Grumbles

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18
Dec 11

Our returning children

I DEPLANE INTO A COMMUTER terminal at DIA at 9 PM on a Saturday and there is pandemonium. The place is jammed. Really, the airport is jammed. I know semesters are ending and holidays are approaching but that’s not entirely it. More like what happens at the end of a war.

Norman Rockwell and The Saturday Evening Post capture this moment from another era in “The Homecoming.” The weary, bedraggled, young man standing there as his family explodes with joy.

In their desert camo carrying huge packs effortlessly man and woman or disguised as civilians with very short haircuts they are everywhere. Most are searching for their next flight. Some are meeting family under the bigtop that is Denver’s main terminal building. I see the family members as I rise out of the underground on escalator. Waving signs. WELCOME HOME FRED. Looking just like the people in the image above. I stop for a moment and watch them when the soldier in question makes his appearance. THERE HE IS someone shouts and he turns seeing their signs huddled so close together they look as though they are a single being … an Aspen grove.

For just a moment he stands there. No smile on his face. A few tears start running down his face as he realizes one part of his life is over and another is beginning. Then out of this collective leaps a young woman. Somehow she flies over the stainless steel barrier and is in his arms for an embrace that seems to have no end.

Those young people still wandering around out in the commuter terminal waiting for their flights to little towns in Nebraska, Wyoming or Colorado will collide with their own family mass of waving arms, cheering, hugging, crying. These children who fight all wars — OUR children — are at last freed from fear of bombs and bullets; of redeployment (hopefully). They have come home. Returned to us from a fight that most Americans barely knew was going on except for the headlines on CNN or Fox News. But for the families receiving their children from this fight, the joy is no less than the moms and dads, aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters, sweethearts of another time.

 

Gluten Free / Grumbles — 1 Comment
15
Jan 11

Bread, bread everywhere and not a crumb to eat

I’VE JUST RECENTLY RETURNED from my first out-of-town trip since beginning an experiment with going gluten free. Sleeping past the free hotel breakfast I find myself wandering the empty streets of downtown Lincoln, Nebraska, looking for breakfast. I pass the Starbucks and the Panera Bread Company. No gluten-free bakery and coffee shop? I wander into the local branch of what happens to be the bank we use. I ask only for suggestions about breakfast places. A woman with a clipboard and a pleasant South American accent starts thinking but is interrupted by a hurried, important, man in a suit who asks where he can exchange money. She suggests the bank tellers right behind her. Then it comes. Panera’s! I thank her for this bit of advice and simply follow it. Continue reading “Bread, bread everywhere and not a crumb to eat” »

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3
May 09

Bozeman’s Wall

GO FOR A JAUNT SOUTH on 17th Avenue between Durston and Oak and back north on 15th Avenue from Oak to Durston and you will experience THE WALL. A manufactured home park that used to be on the outskirts of town now abuts a tony new development of single and multi-family Rocky Mountain (read that “Colorado) chic condos and single-family homes. An eight-foot high wooden fence separates the old from the new. Two worlds kept apart. More than likely one hopes to vanquish the other all in good time.

The blue line marks the way of the new wall

The blue line marks the way of the new wall

Continue reading “Bozeman’s Wall” »

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14
Mar 09

The windows of downtown Bozeman

NEARLY ALL of the north side of this block of downtown Bozeman is effected.

NEARLY ALL of the north side of this block of downtown Bozeman is affected.

A WARM SATURDAY AFTERNOON and a stroll through a busy downtown Bozeman. One block, just west of Rouse Ave, nearly isn’t there except for some ruins. Downtown Bozeman is back in business but up and down the street are stores with boarded up fronts and signs saying “open for business.” Some of these buildings are more than a block away from the scene above. Click on the photo to see it in full size,

What is worrying is the fate of the building on the far right. See the detail below. It seems intact but clearly there is fire damage inside. See detail below:

BUILDING JUST TO RIGHT of the VFW

BUILDING JUST TO RIGHT of the VFW

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5
Nov 08

The future of Sarah Palin?

IN A GRACIOUS, CLASSY and very heartfelt concession speech last night, John McCain seemed to suggest that his time was over and that Sarah Palin’s had just begun. While it was kind of him to talk up his running mate whose ambitions he knew he had to affirm somehow, I don’t agree with him. I think the opposite is the case.

Continue reading “The future of Sarah Palin?” »

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10
Feb 08

Obama wins more caucuses

Caucuses are a great way to disenfranchise people.  They are chaotic and complicated, managed in the most rudimentary way and look nothing like an orderly and procedure driven election. Continue reading “Obama wins more caucuses” »

Grumbles — 1 Comment
13
Jan 08

Not nice in Minnesota

The antithesis of Minnesota Nice

Continue reading “Not nice in Minnesota” »

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26
Aug 07

Finally, the truth regarding Karl Rove’s departure

This Modern World 

At last, an insightful American cartoonist GETS the real reason for Karl Rove’s resignation from the Bush Administration effective the end of this month. Click here or on image to see scalable version. To see the This Modern World archive, click here.

Grumbles / I-35W Bridge — 1 Comment
17
Aug 07

Congratulations Gov. Pawlenty

Hearty congratulations go to the governor of Minnesota this week. Results are in. His approval ratings are UP. Gov. Pawlenty is poised to rise even further as the darling of Bush-era Republikans. What an accomplishment. For years our governor has been underfunding the highway department which has responded for years by steadily lowering its expectations for road and bridge maintenance. In the paper today a legislator reports hearing from highway officials quietly voicing their deep concern for this practice. Most recently, Gov. Pawlenty vetoes a 5 cent gasoline tax riduculing the very idea of it and rejecting DFL efforts to include bridge inspections. What one may consider is the inevitable happening in this post-industrial Republikan controlled era of “government” and a very big, important, bridge comes tumbling down. Now we see the governor on TV looking very concerned and wanting to salve the pain of those awaiting word on loved ones among the disappeared. And the people of Minnesota EAT IT UP. New approval ratings through the roof! What kind of idiots have we become?

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10
Aug 07

Drought – Minnesota Style

Back in the day … our kids were babies … we had a drought, the railroad was laying off people and the local economy in Havre, Montana, was not good. The FHA (Federal Housing Administration) owned 600 houses and was selling them cheap. Property values were dropping fast. Businesses were retrenching and folks were selling out and leaving town. That’s how I remember what a drought looks like. At least up in Montana.

In Minnesota, here in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul metro area, we are some distance from the agricultural economy. We know from lawns and gardens. I have very little of the former. A lot more of the latter. And we have a lot of trees on our property. The sun rises and gives us a cloudless day every day. The temperature rises to the 90s and then cools off in the evening. It is beginning to feel like Havre, Montana.

What doesn’t get watered, dies.  Continue reading “Drought – Minnesota Style” »

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