Glad!

Tonight on my way home after work I saw a group of 7 people on the side of the highway. All of them were wearing safety green vests and carrying bright yellow bags. My first thought was that this was a nice group of people. But then I felt dread for all of them. I knew what was ahead for them. For the past four days the carcass of a doe laid at the corner of my road and the highway. Each day she gets a little more bloated. Each day her long legs are spread a little wider apart because of the pressure in her abdomen. When I got to my corner I let out a sigh of relief. Someone had dealt with the deer carcass. I felt glad. Now the people who adopted the highway would not have to deal with a four legged carcass of a doe.

Angry Birds

Today I had a work meeting at a local restaurant called the Muddy Cow. I got there first and no one else from my group had arrived yet.  Inside the restaurant there was one long table with about 25 people seated wearing matching black t-shirts. Evidently a group of nurses had just graduated and were celebrating together. Their voices were very loud and some beer got sloshed so I went out to the patio. As I waited for my group to arrive I hoped they would want to sit outside. They agreed and the six of us sat on the patio together. We were dive bombed by loud and agitated barn swallows. The waiter apologized for the angry birds and he put umbrellas on our tables so we would be safe from the sun and the defecations of these swallows. One woman in our party pointed out the swallows sitting on the  head of a fake owl and I just had to take a picture. Not only did the fake owl not scare these swallows but they used it as a perch.

Sold on a Monday

I made a mistake and read the wrong book for book club.  I read next month's book instead of this month's book. I figured that out five days ago so I had to hurry and speed read through Sold on a Monday by Kristina McMorris. This book is very popular so there was no way I could get it at the library so I ended up getting an electronic copy through the cloud library. I read it easily in a couple of days and thoroughly  enjoyed it. Honestly it is sad that children get sold. Poverty and illness make people do desperate things. I thought about my own grandmother who  was given away as a child to work on a farm where she earned her board and room. In this story a girl named Ruby and her brother Calvin are sold. Ruby is a resilient girl. Most of the story is not about the children who  were sold on a Monday but about the two journalists who investigated the situation. Some people in the book club did not like the fact that so much focus was on the journalists. Some thought the ending was overly dramatic. At the end of our meeting we were handed small slips of paper. If we were journalists the first slip was our  first name, the second slip was our moniker or nickname and the third slip was our last name. My journalist name Gladys "The Newshound" Cagney.

Euphoria

When I read Lily King's novel Euphoria I had no idea the woman in the book was based on Margaret Mead, a world renown anthropologist. This was a fascinating story about a woman, her husband, and a male friend living in the jungles of New Guinea. They come there to learn about the tribes, the culture, and the people in the village. I can't imagine the bravery they had to do what they did. In order to get there they had to travel by canoe.  Once they arrived they struggled to learn the language. The amount of trust they had that everything would work out is staggering. Besides the hardships they also dealt with tropical illnesses and injuries. To top it off, the husband in the story is both physically and emotionally abusive. Yet Nell Stone, the woman based on Margaret Mead, keeps trying. She asks questions, she types up her notes, she helps out in the community. All her success enrages her husband even more. He feels inadequate. He tries to sabotage her work. I really liked the character of Nell Stone. She is someone I admire.

Embracing the Joy of Today

Today Offspring #2 took me out biking at the trail near Rice Creek in Shoreview. Here I am coming down a hill by the white pines making a face and sticking my legs out to the side for comic effect. We had a good time biking around the creek. We even saw a Baltimore Oriole perched in a tree singing in the yellow leaves and looking so lusciously orange. After that we returned to her house, put the bikes away, and walked to a Mexican restaurant near her house. I had cactus tacos and they were delicious! I feel very fortunate to be here on this day, able to bike, able to walk, and able to eat tacos.  Offspring #1 called while we were eating and I talked to him standing outside on the sidewalk. A great day like this doesn't happen all that often so I want to embrace the joy I felt today.

Migratory Bird Day

I was talking with a friend of mine about the birding by train event. Somehow we impulsively decided to go to Sherburne National Wildlife Refuge for a guided bird tour on Migratory Bird Day. We arrived before 8 a.m. and had a great guide. All the people on the tour seemed agreeable and friendly. We saw a total of 37 species of birds. I can't remember them all but besides these two eagles perched on top of these two tamarack trees we saw Eastern Towhee, American Robins, Chipping sparrow, Blue birds, yellow warbler, yellow bellied sap sucker, hairy woodpecker, downy woodpecker, brown thrasher, black and white warbler, ruby crowned kinglets, Northern Flicker, broad winged hawks, turkey vultures, green heron, great blue heron, palm warbler, Nashville warbler, Crows, Blue jays, white breasted nuthatches, sand hill cranes, loons, Baltimore Oriole, rose breasted gross beaks, and goldfinches. We heard chorus frogs and a sora rail. We saw coyote scat. All this was on the Mahnomen Trail which runs near Rice Lake. So if you go on Mahnomen Trail, please keep an eye out for  my red eye glasses - I lost them somewhere on that trail. 

A Canticle for Leibowitz

My book club has been in existence for almost 40 years. The anniversary of the first meeting will be in this fall.  I found out that the first book they read was A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr. I decided I should read it too. At the library they had the story on audio CD's so I got that. What I didn't realize was this was a radio play. I put the CD in and heard these strange sound effects. I look around at the cars next to me wondering if they were making the noises. I looked at  the dashboard of  my  own car and nothing was amiss. Then I thought it  was my phone making noises. I turned the CD player of my car off for a minute and then put two and two together. I forgot how much I like radio plays. This one was very good. This is a science fiction story about nuclear bombs, the end of the world, the separation of church and state, and also a guy named Leibowitz. I enjoyed the story and I enjoyed  the music and I enjoyed the sound effects.