Visit to Northern Minnesota

We are home in IA again, but before we left our WI property for the summer, we traveled to northern Minnesota to visit Sandy and Will. More than a year ago, they bought a piece of property there, which is nestled alongside a lake deep in the Superior National Forest, quite close to the Boundary Waters Canoe Wilderness, and only a few miles from the Canadian Border. Driving to the property involves the Gunflint Trail, several National Forest Service roads, and about two miles of very rugged and sometimes very hilly road into Sandy and Will's place. Did I mention "very rugged?"

The property itself is beautiful. There are lots of woods, as you would imagine, and the lake is picturesque. (It is also full of lake trout. Will spent about two hours giving Kathie and me a chance to try catching one, but we had no luck this time. Perhaps we will try again on a future visit.) Unfortunately, the prior owner of the property had made a very poor attempt to build a house, which by the time Sandy and Will bought the place was already beginning to fall down. There were a few other structures too--a sauna, an outhouse, and maybe a simple shed or two for storing wood. Will has blogged extensively about the work that they are doing to claim the property for themselves. If you click here, you will be at Will's blog, and if you examine some of the past postings, particularly the November, 2006 archive, you will get some idea of what they are dealing with.

Kathie and I had not visited this new property until this trip, and so we had not had a prior chance to lend a hand with any of the work. Through the summer, Sandy had been rebuilding a deck that was to one side of the "house" (note the quotation marks). She had done a terrific job putting down the new decking, which created a wonderful spot for them to set up a gazebo-style tent for dining and evening visits.



Will first assigned me to help Sandy with the construction of a railing around the deck. You can see some evidence of the results in one of the pictures above, as well as in this shot that looks out form the deck toward the lake.


Sandy has become a master with the power tools. Here she is cutting some of the railing pieces that we needed. You might remember a similar picture that I took of Betsy when we built her gardening bench. I'm seriously considering making a 2008 Women With Saws calendar. I'm missing shots of Kathie, Jessica and Carrie with saws, and I'll have to find seven more candidates for photos, but you might want to get your orders into me soon. I'm sure these will sell like hotcakes.


Later, we built a bench for the deck, but unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of that.

While I worked a second day on the railing and the bench, Kathie helped Sandy clean out the lower level of the old house and helped Will remove most of the second floor of the "house."






In the last shot above, Kathie is obviously loading scrap and debris into our pickup. We were pleased to learn that the pickup could be so helpful to Sandy and Will in terms of moving waste to a burn pile (which has become immense and which will be ignited evidently sometime in the dead of winter when there is little forest fire danger, according to Will).

Those are all of the pictures I have to share. I wish I had taken more. We really like what the kids are doing with their place and can imagine that it will be a very restful place to visit in the future. They already have a very nice little (maybe 10x12) cabin that they built for their visits there, and they are thinking about the possiblity of a bigger cabin at some time in the future.

Reflections on an Outfit

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
-- Mark Twain --

One of my ongoing retirement projects is to collect all of my photographs in one place and in digital form. Along the way, I keep reminiscing and running into little stories. Here's one.

In the following three photographs, taken respectively in about 1944, 1968, and 2005, each individual is wearing the exact same item of clothing. Note the accessorizing that individual number two has added with the shoes and socks. All three poses are interestingly similar!! I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine who is who. The big question is whether or not this item of clothing will make it to yet another individual in another few decades. Who would that be, I wonder!!

1944:


1968:


2005:



P.S. Extra credit goes to anyone who can correctly tell me exactly what this unnecessarily frilly item of clothing is called.

Thieves!!

One of the last nights that Betsy, Pete, and Henry were here, most of us had gone to bed. Except Kathie, who with her usual sharp ears heard some commotion near the bird feeders. She decided to snap some pictures, even though it was almost pitch black. (Pete, who was in bed but not yet asleep, later wondered what all the flashing lights were about.) Conditions prevented focusing the images, and the flash didn't quite compensate for the distance and the dark. Nevertheless, with the help of PhotoShop, we were able to extract this story.

We knew that raccoons had discovered the bird feeders. Usually, I took the feeders in at night, but on this night, I had failed to do that. Turns out there was a mother and maybe as many as four babies. Mother found a way to get to the feeder, in spite of a squirrel baffle, as you see below. She also found a way to avoid tripping the perch that would shut off access to the sunflower seeds (this feeder is designed so that squirrels and other critters are supposed to be too heavy for the perch; birds can rest on it and easily feed, on the other hand). Evidently, she was busy scraping seeds onto the ground.


Then, below the mother and beneath the feeder, the little guys are busy enjoying a meal (and no doubt learning how clever mother is and filing that away for future raids of their own).


Here is a shot of the entire caper.


Thanks to my spouse, the budding nature photographer, for capturing this story. As for me, I'm keeping my supersoaker loaded with water for the next opportunity to disrupt such a raid. (But mostly, I'm keeping the bird feeders inside at night.)

As Good As It Gets

There is nothing quite as satisfying, fun, and comforting as spending time with family. Some of you may have already learned about our family weekend here in WI by reading Betsy's blog, but I have more to add and some pics of my own to share. We wish the whole family could have been here, but it was great to have Will and Sandy, Pete and Betsy, and, of course, Henry here with us.

We had sort of built the long weekend around the Lumberjack Championships, but Henry had not been here since Thanksgiving of 2005 when he was only a year old, so there were lots of things he and his grandfather needed to experience together for the first time. The first couple of hours of Henry's visit were jam-packed with one thing after another.

One of Henry's first stops was our pinball machine. This is one that Uncle Will restored some time ago and sold to us. Later, when Uncle Will arrived, the two of them could frequently be found refining their skills. This is a "Monster Bash" pinball game, and Henry was quite intrigued by (and maybe a little apprehensive of) the various monsters in the game, though he knew them all by name.


Next, it was time to break in the sandbox. We had arranged for a sandbox to be built into our lower deck, but except for Josey finding it a cool place to sleep, the sandbox had not received a proper inauguration. Henry was the right person to do that. With the sand toys that Grandma had purchased last year all ready to go, Henry declared the sandbox to be a fine addition to our property.


Then, after spending a little time repairing Betsy's old Snoopy rod, Henry wanted to try his hand for the first time at fishing. Fortunately, we can often get some bluegill action just off the end of the dock, and this evening was no exception. Here are the results--Henry's first fish.




Grandma introduced Henry to wading and exploring along the shore line. Franklin loved to dig there too and was seen to be eating who-knows-what.


Later, he and his Dad caught frogs along the shore. Uncle Will even found a mudpuppy, which looks like the critter below (found this picture on the web--not a picture of the one Will found).


We also went for an evening boat ride.


Will and Sandy arrived the next day. We took in two evenings of the Lumberjack Championships, which include various events involving log rolling, pole climbing, and log cutting with both axes and different types of saws. Here are a few shots from the events, along with some shots of my favorite spectators.








Will and Betsy each fixed dinners for all of us, which we enjoyed on our screened-in porch.


One of my new toys is a radio-controlled helicopter, which I am still learning to fly. Henry wanted to see it, of course, and not unexpectedly, he wanted to try to fly it. Not wanting to put the helicopter at greater risk than I put it myself, I decided to let Henry fly simulated helicopters on my computer instead. He had very interesting approaches to this, mostly involving sending the helicopter straight up and then cutting its power so that it would drop and crash. His Uncle, Aunt, and Dad found this hilarious, as you can see below.




The new Harry Potter book was a topic of much discussion this weekend. Evidently, Will and Betsy have already polished it off. Another of us spent quite a few hours soaking it up.


Will and Sandy had to return home on Sunday, though not before some additional canoe rides. Later in the day, the rest of us took another boat ride, stopping to play on a sandy island for a bit, and then enjoying some dinner at a cafe that is near the midpoint of the Chippewa Flowage. It was a great weekend.

A Movie I Hope We Will See

For this posting, I step aside from my usual family and life events reporting.

Below is the trailer for an award-winning documentary that I am looking forward to seeing. I hope others of you who read this will also have an opportunity. This "war" in which we are engaged is an abomination and one which should never, never have been started. Though I know some of you may have different opinions from mine, this present US administration is a disaster. Among other things, I very much dislike the image of our nation as an unprovoked agressor. Global terrorism and Iraq did not belong in the same sentence at the outset of this conflict, and so there was not provocation for this so-called "war." For my childrens' and grandchildrens' sakes at least, I hope that our nation can and will recover from these terrible years.

Catching Up

I'm behind on my postings here. We have had a fun-filled several weeks. Since late June, we have spent most of our time at the lake, with one quick trip back to IC mixed in. Kathie's mother flew to IC the day before Eleanor Ruby was born, so she was able to share with us the joy of that darling little girl's arrival. Then the three of us drove to WI and spent about three weeks at the cabin. During that time, Kathie and Mom made a few trips to the hot tub.



We returned to IC in late July so that Mom could return to FL, but before she went back, we had a chance to catch up again with Eleanor and her parents. It had been awhile since we had seen them. She is getting to be quite the bright-eyed and aware little girl. She started life beautiful and is more beautiful every day. Below are a few shots of her with her parents. Dad is trying to get her to take a bottle for only the second time (with some success).


I love this one of her on her mom's lap.



Grandma has always been a champ at putting little ones to sleep.


And is there anything more precious than a sleeping baby? (You have to allow a grandfather to "go on" like this!!)

Getting With the Program

OK, I guess I'm supposed to get with the program related to this Golden Compass movie and book. Rob and Betsy have already posted information about their daemons, and now here is mine. I'd sure be interested to know what my kids think about how accurate a fit this is. For those of you who haven't read the book (like me), there is a new website for the movie, which comes out in December. There you can learn about the book, the movie, and this concept of daemons, which I take to be a kind of representative of who you are supposed to be in real life. This feels a little like astrology to me, which I think is generally a bunch of hooey, but these kinds of things can sometimes be fun. I might not have posted this, but I like the tiger!

Wisconsin Chainsaw Massacre

Readers of this blog may recall my prior reporting (January, 2007) of my interest in chainsaw carving. Back in January, I made my first attempt with a little bear. I decided to try again today, thinking I should continue to refine my technique by carving the same little bear again--hopefully better this time. Unbeknown to me, my dear wife was sneaking around with a camera while I carved. Her movements were unbeknown, because I have a new Husqvarna safety helmet with face screen and hearing protection. Between my intent focus on the carving and the forms of protection, I was pretty unaware of other things going on around me. Anyway, here are a few shots of me at work.



I didn't realize until I looked at these shots, that my saw was smoking so much. I've got to look into that! But, back to the carving...I think this iteration is coming out a little better than the first one. Some have said that my first attempt looks more like Miss Piggy than a little bear. I need to do some more work on this one, and I was disappointed to discover a crack in the wood which is interfering with the shape of the nose and mouth, but maybe I can work around that somehow.

Here are a couple of additional shots. By chance, I was wearing a T-shirt today that I was given a few years ago prior to a sailing excursion in New Zealand. The message on the shirt is probably apropos for anyone who might be nearby watching me carve.



This is a really fun thing to do. Like any carving, the trick is to remove everything that doesn't look like what you are trying to carve. Easier said than done. I don't have as good a sense of how to do this as my sister would, for example. And, I admit, for now I am working from some plans or guidelines in a couple of books. When I start branching out into my own designs, we will all see how really bad I can be. All I've got to say is that Pete and Betsy, and Rob and Carrie, better look out. Someday I might decide that Henry and Eleanor need cute little bears in their backyards instead of some unnecessary big ole tree that might happen to be there!