I don’t write many political commentaries. I am not really very interested in politics and cannot discuss it in much depth, so I tend to write about other topics about which I have more meaningful things to say. This election is beginning to scare me, however. I am receiving a lot of political smears in the form of email forwards. All of the ones I have received are directed against John Kerry. That does not mean that there are none being circulated about George Bush. I am just not getting them. I really have no respect for people who need to mount these attacks. I am also very concerned because there are many people who believe that everything they see in any form of print must be true. In the case of email forwards, authenticity should always be questioned. A heartwarming story may be just a lovely piece of fiction even if it has vivid details and well known names, and a political attack may be just a nasty piece of libel. Unfortunately, I think these emails will reach a large audience and will influence many.

I tend to just hit the delete button when such an email pops up on my screen. My husband, however, has started answering them. He hits “reply all” and then refutes the message point by point. When he is finished, he hits “send” and off his opinion flies to all the people on the mailing list of the person who sent us the email. Now, most of those people are unknown to us. Nevertheless, we hear from many of them. Some of them are polite. Some of them aren’t. So far, we have not heard from anyone who is in agreement with my husband. That worries me a little, too.

I am very concerned when campaigning consists of personal attacks rather than respectful discussion of ideas and issues. I am even more concerned when it is done in this way, because there is no way for the other candidate to respond. The political arena is a public arena. What is said should be said publicly and replies to it should be public. That is not to say that people cannot email friends and share opinions, but political email forwards are not opinions shared friend to friend. They do not offer the opportunity for exchange of ideas and thoughtul discussion which can clarify thinking and lead to a more informed choice. They are nasty little attacks meant to reach large audiences because unthinking people hit “forward” and click on their mailing lists. No thinking process is wanted or intended. Electronic communication allows us to sink to amazing lows.

I have been away for most of the past week attending a professional conference held at Breezy Point Resort located near Piquot Lakes, MN. It’s a lovely resort that offers boating, golf, swimming, and multiple other activities. Of course, I was in meetings from breakfast at 7:30 a.m. to the after dinner socials ending at 11:00 p.m., so I did not really see much of the resort, but I knew it was there. Don’t you wonder why they do that? Hold professional conferences in gorgeous settings and keep you so busy that you see those settings mostly in the brochure pictures, I mean? I am one of those people who feels compelled to attend all the meetings. I am always afraid I will get caught if I don’t, or miss something that is essential to my future success in my job, so I don’t skip out. We had meals on the outdoor deck from time to time, though, so I did see the lake on those occasions. It’s a nice lake. It has water and everything.

The sessions I attended (there were multiple sessions occurring concurrently) were all very good. I presented two sessions with a partner, and nobody booed or threw rotten vegetables at us, so I guess we did all right. I got a couple of nice free books at the vender fair and picked up some great handouts on various topics at the sessions, so, all in all, it was a beneficial experience.

On Wednesday after lunch, there was an awards ceremony. One of my students, Maria, received an award as the outstanding student from our area of the state. She’s really an amazing student and it was exciting to see her honored. She is from Mexico. Her family was very poor and lived on a remote ranch, so they chose not to send her to school. She learned to read in Spanish by picking up match boxes along the roadside and studying the letters and words on them. She learned to write by copying those letters and words in the dirt with a stick. When she came to the United States, she learned English by listening to English speakers. She also had about six months of ESL instruction. She came to my classes two years ago stating that she wanted to work on her GED. That’s a pretty ambitious goal for someone with no education who grew up without even radio or television as a source of information. She is a brilliant woman, though, and was willing to do any amount of work I gave her. This spring, she took her GED in English and passed it on the first try. It was a remarkable achievement and she deserved the recognition she got. It was a thrill to see her standing up on the podium while her story was read to the conference attendees.

My boss, Becki, also received an award for leadership in adult education. She, too, is very deserving of the honor. She is a very supportive administrator who trusts her teachers to do what they are supposed to do and to manage their classes. She is always there to help when needed, but never micro manages. She makes it much easier to be a good teacher.

It was a productive week with long hours and I returned home tired but enthusiastic about trying to implement some of the things I learned. That’s how it should be after a conference, I think.

Galena, part 2

The Ulysses S. Grant home is actually on the opposite side of the river from most of the town of Galena. It’s a short walk across a footbridge, though, so we left our car parked in the visitor center parking and headed over to look around. The view from the bridge was charming.

Like many river towns, Galena is built on bluffs that rise from river level. I was fascinated by the steps in this picture. They provide the most direct route to the homes on the street above the downtown area. Now I am sure residents commonly use cars to drive up there, but, in the heyday of Galena, the steps would have been the fastest and most direct route home from work. In the 1800′s, citizens of Galena must have been in great shape!

Galena has many historic mansions, several of which are open for tours. This one was auctioned for back taxes in the early 1900′s and went for the magnificent sum of $3.00. Even back then, that was quite a bargain!

Since Galena is no longer a significant shipping community, the residents have had to develop other industries, and tourism contributes significantly to the local economy. The downtown area was bustling when we were there. It was difficult to walk into many of the shops. Would you believe this is a town of 3000?

Since the whole community is an antique, it makes sense that many shops feature them. Most, however, have the same line of collectibles found in all shops everywhere. That’s one thing I find disappointing when I travel. It’s so hard to find thngs that are unique to an area. There are some good candy and popcorn shops and several wonderful restaurants. We had lunch in a little espresso shop that had excellent pannini sandwiches. Dan and I swapped halves of ours. He had a veggie sandwich featuring eggplant and I had chicken. Both were delicious.

Our hotel was the Holiday Inn Dubuque/Galena, which is in Dubuque, Iowa, across the Mississippi and thirteen miles from Galena. It’s an exceptionally nice Holiday Inn. When we returned to Dubuque, Dan wanted to ride the nearby trolley run by the Fenton Place Elevator Company. I am not comfortable with heights or with small enclosures, so the trolley looked a little intimidating to me. Here’s what I saw looking up at it as it decended to the boarding platform. Residents of Dubuque used these little trolley cars to go from downtown to their homes up on the bluff over a hundred years ago. Better than the steps in Galena????

Here’s a view from above of a trolley making its ascent. Note how far away the boarding platform is and how small it looks from this height. Notice, also, the double track. These trolleys actually pass each other! The ride is slow and mostly smooth, though, so I just did not look down and managed to survive in good shape.

Of course, high places do have the advantage of providing great vistas. Isn’t Dubuque Harbor lovely?

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The Dubuque/Galena area is a perfect place for a weekend getaway. There is plenty to do, but the area is small enough that you can easily see and do everything you want in a couple of days. We had a great time!

Way Back in Galena

Galena, Illinois, is the city that never was. In the 1800′s, it was an important port along the waterways feeding into the Mississippi. Then the river there shifted, filled with debris, and lost its navigability. What had seemed to be growing into a prosperous port city became instead a sleepy little village lost in time. Wise people, though, take what they have and use it to their advantage. The people of Galena have done just that.

Galena is the home of Ulysses S. Grant. You know, he’s the guy who is buried in that big tomb in New York. Of course, to get that lovely big resting place, he had to be a significant Civil War General and the eighteenth President of the United States. The people of Galena were, and still are, very proud of him. In 1865, they gave his family this house.

By today’s standards, it’s a fairly modest home. Even in the 1800′s, there were bigger, fancier houses in Galena, but this one was surely above the average. It’s located up on a bluff, a short, though strenuous, walk from the river and commands this wonderful view.

The house is unusual because it was in the Grant family until it was bequeathed to the City of Galena in 1904, so nearly everything in the house belonged to the Grants and was in the house when Ulysses lived there. This is the library of the home and that large book on the table is Mrs. Grant’s bible.

The dining room table is set with dishes that were purchased for Grant’s daughter’s wedding, which took place in the White House, so they were used in the White House as well as in this home. That’s a portrait of Grant on the wall. There are several in the house, as well as portraits of other famous generals and some valuable artwork given to the Grants by representatives of many countries. This portrait is a particular favorite of the staff at the house because it shows Grant smiling.

During the tour of the house, I learned that Ulysses S. Grant’s name was really Hyram Ulysses Grant, but when he enrolled at West Point, his name was mistakenly entered using his mother’s maiden name, Simpson, as his middle name and his own middle name as his first name. He liked that name better, so he kept it.

Obviously, if you have a President from your community, you celebrate that in many ways. This is a park honoring Grant. You can see a statue of him in the picture with a lovely gazebo. There are also several large guns from his military career.

Galena is very small, only about 3000 people, so you can easily tour it in a day on foot. 85% of the buildings there are on the National Registry of Historic Sites. You can purchase an historic home quite reasonably and several of them were for sale while we were there. They are quick to tell you what you can and can’t do to the house, though, so don’t get any big ideas about extensive remodeling or modernization.

We enjoyed our day in Galena. I will have a few more pictures in my next blog.

I am hitting the road for four days, so will not be around to comment or blog. Hope everyone has a great weekend!

I do want to comment on one thing. I was channel surfing two nights ago and came upon the Democratic National Convention, which seemed to be the best thing on. I am not terribly political. On the other hand, I do have opinions about politics and occasionally I blog about them. While I was watching the Convention, I heard the keynote speech by Barack Obama, a candidate for a US Senate seat from Illinois. He certainly is a very impressive young man. As I was watching him, it occured to me that he appeared to be an excellent choice as a future presidential candidate. I think the US is about ready to elect an non-white president and this man would seem to be a very credible candidate once he has had a little experience on the national level.

I couldn’t help but think that it would have some kind of cosmic significance if the first black president came from the same state as the president who freed the slaves and set in motion the process that would eventually make that possible. It gave me the chills just thinking about it.

I have two shelves above my computer desk. This is the top one. That’s the doll furniture my mom gave me for Christmas when I was about six or seven years old. When I have done my annual cleaning the past couple of years, I have been trying to get rid of things that are merely being stored, not used. Last year, I came across this doll furniture. There used to be a bed to go with it, but it had a cardboard sleeping surface which did not survive. I still have the frame and keep telling myself that someday I will repair it, but I probably never will. Anyway, the rest of the furniture is still usable, so I was faced with the question of either finding a use for it or getting rid of it.

I am a chronic saver. I come by it honestly. My mom was worse than I am. When she died in 1985, I found utility bills dating back to the 1930′s from houses she no longer owned, all neatly filed in case she ever needed them. It’s no wonder, then, that my house is clogged with the treasures of my life. It’s no good having them packed in boxes, though, gathering dust and maybe mildew in the far reaches of the basement store rooms. The furniture was brought out, dusted off and treated with lemon oil, and pronounced presentable. All that remained was finding a place for it, because, of course, I could not part with it.

This furniture was one of the biggest Christmas presents I ever got. My mom did not have the money to be buying expensive gifts, but somehow she managed to buy this. I often wonder what she had to give up to do that. I am sure that putting doll furniture under the tree for me cost more than just money. I treasured it, though. My friends and I had hours of fun playing with it. I had an eight inch tall Madam Alexander Doll that my mom’s friend Lucille sent me from New York, and this furniture was the perfect size for her. I also had a Ginny Doll, and so did my friend Toni, so we were all set for hours of dolly housekeeping. When we were finished, the furniture was lovingly packed away in the bottom drawer of my mom’s big chest of drawers. I always knew that I had to take very good care of it.

Years later, the furniture would emerge again, this time on shelves that my husband put up in my daughter Betsy’s closet to serve as a Barbie house. She and her friends spent a lot of time playing there before the furniture finally made its way to the basement. Eventually, Betsy got married and her room became the computer room. It seems very appropriate that the furniture is back on a shelf in that room.

The clothes hanging on the clothes rack are from the dolls that I played with in the 50′s. I carefully washed and ironed them and hung them on tiny wire hangers purchased on eBay. I can remember digging dandelions in neighbors’ yards to get the money to buy those clothes. The dolls are new. They are the Madam Alexander Little Women. Little Women was my favorite book when I was growing up. I read it many times. In fact, I wore out my copy. I like the fact that I can combine these two memories. I look up frequently and enjoy them while I sit at the computer.

My original Madam Alexander doll was literally loved to death. Her head does not stay on anymore. I still have her, though, and I intend to get her restored. I wonder where I will put her? There can’t be five Little Women!

Summer has ended for me. This is my second week back at work teaching my class for unemployed people. It takes awhile for the class to settle in and form the group who will hang in there until the end. This group looks very promising. We have lost several of the ones who were there the first day, but the ones who remain seem very interested in learning.

We have been talking about labeling and the damage it does. When someone gets labeled in the workplace, it can be very difficult to overcome the image that has been created. It may even be necessary for the labeled person to leave his/her job. I think just about everyone is guilty of labeling and I find that very sad. I wonder why we think we need to do that to each other?

Class discussion is such a wonderful thing. It provokes thought and lets your mind see things differently. In our labeling discussion, I came to realize that even good labels can hurt people. I was reminded of a teacher we had in our school district years ago. He coached an extra-curricular activity and tended to favor students who participated, especially if they were very successful. He labeled those students as his “best” and gave them high grades even if they did not do much of his actual class work. The result was that the other kids did not like those students and they complained a lot about that teacher.

I have always felt that many people get by on their reputations. You know, they get labeled as being particularly good at whatever they do, and after that, they do little or nothing and nobody seems to notice. Then there are the people who are labeled as lazy or undesirable for some reason. They can do outstanding work without ever getting the recognition they deserve. I guess it’s part of what people are talking about when they tell you that “life is not fair.”

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I had some interesting questions on my last blog. englishjuls wanted to know what the Volunteers of America will do with my old car. If they can get it to run safely (and I think a really good mechanic could), they will give it to a low income person. If not, they will use it for parts. I personally hope that someone gets to enjoy it for awhile longer.

leafylady wanted to know what kind of car both the old and the new one are. My old car was a Mitsubishi. I have never had a more reliable car and I don’t know many people who have. The new one is a Hyundai Elantra. I bought it from a Mitubishi dealer who also sells Hyundai. One of the big factors for me in choosing a car is the seats. I have chronic back problems and I have to have very good, supportive seats that allow me to sit with my knees and hips at 90 degree angles. Another thing I need is a stick shift. I absolutely never drive automatics. I am very bad at it. Surprisingly, the new car cost less than the old one did 12 years ago. Price was important to me. I cannot afford a big car payment.

BLB wanted to know if I am hand feeding the baby robin whose picture was in the last blog. No, I’m not. My husband has several bird feeders, so we have a lot of birds in our yard, but I try not to encourage the birds to make friends with us because of the cats we have. One of our cats (the black one in my profile picture) never goes outside, but the other one does occasionally. I have tried very hard to explain to him that he is well fed and does not need to hunt, but, although he is not a very good hunter, he does sometimes catch something. I would like this little bird to grow up to have baby birds of his own.

We have lots of little animals in our yard. I have a squirrel feeder because my husband does not like the squirrels eating out of his bird feeders and he has bought a feeder that will not hold the weight of a squirrel. We also have a lot of rabbits. I love watching the baby bunnies! One of them kept me company while I was pulling rhubarb a few weeks ago. We have a squirrel and a young rabbit having breakfast together on our front porch this morning. The squirrel is eating bulbs from our flower garden and the rabbit is eating marigolds. No, I do not mind.

That’s my car. Or at least, it was my car. Last night at 11:00, they came and towed it away. It was a very sad event. My poor car had over 250,000 miles on it and had under $1000 in repairs (except for normal maintenance) in all those miles. I thought it would go on forever. In fact, I hoped it would.

I had it for 12 years and I enjoyed every mile I ever drove in it. It was very reliable. It had one odd problem. At times, it could not idle. When I stopped at a stop light, it would die, which didn’t really matter very much because I was stopped anyway. It always started immediately when the light changed. It never even took long enough to make anyone honk at me. It also would die sometimes when I slowed down to turn a corner. I could hear it happen and would reach down and restart it. It never failed to start and the car never lost momentum.

These things did not happen all the time. The car would go several months with no problems at all. Then there would be a few days when it would die fairly regularly. This went on for 6 years or so. We had the car in many times to try and find out what caused it, but it never died for a mechanic and the computer diagnostics never showed a problem. It really did not bother me because the car always restarted.

A week ago Thursday, I was driving home from work at 8:00 p.m. when the car decided to die while I was driving in a straight line at highway speed. It would not restart. I was able to pull off the highway and someone stopped right away and gave me a ride home. Dan drove me back out to my car and it started easily then, but he has been after me for a couple of years to get a new car, and this incident provided him with a reason to insist. The car had finally done something that made me feel a little unsafe, so I agreed. Two days later, we bought this:

You can see the old car sitting over at the curb in the background. It sat there for over a week and seeing it made me very sad. I sort of felt like I had kicked a beloved pet out of the house because the new car had taken the old one’s place in the garage. I am glad it is not there for me to see anymore. We donated it to the Volunteers of America and I cried last night when they came and picked it up. I always said I was going to drive that car until it had to be towed away, and that is what happened.

On a cheerier note, this little fellow was walking around in the driveway right up next to the house a couple of days ago. He let me get within a foot of him to take this picture. I tried to explain to him that it is really not a good idea for baby birds to let humans get so close and that it is even a worse idea to hang out at houses where two cats live, but he did not seem to care.

Taste of Minnesota

St. Paul has an annual multi-day Fourth of July Celebration called the Taste of Minnesota. This year it ran from Thursday, July 1, through Monday, July 5. It was a bit bigger than usual because for the first time in 150 years, the communities along the Mississippi River held a Grand Excursion, ending in St. Paul on July 3, so thousands of people from all along the river would be coming.

There are usually food venders, a stage with entertainment, and a big fireworks display every night. This year, they brought in amusement park rides and had four stages with continuous entertainment plus the fireworks. We were there on Friday and Saturday.

Friday evening, we saw a concert. Here I am with my friend Carol. She looks like she would like me to stop singing, doesn’t she?

The headliners on the 4 stages Friday evening included Rick Springfield, Jefferson Starship, a band I can’t recall, and these fellows. They had an enormous crowd and gave them a great show!

The first two pictures were taken by my friend Mary Kay. I could not see that view. I was looking across the front of the stage and could not see the band at all. This is what I saw. Not bad, if you ask me!

Here’s Dan helping with the autograph line after the show. The picture is dark because it was, well, dark out by then. People sometimes ask Dan for his autograph, but they never ask me. Someone even tried to buy the shirt Dan was wearing once. I guess that even though folks don’t always realize that Dan was not one of the people they saw on the stage, they do at least know that none of the band was female.

Saturday afternoon, we stood in the pouring rain with 150,000 other soggy people waiting for the arrival of the Grand Excursion. What was the Grand Excursion? People who live on the Mississippi River have a tradition of celebrating the river dating back to the early days of the settlements along its banks and enhanced by the writings of Mark Twain and others. In 1854, the first Grand Excursion traveled from Rock Island, Illinois, to St. Paul in celebration of the completion of the portion of the Chicago Rock Island Railroad that established the first rail connection from the East Coast to the Mississippi.

1200 people traveled from Rock Island to St. Paul on steamboats. A large celebration was planned at the conclusion of the journey with many dignitaries, including former President Millard Filmore, making the journey aboard the paddlewheelers and planning to speak to the throngs waiting on the docks.

It was a nice idea. Unfortunately, communication was not very reliable back then, and travel was not very predictable, so the first Grand Excursion arrived a day early and instead of finding cheering crowds to greet them, they found only three drunks on the dock. It was a bit of a disappointment, to say the least!

This year’s Grand Excursion went much better. Planning began more than ten years ago and timing was impeccable. On July 25, the steamboats met in the Quad Cities of Davenport, Bettendorf, Moline, and Rock Island. They came from the entire navigable area of the Mississippi, which extends from Minneapolis to New Orleans. Passengers came from all over the world, some of them arriving in vintage passenger cars pulled by a steam locomotive. More than 30,000 people traveled on the river boats, some for just a day and some making the entire trip. Those on ships not equipped for overnight lodging spent the nights ashore in hotels, boarding the same or a different ship in the morning. Communities all along the route held celebrations.

We stood waiting eagerly for the first boat, scheduled to arrive at 3:00 p.m., to appear under the Robert Street Bridge, and sure enough, at just a few minutes after 3:00, the Jonathan Paddleford, a tour boat from St. Paul, came sailing under the bridge playing the Minnesota Rouser. It was a breathtaking sight! It was soon followed by the other boats from the Twin Cities.

This pretty little paddlewheeler is the Julia Belle Swain from La Crosse, Wisconsin. She is a real steam powered ship. Many paddlewheelers are not really powered by the wheel. I think she was playing I’m Looking Over a Four Leaf Clover.

The balloon arch in the picture below is the largest ever built. For some reason, it did not extend across the river, so the boats did not sail under it, but it certainly was pretty in the background as they came under the bridge. That’s the Harriet Bishop from St. Paul in the picture. She is named for St. Paul’s first schoolteacher.

I photographed all the ships in the Grand Excursion but I am not including them in this blog because it would make an already long blog much too long and also because my pictures of the Grand Excursion are not very clear because of the rain. All of the small paddlewheelers passed under the Robert Street Bridge and tied up at Harriet Island in downtown St. Paul. The three in this picture are too large to go under the bridge, so they tied up immediately downriver from it. The first is the Delta Queen, an 80 year old, 285 foot long paddlewheeler cruise ship, carrying 174 passengers in 87 staterooms. She is based in New Orleans and travels to St. Paul on a regular basis. She is a floating National Historic Landmark. Next is the Celebration Belle from Moline, Illinois. She is the largest excursion boat on the upper Mississippi. She has three decks, is 190 feet long, and can hold 800 passengers. She has a paddlewheel, but she is motor driven. Bringing up the rear is the Mississippi Queen, by far the largest boat on the river, although from the perspective of this picture taken from the bridge you cannot tell that. She has seven passenger decks and can carry 458 passengers in balconied staterooms and a crew of 157. She got hung up in Hannibal, Missouri, because the river was high and she could not pass under one of the bridges, but fortunately the water level dropped enough to let her through and, because she is fast, she was able to catch up to the other ships in Dubuque. She is 382 feet long and boasts the world’s largest steam-powered piano. She was the last ship up the river and arrived playing America the Beautiful.

It took about an hour for all the paddlewheelers to arrive and tie up. As soon as they were safely docked, this delegation of small boats appeared to greet them. You can see some of the riverboats tied up at Harriet Island in this picture, too.

The boats remained in the Twin Cities until July 5 and many events were held to celebrate their presence. I hope they do not wait another 150 years to do another Grand Excursion. It was certainly a thrilling thing to see and made this year’s Taste of Minnesota an exciting event. Next time, I would like to be on one of the boats when it arrives.

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