Till

 March is leaving like a lioness. Today it snowed a couple more inches and the wind was strong. Right now my electricity is out and I hope it comes back soon. This morning I took the bus to campus so I could walk the halls for an hour and get some steps in. I found this door blocked with snow which made me sad. Today is Friday and movies are shown on Fridays. Today the movie was "Till." One year and two days ago a federal law was passed in Emmet Till's honor making lynching against federal law. In 1955 Emmet Till was 14 years old and living in Chicago. His father died serving our country in Europe. His mother worked for the Air Force in Chicago. This summer he went to Mississippi to visit his mother's family. He went to a farm to pick cotton with his cousins. Emmet was a happy boy, interested in music and he loved to make people laugh. His mother warned him that things in Mississippi were different. She advised him to "make himself small." He said he understood but he didn't really understand. When he got to a store in Money, Mississippi, he told the white female clerk at the store that she was as beautiful as a movie star. He gave her the "wolf whistle." She went to get her gun. Days later he was killed for how he treated that clerk. No violence is shown during this movie but it is implied. The grief shown my his mother, Mamie, is what got to me. I cried and cried. This movie was really cathartic for me. Sometimes we all need a good cry. The movie starts and ends with happiness. Emmet and his mother are singing a song about love and dancing around the house. Watching the movie was difficult at times but I feel it is my duty as a citizen to watch movies that can make me uncomfortable.

Rockets Red Glare

 One of my classes today at Senior U was about music. We are studying a Great Books  book entitled Sound Bites: Big Ideas In Popular Music by a variety of authors. Today we studied Whitney Houston. Her performance at the Superbowl is considered to be the high bar other singers should strive for. Here is a list of some best performances of the Star Spangled Banner. I never really liked Jimi Hendrix's version until today. When he performed that song at Woodstock, as a veteran, he used his guitar to make the sounds of the rockets red glare and bombs bursting in air. Now it all makes sense and I do like his version.

Flower Buds Opening With Relief

On January 28th I visited the botanical garden in Houston. I took a medicinal herb class. As part of the class I was given a live calendula plant in a tiny plastic pot. I took that plant home and set it outside my trainer on the Longhorn Ranch. Later I took it to Austin and San Antonio and Arkansas and Oklahoma and Kansas and Nebraska and Minneapolis and then home to Duluth. Many days it spent in the cup holder of my car. Every day I would check the soil and give it a drink of water.

The calendula had flower buds. The buds remained tightly closed until I transplanted it into a larger clay pot about 5 days ago. Now the buds are opening with relief after being root bound for so long.

Like a good stretch after a trip, the calendula unfurls the petals in beauty.

 

Folk Dance

 

Today I took my first folk dancing class at UMD. Our group had 20 participants which included one man. Some of the woman pretended to be male. We did a dance from Israel, Romania, Israel, Turkey, French Canada, Israel, and Ghana. Actually the class was a lot of fun. The exercise involved is as much mental as it is physical.

Einstein

 

Today my class was about Albert Einstein. We started out with his early life growing up in southern Germany in the town of Ulm. When he was 17 his family moved to northern Italy. Albert was supposed to finish his last year of high school in Germany. Albert disliked the military like discipline of the schools in Germany so he just left and took a train all by himself. He showed up on his family's doorstep. Later he finished his last year of high school in Switzerland. There he thrived because the discipline was totally different. The students were encouraged to use their curiosity to learn new facts. In Germany they had to memorize facts and spit the facts back in tests. Albert didn't like memorizing. I am sure, over the next 7 weeks, I will learn more about this contradictory, complicated person. I have read Einstein's Wife: The Real Story Of Mileva Einstein-Maric so I have some ideas about him already.

First Day Of Spring Semester

 Today my classes started at Senior U at University of Minnesota in Duluth. I had a poetry class that started at 9. Since the sidewalks are treacherous and the roads are narrow with ice and snow I decided to take the city bus to campus. For 6 quarters I got a ride to the student center. In the morning I was half of the passengers on the bus. One the ride home a little after 11 a.m., I was the solo passenger. I could get used to this luxury. My teacher of poetry still teaches at Saint Scholastica. He teaches religious studies and philosophy. Although he has never taken a class in poetry, he has published several books of poetry and still enjoys teaching poetry. He talked about rhyming. Certain poets had certain formulas for the rhyming. Emily Dickenson, one of my favorite poets, had an interesting pattern. Shakespeare had another pattern. Robert Frost had some very complicated patterns. Some poets have emphasis on the first words, some had emphasis on every third word. Some words are considered female. Female words are compound words or words that only the second half of the work rhymes. Male words are single words. Our teacher read each poem aloud focusing on the patterns he found. Maya Angelou was another great poet because her words are so evocative. Now days free style poetry is the most common. The teacher said free style poetry is the most difficult to read. Aloud, I said, "Thank you," because I find modern poetry hard to read. I mention Dr. Suess. Dr. Suess kept the same pattern in his poetry in all his books. Sometimes he made up words to fit in the poems. The pattern is so predictable that his books often puts children to sleep. Way back in  December I read an article about resolutions. One resolution suggestion for the New Year was to write a haiku every day. Since January 1st I have written a haiku every day. This practice takes less than 3 minutes. I can't say that any of the haikus are any good but when I read back on them I can picture the kind of day I was having quite vividly. I enjoyed being on campus today if only for a little while.

Monitoring the Ush-kan-wan Stream in Grant Township

I also monitored the Ush-kab-wan stream. This is where I usually walk down to the edge of the water and gather water. But now I am standing on six feet of snow above the road. There was no way to get down to the water level safely. I could throw the bucket in and pull it up but then I would be collecting snow. My sample would be contaminated. 

I think it will be awhile before I can fully monitor this stream. I think an otter or a beaver climbed out of the water, walked over the road and went back into the water. This stream is on a gravel road which is a mile to the tarred road. By the time I got back to the tarred road I had mud and gravel all over my car. I seriously thought I might get stuck in the mud.

 

Monitoring The Cloquet River in Fredenburg

Today I monitored my streams. I have been asked to take monthly pictures of the stream upstream and down stream. I saw two trumpeter swans upstream. The swans watched me as I struggled to pull up my bucket. A triangle of snow remains on the bridge so I had to climb up that icy triangle to retrieve the bucket.  The bottom of the snow triangle was a good 18 inches away from the edge of the bridge. Awkward, much? I am glad they didn't leave due to my disturbance. Mergansers and Canadian geese were here too. 

This is down stream. The top of the bridge can be seen in the lower right corner. The stream is normal in volume at this point.

 

Bong Veteran Museum

Today was "Rosie The Rivetor" day at the Bong Veterans Museum in Superior, Wisconsin. If you dressed like Rosie you could get in free of charge. I didn't dress like Rosie but I did put a red polka dot bow in my hair, raise my fist, and pose for a few pictures. I spent a couple of hours at this museum.

I remember the protests at the U of M in Minneapolis over the Vietnam war. All those students in the street in front of Coffman Union made me anxious about going there in the fall of 1973.

This fur jacket and fur lap blanket was owned by General Goering. Here is a photo of Goering wearing the furs seated in an automobile with Henry Ford who was about 30 at the time. I imagine they were talking about assembly lines and white supremacy.

This was a very nice museum with lots of friendly volunteers.

 

I Am A Winner Again!

 

Today I was having lunch at my kitchen table when the phone rang. The area code was in Minnesota so I answered. The lady on the phone said I had won a raffle prize from last night. I won a 25 dollar gift certificate from Love Creamery. Woo Hoo! Today I am a winner. Later, in August maybe, some ice cream will taste real good. I went to the YMCA. After the work out I walked down the hill to the Duluth Transit Authority to ask a question about taking the city bus. On my way back up the hill I decided to take the sky way. In the sky way I found a surplus store. I didn't need any surplus but decided to go in anyway. A couple weeks ago I bought a pair of deer skin mittens with warm lining for Offspring #2's significant other who has very large hands and needed XL size. Here I found another pair of the same mittens for $11 cheaper! I bought those and will return the others. I found my new favorite sporting goods store and it's a lot closer than the other one in Superior. As I drove out of the parking lot I heard a scraping sound. The board under my car that got attached at my last oil change in Texas had come loose and was dragging on the ground. I drove to the closest Valvoline which was 3 miles away. I waited in line for a half hour before it was my turn. The guy reattached the board. I asked, "How much?" He smiled, waved, and said, "No charge!" Seriously? No charge? I am a winner again! Woo Hoo. Being a winner feels very comfortable!

680 Pounds Of Corn Pops

This afternoon I went back to the food shelf where we sanitized the clean room last week. Today we had to wear gloves, hair nets and beard nets. There was a pallet with a large bag of corn pops laying sideways on top. The top was sliced open. One woman put labels on bags. Others scooped corn pops into bags. Two people measured 1.5 pounds of corn pops into each bag. Other people heat sealed the bags. One guy constructed boxes, filled each box with bags of corn nuts and sealed them shut. I did a little bit of all the jobs except constructing boxes. I spent a lot of time carrying bags to people. I spent the most time on the heat sealer which is odd because in my former job I helped train people to use heat sealers. I am very talented at sealing plastic bags with a heat sealer. I tried to do a very neat job because these bags of cereal are going to families who really need the food. So now I have grit and salt and corn pops in the tread of my winter boots plus maybe a little mud from the Colorado River in Texas. This picture was taken near Enger Tower in Duluth. If you squint you can see the lift bridge down there.

We had all 680 pounds of corn nuts packaged in 1.5 hours. We spent another half hour sweeping and cleaning the clean room. I left wearing that hair net. When I felt the hair net on my head as I removed my beret I felt like Ruth Buzzi playing Gladys Ormphby on Rowan and Martin's Laugh In swinging her purse at the old guy leering at her. One lady in the group asked for a white hairnet to cover her completely white hair.

Later I went to a party at the property management company which is downtown on First Street across from the Salvation Army shelter. They had punch and fruit and vegies and cheese and naan bread with spinach/artichoke dressing and freshly baked cookies. I ate with a couple of other women while we chatted about rent and maintenance and neighbors. I signed up for free drawings. I hope I win. I especially want to win the $250 off next month's rent. After the party I walked back up the hill four blocks to my car. The guys at the Essentia parking lot are going to dump snow off the roof. There is a man wearing a green vest to the left. He lets the bobcat operator know when it is safe to dump a load.

Bombs away!

I watched snow falling for a good five minutes.

That is some heavy snow falling. The snow makes a "whoomp" sound when it hits the ground. The construction guys at the property management company wonder if the Miller Hill Mall will be repaired or just torn down. I remember seeing buckets catching water from the ceiling from the first time I walked that mall back in 2020.  So the people at the Mall knew there were problems. Aldi and Michael's Crafts store had problems too. I prefer older buildings.

One construction worker told me that there will be no more snow this season. We can hope.

 

Trash To The Curb

This morning I hauled the trash to the curb. Today is also the day for recycling to be picked up but that container is frozen solid. I kicked and pulled at it for ten minutes before realizing it was only  half full and could wait.

I don't plan to leave until after lunch but I cleaned off the car anyway.

 

Don't Fall At Gooseberry Falls

Another winter storm warning starts at 4 p.m. I thought I would use the time ahead of the storm to get outside for exercise and fresh air.

That is a pine martin stuffed on the shelf. I stopped at this State Park store last year to buy some ice cleats which I will wear today. I don't want to fall on all this ice. Dangnabbit, falls is in the name of this place. I till try not to fall at Gooseberry Falls.

Some water is frozen and some is liquid. The temperature is about 30 degrees and it is windy up by the visitor center. Down in the valley here the wind isn't so bad.

Today I saw eagles, crows, ravens, black capped chickadees and blue jays.

This open pond is on the other side of Highway 61. I walked beneath the bridge to get here.

I'd like to come back in the summer and fall.

Lake Superior has large, choppy waves pushing at us from Wisconsin. The chunks of ice are being pushed our way too.

Funny to think of all the life living under that ice. Beaver, trout, turtles, frogs, damselfly larvae, mosquito eggs, and crayfish like it under the ice.

Yesterday I had a sauna at the YMCA. I could use another one today.

 

I Still Have It

Rita Rudner, stand-up comic, author, and Vegas performer wrote I Still Have It. I picked up this free, large print book at a bookshelf in Texas. This book was funny, true, but Rita and I don't have much in common. Rita is interested in designer purses, make-up, expensive shoes and cosmetic surgery. I am interested in re-usable grocery bags, sun screen, water proof boots and avoiding any more surgery unless absolutely necessary. I especially enjoyed reading about the first earthquake that turned their expensive California home from a "move-in-ready" home to a "fixer-upper" home in 7 minutes.

 

Happy Spring Equinox at 4:24 PM

This tall dude I found yesterday on the far banks of the Saint Louis river told me, "Forget about spring, lady, more snow is in the forecast."

 

Dinners With Ruth

 Nina Totenberg, a journalist, was friends with Ruth Bader Ginsberg long before either one of them became famous. Their friendship is why Nina wrote Dinners With Ruth: A Memoir On The Power Of Friendships. Nina and her husband were close with Ruth and her husband. When Ruth's husband died, Nina and her other friends were there for her. Nina's husband is a doctor and had connections to help Ruth deal with her pancreatic and lung cancer symptoms. Ever stoic and smartly dressed, Ruth valued appearances. Ruth didn't want to be seen as weak or frail or vulnerable. After she passed away her colleagues on the Supreme Court extolled her virtues as they virtually wiped out all the work she had done in the past 20 years. I am lucky to have friends who have seen me at my worst and still enjoy a good laugh about it. I enjoyed this book very much.

White Pine From The 1770's

Today the local chapter of Master Naturalists met at the Cloquet Forestry Center. The forester there gave us a talk about the indigenous way of tending the forest. Forest management sounds too controlling and he prefers tending. He spoke about the use of fire. In dry regions lightening sparked forest fires. In a wet area such as Minnesota lightening doesn't work as well. Indigenous people used fire to make travel easier, increasing the breezes to keep the mosquitoes at bay, and to be able to forage more food. Although It doesn't look like it, I am wearing my snow shoes in this picture. The snow pack out here is more than four feet in depth. After we spent 5 minutes getting to know another member of the group we went out into the forest and spent 5 minutes getting to know a tree. We were supposed to let the tree speak to us instead of us speaking to the tree.

This tree would not tell me it's name.

I liked the arch.

The temperature now is just above 32 degrees F.

The red pine just right of the white pine is almost dead. The right side of the white pine is very bare. Why? He said this white pine could have emerged from the soil in the 1770's. Wow, this pine has seen a great deal of history.

A forestry center building is low and in the distance.

 

The Partly Cloudy Patriot

Last week I met my former neighbors for lunch. They recommended a book they thought I would like. I guess they know me well because I did like The Partly Cloudy Patriot by Sarah Vowell. The audio book performance has the author reading her book plus guest readers such as Stephen Colbert, Conan O'Brien and Seth Green. Some of the focus of the book is about politics and in particular the 2000 presidential election and Theodore Roosevelt. The author is a history nerd unlike her twin sister who can bake bagels from scratch, shoot an antelope, and raise a son. Sarah includes just the right amount of humorous episodes with her 15 month old nephew. 

Frozen

The frost on the east facing window this morning had a definite vegetative quality.

This afternoon I drove out to Park Point to try my new ocular lens. I like looking through it. The only birds I saw today were crows and ravens. This is a view of Wisconsin in the distance beyond the frozen Saint Louis estuary.

 

The Glad Colleen