2009 slash pile, about 10 feet high and 20 feet in diameter at ground level

Noted at the top of my "Spring 2010 To-Do List" is "Burn west pasture slash pile." So, although it's not quite spring, Doug and I planned to start the bonfire Saturday morning. Burning restrictions and permits don't apply as long as there are at least 3 inches of snow on the ground. There are about 6 inches of shushy snow in the west pasture. There are also fairly deep snowmelt ponds, one of which surrounds and underlies the slash pile in question.

The slash is the result of Doug's clearance operations, thinning a thick, scrappy woods into more like parkland/rough pasture.I mark the keeper trees with yellow caution tape and those that need cutting with black Gorilla Tape. The logs become firewood and the branches become slash piles.

March can be the best time to burn slash, which is surprisingly reluctant to catch fire even though it's been sitting for months. For one thing, it's usually not so cold as to deter standing around outside for hours. Last March, our daughter and son-in-law Phoebe and Dave came for a weekend and took care of several slash piles in a one-day event Phoebe called "Red Neck Olympics" because it involved running from one pile to another in a seven-acre site to keep scraping the debris together and encouraging the fires.

We learned the technique for a successful slash pile burn from Beltrami County Forestry Steward Jerry Stensing. Step 1: stuff wads of newspapers into windward cavities of the piles.Step 2: soak the newspapers and surrounding branches with kerosene. Step 3: Attach a metal tube to the nozzle of a propane tank. Step 4: Turn on the gas and light the torch with a flint sparker. Step 5: Aim the torch into the accellerants. This should get the fire going, although it sometimes requires several repeats of Steps 4 and 5. As the piles burn down, the minders must continually rake the outlying slash into the center, not always easy if the stuff is frozen down.

There was the rub on Saturday. The slash pile destined for burning stands in water. Even if we got some of it to burn above the snowmelt level, we'd still have a mess.So, we put off the first item on the "Spring 2010 To-Do List" until November or December. There will be a "Fall 2010 To-Do LIst," of course.

Squash storeroom

I was surprised last fall to find, after the frost wilted the leaves in the upland garden, a healthy crop of winter squash. It was a cold summer, not, I thought, conducive to squash production. We've eaten most of the butternuts, buttercups, acorns and Mandans. What's left, and I admit being a little tired of, are rouge vif d'etampes, the flattened squash that are a sort of French pumpkin, like the one Fairy Godmother used to make Cinderella's coach. The more oblong orange fruits are Snack Jack pumpkins. They are like a small sugar pumpkin, but have nearly shell-less seeds for toasting.

Actually, my rouge vif d'etampes might be hybrids because I planted them from saved seeds of a squash I bought at the Iowa City Farmers Market a few years ago. That one was redder. But in any case, these are tasty squashes for baking and pies, and very prolific.

They store well in an area that's dry, not too warm, but warmer than a potato cellar. Hence, these are resting on foam shipping materials on the basement library floor. Filed under books by authors whose names start with A.

It's time to start planning the 2010 garden.

It's melting

The spring thaw is well on its way. Paths Doug blew snow from to reach the hay store and woodpile are showing bare, albeit frozen, ground.The deck is clear, and as soon as the furniture is dry, I plan to sit outside in the strong afternoon sun.

The horses are starting to shed. The palomino is pale enough that she doesn't leave much evidence when she rolls in the snow. But the bay mare's rolling spots have brown hair, rather like large, dingy snow angels.

Of course, the thaw has its downside. The slush in the driveway is about 8 inches deep. It was passable when it was frozen, but Sunday and today I got the car stuck. Doug got me out so I could get to work today by shoving against the bumper with a prybar.

The icicles on the west side of the house have melted and the ice dams have broken up. I'm thankful for that. No leaks in the house.

It's getting to be time to think about starting garden seeds inside.

Of course, we wouldn't surprised if we have a few more deposits of snow.

Ella Lindquist wearing her Logging Days Queen crosscut saw badge.

In 1986, the late Earle Dickinson and family had the happy thought of electing a Logging Days Queen to the annual Buena Vista Logging Days celebration. They chose Ella Lindquist as the first honoree because of her interest in Logging Days and her history as the daughter and wife of loggers. For many years, she helped organize the music and food for the winter festival.

As I was told the story, the Logging Days organizers' intent was to elect a new Queen every year, but that wasn't how Ella understood the title. A Queen is Queen for life, after all. On Feb. 21, Queen Ella gave up her reign. She died at age 99 years and eight months, but there has been no replacement. There might be another Logging Days Queen some day, but no one can take Ella's place.

The last time I saw her, she had dressed up in her customary stylish dress and picture hat, called a taxi from her assisted living home and arrived at the 2006 Jaycees Water Carnival Parade. She usually rode on the Buena Vista float, but BV didn't enter the parade that year. Undeterred, Ella hitched her walker over to a parade organizer and told her to find her a float. A Beltrami County deputy, who knew Ella, as did pretty much everybody, asked Michael Meuers if she could ride in the convertible he was driving to lead the way for the DFL candidates. Michael said he would be honored and helped Ella into the car. She gave the crowds her queenly parade wave and was greeted by shouts of "Ella! Ella!"

I know Ella had become very frail in the last years, so I'm glad I have that memory of her commandeering a parade car.

Western woods

Our house is lined up as close as can be along north-south-east-west axes.The sky was clear when I snapped this photo of snowy evening woods on Feb. 21. Sub-zero cold greets us nearly every morning, but the longer days give hope for spring. It's less than a month until the spring equnox when the sun will set exactly outside our western windows. I'll have seeds started in paper pots and count the days until northern Minnesota actual spring, as opposed to calendar spring.

106.7 FM

We listen almost exclusively to Minnesota Public Radio, both the news/talk channel and the music channel. We've been members since we moved to eastern South Dakota from Nova Scotia in 1979. Doug isn't sure about that date, but that's what our membership card reads. One of our kids joked that the tuning knob is Superglued to MPR.

We like the station and the National Public Radio features, but Doug, for one, hates the fundraising drives. Sometimes he tunes to KAXE Northern Community Radio out of Grand Rapids, but more often he broadcasts Radio Free Solway, 106.7 FM.He picks up non-fundraising NPR stations via computer and uses a Windows program to broadcast Columbus, Mo., Austin, Texas, Atlanta, Ga. etc. to our regular radios.

It's a little odd to hear the usual NPR personalities, such as Linda Wertheimer and Lynne Warfel-Holt, interspersed with southern weather forecasts and community news about the Columbus Jaycees Kids' Karnival.

Because the broadcast only reaches the confines of our house, Radio Free Solway doesn't violate any FCC codes.

We do make our MPR contributions once a year via Internet, and we wish the directors would quit sending us mail asking for more donations. Each of those solicitations subtracts from our contribution.

When fundraising is over, Radio Free Solway will go off the air for another few months.

1988 Ford F-150 4X4 half-ton

Last Saturday, I took our 2000 Dodge Caravan into Thompson Auto Repair in Solway for an oil change. As I was sitting and knitting in his office, Kole Thompson came out of the shop with bad news for me. The oil pan needed replacing, and the water pump was leaking. And, he couldn't get parts until Monday.

"You have something else to drive, don't you?" he asked.

"Yes, I have the pickup," I responded.

One of Kole's employees drove me home, I started the pickup and headed out for Saturday shopping errands. As I downshifted to drive north on Sunset Road to buy milk at Blackstar Dairy, I had a bad feeling about the clutch. On the way home, it felt a little better, so I moved from apprehension to denial.

On Sunday, we were ready to drive the pickup to church in Bemidji. The clutch was slipping much worse, and I was concerned I wouldn't even get to Solway. I did and pulled in to Kole's driveway. His three little boys were eating pancakes. His wife alerted her husband to my predicament and Kole tried the truck. Yep, slipping clutch. I could barely back out of the driveway, but managed and drove haltingly the few hundred yards to Thompson Repair. Kole lent me a 1996 Pontiac Bonneville, and we got to church on time.

Doug and I need a four-wheel drive pickup for work around the property. We haul firewood, pull a stock trailer, clean up downed branches to build slash piles. Kole's news that the F-150's clutch was done for and the cost to fix it could run up to $700 decided us that it was time for a new truck. Afterall, the F-150 had served us for seven years. The engine still ran well, but the body was getting very rusty and the bed was sagging. It had also always been hard to get into second gear, and the rear gas tank fuel pump was unreliable. Kole offered to buy the hulk for parts, and I went shopping for a new truck.(By new, I mean new-to-us. I can't imagine buying an unused vehicle.)

We also always buy vehicles we can pay cash for. My first was a 1960 Chrysler New Yorker for $200. When we went on family vacations, we always carried an extra $500 in case we had to buy a new vehicle in some location far from home. We actually had to do that twice.

The Bemidji Pioneer offers CarsHQ online, so I tapped into that resource and found what I hope is the perfect replacement for the F-150 at Pine Ridge Sales and Service. I'm upgrading to a 1990 Ford F-250 3/4-ton, two-tone red-and-white pickup with running lights. (I'm not sure yet if they actually light up.) Pine Ridge is a family operation with Vern Voss, his wife and two sons. They will deliver the truck to our place in Pinesol this morning. Vern said he also changed the oil and would also throw in some spare parts, such as spark plugs, they hadn't gotten around to installing.

May we drive the f-250 in good health.

Goldfinches

Inspired by Blane Klemek's Feb. 7 column in the Pioneer, I took the Great Backyard Bird Count challenge Saturday. I now have data logged with the National Audubon Society, Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Bird Studies of Canada.

My observation site was out my kitchen window at the feeding station Doug built for me. I offer sunflower and thistle seeds, peanut butter and beef suet at this time of year. In the spring, I add oranges for the orioles.

My species list wasn't hugely impressive - chicadees, downy, hairy and pileated woodpeckers (the pileated was in the woods, not at the feeders, but I saw it and added it to the list) blue jays, nuthatches and pigeons (again, not at the feeders, but swooping around from the neighbors' barn). However, I have a large flock of goldfinches enjoying my provisions. I counted 21 at one time, but there are probably more like 30. The goldfinches at this time of year are sort of mustard color, but soon, the males will be showing bits of bright yellow as new feathers come in.

Row counter

Sometimes a household tool is completely satisfying. Think nutmeg grater, seam ripper, dental floss. Simple items but exactly suited to spreading the fresh taste of nutmeg, tearing out basted seams and removing gristly bits from between molars.

Last month, I started a sweater vest with a cable pattern. I made hash marks on scrap paper to keep track of the intervals between the twists. But occasionally, I lost count and wouldn't notice, until after a few rows, the pattern would look wrong. That meant unravelling and reknitting.

I stopped in Ben franklin and bought a row counter. It's a simple clicker that turns over digits in a tiny window. Unlike the anonynmous hash marks (did I make one at the end of the last row, or not?) or simply writing down numbers, the click and turn of the little numbers are easy to remember. I know odd-numbered rows should be the wrong side of the knitting, too, so that's another clue. I haven't gone wrong since the row counter came home with me.

A few years ago, we were catless. We'd gone through some hard-luck cats, ones that disappeared or were killed on the road. The lack of cats meant I was catching mice almost daily, cute little mice, but unacceptable running around the house.

I mentioned to a neighbor that we needed a cat. She invited me into the house, picked up this small white mother with three big kittens attached and handed the cat over. Someone had dumped the little family at their farm. They might have kept the waifs, but the mother couldn't get along with any other pets. Much hissing and growling.

We brought the mother home, and Doug named her Ella. (I voted for Pluma for the cat's magnificent tail, but he said it sounded too much like "puma," and he didn't want her getting big-cat ideas.)

We weren't sure Ella was going to work out for us. At first, she dragged herself around the house, meowing sadly, obviously missing her babies, even though they were old enough to be weaned. After a week she perked up, but then we had her spayed, and she went into another bout of depression. Gradually, she took to us. She's Doug's cuddler during the day and a bedwarmer at night. She's never caught a mouse as far as we know, but her catly presence has discouraged the rodent population from invading.

Her markings - one orange ear, one gray ear, tail shading from buff to gray, white body and blue eyes - and long, silky coat motivated me to check online to see if she is a particular breed. As it happens, I found that she fits the description of a Turkish Van cat, descended from a natural breed that developed without human intervention in the area of Lake Van, Turkey. They're also called swimming cats because, uncharacteristically, they like water. Ella plays with drips and paddles in the rain barrel overflow tank. Van cats don't like to be picked up; they also bite. That's Ella.

Among her good points are careful grooming to keep her fur tidy and no interest in crossing the road. She also chases neighbors' dogs.

Outdoor activity was somewhat limited during Georgia's cold snap when we visited there last month. We walked all over historic Savannah, but we weren't tempted by the outdoor cafes and bars, even with extended happy hours. One enterprising bar offered cheap drinks until 8 p.m. and furnished patrons with Snuggies, those sleeved blackets. In respect for giving equal time to the competition, I would suggest the barkeep also provides Slankets. No outside drinkers were in evidence during our time there.

In a final Savannah entry, I offer this mystery photo. The streets along the river are paved with cobblestones salvaged from the ballast of sailing ships. Savannah is still a busy port, and even had one tall sailing ship at the dock. But the days of ballast stones are past. I hope they don't run marathons along the cobbled route. There would be too many turned ankles.

Temple Mikve Israel, the Hope of Israel

One of the most interesting and inspiring experiences my husband, Doug, and I enjoyed during our two-day visit to Savannah, Ga., earlier this month was a tour of the Temple Mikve Israel, the third-oldest Jewish congregation in the United States - after New York City and Newport, R.I. - and the only neo-Gothic synagogue in the country.

I picked up a brochure advertising the temple tours from the things-to-do rack where we stayed at Savannah Bed & Breakfast Inn. I was amused by the cutsey "Shalom Y'All" greeting, but more intrigued by the brief history on the page. So, when we had the opportunity, we made our $5 donations and were taken in hand by a docent, Arnold Ram, a retired history teacher from New Jersey and a member of the Mikve Israel congregation.

He explained that the neo-Gothic style was adopted in part because that was a popular design for architecture in the late 19th century and because the Jewish community wanted to fit in with the other churches surrounding downtown historic Savannah.

We had learned from history plaques around town that Gen. James Oglethorpe, on orders from England's King George II, founded Savannah as a garrison and military buffer between the English settlements farther north and Spanish Florida. Oglethorpe and his soldiers arrived in the winter of 1733. Five months later, in July, the ship William and Sarah carrying 42 Jews landed in Savannah to set up a colony.

A model of the William and Sarah

They were sponsored by the London congregation Bevis Marks. Most of the Jews were of Spanish descent, Sephardim, who had followed their religion and maintained their rituals secretly during the Spanish Inquisition before emigrating to England. Two of the families were Ashkenazim of German descent, who practiced a different form of Judaism. The settlers had to work out those differences, and so, as Mr. Ram explained, they were, in a way, the first Reform Jewish congregation.

Mr. Ram gave us the history of the congregation, how the members gathered for services first in members homes and later in a temple a few blocks away from the current place of worship, which was consecrated in 1878. He recounted the history of the memorial windows and opened the ark to show us the beautiful red-velvet-wrapped, silver-decked scrolls of the Torah, including one that had been stolen by the Nazis and deposited in a museum in Czechoslovakia. Mr. Ram said the Mikve Israel congregation is working with scholars to identify where that rescued scroll originated and, perhaps, repatriate it.

Temple Mikve Israel sanctuary

Some descendants of the original Mikve Israel congregation are still members, and others, who are spread around the country and world, return for special celebrations, such as the 275th anniversary in 2008 of the congregation's founding. These folks are called the 1733 Club and have the honor of sitting in the front pews.

An annex to the temple houses the religious school, social hall and a museum with artifacts from the congregation's history.

Also, along with menorahs, books and beautiful Judaica art items, the gift shop sells T-shirts printed with "Shalom Y'All."

Savannah, Ga. mansion

During our trip to the frigid South earlier this month, we took a two-day trip from Doug's Aunt Lee's home near Atlanta to Savannah. We stuck to the historic district developed in 1733 by James Oglethorpe around a grid of more than 20 squares and parks. Savannah boasts of being the first planned city in North America. Even though the weather was below freezing, Savannah looked every inch the southern belle with live oaks draped in Spanish moss, palm trees and beautiful architecture.We stopped first at the Visitor Center for maps and general information, and met a woman sitting at a card table with brochures for her business, the Savannah Bed & Breakfast Inn. (She was also offering samnples of the inn's pecan bread, but we declined the goodie.) The inn is made up of about 30 themed rooms in an 1852 four-story row house. We were shown to the Oriental Room with Chinese painting and decor. The cost was $100 per night, steeper than our usual motels, but staying there saved me the trouble of driving around an unknown city looking for accommodations. TheInn also served afternoon tea, bedtime snack and breakfast and was handy to the sights we wanted to visit, such as the river walk and historic sites such as the Savannah Cotton Exchange.

The Oriental Room at Savanah Bed & Breakfast

We also visited the house where Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman stayedfollowing his "March to the Sea" in December 1864. He wrote to President Abraham Lincoln on Dec. 22, 1864, "I beg to present you, as a Christmas gift, the City of Savannah." He and his troops occupied the city, but they didn't destroy it.

Savannah Cotton Exchange on the Savannah River

Icicle fountain in Savannah's Forsyth Park

Earlier this month, Doug and I left our home in Pinesol for a trip to Georgia. When we left, the thermometer stood at minus-35 degrees F and the hot water lines to the kitchen and boot room bathroom were frozen.

Things were warmer in Georgia, but not the 60-degree weather people there are used to there in January. Droopy-looking palm trees, frosty grass, dogs in overcoats and 17-degree record cold nights were shocking. It even snowed a little while we were there. Schools closed down the day before a flake fell, just in case, and the Atlanta area reported 42 vehicle crashes. The driving didn't seem difficult to us. We took a day trip to Dahlonega, a historic gold mining town, but it was really a ghost town with shuttered businesses because of the snow. There were no tours of the gold mine either, even though that was underground.

The front page of the Gwinnett Daily Post for Jan. 9 had pictures of children sledding on frosty grass and the huge headline of "It's So Awesome" referring to the dusting of snow.

An amusement at Stone Mountain is a little artificial hill with in man-made snow for sledding. There is also a field of about two acres covered with snow for people to enjoy walking around in. The cost is $25 for two hours.

The snow-making machine isn't much like the big blowers at Buena Vista Ski Area.

Stone Mountain

While we were in Georgia earlier this month, Doug and I took a day trip to Stone Mountain, a big (825 feet above the surrounding countryside) granite boulder located east of Atlanta. It's carved on the east side with portraits of mounted Confederate heroes (from left) Gen. Robert E. Lee on Traveller, President Jefferson Davis on Blackjack and Gen. Stonewall Jackson on Old Sorrel. The carving is two football fields wide, but doesn't look as big as Mount Rushmore because the observation area is farther away.

The sculpture was started by Gutzon Borglum, who was hired by the United Daughters of the Confederacy to carve the portraits, in 1923. He quit in 1925 after a dispute with the UDC. He had completed Lee's face by then, but that part was later dynamited off the mountain by the next sculptor, Augustus Lukeman. If Borglum hadn't had a fight with the UDC ladies, he probably wouldn't have created Mount Rushmore. The Civil War is referred to at Stone Mountain Park as the War of Northern Aggression.

The carving was finally completed in 1972 and dedicated by Vice President Spiro Agnew.

The walk up the rock takes about one hour. Atlanta's skyline is visible from the top.

Doug on top of Stone Mountain.

Stone Mountain Park features, besides the big rock and sculpture, hiking trails, museums and a craft village. The museums were open, one of which has a film history of the carving and one with a neat geological history of the earth. These are served by acres and acres of parking lots. However, on Jan. 5 when we visited, we were about the only tourists in the park. A snackbar and aerial tram station are built on top of the rock.

Mystery photo

Near the bottom of the climb on the west side of the rock is a telephone pole decorated with thousands of globs of chewing gum deposited by hikers. Quite a contrast to the idealized sculpture on the east face of Stone Mountain.

Lee and Doug

The second day of 2010, my husband, Doug, and I took advantage of some complaint tickets we'd garnered from Delta Airlines and Amtrak. The Amtrak ticket was due to expire in February, so an early January vacation to the sunny South was in order.

We visited Doug's Aunt Lee (pronounced "awnt" not "ant," as she reprimanded me). At 82, she is the last of Doug's father's generation in the family. She lives near Atlanta, Ga., as do two of her sons, Doug's cousins. These are people I haven't met before, or just Lee once at a funeral more than 30 years ago. But Doug is her favorite nephew, and they viusit on the phone frequently.

After an overnight at friends' home in Minneapolis, we took off by air for Atlanta on Jan.3. We arrived in good order, but there was no one at the Delta luggage carousels to meet us. I stationed Doug near a pillar by the airport entry where, I thought, he couldn't be missed, and made some phone calls to check on the rendezvous situation. Doug assumed his cousin, who was scheduled to pick us up, would recognize him. But, no. Remember, this is a person who has never met me, and Doug can't see well enough to recognize a cousin in the crowd.

After about 2 and a half hours, and no connections by phone, we decided to motel it for the night. Super 8 was fine and a late supper at Ruby Tuesday's fit the bill.

Lee and her granddaughter, Barbara, picked us up Monday morning and the visiting commenced. Lee is a wonderfully generous host and a great talker. Lots of family lore poured out during our stay. We met the cousins, too, as well as Lee's dog, a schnauzer rescued from the pound.

Lee and El Cid, named for a Castilian nobleman (1040-1099). The long, gray fur on his legs are referred to as "furnishings."

Lee also generously lent us her Ford Explorer for our day trips to Stone Mountain, Savannah and the old gold mining town of Dahlonega, which was all shut up when we stopped in because of a dusting of snow.

We arrived in Minneapolis by Amtrak Jan. 12 and home to Pinesol Jan. 13, after another overnight with our Minneapolis friends.

The good news on arriving home was that the water lines, whichwere frozen when we left, had thawed withourt any breakage.

Trip reports will follow.

Midnight in Newfoundland

In Maritime Canada, radio announcers always note the time by saying the hour and adding that it's half an hour later in Newfoundland, because that island is a half time zone east of Halifax. For example, "At the sound of the tone, the time will be 6 p.m., 6:30 in Newfoundland." A famous joke on that subject shows a doomsday guy with his sackcloth tunic and plackard printed with the words, "The world ends at midnight, 12:30 in Newfoundland."

(There is another famous riddle: "What's black and blue and floats in the harbour? The next guy in this bar to tell a Newfie joke." But that's off subject.)

Anyway, when we lived in Nova Scotia, we would toast the New Year at 11:30 p.m. because it was already midnight in Newfoundland and we were already up later than we really wanted to be. Last night, as the grandmother's clock struck 9:30, Doug said "Happy New Year, Newfoundland time!" We did stay up a while longer, but not until midnight Central Standard Time.

Happy 2010, everyone.

My Christmas decorations are definitely low key this year. I made an outdoor greenery spray from a couple of branches Doug had asked my to lop off the big black spruce near the mailbox. They had been grabbing him when he went by the tree to pick up the mail.

I put lights on a blue spruce by the driveway. This was the first year I have used LED lights, and I wasn't sure how they would handle the cold. They seem to be fine, although not the bright primary colors I'm used to with the old incandescent lights.

Because we weren't having company, we decided not to cut a tree. I made a Christmas bouquet of white pine, balsam fir and blue spruce branches stuck in damp sand and hung with minimal ornaments. I wrapped the pot in festive colored foil. It's pretty.

We had a quiet Christmas Day. We opened presents in the morning sent by far-away family members and ate a gourmet breakfast. I drove in to work at the Pioneer, thankful for the 4-wheel-drive pickup that could waddle through the deep snow on the county road. I came home in daylight and roasted a chicken,one of the six-pounders my mother's neighbor raises. We finished the evening by starting one of the read-aloud books we received as presents.

We didn't get the driveway cleaned out in time for church Sunday. The snowblower is on the fritz, acting as if it's starved for gas and stalling. So, we shoveled and scooped. In the afternoon, I drove the pickup to rural Debs to pick up a big bale of hay for the horses. Just as I passed Pinewood, the sun began to come out turning the winter landscape into a calendar scene.

It was a nice weekend.

Musical compositions by Sister Miriam Therese Winter

Christmas 1974 - we were coming off a difficult patch. My husband, Doug, had undergone eye surgery and a long recuperation followed by the inability to find a job. But things had turned around that spring. He was employed designing equipment for Hermes Electronics, a Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, company with Sonobuoys as the signature product. They are buoys that deploy hydrophones (underwater microphones) to listen for submarines. We had moved from our farm in central New Brunswick, Phoebe had turned 3, our second child, Joshua, was born and we were living in a three-room basement apartment. We also had a mother cat and five kittens and a husky dog, Shana, whom Doug had saved from being shot for chasing deer. Quite a crowd.

We found a free Christmas tree when we took a load of stuff to the dump. As it happened, the county had just expanded the landfill. Instead of simply bulldozing the trees in the new section, someone had cut down the smaller firs and stacked them outside the caretaker's hut for anyone who wanted to salvage them. We decorated the tree with snipped paper snowflakes and paper chains cut from colorful magazine pages. Christmas dinner was roast pork, some of the last meat we had brought in the freezer from the farm. Phoebe's toys were donations from the pastor of our church left behind by his grown children. I recall a lovely wicker doll baby carriage and toy piano. (If we still had them, I could probably them sell for big bucks on e-Bay now.)

It sounds kind of grim, but it wasn't.

I had asked Doug to bring home a Christmas record, thinking he would find an LP with sing-along carols. Instead, he bought "Gold, Incense and Myrrh" sung by Medical Mission Sisters and Friends with songs composed by Sister Miriam Therese Winter, songs we had never heard before.

According to their Web site, "Medical Mission Sisters are women full of passion – for wholeness, for justice, for life. In a world with so much suffering, pain – and potential – we strive to promote healing and wholeness in all aspects of life.

"Our 625 Sisters, from 23 nations, share one mission, 'To be a healing presence at the heart of a wounded world.' We live this mission today in 17 countries on five continents, among people made poor, among those who have limited or no access to health care, and among those unjustly treated or oppressed."

When I said something to Doug about wanting a different kind of record, he assured me I would get to like "Gold, Incense and Myrrh" and its unfamiliar songs. He may even have said it would become one of my favorite recordings. In any case, it has become a record I look forward to playing each year.

Many changes have happened since that Christmas decades ago. We moved to a rural area near the Bay of Fundy. Our third child, Joel, was born in 1977. Then Doug took a position as professor of engineering at South Dakota State University and we moved (by school bus - another story) to Brookings, S.D. The children grew up and left home. In 2000, we landed in Pinesol - halfway between Pinewood and Solway.

Life moves along

Anne Edwards Fellows

Tom Turney cleaned and repaired my grandmother's clock, which is now running fairly well, but still needs new weight chains. Tom said they have been ordered. I mentioned that the clock was a gift to Grandma Fellows from Grampa Fellows on their first anniversary in 1906.

This is a picture of Grandma Fellows when she was about 18. Family lore has it that she was a Gibson Girl, a model for artist Charles Dana Gibson, who, in the late 19th century and early 20th century, drew pictures of statuesque young women with high-piled hair. They were considered the epitome of feminine beauty at that time.

This is a frame from the 1967 Patterson-Grimlin film, probably the most convincing images of Bigfoot. Robert Grimlin and the late Roger Patterson had heard of Bigfoot sightings in Six Rivers National Park in northern California. They went on a hunt, Patterson armed with a 16-mm hand-held Kodak movie camera and Grimlin armed with a rifle. They were exploring on horseback for the cryptid, as mystery animals are called.

Their accounts of the meeting with the female Bigfoot don't quite match, and Patterson sought to make money from the film, unlike the Kedrowskis whose game trail photo spawned the story in today's Pioneer. Nor do the members of the Northern Minnesota Bigfoot Research Team, who are convinced Bigfoot lives around here,seek financial gain. They are just interested in investigating reports and searching for evidence of the Bigfoot's existence.

Another problem is the plentiful hoaxing that surrounds Bigfoot sighting reports.

I first saw the Patterson film in 1971 when my husband, Doug, and our baby, Phoebe, went to the Gaity Theatre in Fredrickton, New Brunswick, Canada, where we lived at the time. I don't remember the feature, but without any announcement or comment, the projectionist ran the short Patterson film. The first few frames are a jumble of Petterson turning on the camera as he dismounts from his horse. But he recorded several seconds of the creature striding away from the two men and entering the woods. It didn't look like special effects, even if they were available in 1967 for a fairly primative camera.

The film is very convincing. But as the biologists note, there has to be a fairly large population for the creatures to reproduce. Animals new to science are found regularly, but seldom megafauna like Bigfoot.

However, just last year, August 2008, 100,000 previously unknown lowland gorillas were discovered in the Congo. But Cass County is not remote Africa.

Clock gears

Earlier this fall we gave up fiddling with my grandmother's clock trying to keep it running. This is the 7-foot tall mahogany case clock my grandfather, Eugene Fellows, gave to my grandmother, Anne Edwards Fellows, for their first anniversary in 1906.

I called Bemidji clockmakerTom Turney, who agreed to look at the clock. Doug and I put the clock in the pickup truck on a sleeping bag, and Grandma's clock came to town. Tom took the works out, cleaned them and fixed the hamhanded repairs that had been done some unknown time in the past. He then tested the clock for several weeks to see if it would keep time.

Last week, he returned the clock to our home in Pinesol. Grandma's clock is back in its place in our living room. The tick and strike are quieter than before the repairs, and Tom still has improvements planned. He has ordered new chains for the weights that drive the gears. The clock runs on ladder chains. That is, each little brass link is shaped like a flat-bottomed U with two little loops at the top connecting it to the next link. Because brass is fairly soft, the links stretch over time and need replacement every generation or so.

Myrtie Hunt at 92 riding Bonnie Belle

Many people knew Myrtie Hunt better than I did. But as her her friend and hunting host Larry Burgoon said, Myrtie is someone we will be talking about for years to come.

Myrtie died Monday at age 98.

In 2003, before my husband, Doug, and I traveled to China for what we expected to be a year of teaching at Beihang University in Beijing, we hosted a picnic. The object was twofold - to let friends know our plans and to clean out the freezer. We accomplished both, although the Chinese withdrew the teaching contract after we arrived in Beijing and we returned home after about three weeks.

Part of the entertainment at the picnic was pony rides. Bonnie, the little, aged Arab mare obliged. Bonnie was my mother's last horse. She gave Bonnie to us when we moved to our place between Pinewood and Solway (Pinesol). We were Bonnie's retirement home.

At the picnic, Myrtie said she hadn't ridden a horse in 40 years, but she wanted to ride Bonnie. Myrtie mounted up using a picnic cooler as a step and with some boosting. She had a nice ride through our woods trails and said the experience made her day.

The Aer Lingus planes also had names painted on their noses in Gaelic on one side and English on the other. We flew in on St. Dearvilla (English)/Dearbhila (Gaelic).

Here are two signs we saw in Kilkenny that thought were funny.

Note steaming pile. And:

A specialty coffee shop dedicated to minding husbands while wives shop. There actually were several men inside drinking coffee and reading newspapers.

Beehive hut on the Dingle Peninsula

These ancient stone houses don't look particularly cozy, but people in Ireland lived in them from B.C. to about 1200 A.D. The style of building by laying rocks in successive circles gradually tapering to the top was in use until the 1950s. But in the 20th century, the huts were used as storage buildings. The theory is that the Dingle Peninsula huts and surrounding stone walls were the homesteads of free farmers driven off the best land to stony ground by the invading Normans in the 12th century.

No mortar is used in the buildings, but the rings of stones have a downward and outward tilt to shed water. And, even though we'd had some rain the day we drove the circle of the Dingle Peninsula, and even though chinks of daylight showed between the rocks, the huts were dry inside.