Thinking about eagles and light and stars

Our drive down to The Lake today confirmed our reasons for going there at least once a day just to see what's new.  Today we were surprised to see that the ice in the channel of water leading into the marina was nearly totally SMOOTH!  And this is strange because the last time we saw it on Saturday, it was a jumbled mess of frozen ice chunks.  So, what happened?  How did it get all smoothed out because it certainly wasn't any result of melting!  It's been too cold for that.  But it's also been very windy, so perhaps surface water blew inland and everything froze to almost a skating-rink smooth condition.  Just a hypothesis, of course..."I'm not a scientist."  (Hmmm, where have I heard that before?)

Our other sighting today was eagles--actually four eagles!  They were sitting out on the ice edges and finding something tasty to interest them out there.  

Here's two of them together.  The other two were over to the west but even further out...so even smaller specks in my picture.  While we were there, we saw Laura Erickson who does a blog about birds--Laura's Birding Blog.  She is from Duluth but has family connections here and often comes to visit her favorite bird haunts.  Today she was looking for snowy owls which have been seen here lately, but not by us!

********************

What's really been on my mind lately has been my cousin, Ingabritt, from Sweden-now-Greece.  Early yesterday morning I received an email from her husband, Harry (Hariton), telling me that she had passed away on Saturday.  She is the person who was my inspiration to begin blogging just a year ago when I reconnected with her for the first time since the early 1980's.  In spite of breast cancer and all the necessary treatments since 2007, she has lived life to the fullest as a journalist, wife, mother of three, and friend to many!  I'm so glad I found her last year.

 I met her husband, Harry, when we visited Ingabritt in Stockholm in 1979.  Jeff and I were on a three-week Eurail trip through Europe after being discharged from the Army in Augsburg, Germany.  Harry was an astronomy student back then and is now an astronomer in Greece.  In an email I received from him today, he said that as part of the UNESCO 2015 International Year of Light, highlighting for the world the importance of light and optical technology in our lives, he was able to name a star Ingabritt-Maria in her name.  So nice!  I usually go out on our front porch on clear nights to see the stars and check for northern lights.  Our dark skies always make it a great show!

I hope I'm not sharing too much, but he also said that she was brave and at peace to the end.  Her daughter will be having a baby any day now and Ingabritt was sitting up and knitting baby clothes for her first grandchild until Friday, the day before she passed away!  I knew she was my mentor for my blogging project, but today I realized she will also be my mentor on how to live and now even on how to face death.  What a gift!

Adjö, Ingabritt, och många tack!

Is September supposed to be stormy?

Big storms passed through Minnesota today, and moved on to northern Wisconsin and Upper Michigan tonight.  And maybe it's thanks to the Lake, but it pretty much bypassed us.  There's a large farm and orchard west of Minneapolis in the town of Waverly that was pelted with large hail.  That farm supplies the Twin Cities farmer's markets and lots of produce stands with apples and vegetables, but not after today's storm.  All of their apples look like this:

http://kstp.com/article/127/

As we watch over our surprisingly decent apple crop this year, stories like this are so sad...and we aren't depending on our apples as income!  One radio interview we heard late this afternoon mentioned that they were going to start picking apples tomorrow.  Wow!

So our apples still look like this:

They are NOT ripe yet.  They are still at the point where you take a bite and it kind of sucks your cheeks in!  But we need that hail and those high winds to stay away.  And as of this moment, the moon is shining in the window, so maybe this batch of storms will leave us alone.

As promised, I made the basil pesto tonight.  That basil really has a strong odor!  Back in the day with I had bad headaches WAY too often, I was invited to a gathering of people from my school where they were going to make large batches of pesto.  I had all kinds of flashbacks tonight of that event and how I was trying to hang in there with that headache while trying not to let the smell of the basil get to me.  This was a smaller batch and I've "outgrown" the headaches, so all was well.  Now what should I try it with?

Tomorrow I'm scheduled for an appointment with some ear clinic in Duluth to check my hearing for the Veteran's Administration!  This is the "follow-up" to my meeting with the VA rep back on April 7th to find out about possible compensation for my near total lack of hearing in one ear and very limited in the other.   Whether my hearing problems began back with my years of listening through static and bad Russian back in those Army days is still to be determined.  I guess we'll just find out how bad it really is tomorrow.

Huh?

Sunset at the pier and light beacon

Beautiful night down at the pier.  I just kept taking pictures on my phone until I thought I might have one with the beacon light showing.  So, there it is on the far right--that little pin prick!

Today was a frustrating medical day.  We got a little back in April telling us our doctor in Duluth was moving from Internal Medicine to Emergency Room work so she could spend more time with her family.  So we would need to find a new doctor.  I should have done something about it as soon as we got the letter.  Unfortunately we waited...until today...and the selection of female Internal Medicine doctors affiliated with St. Luke's Hospital in Duluth is PRETTY slim!  A total of one...and she doesn't have the best ratings in the Healthgrades.com website!  AND more important, her assistant didn't call me back today.  Luckily I didn't actually need to make an appointment...yet...

I have one other medical topic, sort of.  Back in April I wrote about my attempt to get some help from the Department of Veterans Affairs for my nearly total hearing loss in my right ear, based on the job I did while I was in the Army.  About a month ago I received a letter from them saying they were still considering it and might need some more information.  Then on Saturday I received another letter saying they are "still processing your application for COMPENSATION.  We apologize for the delay."

So, cynic that I am, I'm wondering if this second letter is a result of all the VA uproar and them trying to make good on open applications.  And mine is just a hearing issue.  I would hope that now things start to go faster for those vets who are really suffering.

Huh...I now see that they addressed this letter to me with my maiden name--Larson.  That wasn't the name I used on the application.  Let the confusion begin!

Thinking about Normandy...and apple blossom time

We had to make another trip to Ashland today for another eye exam.  On the way we listened to some of the NPR coverage of the events over in Normandy in France today on the 70th anniversary of the Normandy Invasion.  I had the opportunity to visit those historic beaches several years ago and it's so incredible to think of what those troops must have gone through that day.  And then they had to face the next day!

I remembered that I had a Stephen Ambrose book on my iPad, Citizen Soldiers, detailing the coverage of the war from D-Day to the Battle of the Bulge.  Since I had some waiting room time today, I started reading that book and I learned that what they ran into the next day was almost as bad.

That part of France used "hedgerows" to delineate their fields and property.  Hedgerows are high and wide barriers of earth with trees and vegetation growing on top of them.  The Germans had been located there for several months so they knew how to negotiate them, but American intelligence had only seen them in aerial pictures and didn't know that were as high and daunting as they turned out to be.  They were like mazes for American troops and equipment so they had to spend some precious time figuring out how to get themselves, huge tanks and things through the hedgerows and not become victims of them and targets of the Germans waiting for them.

More information for how they navigated in and around hedgerows - http://www.lonesentry.com/normandy_lessons/

Don't know why, but this stuff fascinates me.

We got home this evening in time to get up into the meadow to take pictures of the apple trees.  I was afraid it would start raining before we got home, but we made it.  Rain is hard on apple blossoms!

So I was still thinking about the Normandy book, then thinking apple blossoms, and next thing I know  I'm hearing the Andrews Sisters in my head singing, "I'll be with you in apple blossom time,"--on the hit parade in the '40's, I'm sure!

And now here are some pictures from our meadow and our "wild" apple trees growing up there.  It's so pretty up there.  Too bad the mosquitoes like it up there too!

Tomorrow - some pictures from our "tame" orchard!

Birdbrains or Mary Moments

This year our yard is just teeming with birds, especially the last few days.  I'm not sure why it would be different this year than last, but perhaps the cooler temperatures are keeping them around here rather than going on north.  We have 4 pairs of rose-breasted grosbeaks, DOZENS of goldfinches, purple finches, 8-10 blue jays that maybe just hatched(?), the orioles, and all varieties of little brown birds.  All of those goldfinches streaking back and forth from the feeders to the trees is really something to see.  

And I could never accuse them of being "bird brains," because that's what I was--twice--last weekend.  But first I had to look up the origin of "bird brains,"

"A bird brain is an individual who seems to have difficulty focusing on the events that are occurring in the immediate area, or to participate in them in any logical manner. Sometimes used as a designation for someone who is esteemed to be somewhat stupid or ignorant, this idiom can also refer to someone who is known to exhibit a short attention span, especially as is relates to carrying on a conversation. A bird brain is often considered flighty and may even be thought of as slightly self-centered, owing to the sudden tangents that may take place during an attempt at conversations. 

The exact origin of the English saying is lost to history. While references in the literature and media during the 20th century made ample use of the phrase, there are those who trace the origins back several centuries. In general, the term is thought to be applicable whenever an individual exhibits some of the aspects associated with birds, such as quickly landing in an area, jumping about and then just as quickly taking off for another destination. The reference has to do with the small size of a bird’s brain, indicating that the human who is identified with this label is operating on little to no brain power." http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-bird-brain.htm 

My first lack-of-focus moment happened just after we got back in the car after stopping at the Belvidere Oasis on the Illinois Tollway.  "Where's my phone?"  It wasn't anywhere--not in pockets, purse, car console, nowhere.  I tried to remember what I was going to have to do to "Find my phone" and knew I'd have to get on my computer someplace that had Wifi to wipe it--erase all content.  Luckily it's easy to get off and back on the tollway there, so we got off and parked by a gas station.  I got out of the car, looked all over the front seat, and then under the seat--there it was!  After it was all over, I was compared to a rabid dog when things like that happen.  It could be an apt comparison.

The next "rabid" event happened up the road in Medford, Wisconsin after we grabbed a quick bite to eat at the McDonald's.  I went back out to the car, put my seatbelt on, waited for Leann...and I didn't have my purse!  And I knew I had it in there because I had paid our bill!

Now, this is an occurrence that happens way too often in my dreams, or should I say nightmares.  I think the nightmares all started back in 1997 when my purse was stolen from our car at a nature area in Richfield, MN.  Within an hour, whoever stole it had opened a charge account at a nearby store and charged $1500 worth of merchandise, wrote multiple checks from my checkbook, and then went on to do other identity-stealing activities that followed me for the next three years.  So, it definitely left its mark on me.  And it's happened so often in my dreams, that while dreaming it I actually question whether I'm awake or not, hoping I'm just dreaming.

Good thing I was in Medford, Wisconsin and not...other places.  I zoomed back into the restaurant, and my purse was still there on the bench where I left it.  Whew!

I have spent some time the last couple of days since it happened trying to find something to blame it on--low blood sugar, tired from traveling--anything besides having "difficulty focusing on the events that are occurring in the immediate area," or being bird-brained!  Unfortunately, from now on, happenings like this, no matter whom they happen to, will now be "Mary Moments."

Icebergs, soggy trails and foggy evenings

When I made my trip down to the harbor today, I was surprised to see this iceberg island covered with seagulls!  I couldn't zoom as close as I wanted, but I think you can tell it's a pretty big chunk of ice!  Then my thoughts went to whether the birds were some variety of Arctic tern that took a wrong "turn" and ended up on our ice island.  (JK) Pretty cool, I thought.

Ice along the beach - it's going to be hard to wade this summer...

And earlier today, I saw this website (below) of pictures of other icebergs taken this past weekend.  These were taken over in the Bayfield area and are really quite beautiful. If you'd like to see more, just click on the link in the caption area.

http://thecookerymaven.com/2014/05/an-iceberg-expedition-on-may-17th/

In my quest to get my 10,000 steps every day, I went for a walk up into the fields behind our house.  I should have worn boots!  All the rain showers we've had lately create lots of little streams and puddles, making walking a challenge.  I don't know when we'll be able to drive Cammie, our Ranger utility vehicle, up there.  (Cammie - because it's camo-decorated.)  Here are some pictures:

The dead-looking trees are apple trees with blossoms and buds still hidden.  Hoping for a great apple year this year!

Leann put this mailbox up on our trails for people to leave notes on their walks.  But right now the trails are all pretty soggy like the picture.  Maybe if/when the frost finally goes out.

 After my meeting tonight, I still needed 3000 more steps, so I took off up our road...into the fog...kind of a Stephen King adventure.  The picture below is looking toward our house, so I just needed to head for the light...

And I got all my steps for today!

Gifts for the blog, and a new distraction

This afternoon I attended a small weekly gathering of people at church.  In our intro session, one member of the group, (and a friend of mine, as well as one of my faithful blog readers,) said he had to go get something for "show-and-tell."  What he brought in was something for me that he found while working at a recent estate sale and here it is:

It's a new snow-measuring stick!  I can't wait for it to snow again!  (Just kidding, no "hate" comments please!)  This one has an additional 6 inches on the bottom so I can stick it down into the ground early in the snow season.  I had to promise them that I wouldn't put it out until at least next December though.  Can do!  Thanks, J & J!  I'll use it well!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Back in December a few days before Christmas, we had a group of people here at our house to get together and sing Christmas carols.  I played one-handed piano (the right hand, of course) and another friend played her guitar.  We sang through all of the usual Christmas carols, had some good snacks and beverages, and the singing went quite well.  But, our piano was VERY out of tune, not surprisingly since it hadn't been tuned for almost 20 years since the daughters got older and moved on to other activities.

Sometime in February I called a man here in town, Tom Denker, who specializes in piano tuning, piano repairs, and all things piano.  He came and tuned the piano, and that was that...

...until a couple Sundays ago when I was talking to a woman before church who mentioned that Tom had been giving piano lessons to a young student she knew.  And I started thinking, (all during the church service), "Piano lessons.  I never thought about Tom giving lessons.  I used to take lessons.  I could start up with lessons again, because, really, what else do I have to do?  I'm going to ask him after church," because he was the accompanist that day in church.

So, after church I asked if he would take me on as a student, and I had my first lesson the next day!  I've taken lessons at various times in my life, and the last time was 1995 when I had an unfortunate, but memorable, experience at a piano recital I agreed to be in.  But that's another story for another day!

The main thing that I've found by starting again after 20 years is that now my left hand doesn't always sync very well with my right hand.  Couldn't be age, could it?  The other thing I've figured out now just two weeks into this project is that it's okay to "play outside the box."  And that's something I could take to heart in all kinds of aspects of my life!

What will be next?

Memories, May baskets & May poles

The first day of May has different meanings for people around the world.  For some people it's a day to remember all those who have struggled and sacrificed for better working conditions and benefits for laborers and the working class.  And for many other people it's a day to celebrate spring with a variety of traditions.

A favorite tradition from my childhood and then again with my children is making May Baskets.  Since I didn't have any pictures of May Baskets from any time in my past, I did a Google search for May Basket images.  Crazy!  NONE were as simple as what we used to make them, but maybe this picture came close:

http://www.pinterest.com/pin/225672631299612949/

As I remember, my Mom had little paper cups she may have called nut cups.  I suppose Dixie cups could have been used but I'm not sure I remember having them back then.  Add a handle using pipe cleaners, colored if we were lucky, but probably white because they were actually used to clean pipes.  I probably decorated the cups a little, then added the candy, mints and nuts.  After we got them all put together, my Mom drove me around to deliver them to some chosen friends, both young and old.  Run up to the door, knock or ring the doorbell (if there was a doorbell back then), and then RUN back to the car or around the house to disappear quickly.  It was great fun!  The routine was pretty much the same when my girls were little, but the materials were a little more elaborate, as was the candy selection and we only did it if it was a tradition where we were living at the time. (Ask me about St. Nicholas Day sometime!) And I really only vividly remember doing it one year with Sara (Ellen was a baby), about 1985 and we ran through about 4 inches of snow getting to the door and back to the car.  Huh, snow in May back then, too! 

I was able to celebrate another May Day tradition when I lived in Germany while stationed in the Army in 1978.  We were out on a spring bike ride and came upon the raising of the May Pole in the Gersthofen Ratshausplatz, the area by City Hall.  It was quite a spectacle,  All the community service people--police, firemen, etc--were all working together to get that May Pole upright and decorated.  This was a larger city, but the tradition in the little villages would be to go out in the forest, find the tallest tree, and use that for the community May Pole.  Here are some pictures from that day. They are taken from slides, so the quality is not the best.

Decorated with symbols pertaining to the city of Gersthofen.

And no celebration is complete without the German brass band!  It was a fun day, and originally I probably had 50 pictures to record every step of the process.  I cut it down to 5 just for you!

May Day here today was rainy and dark, with promises of sun on the weekend.  On my trip to the Lake this afternoon, I saw one of the fishing boats, the Judy, coming back in from fishing.  I'm going to count this as Spring with a capital S, because I think it may be one the first times they actually got out on the lake to fish.

Happy May Day!

Good Friday & coloring eggs, Greek style

Yesterday my Swedish blogger cousin, Ingabritt, who lives in Greece, blogged about a Maundy Thursday egg-dying tradition she has acquired from her husband's family and the area of Greece where she lives.  It begins with the 50 eggs her mother-in-law delivered to her house. (The number is important when you see what all she did to them.)

Tools needed are the eggs, cleaned if necessary, old pantyhose, wire, scissors, and a bunch of small green leaves that she picked in the park.

Next you need a bunch of outer skins from some onions:

Then you make a little egg package by cutting a piece of the pantyhose, tie up one end with the wire, slip in the egg, slip in a little section of leaves, and wire up the other end of the egg package.  And she did that with 50 eggs!  Sounds like an excellent "being in the moment" activity!

Next put a layer of eggs in a large pot, fill it with water so the eggs are covered, add vinegar (sorry, I don't know how much), add a bunch of onion skins, and boil them for 20 minutes.  And guess what color they will be!!  I was surprised!

Aren't they beautiful?? And look at those delicate little leaves!  I commented on her blog that I had never seen doing it with those leaves, and any of my previous attempts at using natural dyes never turned out this vivid.  She said she had lived in Greece many years before she tried this and now can't imagine doing it with commercial colors.  Now they will each bring an egg with them to church for the Easter Vigil and when the resurrection is proclaimed, partake in the eggs.

I was thinking I wanted to try this.  And then I realized we didn't have any green leaves outside, but Leann said we could use some leaves from our inside plants, perhaps even my Swedish ivy!

Since my girls are older now it's been a few years since I have dyed Easter eggs, but it was always a Good Friday activity in the afternoon after church.  The method used to dye them always changed from year to year--boiling the eggs, blowing the insides out, writing on them with a white crayon revealing words when it's dyed, the feeble attempts at natural dyes, and decorating them with whatever fun stuff came with the egg dyes.  But like making jack-o-lanterns for Halloween, it was always an activity I looked forward to, no matter what age I was.

And that reminded me of some slides I had digitized a while back.  Below you can see me and my Aunt Corrine Swanson in 1962 dying Easter eggs with our Paas egg colors.  And look at the shirt I was wearing - Port Wing!  

"Listening" for a promise of benefits

A long time ago I joined the US Army.

I graduated from college--Illinois State University, BA German--and was primed to go teach German in some Illinois high school.  The jobs were scarce back then, even though my friend N landed a great job that she hung with until retirement just a couple years ago.  I think I could have found a job if I had waited until August just before school started, but I'm not a good wait-er, and I really wanted to do something, go somewhere, "see the world."

So I went to visit my friendly Army recruiter.  And soon I was raising my right hand to take the "support and defend" Oath of Enlistment.  They were aware that I had German as a language, so what did my orders say when I finished basic training? They were sending me to the language school in Monterey, CA to learn Korean!  Perfectly logical.  NOT!  So I did some talking and soon was reassigned to German.  I'd be out in 8 weeks.  But. on second thought, someone else in charge of my unit decided I should be switched to Russian.  Logical?  Again, probably not, but that's what happened.  Two Russian courses and a couple "crypto" courses later, I finally got to my duty station in Augsburg, Germany, sitting with headphones on, and listening to and translating Russian radio traffic from East Germany.

Our Russian balalaika orchestra & choir at Defense Language Institute - Army extracurriculars.  I'm second from the right playing the domra.  So fun!

And now, like other people I know who did the same job in the Army, I have severe hearing loss and constant ringing in both ears, the right worse than the left.  And those "other people I know" suggested I check on my Veterans benefits to see if I can get some compensation based on the job I had.  So today we drove over to Washburn, our county seat, so I could meet with the Veteran's Services rep there.  I gave him my DD214--discharge papers, my audiology tests, and I'm officially "in the system" now.  And he gave me no promises about timelines.  Not that I expected anything else.

I'm already so grateful for the GI Bill benefits I earned from serving in the Army.  The money I received from the GI Bill paid for almost all of the classes I needed for my Masters degree in Information Media.  Sweet deal, and travels all over Europe, too!  Now if I could only hear better...and not all on my dime...

We'll see!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Breaking news - Leann just saw our first robin this year!  And enough snow has melted that robins might even find something to eat!