Author: mariezhuikov

The ‘Castle’ has Fallen, Spring Must be Coming

/ mariezhuikov / 2 Comments

Ice Castle 2016 001

The Lake Superior Ice Project formation collapsed near my workplace this week, and that means spring can’t be far behind. The photo above is from a week ago when the right part of it collapsed, and now the whole thing is a pile of ice rubble.

When the collapse in the picture happened, we weren’t sure if it was planned or not. It caused a bit of a stir in the office – especially since last year the structure had a rather spectacular and unintended collapse right in front of a New York Times reporter. But we later heard that the formation’s creator, Roger Hanson, had been working for the past few days on dismantling his ice castle.

It would have been nice if he had alerted the public that he was dismantling the structure. The woman in my photo complained that she would have come to see it earlier had she known. And it could have avoided some surprise and speculation.

I have “castle” in quotes in this posting’s title because the ice never ended up looking like the European-style castle with four towers that Mr. Hanson described in media stories. It looked more like a birthday cake with a door in it to me. I suspect our warm El Nino winter had something to do with that.

The structure also didn’t break any world height records as hoped, but it did serve as a focal point for a community Ice Festival, complete with fireworks.

Orbs 002

Ice orbs during the freezing process.

A related icy project (that I actually helped with instead of snarking about) involved bringing community groups together to create ice orbs in the shape of Lake Superior. The City of Superior’s Environmental Services Division organized this collaborative art project to highlight the importance of fresh water to the community. Different groups pledged to create a certain number of ice orbs so that 365 of them (Get it? One for each day of the year) could be installed near the ice castle for the festival.

The project was called Orb365 and, along with instructions on how to make the orbs, the project included educational messages about how water reacts to freezing and ways water is important.

I pledged 10 orbs, which I created by filling water balloons and sticking them outside in hopes that they would freeze. I started the freezing process four days before the orbs were needed, certain that would be plenty of time, especially in February in northern Wisconsin. However, the weather was so warm, the orbs didn’t completely freeze until the very last night, eliciting some anxiety on my part.

DSCN0051

Lake Superior shaped in ice orbs.

Triumphant, I was able to deliver the orbs the following day to the “orb construction site” where a city worker artistically arranged them into the shape of the lake, and festooned them with lights. She positioned larger orbs to represent major cities around the lake.

Alas, now the orbs are melted along with the castle. The snow is almost gone, and the meatloaf-brown grass of spring is upon us. Although this winter was warmer than usual, I’m not going to complain about it. I’m sure the northern weather gods will make us pay for it next winter.

A Mind of One’s Own

/ mariezhuikov / 6 Comments
Human_brain_NIH

Credit: National Institutes of Health.

I’ve written about my father a few times in this blog. It’s time to give my mother some attention.

My mom is 91, and she and my dad are still together, living in a memory care facility in the Twin Cities area. When my brothers and I moved our parents from my city to their current home last fall, I inherited a hope chest, of sorts, in which my mother stored blankets.

Once I got home and was cleaning it out, I discovered the chest was where she also stored some of her journals. I never knew she kept journals. And to think, all those times I was writing journals and squirreling them away at home, she was doing the same thing!

To ease some of my parental separation pangs, I read her journals, which spanned a period of over thirty years. Recently, I went back into one to look up a piece of information. I found the info, but also got caught by a short comment, where my mother mentioned that an acquaintance of hers complained that my mother was “willful.”

This is true. My mother is the sort who puts her foot down on a decision, and that is that. The problem is, she’s not good at explaining why she made the decision. She makes up her mind, and that is how it is going to be, gall dang it all to heck.

However, instead of her acquaintance’s comment eliciting self-reflection, my mother went on the offensive in her journal. (A good offense is the best defense, right?) But she didn’t go on the offense against the acquaintance who made the comment. Instead, her next entry was a complaint about how I had a mind of my own.

Now, I take that as a compliment. Why would I want anyone else’s mind, anyway? (Smirk.) I suspect my mom wanted my mind to be the same as hers.

Anyone who’s been reading this blog for a while could tell you that I think a bit differently from most. The world needs different viewpoints, and as long as I’m not getting into huge conflicts and arguments over it, I think that’s okay.

The problem is, my mom’s style generates conflict, and she is too stubborn to change her mind once she makes it up.

This all reminds me of something I read recently, which described how people who don’t fit into groups shouldn’t necessarily feel bad. It might mean that they are leaders rather than followers. That gave me some comfort. There have been instances where I’ve felt on the fringes of groups, and maybe that’s why. (Besides the fact that I’m 60% introverted. Grin.) I have also successfully led groups, but it takes a bit of prodding to convince me to do so.

In any event, I love my mother, even if she is willful. And as for myself, I wouldn’t have it any other way than to have a mind of my own.

In Which I Become a Reluctant Heir Apparent

/ mariezhuikov / Leave a comment

soccerball_with_crown

Unbeknownst to me, I have been inducted into a hereditary monarchy committee.

What land do we rule? A local high school boys’ soccer team.

Why do we rule? Because our kids are the new team captains — so it’s more of a backwards hereditary monarchy. Instead of the crown being passed from parent to child, the parents are crowned because their children are good soccer team leaders.

We soccer monarchs had our first meeting last night and learned all the responsibilities our rule entails. This includes organizing a soccer team captains’ meeting, handling bank accounts and budgets, collecting soccer fees, cooking a pre-season BBQ, holding five team spaghetti dinners and a team social potluck, ordering clothing, signing up volunteer helpers, finding kids to catch stray balls at games, coordinating fundraising events, organizing an overnight team-building activity at a hotel during away games, arranging for a traditional Mongolian dinner during an away game, ordering team photos, producing a team memory book and a slide show to be given at the end-of-the-season banquet, hosting said banquet, ordering a special gift for the team seniors, and oh, if we have time, doing a charity project.

The length of our reign? About six months. The number of rulers? Five-and-a half (I say this because one person is out of town a lot.)

I know I should be honored to rule, but I didn’t ask for it. As a single mom with a full-time job, a second career as a teller of tales, active on the board of a writing group, handling affairs for my aging parents, and entertaining my dog, I already have a full plate.

However, it seems, other than disowning my son, I have no choice. If I would have known the consequences, I would have encouraged my son to be more of an average soccer player.

Just kidding. I’m proud my son is a team captain and I shall accept and support the result. However, the amount of activities does seem excessive. Since I’ve been elected without a vote, I’ve decided my platform will be to insert reason into the process and try not to get overwhelmed.

Already there’s been talk on the committee about things being done due to “tradition.” Part of me wonders if they are traditions from when there were more stay-at-home parents on the committee who had time on their hands. I mean, do we really need five spaghetti dinners? I don’t think so.

Hopefully, this approach will not induce a revolt or anarchy. Even if it does, it’s not like they can kick me off the committee. After all, I’m a soccer monarch by divine genetic right.

My Dad & Barnacle Bill

/ mariezhuikov / Leave a comment
TruckRepair1951

My dad repairing a vehicle in our driveway, 1951.

One of my fondest memories of my father — who is ninety-seven and has been having a rough go of it lately — involves the ballad of Barnacle Bill, a song popular in the 1930s.

Picture me as a child of five, knocking on the bathroom door. My father is inside, shaving or whatever. He answers my knock, singing in falsetto:

“Who’s that knocking at my door? Who’s that knocking at my door? Who’s that knocking at my door? (Cried the fair young maiden).”

Of course, I’d tell him it was me and that I had to go to the bathroom . . . BAD. Like all children who would rather play than go pee, I’d leave it until the last moment.

He’d answer by continuing to sing, this time in a gravelly male voice:

“It’s only me from over the sea
(Said Barnacle Bill the Sailor).
I’m all lit up like a Christmas tree
(Said Barnacle Bill the Sailor).
I’ll sail the seas until I croak.
I’ll fight and swear and drink and smoke,
But I can’t swim a bloody stroke
(Said Barnacle Bill the Sailor).”

By this time, I’d plead again for him to let me in, and he’d reply in falsetto:

“I’ll come down and let you in,
I’ll come down and let you in,
I’ll come down and let you in,
(Cried the fair young maiden).”

Sometimes he’d let me in. But if he needed more time to finish, he’d draw out the torture by singing the last verse:

Fancy Pants

My dad in his knickers (right) with his father outside their home in central Minnesota. I call this photo “fancy pants.” It must have been taken in the 1930s, during the time the Barnacle Bill song was on the radio.

“Well hurry before I bust in the door
(Said Barnacle Bill the Sailor).
I’ll rare and tear and rant and roar
(Said Barnacle Bill the Sailor).
I’ll spin you yarns and tell you lies
I’ll drink your wine and eat your pies
I’ll kiss your cheeks and black your eyes
(Said Barnacle Bill the Sailor).”

Finally, he’d open the door to find me doing the ‘I have to go pee’ dance in the hallway.

Even though this ritual was rather cruel, hearing my father imitate the male and female voices was fascinating. It was sort of scary, too, like there was a stranger (or two) in the bathroom. And some of the words were rather violent. But I was the youngest of four, so no doubt, my father needed some type of delay or coping mechanism for these interruptions from his children.

In looking up the lyrics for this song on the Internet, I learned my father was singing the tame version. His rendition was made popular by Hoagy Carmichael and his orchestra on the radio (including Benny Goodman on clarinet and Tommy Dorsey on trombone). Other adaptations are much “saucier,” and longer.

All I can say is thank goodness my dad sang the short and sweet version to me or there would have been a puddle in the hallway.

My Recent Embarrassment with White Culture

/ mariezhuikov / Leave a comment
NativeWhite

Nothing says Native American better than a white girl in a headdress.

Native Americans are the largest non-white population in my northern Minnesota county, coming in at just over two percent. Even though they are the largest “minority” population, in my experience, the “majority” community still struggles to remember to represent Native Americans on decision-making and natural resource committees. But I recently participated in two events where natives were remembered and asked to take part. However, the events reflected poorly on us white folks.

The first event was a journalism panel for a project (One River, Many Stories) that’s trying to bring journalists together to write about a major river that flows through our community. The river, which has been a dumping ground, is being cleaned up and is the focus of major restoration and community planning efforts.

The three journalists on the panel were speaking about collaboration for this project. One was Native American and the others were white. Granted, getting media types — who have been trained to compete with each other — to cooperate is a tall order to begin with, but as the discussion and Q&A session progressed, I felt increasingly chagrined. The native journalist was giving the audience tips on how to find story sources through old records and by talking to people. The white journalists were spouting the corporate line and jumping on chances for exclusive stories. Hello. The whole point of the discussion was collaboration, which the white journalists just didn’t seem to grasp.

Even the audience (mostly white from what I could tell) ended up grand-standing and sniping about which media outlet was the better storyteller. I left the event embarrassed by the blatant blindness to the benefits of collaboration by the white folks.

The second instance was an open mic poetry/prose reading last night at a local coffee house. Although anyone is welcome to read at these sessions, each features an established writer who is given extra time to showcase their work. The featured reader last night was a Native American. His reading concluded with a song he sung in Ojibway. Once done, he invited a lady on stage to read, who also looked native.

Their poems were moving and heartfelt, raw and sentimental. They worked for me. What didn’t work was the lady who read last. She was a blonde older woman who ended her set with a song from a play she wrote. She said she decided to sing in appreciation of the featured reader. But as she belted out several times that she was a “full-blooded Indian” and had endured repression as a native, I began to squirm.

Now, I know that Native Americans come in all colors, but this lady was definitely not native. And I understand that she was trying to honor the culture in an artistic fasion. But I don’t think she realized how farcical it is for a native to see a white person trying to “be” native. It made about as much sense as a Nigerian singing onstage about being Swedish, even if that Nigerian really digs and honors Swedish culture.

I’m sensitized to this issue from recently reading Alexie Sherman’s “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,” but also because over the years I’ve spent time on reservations around the country, in kiva ceremonies and at pow wows, and with Native American medicine men. Besides, don’t forget that I am a whopping 0.4 percent Native American myself (smirk).

I realize I’ve opened a can of worms with this post. I guess what I am trying to say with it is, please, please, please white people – there are better ways to honor Native American culture than by trying to pass yourself off as something you are not. And please learn how to collaborate, a trait that seems to come so much easier to native peoples. I worry about white culture’s ability to survive on several levels unless we do so.

A good blog post about Native American cultural appropriation can be found here.

As I left the coffee house last night, the two native poets happened to walk out behind me. I casually held the door open for them. It was the least I could do.

Dude Wipes

/ mariezhuikov / 9 Comments

Dude Wipes

I was just in the grocery store, which seems to be my main form of socializing lately. I saw a display in the Kleenex aisle that caused a double take. “Dude Wipes.” Not baby wipes, or feminine hygiene wipes. Dude Wipes: flushable wipes guaranteed to combat stank and put you back on your game wherever and whenever nature calls.

With Vitamin E and soothing aloe, this product will give the user magical cool dude powers. And better yet, ten percent of the proceeds are donated to The Colon Club Charity.

O.M.G.

Dining Our Way to Mad City

/ mariezhuikov / 3 Comments
20160128_172614

The view of the Wisconsin State Capitol from our table at the Old Fashioned Tavern.

The Mother Ship for my day job is located in Madison, Wis. My coworkers and I recently took a road trip to the “Mad City” for a strategic planning meeting. To make things more fun, we strategically planned our lunch stop to coincide with the Broadway Diner in Baraboo, Wis.

I learned about the Broadway Diner the weekend before during a TV show called “Discover Wisconsin.” Since I am a lifelong Minnesotan who now works for a Wisconsin institution, I have endeavored to learn about my employing state. Discover Wisconsin is one of my secret weapons in this cross-cultural quest.

20160128_114314

Inside the Broadway Diner in Baraboo, Wis.

The show featured eating establishments that use locally sourced ingredients. The Broadway Diner caught my eye because I knew I’d be travelling through the town, and because I’m developing a “thing” for diners. The diner supplies its cheese, eggs and meat from local sources.

The Broadway looks like any respectable diner from New Jersey, with a metallic outside and a tiled, stooled inside. We learned while there that the diner was, in fact, made in New Jersey, and it spent many years in Connecticut as a diner, before it was moved into storage in Cleveland, bought, and moved to its current Wisconsin location.

The food hit our lunch spots, although I had breakfast: potato pancakes with over-easy eggs and sausage. Wonderful. My co-workers enjoyed their wrap sandwiches. For those who are gluten-intolerant, the diner offers gluten-free bread.

Sated, we continued onto our meeting in Madison. After a vigorous afternoon of strategic planning, we converged as a group on The Old Fashioned Tavern and Restaurant in the center of town, directly across from the Wisconsin State Capitol.

20160128_173035

An Old Fashioned.

I treated myself to my first-ever old fashioned. It’s a drink served in a tumbler, which features brandy, cherry and citrus flavors. My first was so good, I had a second.

The Old Fashioned specializes in German cuisine and offers tantalizing appetizers such as spicy pickled eggs, turkey gizzards, and pork hocks. A person can even buy jars of pickled eggs “to go,” if they don’t have time for a sit-down. Fried cheese curds are on the menu, too.

I ate a Wisconsin Burger, which of course, was topped by Wisconsin cheddar cheese. I asked for fried onions instead of the raw onions on the menu, and happily received the correct onion versions.

If you’re ever in or near Madison, try the Broadway Diner and The Old Fashioned. You won’t be sorry. They can even make a strategic planning trip to the Mother Ship enjoyable.

Going Coastal! Lake Superior Writing Contest

/ mariezhuikov / Leave a comment

PosterJpeg

If you’ve ever written a short story (6,500 words or less) about Lake Superior or you’d like to write a short story set in or around it, this is your chance to have it published. Instead of cash prizes this year, the writing group I belong to is offering the chance to be published in an anthology.

Authors can submit up to two stories. The deadline is April Fool’s Day, 2016. Don’t be a fool! Let’s all go coastal and then write about it. See the rules here.