Kickin' Chunks

Kickin' chunks. Ice chunks, that is, the frozen chunks of slushy mush that build up on your car's mud flaps. Kicking chunks of ice off the mud flaps is one of my winter amusements.

To pass the long winter, I've become an urban phenologist, keeping track of winter's progression: "firsts" such as the first day the sun sets after 4:30, and the conversational slide from "we need the moisture" to "isn't the snow beautiful" to "My God, will winter never end!" When I rang the Salvation Army bell this Christmas, I was able to track the progressive addition of layers, ending up with three pairs of socks, long underwear and pants, a shirt and two sweaters, coat, fleece-lined ear-covering hat, 6' scarf, liner gloves, mittens, and choppers, and three layers of cardboard (to stand on)!

Today I have a new entry in my phenology list:

it's too cold to kick the snow off the flaps! It's frozen solid!

It's -20 degrees, a great day to reread Shackleton's Endurance, Jack London's short stories, or Robert Service's tall tales of the Yukon. Click to read my booklist in Hennepin County Library's Bookspace.

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

Robert Service

Celebrations and Festivities!

May is chock-a-block with events and celebrations. Here are a few I've observed:

Minnesota's Sesquicentennial!

Minnesota became a state on May 11, 1858. One of the many aspects of our state-wide celebration is this slide show, Shines for All to See, commissioned by Roseville Visitors Association and MN150. I have lived in many places in Minnesota: Elmore, a tiny town on the Iowa border where as a small child I saw a tree shimmering with movement, completely covered by migrating Monarch butterflies; Plainview, a rural town near Rochester and the great Mississippi River bluffs, where my best friend's family had a dairy farm and where a brief walk out of town led one directly into the country. Hermantown, outside of Duluth, near beautiful Lake Superior, has a completely different northern Minnesota culture. My dad grew up in Park Rapids, in the heart of Minnesota vacationland, where family reunions are held every two years, and as an adult my family went to a resort near tiny Nevis, MN, for 13 years. And now for many years I've lived in the city of Minneapolis, and I love it here too.

I've created a Minnesota book list of some of my personal favorite books about, set in, or written by authors in Minnesota. Check it out!

Prom Night!

Last Saturday night was prom night for beautiful South High School in Minneapolis, Home of the Gallant Tigers, "where the administrators are strong, the staff is good looking, and the students are above average!" Or so Zee, our extraordinary parent liaison tells us, thanking Garrison Keillor.

Here's my Prom book list.

Spring!

Thank whatever merciful powers have brought us spring at last. Glory be! The best book about spring is found in walking outside on a spring morning, listening to bird song and if you are lucky, frog song.

I'm reading John Bates' A Northwoods Companion; Spring and Summer, edited from over seven years of newspaper columns describing the phenology of the north woods, from his home near Minocqua, Wisconsin. This is a companion volume to A Northwoods Companion; Fall and Winter.

Phenology is the orderly timing and progression of natural events. For instance, in Minneapolis, the peak bloom for lilacs, flowering crabs, and dandelions is typically Mother's Day weekend. This year, with Mother's Day just yesterday, the lilacs display small leaves but the blooms are still tightly budded.

In Duluth, however, the lilacs bloom for graduation in early June. Similarly, since trillium bloom before the leaf canopy fills in, they bloom in Eloise Butler Wild Flower Garden (Minneapolis) in April, but at Spirit Mountain Ski Resort (Duluth) for Memorial Day. And if you go far to the north, to Flin Flon, Manitoba, as I did one summer, you can welcome spring in June, and go to drive-in movies which start at 11:00, when it finally gets dark.

I enjoy the Fall and Winter volume of Bates' book more; the Spring and Summer version has a lot more birding information than I need. Both describe the progression of plant and flower life, animal mating and birth, bird migration, nesting, and hatching, the commencement of frog song, weather patterns, canoeing, snowshoeing, maple sugaring, and hiking rxpeditions, and particularly in the Fall and Winter volume, stars and the night sky. These would be wonderful books to have on hand if you lived north of Hinckley, but even for this city dweller they are a way to stay tuned into nature's rhythms. Spring moves north at a rate of about 17 miles per day, says Bates, so events unfold here about a week ahead of his timeline.

Here's a quotation Bates uses in his Fall and Winter volume:

"I go Up North as often as I can but it never seems to be often enough. My soul resides there. . . There is there a sacredness, a wholly otherness that I've found nowhere else. Those who know Up North know we take life from the depths of its water and breath from the far reaches of its open skies and peace from the quaking serenity of its birches."
-- Susan Wendorf

Another Minnesota phenology book is Through Minnesota's seasons with Jim Gilbert.

All three books can be found at urban and suburban Hennepin County Libraries.