What I think about on a cloudy rainy day

 Today was a long ride in the car--it rained at windshield-wiper-on-high rate and the Ohio Department of Transportation justified its existence by making sure that they placed plenty of orange things in the road.  All that, and our choice of roads (we try to avoid the interstate) meant that we traveled at about 45MPH for much of the day.

That is OK.  Some might call that a slow pace but I prefer calling it a contemplative pace.  It allowed us a pretty good peak at NE Ohio and it was interesting and informative.  First off, red state or not, not all of Ohio is doing well.  Our route took us through countless small towns with Main Streets that were often filled with for rent signs or just empty buildings.  Even some of the really cute towns that showed civic pride and lots of work showed some serious wear around the edges.

But then we also drove though suburbs with multi-million dollar homes and past marinas filled with boats that were decidedly not filled with 14 foot Lunds with Johnson 25 horse engines. Certainly there will always be those contrasts but some of these were pretty jarring.

If I could be a prognosticator of big broad things, I might say that it feels like rural America is in real trouble.  We have been aghast at the gas prices.  We have regularly seen prices in the $4.70's for unleaded.  That hurts when you are on a 2,000 mile+ road trip.  But our angst at rapidly rising gas prices pales compared to what farmers are facing.  At a Pilot truck stop, the credit price was $7.09.  In February, the price was $3.89 a gallon.  I am just not sure how, if you are a farmer, you can successfully budget for a price change like this, especially at harvest time.  Add to this you would need to figure out where exactly you can sell your crops if you can get them off the field.  Ahh, tarrifs...

This just sets the stage for future challenges.  Much of the fertilizer that provides the foundation of an ag economy comes through the Strait of Hormuz or is made from natural gas.  You don't need to read many issues of the New York Times or the Economist to understand why farmers are boosting the sales of anti-acids.  And to understand the fragile nature of the rural economy.  So when we were driving through all those fields of corn and beans, we had had lots of conversations about just how do farmers manage all of this.

But since we were driving at a contemplative pace, we were contemplative as we drove through the rain.  All this made us wonder about just what the way forward for this segment of America is or will be.  Certainly we reached no conclusions other than there are very dark clouds on the horizon.  

After all that, we landed in Erie, PA.  Hotel rooms were a bit scarce because people were staying here so they could go to the Buffalo Bills game tomorrow.  It was a bit tense as we had to manage my birthday dinner.  The first hotel had an Arby's nearby but we aimed a bit higher than that.  The hotel we found was right next to a country western bar and grill.  We were prepared for the menu, the dance floor and even the Saturday night karaoke but we simply were floored by coming into a bar and restaurant that allowed smoking!  Seriously, it was smokier than Irish pubs of the 1980s.  We skipped that and had a great dinner at the Taste of Asia, a smoke-free dinner, I might add.

Tomorrow is Niagara Falls and environs.  It should/will be fun. 

 

 

Things that you see when you looking for something else...

 This is day two of our road trip, and it was a great day.  We started in the (not) bustling town of El Paso, Illinois.  It is cute, I guess, in a grain farming kind of way. El Paso does have a an exceptional Carnegie library, and several hotels that probably should not have made the Expedia list. 

From El Paso we headed due east on the type of highway we prefer.  Highway 24 was drawn by a ruler across a landscape that changed only when the corn field transitioned into a soybean field.  The starkness and the flatness of the land is so different than what we are used to in Minnesota.  It has its own beauty for sure, but I can't imagine what it is like in winter.  It would be nice to have a tree or two for shade or to block the wind a bit.

It was even more striking because of the light.  It was misty and foggy this morning and while these photos don't do justice to the light, it was amazing.  I am not on my usual laptop and I

 feel it when editing.  I do think that you can see that things in the distance just fade into the mist, especially with the photo of the school bus.

To tie all this to the title of this blog, you have to look at the last three photos.  Indiana uses a type of crushed limestone on its secondary roads which make them almost white.  I wanted a photo of one of these roads heading into the darker sky.  I tried for that, and I don't think it worked all that well.  Then, when I was looking for that, I was visited by this hawk.  I will re-edit this sometime but it really was striking to see it float towards me.

 I am out of practice taking photos, that is for sure.  It isn't my camera, but the flaws are in the taking and the editing.  This is the perfect trip for me to practice and work on the holes in my technique.  We are so blessed--we have all the time in the world, we are just really wandering east, and both of us have a great sense of humor.  What more do you need? 

 

Testing, Testing, Testing 1,2,3...

 So someone said it has been years since I last posted, but it has only been about 20 months.  My, how people exaggerate...  But it has been a bit.  That is probably for many different reasons but probably just because I am lazy and unmotivated.  It is not because I have not had monumental changes to write about.   We got married, I am mostly retired, and I guess the world is in disarray.  All these should have been fodder for the mill, but here we are.

 Today we are heading out for a semi-epic road trip.  It is hardly the years-long Homeric odyssey recent in those moving pictures, but more two weeks of "Blue Highways."  We have no real plans except to head east and then head west to get back home.  So I thought that I would try and document some of the adventure.  

  I first had to see if this blog was still accepting submissions and that my cameras worked.  So far so good.  The photos are of the last gasps of our front yard.  It is still beautiful even as it more faded than it was six weeks ago.  We, and the bees and the monarchs (it was an epic year for Monarch butterflies) love it still.  Click to see them in a larger format.  Write if you have questions or comments.

More from the road in the next few weeks.

 

Compare and contrast and then evaluate

 

 In my classes, I often used the question structure of "compare and  contrast, and then evaluate..."  It is a useful question and taught bigger and more important skills than just gathering facts. It gave students a method or a rubric that they could use throughout their lives.  With this structure, you can determine the value of things, the correctness or "rightness" of most things.  So, which car to buy or where to go to college or where to live.  And, I suppose and fervently hope, who to vote for and who to respect as a leader.

I freely admit that the process is important but I have to say that it doesn't always lead to the best or right conclusion.  Some people have other inputs which affect the results.  Today seemed to me to be a perfect example or opportunity, though, to use this process.

One one hand, you have Jimmy Carter.  The many recent eulogies have listed his many identities:  son of Georgia, farmer, father, husband, veteran, businessman, representative, governor, president, peacemaker, builder, Christian, and many other selves which made the man.  And remember, those earned titles of who he was came with many, many, adjectives, most of them positive. Loving, faithful, successful, caring, dedicated, honest, servant, and humble were just some of these adjectives that celebrated the man.  None called him perfect as he wasn't, but when you compare or contrast him to many, well...

Many or most of us lack in our lives compared to Carter's.  At best we need to look at his life and see it as aspirational and something to work towards.  I struggled today, though, because it is our nature to compare and contrast presidents and with Trump and Carter, the differences are stark.  It was particularly jarring today as I read today's news.  Trump, as a venal, dishonest, convicted felon in 75 minutes denigrated the whole judicial system, threatened our neighbors with territorial expansion, ignored 75 years of the greatest military and political alliance ever, lied about elections, the economy, his record and and and...  This is just a brief recap-- an actual transcript is terrifying.  More than anything, if you compare and contrast and then evaluate the two men, I at least, find one former president lacking in character and content.

So what?  That's a good question.  The crux of this rant is that we need to keep comparing and contrasting and then evaluating.  I suspect that there will be plenty of differences in which to apply this rubric.  I think that we could do a bit better evaluating.  Some people are simply lacking in all those positive adjectives ascribed to the man we are honoring today.

Life is a contradiction...

 

I have been trying to write for the past several  weeks and it is hard to do.  I have conflicting feelings about our country and its people right now—mostly I simply do not understand how this all came about.  Well, I do, and that is part of the problem.  I do believe in simple adage, “if someone tells you what they are going to do and what they are and especially if they repeat again and again, just believe them.

 The challenge is that more than half of those who voted (but not more than half of the population) ignored that.  Part of me wants to say, fine, then you live with higher prices and misogyny and racism and hate and incompetence and all the other things that this administration will bring but unfortunately, all this will affect everyone, including and perhaps especially those who didn’t vote or vote for him.  So like many others I am learning how to navigate this mess.  An early grade for efforts would probably be a C or C-.  This is hard.

Another reason why I am conflicted is that while the country is in a state of decline and despair, my personal life is pretty darn good.  There are many indicators of this, including the simple fact that I have lived where I live, in the same house, for more than five years.  I know that many live in the same place for years and decades but that has not been my life.  As an adult I have never lived in the same place for more than four years and even in those four-year stints, I have never lived in the same house for that long.  I have come to find out that this is a very nice concept—I should have tried it before!

This stability has been facilitated by a great, stable, long-lasting relationship with a partner who is smart and fun and adventuresome and who really is partner in my/our lives.  It hasn’t been easy—heck, I’m very certainly not easy, and there have been some bumps along the way, but this is a very good thing.  From cooking to talking to traveling to planting a garden, she is a part of all of this.  We have fun, and sometimes even laugh out loud before 7 A.M.   We plant perennial flowers, not annual flowers—that is how serious this is!    I am a lucky guy. 

That adventure part?  We went to London over Christmas—but that is a different post.

 

What is the matter with Kansas, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, men, and and and..

 

 

This is who we are.  While I recently wrote that we were an optimistic country that wants to and usually does do the right thing, it seems that we as a country took a decided detour away from that ideal. 

This is what the majority of the people of the United States are.

As someone wrote, we love a rapist more than women, a felon more than the person who spent her life enforcing the law.

Millions of people actively and apparently enthusiastically voted against their self-interests.  Just as William Allen White wrote about farmers voting for politicians who passed legislation that hurt farmers, people voted for the party and policies that will hurt their lives, from cutting social security to cutting taxes for the wealthy to easing regulations that make us safer.

People seemingly are OK with a regime (and I use that term intentionally) that wants to ignore the words on the Statue of Liberty  about the country being a refuge and place of opportunities, opportunities that most of the people who live in this country have enjoyed

People have believed and accepted all the fearmongering about crime, about the “threat” of LGBTQ+ and especially  transgendered people, LEGAL immigrants, DEI, a failing economy, and how it is better to make sure the rich get richer and so much more.

And then about the status and treatment of women.  While 7 states passed bills trying to protect the right to reproductive health care, more Americans than not voted to support a candidate and ticket that limits women’s rights to bodily autonomy and honestly, encourages a world where women are second-class citizens without the same rights as men.

I could go on.  But this is who we are as a nation, if you are to believe to election results.  And unlike many, I do believe and accept election results.  Even when I don’t like them.

But as individuals, we are not all like this.  What do we do?  Vice President Harris had a great line in her concession speech.  “I concede the election, but I do not concede the fight.”

So, I fight.  Even though I view more than half of the electorate with some distrust because what they have done to so many people, it is still my world.  There have been many other people who are trying to figure out what to do, and here is a brief list of things that I have found or things which I hope will help:

·      Lean on trusted social networks (not just the online ones!) and expand them when you can.  A neighborhood is still a neighborhood.

·      Live your life as an example of what you want for the country.  Be kind. Share.  Love when you can and at least be tolerant when you can’t. Show people by example what we can be.

·      Don’t doom scroll or only watch MSNBC or Fox or whatever.  Use your Netflix subscription.  Read a book.  Go for a walk.  Still travel to learn.

·      Learn something new.  Take a class.  Start a project.  Ideally, do this together with that social network mentioned above.

·      Write a poem.  Paint a picture.  Plant flowers.  Paint your house.  Find beauty and make some of your own.

·      Do something for others.  It isn’t all about you.  It doesn’t have to be a grand gesture—the smallest kindness can make a difference and they do add up.

I don’t fully know.  We are entering uncertain and different times that are far from the American ideals of a country of hope and kindness.  That may be the only certainty that we have.  But while there is this seismic shift with the majority, the minority still can make a difference.  I am going to try and help.

Election day

 

 

I hate political themed blogs—I am always amazed at the increased numbers of bloviating writers since the last presidential election.  Even though I am technically a low-volume consumer of these blogs or writings (I am not on Reddit or Substack or other providers), the content still makes its way into my inbox or more annoyingly, onto my Facebook feed.  You used to have to own the press and be able to buy ink by the barrel to share your opinion—now you can do it with a few clicks and a Starbucks internet connection.

Of course I totally exclude myself from these bloviating folks—I simply offer a few thoughtful political observations on this day of reckoning for the country.

First off, I am incredibly optimistic about our country.  We have faced crisis before and amazingly the country has survived.  Wars, monetary foolishness, and even fools have dented but not completely smashed the ideal that is the United States.  So that is good.  But good heavens, I am dumbfounded on how we do this.  We seem to take the most painful, most tortuous path.  Someone, perhaps Churchill, posited that “Americans will do the right thing once they have tried everything else.”

How true, I hope.  The country has tried other things including a lingering, painful nine-year experiment with things Trumpian.  It has divided the country and families, brought shame and embarrassment to the United States, and very certainly lessoned our prestige and the image of a shining city on a hill.  Meanness has become the currency of discourse, and we have devolved into a zero-sum society that allows one group to do better only if the other groups suffer and do worse.

Obviously you should be able to read between the lines on which side of this political divide I stand.  I suppose this decision could be and for many is based on policy differences between the candidates and parties.  There are plenty of these, and while they sway my thinking a bit, they are not the reason why I stand where I stand.

The United States is this confederacy of states but it is also an idea and ideal.  It is a place where people go for refuge, to learn, to prosper, and where they can disagree with the government and others.  Safely.  It is a dream, something that is totally aspirational and it totally isn’t just states with a border.  We should strive for these ideals, all the while knowing that we aren’t quite there yet.  We have much work to do before we are that perfect or even that very, very good Union that we dreamed of and began almost 250 years ago.

How we as a nation have accomplished what we have over this span of time was not just through policies. Those change, sometimes when the wind blows and for sure when there are elections.  The elasticity of the country in terms of policy shifts is pretty remarkable but in my mind, what has supported this (and sometimes, even the successes) of this fragile experiment is that the United States has done the right thing, eventually.  Eventually, character wins over rhetoric.  Eventually, belief in the ideals of this country wins, and lastly, hope and the belief in hope will win out.  I can’t believe that the United States is a dystopian, wasted landscape of despair as some have portrayed.

We will do the right thing, eventually.  This election gives the country a chance to be a little better, to hope, and to polish up that shining city on a hill. Let’s hope we make the correct choices to begin to do the right thing.

I have to go.  My internet connection is timing out…

What's been going on...

 

So some might wonder what have I been up to for the past four years, and it is not all that easy or simple to answer.  Remember that in my last post I mentioned that I have not exactly followed a simple or predictable arc.  I suppose what has been the foundation of the second half of my life has been teaching and education, and that has continued, though I have had detours working for the U.S. Census, a grocery store, and even a go at Starbucks.  And I have the green apron and a pay stub to prove it in case I run for office.

For most of the past four years I have been teaching in one way or another in the high schools.  That has been a pretty dramatic change from years working in the colleges.  It has not always been an easy transition.  I started subbing all over the metro area during the COVID year, and then I was lucky enough to take a long-term sub position for six months.  Last year, I accepted a full-time assignment at an alternative credit recovery high school.  This school year I am back to subbing pretty much full time or at least every day that I want to or can.

As for the transition to working with high school students, all I can really say is wow.  There have been some incredibly rewarding and fun moments where I truly felt/feel that I made/make a difference.   Then there are the days that I spend my time telling the boys to stop making farty noises and issuing bathroom passes,

On balance, it is a pretty rewarding, positive experience, and at the least, I have great stories to tell during post-work cocktail hour!

One advantage of teaching all over is that I get to see all variety of high schools and the variety of students.  Last week I subbed at Edina, no doubt the crown jewel of metro area schools.  Other than perhaps Purdue University,  Edina has the nicest physical plant of any college or university that I have taught at and that list is pretty long.  It is the land of straight teeth and designer clothes for sure, and certainly most if not all are hoping for a spot in some Big 16 or Ivy League institution.  If I am to believe my informal observational poll based on sweatshirts, Harvard seems a popular choice as does Indiana for some reason.  No one was wearing Purdue wear…sigh.

Some other schools are not so lucky to have that same tax base.  Columbia Heights where I frequently am at and where I love to sub, spends less than one-third of what Edina spends on each student.  It is a nice school, but the students are far more likely to be English-language learners than SAT stars, though I have found that there are academic all-stars everywhere and in every single school.

Working at Edina or Southwest or Washburn makes you notice that some students start on their path to academic success at different places and with vastly different resources.  Here is a simple test to show this is the case.  Ask a class what they did during summer vacation.  At some schools, you will hear tales of trips near and far and time at the lake or tennis camp, and they often are wearing sweatshirts that memorialize the trip or experience.  Ask that same question at some other school and you hear tales of work or video games or taking care of siblings.  There clearly is a resource and opportunity gap that is sometimes unimaginable.

My eyes, and certainly my heart, has been made far more aware of all that students have to deal with.  In Minneapolis, almost 15% of students experience housing insecurity each year, and at the school where I taught all last year, the figure was closer to 25%.  Imagine, one out of four students wonder whether or not they have a consistent , safe, place to stay.  Food insecurity is even more prevalent.  Our Communist-Socialist governor, Tim Walz, THANKFULLY signed a bill over strenuous protest to ensure that students got a free lunch and breakfast.  I have seen first-hand significant numbers of students who wait to ingest every available calorie during these meals because that is the only food that they have for the entire day.  Yeah, what a terrible thing to do, making sure that students have something to eat.  No wonder we want him out of the governor’s mansion—what a terrible man.  He should be vice-president or something.

So I get up every morning and am on the road about 7AM to be on the pointy end of the education system.  Today I am teaching business, last week I taught science, history, French, English, and one class of Chinese.  Teaching might be a bit too strong of a verb, but I am in front of a classroom, a spot where I think that I belong.

More pictures and a more personal take on what’s up with me in the next episode.

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                     

Beginning again

 

You know, I used to do this 10 or 12 times a month and sometimes when I had more to say or, more usually, when I had absolutely nothing to say I used to do this even more.  It is hard to believe that I have not posted anything on my blog for almost four years.

Since I first wrote in August of 2008, I have posted 696 times.  These posts documented a move across the country to Washington and back, trips hither and yon, and many, many adventures both large and small.  And lots and lots of flowers.  And words!  If each post averaged 500 words, not an unreasonable assumption considering  my overly wordy tendencies, that is 348,000 words.  The average adult novel has between 80,000 and 120,000 words.  War and Peace has about  560,000 words so I have some work to do, but still.  People who have been following along since the beginning very well could use this for their summer book report!

These words (and pictures) have told a story of a life that might not have been perfect but one that has always been good.  Very good, mostly and actually.  Hey, I am from the Midwest, where the most common response to the question “How are you?” is simply, “Can’t complain…”. And I can’t.  The story it tells certainly isn’t one smooth arc of progress and perfection, but I do think that the blog attests to positive movement.  Yep, I'm trending positive!

But what to do about this blog?  At one point I liked to believe that there was a following, however small it was.  It has been seen or visited almost 119,000  times, and only about 47,000  of those visits were by me, no doubt checking on if ANY ONE had actually read what I posted.  Certainly no one recently has made it “must read/see TV,”  to butcher a reference to what people my age used to look forward to watching  on Thursday nights.

All that blathering aside, I have come to realize that I miss the blog.  I miss the process of it all, the sharing, having to write in complete sentences, and letting people perhaps see why I do have eleventy-seven cameras.  And, I suppose, I miss letting people peek into my life a little bit and to let those few who might be regulars or become regular visitors know a bit more about me and what I am up to.

And so it begins again.  Call it my resolution—this will become more regular feature.  First step is to post some pictures.  Since my photo library said I have saved more that 10,700 photos since 2020,  I have some to choose from.

 

Workbenches and other things

Happy New Year!  I am continuing my twice yearly (at least) blogging.  Honestly, I will try and do better.  I miss it, and it seems to be one way to force myself to maybe even take a photo now and then.

I have shared a few photos of the shed in my life.  This 10X12 shed is a workshop, a storage space and, of course, a retreat of sorts. It is hard to be mad or frustrated with the world when you are surrounded by the smell of sawdust, the sight of tools with earned patina, and a comfortable chair.  I have found that a comfortable chair may be the most important tool in the shed.  You know, a chair for thinking.  Or napping.

This space also allows me to continue my collection of workbenches and now I have three.  Seriously, someday I will just collect stamps or something easy to store and carry, but for now I will stick to workbenches.  And anvils.  My first one was a beat up bench that I found in Michigan.  My second workbench was an estate find, and it holds a TV, and, as always, lots of books.  Being small and pretty, it is "furniture" and it resides in the living room.

My latest bench was a gift and it was hard and expensively earned.  My lifetime friend, mentor, and colleague passed away last fall and this was his legacy to me.  For more than 40 years he taught me, helped me, fixed my caneras, and was basically family for me.  He certainly was not above kicking me in the butt (stay in school, do better in school, file your negatives, be better) but he also was smart enough and kind enough at times to not say anything.  Since my parents passed away, he was my touchstone for my hometown, and I can think of only a few times in the past 30 years that I returned to Eau Claire without stopping in for a drink, a conversation, or. welcoming place to stay.  I miss him every time I pick up a camera, working or not, and when I wander through Eau Claire.

What to do with such an important gift? Frankly, I would rather have in his garage, covered with his latest project or holding anyone of the ten drills, the many, many tape measures and tools, the gallons and cans of paint and solvents and the other detrius of a skilled craftsman.   He was 88, and a resource and frend of inestemiable value.  The workbench was his father:s, so it is probably around 100 years old.

As with most things (and people) that have been around and that have been used, it shows its age.  There are scars and stains, dents and hurts.  Paint from projects long forgotten colored the dense wood of the top.  Oil from who knows what has bled into the grain.  I will always wonder what he painted that was traffic cone orange!  I preserved the orange blob but I spent more than a day sanding and polishing the top.  The dents and scratches did not disappear but they appear a bit healed, and the four coats of a satin finish shows off the beauty of the wood.

It is beautiful and priceless to me.  As I was putting my shop back together, I hesitated to put anything on the bench.  Part of that was because I love looking at the wood and wondering what was created on this bench that caused that stain or made that dent.  I also feel that after all that time and effort to refinish the top, I didn't wasnt to scratch that beautiful finish.

But that is silly--it is a tool, and it was made to be used.  I doubt that John or his father would think that is should just be a piece of furniture, but rather it is to be used as intended.  So I have used it, and just yesterday I put a scratch on it as I moved my miter saw to the workbench.  I winced, but then I smiled and silently toasted an absent friend.

Flowers, just flowers

So I have a lawn.  Well, I share a lawn.  And flowers.  But I planted many of these and grew them from babies.  Well, not really but some of these are from seeds which is pretty cool.   It is so cool that I am actually blogging after almost forever.  I would have done this sooner, but it takes a long time for flowers to grow, you know.  Maybe I might even try this again before fall leaves are as colorful as these flowers.

I have no idea what most of these flowers are.  I tend to identify growing things into larger grroups, like "grass" and :"trees" and, of course, "flowers."  Please click on the phtos to see larger images.  All were taken with a Canon 7D MarkII and a 100mm 2.8 Macro lens.

London, 2018-19

We had a wonderful trip to London over Christmas and New Years.  There is always (at least for me) the question of what I am to do with all the pictures.  Normally, I would readily post them to this blog, but I know that it is sorely neglected.   That is fine, I suppose, though I know my audience dwindles as I dawdle about and never post.

None-the-less, this is my home and where I do things like this.  The people that matter will see, and maybe, I will resurrect my blogging efforts.  Here are the first of the London photos.  If I do this correctly, you will be able to follow chronologically from our arrival on the 23rd to when we left after the New Year.

Oh, Happy New Year to you and yours.  More to come