Like a tune you can't stop humming, some phrases you just keep remembering. You like the creativity, the play on words, the outrageous image it paints in your imagination. In addition it may summarize a current battle in your life.
Among such a 'signs to remember' I add that announcing a street dance on First Street in Duluth this evening: "First Street Street Dance featuring the Pot Bellied Stallions". Delightful name "the Pot Bellied Stallions." Googling the internet brings up their web site.
Rumor has it the gentlemen will play shirtless! Not to be missed gals .... (Really? No, just my imagination playing with their title!!!)
Showing posts with label Duluth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Duluth. Show all posts
Friday, July 10, 2009
Pot Bellied Stallions
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Breath of Lake Superior
I love Lake Superior!
Lake Superior embraced me in my garden last Saturday. Her breath, that 10,000 year-old echo of the great ice sheet, suddenly touched me at my digging.
After a few warm spring days high pressure and the east wind drove cold temperatures deep inland from the lake. The temperature dropped to freezing during the night and barely surpassed 40º during the day. Snow fell. Folks layered on more clothing. Plants paused in their growing. City Hall, where I worked, turned on heat today after a cold day yesterday.
Right now it is colder by the lake 46º and warm at home 66º.
A refrigerator kept at 46º prevents stuff from rotting, turning green or wrinkling. Will this cuddling with Lake Superior keep younger?
Lake Superior embraced me in my garden last Saturday. Her breath, that 10,000 year-old echo of the great ice sheet, suddenly touched me at my digging.
After a few warm spring days high pressure and the east wind drove cold temperatures deep inland from the lake. The temperature dropped to freezing during the night and barely surpassed 40º during the day. Snow fell. Folks layered on more clothing. Plants paused in their growing. City Hall, where I worked, turned on heat today after a cold day yesterday.
Right now it is colder by the lake 46º and warm at home 66º.
A refrigerator kept at 46º prevents stuff from rotting, turning green or wrinkling. Will this cuddling with Lake Superior keep younger?
Friday, April 20, 2007
Thoughts about Obituaries
Lake Superior
A Bench by the Harbor -
I love Lake Superior. I took this photograph just a few days after our last snow. (We hope!) This bench sits close to the Duluth Aquarium.
I like the peace of this picture. Not a footprint in sight.
To be honest, I have entered the Funeral and Obituary Season of my life. Death no longer takes just Uncles, Aunts and Parents, but now cousins and friends.
I should read the obituaries. Mom read them until she died. She called when propriety required attendance at a funeral. Now my siblings and I muddle along hoping to catch them all.
True, newspapers make it easier. I can check the obits electronically. I can sign the guestbook of a friend in Fort Wayne from the comfort of my Cloquet office. Still I must remember to log in each day. Its useless to batch read obituaries a month at a time.
What do we really need? Automatic, email notification. I envision it this way.
I log on to the local newspaper and enter all those names I wish to track. When my cousin's husband, Fred, dies an email will tell me!
Yes, I see some technical problems. What if the family of my friend Dick Smith publishes his name as Richard. I think technology can handle it.
The Obit Notification may give me a number of false positives. It could email me about the Dick Smith who lives in Superior not the Dick Smith who lives in Duluth.
However, better too many notifications than missing an important funeral.
I have not solved one difficulty, however: Competition. Can you imagine graybeards my age at local bars and coffee shops. "Well, I have 56 people who are watching for my death. How many do you have?"
Ken
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Along the Superior Hiking Trail - Presumptions
We presume lots of things to be 'natural' or true. This quote unmasks the assumption.
"Tell me," the great twentieth-century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once asked a friend, "Why do people always say it was natural for man to assume that the sun went round the Earth rather than that the Earth was rotating?"
His friend replied, "Well, obviously because it just LOOKS as though the Sun is going round the Earth."
Wittgenstein responded, "Well, what would it have looked like if it had looked as though the Earth was rotating?"
We always need to wonder what's spinning whether considering the world or the truth.
I captured this photograph during a 'false' Spring day. Two additional snow storms came later that month. I walked here many times before but a different light and season created a new view.
"Tell me," the great twentieth-century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once asked a friend, "Why do people always say it was natural for man to assume that the sun went round the Earth rather than that the Earth was rotating?"
His friend replied, "Well, obviously because it just LOOKS as though the Sun is going round the Earth."
Wittgenstein responded, "Well, what would it have looked like if it had looked as though the Earth was rotating?"
Quoted in The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
We always need to wonder what's spinning whether considering the world or the truth.
I captured this photograph during a 'false' Spring day. Two additional snow storms came later that month. I walked here many times before but a different light and season created a new view.
Taken near the western end of the trail, just off the Becks Road in Duluth.
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