Citizens

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On Monday, we had Eric Eichorn (Eichorn Installation, LLC, P.O. Box 562, Red Wing, MN  55066) remove the old awful floor in the kitchen, and put in a nice new one.  He did a great job.  Except when it was done, and there was a pile o’ crap on the deck, and he was packing up to go, I pointed at the pile and said, “That’s going too?” and he said removal wasn’t covered in the estimate.  When setting it up, I’d left a message asking for verification that removal was included, and then forgot about it… grrrrrrrrr… so we agreed that I’d pay an extra $20 and he’d remove it, and he committed to bring his trailer the next morning and take it away.  That was Monday.  That was three days ago…

Here’s the side yard now, THURSDAY!  It’s still there!  Now it’s a wet mess.  Alan left a message Wednesday morning (651-301-3029) after it didn’t disappear Tuesday, I left a message on Wednesday afternoon, and I’ve left a message this morning.  He’s not returning calls, he’s not taking the crap as promised and as paid to do.

I’ll take this down when he takes the pile o’ crap!

I dreamed about bicycles last night. I suppose that's no big surprise given that yesterday was the start of another round of 30 Days of Biking and I attended a Giant for Women bike maintenance workshop last night. Still, it was kind of odd to wake up and realize that I dreamed about the new road bikes for 2011 instead of, say, something scary or family related or something scary and family related. But I dreamed about bikes and fixing flat tires and about riding with my kids - and that's a pretty good dream and a fine way to start the day.

As I mentioned, 30 Days of Biking started yesterday. Some of you may remember that I committed to ride my bike every day last April and that this 30 Days of Biking thing was started by two guys who decided to challenge people to ride their bikes Every. Friggin. Day. for 30 Days. Well, the challenge really took off and about 500 people from all over the world took part. I had a blast doing the challenge and met a lot of cool people along the way. Other riders had as much fun as I did so the guys who started it all, Patrick and Zachariah, decided to launch 30 Days of Biking Part 2 for the month of September.

Rose and I after our first ride for 30 Days of Biking
Excited to do it again I signed up right away but guess what? Owen signed up and so did Rose and Ryan - our whole family will be doing 30 Days of Biking! I know I can do it, having ridden every day in April. I'm pretty sure Owen will manage to get out on his bike every day but I'm honestly am not sure if Rose and Ryan (they are only 11 and 8 years old, respectively) will actually ride their bikes every day. I mean, I still have to remind Ryan to change his underwear and riding every day is a big commitment. Will the Mibus Family really ride our bikes every day? I guess we will find out.

My favorite bike shop, Valley Bike and Ski, is having a Giant for Women event. It started yesterday with a maintenance workshop. Today women can go in and check out the 2011 line up of Giant Bikes for Women and/or go on a casual group ride.

I attended the maintenance workshop last night and am really glad I went. The workshop was taught by a woman named Jackie and was attended by about 15 women. Jackie reviewed with us the parts of a bike, showed us how to "pre-flight" our bikes (okay, my aviation language is coming through - she called it a pre-ride check or something but I think of it as a pre-flight), how to change a flat and more. She was knowledgeable, a good instructor and fun. I came out of the evening excited to see so many other women bicyclists and full of information I didn't know before. For instance, I didn't know most of the parts of my bike. Yes, I knew what a top tube was, the fork, the saddle, but now I know about cassettes, bottom brackets and more. Now if my bike is making a funny noise I won't have to go in the shop and say my bike's thingy-a-bob is making a funny noise or the gizmo is creaking.

Well, today is a day filled with school activities for the kids. Rose was on the school bus at 7 a.m. and is now at an orientation for middle school. Yep, she's starting 6th grade and she's so excited. She started soccer practice this week as well, she's never played but is doing very well and having a lot of fun. Later tonight we all head to town for Ryan's open house where we get to meet his 3rd grade teacher and drop off his school supplies.

It will be a full day. But somewhere along the way we'll fit in a quick bike ride for Day 2 of our 30 Days of Biking! And maybe, just maybe, I'll sneak down to Valley and check out some of the new 2011 bikes for women. ;)


I can dream, can't I? The 2011 Giant Avail Advance 2.Composite frame. A couple of steps up from the bike I have now.

One of the best drives in the Upper Peninsula takes US41 from the Copper Country around Keweenaw Bay to L’Anse, Michigan. Driving west on that route last Sunday, I stopped in the tiny bayside town of Baraga to take a few shots of the morning sun on the bay. I could not have been more lucky with the weather. It was spectacular. The water was the definition of “limpid.”

Debbie Weil, corporate social media consultant and author of the recently updated The Corporate Blogging Book (now on my Kindle), tweeted this on Monday:

9 years since my 1st article about blogging on Aug. 22, 2001: To Blog or Not to Blog http://bit.ly/cgL88M Yr thots on what has changed – ?

Weil was prescient with her 2001 ClickZ article To Blog or Not to Blog… That’s a Good Question. She not only saw blogs as potent corporate marketing tools but saw the possibility of them being used by executives:

So how does this translate to your email marketing program? If your objective is customer retention and you are sending an e-newsletter to your house list, you could easily include a link to your CEO’s blog — or a blog by another executive in your company who has a keen wit, writes with style, and has something to say.

In 2006, Weil wrote in her book:

Ideally, the blog attaches a voice to the company through the words and style of the executive writing it. A legitimate question to ask, however, is this: Is a CEO blog "the" voice of the company? What about employee blogs? Perhaps it’s better to say that a CEO blog can help tell the story of the company. The story you want customers and the media to listen to. It’s a subtle difference, but it touches on one of the most oft touted reasons for a large corporation to blog–giving the company a human voice.

Yesterday, Jennifer Van Grove, Associate Editor at Mashable, published an article titled How CEOs Will Use Social Media in the Future.

Van Grove quotes from last May’s Mashable interview with Forrester CEO George Colony titled Should CEOs Be Fluent in Social Media? about how few top executives use social media, noting that "social media abstinence even appears to extend to CEOs of tech companies."

She brings in the age and attitude factor (which Colony raised as well):

When it comes to CEOs, there’s a vast disparity between the young ones heading up startups and the more seasoned CEOs running the world’s most powerful companies. That disparity is social media — the young are more versed than the old. The difference between the two groups can be attributed to different generations and different attitudes around content and information meant for the public and private domains.

But she fails to mention that in that interview, as well as on Colony’s blog here, that he also notes that the CEO’s of social media companies are less than avid social media users:

Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook is active on his platform but doesn’t blog and infrequently visits Twitter. Evan Williams of Twitter Tweets several times per day and blogs, but hasn’t posted in 2010. Jeff Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn uses Twitter several times per week and posts to the LinkedIn corporate blog. Mike Jones, co-CEO of MySpace is on Twitter several times per week and has a blog (though no posts this year).

I don’t know the ages of Weiner and Jones but Williams is 30-something and Zuckerberg is 20-something. These guys are not only extremely versed in social media but Williams (Blogger and Twitter) and Zuckerberg (Facebook) were among the creators of it.

So it doesn’t seem, as Van Grove asserts, that lack of executive blogging/social media use is solely because of "different generations and different attitudes around content and information."

I’d argue that it’s because executives of all generations have not considered how these technologies can be used as leadership tools. They only see them as marketing/public relations tools and once a company gets to a certain size, few CEO’s engage directly in PR on a daily basis.

Van Grove lauds the tweeting of Livestrong CEO Doug Ulman but he doesn’t appear to blog and I seriously doubt that he spends much time reading or personally responding to the tweets of his 38,000+ followers. As I blogged last month, the social networking part of social media is a problem for most executives.

Van Grove asks Edelman Digital’s Senior VP Steve Rubel what he thinks the use of social media will be by executives in the future:

While bullish on CEOs making organizational changes to better incorporate social media, Rubel does not see reason to predict a huge uptick in social media broadcasting from the CEOs themselves. “I see CEOs more laying the groundwork in vision and process than necessarily participating actively themselves,” asserts Rubel.

That’s because Rubel sees the world of social media through the lens of public relations. Others, like that geezer CEO Paul Levy, see it through the lens of leadership.

Debbie Weil saw that a blog could give an organization a human voice.  We now need executives to see that a blog can help them lead an organization with human voice.

Marriage is an institution that strengthens and stabilizes society. It is an institution that has the capacity to bring profound joy and happiness to people and it is a matter of equality and keeping faith of one of the charters of the nation, the right to live your life. What left wing politician made this [...]

The second “30 Days of Biking” event kicks off tomorrow, on September 1. As the website says,

The only rule for 30 Days of Biking is that you bike every day for 30 days—around the block, 20 miles to work, whatever suits you—then share your adventures online. We believe biking enriches life, builds community, and preserves the Earth.

The brainchild of Patiomensch and Zachamon, two riders in Minneapolis, 30DoB was a decent little phenomenon in April. September is a good riding month, too, so – barring a broken leg – I am definitely going to ride every day until October. I hope many others will try to ride for 30 straight days, too: it would be good for the heart, the legs, the streets, and the planet. If you want to do the 30DoB, you can register at the website or via Twitter (using the #30daysofbiking tag) – or not register at all and just, you know, ride.

For my part, most of my rides will be commutes – twenty-one of them, if I ride every workday in September. But beyond that functional riding, I want to accumulate at least 300 miles of training rides, including rides of 85 and 100 miles. Those long rides would build on 50 and 65 miles I did  earlier this summer, and would build fitness nicely toward winter. Skiing is only about 90 days away!

I’m just back from my four-day trip to the Upper Peninsula to attend my grandfather’s funeral. I’ll be writing more about the trip – and about the funeral – soon, but for tonight I wanted to just post three pictures of the Copper Country: the view from Houghton, on the southern side of the Portage Lake ship canal. The Copper Country is a gorgeous place, and only rarely more gorgeous than it was on Sunday afternoon. It had been seven or eight years since I’d visited – far too long. I hope I can go back (with the family!) next summer.

All of these photos were taken from the patio of the Keweenaw Brewing Company, an excellent microbrewery in Houghton – which is roughly ten thousand times cooler now than it was in 1990.

The view to the northeast, of the picturesquely abandoned Quincy copper-smelting works in Ripley, MI.

The view straight north, of Quincy Hill, outside Hancock.

The view to the west-northwest, of the Portage Lake Lift Bridge – one of the most beautiful bridges in the world.

Since the formation of the ELCA in 1988, the denomination has been shepherded by three presiding Bishops:  Herb Chilstrom, H George Anderson, and currently Mark Hanson.  Herb and wife Corrine now reside in retirement in St. Peter, Minnesota.  On August 26th, Herb penned an op-ed piece for the newspaper in nearby Mankato—his response to the [...]

The Minnesota State Fair opened Thursday, which means it’s the perfect time to explain my great-grandfather’s connection to what’s also known as “The Great Minnesota Get-Together.”  I have a few stories to tell, but I’ll use this post to focus on the the Bemidji Boys’ Band’s great fair adventure of 1922.

The 75-member Bemidji Boys’ Band in 1922. G. Oliver Riggs moved to Bemijdi in January 1919 after accepting an offer to direct the city’s municipal band and form a juvenile band.  The rest of his family – wife Islea, elder son Ronald and younger son Percy – stayed in Crookston until June, when Ronald graduated from Crookston High School.

By March of 1919, G. Oliver had recruited 111 boys to the band and had begun instruction.  Three years later, the Bemidji Boys’ Band was invited to perform at the Minnesota State Fair.

The 75-member band piled into several vehicles and left Bemidji on Friday, Sept. 1, at 4:30 a.m.  The all-day drive included a 9 a.m. stop in Pine River for milk, and a 1:30 p.m. chicken dinner at St. Albans on Mille Lacs Lake.  After sleeping in tents at the fairgrounds, the band members awoke early the next morning and went to Minneapolis, where they paraded in the streets of the business district and serenaded newspaper and government offices.  That afternoon, they did the same thing in St. Paul.

An article and photo of the band in the Sept. 2, 1922 issue of the Minneapolis Journal. The above photo is difficult to make out; I copied it from the State Fair scrapbook that’s available on microfilm at the Minnesota History Center library.  My favorite part of the article is the interview with the youngest band member, 10-year-old Basil Britton, who had never seen a streetcar and had “lived all his life in Bemidji ‘where I see buses.’”

An article from the Sept. 3, 1922 issue of the Minneapolis Sunday Tribune. Sunday afternoon the boys had a paid engagement to play at Minnehaha Park for a “record-breaking crowd of ten thousand people, thus evidencing the favorable publicity gained by their city parades the previous day,” according to the band secretary’s account of the trip, published in the Sept. 15 issue of the Bemidji Sentinel.  They were treated to an evening meal at the Ryan Hotel (an impressive building demolished in 1962) and a show at the Metropolitan Theatre.

The program for the Minnehaha Park concert, printed in the Minneapolis Daily Star. The boys played twice each day, Monday through Friday, at the fair’s Plaza Bandstand, and because they were such a big hit, fair manager Thomas H. Canfield requested that the band play in front of the grandstand on Friday evening as a featured act.  Through a newfangled $50,000 amplifier, Tony Snyder, the director of state fair music, introduced the band as “the world’s most famous boys’ band from Bemidji, Minnesota, under the direction of G. Oliver Riggs.”

This is how the Bemidji Daily Pioneer described the Sept. 8 performance: “The act went over big.  The boys were applauded from the minute they appeared in view of the grandstand until they were again out of sight.  The announcement made by Mr. Snyder received a tremendous ovation, as did the first number played by the boys.  An encore just had to be played before the crowd would let the boys leave the front of the grandstand.”

(An interesting side note: the amplifier was donated for the Fair’s use by Northwestern Bell.  Vice President Calvin Coolidge used it earlier in the week for an address that apparently left fairgoers unimpressed.  According to a story in the Minneapolis Daily Star, the audience became restless 40 minutes into the speech and started walking out, causing Coolidge to skip to the end.  The 98-degree heat was cited as the most common explanation for crowd’s behavior.  I wonder how long Coolidge would have spoken if the audience had remained quiet?!)

A photo of the Bemidji Boys’ Band in front of the bandstand, with the grandstand in the background. The band left the fair the next morning and drove all the way home, stopping in Walker for supper at the New Chase Hotel, and arriving in Bemidji close to midnight.

As I read old newspaper articles Sunday afternoon about the trip, the words “Chase Hotel” jumped out at me because a few hours earlier I’d read a travel article in the Star Tribune about Walker that mentions the hotel.  It’s listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is now known as Chase on the Lake.

I ate at the hotel’s restaurant a few years ago, on a trip up north with friends, and enjoyed the view of Leech Lake.  I didn’t realize until writing this post that that by stopping to eat there, I’d once again unwittingly followed the trail of my great-grandfather.  
Now I suppose I should travel to Pine River for some milk, and catch a concert at Minnehaha Park.  Good thing I don’t have to worry about running into Coolidge.

While we haven’t been to any new places to eat lately (still waiting for Pan Pan, Norman!) we have a few tidbits to report on for you amusement and information today.

First of all, let me say that my days of eating whatever I want whenever I want are over. While I have mostly maintained a 50/50 diet, that is half of what I like and half of what is really good for me, I am moving forward into the 80/20 realm, which means only one treat per day and less eating out, unless I can manage more like this next bit; We love George’s Vineyard on Hwy 3, and I have tried just about everything, and it’s all good, but this week I tried the Hawaiian Pizza again. I usually order pizza with a light amount of cheese, but I forgot this time and Man oh Boy oh Girl oh Goodness! It was good. I ordered a small pizza for myself. Usually D and I split one, but I could see that look of the hungry hunter in his eyes and suggested he go ahead and order his usual gyros platter. I promote that because I usually steal some fries with the Greek yoghurt as a dip, or If I have spaghetti, I will put the yoghurt in the sauce. A tablespoon or so, does the trick.

I know I am saying ‘usually’ a lot, well that’s about to change!

The tip is that I ate about one third of the small fully cheesed pizza, and packed up the rest for home. The next morning, I nuked the second third of it for 10 seconds and had it for breakfast. The next morning I did the same. So, pizza, yes, full cheese, yes…break the caloric barrier? NO! And it was good as can be with a very light crust, thinly sliced Canadian bacon and nice little chunks of pineapple. I like the very refreshing trend towards lightening up some recipes with citrus. Any citrus. But I wonder if I can contemplate pizza with mango?

My new favorite food recommendation is chutney. People are making chutney from more combinations of food than I can shake a stick at…and some of them sound quite delicious. Apple, cranberry, walnut chutney for example. Or string bean chutney with curry spices. The list is endless. Chutneys can be served with any mild food that takes on other flavors, like chicken, cheese, crackers, potatoes, rice, pasta and so on. So if someone offers you chutney, don’t crinkle up your nose…give it a go. It’s the most flavorful food I have ever tasted.

We got some great salsa from our Farmer’s Market, as well as some of the meatiest tomatoes I have seen in my life. We had some really delicious Yukon Gold potatoes from there last week, which we cut up, throw into a pot, boil them for 15 minutes, let them cool a bit, toss on some oil and vinegar, and drop them in a green salad with hard boiled eggs for lunch or dinner. It’s budget friendly, and tastes awesome.

We broke down and bought homemade bread, and cookies, too…but we didn’t eat them all at once. WHEW! Do check out the Farmer’s Market Real Soon! They have some great deals for you.

What a lovely week of music making it has been at Montessori Children's House. Thank you to Shana and Anika Hodel for their joyful and thoughtful preparations for each day of happy camping.

making sandpaper blocks

wind chimes

shakers

bell bracelets

stringed instruments

  guest artists

make a pretty sound

instrument exploration

  all together now

we love music!

The long awaited and much ballyhooed Convocation of Lutheran CORE is underway in Grove City, Ohio.  At the Convocation, eighteen former ELCA congregations have banded together as charter members of the CORE created Lutheran denomination auspiciously called The North American Lutheran Church (NALC).  Eighteen.  Newly elected NALC bishop Paull Spring predicts the new denomination will [...]

Although Paul never mentioned his city of origin, the Book of Acts reports that Tarsus, in modern day Turkey, was the home of the diaspora Jew.  In the first century, Tarsus was a major city, home to a Greek University of the Stoic school of philosophy, and the capitol of the coastland and plains province of Cilicia.  Churning out of the rugged mountain pass known as the Cilician Gates (Alexander’s army passed this way), the Cydnus River rushed toward Tarsus before slowing and ribboning the last ten miles to the sea.

In A Wretched Man novel, this city and the river provided the setting for many scenes (the names are in the Greek language of the times).

A caterpillar rafted down the river aboard a silvery olive leaf. The larvae had not yet become a moth, a butterfly, or whatever it was destined to be. Speeding through the ripples, slowing in a pool, and spinning in an eddy, the hairy pilgrim drifted with the current.

Perched on a rocky outcropping along the River Kydnos, the teen-aged boy named Paulos dangled his feet in the cool alpine waters, coursing toward the sea from the nearby mountains. Snow-capped peaks loomed over the Cilician plain and the city of Tarsos like white-haired eminences in vigil over their domain. Here was the young man’s sanctuary: a maze of rocks, pools, and small waterfalls just upriver from Tarsos, his home.

Much changes in two millennia.  Tarsus is now a small city wedged between the greater burgs of Mersin to the west and Adana to the east.  Rivers silt in, dams and levies altar God’s creation.  Do modern day pictures of Cydnus river rapids depict the spot where Alexander bathed and nearly caught his death of a chill?  Does the slow river beneath Tarsus where Cleopatra’s barge entertained Marc Anthony now follow a different course?

And the centuries spawn myths and legends—here is Cleopatra’s bridge and there is the church of St Paul, the site of his childhood home according to local tradition.  Turkey is now Islamic, and St Paul’s church is merely a museum, but that may change if the head of the Religious Affairs Directorate gets his way:

Bardakoğlu called for the reopening of the Saint Paul Church in Tarsus, a district of the southern province of Mersin, comments he reiterated at the iftar. “I find it more correct if the Saint Paul Church in Tarsus serves as a church than in its current role as a museum,” he said.

Go there as a pilgrim and ponder; or join me in my wonderings as I imagined my way onto the shores of first century riverbanks, pricked my ears at hawkers in boisterous marketplaces, and meandered through back alleys as Roman legionaries lurked in the shadows.  One reviewer said it this way:

a stupendous novel about Paul … the book is beautifully written full of descriptions of the Holy Land’s landscape and Agriculture … made me read further, stop reading, begin reading and so on throughout the book … I questioned, I discovered, I began to see with a better lighting … birthed in me a desire to know more.

In 1984, a new restaurant opened in the Cedar Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis, between the west bank campus of the University of Minnesota and Augsburg, a private liberal arts college of the ELCA.  Restaurants come and go, and this new start was hardly noteworthy except that the goal was not to make money but to [...]

I did it! Today I got on my bike in Collingswood, NJ, at 6:46 am and made it to my office door at 7:36 — 50 minutes door to door, a little longer than I thought it would take to travel the seven-mile distance. Highlights: the traffic was light and the potholes were plentiful in Camden, the pedestrian/bike path on the Ben Franklin Bridge was very narrow in spots, there were a lot of traffic lights, and the cobblestones in Philly were a challenge.

I love baking and making appetizers but don't think of myself as much of a cook. I can make a cheesecake or a wonderful plate of brie onion tartlets but when it comes to feeding my family dinner...well, let's just say we eat a lot of plain pasta at my house and I feel pretty inept when it comes to cooking meals.

So when I found out that my favorite chef, Karl, was going to come over today and make me and my kids lunch I was especially thrilled.

Karl is my friend, Tom's, brother. He's a chef who has lived all over but is currently living in the Dominican Republic and working at a swanky resort. We originally connected because of a recipe he created for his nephew - Jordan Ett's State Fair Drunken Beef Stew. I posted a comment on his blog, Fusion on the Fly, and he didn't think I was real. My name, Myrna CG Mibus, sounded made up, he thought, so he figured his sister-in-law, Libby, posted the comment as a joke. Libby assured him that Myrna was, in fact, a real person and the next time Karl came into town Libby, I, and a bunch of our friends put on a brunch for Karl so we could all meet him in person.

This group of friends puts on a wonderful spread of food. We ate well and enjoyed great conversation. I made Karl a gooey chocolate torte for dessert.

We've been friends ever since.

The next time Karl visited we had a "fusion" party at my house. I invited some friends and everyone brought three or so ingredients that they happened to have at home. Karl then promised to use whatever people brought and create a meal from the ingredients.

My friend, Joy, has a good sense of humor.
She brought a can of SPAM.
Cured ham drizzled with balsamic vinegar. Fried squash blossoms stuffed with cream cheese and capers on the blue plate.On the white plate - Fried squash blossoms stuffed with SPAM on a bed of sauteed SPAM. Plus a glass of lovely red wine.

We thought we had Karl stumped but we did not. Armed with SPAM, a packet of steaks, a can of peppers, a jar of capers, cream cheese, a bread starter, a few tomatoes, a few things out of my garden and me and my daughter Rose as helpers, Karl created one of the best meals ever. We had Spam stuffed squash blossoms, pizza, marinated steak with pepper sauce, fried zucchini appetizers, cucumber and tomato salad and some lovely cured ham drizzled with balsamic vinegar (a gift Karl brought all the way from New York where he was living at the time) and more! Rose felt so important working alongside a chef who took the time to teach her things as they prepped the food. She has since taken a great interest in cooking and often talks about the day she helped Karl.
Rose helping prep food for our Fusion Food Party
Karl travels to Minnesota each summer to visit his mother and his brother, Tom, and his family. Part of this visit involves taking his nephew and niece, Jordan and Linnea, to the Minnesota State Fair. Part of his visit, it now seems, involves visiting me and making a meal together.

I'm a lucky gal.

So this afternoon Karl, Libby, Jordan and Linea arrived with two Cantonese style roasted ducks that Karl picked up in Minneapolis and enough energy to prepare a meal for a couple dozen people. He popped the ducks, already prepared and cut up, into the oven to warm then started cutting up veggies for a stir fry. He created a sauce out of a whole bunch of stuff I had in my cupboards, cooked up a big pot of rice and stir fried the veggies. Before we knew it, Karl had a fabulous lunch ready for us.
Stir Fried Veggies
The duck was fabulous!! All of the food was wonderful. We laughed and ate and listened to Karl tell stories then ate some more. Ryan asked for seconds and thirds of duck, saying it was the best thing he's ever eaten which is pretty high praise from my somewhat finicky eight-year-old son.
We finished off our meal with dessert - Raspberry Chocolate French Macaroons that I made. I've never made macaroons but they were such a hit that I'm sure I'll make them again and again.
Raspberry Chocolate French Macaroons - Yum!Here is the recipe (Thanks Ruth!)

Karl heads back to the Dominican Republic on Saturday. My kids head back to school in under two weeks and I will get back to my "normal" school year life as a writer and mom. Karl will be creating wonderful meals for the people who visit the resort and I'll be frantically trying to figure out what to make the family for dinner. 

Yep, life will be back to normal.
Or will it?

You see, I have a friend who spent almost a whole day of his vacation so he could come to my house and make lunch for me and my family.

That's really special.
Someone giving up a day of vacation time just for me.

Can life really go "back to normal" when someone gives you that kind of gift?
I don't think so.

It’s been a while since I posted some good kid quotes, and since I’m going to miss the girls a lot while I’m attending my grandfather’s funeral in the U.P., I thought I’d post a few from the last couple weeks:

Genevieve, disagreeing with me: “You don’t know the truth, big man.”

Julia: “Tomorrow for breakfast, I want a sporn and fook, okay? Sporn and fook? What did I just say?”

Genevieve, getting into her chair for dinner: “Well, here we are again, sitting at the table, eating watermelon.”

Julia, bored with our outdoor games: “I’m getting out of here and going back to my castle.”

Genevieve, wearing toy butterfly wings: “I’m a fairy, and I just turned you into a handsome dad.”

Me, telling them about my new diet plan: “I’ve decided that I’m going to eat a bigger dinner so that I don’t get hungry later and have an unhealthy snack later.”
Julia, unimpressed: “That’s a good idea, but you could just have a healthy snack.”

Genevieve, frustrated: “If Julia doesn’t stop being mean to me, I’m going to go to Chicago and live for 15 years.”

I would have skipped over this piece three years ago — that is, before our first dog arrived and quickly raised my awareness of creatures large and small, legged and winged, that I previously disregarded — and what fascinating stuff I would have missed. Such as:

“Most young birds, even those hatched just weeks ago, don’t travel [south for the winter] with their parents or even their siblings. Instead, they follow a flight plan embedded in their brains.”

Whoa. And …

“Whether it’s a first trip or one made by a seasoned veteran, bird migration is a finely calibrated phenomenon. A small feathered being, weighing less than 2 ounces, may fly 3,000 miles or more in spring and fall, able to navigate with such precision that it may land in the very same tree it left six months earlier.”

I cannot tell a warbler from a catbird. But I know that before traveling a couple-three-thousand miles, you need a decent meal. So I had better keep the Swift bird buffet (pictured) well stocked. I filled it up last night and by mid-morning they were munching.

It’s one of those mornings, had a long bath in the bestest tub in the world, then got the doggies fed and out and pooped, and ready to commence work, fired up the machine, got maybe two emails opened and suddenly… SILENCE and DARKNESS (it’s dark on the side of a bluff).  No computer, no light, no ceiling fan… There goes Xcel again, they know I’ve got work to do, and they sent out their terrorist army.

NOT… it was a squirrel.  Alan hear the fuse on the distribution pole across the street go, and saw something drop, I said, “it’s a squirrel.”  Damned if it wasn’t a squirrel he saw fall, a brave soul who gave is life to Xcel to bring everything to a halt this a.m.  Power is back.  And neener, neener, neener, neener, Xcel, I got to office in Prestigious West Red Wing withwireless, Greek Strata and unlimited coffee.

Stop by the Hort Society booth for great deals on garden gear. (The garden gloves are HUGE sellers.)

I’ll be making my annual trek to the Minnesota State Fair to volunteer at the Minnesota State Horticultural Society booth next week, but I’m already figuring out a plan for visiting the fair. The state fair offers many temptations for gardeners — and not just the kind that are deep fried.

MSHS Garden, cared for by the St. Anthony Park Garden Club

Of course, the Horticulture Building, at the corner of Underwood and Judson, is the place to start. (Enter on Como Avenue for easy access.) Be sure to walk around the building and visit the gardens that are planted and tended for MSHS by the gardeners of the St. Anthony Park Garden Club. The gardens include two streams and a water feature and often are planted with native plants, which are usually at peak bloom during the fair. While this is my favorite garden at the fair, there are 32 organizations that Adopt-a-Garden at the fair. This brochure gives a good map and description of the gardens, which are restful places to stop and take a break. I often stop at the Minnesota Water Garden Society garden, which is near the Food Building.

Yes, they give an award for the largest zucchini!

Inside the hort building is the MSHS booth, which includes a retail store and a separate educational area (watch for Big Boy, the tomato). Just down the lane from the educational booth is the U of M Master Gardener’s question-and-answer booth, always a crowded spot and a great place to stop with questions about your gardens.  The building also includes winners in the State Fair big vegetable contest, the MSHS Plant Show displays, the apple displays (a healthy stopping point), and the new Dirt Stage, which will feature talks about gardening topics every day. Here’s a list of who’s speaking.

What are your favorite places at the State Fair?