River House Creatures, Part Two

Swimming at River House, circa 1958 (VAL photo)

Dear George,

I wrote recently about some of the animals that inhabited our Menominee river property. The river, of course, contained a whole different population. As much as we relished swimming in the summertime, conditions weren’t idyllic. The bottom was mushy, there were sticks and jagged stones, and slimy seaweed clung to us as we waded from waist-high to chest-high depths. There was even an element of felt danger because of the many living beings that inhabited the river. Here are some of the wild things that lived there:

CRAYFISH

Our crayfish looked like tiny lobsters, and they lived in holes that they dug in the river floor. We’d watch out for them as we stepped off the bank to enter the water. Other times we would try to capture them by trapping them under a cup or small pail before they darted into their domiciles. Crayfish would shed their claws, and we would scoop these up and collect them.

CLAMS

Clamshells were still more desirable as collectible. You could peek inside when the clam still lived there, then return it to the water. Vacated clamshells were handy for various arts and crafts projects, e.g., when painted as Xmas tree ornaments.

BLOODSUCKERS

Bloodsuckers had a mythical status in our household. The shallow water was home to hundreds of these little monsters who attached themselves in the spaces between our toes and feasted on our blood. You didn’t feel them while in the water, and we learned to inspect our feet and legs as soon as we got out. If they’d been on you for a while, they would have burrowed into your skin, so you’d have to pull them off, leaving a little indentation of oozing blood. We’d throw the bloodsuckers into the deep grass in the birch tree grove, figuring that that would be the end of them.

WATERBUGS

The water’s surface was inhabited by various insects, the most entertaining being the waterbugs. These little black beasties could scoot around practically at the speed of sound, zigging and zagging this way and that. Though they lived in big colonies, they were so quick it was nearly impossible to catch them. We didn’t mind sharing the water with the waterbugs since they seemed harmless enough.

TURTLES

We had both land turtles and water turtles at river house. The turtles that lived in the river were larger and scarier. You would see them at dusk swimming along with only their snouts above water. Or sometimes they would be sunning themselves, perched atop a deadhead. Rightly or wrongly we imagined some of them to be snapping turtles, and we would frighten one another by making up scary fantasies as we entered the water. One year Steven shot a huge turtle in the neck with his bow and arrow from the rowboat, then had to drag it ashore to put it out of its misery. We all, including Steve, found the experience terrible.

MINNOWS

Steve was the family fisherman, though he only became fully serious about it when he and Margie moved to Seattle. We’d do a little fishing on the Menominee, catching an occasional perch or crappie. We’d always see schools of minnows near the shore, and sometimes we’d gather them up in a big pail. Since those early days the Menominee River has been cleaned up and has become a popular destination for serious fishermen. According to Internet accounts, it’s an excellent location for smallmouth bass, as well as northern pike, walleyes, and brown trout. Below the dam you can catch lake sturgeon, whitefish, steelheads, and salmon.

CICADAS

A totally mysterious and remarkable event occurred every August on the river’s bank. We’d come out one day and the tall grass along the shore would be covered with the exterior shells of cicadas who had shed their skins and flown off to enjoy a new life phase. The shells were perfect, hollow replicas of the original bugs, and we would carefully pick them off the weeds and put them in a box to keep for eternity.

MUD PUPPIES

I know we have mudpuppies in the river because I saw one once. Katja came to visit for the first time over Xmas vacation in 1957. The river was frozen solid, and we walked across to Pig Island. About halfway across we looked down through the crystal clear ice, and we could see a mud puppy lying motionless on the river floor. It looked like a prehistoric being. Katja thought it was just one more amazing thing about Menominee.

DRAGONFLIES.

There were bugs everywhere you went at river house, but the grandest of all were the dragonflies. You would see them most frequently soaring along a foot or two above the water in the river. We knew that they wouldn’t bite, and we’d let them land and rest on our heads or forearms when we were out in the rowboat.

HERONS

The river was home to many bird species – ducks, geese, even seagulls. The most majestic of all, though, were the herons. We would see them most frequently when we rowed across the river and entered the channel between Pig Island and its adjacent neighbor. This was a quiet, isolated spot filled with water lilies and ancient tree stumps. The herons nested there, and we would virtually always see one when we entered this secret space.

So what do I think about this some sixty years later? I don’t think we children fully appreciated the remarkable place in which we lived. It was not only beautiful, but it was a constant source of education and entertainment. We were lucky kids to have lived there.

Love,

Dave

G-Mail Comments

-Vicki L (11-18): Hi David, I had lots of feelings followed by some epiphanies after reading your account of the creatures of the riverbank and of the river. This was partly because the pictures and remembrances brought to life so many rich, vibrant memories. Thank you for that. Sometimes I dub your blog "The Function of Language and Narrative In The Development of Affect Regulation". I won't bore you with the details.....just to say how lovely and important your reminiscences have been for me. Love, Vicki

-Donna D (11-16): david, i''ll bet that river water and its creatures are why you're so healthy today! donna

River House Creatures

Our house on Riverside Boulevard (VAL photo)

Dear George,

Growing up on the Menominee River out in the country, we were a lot closer to nature than we’ve ever been since. Our family property was home to numerous animals, birds, reptiles, and insects who were significant parts of our lives. Here are a few of them:

CHIPMUNKS

Our mother kept a hanging bird-feeding station outside our dining room window which she restocked regularly. Because the birds would spill lots of the seeds on the ground, the feeding station was also of great interest to the chipmunks who lived under our house. They would scurry back and forth and gather up their food stocks. They reminded us of characters in Walt Disney’s Bambi.

SQUIRRELS

Our yard had a bunch of hardwood and evergeen trees, and squirrel families built their nests high in the maples and oaks. Like the chipmunks, they enjoyed the bird-feeding station, as well as the plentiful supply of acorns that fell to the ground in the fall. My parents welcomed the grey squirrels, but the red squirrels, for reasons I no longer remember, were considered an undesirable nuisance. When we became teenagers, we were allowed to go out and shoot them with the .22 rifle (or, more accurately, shoot at them).

BATS

Country homes are privy to wild visitors, and bats were common guests in our house. Steve and I were given the job of disposing of them. The living room had a high arched ceiling, but when the bats swooped low enough we would swing at them with a broom. They were fast and guided by radar, so it would take numerous passes, but eventually we would knock the bats out of the air. Later we discovered that a frying pan was a more lethal instrument, and, though harder to hit the flying bats, it effectively disposed of them when we finally were successful.

PINE SNAKES

Pine snakes lived under our house, perhaps drawn to the Norway pines in the front yard. These were huge snakes, four to six feet in length, and it was always exciting and scary when we discovered one that had ventured from its den onto the front lawn. One evil thing I did as a child was to take the carcass of a huge dead pine snake that I’d found and put it under the sheets on Steven’s bed. Justice was served when I got into bed the next night and suddenly felt the snake lying next to me.

PORCUPINES

Porcupines lived on our property, though we rarely saw them. The exceptions occurred when our Irish setter Mike would trap one in the corner of our house near Vicki’s bedroom door. We regarded Mike as a highly intelligent dog, but porcupines were his Achille’s heel, and he would wind up with a snoutful of quills most every year. My father would get him in the car, and we would rush off to Dr. Seidl to have the quills extracted. Dr. Seidl always remarked that porcupine quills were the worst thing that happened to dogs in Menominee. Porcupines were much more common and visible at Jean Worth’s hunting camp at Cedar River. Katja was shocked on an early visit to Menominee when one of my cronies shot a porcupine high up in a pine tree. A suburban Philadelphian, she concluded that we were savages. But such is life in the north woods.

DEER

Menominee County was deer country, but we would only see a white-tailed deer on our property once a year or less. The most dramatic occasion was when an adult deer fell through the soft ice in mid-river in front of our house one spring afternoon. My dad, Dick Sawyer, and Mike O’Hara tried to rescue it by pushing our rowboat over the ice to reach the flailing animal. However, the deer sank below the water before the rescuers could reach it. Everyone was very sad.

OTTERS

We discovered in our teen years that otter families made their homes in the river bank along our property. A man in town paid for their skins, and Steven became a dedicated trapper, employing our younger brother Peter as an assistant. I don’t think Steve got rich from the otter skins, but he did supplement his weekly earnings from the drugstore. Our sister Vicki was totally disgusted.

The river, of course, was home to its own bestiary. I’ll say something about that on another occasion.

Love,

Dave

G-Mail Comments

-Phyllis SS (11-13): Dave. I love, love otters. How could that man buy them. What on earth would he do with their skins (a rhetorical question only - I don't want to know). I am in total agreement with your sister. Phyllis

Dead Leaves, Almost-Dead Self

Dear George

I took our sheepdogs Mike and Duffy to Parker Woods in Northside the other day to take some photos of dead leaves in the November forest. The dogs were enthusiastic about being out on a sunny cool day, but they do get puzzled by the constant stops and starts of photo-taking. Duffy stays right at my heels when I step off the path to take a picture, but Mike just sits down and waits for me. Sometimes he winds up so far back that I lose sight of him altogether which is scary. As I moved in to take a shot of a picturesque fallen tree, I walked straight into a broken branch that had a pointed end as sharp as a dagger. The jagged end of the branch struck me right in the front of my neck where I fancied my jugular vein to be. The sudden sharp pricking hurt and shocked me. I put my hand up to my throat to see if blood was pouring forth (it wasn’t), then fantasized about how I would need to run for help to try to save my life. I felt my neck again – still no blood. After four or five more checks, I decided I wasn’t going to die after all. So I went back to taking photos of dead leaves. Dead leaves, I concluded, a lot more enjoyable than dead humans. Here are some of the photos I wound up with.

Love,

Dave

G-Mail Comments

-Linda C (11-17): david , that is horrible and now when katya really needs you to help her. i too would have been sure my jugular vein was punctured, and how do you tie that off, just press your hand to it and run, or cell phone. i am so glad that you were able to soothe yourself into thinking the most important vein in your body was ok. i however, would have wondered if perhaps a little tiny prick was still in there filled in by the tree needle and soon it would come out and the bleeding might start. i would have taken my self right down to the er to get an mri immediately, after all, what is my insurance for. well , hope that didn't start you to worry again, i am sure you are just fine, what if a tiny particle of wood got into the vein, what would happen then. how long do you think you would live then. bad things happen when you take those dogs out to the woods. as K says i know that bad things happen to good people but i hate it when good things happen to bad people

-Phyllis SS (11-12): Dave, I don't know - I think I disagree about leaves being more interesting than dead humans. Have you never seen the photos from the 19th century of people in their caskets? pss

-Ami G (11-10): You are getting awfully good at picture taking. These are pretty amazing!

America-Geddon: A Scary Horror Movie

Dear George,

With the recession having gobbled up a chunk of our retirement nest egg, it looks like I’ll have to start making some money. I’m not inclined to start teaching again, but I think Hollywood might be a good alternative. There’s a lot of cash to be had if you can write a blockbuster movie script. I never wrote a movie before, but I’ve gone to hundreds, so I have some ideas of how to approach it.

I’ve decided my best option is a fantasy horror movie -- something that will tap into the deepest fears of the American public. I have in mind an epic about the total collapse of American society, kind of like 2012 or Independence Day. Since the movie will be like a science fiction fantasy, I’ll start it off with a completely far-fetched event, i.e., the inauguration of America’s first black president. I’ll give the guy some goofy name – I’m thinking “Borax Obamarama”. I have in mind a character like Sidney Poitier in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner -- young, articulate, with a beautiful wife and a good basketball jump shot. Denzel Washington would be a good choice for the role. In this imaginary election Obamarama has eked out a narrow victory over Republican septagenarian, John McAged and his running mate, Sally Palebrain, ex-small town mayor and moose-hunter.

Obamarama’s election is lauded throughout the world and hailed by many as evidence of the end of racism in America. Quite to the contrary, however, Obamarama’s victory generates the most intense polarization in America since the reconstruction era and brings previously dormant, ugly attitudes to the fore.

After portraying the rock-and-roll style inauguration I’ll introduce the villains of the movie. I have in mind a “Gang of Three”. These have no resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead. The leader is John Bonehead, a congressman who persuades the Republican party to rename itself “The Party of No”, symbolizing its opposition to every policy initiative of the Obamarama administration. Bonehead’s gang uses filibusters to block all administration efforts to improve the disastrous economy, believing that with total financial collapse the frustrated voters will turn to the crackpot Republicans for relief. As a funny in-joke, I’ll have Bonehead come from a suburb of Cincinnati. After her and McAged’s election loss, Sally Palebrain quits her current job as governor of a wilderness state to make millions on the political lecture circuit. Though she can’t remember any newspapers she reads and has no credible ideas, the public loves her because she is like a wacky character on a sitcom. Aiding and abetting Bonehead and Palebrain, drug addict and right-wing media giant Rash Limberger convinces his audience of angry white males that Obamarama is really a Muslim who was born in Kenya, supports terrorist causes, and is turning America into a socialist state.

The noisy Gang of Three, with the backing of Faux News, is successful in whipping the electorate into such frenzy that reason and civility totally vanish from American politics. Reminiscent of fascist Germany, a southwestern state legislature decrees that all persons with brown skin and/or Mexican accents must carry identity papers or face imprisonment and exportation. Congress is paralyzed by the Republicans, and many ordinary white middle class people are swept up in a new social movement labeled the Teabag Party. Teabaggers want to “take our country back”, supposedly from the black terrorist Muslims who have stolen it from them. They hold meetings in Starbuck coffee shops, armed with AK-47’s, and their members spit on black congressmen and hurl epithets at gay politicians. One Teabagger proclaims she is no longer a witch; another makes anti-masturbation the centerpiece of her political platform.

In the midst of this political uproar, Obamarama struggles with massive problems stemming from the prior George W. Butthead administration, namely, a devastating recession and futile engagement in two unwinnable wars in the Middle East. Though he initially enjoys high popular support, that enthusiasm rapidly deteriorates as Obamarama fails to turn the economy around in his initial weeks in office. Here I think I’ll inject a comic element in the movie with a succession of aspiring goofy terrorists. One guy in an airplane tries to blow up his shoe; another sets off a bomb in his underpants. A third fill his car with fertilizer, and tries to ignite it with sparklers in Times Square. Despite the displays of ineptitude, mass anxiety reaches an all-time high, and randomly selected foreign men with dark skin are given life sentences in prison for daydreaming about terrorist activity.

The midterm election occurs, and unqualified crazy people across the nation are elected to office by the hordes. One Teabag spokesperson is quoted as being thrilled because the Republican dominance of Congress means total gridlock for the next two years. Sarah Palebrain teams up with extremist right-winger Jim DeMented of SC to begin a presidential campaign for 2012. Rash Limberger’s associate Grinn Breck proclaims that he is the direct emissary of God and the Teabaggers are God’s agents on earth. This chain of events, of course, just keeps getting worse and worse and builds to a climax where America’s very survival is on the brink. I’m just sort of stuck at this point about the movie’s ending. Nuclear holocaust is one possibility. Or a civil war. Or perhaps Obamarama does wind up producing miracles (though that seems like a pretty lame Hollywood ending). My biggest worry right now is that the script will be unmarketable. The whole plot line is so wildly bizarre that no reviewer will give it any credibility. Palebrain? Limberger? You can’t make a good horror movie if there’s no connection to reality whatsoever.

Love,

Dave

G-Mail Comments

-Kiera O (11-19): Dear Vicki and Dave, Vicki sent me some treasures from "letters to George" which I have just feasted upon. The critter spotlights, charming narrative, & photos of River house transported me for delightful and out-of time moments. As to the screenplay--BRILLIANT!--if you need someone to work on the theme music, let me know. love, Kiera

-Phyllis SS (10-11): Dave, I'll buy a ticket to see it - and the photo should start the movie. pss

Pumpkin Fever

Dear George,

Ever since I saw Pumpkin Circle, I’ve developed a strong emotional attachment to pumpkins. I’ve acquired an unknown number of ceramic, plastic, and wooden pumpkins which are sprinkled about my secret collection room, and, most notably, I’ve collected a huge paper ephemera collection of pumpkin images, from calendar portraits to napkins to postcards to Saturday Evening Post advertisements. Walking about Clifton this past weekend, I noticed that we seem to be the pumpkin capitol of the Midwest, with porches on every block sporting at least one and sometimes seven or eight carved or uncarved pumpkins. What a good opportunity for a photo gallery. So I’ve been busy at work. Here’s a sampling of our Clifton pumpkins, and I’ll be putting a larger batch on my Flickr site (www.flickr.com/photos/lundgrdc/) shortly. Happy Halloween week to all.

Love,

Dave

Mr. Sophisticate

Near-sighted Pumpkin Romances Teapot

Ready for Trick-or-Treating

Down and Out Pumpkin

Meanwhile at the Old Folks Home…

Quoth the Raven

Dejected Democrat on Nov. 3

This is My Kitty

Election Results? Oh Barf!

What Will Happen to My Babies?

We’re Pretty Happy Here at Tea Party Headquarters

Mr. Big

The Belles of the Ball

G-Mail Comments

-Donna D (11-4): these are so good! donna

Fear or Sanity?: Hard to Say

Dear George,

Thanks to Comedy Central, we watched and enjoyed The Rally to Restore Sanity this afternoon. There was a huge turnout at the Washington Mall. The Daily Show’s John Stewart said (tongue in cheek) there were two million attendees, Comedy Central estimated 250,000; another media source said 150,000. The crowd looked youngish and pretty white from the TV camera scans. Fox News claimed there were too many people and nobody could see or hear anything. Stephen Colbert had originally announced a counter-rally to Keep Fear Alive, but the two supposed antagonists joined forces and presented a combined rally to “Restore Sanity and/or Fear.” There was plenty of both, plus a lot of good music. In fact, the show started off with a thirty-minute mini-concert by the Philadelphia hip hop group The Roots, joined by six-time Grammy winner John Legend, and they got the crowd totally energized. A couple of guys called the Mythbusters had 150,000 or so people doing the wave and cackling like mad scientists. John Stewart entered, welcomed the crowd, and introduced “The Four Troops,” a military quartet who sang the National Anthem. Father Guido Sarducci of SNL fame gave the benediction with his usual comic brilliance, and Sam Waterston read a poem about fears. A lot of musical acts were mixed in (e.g., Yusuf Islam, Ozzy Osbourne, the O’Jays, Kid Rock and Sheryl Crowe), and even a patriotic duet by Stewart and Colbert themselves (John Stewart was admittedly awful). Stephen Colbert had entered in the midst of all the hoopla from his Bunker of Fear, 2000 feet underground, and he and John Stewart engaged in a mock competition, with Stewart awarding medals for rationality (e.g., to the gracious baseball pitcher whose perfect no-hit game was ruined by an umpire’s wrong call) and Stephen Colbert’s Fear Awards (e.g., to NPR, the NY Times, Washington Post, and CBS for banning their employees from attending the rally) (yes, really true). Also to Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook creator, who didn’t attend to receive his medal because “he values his privacy more than yours.” Stewart and Colbert then engaged in a debate, highlighted by the appearance of Kareem Abdul-Jabar who disrupted Colbert’s fear of all Muslims. When Colbert presented a video montage of TV news clips illustrating nonstop hatred from the right and the left, it appeared that Fear was about to win out. However, the Daily Show’s John Oliver appeared in a Peter Pan costume and led the crowd in cheering for John Stewart and chanting, whereupon Stephen Colbert and his gigantic puppet replica of himself melted into the stage and disappeared, just like the Wicked Witch of the West. John Stewart wound up with what he described as a moment of sincerity, thanking the crowd and the staff, and making a strong case that the press, particularly cable TV and politicians, have been manufacturing a false image of America as a “country torn by polarizing hate.” Stewart argued that the American people work together every day to solve problems of all sorts, suggesting that “cable TV is the only place we don’t.” There’s always darkness, he noted, but we have to be able to work together. Tony Bennett came out and sang “America the Beautiful,” and we all had a tear in our eyes. It was a meaningful and fun event which hopefully generated some voter enthusiasm on the eve of midterm elections. Stephen Colbert, as usual, was hilarious. It was billed as nonpartisan, though it wouldn’t be difficult to read in a critique of Fox News, the Tea Party, and various right-wing politicians. However, there was virtually no explicit mention of political parties, particular media sources or politicians, or given political issues. The emphasis really was on restoring sanity. Though Sanity won out on stage, it’s harder to determine what’s happening in real life. I guess we’ll learn more on Tuesday.

Love,

Dave

G-Mail Comments

-Donna D (10-31): very good david. i'm voting for sanity on tuesday.... donna

Hot Air Doldrums

Katja & Mike check the air conditioning units

Dear George,

I shouldn’t even be a home owner. It’s all a little bit beyond me. We slept in yesterday and were wakened by a phone call from Sampson Bros., our furnace/air conditioning people, saying that their technician was on the way. We’d forgotten our appointment for an annual maintenance check, so we jumped up and got dressed. The furnace guy, a portly fortyish man whose name was Mac, arrived twenty minutes later, greeted at the door by large dogs with loud barking voices. He’d been to our house before so he wasn’t fooled by the dogs’ make-believe aggression. Because Cincinnati was under a tornado watch, he said he was going to do the outdoor stuff first. I said, however, that we’d been having trouble with the new thermostat that they’d installed last year. This state of the art device supposedly enables the owner to pre-program it so that it automatically changes temperature settings at different hours of the day (e.g., lowering the temperature when the people go to work). Our thermostat, though, seemed to have a mind of its own and has simply changed itself to 62 degrees every four hours no matter what. This frequently made for an unpleasantly cold house. I asked Mac if he could change the thermostat so it would be set on manual instead. He didn’t seem to hear my question but instead asked what was the lowest temperature we would prefer. Katja said 68. He pushed the various buttons on the thermostat about a dozen times and announced that it would now go no lower than 68. I repeated my question about whether we could just have it set on manual and change the thermostat ourselves. Mac said something, but, because he has a hefty speech defect, I couldn’t make it out. I gave up on my manual idea. I told him that the other problem we’d had last winter was that the furnace would stop generating hot air altogether every week or two and I’d have to go up to the attic and bleed the hose (which he’d showed me how to do two years ago). We went up to the attic to look at it. I’m always embarrassed because stuff in our attic is piled so high that your life is at risk from being crushed by falling possessions when walking through. Mac said I hadn’t been bleeding the furnace correctly, and he showed me how to do it again. I privately thought to myself that if our furnace was working properly I shouldn’t have to be bleeding it at all, but I didn’t say it aloud. Mac then went outdoors to do whatever he needed to do. When he came back I asked if he’d noticed any odor of sewer gas in our basement. He got defensive and said the furnace doesn’t cause sewer gas. I said I knew that, but we’d been having a problem with sewer odors, and I just wanted an outsider’s opinion. He said he hadn’t noticed anything. Then, since he was clearly more knowledgeable than I about practical matters of all sorts, I asked him if he thought the lack of sound on our downstairs TV was likely to be a cable problem or a problem with the television set itself. He thought it was probably the TV set. “I wonder if I should call a TV repairman,” I asked. Mac didn’t reply, leading me to wonder if he had a hearing problem. He said that the garden hose that ran through the basement from the furnace to a drain in the floor was leaking and that we should replace it. I asked if I’d be able to do that. He said it was just an ordinary garden hose which I could attach to the furnace outlet. I asked if I could just tape up the old hose with duct tape, but he said it wouldn’t hold. He was done with his work, and I signed the papers. “Is everything looking o.k. then?,” I asked, and Mac said everything looked fine. That was a relief. Now the thermostat will reset itself to 68 every few hours, but it will be less of a problem. And I’ll be able to get the furnace running again every week or two by bleeding it properly (if I can remember how). I was happy that we were prepared for the coming winter. Katja suggested I go to Ace Hardware right away and buy a garden hose, but I said I had more important things to do (like writing this blog posting). Besides, the hose had been leaking for at least a year, so there’s no rush. I’ll take care of it next week.

Love,

Dave

G-Mail Comments

-Vicki L (10-30): Hi D, This posting was very reassuring to me. Geo had a new furnace installed several years ago. I've never been able to figure out how to program it. Only one of many instances of feeling stupid and inadequate. Fact is, I think many of these 'devices' are set up to be hard to figure out - providing opportunities for the 'Mac's' of the world to have plentiful work. That'd be OK by me if 'Mac' would take time to really help me become competent. I don't know about stretching the questions to the TV. I've given up trying to watch TV and am coming close to seeing the telephone as also too complicated. The pic of K's arm is very impressive. Send her my love, V.

-Gayle CL (10-28): David,,,, you should hire Mac as ur handy man.....:)))) great photo of Katya and one of the big dogs...lots of love;)))))) X O. G

-Donna D (10-27): great pic, david!