Monday in Linden Hills

I am on holiday and I am spending it close to home.   A good choice.  The afternoon weather has turned a bit overcast, but it doesn’t feel like heavy weather.  That’s almost a disappointment, actually.

I have the propensity to rally behind over-the-top weather.  If we’re experiencing a streak of snowy weather, I want more snow.   Heavy rain?  Why not some more?  Let’s go for a record.  Same for bitter cold, high winds, wild thunderstorms (a favorite), and dense fog.  Make it something to talk about.  That weather is best.

There’s something exciting about extremes.  In fact, other than stretches of heat, sunshine, and drought, I like extreme weather streaks.  And I only find heat and sunshine uninteresting because I lived in Tempe, Arizona, for ten years.  Droughts simply are not a good idea unless you live in a desert.

When I see the last bands of persistent heavy rain disappearing from a weather radar with only clear skies behind, I feel disappointed, almost a sense of loneliness.  So I hope for maybe just one more deluge before things calmer, more tepid days return.  Maybe some lightning and thunder, too.

Until then today has been nothing less than a decent one away from work.

Should I tell you about my walk in the woods?  Why not.

I notice from time to time deer tracks that appear to show a deer dragging a leg a little.  I have seen this before, not just recently, so I wonder if it is a way deer walk.  I doubt it.  More likely one of the deer is somewhat lame.  Although it is more common to see this dragging print in the snow.  Perhaps deer just get a little lazy and shuffle along like a bored kid impatiently trailing behind busy parents.

Not a warbler. It’s a cardinal.

The birds were out and so were the birders.  I chatted with two.  The first birder told me he was watching some sort of warbler.  I just nodded, pretending to know exactly what he was talking about.  He also corrected my owl identification.  I have been seeing — and hearing — barred owls, not great horned owls.  Although I do know for a fact that I have spotted great horned owls more than once in the woods and heard them in the back yard.

I took quite a few photos.  My camera works great!  But I need a tripod.  When on deep zoom, my ability to steady the camera doesn’t last long and with uncooperative birds that is proving to be a problem.  Still, I get a semi-decent picture from time to time.  As they say, even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while.

Going down the trail I noticed some bright white stuff on the ground beneath a tree.  I got excited.  It looked like egg shells.  Here was my chance, I thought, to find a hidden nest and earn some birder bragging rights.  Surely above these broken fragments of egg shell there was something special.  The pieces looked large, like potato chips. But no nest.  It made no sense until I got closer and saw that my discovery was a torn up styrofoam cup.

Barred Owl

Nonetheless, I think my instincts and logic deserve a compliment.  It could have been what I thought it was.

The second birder I encountered had a camera bigger than some beer coolers I own.  He had a tripod out of simple necessity.  (Have you ever tried to hold a beer cooler steady?  It isn’t easy.)  He told me he was photographing some bird nesting in a hollow tree.  Instinctively he seemed to know that the species would be irrelevant to me.

I did show him a couple of my pictures, however, and he seemed to be more than polite about them.  Feeling smug and chatty, in the whispering birder sort of way, I also commented on the “morning” warblers I learned about from the other birder.   When I came home and looked them up in my bird guide, I discovered they are mourning warblers.  I suspect the guy with the giant camera wouldn’t have noticed my mistake.

I do have a Sibley Guide to birds.  It is great, however I can’t really carry that in my back pocket.  I am thinking of getting a field guide, but I’m not sure if I really have the patience to stop and look up a bird.  And none of the serious birders seem to have a guide stuck in a back pocket.   I don’t want to look like a dork.

I wonder if I should get a photojournalist’s vest instead.

I’m not sure how I will finish my holiday.  Perhaps I will find time to embark on my Big Ambition.  I should probably check in at the bar, however, and make sure nothing has changed.  And I do have a couple clients I want to call.  Strangely, I tend to like making calls on my days off.  Those calls seem so unworklike.  I like that.

Whatever it is, I have to decide soon.  The afternoon is running fast and I have a very acute obsession with time, recently, especially the lack of it.  That Big Ambition can wait no longer.  To make something of a high art reference, these are indeed the days of our lives.

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Event Promoters Take Note

I heard a loudspeaker calling out names and numbers from down by the lake this morning and that was enough to get me outside to see what was going on.

The key here is I already knew what was going on, it was another race.  We have races on a seemingly weekly basis around Lake Harriet.  Signs had been posted for over a week and those of us in the neighborhood know if its Saturday, there’s likely a race down by the lake anyway.

But hearing the event nagged at me.  It created interest in the event.  I felt like I was missing something, even though it was only another race and one that I already knew about.

So I filled a go-cup with coffee (skipped the whiskey this time) and wandered to the band shell to see what was going on.

Guess what I found.  A 10-K race!  Quelle surprise!

Even a jaded guy like me can get fired up and motivated by a little activity.  I had a good time watching the runners and bought cookies from a girl scout.  A good start to the day.  If I had not heard the announcer, I would have gone through this morning having completely forgotten the event.

Just a little extra often is enough.  If it sounds like something going on, it registers as something going on.

Ok, let’s move on to something else…

Late Winter Moonrise Over Lake Harriet

It is the kind of thing that inspires poets and madmen, a cold rosy pink moon silently rising above the trees across the lake.  It pays no mind whatsoever to anything happening on busy earth and will roll on regardless.  There’s something both reassuring and lonely about that.  The definition of permanence.  And guess what…I didn’t get a picture of it.

 

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Fog, Stillness, and a Few Crows

(Editor’s Note:  Mr. Shane is on a break from politics, his walks in the woods, and other things that people read about here.  He is taking this break to enjoy time with his weaker thoughts and fantasies.  Mr. Shane’s regular posts will return sometime in the near future.)

It was a beautiful start to a great morning here in Linden Hills.  I still sleep with a bedroom window open, and when I cannot hear the ambient sound of the city in the distance I know the weather is heavy.  This morning it was fog.  Beautiful fog.

This wasn’t the densest fog I have seen, nonetheless it still the most weather we have had around here in weeks.  I took an early walk, but this was more of an indoors fog.  It simply looked better from a window with a pot of coffee brewing in the other room.

The fog blocked out the eastern shore of Lake Harriet — maybe the fog thickened over the lake — but I found myself staring out toward the lake anyway.  It was a good fog to think by.

And I wasn’t alone.  A pair of crows called to each other in a nearby tree.  I love crows and I cannot think of a better way to punctuate the silence of a foggy morning than the call of a crow.  So I was especially grateful for the crows.  A good omen, I think, a sign that today might be a good day.

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Quick Tip For Minneapolis Sun/Moon Fans

The full moon rises as the sun sets.  That’s it.  That is all I have.  But it indeed is a beautiful night for the sun and the moon.

Mast-Head Watch: Not a Whale in Sight

I nearly posted a link to a Garmin map that tracks the walk I took tonight.  It took quite a bit of time to figure out a way to post it, then I thought…do I really want to post a map showing where I walk?  Hell, why not!

Actually, I have decided against it.  A moment ago I deleted the post.  And now I feel grumpy.  Tired.  Disappointed.  All too familiar.

This was a typical walk-along-the-lake-and-into-the-woods kind of post.  I have a few dozen posted here already, I am sure.  And my photos were not quite as good as others.  I am afraid my camera phone is growing tired.  Focus is not one of its strong suits any longer and light exposure is all fuddled up.

It was a nice walk, though.  I did see a doe and two fawns and I wrote about that.  Sounds dull, I’m sure, but I did a good job.  (You see I discovered this gap in the fence where the deer crouch down and scoot under the chain link…I watched two go through while the third seemed a bit confused and lost…he eventually found his way to the other side.  Happy reunion.  Drama worthy of a book about a white whale, of which I have read very little today.)

I took pictures of mushrooms and roses.  I commented on the compost at the rose garden.  (It smells like a mix of tobacco and plums, not an unpleasant scent at all.)  I took pictures of artists painting in the park.

And I complained about the heat.   I complained about the heat a lot and wondered if whiskey might make it better.  Oh, my writing about this was especially good!  I can’t recall what I wrote, but I can tell you what inspires me.

When I think of awful heat and smothering humidity, I think of old southern men, Depression era, of course; old southern men sweating in seersucker suits, poorly tied ties, and Panama hats.   And I think of whiskey.

Perhaps it is unfair to whiskey — or maybe the old men — but sticky heat is old man whiskey weather in my mind and I think it might be time to see how they mix, if they do.  Of course Minneapolis is a city where it is tough to have a good time.  You can’t stroll the parks with a flask of whiskey, for example, but you can always carry some in your stomach.  So I have decided that one of these hot steamy nights I’ll have a shot or two and go for a walk.

I might take a chance and put a small flask in my pocket, too.  What harm can a guy do taking a nip in the bird sanctuary?  Maybe the shadows will speak to me differently if I do.

That will have to be another day.  It is quite late now.  I do feel a bit better having taken a few minutes to write something.  It is a recovery of sorts, a recovery from a lost post.  It was the map that had troubled me in that post.  Nothing more.  I had my story all laid out along the Garmin track.  I shouldn’t have been so quick to trash it.  I didn’t feel right putting my map on the table, however.

Plus there is something about the map that is especially interesting to me in a strange, taunting sort of way.  I uploaded the map of tonight’s walk and at the end my route, the track jumps down the block and ends in a place which is not mine.  When I saw where it landed, I smiled and felt a little sad at the same time. True to Freud, this strange glitch truly touches the uncanny.  (You’ll have to trust me.)

It has been a very still, quiet week.  Maybe the heat has something to do with it.  Nothing seems to stir, but everything is hot to the touch.

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Sunday Morning

Could a post titled “Sunday Morning” promise less?  How dull.  But that’s sort of the way it is today.  A smart way to read this post might be to do so in comparison with yesterday’s.  I don’t know.  We’ll see.

Not so long ago Sunday mornings were good around here.  Happy, lively and served with breakfast.  Open windows, birdsong, and curtains billowing in the morning breeze.  All that kind of stuff.

Now the place is sealed tight — like the heart of a lost love — and nothing billows in the wind.  Windows closed, blinds drawn, and the only sound heard is indefinable whir.  The place feels like a tomb, both empty and crowded.  Nothing moves, nothing seems to change.  It really is so much like love lost.

I took today’s walk a little earlier than usual.  First to beat the heat and second to shake the blues.  In mixed measures, it worked.

Weekends can be a challenge down by the lake, however.  The weekend visitors tend to amble along a bit carelessly, if not menacingly, very much like George Ramero’s zombies.

Maybe the worst of the bunch are the Universalists heading toward the band shell for Sunday morning services.  They arrive in packs that move almost imperceptibly, like blobs.  They were generally a wide-bodied set this morning and left little room along the walking path.  The Universalists have room for everyone it seems unless you’re one of God’s children who wants to pass them on the trail.

I was a little wound up by the time I got to the woods.

Lost today was that sense of peace from yesterday.  No wildlife.  Not even a woodpecker.  And the woods are getting buggy.  It was cool back there, even without the breeze, and I was very much alone, which I enjoy.  But I couldn’t shake the malaise.  Even the robins seemed cranky this morning, holding close the ground and running rather than flying out of my way.  (It is easy to tell when a robin is pissed.  If he looks pissed, he’s pissed.  Period.)

Half way through my walk at the point when I begin to look forward to a cold bottle of Orange Crush and a salami and American cheese sandwich on a hamburger bun, I realized I was out of Orange Crush, American cheese, and hamburger buns.  When the Fates see that you’re down, they waste no time taking a kick or two.

So I stopped right there, took a deep breath, and I reminded myself that the day had just begun.  I’ll call someone for lunch, put on a smile and walk with purpose.  That will change things.  Check in with me later.

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Bottle Openers

Something unexpected happened while on today’s walk…I found myself feeling good!  I couldn’t work up a worry or even entertain a blue thought.  I felt whole.  A nice feeling.

And this comes on a day when the state Department of Revenue informed me that I owe them money, or so they claim.  Those revenue guys are funny and it is always a good idea to open their correspondence with a sense of humor.

I am in a rotating file, I believe, every few years it is either the Department of Revenue or the Internal Revenue Service asking for more.  These notices seem to arrive at the final hour, too.  I’ll admit that I don’t always pay much attention to official-looking notices from the state, but I do get around to it eventually.  So I often wonder how I only seem to get these urgent last minute requests.

In this case, the state asserts that I had unclaimed income in 2008.  (Golly, I wish!  2008 was rather bleak.)  Their terse notice left no doubt that they were through fooling around with the likes of me.  I had ten days to pay up or I would end up in real trouble.

It isn’t a large bill — frankly it is among the smallest they have ever sent — but I better call and find out what is going on.  The real depressing part of all of this is the finding out what is going on part.  I’ll spend half of Monday on the phone pressing one and being transferred to hold.

Certainly that isn’t the reason for feeling good, but — tut, tut — it isn’t much of a bother now either.

Of course there is the small chance that I felt good this afternoon because I was still a little drunk.  My favorite little bar serves a new wine that is a lot like drinking Nyquil.  It is strong and clinging, it hangs down your throat for a moment or two before settling.

I believe I had five glasses of the stuff last night which would add up to just over a bottle.  I am comfortable with a bottle serving, by the way.  I was told once that the ministry in France that would declare such things set the 750 ml bottle size because represented a standard, everyday serving of wine with a meal for your everyday French adult.  Special events, however, justify — and even require — more.  There are many special occasions in my life and so I choose to life like a Frenchman.

Woodpecker Tree

But wow!  Maybe I should say Pow Wow…The new stuff at Amore Victoria has some pow-wow-power and it hits hard.  I complain about it and nobody listens, not even me.  I plan to head back there soon and, guess what, I’ll have a glass or two of that heavy wine.  (In truth I am craving pasta again.)  And, for what it is worth, I had a very nice time last night.

I should get back to my walk here.  Let’s see.  No wildlife to report.  I did hear something rolling in the woods, however, and saw a woodpecker.  I took a photo of the broken tree the bird pecked.  If you look closely you can sort of see the woodpecker, too, but I am using my camera phone (I really need a new camera) so I decided to get a picture of the tree and call it good.

Plenty of weddings in Lyndale Park, too.  I counted five, and none of them small.  In fact one young girl — and she was young and appeared to be a girl — seemed to have her entire high school class dressed up as attendants.  Other brides were much less ambitious, holding to more sensible numbers like 10 or 12.  Ten or 12?  Come on people!  I don’t even think I know ten or twelve people, at least not ten or twelve who would want to be in my wedding.

I didn’t get many pictures of the weddings unfortunately.  A single guy in straw fedora and sunglasses taking pictures makes people nervous.  I did ask two young women if they wouldn’t mind me taking a picture of them and their picnic.  They had the perfect picnic spot — a place I likely passed dozens of times and never noticed — so I wanted to get picture.

I didn’t linger long.  It was getting hot and I was getting thirsty.  Which brings me to the point of this post.  One of the best birthday gifts I have received in many years is a simple church key bottle opener.  (Engraved with my name on it.)

Since receiving this gift I have opened many bottles of Orange Crush and root beer.  It brings me back to childhood.  I think that’s why I like the gift so much.

One summer when I was a boy, my parents must have found some extra cash because we went from being a Kool Aid family to being a bottled pop family.  In South St. Paul we had a soda pop company called Viking Pop down on Concord at the very south end of town.  I remember the family station wagon always hauling crates in the summer…crates of peaches, berries, and Viking Pop.

You could mix and match as you liked.  I preferred blackberry and orange.  My brothers and sisters tended to like red pop and the super sickly sweet lemon lime Viking sold.  Mom always picked up creme soda, probably because she knew none of us would touch it.  Dad had the occasional Viking, but he was still a North Star Beer guy at heart.

Viking Pop was special, too, because it was the same pop they sold at Verrip’s Resort on Big Sandy Lake.  Back in those days my family’s big reunion was held each summer on Big Sandy.  Imagine the pride when I could point out to my cousins that Viking Pop was from South St. Paul and that in fact we could have Viking Pop pretty much anytime we wanted one at home.

My cousins seemed to shrug it off as no big deal, but I like to think they were impressed nonetheless.

I wonder whatever happened to Viking Pop.  Everything is controlled by large corporations these days, increasingly owned by upstarts overseas.  I imagine the rich variety of Viking Pop simply couldn’t compete with the simple bland plainness of multinational cola.  It is a shame.

Hell, you can’t find glass bottles with steel bottle caps anymore either!  But when I do, I use my simple church key, just like I did when I was a kid, and immediately I feel at home and I feel good.

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Brideshead Revisited or The Rum Diary?

I thought I might write about tonight’s walk through the neighborhood and the woods.  I have been walking a great deal, so much, in fact, that my feet are painful with blisters and bruises.  I seem to have much on my mind…and so I walk.  And such nice walks, too.

This evening’s highlights include a beautifully calm lake reflecting a late evening blue sky and a family of deer.

Doe and fawn ate quietly, perfectly in the manner of Bambi, an early scene at least, while the buck, about 40 yards distant down the trail, pretended not to care.  Not about the two other deer, not about me, not about anything.

No pictures of the deer.  I need a better camera.

I also thought I might write about the Affordable Care Act, but I would only be repeating endless chatter about that…and be lost.  So I thought I might write about that shameful dingbat, Michele Bachmann, Minnesota’s disgrace, but picking at her stupidity has lost its appeal; there’s no sport in it.  She opens her mouth and it is plain stupid, not even remotely funny any longer.

Bachmann “CRAZE” (Photo credit: Mr_CRO)

Bachmann promised today that repealing “Obamacare” would ensure that the economy would create millions of well-paying jobs.  Really, Michele?  We don’t have Obamacare now, where the hell are the jobs?  Republicans and their endless excuses.  We all grew up with bratty children like this, didn’t we?  Why the hell do we elect them to important public office…or any office, for that matter?  The world needs ditch diggers, after all.

Overall I feel like I am at a crossroads of some sort.  I might be a shade beyond my 39th year, but not dramatically so, and so I thought I might revisit Brideshead Revisited, where our protagonist deals with such a crossroads.  And it is a good read.

Then I thought…what about The Rum Diary, Hunter S. Thompson‘s tale o a man who, as an adult, finds himself with uncertainty.  It is full of drama and a late escape, if I remember correctly.

I doubt either would be a very appropriate model to follow, not in this era or at my stage in life, but it is good to think about.

And guess what I found as I thought about my choices!  A fantastic television series to fill the lack I endure now that I have completed all of the available Columbo episodes and have watched All Creatures Great and Small often enough to be thought strange.

So to hell with any important life decisions in the here and now, we have a wonderful television series to watch.  Advice to my many, many readers, however.  Read Waugh’s novel prior to watching the television series.  I simply think it is key to experience the original before turning to an interpretation.

Let me check back with you later.  I have to get to episode 2 yet tonight.  (There is a movie adaptation of The Rum Diary now, too, right?  Yes, there is…much to do.)

English: Madresfield Court Much of the picturesque moated Madresfield Court is Victorian with some of the Elizabethan building surviving, though the house is on a site of an early building. The house has never been bought or sold and has remained in the same family for twenty-eight generations, some 1,000 years. In the 1930s, the author, Evelyn Waugh was a regular visitor to Madresfield Court, thus providing the inspiration for his book, ‘Brideshead Revisited’. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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Silent Night, Owly Night, Part 1

A different sort of owly night tonight.

Down by the lake this evening an old couple sitting together on a bench stopped me in my tracks.  They were so simple and yet so present that they could not be missed.  And their presence resonated with me, my moods and thoughts, in particular.

It was a beautiful thing.  A cool wind blew steadily and strongly across the lake, and she sits bundled in a light coat and scarf.  She shields herself from the wind by leaning in against him and talks to him lightly, looking up into his face as he gently nods and watches the lake.  And I wonder it happens.  How, exactly, does that happen?  With all the people and activity breezing by them, they are perfectly and happily alone together, entirely content.  How does that happen?

I have seen young lovers at the lake many times, but never do I think I have seen a couple so easily at peace.  Such an owly couple, they are!  So calm and controlled, so self-assured.  And it made me think that love — your true love — comes with time and maturity, and maybe just a bit of effort.  How rare that seems to be.  How rare indeed.  It is something to chew on.

The couple soon stood and left, and when they left, they very much left together.  They walked across the street behind them, got into a sensible car, and I haven’t any doubt they are still together now and will always be together regardless of whether one or the other is near or far, there can be no doubt about this.  Even the end must seem sweet to them.

Yesterday I wrote about owly of another kind, the ornery kind that goes storming off in irritable disgust.  I focus on this because we all deal with the all-too-human owly.  Frankly I don’t believe unhappiness always begets more unhappiness anymore than I think a moment of happiness is a guarantee of unbroken bliss.

This old couple was a gift tonight, an answer to those thoughts.  Certainly it is a gift of time and experience, both good and bad, that gives them the comfort they share alone together.  It seems clear to me that owly — both in the calm sense and in the cantankerous — work together and form something of a gestalt, a wholeness that is more than its parts.

Very simply, the irritable owly can coexist with the calm owly and form something other than either one or the other.

My walk in the woods felt sobering and detached.  It fit the mood perfectly as a mix of sadness and optimism.  I like the woods.  A peaceful place to think.  Tonight my thoughts did not rest, however.  The old couple was a touchstone which let many pieces of thought and experience fall — not always comfortably — together.  It never hurts to see the possible and sometimes that is a matter of first giving up the impossible.

Above all else, however, one needs to be open to what is possible.  I cannot imagine the old couple being where they are today if one were naively optimistic and the other stubbornly unsure.  The two must mix and mingle and that comes with looking forward and accepting the possible.

The Sweet Pea

See how easy it is?

Well, ok…perhaps not easy…

Staying with the couple — I cannot help myself — if you are going to be both yourself and something more than yourself, you would need to accept the possible in the other, right?  I think it is the same with just about anything.  Easy in theory, complicated in practice, but straight-forward either way.

Part 2, by the way, is nothing but an easy walk in the woods and moments sitting in the sunshine staring at sailboats.  (Perhaps more on that later.)

Somehow it will form a whole, I’m sure it will.

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