Tankaceratops sacrisonorum

Talk about wild life!  This herbivore lived right over the hill northwest of the Cave Hills buttes in my header at the moment; albeit his family probably ate the lush jungle plants 65.5 million years ago.  Today they have all gone to oil except for the fossil remains of  more dinosaurs than one can shake a stick at...while threatening the rattlesnakes of today.  How amazing and how good to have cousins that doggedly dig and come up with new bones with no names..until now!

A few years ago another dinosaur was named "Willo" for the rancher's wife on whose land it was found.  Now my own maiden name shares a little of that glory.

 I first read about it in my home town newspaper, Nation's Center News.  Google directed me to a few more sites worth exploring.

" This skull and its accompanying partial skeleton were discovered and collected nearly a decade ago by Stan and Steve Sacrison, respectively of Buffalo and Bison, South Dakota, in the Hell Creek Formation of Harding County. These twin brothers have distinguished themselves over the years in their paleontological discoveries that include three Tyrannosaurus rex skeletons. One of these, "STAN," is the second most complete T. rex skeleton ever discovered.

Implications of this discovery point to concerns held by scientists regarding the proposed route of the Keystone XL pipeline, which crosses Montana and South Dakota near other important paleontological sites."

The genus Tatankaceratops is derived from "Tatanka," the Lakota name for the American Bison (Bison bison), in reference to a similarity in size between the two animals. The name also intends to honor the Lakota Sioux Tribe who inhabited the region. The Latin "ceratops," means "horn face," and is commonly included in the names of creatures in this category. The species name, sacrisonorum, is a tip of the hat to Stan and Steve Sacrison. The new specimen, # BHI6226, is reposited at Black Hills Institute, Hill City, South Dakota."

Wildlife Update

Sometimes the wild life is my own.  I have spent way too much time with the Microsoft help folks.  Some of my problems were solved.  Every time I tried to work on my biography of Liz, MS Word would crash and give me a little note that I am working on an illlegal copy of the software.  Having purchased Windows 7 and MS Office Home and Student, I knew it was not illegal.

The crashing has been resolved and the note about the illegal software has blessedly gone away.  Along with all of that I have lost my Office Outlook email program, every contact, and all of my saved files.  I will not have a crash of my own over any of it.  Maybe staying off of email for a while will not be all that bad.  Yes, I can get my email as I access Cox Webmail with my old address.

Our babies, the little bunnies in the flower pot and the wood ducklings are all out of their nests.  Mother wood duck flew over us last night so she must have the three ducklings hidden away somewhere nearby.  All of them are out of my control and it is a bit of a relief to not have to protect the cotton tails from our frequent downpours.  Mother Wood Duck hatched out three little ducklings in the hole in our front yard tree again.

He Who Must Be Obeyed is about done with the insulation on the sauna.  We both look at all the wonderful cedar and will be glad when it is on the walls so we can get the full aroma of it.  My book nears completion.
                              Live is Good.

Mid-Town Wild Life

It is a happy event to observe a little bit of nature.  This time it is in my planter in the roots of my flowers.  I was first made aware of it when I was watering the pots along the house wall in the front yard.  My habit is to fill the pots to nearly brimming;  in the midst of holding the hose, up from the ground in the middle of the planter came four or five black little blind jumpers.  At first I thought they were rats and I was a little taken aback and horrified.

Not rats at all; they are baby bunnies so young their eyes are not open yet.

The little mother has dug a deep hole and lined it with grass.  I have never seen her near it, but she must feed them as they are growing.  I think it is clever of her to jump up into the planter to create her nursery.  It makes watering the flowers a little tricky.

A small thing, perhaps, but heart warming for this soul who longs for a walk in a pasture again.

Summer Swimmers

Summer Swimmers.

Cencus 2010

This household sent in the census letter, saving a worker to have to knock at the door and gather our information.  How many?  What ethnicity?  Simple form, quick answers.

Yesterday a wee small elderly gentleman saw our back gate open;  he parked to ask the man of the house some information on the neighbors who were never home, or at any rate, never answered his knock.  Five minutes later his small economy vehicle was parked and running in the driveway again.  This time he saw my front door open and came to ask some clarification questions of me.  House numbers were messing with his head as were skin colors and the concept of north, south, west and east.  Right and left are always so confusing.  From where you are standing or where you are looking, or just what.  West of China is more than a metaphor on our street as one of our sweet neighbors is named China.

He knocked on the door once more.  I was in my little writing nook nearby.  This time he would like our names and phone number so he could call with questions; which he did once.  This time he was trying to juggle papers, writing pads, manila envelopes in mid air with a pen in the other hand.  I asked him in, as I could easily tell that he was...all in.

The chair I motioned him into was a relief to him.  He clearly was not comfortable in breaking a rule.  He was 80, and frail, a little muddled, lived not a mile from us, had raised not only his own kids but other's kids, didn't have a retirement fund, had to work, found people uncooperative and indifferent in his quest.  If they only knew what kind of money it meant to the city to have their presence counted by the Federal Government maybe they would care. I got a dollar figure and he said it ran into the millions.

I did not ask the wee frail gentleman his name.  From my observation, I think it was American Hero.

Generations of Mothers

Do you see that pouty little child?  That is me surrounded by generations of mothers, my own, my grandmother, and her mother, my great grandmother, who out of kindness and motherliness held my little hand through this ordeal.

My own grandmother looks as annoyed by the event as I do.  Only my mother and my great grandmother seem to be pleased with our four generation accomplishment.  We are full Finns all, speak in that whispering sing-song language while breathing in or out.  There is no other sound like it.  I long to be fluent in it.

My grandmother was the eldest of her family of twelve, six brothers, six sisters.  All my heroes were cowboys and women of great strength and worthy of the admiration I have for them.

Happy Mother's Day to my own group of four generations of mothers including  four great grand babies about to welcome a fifth.  I am the oldest of this new group of mothers.

Junk in the Trunk

Our Holy Cross women's circles had a unique "garage sale" this morning.  The cars circled around in the chruch parking lot with their noses out and trunks in.  In each of the trunks was a varied assortment of garage sale items.  We must have numbered 15 or more cars.  A couple of tabled items filled in the circle.  We had a wonderful morning of visiting and eating cookies from the bake sale table.

 One fellow had a birthday and tied a helium balloon on each trunk lid.  It was one great big social with buying and selling for the benefit of the woman's circles.    I found some wonderful things I could not live without, and people sold things they couldn't live with.  When it was over, the trunk lids were shut, anything left on the tables was cleared off with whatever a person could fit into a plastic bag for a dollar.

What a sweet idea.  Nine to noon and we were done.

Yoiking

The charming and adventuresome husband of a niece is on a PhD adventure in Greenland.  Brant is in the final stages of his PhD program in Science Education at the University of Minnesota.  It is fun to join the group through the internet and see where they are, listen to one of the group give an oral update, and learn a lot.  A few days ago, I sent him a little note about the Sami custom of yoiking. Today I find a segment on the Sami on that 2008  web site

My first encounter with it was at FinnFest 2006 in Astoria.  These festivals include people that present research papers and one that a cousin and I attended was about yoiking.  It was one of those experiences that simply knock your socks off.  Additionally, this dear cousin yoiked a family gathering as a meal grace.  Her haunting yoik that welcomed our ancestors and honored the event was magnificent.  As the site states, "It is possible to yoik dead relatives, forgotten places and dramatic events, to make sure they do not disappear from the collective memory bank."

When one has the blessed gift of falling asleep holding hands with the one you  love, what is to complain about?  I think about Brant's sweet little wife, mother of three small children, letting go of her strong hand holder for so many weeks.  May God bless her for her generosity.

Happy to be Alive

I marvel at how thrilling it is to enjoy the arrival of warm weather and see the flowering bulbs and trees, even the grass looks greener in my own yard.  I am thankful that I live in a place that enjoys the seasons as they return.  My pear is blooming and if we don't get a freeze we will have pears to can again.  I am so happy to be experiencing another spring.  I told my primary care physician today that we had a wonderful winter.  We did, I worked on my book and He Who.... memorized Spanish words and worked at playing the guitar.

The three lilacs in large containers are showing purple even if the back yard rabbit had a few munches on the lower stems.  It was the never ending snow that prompted him to eat the bittersweet stems right down to the ground.  I have high hopes that they will grow back with renewed vigor.  Surely their root systems are hardy after these years.

And the pool is filling after weeks of hard long labor.  A son came to help with the concrete wall repair.  It will take a couple of days to fill it.  Life is good.

They Have Sisu

The scene on the header leads your eye down the road  to my grandparent's homestead.  The butte in the horizon is Liisa Butte, just west of the homeplace.  Early springs found my grandma, aunts and mother taking me to find the first of the crocus on the northern side of the hill.  A little later, cousins faster, bigger, much braver and  advernturesome hunted rattlesnakes on it.    Thanks for the photo!

This is truely a thin place that Marcus Borg speaks of;  those places with a particular spirituality, where God is near,  the air is full of a poignant special scent, the Meadow Larks call, and your heart nearly bursts for the love of it all.

Rattlesnake Nightmares

 I had rattlesnake nightmares for years after I moved away from  my childhood home.  The reality of the dangers that faced barefooted children as they invented ways to spend summer school vacations came to mind again when a cousin emailed a story of his experiences on my grandparents sheep ranch.

Thanks for the snake pictures. They remind me of the "snake hunts" we had at the Tuovinen place in the 1940s. We hunted the dens on Sheep Mountain and Liisa Butte in the spring when the rattlers were coming out and in the fall when they were returning to the winter dens. I regret that we didn't take more pictures but on a good day we would get anywhere from a few rattlers to close to or more than 100 of them. In more recent years I did get a couple good snake pictures. Roger always kept track of where the good dens were and let us know when the snakes were active. The snakes seemed to use the same dens year after year but I suppose we never did find all of their dens. We drove nails into sticks made from small trees, usually chokecherries, and bent the nails over to use them as rakes to rake the snakes from the den areas. A couple of us would "sling" them down the hill and a couple others would kill them with sticks as they landed after flying through the air. It was advisable to stay awake when the snakes were being thrown down the hills so as not to get tangled up with them! It is interesting that, for some reason, only a few bull snakes would den up with the rattlers.
After the rattlers left the dens they would scatter over the surrounding prairie. I recall killing up to 20 of them in a day when lambing for Rudy and Mabel Mick in the Sheep Mountain Area. The sheep would let you know if a rattler was in the area as they would split around the snake and leave plenty of room. It was interesting that some horses were very frightened of snakes and others were not. I recall that a horse of Lahti's was bit in the nose two or three times - the fang marks were quite visible. The nose swelled up to about twice the normal size and it was difficult for the horse to eat for quite a while but it did usually did survive. I was using a small white horse that had respect for the snakes and managed to evade them, sometimes very quickly! When spending all day in the saddle I used to alternate one leg and then the other around the saddle horn. There is little or no chance of staying aboard when the horse moved quickly and I ended up on the ground more than several times as a result. A State snake hunter named Jackley used traps in the den areas and caught many rattlers with his method. The snakes would push a cellophane - covered entrance aside to get in but were unable to get out.

It reminds me of when we talked Aunt Jennie Tuovinen into cooking rattlesnakes for us (Roger Kuoppala and I). We, of course, had to prepare them for cooking. They actually didn't taste bad if a person could forget what one was eating. As I recall she fried them and the meat was light colored and tasted something like chicken. Also we saved the skins and tanned them to put over belts for effect. We used to get the rattlesnakes in the spring and fall when they were denning or coming out of the dens. On good? days we would get from 50 to 100 rattlers along with a few bull snakes which apparently denned with the rattlers. I recall on one of our trips to Sheep Mountain Uncle John Tuovinen was herding sheep in the area and when a rattler started into a hole Uncle John grabbed it and pulled it out. We thought that was either very brave or simply a not very intelligent thing to do.

This is a very abbreviated summary of some of my snake hunting adventures,

Vine Deloria, Jr.

"When asked by an anthropologist what the Indians called America before the white man came, an Indian said simply, "Ours." –Vine Deloria, Jr

Vine Deloria, Jr. (born 1933-2005) is known as a revolutionary thinker who speaks out against the decadence of U.S. culture and insists that young Native Americans receive traditional teachings before exposing themselves to the philosophies of the dominant Euro-American culture.

His Nationality is Standing Rock Sioux, American.  He was born in Martin, SD to Vine Sr. (1901-1990) who studied English and Christian theology and became an Episcopal archdeacon and missionary on the Standing Rock.

Deloria, Jr. earned a degree in general science from Iowa State University, then served with the Marines, and in 1963 earned a theology degree from the Lutheran School of Theology in Rock Island, Illinois.  He earned a law degree from the Univ. of Colorado in 1970.

Custer Died For Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto, New York: Macmillan, 1969, remains one of the most significant non-fiction books written by a Native American. The book was noteworthy at the time for its relevance to the American Indian Movement that was in its infancy.

White Gloves

I recall with a tinge of fondness,  the hat and white glove days of my late teens.  Later, much later, I bought white gloves at every garage sale if they were out on a table.  Actually, I had quite a nice little collection of them.  On Tuesday they were nearly all put to good use and they will be again when I start digitizing my father's slides from the 50's and 60's.

We have obtained the services of a sweet friend for a few hours every other week to help us at home.  As we had cleaned so well prior to the photography session, I had Tutu clean the three chandeliers in this very small house.  Three!  Many years ago my compulsive-shopper mate found an electric company going out of business, apparently  the fixture sale was irresistible.  I was very annoyed about that to tell the truth...thinking about the old saying about the purse and the pig's ear.  He recalls moving them around and around the house after he got them wired in...just to satisfy my home decorating eye.  That stopped me from complaining,  I could see that that was no easy task, even if he was perhaps 25 years younger then.

The three of us, He Who...Tutu, and me-self, were thrilled over the cleaning results.

Wanting to do things right, I discovered on the internet the correct way to clean crystals:   

The White Glove Method.

This method does not require removing crystal.

Prepare a cleaning solution of one part isopropyl alcohol to three parts distilled water. Put it in a spray bottle.  (Oops, I used only two parts water)

Wear white cotton gloves. Spray one glove with the above solution and keep one dry. Caress the crystal with the damp glove and wipe it immediately with the dry glove. This can be fun if you love crystal!

IMPORTANT: Do not use packaged cleaning fluids under any circumstances, even if they claim to be for crystal. They may contain ammonia or other chemicals that will eventually degrade the frame finish. The crystal cleaning methods described here are the only methods Schonbek supports.

Wonders Never Cease

Our week was busy, delightful, surprising and exhausting.  It actually started on the previous Friday with a thorough house cleaning that took three days,  many cleaning clothes, and a fair amount of Windex glass cleaner.

Monday after lunch a renouned photographer and his crew of nine came in and set up lighting, arranged pleasing backgrounds, and kept "He Who is Amazing" powdered and proper.  The house and "He Who.." .will perhaps be in a brochure for a national elder assistance at home company.  They had five people to choose from.  They moved or rearranged a goodly bunch of our collected 'stuff.'  I might add they put it all back in its proper place.  It was enjoyable and exhausting for all of us.  "This will be fun," David, the photographer told us.  He was right about that.

The Amazing One's  photo is in a book called "America at Home."  He is the fourth one down under Lifestyles. This excellent photographer had two pictures in the book.  Little did we know that the image in the back porch had made the book's selection, until a couple of weeks ago, when there was a knock on the door.  We opened it to find David, with the book, and such a deal for my man.

A Beautiful Son

This morning we attended the Mass of Christian Burial for my friend's son, Father Dan.  He was the same age as our own sons, taken down with an eight year battle with cancer.  He lives on, in memories, more alive than last month, last week.  He was loved.

This Lutheran loves Liturgy.  We experienced it in its most glorious worship.  It was good to go back to the liturgy I learned as a child and young person.  The First Reading, the Responsive Psalm, the Second Reading, led by nephews. The Gospel read and the Homily given by a local Priest who went to seminary with Fr. Dan.

The chancel was filled with two Archbishops, and what looked to be a hundred Priests all in white. The Chamber Singers, who he sang with at the Seminary at the College of St. Thomas in St. Paul, MN were here to sing him home in clear lovely accapella.

The faithful men in white robes and albs lined the way to the hearse singing again in Latin; an honor guard for one of their own.

Whirling Dervish Again

How could I have gone so long without a word here?   I spend time working on my book project, going to church with the added Lenten studies and services, and hoping I don't throw a clot waiting for the Coumadin. My days and weeks have been ones of dizziness and attempted accomplishment. I pushed for a solution and was answered by a profound quote by my cardiac surgeon, "I have to think." 

We have found the Olympic coverage by NBC better than in past years.  Maybe it is just that we have more time for it at this stage in life.  Two deaths marked its days in Vancouver as well as the medalists.

Most of my time is centered on  research and writing.  It is good to have a cousin who is close in age to me with a good memory, and is a deep mine of information.  Today's phone call from him was a gift.

I find that Eve was not all to blame for the Fall of Mankind.  Adam should have come to her aid and crushed the serpent's head before he became beguiling.  But no, he just stood beside her and let it happen.  And why didn't he tempt Adam instead?  Because Eve mattered more.  I find the whole episode irritating and unjust.

St. Valentine's Day

Just as it often was when I was small, we are having a beautiful snowfall on Valentine's Day.

I never tire of the snow, nor the cold.  But I am spared the driveway and sidewalk clean up.

I feel almost pampered, not having to slide around on the ice that is so dangerous to us that are not real steady in the best of conditions.

"Put your arms around my neck," I am told as I attempt to get my feet on the ground as I exit the pick-up.  People at church must find it strange.  But then, other than the children, I am the shortest person at the 5:30 Saturday evening service.

Be My Valentine.

Snow and Paper Whites

Not only is the snow beautiful outside; but so are the Paper Whites a dear daughter-in-law gave us for Christmas.  I moved them closer to the west window hoping to keep them cool and blooming longer.

Not the best place to photograph them and I knew that.  White drapes were not much better with the white on white effect.

Five of the seven African Violets are brave bloomers. It doesn't take very much to make me happy.

We have snowfall the past two days and again last night.  It keeps the world white and beautiful and keeps He Who MBO plowing and shoveling.

February 5th Snowfall

So Softly, So Silently, So Beautiful.

Snow on Snow, Snow on Snow, In the Bleak Mid-Winter.

That Eyeglass Thing

We have all been there, trying on a newly ordered pair of eyeglasses, with the chart of deminishing lettering at the top and becoming larger as you read on down the card.  Have you ever, really read that card?  I did when I got new glasses after the cataract surgeries.

I was in for a real surprise and a new learning adventure.  It was an Epiphany for the season, we are in the fifth or sixth week of Epiphany, I think.  I actually read that card from top to bottom and I am not talking about the new glasses correction; I am talking about the words on the card...the meaning of those words.  It was an exacting rule as what size font to use in writing books with a note or two on shoulds and shouldn'ts.

The optometrist fitting my glasses copied the card for me.  As is my usual manner of routine, I cleaned out my purse and put that paper where I would need it to check against my work at hand. It is called "Standard Test Types."

Here is a little list:  These font sizes are limited to what is available here.

4 point   Small Bible
51/2 point Newspaper  Sports and Market
7 point   Newspaper   Columns
10 point  Text Books  Should be printed on dull finished paper.
11 point   Books
12 point   Books Sit with back to the light.
18 point  Children's Books ...excessive reading forbidden.