Author Archives: Kathleen Fox

Black and White and Dread All Over

Posted on June 3, 2011 by Kathleen Fox

One of the pleasures of hiking in the Black Hills is seeing wildlife. Mule deer stand and watch you go by with casual interest. Whitetail deer leap away through the woods when they hear you coming, their tails waving to signal danger—not seeming to realize that if they just stood still you probably wouldn't see them in the first place. Turkeys flap away in flight as inelegant as the first attempts of the Wright brothers. Chipmunks dart across the rocks as if an invisible force were pulling them along by the tails that stand straight up over their backs.

On one recent hike, though, we saw something different. We were walking along an old railroad bed that had been built some 130 years ago a short way above the bottom of a narrow canyon. A moving flash of black and white in the canyon caught my eye, and I thought, "There's a Border Collie."

Close, but not quite. It was a skunk, the biggest one I've ever seen. (Of course, it's hard to get an accurate comparison, since most of the skunks I've seen were in various stages of squashedness in the middle of the highway.) It was a beautiful animal, with its dramatic striped coat and magnificent plume of a tail. Presumably the stripes help camouflage a skunk at night, but in the sunlight it seemed a tad overdressed, like a socialite in pearls and satin at a backyard barbecue.

Since skunks are both nocturnal and also one of the most common carriers of rabies, it's not a good sign to see one in the middle of a sunny afternoon. We kept very quiet, preferring to remain anonymous while we watched this one. Its behavior seemed normal enough. Though since we tend to do our hiking in the daytime and had never seen a skunk in the woods before, how would we know?

It was obviously on a mission, trotting down the bottom of the canyon. It came to a little spring, stopped to get a drink, then pattered on up the canyon and out of sight. Reassured—at least until we realized the skunk was between us and our car—we went quietly on with our hike in the opposite direction.

A little further along, on the opposite side of the canyon, we saw a huge bird perched atop a pillar of rock. We thought it was an eagle until we spotted its red head. It was a turkey buzzard, basking in the sun. It sat and watched us watching it, seeming to wait while we got the camera out. Then it spread its wings into an elegant sweep, the sun behind the long pinions haloing them in golden light. We expected it to launch into the air, but instead it just sat for several minutes, sunning itself, watching us take pictures almost as if it were posing.

Or maybe it was just waiting to see whether we would stop moving long enough to be considered lunch. We made sure to stay in motion, and after a while it gave up on us and flew away.

Some people might consider seeing a skunk and a turkey buzzard in the same afternoon a bad omen. It may have been. Or maybe not. We were just glad neither one was a mountain lion.

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Lions and Tigers and Bears–Or Not

Posted on May 27, 2011 by Kathleen Fox

It all started with the Beetdiggers.

Taking a break from driving during a two-day road trip, we were walking along Main Street in Brush, Colorado. We noticed a sign on a store window: Go Beetdiggers!

Okay, as high school mascot, maybe a beetdigger doesn't have the same aura of ferocity as its more common cousins, all those lions, tigers, bears, and bulldogs out there. But at least it has a clear connection with the area's major industry of raising sugar beets.

The Beetdiggers (who probably "Can't be beat!") sound a little tougher than their neighbors further down the road—the Rocky Ford Meloneers. When your town is famous for its sweet, juicy watermelons and cantaloupes, maybe toughness isn't quite so important.

Still, both of them are far ahead of Fort Collins, where the wrestlers and football players must be some of the toughest guys in high school sports. You'd have to be, to overcome a mascot like the "Lambkin."

Of course, back home in South Dakota, we have our share of school nicknames that, when it comes to that good old fighting spirit, are a couple linemen short of a full team. Some of them don't even seem to make sense, unless you know a little about the history of the town.

Like the Sturgis Scoopers, for example. The town, near the frontier military post of Fort Meade, had an early reputation for "scooping" money out of the pockets of the soldiers. These days it offers the same service to bikers during the annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally.

The "Scotties," for the prairie town of Phillip, doesn't seem logical at all unless you know that the town was named after Scotty Phillips, an early rancher who helped bring the buffalo back from near-extinction.

For a real macho image, though, you can't beat the good old Mitchell Kernels. No, that's not "Colonel" as in military, it's "Kernel" as in corn. Back in the early 1900's, a lot of small towns built onion-domed "corn palaces" that were decorated with grains to celebrate agriculture. Mitchell has what may be the only one still being used and still freshly decorated every year.

My favorite sports mascot is still one I saw a few years ago in Montana. A sign in front of the school in the little town of Belfry proudly announces, "Home of the Bats."

I was surprised and disappointed, though, to discover that one well-known animal native to Wyoming and South Dakota doesn't have a team named after it in either state. The only school I found using it as a mascot was Rudolfo Anaya Elementary in Albuquerque. And that simply doesn't make sense. Everyone knows New Mexico doesn't have native jackalopes.

Categories: Just For Fun | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

What’s the Beef?

Posted on May 20, 2011 by Kathleen Fox

Angus beef. It seems to be everywhere. Grocery stores advertise it in their flyers and call attention to it with signs in the meat department. Steakhouses announce it on their menus, usually throwing in a few supportive adjectives like "tender" and "well-aged." Fast food restaurants offer Angus burgers—plain old "hamburgers," after all, are so last century.

If you set up a blind taste test, with random participants sampling steaks or burgers from Angus, Herefords, Charolais, and probably even buffalo, I suspect most people wouldn't be able to tell the difference. The perceived virtue of Angus beef has more to do with the quality of the marketing than the quality of the meat itself.

Personally, I prefer Herefords, especially in the spring. Not for any differences in the beef, or any lingering prejudice against the Scots, or any bias because the cows I remember from childhood were red and white instead of black. Quite simply, the calves are cuter. A brand-new Hereford calf is almost as appealing as a puppy or a kitten, mostly because its little white face is so bright and clean in contrast with its red-brown body. A baby Angus just doesn't register quite as high on the cuteness scale.

Still, the good people at the American Angus Association have been working hard over the past couple of decades to persuade us all that Angus beef is better. If they've had any doubts about their success, a classified ad that appeared this week in the "yard and garden" section of our local newspaper should reassure them that they've done well.

In fact, the ad was a completely logical and even inevitable outcome (if you'll pardon the expression) of the Angus marketing campaign. It advertised "Angus manure."

The perfect fertilizer, presumably, for beefsteak tomatoes.

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The Almost Outstanding Graduate

Posted on May 13, 2011 by Kathleen Fox

"Pomp and Circumstance." Graduation simply wouldn't be graduation without it. At least I hope that's still the case because, trite or last-century as it may be, the grand sweep of that music still moves me right down to my toes.

Actually, the music we think of as "Pomp and Circumstance" is only one section, "Land of Hope and Glory," from the first of six "Pomp and Circumstance" marches written at the beginning of the 20th Century by British composer Sir Edward Elgar. It was first used as a graduation recessional at Yale in 1905, and since then hundreds of thousands of graduates have done their best to keep their mortarboards level and move at a pace appropriate to its stirring dignity.

It would be fun sometime to hear the entire suite of marches at a concert, though during the "Land of Hope and Glory" section it is probable that a large portion of the audience would be irresistibly driven to rise from their seats and march solemnly toward the stage in alphabetical order.

Maybe my emotional reaction to "Pomp and Circumstance" stems from my own high school graduation, though I don't consciously remember the music. What I do remember is processing in, seventy-something of us, two by two, from the back of the city auditorium and down the center aisle through the rows of seats crammed with relatives and friends.

Just as we had rehearsed, when we reached the front each pair separated to file in opposite directions and take our places, standing in front of the seats that were reserved for us. Being an "S," I was toward the end of the pack, and my assigned seat happened to be at the aisle end of the row. I reached the designated point, turned toward the row of chairs—and realized I didn't have one. Someone had counted wrong, or someone in the crowded auditorium had filched a chair.

Behind me, the rest of the graduates filed into the last row. Up on the stage, the minister began his invocation. Standing with my head dutifully bowed just enough so my mortarboard wouldn't slide off, I was quietly panicking. As soon as he finished, I knew he was going to say, "Please be seated," and everyone would. Everyone except me, who would be left the lone graduate standing, the humiliated focus of hundreds of eyes.

Some seniors, self-confident class president types or debate champions or drama club lovers of the spotlight, might have been able to pass such an incident off with élan or even enjoy the attention. I was not one of those students.

Before the pastor got to the end of his invocation, though, I felt something nudge the back of my robe. Miraculously, a chair had appeared behind me. When we were told to be seated, and in uneven blue-robed unanimity we sat, I had never been so grateful to settle onto a hard metal folding chair.

After the ceremony, I learned that a neighbor, the father of one of my classmates, had noticed my predicament from his seat near the aisle a few rows behind the graduates. During the prayer, this burly, six-foot-plus man had sneaked forward with his own chair and placed it behind me. Knowing him, he gave the audience a big grin as he went to stand in the back of the room.

I hope I thanked him properly. As inarticulate and shy as I was at the time, I probably wasn't able to let him know how much his embarrassment-sparing gesture meant to me. And now, even though I've remembered it with gratitude for all these years, he's gone and it's a decade too late to tell him in person.

Thank you, Lyle. Bless your kindness and your quickness. I think about you every time I hear "Pomp and Circumstance."

Categories: Living Consciously, Remembering When | Tags: , , , | 1 Comment

Facing Up to the Pansy

Posted on May 6, 2011 by Kathleen Fox

I'm not sure when or why the word pansy became an epithet, a scornful term for a man who didn't seem "manly" enough. Besides, as a feminist and a parent of both daughters and sons, I could—and do—certainly take issue with why being considered effeminate is an insult in the first place.

But that's a rant for a different day. For now let's talk about pansies.

I bought a bunch of them this week, which I plan to put outside if it ever warms up enough to actually plant something. I've liked them ever since I was little and first noticed, in my grandmother's bed of pansies beside the back step, how much their blossoms resembled vivid little faces.

In the hierarchy of the garden, pansies are members of the chorus rather than stars. They don't have the fragrance of roses. They aren't dramatic and showy like peonies or gladioli. They aren’t temperamental or difficult to grow.

What pansies do have is character. The heat doesn't appear to wilt them. The ever-encroaching creeping jenny doesn't defeat them. Even the ineptitude of my gardening doesn't seem to faze them. They just keep blooming, through spring hailstorms, summer heat, and even the first early frost.

According to Merriam Webster, the word pansy comes from the Latin “pensare.” It means to ponder, and it’s also the root of “pensive.”

The name suits these bright yellow and purple flowers. Blooming is their business, and they do it conscientiously. Pansy faces aren't smiling and carefree. They wear the focused, serious expressions of those with important jobs to do.

Actually, they remind me of another group that does important work. A group that certainly would be described as effeminate and could easily be called pansies if the word meant what it ought to mean. They're tough, they have character, and they hang in there even when conditions are less than ideal.

Surely, by now, you know who I'm talking about. Mothers.

Categories: Wild Things, Words for Nerds | Tags: , , , | 2 Comments

Back Yard Biddies

Posted on April 28, 2011 by Kathleen Fox

It might be due to the economy. It might be due to the "natural foods" movement. It might be due to pressure from otherwise law-abiding citizens who have been seduced into illicit behavior by the lure of fresh eggs.

At any rate, earlier this spring our town considered an ordinance that would allow residents to keep chickens in their yards. The proposal was defeated, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see it come around again.

Even though I am not a fan of chickens until they're cooked, this seems like a good idea to me. A handful of hens would be less aggravating to one's neighbors than a couple of Chihuahuas or a pit bill. It makes sense to have back yards used for something practical rather than just a place to water the grass and fertilize the grass so you have to mow the grass. Not to mention the appeal of having fresh eggs for the price of some vegetable peelings and a little chicken feed.

Of course, having fresh tomatoes from one's own garden is appealing, too, and we all know some of the pitfalls that lie between that particular idea and the reality. No doubt raising chickens would be the same.

In our case, for example, we have a huge back yard with ample grass in its natural state—even more natural since the lawn mower broke last fall. Theoretically, half a dozen hens could find a wonderful home out there.

I’m sure some of our neighbors would love the idea. The red fox who lives in the gully, for example. Mountain lions probably wouldn't bother much with chickens, but you never know. A fat hen now and then might be a tempting morsel and a nice change from venison. The money-saving aspect of raising chickens for the eggs would pretty much be wiped out if we had to lay in (if you'll pardon the expression) a fresh supply of hens every week or so.

Then there would be the issue of keeping the flock fed and watered when we're traveling. I suppose, in exchange for the eggs, it might be possible to find someone to look after them. We’d just need to enunciate very carefully when we asked if they’d be willing to chicken-sit.

Categories: Just For Fun, Wild Things | Tags: , , , , | 1 Comment

The Dark Side of the Geek

Posted on April 22, 2011 by Kathleen Fox

I don’t get computer viruses.

Well, I do, unfortunately, in one sense. I got one on Monday. A nasty little beast sneaked past my antivirus software to infect my operating system, mark all my files as hidden, and create false error messages intended to generate panic and scramble files.

I consulted a specially trained professional who looked young enough to be moonlighting his way through middle school. He suggested that the fee for wiping the computer clean and reinstalling everything would be more than the value of the computer, given that it was four years old, which in computer years made it a doddering ancient. Seeing the sense in this, I decided to buy a new computer.

After one frustrating day of waiting for the new computer to be ready, followed by another frustrating day of transferring files, reinstalling software, and rounding up email addresses, I was cautiously back in business. I had lost a bunch of email files, a bunch of time, and a couple of software programs; I had gained a large dose of aggravation and stress.

I know how much the new computer cost me in dollars and cents. I don’t even want to think about what this virus cost me in terms of time, lost information, frustration, and aggravation.

What I don’t get about computer viruses is why. Most of them have no purpose other than to destroy. The only gain for the twisted minds who develop them is the vicious satisfaction of sowing destruction and chaos. It obviously takes a certain level of brilliant geekiness to create viruses in the first place. All those intelligent minds could be building and contributing something useful with their skills. For whatever reasons, they choose to destroy instead. It’s sheer maliciousness.

If I were in charge of such things, I would sentence the creators and disseminators of computer viruses to spend part of their days in bare rooms with nothing but plain paper and dull crayons. They would be required to write over and over, for hour after hour, “I will never do another bit of computer harm.”

The rest of their time would be spent doing hard physical labor, preferably cleaning out pigsties or sewers. They would be fitted with devices that would give them severe electric shocks if they so much as touched any type of electronic device. And, of course, they would have to repay in cold, hard cash everyone who had lost valuable time and data as a result of their evil creations.

Maybe, by then, they would have some understanding of the trouble they had caused. Maybe then they could explain to me why they thought creating computer viruses would be fun. Because I just don’t get it.

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The Back-Row Balcony Blues

Posted on April 14, 2011 by Kathleen Fox

How much do I hate standing in line? I would rather eat fast food than wait 45 minutes for a seat in a nice restaurant. There is no bargain in any store tempting enough to persuade me to line up in the predawn cold on the day after Thanksgiving for the privilege of fighting other shoppers for it. I once passed on the opportunity to climb up to the top of the Statue of Liberty because it would have meant standing in line for two hours.

I renew my car license tags by mail to avoid standing in line at the courthouse. Though to be fair, the county treasurer's office is equipped with a long wooden bench like a church pew, so the first 15 or so people in line get to sit while they wait. The seat of the bench is well-polished by generations of taxpayers sliding along it until they get to the front of the line; it probably hasn't had to be dusted in years.

But this week I stood in line for half an hour to buy tickets to hear Greg Mortenson. He's the former mountain climber who has spent almost 20 years helping to build schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and in a more logical world he would already have received the Nobel Peace Prize.

I knew tickets for his talk would sell out quickly once they went on sale at 10:00 a.m. on Monday, so I got myself down to the Civic Center promptly at 9:57. I was overly optimistic; 50 or 60 other people were already in line. More kept coming in behind me.

As we inched our way closer to the ticket windows, we made conversation, bonding in the way people do when they are sharing an arduous experience. The closer we got to the front of the line, though, the more ominous the news became from the successful buyers ahead of us with their tickets clutched in their fists. "They're already sold out except for the balcony." "They're saying not everyone in line will be able to get tickets." "They're saying you'd be better off to get tickets online."

Well, if we had wanted to get our tickets online, we'd have stayed home and done that, wouldn't we? Undiscouraged, we kept creeping forward. We told each other and ourselves how wonderful it was that so many people were eager to hear about Greg Mortenson's work. We pretended we would be glad for those people even if we didn't manage to get seats ourselves.

Mostly, though, we agreed that it wouldn't be fair if all the tickets sold out to those upstarts who were buying theirs online. We, after all, were more deserving. We were getting our tickets the old-fashioned way. Even if standing in line made us feel like singing the blues . . .

"We're just standing in line here and standing in line, and it feels like we aren't even moving.
At least all this crowd is too nice and polite to be elbowing, pushing, or shoving.
We hear from the folks near the front of the line that the tickets are selling out fast,
So we hope and we pray that we'll still get a seat when we get to the window at last.
While we're inching ahead, we are making new friends and we're getting along here just fine,
For we all can agree that the real enemy is the one buying tickets online."

At 10:28, I made it to the window. Did I get tickets? You bet. Balcony, third row, left center. Sometimes good-enough seats still come to those who wait in line.

Categories: Just For Fun | Tags: , , , | 7 Comments

The Leg and the Egg

Posted on April 8, 2011 by Kathleen Fox

There they were, glowing softly under the spotlight, appearing together for the first time. Dedicated fans, serious researchers, the envious, and the merely curious crowded closer to get a better look. The Black Hills' two biggest gold nuggets were side by side in the same display case.

First, the leg. This famous nugget found by Potato Creek Johnny in 1929 was a crooked strip about four inches long, looking a bit like the back leg of a skinny horse, minus the hoof. It was a solid, gleaming chunk of yellow metal looking just the way we non-prospecting types assume gold ought to look.

The egg, named the Ice Box nugget, was discovered in the fall of 2010. Roughly the size and shape of a hen's egg, it looked like a fairly ordinary rock at first glance, until you noticed the thick yellow veins bulging out of it on all sides.

The two nuggets were surprisingly small, considering that they added up to some $15,000 or $16,000 worth of gold at today's prices. A person could have held both of them in one hand. Theoretically speaking, a person might have even been able to sneak them out of the museum in the same jacket pocket—as long as no one noticed it sagging under their combined weight.

Theoretically or otherwise, I doubt that many of the people who came to the Journey Museum to see the nuggets had any serious urges to grab them and make a mad dash for the door. Several of them, though, were clearly prospectors themselves and were trying their hardest to pick up any clues as to exactly where the Ice Box nugget had been discovered. Gold fever in the Black Hills is still alive and well.

I didn't catch it myself, though. Listening to the discoverer of the Ice Box nugget was an effective inoculation. He was dressed in his work clothes—possibly for effect, I suppose, but also because, as he explained, this time of year when the snow is melting and water running, a placer miner needs to spend every available minute working his claim. His forearms were ridged with muscle, his hands were scarred and battered, and his fingertips were so abraded that it was doubtful he had any fingerprints left.

"Yeah, we move rocks the size of that desk all the time," he said. I don't have a clue how much money he may have made over the past couple of years working his claim, but he obviously had earned every penny. Getting rich quick by finding gold looks a lot like plain old-fashioned hard work.

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Born to be Mild

Posted on April 1, 2011 by Kathleen Fox

Bungee jumping? No thank you.

Roller coasters? Did that once, thanks. Once was once too often.

There's an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation in which Captain Picard, having learned about some consequences of a youthful misadventure, is regretting what he sees as his character flaw of recklessness. He is taken back through his life to explore how it might have been if he had taken fewer risks. It turns out he would have still ended up on the Enterprise, but as a low-ranking, undistinguished member of the crew. The risk-taking he had seen as a flaw was part of what gave him the ability to command a starship.

Unlike Picard, when I look back I don't regret my past reckless behavior. Quite the opposite. As a child, I believed that rules were meant to be obeyed, boundaries to be respected, and lines to be colored inside. Not only was I rarely the one suggesting anything adventurous, I was often that annoying kid warning the others that they were going to be in big trouble.

This was less about respect for the rules, actually, than it was about being chicken. I was simply born to be cautious. On the very few occasions I did let peer pressure lure me into wilder behavior, I usually lived to regret it.

Like the time at church camp when I was a teenager. Everyone else was doing it. (Well, as is usually the case, not quite everyone. Several people were doing it, including a boy that I wanted to impress.)

No, not drugs. Not smuggling pine cones into the counselors' beds. Not smoking cigarettes or necking out in the woods. A few kids very likely did those things, but they didn't tell me about it.

Someone had come up with the bright idea of putting a plank across a log to make an impromptu teeter-totter. The smaller person, aka the girl, would stand on one end. The larger person, aka the guy, would jump onto the other end, sending her into the air. Her hair and sometimes other parts of her anatomy would bounce in an appealing manner, and she would squeal and giggle and come down more or less on her feet.

It looked like fun—sort of. One of the boys doing the jumping was the one I was hoping to impress. I didn't want to look like the chicken I really was. Even though my sensible side tried to talk me out of it, I allowed myself to be coaxed onto the short end of the board.

He jumped onto the other end. I went flying. If my hair bounced in an appealing manner, I didn't have time to notice before I tumbled sideways and the ground came up and hit me.

My wrist hurt and started to swell. The camp director insisted on taking me to town for an X-Ray. Instead of playing my guitar at the campfire sing-along that night, I spent the evening in the emergency room finding out my wrist wasn't broken. They sent me back to camp with an ice pack, which soothed my bruised arm but didn't do much for my bruised pride.

In the years since, I've become far more adventurous in a lot of ways. I've learned to take a few more risks—at least of the emotional and social kind. But physical? No thanks. I still don't do carnival rides that fling you around like Raggedy Ann on speed. I don't stand at the edges of cliffs when I'm hiking in the woods. I take my vitamins, eat my vegetables, use sunscreen, keep my gas tank at least half full, and always fasten my seatbelt.

Maybe that explains why no one has ever put me in command of a starship.

Categories: Living Consciously, Remembering When | Tags: , , , , , | 4 Comments

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