and a blessed Leon to you, too

The world seems out to amuse me today. I'll get into my co-worker's imaginary cat later, but for today there is the house on the edge of my parents' neighborhood. They put up a fair-to-moderate amount of Christmas lights every year, and this year is no exception. I haven't driven by to see for myself yet, so this observation comes care of my sister. As we were getting off the phone, she had a request. "If you call Mom tomorrow, will you ask her if she knows why the house on the corner has "LEON" spelled in lights?" Why, indeed. It's not like they put the NOEL sign up backwards by mistake, because the letters are facing the right way. Is it supposed to be a joke? A grinchy anti-Christmas message? An homage to a friend named Leon? Some kind of misguided attempt at Christmas light back-masking? I almost don't want to know. The imagining is more fun. If I find me a working camera soon, I'll add visuals.

pocket archaeology

Last night, the weather took a nose-dive from the mid-40's down to -5 windchill, so I broke out the Dewey coat. This is an old U.S. Air Force parka from the 60's or 70's that I rescued from my grandparents' attic; it belonged to my Uncle Dewey back in the day. It's enormous on me, but what a great coat! Warm and comfy with huge pockets. And not that I advocate harvesting this material today, but have you ever felt real wolf fur trim? Best. Hood. Ever.


Anyway, I hadn't used it since before I moved to Washington- because really, who needs that much parka when it's constantly 45 degrees in the winter? When I reached into a pocket, I found a list I wrote some time during grad school, with reminders for friends' birthdays, a voice recital, and a semi-cryptic line about "change money." Into what? I don't remember.

As I delved deeper into the Dewey Parka Pockets, layers of my life were revealed in strata of folded paper and assorted detritus. The tour itinerary for my trip with Ole Choir to the ACDA National Convention in Chicago, 1999 (playing English horn in the accompanying chamber orchestra, mind you); a freebie Chicago Symphony Orchestra/ACDA pen; an invitation to a Philharmonia pizza party, with chocolate heart still taped to it; three cough drops; St. Olaf January Music Calendar, 1998-1999; a receipt for gas at $1.39 a gallon; grade report card for English 399: Major Seminar (I got an A-; no idea what class that was); a carefully folded piece of notebook paper w/ nothing on it; half a peanut.

What does all this tell me, archaeologist of my former self? First of all, I was a pocket pack rat. Moving cross-country a few times has lessened that quite a bit. What else? Studying and playing music was a huge part of my everyday life. Playing still has some part in my life, but the more valuable thing I gained from all that college music majorism was the friendships- people like the ones I spent last Saturday night with, playing Mexican train dominoes and catching up (hi girls!!). What else does the DewPock tell me? I liked peanuts. Still do. I think the blank paper was just in case I had something to write, but I never used it. Looking down into the pockets of my past, I should have. I should have used those cough drops, and eaten the chocolate, and filled the paper up with thoughts and random quotes and doodles, instead of saving them for Just In Case. I should have eaten that peanut.

snow snow snow snow yaaaaaay!!!

Okay, it's not a lot of snow, but the dusting has been happening for hours now, and it's actually sticking. And it gives me hope that maybe my snowshoes will not languish in the closet until March again like last year! Why is snow so happy-making? It just is. Add it to my thankful list. I just realized that I just used a hyphenated language construction I got from a teen sci-fi book. Way to go, Scott Westerfeld, for such plausible and catchy world-building!

today's RPLM

Today's Random Public Library Moment gives you a peek into the strange, and sometimes frightening, world of cataloging.

Recognizing that people are much more comfortable with a video store model of finding DVD's by topic or genre (drama, comedy, home improvement, etc.) rather than by fiddling with those pesky Dewey Decimal numbers, that's how my library organizes them. This is a big improvement over filing every single feature film in the system- several thousand of them- under one number. And library geek points to the person who can Name That Dewey Decimal Number! (see below for answer) Poor Melvil- he didn't have these crazy moving pictures around to mess up his decimals back in the day.

Anyway, it's still not a perfect system, partly because we have the same categories for adult and children's DVD's. Which results in things like this:

This is Once Upon a Potty for him, a potty training video. And the category?
Easy DVD- Personal Growth

As far as personal growth goes, it seems like kind of a gimme to me. But I guess toddlers need to have something to talk about in their support/play groups, too.




Answer to geek bonus question: 791.4372

depends on your definition of "coffee"

This is the Aster Cafe:

It's in an old converted warehouse in the St. Anthony Main district of Minneapolis, on the East Bank. I bet that some of you didn't know that Minneapolis has an East and West Bank. Que magnifique!

Aster is a comfortable, unpretentious cafe with rough wooden beams for a ceiling- not the clean, shellacked kind chosen by an architect to give a newly built location that classic look (what? who said Caribou?), but actual old wood, the kind that collects a fuzzy combination of cobwebs and dust that seems to have a symbiotic relationship with rough wooden beams. Although what the beams get out of it, I don't know.

This is an exchange I overheard during a Saturday lunch rush:

Impatient Customer: Do you have wireless internet?

Teenage Barista: No, we don't.

Customer: (Now slightly confused and annoyed) So you're not a coffee shop anymore?

Restrainedly Polite Teenage Barista: (refrains from glancing at the large chalk board behind her bearing the coffee menu and prices) We are a coffee shop. We just don't have wireless.


Might I also point out that the white signboard out front says "Coffee" in big letters. That whole wired-coffee/wired-technology double meaning has long been exploited by the coffee shop marketing people, but this is taking it a little far. I'm imagining a future world in which caffeine and wireless signals interact in the human body in some inextricable way.

polka-dotted deep truths

A recent issue of The Horn Book included a tiny little short story by M.T. Anderson as part of their special "Boys and Girls" issue. (Horn Book is about books for children and young adults.) At the risk of breaking copyright laws, I'm going to quote the story here- a lot of it, if you know what I mean.

Coloring Dinosaurs

By M. T. Anderson

One morning in the second grade, our assignment was to color dinosaurs. A girl in my class came over and asked me what color a Diplodocus was. Suddenly, all of the things that usually made me an outsider—I was pale, weird, vacuously dreamy, and read a lot of books—made me appear to be an authority.

I did know about dinosaurs. So I tried to explain to Shirley that really, no one knew what color dinosaurs were.

As I talked, I watched my fleeting authority evaporate in her cute button-eyes.

So I quickly amended, “But the Diplodocus, yeah, he was green with a brown head.”

“Okay,” she said. “Tyrannosaurus?”

I made something up.

One of her friends said to her, “You’re listening to something Tobey says?”

“Only about how the dinosaurs were colored,” said Shirley, confidently crayoning one of the most ferocious of the earth’s carnivores pink with green spots.

If only I had been man enough to realize it, here, laid bare before me, was the One Great Secret of Masculine Authority:

If you don’t know the answer, bray about the subject loudly and confidently, and maybe no one will realize that you’re a complete idiot. People would rather hear a really stupid answer than believe there’s no answer at all.

In case you didn't know, I looooove M.T. Anderson. See previous post for more info. But I digress.

It's a great, compact piece of writing, but it's his final kicker of a sentence that really got me thinking. As a Christian, I don't believe there's anything that won't be answered in time. However, accepting that the answer is basically unknowable this side of glory is almost as hard. The idea that we have no control over when or how some answers come can really bug us- or maybe it's just me. So we accept, and sometimes vehemently defend, our polka-dotted dinosaurs without really testing them, just so we have something to call our own, a fast food sack in the hand because we can't wait for the Thanksgiving feast, or maybe we fear it'll never come. I'm all for polka-dots and star-gazing, as long as I remember which things I really know, and which ones I'm making up.

I've had an apostrophe

The thing is...I kind of hate MySpace. There are a lot of people on MySpace, which makes it very successful for its purpose of social networking, but I don't like it. It's messy, and ugly, and not user-friendly, and I can't believe it's gotten as far as it has. Maybe I'll try Facebook, maybe not. I may give the newish site Virb a whirl. But if you're one of the people I keep in touch w/ over MySpace, be warned. My time there may be limited. Tom, no offense, you've always been there for me. But it's time to move on.

Ukrainian dance party

I just went outside to walk the dog and saw some crazy flashing lights in my Ukrainian next-door neighbors' window. All the lights are out except for a home version of one of those colored light ball things, sitting on what looks like a dresser by the window. Looks like a party, but sounds silent. What in the name of borscht are they doing over there??

amazing, indeed

The final song in worship this morning was "Amazing Grace," in a slightly updated style, but mostly the same as the original. My church is the kind of place where people sit or stand during worship, whatever they feel like doing. There was an older lady sitting behind me, and from what I've observed in the past, she's enough of a traditionalist that she doesn't usually stand unless someone says "please stand" from the front. But the first few words of the first line were still resonating when she got directly to her feet.

I understand exactly how she feels. Of all the meaningful songs in my life, this one still has the power to choke me up, at least a little, every single time I sing it. What is it about "Amazing Grace"? The lyrics, the music, the combination, or some inexplainable third element that makes it greater than the sum of its parts? A friend in grad school was on an ongoing quest to find as many melodies as he could that scanned well with the poetry of AG. His favorite success was the theme song to Gilligan's Island. Go ahead, try it. You know you want to. Same powerful words? Yes. The choke-up factor of that version? Not so high. I've never heard alternate lyrics to the AG melody, so I have no experience with reversing the experiment.

Whatever the reason, I'm thankful for it. The world is a better place with this song in it. And, of course, with the availability of said amazing grace. Nothing like the ring of incredible truth to make the meaning more, well, meaningful.

these are the places in my neighborhood

What's with you, man? You been eatin' at the Crazy Buffet?

(sorry about the camera phone-quality photo)

arming the primates

I was out in my car a couple days ago when I ended up behind this guy:




Yes, Mom, the car was safely stopped at a light when I took this picture.

In case you can't read that plate (I've been reduced to using my camera phone), it says "CHMPGN". Despite the fact that I lived in the city of Champaign for nigh on 3 years, this was not the first word that came to mind. Rather, I thought, "CHIMP GUN? What's that supposed to mean?" Other options might include CHAMP GONE, for a veiled Simon & Garfunkel, "where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio" kind of reference, or maybe CHOMP GOON. Or CHUMP GIN. In any case, putting an alcoholic beverage on your license plate seems like a gutsy move. It reminds me of a guy on the "Before We Go" blurb on the local news a few years back who used his initials: DWI. Of course, if the owner of this car gets pulled over, they could always claim it says CHIMP GUN. Because that's a much less conspicuous thing to say.

Best use ever of future perfect tense

Because it made me laugh, and because it's a good solid piece of satire, here's a recent Onion News Network segment:


Preemptive Memorial Honors Future Victims Of Imminent Dam Disaster


My favorite line: What will I have done?