Looking East over Wayzata Bay

Behind this tree run the railroad tracks from Minneapolis going West.
I should take more photos of the railroad through Wayzata. This town was once a railroad destination, with tourists clamouring off the train onto the platform one mile from town to trudge back to their luxory Wayzata hotels. James J. Hill built the station outside the town to spite the local politicians.... his antics with the Wayzata town council are legendary (The station was later moved by Mr.Hill into town).

I love hearing the train whistle as it blows over the lake. You can hear it clearly at night in Deephaven, hauntingly , like the train in the distance in a De Chirico painting. Time goes by.



Detail from Monparn Station- DeChirico

I found a grocery bag - a mystery.

The cart was pushed up against the darkened cart corral, abandoned at Cub. In it was a a full bag of groceries and an Ez Bake oven liner. I went in to Cub and shopped, picking up coffee and miscellenous items, and then returned to my car. The cart and bag still sat there, angled against the corral and a next to a newly parked SUV with “Waleye” vanity plates.

I felt a bit like a thief. I took the bag home with me for examination.
When I got home I emptied the bag, and with it a receipt. A mystery to be solved lay in front of me.

Purchase date: Friday@5pm.

Contents in the bag: Butterscotch morsels, Kellogg Special K, green beans , 9 hard bakery rolls, beef taco salad mixing, small marble rye - and a bottle of Visine with red eye reduction.

Contents listed on the receipt, but NOT in the bag: Beef for stew, skippy chunky peanut butter, celery, 9 raspberry donut holes, onion, Sunrise Scramblers, and a large lemon.

There were (probably) 2 bags of groceries and the baking liner. The owner forgot one bag and the liner. The bag was packed very neatly.

It was 5pm, the day after Thanksgiving.

Memories of Basel 1972 (drawn in 2002)

Minnetonkascenes interviews OJ.- A breakfast meeting uncensored.

Minnetonkascenes asks: “O.J. is short for orange juice, isn’t it?"

Mr. Simpson replies: “Why yes, that is true. They used to call me “The Juice”, I think it was some sort of compliment. I am not sure... When I ran I just squirted through the holes made by my blockers”

Minnetonkascenes:” You were a great running back and orange juice certainly is a refreshing drink in the morning. Mr. Simpson, if I may call you that, how do you celebrate Thanksgiving?”

Mr. Simpson; “ Oh, I get together with my kids and we eat turkey and stuffing... you know pretty much the traditional thing with a brief reading of the Mayflower Compact. No steak knives though. Can’t have those around anymore”

Minnetonkascenes asks: “Why is that?”

OJ responds; “Well, they are too self referential, you know, Kantian self-criticism. I am a logical positivist by nature and Luwig Wittgenstein, the early Wittgenstein, states that we live a contextual set of definitions......any way no steak knives.”

Minnetonkascenes: Well OJ, that's pretty much all I’ve got”

OJ; “Thanks, and may I say that you take very nice pictures”

Minnetonkascenes: "Thanks OJ"

A Frontier Thanksgiving in Excelsior MN 1853

First:
I am planning our family Thanksgiving dinner. Our house is quaint and small. Seating is limited but will somehow be sufficient for the two of us and our 10 - 12 guests. The fare will be the traditional sleep-inducing variety. If that isn't enough, I will talk.

Compare that with the first Thanksgiving celebrated in Excelsior/Chanhassen in 1853.

This following taken (and distilled) from Wilson Meyer’s “Tonka Tales”.

The small group of New York settlers (the Excelsior Pioneer Association) had just arrived a few months earlier in July, by oxcart in 1853. The were led by George Bertram, the group’s leader and organizer. It took two days of stumbling through the woods by the lake to find their proper location, staked out by Stephen Hull.
After only a few months the Reverend Charles Galpin extended an invitation to all the settlers of Excelsior and Chanhassen to his one room house for Thanksgiving. The guests totaled 18 adults and 12 children. The month was December, a traditional Thanksgiving time.
They ate at a makeshift table and chairs in three shifts; 2 adult shifts of ten and one shift of the 12 children.

They were vegetarians by default:

The menu included baked beans, potatoes, turnips, biscuits & butter, cranberry sauce. These dishes were prepared by the women. The men were assigned the dauntingtask of hunting game for the meal. After hunting for a few days the men could only muster one raccoon for meat for the dinner (a variety of excuses and or explanations were offered in the story but I think the men were just initially lousy, ill equipped hunters).
The Excelsior settlers’ first Thanksgiving meal would be almost meatless, but they would joyously celebrate their safe arrival and hope for a prosperous future. This according to the author. Let me just interject: I will bet that more than one wife was a little ticked off at the men’s hunting efforts. Lousy one racoon.

A final fishing post for 06

A Moving Target

I was strolling through the Target Greatland Store on 101 and Highway 7 when I happened upon the electric keyboard section. I looked at the little keyboards. I remember these, they were popular back in the early 90s/late 80s....I thought. - Stevie Wonder overdubbing random sounds and playing techno pop.
I tried the $200 model (that's 199.99 in retail-speak). The keyboard sounded like it was filled with air.
I stepped up to the $499.00 Casio keyboard with 61 keys. Whoa!, it was touch sensitive. It looked like a chunk of a real piano that had fallen off. I started to toy with it; a little bass, a little wandering right lead, I thought it was fun. I sounded like a lounge lizard as I "tickled the plastic".

People began to look at me. They thought "this is not recorded music over the PA, this impromptu concert is some clown playing in the store." Embarrassed, I fled the scene like I had been caught at a minor crime. - Better to be caught perusing the ladies intimates.

Toonie (on Tonka) is Spayed

From online etymology;

Spay:
"c.1410, "stab with a sword, kill," also "remove the ovaries of," from Anglo-Fr. espeier "cut with a sword," from M.Fr. espeer, from O.Fr. espee "sword" (Fr. épée), from L. spatha "broad, flat weapon or tool," from Gk. spathe "broad blade" (see spade (1))."

I have always thought that it was "spade", like the cards or the shovel. In both cases you can see the derivation. Well, I could just imagine the vet with a shovel doing the dirty but necessary deed. With our very recent pet history, it was a tense event.
The vets last name was,-get this: "Hotvet". I said "Is this a made-up name?"
The technician said, no it was not.

Hotvet. Spayed. Toonie is doing well.

Authenticity

I stood by the lake the other morning and I thought about "authenticity". I have always sought after authenticity in art... music, God fobid-poetry (I simply try to survive writing). With characteristic personal "authenticity' my mind bounded from thought to thought, example to example without a reasonable conscious connection; garage rock, blues history, an elbow through a Picasso, Pluto demoted, Cottagewood mansions.... South Saint Paul, all flowed by with coffee enhanced consciousness.

Authenticity is not honesty, but that is a part of it. It surely is not good taste, infact it may be just the opposite.
In the end I could only settle on examples. Here is my first:


This photo is an unaltered shot. No photoshop enhancing,contrasting, or saturation bumping. 30 second timer. Location, Grays Bay.
Not the best example...

Down with lawn signs!

Another election, and some people are happy:

"That's not the voting lever, but don't stop pulling."

I Voted....and you are there.

Deephaven City Hall 6:55 am.
The line is already forming, waiting for the Polls to open. I can honestly say, this is as heavy a morning turnout as I have ever seen. I wait quietly, two persons ahead of me a man in a business suit feverishly places calls on his cell phone. No time to lose.

The voting instructions are spread neatly at the front counter, in 8 languages. I try to determine which languages they are. I ask the voting judge. She does not know, but points out the sheet in Spanish. I asked her if I could have some of the sheets, and she curtly tells me that they are for the people who needed them. Fair enough. My guess: English, Spanish, Hmong, Russian, Norwegian, Chinese, Swedish and Klingon.

I vote, filling in the "bubbles"(their uniform description by the voting judges) completely using a black ballpoint pen with a popsicle stick taped to it. I imagine the debate: "We could call them 'circles', but circles are round. We could call them 'ovals', but this is a difficult word. Lets call them 'bubbles'. That will make it very clear." I managed to figure it out.

Good luck to all.

The Marsh Turkey Trot Results - 2006- www.onlineraceresults.com

For the many people googeling (is that a word?) and searching my blog to find out the Turkey Trot race results. For much more complete results go to:www.onlineraceresults.com

Just a partial listing of the first runners: (the last numbers are overall time and pace).
1 #85 Michael Bialick 25 M Minnetonka MN 16:34 5:20
2 #66 Ryan Bailey 17 M Wayzata MN 17:39 5:41
3 #393 Tony Schiller 48 M Chanhassen MN 17:49 5:44

26 1 #199 Angie Henry 15 F Wayzata MN 21:00 6:46
28 2 #392 Paige Schember 14 F Plymouth MN 21:05 6:48
31 3 #205 Lisa Hines 44 F Waite Park MN 21:34 6:57

Vote Now!

I will amble...no make that drive, down to our Deephaven City Hall on Tuesday and vote. The caucauphony of lawn signs will dissappear in Deephaven, and life will go on.




Note: I carefully edited this post for poitical content. I like Ike!

Rules along the trail

As our Shetland Sheepdog "Toonie' would say; "The devil is in the details."

There are signs with instructions and bag dispensers at regular intervals along the trail. Deephaven has these signs and dispensers at Thorpe Park walking path also. It is a very dog-friendly community.

Strange things happen

I heard this song 3 times yesterday (Halloween). Besides "The Monster Mash" there is a dirth of decent Halloween songs. In the very early 60s Dicky Lee wrote & performed this cloying little tune. He also performed "Patches", both were BIG hits- Really! They do not write songs like this anymore.

Here are the lyrics:

Last night at the dance I met Laurie,
So lovely and warm, an angel of a girl.
Last night I fell in love with Laurie -
Strange things happen in this world.

As I walked her home,
She said it was her birthday.
I pulled her close and said
"Will I see you anymore?"
Then suddenly she asked for my sweater
And said that she was very, very cold.

I kissed her goodnight
At her door and started home,
Then thought about my sweater
And went right back instead.
I knocked at her door and a man appeared.
I told why I'd come, then he said:

"You're wrong, son.
You weren't with my daughter.
How can you be so cruel
To come to me this way?
My Laurie left this world on her birthday -
She died a year ago today."

A strange force drew me to the graveyard. (tell me about it)
I stood in the dark,
I saw the shadows wave,
And then I looked and saw my sweater
Lyin' there upon her grave.

Strange things happen in this world

Note: Dickie Lee tips us off early with the word "an angel of a girl", He might have caught on when he put his arm around Laurie and found himself kissing the front seat of his car.
The sweater: Ralph Lauren