hate to think that such a cliche could possibly be true. But take a look:

I fired or convinced to resign five people in my checkered career. Then I myself was "laid off."

And now Kit Hadley, who was ultimately responsible for my layoff, has herself been reorganized out of a job.

Comforting for maybe two seconds. But, since it's a cliche, pretty meaningless.

And only slightly better than "Some things were meant to be" or "You'd be really good at...."

Brrrr

It's cold--18 degress at 10 PM. We are so unused to this, thanks to our inability to live any other way than we do right now. I read that daffodils were blooming in late October around the Twin Cities. They were clearly confused. Today's temps will certainly discourage any more of that behavior.

Bitter wind from the west

It's finally cold. Today the temp was 35 degres, with a howling wind that apparently topped 30 MPH. Certainly not hurricane force, but strong enough to blow the leaves around.
Minnesota Harvest Photo
At my place of employment, we sit under the SE approach to MSP airport. When the planes pass overhead, they are about two miles off the runway, and today those NWA birds with the red tails were bouncing in the gale. I thought of the pilots quickly needing to adjust to winter flying conditions--they've had it easy for so many months.

Medical miracle

There was an op-ed piece in the Strib the other day about the writer's encounter with the Chinese medical system. He marvelled at its primitive (to our eyes) nature, its ready availability and its cheapness. All true, no doubt, but I can top that.

In 2006, I fell and busted my nose on the High Street in Dalkeith, Scotland. I didn't think it was broken, but it wouldn't stop bleeding, and being vain, I was worried about scarring. It was a Bank Holiday, and the local clinic was closed. So, off I went in a taxi to the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh casualty ward. The taxi was by far the most expensive part of the experience.

I presented myself at the desk, where the admissions clerk asked me my name and my age. That was it. Than I waited for about 45 minutes -- it was a holiday, after all -- and was then seen by a nurse, who asked me my name, my age, and whether I was allergic to anything. I then waited about 10 minutes more and was called back to a cube where I saw the great man himself, the head of the famous internship program. Apparently the most senior staff pull shifts on holidays. He was busy, trying to secure a place at some hospital in England for one of his students and kept darting in and out. But he was clearly tickled to have a Yank on his couch. "You're not from around here," was his little Scottish joke.

But here's the thing: he patched me up, lectured me about why stitches wouldn't work on a nose, and sent me on my way. It cost nothing except the cab ride. Think about the hours of paperwork saved. Why is it so difficult for us to even think about a system along these lines? The only people who benefit now are the insurance claim processing companies and their parent corporations. Do we care so much about them?

And the blood spots stayed on the High Street pavement for many weeks, despite the daily drizzle.

Scandal at MNDOT

Apparently even Republican appointees are capable of questionable behavior. Sonia Pitt, a career employee of the Minnesota Department of Transportation, was elevated to a senior position in 2003 by republican governor Pawlenty. In charge of emergency management for the department, Ms. Pitt declined to return to the state after the 1-35 W bridge collapse in August 2007 because she was hanging out with her boyfried in DC. The boyfriend, a federal transportation department guy, was the recipient of hundreds of emails, cell phone calls and visits, all paid for by the tax payers of Minnesota. And Ms. Pitt apparently was so blinded by luv that she didn't have the grace to show the flag after the bridge collapse. "I can work from here just fine" was her response to questions about her whereabouts.

Here's another example of how the insertion of politics into what should be merit-based positions hurts the rest of us. Ms. Pitt was a marketer when she was promoted to head the emergency prepardeness section at a cost of $84,000+ and very nice state benefits. In the Northstar state, that's a good salary. And, as a marketer myself, I know that such jobs are good preparation only for other such jobs.

That's why we are supposed to have a civil service. The so-called experts are protected from political retaliation, in return for which we are supposed to believe that they are working hard for us. In Sonia's case, she was clearly using the state dime to get her own needs met.

And apparently that's only the tip of the iceberg.

Ghost cats

Even though they've been gone for several months, I keep seeing black cats. A pouring rainstorm brings the fleeting thought: I've got to get them inside. A pair of jeans tossed on the white bedspread in a dark room brings irritation: She's sleeping on the bed again. A marauding tom cat in the middle of the night makes me worry about the big tom: Hope he's close to the house. An old coupon for cat food reminds me: Gotta stock up.

Their elusive presence is surprising. But, even in their elderly, sick, last days, they were out of sight as much as front and center. They were not ever-present. In short, they were independent cats. These nano-second reminders are the way it was when they were alive. They would suddenly appear after an absence spent under the bed or across the street. They would pretend that we were the center of their world for those few moments it took them to convince us to feed them. Then they would disappear again.

So even though they don't personally appear any more, our minds are conditioned to have them pop up unexpectedly. That's the cat way.

Barak story

During his sojourn at the University of Chicago, Joe College Grad lived in an apartment in Hyde Park, across the street from Barak Obama's place. How close it was I don't know, but close enough to make this a story.

Anyway, Joe, as college students often do, had a party to which he invited several hundred of his close, personal friends. That part is clear. The next bit gets a tad murky.

Bottom line: some of Joe's friends got a bit excited and began throwing stuff, or in some versions of the tale, shooting a BB gun at Barak's building. Who knows...

Bottom line: Chicago Police department officers or secret service guys--I suspect Joe doesn't know--arrived at the scene of the party, asking to be invited in. And maybe this has nothing to do with guns, rock throwing, or other juvenile attacks on the senator from Illinois. Maybe the neighbors were sick of the noise emanating from Joe's place. However, whatever the cause of their arrival, the cops were denied admission to the student apartment. Joe wouldn't let them in because they didn't have a warrant. Every penny spent at the U of C was worth it....

And Joe is a solid Barak fan. It turns out Barak doesn't live in the neighborhood anymore. Probably those students got to him.