Coop's Corner: April 2023

Sunday, April 30, 2023

Arthur Is Here - 2023/05/01

2023/02/12 -

Here's Arthur before he was Arthur, his name at the time Puppy Puppy Puppy and his response to his name at that point matched that of his 8 siblings. Kuvasz is the breed and his color is was farmstead fluffy white.

Now he's officially (and responds to!) Arthur. He came home at 9 weeks and 16 pounds.

At 11 1/2 weeks he's close enough to 30 pounds and working on his big boy face....there's a LOT more big to come.

A wonderful addition to the family, he's got us where he wants us.

Saturday, April 29, 2023

Fine Day, Fine Ride - 2023/04/28

The very best part of the day??

A riding lunch with friends.

Eric's idea, I thought I was the only one invited but I was not at all disappointed to be wrong...Greg and Steve joined us in Plum City to make four of us.

Sand in most corners, sometimes deeper....

Spring green's and many shades of lingering browns...

It would have been ideal to take the long way home but my hope was to get there before the rain...so that I could roto-till our potato patch. But I wasn't in too big of hurry to avoid an ice cream stop in Nelson.

The Twin Bluffs across the street from the Nelson Cheese Factory.

I passed through Wabasha, took County 10 to parallel Hwy 61, something I often do. It wasn't looking good for garden work before the rain.

Just as I was entering Lake City, the windy rain started. It actually felt good, my first riding drops in the new riding season.

Friday, April 21, 2023

Our Mississippi River Flood - 2023/04/21

Between our old snow, the new snow and recent rains, the Mississippi River here in SE Minnesota is over its banks.

In today's Lake City (our school district) Graphic newspaper....

Here's Red Wing's chart....the plateau and then another that is predicted to last too long.

The Black River in Wisconsin, a tributary further south that flows into the Mississippi near LaCrosse.

I was out and about this morning, checking things in Old Frontenac....firstly at our beach....a good place to enter the lake ice with a sidecar.

Then I went around the corner to the South end of Lake Avenue.....

Then I flew over the North end of Lake Avenue...

Down to the Lake City MNDOT Rest Area...

Only the tops of picnic tables visible.

Three white table tops....

The tops of the picnic tables, the submerged fire ring and barely visible....the curbs.

The monument surrounded by shrubs...

Me....

Now down to Lake City....

Ralph Samuelson, inventor of water skiing. In the distance across the river, Maiden Rock.

Abundant flotsam and jetsam...

The south end of town and the pier....

I'm looking at the 10 day forecast this evening....60 degrees is average....I don't see anything like that on our horizon. Major motorcycle gas savings!

I'm advised that the next Post will be exclusively about Arthur (as long as the motorcycles aren't running).

Others say....

"it was auspicious to approach any situation from a deferential, inquisitive place. Conceding that there is much to learn is the best blueprint for discovering something new." ----B. Fuller

The Man straightened stiffly above the block of salt fixed to the stake and looked at the young cattle ringed about him. The pasture was holding out well and the stock was looking good. This bunch would be ready to sell in another month, maybe sooner if the market was right.

A stir among the cattle down near the river brought him round to face the swinging bridge he'd built years before. Someone was coming toward him from the bridge. Someone in breeches, but it didn't look like a man, somehow. What was a woman doing in his pasture this time of night?

He bent over the salt again; maybe if he paid her no heed she'd go on past and let him mind his own business. He heard her footsteps come nearer and stop. "Good evening," she said.

Her voice was smooth with book learning but friendlier than most, and somehow almost shy. When he made no answer she went on, "I've been sitting on your swinging bridge....I thought I'd like to say thank-you...." Her voice stumbled a little, then she tried once more.

"You are Mr. ____". His name sounded strange in her voice, but she went on to tell her own.

"That's what they've called me the last sixty-eight years," he said, looking past her face to the hills fast darkening under a single star. "I reckon the woods are free for those that like to walk there."

The unfamiliar voice laughed a little. "That's what Emerson said: the grove belongs to the man who walks in it with an open heart....On that basis I guess I've owned part of your woods for a good many years.....". She made a final effort. "I've always wanted to thank you....."

Something deeply hidden stirred in him. "There's a stump up there, in the notch of the woods", he said slowly, "that before the timber grew so tall you could stand on it and see all over this country."

He kept still a minute, remembering, then, "I used to stand up there an' look at things, an' wonder how they come to be like they was, an' how the hills was created, an' all the things in Nature.... I told my wife I guessed all the religion I ever had I got standin' on that old stump, a-wonderin'..." He turned his face away from her.

She helped him out. "I know about that, a little. This afternoon I saw......." Her account of a thing she had really taken time to look at eased him, and he answered with telling of the badger den at the foot of the swinging bridge.

When she had gone, he turned to watch her. After a moment she stood clear and unmoving against the sky. You could hear the sounds of the river where she stood. She was one that could stand still long enough, he thought, really to hear what a body was saying, or a river.

Then she walked down the farther side of the slope and was gone. ------Margaret Snyder from A Chosen Valley

Fall was the end of harvest, end of the growing season, a burst of color and sun-warmth before killing frost turned the land gray and cold. Fall was a moody time, full of both life and death, a time when we were reminded of the power outside of us, reminded that the seasons happen to us. We do not invite the change to come.-------Ben Logan, from The Land Remembers

When you get those rare moments of clarity, those flashes when the universe makes sense, you try desperately to hold onto them. They are the lifeboats for the darker times, when the vastness of it all, the incomprehensible nature of life is completely elusive. So the question becomes or should have been all along, what would you do if you knew you only had one day, or one week, or one month to live. What lifeboat would you grab onto? What secret would you tell? What band would you see? What person would you declare your love to? What wish would you fulfill? What exotic locale would you fly to for coffee? What book would you write? ------- Ben Tyler

We were also cautioned about journeying far from home. As an example of the dangers, the town had a badly crippled lady named Lucy, who as a girl had traveled to New York City. As she traveled along a sidewalk, sightseeing, she was struck by the outstretched hand of a suicide who had leapt from high above. Her spine had been shattered and for the rest of her life, she was to walk bent forward at the waist, tapping the sidewalk with two black canes. Whenever the subject of travel to a big city was raised, someone would say, "Just remember what happened to Miss Tripp." ---- Ted Kooser, from Local Wonders

"Steamboats are like wedding cakes without the complications...." ----Mark Twain

"It's not about having lots of money, it's about having lots of options......." -----Chris Rock

As the very proud father of three former ponytail wearers, hopefully I can get away with this....."For the past few years it's been fashionable for young women to wear ball caps and to snap the strap on the back under their ponytails. I like the looks of that, their shiny ponytails jauntily swinging, but it's hard not to think of the rear ends of horses. There's a piece of harness called the crupper that goes just under a horse's tail to keep its nose down. If the horse lifts its head to look for a way out of whatever predicament it's in, the crupper tightens and hurts the horse. But it's foolish for parents to think that a ball cap might keep a young woman from running away. Anybody can see they're made for running." ------Ted Kooser, Local Wonders

"I tell the guy's girlfriend that the only difference between the book's main character Phaedrus and myself is that I am neither brilliant, tortured or insane, she looks at my bike and there is an uncomfortable silence." --------ahendepe (a.k.a. Vermin)