Just For Fun

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.

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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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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.

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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.

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Sniffing Out a Good Book

Posted on March 25, 2011 by Kathleen Fox

Kindles. Nooks. As the marketing experts who came up with them would be very pleased to know, the names alone tend to make you want to curl up in a cozy corner by the fireplace with a good book.

I don't have an ereader yet, not because I don't want one, but because I haven't quite managed to decide which one to get. In the meantime, I've been reading some of the discussions for, against, and about ereaders and ebooks in general.

Some readers are passionate advocates for ebooks, some are lukewarm about the new technology, and some vow they will give up their paper books only when their last well-worn copy of "Twilight" is pried from their cold, dead fingers.

One aspect of those discussions baffles me. There are plenty of people who say one of the reasons they enjoy paper books is the way they smell (the books, not the readers). My daughter, who admits to being one of these people, says it's the glue. I suppose I should be grateful that book-binding glue is the only kind she sniffs.

I don't get it. It isn't that I'm olfactorily challenged. I savor all sorts of favorite smells—not to mention being sensitive to all sorts of smells that make me sneeze. But I don't sniff books. I don't think of them in terms of odor. I'll walk into a flower shop, a bakery, or a leather shop, inhale, and say to myself, "Ummm, it smells so good in here." I only do that with bookstores if they have coffee shops in them.

Of course, I don't get the thrill of that famous new car smell, either. Once, when my late husband's construction company had just bought a brand-new crew cab pickup, we drove it up into the hills for a family picnic. By the time we got there, I had a headache and the three kids in the back seat (including my daughter the book-sniffer) were all getting sick from the smell. Maybe the new car smell is more appealing in a luxury SUV with leather seats. Or maybe I've just never learned to appreciate it because I've never bought a new car.

Maybe that's my problem with books, as well. I don't appreciate the aroma because I don't buy a lot of new ones. Sometimes I browse in second-hand bookstores, which do have a distinctive smell, just like second-hand clothing and furniture stores do. It's easy to identify but hard to describe—a combination of musty basements, dusty attics, and closed-off rooms that haven't been aired out in a long time. Add accents of stale cigarette smoke and old perfume, and you have a definite aura that says, "other people's old stuff."

Mostly I get books from the library, and I have to admit a few of them have odors of their own. Cigarette smoke, sometimes, or coffee, or perfume. Once in a while it's strong enough to bother me, but usually I don’t pay much attention.

Apparently I don't care if a book smells like new paper, someone else's attic, or even new electronics. What I do care about is the smells, sounds, tastes, and emotions that skilled authors create. Smell the paper? Never mind. I'm too busy sniffing out the story.

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The Luck of the Pot

Posted on March 18, 2011 by Kathleen Fox

It was a near-crisis. The situation was unprecedented as well as acutely embarrassing. The president had to open a public event by making a humiliating announcement.

She had the courage to be blunt. "I hate to say this, but we just barely have enough food to go around, so please don't help yourselves too liberally."

The public event was last month's regular potluck dinner of an organization we belong to. For the first time in institutional memory, the members had failed to bring an abundance of food. The president showed her leadership skills, though, both in her public announcement and in her resource management. As she explained after the meal, "The only dessert was one pie, so I just moved a couple of Jell-O salads to that end of the table."

Fortunately, such an occurrence is rare. Whether it's a church supper, a club's regular meeting, or a get-together with friends, potlucks are an easy way to feed a group. Everybody shares the work, everybody shares the cost, those on special diets can bring something they know they can eat, and most of the leftovers—and the dirty dishes they came in—go home with the ones who brought them.

Of course, inviting people to a potluck without giving them any suggestions about what to bring does have certain risks. Sometimes meals are heavy on breads. Sometimes casseroles rule the table. I remember one occasion when everyone brought desserts and we had to order pizza just to have a little protein. And, of course, a discerning shopper can often tell what foods are currently on special at Safeway.

Sometimes a meal can inadvertently develop a theme. There was the corn-fed dinner where we had corn chowder, cornbread, corn salad, and homegrown sweet corn. We could have either filmed an episode of "Hee Haw" or opened our own ethanol plant.

Potlucks may not be elegant dinner parties a la Emily Post or Martha Stewart, but they do have their own etiquette. It's considered good manners to take a little of most things but not too much of anything. Eating your own food is optional. You are, however, expected to take home your own leftovers. Exceptions do sometimes occur, as when the person who brought that oh-so-rich dessert ruthlessly sneaks out the door and leaves it in the refrigerator of the dieting hostess.

Good manners and etiquette do have their common-sense limits, of course. To illustrate, here is a potluck logic problem. Suppose a hypothetical person whose resemblance to the writer of this column is strictly coincidental hosts a potluck dinner at her house. Guests have brought three desserts: cupcakes, chocolate chip cookies, and carrot cake (which of course doesn't count because everyone knows carrots are vegetables.)

The hostess eats one of each. She tells herself she is just going out of her way not to hurt the feelings of any of the cooks. Is she really being:
A. Polite and gracious?
B. Co-dependent?
C. Self-sacrificing?
D. Self-indulgent?
E. Just plain greedy?

All answers will be kept strictly confidential—especially by the hostess.

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In The Bag

Posted on March 11, 2011 by Kathleen Fox

What on earth do people carry around in those things? Laptops? Library books? Walking shoes? Gym clothes? Small children? Litters of newborn puppies?

I know, I know—since I have to ask, I obviously don't get it. I don't understand the current style trend for huge purses. Maybe it's my lack of fashion sense. Or maybe it's my naïve belief that if you have something called a "handbag" you should be able to actually carry it, rather than needing to haul it behind you in a little red wagon.

These purses remind me of the magic carpet bag from which Mary Poppins extracted a series of improbable belongings, including a coat rack and a tall plant. (By the way, an Internet search for "Mary Poppins carpet bag," comes up with several places where you can buy a replica of her bag to use as—you guessed it—a purse. Sigh.)

I might have used a more contemporary reference and said these bags remind me of the magic bag carried by Hermione Granger in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I. It contains, among other things, a tent the size of a three-bedroom house, complete with furnishings. But Hermione, being a sensible young woman as well as a skilled magician, was wise enough to condense all her camping necessities into a tiny evening purse.

I just don't get why these bulky bags are so popular. I suppose one might come in handy for defending yourself against a potential mugger. Provided, that is, you could manage to swing it high enough to knock him out with it.

My only other theory is a diabolical marketing scheme by a powerful cartel of chiropractors. There has to be a lot of money to be made from treating back and shoulder ailments of all the women who are hauling around half their worldly possessions in gigantic bags.

Most of these purses, besides being huge, are hugely over-decorated. They're covered with the initials of famous designers, or loaded with shiny buckles, chains, studs, and plastic ruffles or flower-like thingies. One day I noticed an elderly woman lugging one of these bags that had a big round design on the side. I couldn't quite figure out what it was until I got closer to her.

It was a clock. A working clock, with a traditional round face about four inches in diameter. It was covered with clear plastic to protect it, of course, which was a good thing since its slender owner was dragging it across the parking lot through the slush.

Okay, I suppose it might be convenient to be able to tell the time by glancing at your purse. You'd think it would be easier just to check her cell phone like everyone else. But of course she couldn't. She probably hadn't been able to find her phone in weeks. It was lost somewhere in the bottom of that enormous purse.

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Making the Lady Look Good

Posted on February 25, 2011 by Kathleen Fox

A cold, snowy Saturday night. Dinnertime. Decision time. Did we want to settle in for the evening with our respective murder mysteries or go to the dance?

Dancing won—just barely. After we finished eating and did the dishes, we had 45 minutes before leaving the house at the agreed-upon time of 7:25. We went off in our separate ways to get ready.

His preparation (phase one):
1. Sit down in the recliner with his book.

My preparation:
1. Meditate for some moments in front of the open closet door to decide what to wear. Choose a denim skirt, purple tee shirt, and black corduroy jacket.
2. Heat iron and press shirt.
3. Take off jeans and sweater, put on pantyhose, skirt, tee shirt, and jacket.
4. Decide purple shirt is too dark. Select pink lacy tee shirt instead. Take off freshly-ironed purple shirt and toss it onto the bed. Put on pink shirt. Put jacket back on.
5. Decide texture of corduroy jacket clashes with texture of lacy shirt. Take off corduroy jacket and toss it onto the bed. Put on black blazer instead.
6. Select necklace and put it on. It's too long for neckline of pink shirt. Replace it with a different one. It's too large and doesn't look right against lacy shirt. Replace it with third necklace. Like Baby Bear's chair, it's just right. Add matching earrings.
7. Get out curling iron and turn it on to heat.
8. Touch up eyeliner and apply eye shadow and mascara.
9. Curl hair.
10. Put on dancing shoes and buckle them.
11. Check mirror. Pass self-inspection. Check clock. It's 7:23.
12. Put on coat, get purse.

Total time to prepare to leave the house: 44 minutes.

Meanwhile, back at the recliner, he has been contentedly reading for 43½ minutes. He moves on to phase two of his preparation:
1. Put bookmark in book, set book aside.
2. Get up from chair.
3. Put on coat.

Total time to prepare to leave the house (not counting reading several chapters): one minute and a half.

LeRoy Olesen, a long-time local dance instructor who is personally responsible for helping hundreds of couples master the foxtrot and the waltz, frequently reminds the men in his classes: "Your job is to make the lady look good."

It's only fair for the gentleman to have that responsibility when the couple is out on the floor. The lady, after all, puts in all her effort toward looking good before they leave the house.

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The Wrestlers and the Resurrected Raccoon

Posted on February 11, 2011 by Kathleen Fox

Why would you put a dead raccoon into the luggage compartment of the bus in the first place? The brief item in our local paper didn't explain, but inquiring minds would like to know.

True, the passengers on this particular bus were high school boys, which may be all the answer inquiring minds need. I could understand their interest—purely scientific, undoubtedly—in a dead critter. What I didn't understand was how the raccoon ended up stashed with the luggage. To me this implied a certain amount of official collaboration, since presumably only the coach or the bus driver could open the storage compartment.

The person who shares my morning newspaper suggested I might be underestimating the ability of a group of teenaged boys both to sneak a dead critter past their adult supervisors and to surreptitiously open the electronic latch to the luggage compartment door. Having been a teenaged boy himself, he ought to know. He claimed he wouldn't have put a dead critter on a bus himself, but would have abetted such a project.

Not satisfied with this explanation, I did further research. (Yes, I know. Certain people have occasionally implied I don't have enough to do.)

I found that the raccoon caper was sanctioned, however unwisely, by at least one adult. Furthermore, it involved raccoon-bashing as well as raccoon-stashing. On a Friday evening, the high school wrestling team from Carrington, North Dakota, was on a bus headed for a regional tournament in Grafton. They spotted a raccoon and the coach stopped the bus. Several wrestlers got off, hit the raccoon with a pail, picked it up, and stuck it in the baggage compartment under the bus.

Presumably, this whole operation seemed like a good idea at the time.

But apparently a pail (plastic, do you suppose?) isn't a very effective murder weapon. The next morning, when somebody opened the compartment, the "dead" raccoon hopped out and trotted away.

The poor critter must have been confused. First it had been knocked unconscious with a pail and shoved into a cold metal compartment among luggage filled with wrestler's uniforms and socks (freshly laundered, one can only hope). Then it escaped, only to find itself in a strange place miles from home.

Maybe its near-death experience has led to a spiritual awakening, and it will spend the rest of its life ministering to homeless critters in the parks and alleys of Grafton. Or maybe it will sell its story ("Captured by aliens and left for dead in subzero weather!") to the National Inquirer and retire to a cozy home well out of sight of the highway.

Meanwhile, back at the bus, the wrestlers and their coach were having an awakening of their own. Because some of the boys had handled a wild animal and therefore might have been exposed to rabies, the whole team was deemed a health risk and barred from the tournament.

As far as I know, none of the wrestlers have come down with any mysterious diseases. But there's a rumor that several of them have developed an unusual urge to wash all their food before they eat it.

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The Final Decorating Frontier

Posted on January 28, 2011 by Kathleen Fox

On my way through the living room the other day, I happened to notice that the mantelpiece was bare. No, a burglar hadn't come down the chimney and grabbed the heirloom Sevres porcelain. Nor had the butler taken the silver candlesticks away to be cleaned. We had, in fact, cleared off the mantel over a month ago to put up Christmas decorations.

Our design scheme included hanging ornaments from the antlers of the deer skull that hangs above the fireplace. (No duct tape was used, however.) The look may not have worked for Martha Stewart, but I bet Red Green would have loved it.

We took down those decorations a few days after Christmas. A week or so after that we went out of town for a week. We've been back for a while now, and it took me this long to realize the space above the fireplace was still empty.

Several of my friends would have already decorated that tempting six-foot bare expanse. They would have arranged some color-coordinated combination of ornamental objects in an elegant display that might even enhance the antlers. Then, a few weeks from now, they would take that stuff down and replace it with something equally attractive and tasteful.

Not me. True, as a person with a college major in art, I do claim to have some esthetic sense. I have never owned a painting of Elvis on velvet, bought a couch pillow in fluorescent green, or worn plaids with stripes.

And I do recognize bad decorating when I see it. For example, take—please take, preferably as far away as possible—the Wisconsin motel that my late husband and I once stayed in. On a last-minute impulse, we had flown to the huge air show at Oshkosh. The closest available room we found was in a small town some 150 miles away. It shall remain anonymous, partly to protect the guilty but mostly because I have blotted its name from my memory.

The motel, called something like the Fantasy Inn, was apparently intended to attract honeymooners and those in search of romantic weekend getaways, licit or otherwise. Each room, the clerk informed us, was decorated around a different theme—a jungle room, an Arabian Nights room, an Egyptian room, and so on. You get the idea.

Either because we were Star Trek fans or because it was the only one left, we ended up in the "outer space" room. It turned out to be less than stellar.

Imagine a set for a zero-budget elementary school play about landing on the moon—on the dark side. The hot tub sat amid fake boulders intended to look like moon rocks. The walls and ceiling were black and ornamented with a faint scattering of amateurish painted stars and planets. There were a couple of dim lamps, plus a 20-watt light bulb over the bathroom sink. Applying eyeliner in the dark could make anyone look like an alien. Big round eyes or not, there was no way ET could have found a telephone in that room so he could phone home.

The focus of the décor was a round waterbed inside a structure designed to look like the nose cone of a space ship. To complete the futuristic theme, a video game screen was built into the inside of the "space capsule." Apparently this was the backup plan in case that whole romantic weekend thing didn't quite work out.

Compared to an esthetic disaster of such galactic scale, the potential for even a decorator-challenged type like me to mess up a simple fireplace mantel is minimal. It's just too bad the geologist in residence doesn't have any moon rocks.

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