Dignified burial -- FAIL

Sometimes, it's better not to know.

But still, you wonder: how DID this shriveled little skunk corpse end up dangling 15 feet above the ground from a bare aspen tree along Highway 53? A snowplow? A roadkill-scavenging eagle that realized its terrible mistake only in midair? Someone who couldn't find a dead cat to swing to make some obscure point, so they settled for a skunk? Who can say?

Posted by: Janna on 2/20/2009 at 12:30 PM | Comments (0) | Permalink

Toothpicks and glue, together again

The annual ritual of uniting toothpicks and Elmer's glue in a hopeful stab at engineering greatness went on at UMD again tdoay.

It was the 16th annual toothpick building competition, and it drew about 100 high school students from the north and south. The bridges they had spent weeks constructing ranged from beautiful to utilitarian, from the sturdy to the rickety, from sleek and smooth to globby and pointy. But what could be more hopeful than a toothpick bridge -- to believe that your tender creation could span the distance and bear the weight?

Students stood in line to test their creations one by one. Some bridges could barely hold the weight of the test bucket, others held strong as their creators piled in scoop after scoop of sand. The tension was awful for the sturdiest of bridges as the sand grew heavier -- the strongest bridges held near 100 pounds. A small child could have crossed some of those bridges.

But eventually, they all cracked under the weight. Some went home with their architects, perhaps to be studied for flaws and improved upon next year. But most were unceremoniously dumped in the trash on the way out.

Posted by: Janna on 2/12/2009 at 1:44 PM | Comments (0) | Permalink

Lovely hands, locally grown

There's no end to the attractive sights and sounds at the Duluth Farmer's Market, especially this time of year when the heirloom tomatoes are fully ripe, the pumpkins and gourds are fleshed out, and the carrots and beets and other root crops are bunched and ready.

But here's what really caught my eye when I visited the market on Wednesday morning. I was chatting with Annie, who's been a market staple for a long time, about consumerism and wants and needs and other abstract topics. And all the while she was talking, Annie kept shucking wheat with her strong, honest fingers.

It was ornamental black wheat, and she had shocks of it for sale as a seasonal decoration. The seed she was cleaning was going into the ground yet this fall, where it would rest over the winter and hopefully grow into another lush crop next summer.

Wheat is Annie's favorite crop to grow, she said -- she loves how a ripe stand ripples and sways in the wind -- and she has been meticulously saving and storing wheat that has descended from her original harvest, 17 years ago. There's no nail polish, here. One could well imagine dirt under Annie's fingernails, or ground into the creases along her knuckles. They struck me as such honest, lovely hands, working with such an honest, lovely grain.

Posted by: Janna on 9/24/2008 at 12:50 PM | Comments (0) | Permalink

Vintage (sort of) pizza mural

A little bit of Canal Park history -- dating allllll the way back to 1989 -- saw the light of day on Friday morning, as Grandma's employees Tom Ziebarth (on the ground) and Pat Conlan (on the ladder) peeled the wooden sheeting away from an old paper billboard outside of Grandma's Sports Garden.
Though it seems incredible to me now, back in the day, billboards were just that; layers of paper plastered one of top of the other. This mural, depicting a pizza waiter going flying -- perhaps he slipped on a slab of pepperoni, or was tripped up by a drunken customer, we'll never know -- had deteriorated considerably, but I do seem to recall it from my very early college years.
If you remember it too, scoot on down to Canal Park today to catch a last glimpse. Pat said someone was going to be scraping it off the building. It will be replaced with a shiny new vinyl mural in a few weeks.

Posted by: Janna on 9/19/2008 at 9:56 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink

So, how do you pull up the White Stripes?

Proof positive that it's never, ever too late to learn something new, or that you CAN teach an old trooper new tricks, here Neil Dickenson, left, explains the features of his iPod to fellow Minnesota State Patrol trooper Mark Baker.
"I'm trying to educate Mr Baker," Neil said. He's had his iPod for about eight months now, and it suits him. It's crammed with his videos, photos, calendar appointments, you name it. Music, of course -- everything from new rock to country, Neil said.
"And western," Mark added.
"No western," Neil protested. A man has his limits.

Posted by: Janna on 9/10/2008 at 4:53 PM | Comments (1) | Permalink

Row, row, rowing his boat

I'm not trying to segue into the motivational poster market with a scene like this, but I surely do love it when something little throws down against something big. I wish this rowboat captain, whoever he is, a happy journey out of the Duluth harbor and into Lake Superior.

Posted by: Janna on 9/05/2008 at 9:53 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink

Garbage day, times 10

Moving day?
An eviction?
A huge fight with an ex, or an in-law, or a friend, ending in someone's junk tossed to the curb?
Too busy to hold a rummage sale?
A cat with no litter box run amok in the apartment?
Water damage in the basement?
Someone gave up the heaters and they want to purge the house of smoky clothes?
Is there anything more evocative than a big pile of garbage? I say no -- unless it's waiting in line at the grocery store and sneaking peeks in other customers' shopping carts.
It's awfully easy to judge, when you're looking at these details in other people's lives. But you can't do that, because you don't know the circumstances behind it.
Perhaps they had to move quickly. Perhaps there was some tragedy, or a fabulous opportunity that couldn't be passed up. Perhaps, maybe, possibly...we just don't know.

Posted by: Janna on 8/28/2008 at 9:40 AM | Comments (1) | Permalink

Because this bottle is soooo heavy

Of all the innocuous petty crimes -- like jaywalking and running a few miles over the speed limit -- littering is the one that tweaks me the most. It's so unnecessary, and so ridiculous, and I hate the idea of people just leaving their junk for someone else to clean up. What reasonable person does this?
Like this fellow. I was on my way to get my morning coffee today, waiting on Canal Park Drive to hook a left into Caribou. I watched as this guy, who was strolling along with his family (not pictured to protect their hopefully non-littering identities), twisted the top off his breakfast bottle of Coke, stuffed the cap in his pocket and nestled the nearly empty bottle in this pot full of petunias. What?!? OK, OK, there wasn't a garbage can immediately in the vicinity -- it was all of 30 feet away, across the street. I guess I can understand that. So come, tourists, come and enjoy this pretty city. Leave us only your tired, your poor, your litter.

Posted by: Janna on 8/12/2008 at 9:44 AM | Comments (1) | Permalink

Frank Lloyd Wright LIVES! And moves!

Yeah, yeah, you're saying he's long since gone to sit at that drafting table in the sky, that he never even made it to Cloquet to see the mysterious Lindholm house and famous service station that he designed. And you would be right. But on Thursday, at the start of a symposium exploring the renowned architect's career and the societial forces he was responding to when he designed that gas station (he actually designed it in the 1930s, when it was becoming clear that soon everyone and their dog would own an automobile), Wright rose from the grave and answered a few long-standing questions.
Dandled at the hands of Greg Cooper, Wright tapped his cane against a tabletop and announced how pleased he was to be out and about again. And he put another rumor to bed. When asked if it was true that Robert Pond, the Wright understudy who supervised the service station construction in 1958, really was a party animal, Wright's answer was quick and sure. Yes, yes, he was.

Posted by: Janna on 8/08/2008 at 10:07 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink

I can't believe I'm about to touch this

Kids + animals = charming. One of the lovely things about going to your county fair is watching people of all ages finally come face to face with chickens and pigs and bunches of turnips; the kind of things most of us eat but rarely have to deal with.
So here we have 4 year-old Dominic Cementina of Hibbing, stretching an arm so gingerly towards the business end of a huge red angus heifer owned by Shady Oaks Farm in Jacobsen, Minn. It was the first real live cow the boy ever touched, at least as far as his father, Robert, knows. It took Dominic a few moments to bunch up his courage enough to actually rest his palm on the cow, but he made it in the end.
To me, this is what the fair is all about. A warm cow, a little kid, a connection made. Here's a few more animals from the fair; sorry about the cages.

Posted by: Janna on 8/05/2008 at 9:51 AM | Comments (1) | Permalink