Monthly Archives: May 2012

Poison Ivy

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Sometimes its easy to see the flowers:

But not so easy to see the weeds and poison ivy:

Poison Ivy

Have you ever sat among the spring flowers to dream and relax, only to realize the next day that you were also sitting in poison ivy? Well, that’s what being with Jason was like…

Jason was my best friend through grade school and high school. Well, not really my best friend, more like my only friend. We shared a back yard that over looked the park, a car (when I finally got one), our class notes (well, mostly mine), a girlfriend (well, she started out as mine, then transferred to Jason, sigh), clothes (ah, he didn’t like me wearing his stuff, but…), beer (my dad’s), ciggys (all mine)…well, I think you get the picture. Unfortunately for me, I didn’t get the picture until my senior year.

Jason was the baseball team captain at our high school. In our senior year he led the Muskies to the state finals. Although we only got as far as  consolation–4th place–, he was heralded as a small town hero. It didn’t hurt that he was also handsome and assumed to be wealthy, as he was the son of our small town’s banker. What he possessed in knowledge of sports and magnetic attraction was only somewhat moderated by what he lacked in mental capacity and agility. Even though I was valedictorian, Jason and I were neighbors, so maybe it was only natural that we ended up being friends in school. What seemed odd was that our friendship lasted on into college.

I decided to go to State University because Dad worked for a living and thought his son should as well. While we weren’t poor, neither were we wealthy. Dad was conservative when it came to school loans as well as his views on his children working for their education.

Jason decided to go to State University because they gave him a full four year scholarship to play baseball. They didn’t realize, as both Jason and I did, that it would probably take him eight years to get his bachelor’s degree in PE.

One Saturday night in June, Jason asked me if he and I could be roommates at State.  We were working on a six pack of Bud Light from Dad’s garage refrigerator stash and had been laying on the hillside between our houses that overlooked the city park. . I was a little taken aback because I figured our friendship would end when we both went our separate ways in the fall. “Why would you want to room with me, Jason? Won’t you have a plethora of baseball jocks whose minds work hand in glove with your own?”

“Well, jeeze Nickers–he had called me Nickers ever since Mom dressed me in what she so lovingly called “young man nickers”–that’s ‘zactly why I wanna room with you. None of those jocks is gonna know how to teach me nothing. You been tutoring me since kiddygarten.” Of course that little speech made me proud of my years of work.

I thought about the many weeknights the two of us spent holed up in Jason’s room, him listening to music in his left ear, drinking diet Mountain Dew and texting with his left hand, while I read the highlighted notes from our chemistry, algebra, world history, English literature, or whatever class for which we were studying, to his right ear. I would alternately beg him to listen or ask him questions that he alternately ignored or answered wrong. When the day of the test came, I would pass with flying colors and he would pass with a D+ or C- or maybe he would just flunk. Then he would be assigned extra work or maybe some cretin of a teacher would give him a take home make-up exam. A take home make-up exam, just what I needed.

“Well, I guess there’s no harm in us being roommates, Jason.” Acting like that was the answer he had expected all along, Jason said the beer was making him cold and asked to borrow my sweater. I took it off and threw it at his head while he laughed and punched me in the arm. Ow, crap, that was right on top of the bruise from the last friendly punch he shot me two days ago. Well, at least we knew where we stood with each other.

As Jason buttoned my sweater over his worn baseball tee shirt, he undid his shorts and slid them down his hips. I rolled over to relieve both of us, as I did most Saturday nights we hung out together. As I did, I pondered the next four years of rooming, and tutoring, this small town baseball star. And I smiled to myself, even as I began to break out in hives and itch.

Review of “Conditioned Response” by Marjorie F. Baldwin

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Conditioned Response (Phoenician, #2)
by Marjorie F. Baldwin (Goodreads Author)

6465977

Bob Tyler‘s review

Apr 22, 12  ·  edit
5 of 5 stars false

bookshelves: sci-fi-fantasy

Read from April 22 to May 24, 2012
An amazing first read by a new author to me, Marjorie (Friday) Baldwin. The book is hard to categorize, the enjoyment is not. A mix of futuristic Sci-Fi, romance with a touch of straight, bi, gay, trans-species lovin, political thriller, bio-engineering…you name it, there are threads in there!

Two things that endear me to authors are books that have multiple plots and books with characters I relate to that are deeply developed. Having deep generational relationships integral to the plot, Conditioned Response fulfilled this beautifully.

The Phoenician Series,and Conditioned Response in my experience, develops a world both unique and real. One in which I might easily be able to adjust to!

Memorial Day – 2012

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Paul and I have been together for more than 26 years now. Our families have been, and  continue to be, very important to us. Luckily for both of us, they are also all physically close. Our parents and siblings spent the past 15 or so years all within 45 minutes of each other. As our siblings have grown up, their kids are now the ones that are going out into the world to conquer and improve.

Amazingly, to me anyway, in those 26 years I have never participated in the Memorial Day weekend drive to the cemeteries to maintain plots, clean headstone, lay flowers and pay respects. It was simply never part of my families tradition because my parents lived 500 some miles away from their family. It was impossible to do, therefore was never done.

Now that Dad has passed away and his ashes are at Fort Snelling, I decided to go with them this year. Of course the weather was awful this morning and we only got to two of the four locations, but what a wonderful experience. Five of us out in the rain with brushes, knives, grass trimmers, water buckets, flowers, etc. There was laughing and telling of stories. From past years everyone knew their particular job…mine was to stand by under an umbrella and look wet, but I still really enjoyed the time. We will go and visit the last two sites tomorrow and I’ll add the pictures when we do.

It surprises me how long I wait to accept a new tradition, but I’m glad to have done it at last. May all the people visiting be granted peace and all the people being visited rest in peace.

Our first stop:

Our second stop:

Sunday, May 27, 2012

Paul and I got up early and visited Dad’s ashes at the Columbarium at Fort Snelling National Cemetery. I was reminded of what a lovely, peaceful place this is.

The full inscription below the dates reads “Husband Dad Grandpa”.

 

Babies starting to grow up.

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I know that sweet baby red foxes don’t quite fit the definition of “blastie” for the Scots, so for animal Tuesday a week ago, I blogged pictures of a mother red fox and her four kits in our back yard. They were little greyish sort of blobs then, just starting to find their legs. Oh what a difference a week makes. I’m sure I’m imagining things, but it seems like the rabbit population has already dwindled. I caught these pictures of one of the four kits this morning from our bedroom window as we were getting ready for work. All four of them are still around, happy and playful. They’re moving much faster now, which is why I could only get a good shot of one of them.

I can see it now, I’m looking forward to a few years rodent free down on our end of the lake!

“Letters of Note” Thank you to my friend, Mary

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As I was trying to dig through mountains of paper from being gone the last week, kicking myself for not blogging while I was gone, even though I barely had any internet access, and  pondering what to put in a Monday blog spot that is supposed to be based on quotations, I ran into an e-mail from my friend, Mary.

Mary is a thinking gurl, a quietly stand beside you and support you gurl and she’s partnered with another beautiful soul, a funner dynamic duo you haven’t met.

She sent me a link to a blog spot called “Letter’s of Note” and, specifically, to a letter written to Edith Mirrielee by John Steinbeck when he was a young man and she was his professor of creative writing at Stanford.

It is a real eye opener, especially for those (of us???) that think “I can write a book” and start studying the mechanics of how to write a best seller while, potentially, forgetting the part about whether we can write a book anyone might be interested in reading.

If you are a writer, or maybe even more importantly, a wanna be writer, read this…and consider moving to Europe.

“Letters of Note” letter by John Steinbeck.

Fox in the chicken coop.

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For the last three years or so our yard in the northern suburbs has been overrun by rabbits. They get into anything green in the vegetable garden and eat lots of the budding flowers as well. It seems like the population of rabbits and foxes ebbs and flows in an alternating cycle in our area.  When there are so many rabbits that the in-breeding starts to show (stumpy ears, funny feet, etc.) the fox population starts to pick up. It seems we might be at that stage now, as here are the new squatters at the north end of our yard. All the pictures aren’t great, but we have seen a mommy fox with four babies!

A quote from upcoming novel “Alexander’s Tale” by R. Scott Tyler

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The stare must have burned into the artist’s consciousness, because he looked up and smiled right at Nico.

Gilbert then glanced over and stood up, wagging his tail at Nico. That was the precise moment that Nico realized Gilbert was not in his truck and that the artist was laying on one of his packing quilts. Neither one of these things was a big issue, but it did mean that this amply bottomed artist had been inside his truck.

“Stay” he said loudly to Gilbert as he held out his hand in the universal halt signal. There was really no need to do this, as Gilbert knew the rules, no running to Nico unless called. Gilbert decided to make it clear Nico was over-communicating, so he sat down.

Nico strode over to the side of his truck and Alexander moved to sit back on his haunches. He stuck his hand out, saying “I’m Nico, you must be…?” he wasn’t going to make any assumptions here.

Laughing, the young man grabbed his hand and hauled himself to his feet. “I’m Alexander, dude, really cool to meet you!”

Nico leaned down and picked up the abandoned sketch pad. “I see you’ve been sketching my dog…”

“Yeah, he is so cool and he has the best eyes…”

Nico interrupted with his continued statement “…who used to be in my truck…on my packing quilt, which also used to be in my truck.”

“Oops, first mistake?”

Shanghai, China

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I was in Shanghai, China shortly after the opening of trade and the beginning of the building and foreign investment boom. Being a project leader for a major new plant sight there was one of my three favorite jobs at my last employer. While I never lived there on a long term basis, I traveled there for two to three weeks at a time, about a dozen times over the course of the project.

I have memories that nothing, with the possible exception of time and dying brain cells, will take from me that include working long days and nights with dedicated employees, meeting many new people from a vastly different culture, being forever crowded, especially on the streets with people, bikes and cars, and experiencing so many firsts.

On most of my trips there was at least one day that could be spent as I pleased and this usually meant a trip somewhere with LOTS of people, shopping, seeing sights, eating, listening to music / jazz. This particular picture was a work celebration where our Chinese project leader was happily showing us how to eat crab…and get every last morsel that was not shell!

I would go to Asia again, and plan to in the future, but I’ll probably go to new places with new people and pleasures, because life is short and one must experience it while its available.

Each Other’s

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I originally wrote the following very short poem (at the bottom of this post) in 1986. It was written with a particular person in mind, but was supposed to be about relationship, and specifically, being in relationship with another person.

I didn’t write it with a defined sex for each of the individuals, not thinking that sex was the focus or the issue.

I have since known many strong couples…male / female, male / male, female / female. Some are old, some are young, some are the same age, some are not, some are in the same house, some are not, some haven’t even figured out whether they feel better being call “gurl” or “boi”.

When I see two people love and support each other to an extent that you can see it in their face, it makes me happy for them, no matter what they look like.

Why can’t it be like that for all of us? Twenty six years later, we are still talking about the issues…at least they are being talked about at a much higher level.

Cold mornings waking next to you,

Quiet evenings in each other’s arms,

Family times and holidays,

Party times and greetings,

Both with our individuality and character,

Yet with the added strength of a couple.

Through all of this we are proud to be

Each other’s.