Songs in the head

I knew it was going to be a strange day when I start out with Simon and Garfunkel's "The Boxer"  and a few minutes later the theme song from the George of the Jungle cartoon show.

What makes that happen? They weren't "ear worms" as I understand those. To me an ear worm can't be easily gotten rid of except to sing it to someone and thereby passing it on.

And then there are the misheard lyrics. Most are pretty well known like Hendrix "'scuse me while I kiss this guy" or CCR's "there's a bathroom on the right". There are more obscure ones like the Association's "Windy". The real lyric is "Who's sweepin' down to capture a moment" but sometimes heard as, " Who's creepin' out to capture a Mormon."

Or The Allman Brothers "Whippin Post" heard as "Sometimes I feel, sometimes I feel, Like I been tied to the fishin' pole".

David Bowie's Space Oddity, "And the papers want to know who shot you where." " Clown control to Mao Tse Tung".

Fleetwood Mac's Landslide, "I took my love, and I took it down", or was it " I took my love and I milked a cow". Or Bill Clinton's favorite, "Don't stop thinkin' about tomorrow" to "Don't stop thinkin' about your mama."

Back to Simon and Garfunkel. "And here's to you Mrs. Robinson, She's a slut, that's more than you should know."

There must be hundreds or thousands of these that are heard by everyone. After all it is better to make something up than just mumble your way through lyrics you just don't know. And what about all the foreign languages? They must have these, too!  Imagine a group like Led Zeppelin writing lyrics in Gaelic or Swahili.

Or maybe the Three Stooges "Swingin' The Alphabet".  Just a musical interlude for your listening pleasure. Really!

Yes, it's true I sometimes slip back into something less mature and childish than most people are used to seeing, but even I enjoy a good fart joke now and then. I am not always the worldly intellectual scholar that you see before you (Don't read that with a mouthful of coffee...Ooops! Too late!). Maybe I'll pass for normal by the weekend.

Summer slowly slips away

The ships on the big lake are starting to hug the shore, more than before, in anticipation of the North Wind. The slowly setting sun gleams on the forecastle (fo'c'sle) as the ship is upbound for Duluth. Pardon my alliteration. Must be reading too much poetry lately.

Another sign of impending winter is the hot rods and classic cars getting out for one last joy ride before the highway departments start salting the roads. One of the reps that calls on us at work brought his Cadillac up the shore a few days ago.

Speaking of work, I got to take a drive up the Gunflint Trail (one of the three or so paved roads in the county) to fix a minor problem and stopped on the way down to take a look at the change of colors.

In another week or so we will be at the peak of change.

Yesterday the Cooker and I took a stroll through the woods looking for any mushrooms that might have made themselves available after the recent rains. We found woods sculpture that we had left behind at another time. I call this "Bolt on a Stump" because it's a bolt on a stump. Clever, eh?

And then the Cooker left her implements in a pile on the trail while she went to peruse a wooded hillside for some fungal treasure. I call this still life "Basket and Walking Stick". Pretty clever again, don't you think?

We never did find any edibles, but did see some interesting 'shrooms like this on the butt of an old log. These are tiny as the log is only about 6" (15.24cm) in diameter. Cool colors complete the composition. Click on it to see the variety.

 Something this past week brought to mind a poem from T.S. Eliot called "Dry Salvages". It was the death of an old friend with whom I had reconnected with a few years ago and got to see at my college reunion a few months ago. There were a few lines toward the end of that poem that took me back to our college days.

For most of us, there is only the unattended
Moment, the moment in and out of time,
The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,
The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning
Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts.

Fall Fair

It’s Fair time around much of North America. Some were earlier in the summer and some just finished.  In Minnesota the state fair is a big thing. I have been a few times, but it is far away and I have gotten just a little agoraphobic in my later years. I can handle being in the vicinity of large crowds, but when the crowd picks you up like a leaf on a river you just have to go along for the ride. I don’t like that part. In recent years I have opted for smaller venues. I am much more likely to attend the Hymers Fall Fair located west of Thunder Bay, Ontario in the village of (wait for it…) Hymers. 

 It is a quaint little agricultural fair with no midway or beer garden. There is some good food available as well as junk food, but no deep fried anything-on-a-stick.   

We usually go for the first of the two day fair. That is when they have the light horse events. The heavy horse events are the second day. It is fun to watch the kids do some amazing things on their trusty steeds. It is a fairly low key competition, but a good practice experience for those who want to go on to bigger and better things. 

 

It is the stuff of dreams for a lot of young girls. If young boys knew more about the girl/horse thing there would be a lot more boys out in the arena waiting for their future “buckle bunnies” to get old enough to date. 

One of my favorite displays is from the "Tired Iron Club". They find, salvage, and restore old engines of all sorts. Everything from pumps to chainsaws and generators, some of which are over a hundred years old. The noises the engines make are from the past and are often a bit comical by today's standards of mechanical sounds.

 They tend to put a smile on your face or cause you to think back and contemplate.

There are two stages for your entertainment and the bands are pretty good for the most part. About ten or fifteen years ago I could hear some very familiar instrumentals coming from the main stage. They were playing a bunch of songs from Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. Guess what? It WAS the Tijuana Brass sans Alpert. They were older than I remember (Gee, so am I), but damn they were good! Here is that stage with one of the local bands.

There is a dog show of sorts and there are the usual cows, pigs, chickens, geese, goats, sheep, ducks, etc., for everyone, but some would rather just eat.

  

We came home with Canadian maple syrup which is better even than our local home brew, homemade cookies, and three pairs of really soft handmade wool socks for really cheap! 

Don't forget your Passport!

Geography is Destiny

A few days ago I went on a road trip south to Duluth to consult about a knee replacement. On the way I was listening to MPR when "Talking Volumes" came on the radio. I don't often get to listen to the radio during normal working hours and if I do it is just background noise. The speaker/interviewee was  Dr. Abraham Verghese and the interview was done at the Fitzgerald Theater in St.Paul (that bastion of culture) last October. Mostly they discussed his book "Cutting for Stone" which is a wonderful and best selling novel, but I am more impressed by the man himself. I would love to have him as a friend.

One of the points he brought up and getting from his own background is that geography is destiny. He mentions that Freud said "anatomy is destiny" and segued that into geography is destiny by mentioning all the important stuff near the birth canal and then to Napoleon's "geography is destiny" attribution. I may not have that exactly right as I am doing this from memory of a few days ago, but that was the gist of it in my mind. His changes in geography led him to where he is now and he used that journey as a basis for some of "Cutting for Stone". I listened intently, but kept wandering off to my own thoughts about this.

As the son of immigrants I have always been drawn back to "the old country" and wonder what life would have been like if I had grown up there.

My mother died about the time I turned three so I don't know much of what her life was like in the U.K. I never got the details my father was able to give me throughout my life. The bedtime stories he told me as a child were full of adventure with a little fantasy thrown in much as the stories of Iceland and Norway are often related. The characters were Per and Odd, boys not much older than myself so that I could relate. The plots I don't remember well, but the scenery and pictures he painted in my mind always took me to beautiful and rugged place.

Sometimes the stories would take me to ancient settlements in the viking age and voyages across the North Atlantic where fish was always plentiful. This is across the fjord from where my grandfather was born in Iceland.

Years later I would hear Led Zeppelin play "The Immigrant Song" and it would take me back to some of the places in the stories.

"We come from the land of the ice and snow,
From the midnight sun where the hot springs flow.
The hammer of the gods will drive our ships to new lands,"

And so I have often wondered what my life would have been like if my father had returned to Norway after my mother died. But he had carved out a life here and Norway was devastated from the War. His younger brothers returned after getting an advanced education and my father would return to his homeland every couple of years to visit his family.

Of course, the questions from my own life like what if I had stayed in Delaware or Minneapolis? How would my life have been different. I will never know because my geographical destiny brought me here to a beautiful place along the North Shore of Lake Superior and life has turned out the way it has because of where I am. At least I think so.

If you get a chance to read or hear Abraham Verghese, do take the time. He is a great believer in "Geography is Destiny" and he has certainly given me a reason to think about it. As Mr.Spock would have said, "Fascinating."

Earthbound

As I drift back into my mundane world of getting by on a day to day basis, I have to take stock of my surroundings and see where to start. The cooler days remind me that autumn is in the air and that I need to think about getting ready for winter. But it’s only early August! It takes me a while to wrap both of my brain cells around the fact that winter is coming and, as I am the King of Denial, I need to start early. No more gallivanting around Europe, no more schmoozing with my wonderful cousins, no more sitting on the deck with a guitar and a beer (well maybe just a little). Nope, it’s time to get back to work and quit being a man of leisure. If it weren’t for my pesky day job I might have enough time. The barn aisle is a bit scary and needs to be cleaned up, things put away and some kind of organization needs to take place.

Weeds need to be whacked as the plant growth slows down. Pastures need to be mowed and all sorts of other work needs to be done, but I find myself unmotivated. I'd rather take pictures of things around the farm. Like this grate. It's a great grate.

My thoughts drift like a message bottle upon the sea. Maybe someone will find it on a distant shore and read it because I'll be damned if I know what it says. Maybe it's good to write these thoughts so they don't die of loneliness in the cavernous space between my ears. The cool thing about that space is that it sometimes sounds like a reverb chamber.

See what happens if I don't focus? Speaking of focus we have an interesting arrangement in a pot on the deck.

 Then nearly forgotten lyrics pop into my head.

Golden rose, the color of the dream I had
Not too long ago
misty blue and the lilac too
never to grow old.

It's Rodgers and Hart, but I remember the Hendrix version. I am distracted and called to another dream world.

It's time for that beer and guitar. Gotta go now.

Of Shards and Dragons

While in London a couple of weeks ago I was marveling and the variations in architecture. Everything from medieval to modern with all the stuff in between. There is a tall glass spire known as the Shard which is completely out of place near Parliament and the Tower of London. It is interesting in its own right as a glass spire rising over 1000 feet (300+ meters) in the midst of the city.

I looked more closely at it a bit later and saw this.

Click on the pic and you will see that there is a person on the side. Doing what I'll never know, but I hope not washing windows.

We've had some strange weather lately with a bit of a chill in the air. It was not enough to dampen the spirits of the annual Dragon Boat Festival and its participants. The crowd was a little thinner due to temperatures in 50's, but it is a fun thing for everyone who does show up. I think this guy is wearing his long johns on the outside. Didn't Madonna make that popular a while back?

Stitch got to steer the boats for the two teams she was on. The names of the teams were something like Women on the Edge and Women over the Edge. I just figured they were edgy women and gave them a wide berth although they seemed friendly enough. They must be a pretty tough bunch braving the cold air and possibly colder water, although this time of year the ice chunks are usually gone. They certainly seem happy about the whole thing.

Why two teams want her to drive is beyond me. They have obviously never been with her in a motor vehicle. Just kidding! (I hope she doesn't read this or I am toast!)

Oslo

Oslo is a big city by most standards. Not huge, but for a guy from a county with a population of about 5000 a million and a half is a lot of people. It is an international city with people from many parts of the globe, but since its in Norway it is mostly full of Norwegians. As many northern people they have a strong artistic culture shown in their music, art, and architecture. This year is the celebration of Edvard Munch's 150th birthday, and I thought I was old. Of course, as far as I can tell, I am alive and he isn't. Andie, my cousins, aunt and I went to see the exhibition.

This is probably his best known work of which there are several versions. He was quite prolific and has a museum dedicated to him in Oslo.

There were many more of his works at the National Museum which is in another part of the city.

Both exhibits were busy with visitors from all over. Here are some of our fellow art lovers in front of the National Museum.

The Opera House is a sculpture itself, the outside of which is covered in Italian marble. It is a very geometric building and invites people to walk on its surface so we obliged.

 While there was a little drizzle to wet the surface, it was not slippery and the views from on top were rather nice as the building sits at the edge of the Oslofjord. Here is another child of my cousin's leaping on the marble roof.

Well, maybe not leaping exactly.

In the water anchored next to the opera House is a floating sculpture Hun Ligger (She Lies) of a glass and steel ship on a floating (that's right) concrete platform. It is anchored and moves with the wind and tides. Very cool!

As an engineer with a great appreciation for the arts I think Andie liked this sculpture.

There is also human sculpture in the form of this, which we found to be all over the well traveled parts of the city. Painted people posing as statues were not uncommon, but sometimes a bit weird for some of the viewers.

He just didn't trust it to get any closer. He was sure he saw it move. It did.