I was reading an article in the wikithing entitled “Principles of Learning.” I don’t really think it’s a well-done article – it’s quite unclear where the “objectivity” (that wikipedia strives for) stops and the author’s opinions related to the theory being expounded start. In fact, it’s not even clear on a cursory read that it’s a theory rather than objectively proven information. Much of “education theory” is rather like this, however. I find particularly bizarre the oddly specific reference to “aerospace instruction” in the header – this makes me think that a better title for the article might be “Principles of Aerospace Instruction.” Yet the article is highly general in its approach – it has the appearance of a generalized theory of pedagogy.
Nevertheless, despite this, I find the statement below highly quotable, and it may form a core idea of my own teaching philosophy – at least on good days (of which I’ve not had many, lately, to be frank).
The principle of freedom states that things freely learned are best learned. Conversely, the further a student is coerced, the more difficult is for him to learn, assimilate and implement what is learned. Compulsion and coercion are antithetical to personal growth. The greater the freedom enjoyed by individuals within a society, the greater the intellectual and moral advancement enjoyed by society as a whole. Since learning is an active process, students must have freedom: freedom of choice, freedom of action, freedom to bear the results of action — these are the three great freedoms that constitute personal responsibility. If no freedom is granted, students may have little interest in learning.
I have recently been exploring googlebooks. There are some interesting and unusual out-of-copyright materials there. This morning I have been perusing a text by someone named Francis Hopkinson entitled “A Pretty Story,” originally published in 1774 and reprinted (I suspect from the original proofs since the text is full of 18th century typography not matching the 1860’s edition date).
The story is a sort of political allegory, a rather thinly veiled account of the colonization of North America by the British, and relevant to the impending American Revolution (note that Hopkinson was apparently a signer of the Declaration of Independence).
I think I enjoy reading texts such as these as much for their archaic style and language as for the actual content, although making cultural comparisons of the then-to-now sort, in the style of a time-traveling anthropologist, is fun too.
On a technical side, I’d like to rant.
<rant>
Googlebooks’ interface annoys me, because it keeps reverting to Korean Language, because of my IP address. I’m not opposed to using the Korean interface, per se, but I see it as a technical glitch whenever default language of web sites is driven by the geotagging information attached to the user’s IP address when so much other information is available to the browser (e.g. my computer’s preferred language setting, my browser’s preferred / installed language, not to mention the language of the text being viewed – why would someone viewing an 18th c. political tract written in English not prefer [or at the very least, not be uncomfortable with] an English language web interface?). I especially resent internationalized web content that fails to offer a clear control to change languages when viewing the page. Googlebooks apparently doesn’t like to offer this option clearly on their page – although, if you scan it carefully, the extended URL contains a language flag, but even when you toggle this manually (changing the “ko” to “en”), the page nevertheless reverts if you follow any in-site links.
</rant>
Here are some screenshots from this archaic text.
The introduction, below.
First page, below.
I like the old-style “long s” in the word possessed (roughly, “poffeffed”).
I’ve been in a dark mood lately. Ever since last week when I realized even some of my students agreed that my progress in learning Korean was unacceptable. Walking home in freezing rain or sleet or whatever it was, the air was smelling dirty or dusty – I wonder if we’re getting sand from China and Mongolia?
An elementary student of mine wrote the following essay, which was supposed to be about an imaginary trip. It could be read as a depressing reflection of shallow values and crass materialism and at least a small dosage of racism thrown in, to boot… but I've decided instead to read it as a satire in the vein of Swift's Modest Proposal. Hereforthwith I present her writing, unedited:
I will go to Africa with small boat just by oneself. At first, I will go to African's village and give lots of money and play with them. Second, I will go to the diamond mine and dig many diamonds with African children workers and take it to Korea and sell at a high priceㅋㅋ Third, I will go to national park and photographing all of the animals and plants and I will take small and cute animals put in the small case. Then I will go back to home and sell diamonds, cute animals, and I will be very very rich person in the world. finish..
Think of it as a perfect description of the modus operandi of contemporary global capitalism. As explained from the mouths of babes…. Even if it's utterly presented at face value, there are lessons to be taken here.
Garrison Keillor said of the Democrats, "…the party of people who don't mind waiting in line." Somehow, this captures a lot. It's a little bit funny, too. Some days, I enjoy "A Prairie Home Companion," and other days, I don't at all.
물 밖에 난 고기 water out-AT coming-out fish A fish out of water
This proverb wasn't difficult. I guess there's a first time for anything.
Unrelatedly, here's an interesting quote – yet another thing I can hit myself with when I contemplate my lack of progress in language-learning: "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." – Thomas Edison. I am constantly missing opportunities to learn Korean because of this exact problem. My inherent laziness kicks in.
I finally ran across some beets during my most recent visit to the Orangemart supermarket across the street. Grace had told me that they had them, but I had never managed to see them until this time. Maybe it’s a kind of sometimes thing.
I love beets. And beets make me think of borshch (or borsht or borscht, Борщ). So I made borshch. I didn’t follow a recipe. I’d been reading a while back about a way of making it where you oven-roast the beets and potatoes first, to carmelize them slightly and give them a stronger flavor. I don’t have an oven – I don’t even have a microwave – but I was trying to think of ways to achieve a similar carmelizing effect.
Here’s the recipe I made up as I went, with occasional illustrations.
I peeled and cut up one large beet into thin bite-sized slices. I did the same to one carrot and two smallish potatoes. This seemed about right for one “batch” which I imagine will be three servings for me.
I sliced two small white onions and added a few cloves of crushed garlic to a pot and began to fry them in about a tablespoon of canola oil (I have a several-years’ supply of canola oil, as several bottles came embedded in my Seollal gift-set from my boss this year). I added the chopped beets, carrots and potatoes, and some spices. I used ground bay leaf, thyme, oregano, dill seed, a dash of salt, black pepper, a squirt of lemon juice, a teaspoon of brown sugar (to bring out that carmelized beet and onion flavor, right?).
Then, I “stir fried” it all on a low flame. I didn’t add any additional liquid. I figured when it started to burn, I would add the liquid, but I wanted to try to get the carmelizing effect. And much to my surprise, it didn’t start to burn, for almost 30 minutes. The onions and beets and the lemon juice seemed to provide enough liquid to prevent the stuff from sticking to the pan. I stirred it a lot.
The stuff cooked down a lot. It bubbled and smelled delicious.
Finally there was some crusting on the bottom of the pot, so I added a half cup of red wine (which I keep for cooking and use when recipes call for vinegar). Then I added a cup of tomato juice – which is a great instant, convenient vegan substitute for any recipe that calls for broth or soup stock. This bubbled up and boiled I periodically added some additional water, for another 30 minutes.
The recipe is purely vegan up to this point.
I broke that rule because I put a pat of butter on it and sprinkled some dried thyme, for serving it. I didn’t have any sour cream or yogurt on hand, which is what you’re supposed to put on borshch.
Borshch always makes me think of Doukhobors. Doukhobors are like slavic Quakers (and there’s an important link to Tolstoy). I like Doukhobors. If I had to be a Christian, I would have to be a Doukhobor, maybe. The name means “Spirit Wrestlers.”
The personal connection, for me, was in the summer of 1989 when I made a road trip with my brother and father in the moonwagon (my dad’s 1949 Chevy suburban) from Minnesota to the Kootenays region of British Columbia. My father had spent some time during his childhood there, in a Quaker semi-utopianist intentional community named Argenta, that was linked to the one his parents had founded in Southern California. There are a lot Doukhobors in that part of Canada, and we visited someone who served us some home-made Doukhobor borshch, which is one the most delicious meals I have ever eaten in my life, perhaps in part the context, but truly good food, too. Ever since, I keep trying to reproduce that experience, which is why I so frequently obsess on borshch-making.
And as a stunning non-sequitur, I offer: what I’m listening to right now.
Mexican Institute of Sound, “Yo digo baila.”
Y además:
Mexican Institute of Sound, “El micrófono.”
Que chango tan chistoso, ´nel video.
Mejitecno. Jeje.
There is really nothing quite like sitting in a cozy apartment on a frigid February day, in Northwest South Korea, eating homemade borscht and listening to Mexican techno.
Recently I was listening to an NPR radio show called On Being – it was an episode called “Becoming Detroit,” about a new/old urbanist kind of movement in Detroit, the capital of American decadence. One of the people being interviewed in the show was named Wayne Curtis, and he quoted a bit of poetry, somewhat informally. I have no idea if it’s his poetry, or someone else’s – if it’s someone else’s, I was unable to google an attribution. But it stuck with me:
“One day I forgot name, age, sex, religion, address. I found myself.”
Not that I did that. It was just a sort of short conceptual bit of text that stuck with me. I’m kind of down lately.
What’s with me and pea soup? If you look around this blog, you’d think it was the main thing I cook. It’s not. It’s just the main thing I cook and then blog about having cooked, I guess. Maybe I just really like the pea soup I make for myself?
I made pea soup last night. It’s good on cold days. It feels nutritious and healthy to eat. This time I added dill spice (because I have a lifetime supply) and carrots and celery (the things added depend in part on what I run across in the produce aisle across the street – those wacky “foreign” veggies [i.e. celery] aren’t consistently available).
My friend Seungbae called last night – one of my “Gwangju friends” whom I haven’t visited because I’m too lazy to travel to Gwangju. And it turns out he’s being transferred by his work to the south side of Jeju Island – the Korean equivalent of being transferred to… hm, maybe Bakersfield (nice climate, but backwater town). Now it’s even less likely I’ll visit him, I suppose.
We were doing an exercise in my debate class this evening, and these four mild mannered middle-school girls were turning into the most blatent populists and nationalists imaginable.
I was having them develop hypothetical presidential campaign platforms (for president of Korea, of course, although I also talked about the neverending campaign taking off in the US this year). They proposed everything from eliminating SAT tests (pandering to students) to providing free massage-chairs to everyone over 60 (pandering to the elderly). They suggested war with North Korea as well as Japan (just for old times' sake, I guess). One girl proposed building a protective dome over the country first, which I thought was clever, but it made me think of Newt Gingrich's moon colony for some reason. Another girl wanted to execute all prisoners. I said… even non-murderer criminals? Oh yes… prisons are expensive. Hmm.
Well, next week, I'll give them a chance to try to come up with rebuttals to some of these outlandish proposals. And I hope I can lead them to some degree of thoughtfulness about these things.
This concept of “self-deportation” has come to the fore of the political debate recently due to the new law in Alabama (profiled in the radio show “This American Life” recently, for example) and references made by certain Republican candidates for the presidency. But it’s interesting that the term was not invented by the right, but rather by the left, in the form of satire: there was a group of Latino activists in LA who formed a sort of social-satire political campaign against California’s proposition 187 in mid the 1990’s. I would credit the term “self-deportation” to brilliant cartoonist and satirist Lalo Alcatraz (sample of his work below).
I’m intrigued by this way that satirical ideas become “real” ideas coopted by the opposite side in political debates. Notably, Colbert has been exploring this, in a sort of “push” approach with his conservative blowhard impersonation.
After learning that I'd been in Korea for more than four years, my new(-ish) student, Sumin, a 7th grader with amazingly good English, only had one question: "Then why is your Korean so poor?"
Indeed.
I'm now plunged into a black, black depression.
Why, indeed, is my Korean so poor? Am I lazy? Inept? Hopeless as far as learning this language?
Yesterday at work was hard. Every time I have that PM2 cohort, I struggle – they are bright kids, including a few too bright for their own good, but they are unruly and uninterested in academics of any kind, as far as I can tell. This is a hard consituency for me to teach toward – I'm one of these people who thinks that if kids don't want to learn, and are clearly smart enough to be making that choice with some degree of self-awareness, then it's not really my role, as a teacher, to try to change minds. That's a waste of my energy, as such changing of minds is difficult and resource-intensive on the part of the teacher. That kind of mind-changing is the job for parents or other role-models – if they can manage it. And sometimes, adults simply have to accept the kids aren't going to do what you think they should – and be accepting of their choices, even if we believe they're bad choices. As I've said before – sometimes kids have to fall down on their own.
OK, that got philosphical fast.There were other small incidents that left me feeling gloomy about work yesterday: greedy parental demands and irrational complaints.
It's become quite cold. I like this kind of weather. Hopefully today will go more positively.
I have always had a special interest in what I think of as ephemeral visual-arts media: sandcastles, doodles, graffiti, etc…. and now, office whiteboards. Seeing Bill Taylor’s cubicle whiteboard artalmost makes me wish I worked in a cubicle, again. I say, almost. Maybe I should just buy a whiteboard for my apartment, instead. He draws these things on the whiteboard in his cubicle at work – a month or more for each one, during his spare time.
Bill Taylor, imitating Picasso’s “Guenica,” whiteboard and dry-erase marker.
By Minnesota standards, an inch or two isn’t much snow, but by Seoul standards it’s pretty signifcant. It snowed today while I was at work. It was beautiful walking home, the ground crunching, the air clean-smelling and cold. Here’s a view from a classroom window at work.
I felt good about work today. What I’m listening to right now.
Several long-time teachers are leaving Karma Academy this week. Yesterday was Lena's last day, and she gave a small simple gift of a can of Starbucks coffee. There was a little note attached, and it said, "I was happy to work with you. Take care! P.S. Don't think too much." This last P.S. was funny – it's weird how even people who don't know me very well, and across cultural barriers, nevertheless seem to understand my neverending, utterly fundamental character defect. I was flattered to be so transparent, maybe.
Last night, we had hwehshik (business dinner+drink), but I'm trying so hard to not drink alcohol, which makes me a definite killjoy in the Korean cultural context at events of this sort. I tend to just sit very quietly and listen to the conversation and banter, viewing it as an extended listening comprehension exercise in the Korean language. Sometimes I can earn some respect and/or surprise from my coworkers by interjecting some short comment or question, generally in English, that's appropriate to the current topic – which shows that I'm understanding, at least sometimes.
Well, I always come away frustrated and slightly depressed after these things – because I refuse to drink because of my health (and because I'm such a depressed, unhappy drunk), and that makes my coworkers see me as "too serious" and strange, and that makes me mad that I can't just be taken at face value. Sigh.
Here follows an actual conversation with one of my favorite seven year old students: “Hi. How are you?” “I’m happy!” “Good. What are you doing?” “Water. 물.” He was translating – for himself, or to make sure he was getting the right word with me. He was standing at the water cooler, putting water in one of those envelope-shaped paper cups. Children seem to find drinking water this way endlessly entertaining. “Did you have a good weekend?” “Yes.” “Good. What did you do?” I was going out on a limb in asking this question, because it was somewhat beyond little Jinyong’s level of English ability. Without hesitation, and with a straight face, he answered, “똥먹었다!” As cheerful and as pleased as can be. I burst out laughing. You see, “똥먹었다” means “I ate shit.” Seriously. On the one hand, I was very proud of the kid – he’d understood a question I hadn’t expected him to (past tense, open-ended), and answered it (although in Korean) with communicative competence. The whole conversation showed a higher level of comprehension than I’d expected from him – he’s probably my lowest ability student. So I felt proud. At the same time, it was a rather disgusting answer. He’s what you might call a potty-mouthed kid. He’s a Korean version of a character from South Park. So his answer wasn’t exactly unprecedented. It was funny. I was laughing too much to continue the conversation. And I unintentionally reinforced his disgusting sense of humor by laughing at his statement. Ah well. Life goes on.
백지장도 맞들면 낫다 blank-sheet-EVEN lift-up-together-IF improve Even a blank sheet [of paper], if lifted together [as a team], [things] improve. Wow that was difficult! Why do I even try these proverbs. The key to making sense of this was understanding the verb 맞들다, which seems to mean “lift up together, join forces, cooperate as a team.” But even then, the syntax seemed fragmentary, missing too many elements. The proverb-to-proverb translation would be “Two heads are better than one.” I had to cheat in order to make sense of this. My first draft, pre-cheat, was “if one hundred hinderances are tasty, things improve.” I thought it might be something weirdly Buddhist. I had carelessly mis-read (and mis-re-typed into the dictionary) the subordinate verb as 맛들다 [to be tasty, to become delicious], which would have the same pronunciation as 맞들다, but a slightly different spelling. And I had mis-parsed the noun phrase at the beginning as 백-지장 instead of 백지-장, hence the “one hundred hinderances” – but I’d made a mistake too, since that’s not really accurate given the need for a COUNTER particle if you’re going to count things.
Music and experience become intertwined. This is the principle of one´s life having a "soundtrack."
22 years ago, on a late January day, I finished reading the last chapter of Gabriel García Márquez´s Cien años de soledad. I was living in St. Paul, Minnesota, and it was bleak and white and snowy outside. I was listening to Peter Gabriel´s So album, and the song "Mercy Street" was playing as I read the last paragraphs of the novel. As a consequence, whenever I hear that song, even these many, many years later, I am thrust back into the dissolution of the world at the end of that novel, despite the fact that the song and novel bear only a distant thematic relation – perhaps something on the axis of dreaming and perception and subjectivity.
What I´m listening to right now.
Peter Gabriel´s "Mercy Street," in point of fact, is dedicated to the poet Anne Sexton, and treats some aspects of her biography. Here are the lyrics.
looking down on empty streets, all she can see are the dreams all made solid are the dreams all made real all of the buildings, all of those cars were once just a dream in somebody's head she pictures the broken glass, she pictures the steam she pictures a soul with no leak at the seam let's take the boat out… …wait until darkness let's take the boat out… …wait until darkness comes nowhere in the corridors of pale green and grey nowhere in the suburbs in the cold light of day there in the midst of it so alive and alone words support like bone dreaming of Mercy Street wear your inside out dreaming of mercy in your daddy's arms again dreaming of mercy st. …swear they moved that sign dreaming of mercy in your daddy's arms pulling out the papers from the drawers that slide smooth tugging at the darkness, word upon word confessing all the secret things in the warm velvet box to the priest – he's the doctor he can handle the shocks dreaming of the tenderness – the tremble in the hips of kissing Mary's lips dreaming of Mercy Street wear your insides out dreaming of mercy in your daddy's arms again dreaming of mercy st. …swear they moved that sign looking for mercy in your daddy's arms mercy, mercy, looking for mercy mercy, mercy, looking for mercy Anne, with her father is out in the boat riding the water riding the waves on the sea.
바지락 [ba-ji-rak] is a small clam. Koreans love seafood, and I’ve been getting adventurous with the instant-foods aisle in the supermarket (see e.g. my recent post on nurungji). So I bought some ramen-looking stuff (that also claims to be lo-calorie and not fried – “notfrying” in English on the label) that was called 바지락. Last night, when I opened the package, I was surprised to find some actual vacuum-packed clams! And it cooked up pretty delicious.
Here’s a tear-down (i.e. pictures).
I’m not going to make any assertions or assumptions about healthfulness – I’m sure it’s packed with preservatives and MSG and who knows what else. But it was nevertheless pretty tasty.
The blogger IOZ is such a talented writer that I enjoy reading what he writes even when I don't necessarily agree with the sentiment. In a recent, broader discussion of Obama's rhetorical style and the recent State of the Union Speech, he says, "What, after all, is authenticity but the habituation of the self to its own autobiographical invention?"
That's such a brilliant, memorable line. It's going on my list of favorite quotes, thusly decontextualized.
My student Jeongjae wrote this as a speech about a trip to an imaginary place. I like it. He’s an interesting student. His writing is unedited, below – I have corrected nothing. Not perfect, of course, but I think for a 6th grader he does pretty well.
I went to an opposite world. It looked complicated, funny and horrible, because everything in the world was opposite to Earth.
I will introduce my experience in an opposite world. First, it was funny. A mouse was giving pain to a cat like Tom& Jerry and penguin was walking in a desert and flying through the air. Second, it was good for students. The students were teaching teachers and giving a lot of homework.
teachers were crying because of a lot of homework, but every teachers studied hard. Third, it was good for kids. Every animation chracter and game chracter was living with people and the animals were walking like people. The greatest thing is the president was Pororo, every citizen liked the president. Finally, it was good for everyone. All things were free and they didn’t have war, so an opposite world’s citizen liked to live in this world.
There’s not much in the way of Dakota-Lakota language material on the internet. Dakota and Lakota are two closely-related dialects of the Sioux Native American language. Somewhat confusingly, the Lakota dialect is what is spoken in the Dakotas, while the Dakota dialect is spoken in Minnesota and Manitoba.
I studied the Dakota language while living in Minneapolis in the early 1990’s, during one of (one of ?) my “strange languages” phases. I really like the language. As an “active” speaker I can’t do much with, but I can still recognize verb conjugations and some basic vocabulary when I see it or hear it (not that that happens much). During my Lunar New Year time off I was surfing the internet looking for random things, and I took a moment to wonder if anyone, anywhere, had posted some Dakota Language poetry.
The below is the only thing I found in that vein. It was written by someone named John Hunt Peacock, Jr., a few years ago. He has been learning Dakota as a way to get in touch with his own cultural roots. Finding written materials in the language is hard – there are only a few thousand speakers in the world. He learned his language from the Dakota Bible and other Christian materials in the language, but he feels ambivalent about Christianity.
The poem is quite brutal in its assessment of the Christian legacy provided by the European Americans. He is both glad there is a Dakota language Bible, and bitter about the fact that that Bible was used to justify the mistreatment and dispossession of his people (“the cross of the Dakota culture’s crucifixion,” he writes). He asks how he could possibly be Christian.
TOKED CHRIST TAWOKEYE HEMACA OWAKIHI HWO?
Miye ca wowinape un wati, wowapi ska akan, Iyuieskapi topa dena — Dakota Wowapi Wakan Kin, Wocekiye Ikceka Wowapi Kin, Mahpiya Oicimani Yapi Kin, Sina Sapa Wowinwange — icipahyapi okatanpi wan Dakota wicohan yapi, Dakota iapi kin nipi, wotanin waste dena kapi. Wowapi woyakapi, toked wakiye sni, kais wawihingyapi sica, caje un econpi, Miye ca, wicoie ed otokahe ekta wicoie heca, Wan iye qa iyohi Dakota wicoie waste!
HOW COULD I BE A CHRISTIAN?
To me, living in exile on this white page, these four translations — the Dakota Bible, Book of Common prayer, “Pilgrim’s Progress”, and Catholic Catechism — once the cross of Dakota culture’s crucifixion, have become the gospel of the resurrected Dakota language. I don’t care what these books say or mean, or what atrocities are stll committed in their name. To me, in the beginning was the word, and the word, each and every Dakota word, was good!
I don’t know who this image should be attributed to – I found it here (a photographer’s blog, who in turn attributes it to this website). It’s pretty cool, though.
I made home-made tortillas again today, using the masa harina my mom mailed me from Australia – I like that masa basically keeps forever in a well-sealed container. Unlike most “foreign foods,” Mexican-style masa harina isn’t to be found in even the most obscure Korean specialty store, because of two contradictory facts: a) there’s no market for corn flour, and b) masa harina is viewed by the government as nothing different than corn-meal (which is easily found), but corn-meal is a “raw food product” and therefore require a domestic manufacturer – which would require a market see a).
Anyway, made-in-the-USA masa harina can be bought in Queensland, Australia, food stores, and so my mother mailed me some after I visited her last year (it was about one year ago this week, in fact).
I press the tortillas flat with a plate, using some ziploc baggies as a non-stick surface. Then I cook them in a heated frying pan with no oil. They’re pure corn flour. Much healthier than store-bought ones.
It’s possible to buy frozen, US store-style tortillas in places like Costco, here, but I really don’t like those. Fresh, warm, home-made tortillas are awesome. I can’t make folded tortillas (i.e. tacos) with them, because, being hand-pressed, they’re a little too fat and brittle for that. Actually, they’re almost more like Central American pupusas. I put cheese or beans or rice or mushrooms on them. They’re delicious.
The below is apparently a very famous poem in Korea. I find it notable that the author was imprisoned and tortured by the dictatorship in the 1960’s.
귀천 / 천상병 나 하늘로 돌아가리라. 새벽빛 와 닿으면 스러지는 이슬 더불어 손에 손을 잡고, 나 하늘로 돌아가리라. 노을빛 함께 단 둘이서 기슭에서 놀다가 구름 손짓하면은, 나 하늘로 돌아가리라. 아름다운 이 세상 소풍 끝내는 날, 가서, 아름다웠더라고 말하리라…..
Back to Heaven by Cheon Sang-Byeong I’ll go back to heaven again. Hand in hand with the dew that melts at a touch of the dawning day, I’ll go back to heaven again. With the dusk, together, just we two, at a sign from a cloud after playing on the slopes I’ll go back to heaven again. At the end of my outing to this beautiful world I’ll go back and say: It was beautiful. . . . (translation by someone who goes by “Brother Anthony“)
I took the picture below in April, 2010. Somewhere near Gwangju.
Today is 설날 (Lunar New Year, inappropriately called “Chinese New Year” in the West). So… “may your lunar year be as wonderful and exciting and productive as the solar one you started a few weeks ago!” I guess it all depends on the moon, right? I just can’t wait for the Mayan New Year. It’s supposed to be extra special, this year. Hehehe. Um. Just kidding.
I’m having a kind of boring day off. I’m so burned out on traveling places, lately. I’m just a dull homebody. It seems so cold and desolate outside, on the holiday. Like I woke up inside a dream, this morning. I made some pasta and have been watching movies and listening to music. What I’m listening to right now. oOoOO, “Burnout Eyes.” What a great name for a band. What a great name for a band.
This is reminiscence (which is to say, I don’t mean a trip up to North Korea, a half-hour drive from here).
Lately, for some reason, I keep thinking of camping trips to northern Minnesota. It was an old, old tradition among my certain circle of friends, and camping trips to northern Minnesota and Upper Michigan were also a significant aspect of Michelle’s and my relationship.
In a related vein, I ran across a very old and somewhat embarrassing picture of me, possibly from the late 1980’s or early 90’s, standing in a campfire somewhere close to Hibbing, I would guess. It’s pretty funny – I reckon I was trying to stomp out the embers and was caught candidly. Dig the long hair.
Why do I post these things? Let’s just call it the spirit of full disclosure…
So, sometimes when we drove to Hibbing or Duluth or the UP, we’d stop and camp at Banning State Park, which is just off I-35, pert’ near Sandstone, along the kettle river.
What I’m listening to right now (nice segue, huh?).
Pert Near Sandstone, “Save Me.”
This might be called Minnesota bluegrass. An interesting genre.
