A documentary on A Prairie Home Companion.

I had the good fortune to be at home tonight, letting my wife take my daughter to her basketball game. I was doing some stuff and then came upon a PBS documentary on A Prairie Home Companion, and Garrison Keillor of course. I often wondered if there was something like this done, I had only seen the movie, which I didn't like. This was a real look at the show, the man behind the show and the Minnesota culture that started it all. I've been a fan of the show for many years and have been fortunate to see it a few times. My wife has been good enough to get tickets and we both enjoy the live show in St. Paul. I remember the first time I heard the show which was 1985. I was rooming with three other guys in a townhouse and the girlfriend of one of them, Dorothy, talked about if it was time for the monologue one Saturday evening. I asked what it was and then I listened to it with them as we ate dinner. It was something I got hooked on because I also liked that old-timey music. For those of you who listen to the show but have never seen it on stage, you miss out on something that's real special. It's an entertaining performance and I think that still translates to radio even after all these years. The performers are seen often in town, most of them have day jobs in radio or in music. Our local coffee shop sometimes has the sound effects guy sitting there, and I see that monster guitar player Pat Donahue on the street occasionally. I wouldn't know who they were except for seeing the live show. It must be the ultimate gig in smalltime showbiz, being able to do an artform like this, be well paid, without being readily recognized or bothered. This would be something most people would like in Hollywood. They try to be anonymous, but can't with their image being used, unlike radio where a disembodied voice causes us to imagine someone who looks totally different than what people actually look like. The documentary was what I had hoped it would be regarding the show, if you get a chance to see it, you should check it out.   

Sunday morning walk 6/28/09

I've often talked about the walks I take on Sunday morning and how wonderful they are, blah, blah, blah. And all of them are, but each one I take seems to be better than the last. This can't be. My conclusion is that the uniqueness of each experience makes it seemingly better. It must be that way in life too, things can seem to be better and better if we take them for the unique gifts that they are. This morning, I walked in a more remote part of the Lake Elmo Park Reserve, like I often do. There were farms at one time that the county bought for open space, letting it revert back to nature. The wind was gusting hard at times but the temperature was very comfortable. It rolled across the fields like a body of water, waves and waves of plants bowing to the wind. The humidity has gone away leaving the breeze to be very refreshing this day, and there was not a cloud in the sky. The sky seemed so blue, like it was when I was a kid, so deeply blue to the horizon. The wild flowers and plants are in full bloom right now with colors of white, yellow, orange and purple. I know that the county wants this to be like original prairie grassland along with the woods and this morning, it looked like that. There were no deer out today although I was early enough to see some, but there were plenty of birds. The landscape is so green and growing right now that the birds must enjoy an endless buffet of insects and plants. I was out there for quite a while enjoying the open spaces. I went off trail a bit down by the lake and found a perfect viewing spot with some fieldstones piled in the woods. These are scattered around the park, which is really large, most of the time in wooded areas where farmers left them many years ago after clearing their fields. There were very few people early this morning, only some campers who were up and going. The only things to be heard today in the field was the wind, the birds and the waving grass. Excellent.

The fateful shock of Uncle John's Bathroom Reader.

Years ago, when I worked for the big copier company, I worked with a group of salespeople who seemed to always be in meetings. I don't think any of us liked it, it's just the way the company communicated their very important truth and wisdom, through boring meetings. Of course, all of this bothered me and I would look for any reason to miss them, and if that wasn't possible, looked for ways to make it go sideways. One of the great meetings we had was a Christmas gift exchange, a random gift that people selected. As each gift was chosen, it was gone. I got a book, a gag gift, Uncle John's Bathroom Reader. It was one in a series of these bathroom readers with all sorts of fun facts, short stories and cool stuff only guys like. The cover had Uncle John dressed in a lab coat and wielding a clipboard with a roll of toilet paper prominently displayed. It's hilarious for a gag gift. The problem came up that as people were getting down to my gift, which was the last one, the last person to pick was a woman I'll call Patricia. Patricia was what I would consider tight, not one to joke about herself, really very serious. A nice person truly, but real rigid. I never understood why she was, I didn't know her that well, but I started to think that she would be the ideal candidate for the bathroom reader. As fate would have it, the last gift left to open was the bathroom reader, and she was the last person to pick. She unwrapped it and to her horror, Uncle John's Bathroom Reader appeared in all it's glory. She was horrified. Other people in the party grabbed it and thought it was cool, one guy even said, "Way to go!". Most everyone was laughing, which was the intention of the book, you couldn't help but take this with a good laugh, except for Patricia. She was so shocked by the nature of the book that she wouldn't even touch it again, like it had been in a bathroom already touched by someone who doesn't wash their hands after being there. I mean, a bathroom book, yuk! It stayed on the table and when she left later, it was still there. Someone else took it I think, she wouldn't touch it again. The personal shock was one of those rare treats that we get in the business world, everyone taken by surprise and yes, making something dull go wonderfully sideways. I did feel kind of bad that I accidently put her in an uncomfortable position, but it was purely by chance, so I had no control, it was a fateful moment in gift giving.

Hubris is always out of style.

I was watching some interview with a reality star recently on TV and the level of arrogance, over-confidence was stunning, especially for a reality show person who had no talent. In other words, these people were famous for being famous and this venue gave them 15 minutes of fame. Hubris is what it's called, that arrogance that people on occasion will display. To my mind, hubris is always out of style. People that have to view this behavior are sickened by it, and the people that are arrogant look stupid. Everyone knows that no one has it all figured out, even those that think they do. It's not possible. Hubris is something that makes one lessened, in both character and general appeal to others. But over the years, I've seen it again and again, but it invariably leads to ruin, hubris has that way of destroying the very thing we think we gained. I like what Robert Townsend said in his great book, Further Up The Organization, where he states that hubris is always followed by it's brother nemesis.

The mysterious world of clip art people.

Over the last couple of decades, you see a lot of the same people used as clipart over and over again. These are real people, people that breathe, people that have families, but have another life as a clipart star. I see the UPS one all the time, that brown shirt holding a package, but is he really a driver for them, or simply an actor, a sort of hand model? They seem so unreal, so unnatural. And what get's me is that they always seem to be having way too much fun with the products they handle. I saw one photo where the woman seemed like there was a party going on in her coffee cup. I think that's where art fails. None of us believes that a kitchen mop delivers nirvana, but you would think so based on a photo. I suppose they can't have someone with a frown, but is there some reality? Maybe not, I think that the world of ads is a perfect world, not infected by the daily problems we face. It's something I would like to know more about, these clipart people, these people I see again and again. What are the royalties for using their image? Are there any at all? Becoming clipart must come from companies who choose them, whether it be an in-house job or a contract position. It could be that they are models like a catalog company might employ. Possibly they are there for a photo shoot, and then poof - off they go. Once again, I don't care that much about the artwork itself, but who are these ubiquitous people?

Not quite a hole-in-one, but very close.

We participate every year in a charitable golf tournament for my kid's school and this year we had the pleasure to have a couple of our golfing neighbors along too. It's a best ball tournament done shotgun style, so it's a fun round. My neighbor Bob has a long driver that he can just pound and that helped us out in the early going. He's a lefty too, so it gave us some options for shots that a bunch of right-handed people would not get. For me, golf is a frustration at times and I've quit the game, but still play once in a while. This is one of those occasions where I take stab at it, lose a few balls and try to make a good shot or two. Our wives were playing with us and they play well, but things were a little on the cold side for them starting out. There was a running leader board on the GPS screen and I could see that we would have no shot at winning, one group went something like 17 under par to win it. We were even par at the end, which is far better than the +6 we usually get. Golf is a hard game, even when you take the best ball from four people. There was one hole which was a designated hole-in-one shot, the winner getting a $5000 reward. On this hole, I took my five iron out at about 180 yards. I had a feeling about the shot, that it would be good, and it was, my ball rolled past the hole just inches away from going in. We all rejoiced for even getting close. The chances of getting a hole in one are very small for a sodbuster like me, even more astronomically small on a specific hole, but it was as close as I'll ever come to a jackpot I suppose. But I'm not going to let a great shot like that pull me back in to golf again, which is what the game does, giving a small ray of hope to the hopeless.

Eternally squeezed between McDonald's, a tire shop and Highway 61.

I went to McDonald's this morning and something hit me that I never noticed before. There is a cemetary, a very small graveyard right in a business district of Cottage Grove, Minnesota. It was a curious thing, I had never even noticed it before, though I drove right past it for years and look at it as I turn into the parking lot. It's an unusual place to have such a thing, but obviously, it was there long before all these businesses crowded around it. I went in and got an Egg McMuffin, and before I ate it, I went over to the fence that surrounded this little cemetary. I looked around and saw that there were only about 12 gravesites, not in any particular order with a beautiful tree in the middle. The randomness of the burials seemed odd too. It looks like the tire store's back door opens directly into it as well, where a lawnmower was sitting. It's literally one step out the back door! Kinda creepy. I don't know why the city didn't move this years ago, wouldn't that make sense? Another oddity was that right next to the fence, and right next to the parking lot was a small, lonely grave and I could read the inscription, Willie Churchill, Aged 1 year and 2 months, died 1872. How sad. Even more sad is that this little marker is not in a more respectful place with all this business and activity all around, next to McDonald's. Someone had a temporary cross put up, but I wouldn't know why that would be there. I then wondered what this place was like 137 years ago. There was probably an old dusty Highway 61, before it was called that, some open farm fields, lush green trees and this little place of final rest where a family would visit. There probably was a church somewhere nearby too. I find it fascinating how our modern world even encroaches on people long passed on, not just us. Money and progress it seems, is no respecter of people.

Washers, dryers and 2001: A Space Odyssey.

I'm always on the hunt for the offbeat connections in the world around us. There are influences, ways of thinking and synchronicities that seem to have no connection, but do. Recently, we bought a new washer and dryer. The old ones were making a lot of noise, a heavy pounding, where there was none before. Of course, this means it's the end of the line. My wife and I went shopping for a new set and found some of these great looking frontload units. They look so cool, so modern. Here's where I see a strange connection, although it might only be in my head as I was flipping around the movie dial. I saw some later scenes in 2001: A Space Odyssey, where Dave the astronaut is flying out to recover a body and is then shut out of the spacecraft from HAL. It was the pod he was flying in that struck me, that looks like our new washer and dryer! Both our new units have an outer curved shape, a round window, and a  beautiful white color. It makes me wonder where industrial designs come from, the genesis of an idea, does it come from life or art? I'm sure this is all so ridiculous, but now, whenever I see the movie, I'm going to think that my dryer is flying through space. The one thing that bothered me about my appliance purchase was the cost of the pedestals the washer and dryer stand on, $210 each. It's a $10 manufactured item to be sure, but I guess that's where the profit is, charging movie studio prices for this must have "prop". Well, that's yet another similarity between these things, and it makes me wonder.

Graduation parties and all that.

This coming year, my son will be a senior in high school and we make that last little push towards college. It's exciting to see him becoming a young man, but there is some sadness in this as well. For this year though, we get to watch other people's kids make the transition to a more independent life, and to their further growth. Today is our biggest day for graduation parties and my wife and I will be making the rounds to a few. It's really a big deal these days, almost like a coming-of-age party sort of. All the kids we'll be seeing are truly good and smart kids (what else would they be?) and it should be fun to see our friends as we wish them well. This is one of those occasions where you think about this point in their life as a new starting point, not unlike kindergarten or being born for that matter. It's really a launch into the first careful steps of adult life. As an aside, I'll be looking to taste the flavors of snacky little morsels and some flavorful beverage. We will probably see some people we haven't seen in a while and do a little catching up. It's a beautiful day here in Minnesota, about 75 degrees under a clear sky, you couldn't have asked for a better day for a graduation party.

A lawn contest update.

It's been a very dry year for us here in St. Paul, Minnesota. There are a lot of ponds that are dried up or nearly so. It also has affected our neighborhood lawn contest, putting me at a severe disadvantage. I don't have an in-ground sprinkler system, so I have to move a sprinkler around the yard. It doesn't work as well, but I seem to have a good time doing it. It's a little like watching fish in an aquarium, it can be very relaxing. But as for my neighbors who do have such watering capability, they seem to be doing much better. Their lawns are beautifully trimmed and very green, and I can see that I'm going to have to do something more drastic to come from behind. For now, there are three lawns who seem to be out front in the competition, and I'm holding up the rear. I don't mind though, I simply enjoy the lawn game. We got some rain this week which really helped everyone, but we could still use a lot more. It's a record dry year so far, but hopefully that will change with some storms coming through. You would think in a State that has so much water that we would always have more than enough, but that's not true. It's the ground water that makes the difference, and when that water table drops, everything is dryer. 

Radio silence was seen as an oddity.

Last week, I told my wife that I often turn off all forms of media, including radio as I'm driving. She thought this was very odd, to be driving along in complete silence. And I must admit, that it might seem odd when you consider driving to be downtime which must be filled with something to think about. We always consider listening to the radio which is either music or talk, but most of it these days has such a poor content quality, who can really take it in? It's mostly regurgitated news items with someone else's spin made to charge you up, or it's music playlists that are often repeated for years on end. With radio, like anything else, it's all a formula meant to appeal to the greatest number of people at any one time. Even on some stations that pretend to be more audience focused, they're really not. Radio has had many problems for years, as to where it fits in between TV and print media, and now it's even worse with the portability of whatever you want to listen to via the internet. It's all changed. So I decided to shut it off most of the time, listening to nothing was better than listening to mind rot or something that was specifically designed to get me upset. Instead of this, I open the windows and listen to the wind, the sounds all around this world, it's what people did over 100 years ago and I think they lead a more peaceful, balanced life.

A rainy day means being nearly alone in the woods.

It was another beautiful Sunday morning, but this one was overcast and still had some rain coming down. It had rained all day Saturday which was a welcome relief because we're having a dry year here in the Southern Minnesota area. The lawns have been drying up but that's not the worst, there are some ponds and lakes that have record low water levels. One of them is White Bear Lake, one of the most popular lakes in this area, which is populated with people that like fishing, sailing, all of which is affected by this drought. We were there a couple of weeks ago and the beach went out about 100 yards beyond normal, very unusual and not good. I started watering my lawn in May, something I never do, so yesterday's rain is a start, but we could us a lot more. This morning, I went out walking in the woods and because of the foggy sky, many people decided not to come out. This is when it's great, early in the morning when no one is out there except for maybe one other person. This means you might get a chance at seeing more wildlife, especially deer, as there is less disturbance along the trails. This morning there were a couple of crows across a pond that were making a lot of noise and swooping back and forth across a tree. There must have been a hawk or some other predator in the tree, I'm sure it was a hawk though. Those crows broke up the quiet of the breeze and the gentle rain which continued to come down. It was only 48 degrees and the wind was blowing making it much colder. I knew it was a mistake to wear shorts at that point, as it got quite cold, but I stuck with it. The best part of being out early and in the rain is the solitude. I only passed one person walking a dog and I said "good morning" with absolutely no response, I guess he didn't want to see anyone either.

Hypnotized for the cause of sales.

A little over 10 years ago, I worked for a manufacturer's rep for all kinds of light fixtures. They were a good company and are in business today. They had one line of light fixtures that was an energy efficient line and it was ahead of it's time. A factory guy came in, I'll call him Ted, to make sales calls with me for contractors and some electrical engineers. On the way to Owatonna, Minnesota, Ted got talking about his background and got into the subject of hypnosis. I've never been hypnotized and wouldn't subject myself to it, but Ted said that he had the ability to do it. We had lunch before our sales call and he starts talking in a certain cadence, and pretty soon I find myself almost in a fog, it was weird. After lunch he asked me if I could feel what he was doing, and yes, I did, it was a subtle demo of what he could do. Next, we went to the sales call and Ted was silent, but I had a feeling he was going to show me that he could do this hypnotizing there too. We met with a couple of guys and he starts in, pretty soon these guys are nodding their heads, not saying too much, almost like they were under his control. So he talks about the product, which may or may not work for them, but they're still nodding, almost in a trance. Then he says to these successful men, our customer, talking down to them and I quote "You guys are lousy business people, you don't know what you're doing." And they nod in complete agreement and say "yes". And then he tells them what they're going to do with the product. It was stunning, it still makes me wonder how he could do this and get these gentlemen to easily agree. After the sales call, we got in the car and I told Ted that it was unbelievable and we laughed about it down the road. I never saw Ted again after that, he moved on to another company.  I don't believe that one should ever do this, it's manipulative and I wouldn't know how to anyway, but it was the most interesting sales call I ever had.

More from the North Pole.

It was a spur of the moment decision to stop in The North Pole restaurant the other morning, but I felt I needed to keep my promise of making it a weekly stop. Will I be able to break into this group over time? I think so. There is a group of members that come in, sometimes more than once a day, to trade insults and talk about what they have going on. I was surprised to learn a few things on this last visit, mainly that Jim is the man. Jim didn't come in until some time after I had finished breakfast, and insisted for people to make room at the counter. The counter is where the center of all activity and discussion takes place. What makes Jim special is that his moxie allows him to move freely throughout the restaurant and a start a conversation with anyone he pleases. He acts like he owns the place and I guess from a pure social perspective, he does. This is the guy that is the former schoolteacher. He truly holds court no matter where he is and is another catalyst for some spirited discussion. He moved from the counter and as he did, another fellow took his place, a corporate scientist, who was quite friendly as we started to talk about LED lighting. He talked about the industry he was in, and that he has a special function for new product development. I point blank asked him what they were working on and he naturally declined to say, but I was going to ask anyway! He was interesting because he does work I never have, nor ever will do. He asked about what I do and there was a mutual friend we talked about. It's funny how small the world is especially in this very small restaurant. This particular morning, there was a number of high school kids that came in and were texting and they were in their own little world. They left and then it was just older people, about 95% men and that's when I realized, this is a boy's club masquerading as a restaurant, at least in the early morning. I'm still figuring it all out, this social dynamic, and I look forward to my continued research with upcoming reports.