Return to the Ivory Tower

Last weekend I went out of town to St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota for my 45th college reunion to go hang out with people I have known since we were eighteen or nineteen years old. Not all of us are even alive anymore! There were some nice meals and presentations, but just hanging out with old friends was the best part. There were still some old haunts that we were able to visit as most of us seem to be ambulatory still.

There are some new buildings, all done with the same limestone facade of most of the other buildings with only a couple of exceptions. The exceptions being some of the original ones when the college was young (the school was founded in 1874). They have been well maintained and are still in use today. I even had a few classes in Old Main. As always, click on the pic to embiggen.

The old Steensland Library still stands, too.

The limestone walls of the other buildings can be imposing, but modern bike racks take the edge off of serious.

That picture is by what turns out to be the chapel. I always thought it was the math building because of the big "plus" symbol on top. I wasn't much into math.

The trees have gotten bigger, but the green spaces have been gussied up a bit with landscaping, memorial bell towers, and possibly functional sculpture.

Now that they sell beer and wine on campus (a very recent update) we didn't have to leave as much, but we went to into town a few times anyway.

The bullet holes in a few buildings left from the days of the Jesse James /Cole Younger raid (1876) are still visible. One of the stores in that building sells vinegar now.

There was a small gathering of local entrepreneurs selling their wares in Bridge Square.

The Cannon River flows through town and on for about thirty or forty miles before emptying into the Mississippi.

Mostly I hung out with these two Bozos, Jim and Greg.

We walked through the Arboretum (or "the arb") at Carleton College on the other side of town. There are some nice trails that go along some of the feeder streams as well as the Cannon.

Then it got close to leaving time again. We had stayed in one of the dorms and here we are heading to one last breakfast in the snazzy new eating facility.

Then we had to say goodbye to some more old friends (old is starting to be the operative word here) before heading back home. Good-bye Donna and Kathy!

At least I see Jim and Greg in between these things. Next time it will be the fiftieth for those of us who are still on this side of the dirt. I really hope that will be all of us, but realistically it won't be.

Until we meet again, old friends!

Must be summer!

I can tell because everything is green and the bugs have come out of their winter hiding places. The temperatures are staying above freezing and even though our last frost date is mid June we are unlikely to get that cool according to the long range forecasts.

Sometimes we see specific things that tell us it is summer. For example the Cooker (my spouse) took her horse out for a ride in the woods today and came across a couple of bares. They were very white, apparently just out of hibernation, and were probably just as startled as the Cooker and her horse. They must have bought one of the small acreages behind us where we built horse trails over twenty years ago. Apparently they didn't read the fine print that mentions the trail easements. It'll all work out.

Vinny the feral cat has made a new friend on the deck and is quite happy with the company. here he is with his new friend. The Cooker used to paint things on rocks and we still have some.

He has let me brush him now and seems to enjoy it. If he didn't I suspect I wouldn't be able to type this with my hands wrapped in bandages. Despite the look he has in this picture he is getting quite affectionate. Next move is to start getting him used to being picked up.

Remember the warblers from last week? The Cooker and Stitch went and identified about ten more species than what I did. So we had about fifteen species of warblers around the ponds over last weekend. This week we had an errant visitor of the avian persuasion. We seem to get these now and then and usually they are way outside of their usual areas. This time it is a cattle egret in breeding colors. They are much more common to the Southeastern U.S., but they rarely range this close to the Canadian border. He wasn't willing to let me get very close so I had to use a long lens. The photo isn't nearly as sharp as I would like, but it will have to do.

He seemed to be all alone.

I also restrung my 12-string guitar this morning and cleaned and oiled the fretboard. That took a couple of hours as I took my time and listened to some music while doing it. At least I didn't take a break to get up and dance. My father, Otto, bought it for me for Christmas in 1966. It is showing it's age, but I still love the sound that comes out of it.

  It is a short work week for me this week so I am hopeful I will have something to say by next weekend. At least the weather is nice.

Warbler watching

The warblers have just returned following one of the first laws of nature; where there is something to eat there is something to eat it. In this case it is bugs hatching around the ponds. They are not the type of bugs that bug humans, yet. Those will be hatching soon enough.

Most of these birds have migrated from somewhere south of here. Some as far as South America so it stands to reason that they are hungry. Before the leaves have completely unfurled it gives me a chance to see them for long periods of time, often as much as two seconds. These are not lazy or immobile critters. Trying to photograph them is beyond challenging, but every year I try. I got a few passable pics this time of the 1.5 bazillion that I attempted to take. They are so beautiful and colorful that I am still smiling through my frustration.

Here we go for a walk by the ponds.

This is a Black-throated Green Warbler.

This is a Yellow-rumped warbler. They used to be called Myrtle warbler. This one is covering up its yellow rump at the moment. Must be shy and may explain the name change.

I apologize for the blur, but these little suckers really move around! I believe this is a Canada warbler. Probably in a hurry to continue north to his home.

This is a Yellow warbler. It sure is bright in the sunlight!

This is a Redstart. They seem to be some of the more numerous warblers along with the Yellow-rumped.

 In lowering my eyes a bit I notice one of the other denizens of the ponds, a painted turtle. I think we have two of these. I am not sure if it is an Eastern, Western, or Midland version. Maybe one of you knows.

These were all taken  by the upper pond. When leaving I saw something on the other side of the lower pond. It was a Lesser Yellowlegs.

It can be so much fun living in a place with several different habitats out my front door. All these birds are just one aspect of it and there is so much I don't see. There were several other bird species that I couldn't identify or photograph. My respect for wildlife photographers always grows when I realize how much effort goes into a good photograph of the natural world.

 The fiddlehead ferns are also popping up. Might have to saute some for dinner. As always, click on the pictures to embiggen.

Bumpkin goes to the city

A short one this week.

I was down in the Twin Cities for a few days this week to accompany my brother while he had some surgery done on his parathyroid gland. They removed a little something (adenoma) which used to be a three day stay. Now when someone has it done they go in in the morning and come out in the afternoon.

About sixty years ago, when I was six or seven years old, I was showing my brother how to use a grass whip when he walked behind me as I swung it. I cut his throat, missing his jugular vein by about a quarter of an inch.  I didn't stop crying until he came home and I could be sure he wasn't dead. He still has a scar. The deadly tool looks like like this.

 I asked if the surgeon was going to finish the job I had started all those years ago. It turns out they have to cut lower by the base of his neck. So now he has an additional scar on his neck. The good thing is that they fixed the problem and didn't accidentally cut the nerves to his vocal chords which would have left him speechless. Literally. I guess it's about a one in fifty chance or a one in three hundred chance depending on who you ask. While those are not the kind of odds good for gambling they are a little worrisome in this case.

When I left him he still had a sore throat, but was feeling good otherwise. 

I did get away for a few hours and went around to some local music stores to pick up some strings and supplies for one of my habits. When one proprietor asked if he could help me I asked about that old Gibson J-45 hanging on the wall. "Would you like to play it?" "Sure!" So I did. It was a 1947 model that had been stained reddish back in the 60s, but also looked like Willie Nelson had played it for a while. In other words it was well used. It had been maintained and was in good playing order, however, despite a few pinholes in the top and some repairs. It was actually a delight to play and sounded wonderful. Had it been in nicer condition it would have been valued at about twice what it was which was about $5000. Here is what a pristine version looks like.

 

So that was the week that was. My brother is well and I am back on the farm with the wife (The Cooker), the roommate (Stitch), the horses, the cats, the chickens and whatever else wanders in.

Language camp

When you go off to camp for a while many people think of a kids summer camp with swimming and playing. This camp can be like that for the kids who attend in the summer, but focusing on a foreign language. In this case Norwegian.

Some of you who have hung around here on occasion might remember that I have gone to camp a few previous times. It has gotten to be a habit. The teachers and students have gotten to be friends in many cases.

This year I was assigned to the farthest cabin, Tromsø, which is on the other side of the Arctic Circle as you can see by the post. Reminding us of the location this year was the lake was still frozen. It is a week later now and it is probably about ice free by now. As of yesterday some of our local lakes still have 16 to 20 inches of ice on them, but it is pulling away from shore and should be thawed for next weekend's fishing opener. We hope.

This year I got to meet a guy named Jerry who has a radio show on a couple of Northern Minnesota stations. He specializes in Bluegrass, but is quite attuned to other genres as well. One of our teachers, Arna, also has a radio program on Two Harbors radio called Nordic Roots. She is also a singer and musician as are a number of other campers and teachers. Needless to say some of our learning comes in the way of songs as well as stories and poetry.  Here are some pics of the entertainment from the Saturday night banquet.

This year our classes stayed in one place and the teachers moved around which was a great way to give different perspectives and methods for learning. When grammar discussions got dry we would turn to stories and in one case, tongue twisters. They are difficult enough in English, but a good training device when learning another language. The end result is that I am hoping to be proficient by the time I die. Or at least to the point where my cousins don't automatically switch to English when they see me coming.

My roommate Jeff and I walked to Sweden and Finland in less than an hour round trip. The Concordia Language Villages teach fifteen languages at all levels so there are many villages around the lake of which Skogfjorden, the Norwegian village, is the oldest. 

One of our other cabin mates apologized to Jeff for the glare off his bald head. Not to be outdone I removed my hat. Jeff exclaimed, "If you two put your heads heads together and focus you could start a fire!" This is Jeff. He has lots of hair.

 I kept hoping the ice would go away, but it didn't. Where water flowed into the lake over a beaver dam and under a footbridge it was beginning to recede. It was nice to observe the process and watch spring slowly gaining on the past winter.

Time to head home and back to work. I bid another fond farewell to Skogfjorden and hope to go again next year.

Canal Park continued

One of the reasons I went to the Canal Park area of Duluth was to visit a fellow blogger. He is a luthier (maker of wooden stringed instruments) in one of the spaces in the Dewitt-Seitz Marketplace  in Canal Park. There were several reasons for this visit. Michael repairs some fascinating instruments as some are unusual, some are classic, some are just someone's favorite, or any other reason to have something tweaked or repaired.

I also wanted to try out a Seagull guitar as they are still made in North America (Quebec) by hand and are a more affordable than the other makes that I like. They are quite impressive to me and I need one. It should be an electrified acoustic guitar for band purposes. It'll be a while, though.
Here are some in the shop.

While commenting on Michael's blog I found out that he also had a connection to Iceland which is an unusual coincidence. It turns out that he lived there for a year when he was about 24 years of age and returns every few years to visit his other home and family.

There are several workbenches at Rosewood Music and all have instruments on them in various stages of work.

The location is terrific and Michael said he used to live across the lift bridge on Park Point so he could walk to work. That was so very convenient, but he has since moved out of the city back to the peace and quiet of being in a more rural setting. To give you an idea of how close he was here is a shot out the shop window.

Michael generously spent a good hour with me talking of many things, but he had to get back to work and I needed a cup of coffee before heading back to the bus depot. It's okay as I knew we could have a rest stop on the way back up the North Shore. Here is Michael in his natural environment.

Looking back on my day at Canal Park I can appreciate the outside world and make a connection. When I look out my window and see a ship going by I can imagine it having come under the lift bridge and through the canal more than a hundred nautical miles down the lake. If I wonder where it is headed I can actually go online and look it up.

Canal Park

I am writing this on my new laptop and still getting used to the way it feels and the way it works. Made the the switch from my old desktop so bear with me for a while.

I took this past week off as I had to use up vacation time or lose it. Not a bad position to be in so I took advantage of it. I decided to take the weekly (every Tuesday) bus to Duluth since I really hadn't been out of the county since mid December. I drove into town to meet it at 8 a.m. and gave the driver my fare for the 220 mile round trip.  I think the bus is designed for seniors, but anyone can take it, and it is subsidized which explains the $20 fare. It will drop you off in any number of locations as well as stopping to pick up other passengers anywhere along the route. I got off at the bus depot in Duluth and walked through the skywalk system to within a block of where I wanted to be.

Canal Park is an area that was a run down warehouse district adjacent to the entry to the harbor where the first saltie (ocean going vessel) just came in the other day. It made it from the Atlantic Ocean, through the Great Lakes and locks to end up in Duluth, a distance of over 2300 miles. 

Canal Park was developed back in the 80's starting with Grandma's restaurant and progressing into an area of shops, restaurants, breweries, distilleries, offices, museums, and hotels. It is now a destination for locals and tourists, of which I was one, coming to the head of the Great Lakes.

Here is some of what I saw.

The William A. Irvin was in service from 1938 to 1978 carrying coal ind iron ore. It is over 600 feet long and is now used as a floating museum. At Halloween (actually, most of October) it is turned into a haunted ship and is quite an attraction. Here it is still frozen into the ice, but it should thaw in the next couple of weeks. The harbor is open now and the icebreakers are no longer needed.

The Aerial Lift Bridge connects Canal Park to Park Point, an mostly residential area. It crosses the channel that these ships go through to enter the harbor and is a historical landmark. It was put in service in 1905 as an improvement to ferries, swinging foot bridge, and was first used as a gondola before turning into a lift bridge a couple of decades later.

This is the channel that goes from the lake to the bridge.

Here is the Bayfield, a tugboat that is grounded in front of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The Corps operates the Duluth Maritime Museum at the west end of the bridge.

 Even though it was a chilly weekday people still walk on the paths and visit the displays along the end of the Lakewalk.

Long ago, in November of 1905, there was a shipwreck at the end of this breakwater, before they put a lighthouse there.

 The ship foundered and broke in half. Many lives were lost, but there were some survivors. It was only about a hundred yards off shore. Here is the story, but you'll need to embiggen the photo in order to read about it.

To be continued...