Musings

Entering the Virtual World

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My youngest son enters the virtual world under the tutelage of my oldest son (in background).

I spent the weekend in a virtual world. Well, okay, it was just a few hours this weekend, but it was a cool few hours. My oldest son, who is a computer science graduate student, used his tax refund money to buy an HTC Vive. He treated me and my youngest son to a demonstration of this virtual reality system at his house.

The easiest way to describe it is to say it’s like stepping inside a video game. You put on the virtual reality goggles and **bam** you’re in another place.

Now, I am a mom, so I think of safety-related messages like these: Be sure to only try virtual reality with people you trust. You can hear the people around you, but you can’t see them once you put the goggles on. Others in the room could easily trip you if they are the mischievous sort, and you’d never see it coming. Likewise, remove all pets from the area that could wander into your virtual space and make you fall flat on your face.

I tried several demos from a program called “The Lab.” I entered a cave, complete with dripping water and piles of snow. Using one of the hand controllers, I found I had the ability to blow up balloons, which quickly rose to the cave’s ceiling and popped. It might not sound that exciting, but when you’re surrounded by the world, and you see the balloons you create actually rise like real balloons, it’s pretty darn cool. Then I was off to a secret shop that felt like a wizard’s lair come to life.

When it was my youngest son’s turn, he started out at Vesper Peak, throwing sticks on a mountain top for his slinky robot dog companion. He also tried Longbow, which had him defending his fort with a bow and arrow against rabid gingerbread men-like raiders. He also got to try his hand at being a line cook in one of the job-related games.

I am a real-world nature-lover, so my knee-jerk reaction to virtual reality games is negative. But after trying it, I can see how it’s certainly better than watching television because it gets you up and moving. Also, I can see how it can be a powerful storytelling tool because it immerses you in the experience more fully than a flat screen ever could.

In short, the virtual world’s not so bad. It might even be useful.

The World’s Largest Freshwater Sandbar

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Barkers & WI Point 047

Even though Wisconsin Point on Lake Superior is not truly part of “the world’s largest freshwater sandbar,” it’s still pretty.

It’s a common local point of pride in Duluth to say that Minnesota Point (a.k.a. Park Point) and Wisconsin Point form the “World’s Largest Freshwater Sandbar.” I am sorry to burst the community bubble but . . . NOT.

Way back so many years ago I can’t even find it on the Internet, Duluth sent a delegation of kayakers to Lake Baikal in Russia. They returned with tales of a sandbar or two on this freshwater lake that were even larger than MN/WI points. Maybe I was the only one who listened then because local tourism organizations and media outlets continued to refer to our sandbar as the “world’s largest.”

A couple of years ago (2014), I decided to fact-check the claim because I was editing a government report that repeated it. Lo and behold, I found a provincial park in Canada that claimed the same thing (Sandbanks Provincial Park).

I also asked several scientific types who are in the know about such things and received a response from a researcher at the University of Minnesota Duluth’s Large Lakes Observatory. Prof. Ted Ozersky did some Google Map comparisons and found that Jarki Island at the northernmost tip of Lake Baikal sports a sandbar that is 18 kilometers long. MN/WI points are 16 km long.

He also found a series of long sandbars on Proval Bay along the eastern shore of Lake Baikal that collectively stretch for 40 km.

So, in the document I was editing, I changed the wording to MN/WI points as comprising “one of the largest freshwater sandbars in the world.”

The issue arose again just last week when a fellow blogger made the “world’s largest” claim in his post. Why? Because he saw it elsewhere on the Web.

I figure it’s high time to get definitive news out on the Web that, alas, Minnesota and Wisconsin Points ARE NOT the largest freshwater sandbar in the world. Even the park in Canada has downgraded their claim to say instead that they have the “world’s largest baymouth barrier dune formation.”

In short, it’s okay to say that MN/WI points are the largest freshwater sandbar in the country, or one of the largest freshwater sandbars in the world, but not “THE largest freshwater sandbar in the world.”

Class dismissed.

That Time I got Mistaken for a Homeless Person in Grand Central Station

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New York City’s Grand Central Station.

A friend of mine was talking about Grand Central Station in New York City the other day and it reminded me of an experience I had there thirty years ago. I had just arrived in the city (for the second time in my life) and I was waiting in the station for several hours to catch a train to join the other members of my outdoors expedition. (If curious, please click on the link for an explanation.)

I sat on one of the hard wooden benches in the waiting area, surrounded by my gear: a large duffle bag, a daypack, and an internal frame backpack that had a pair of Sorrel boots tied to the back along with a sleeping bag and sleeping pad.

A man with a kind smile walked among the benches, handing sandwiches to the people who were sitting or lying down and who didn’t look like commuters. When he came to me, he offered me a sandwich. I sputtered a “No thank you, I just ate a muffin,” and he moved on.

I was surprised and a little offended that he mistook me for a homeless person. After all, I was clean and well fed. Couldn’t he tell I was going camping in the wilderness, not camping in a city park? Apparently not. I probably did look like a runaway waif, lugging all my worldly possessions with me.

Over the years I’ve enjoyed relating how I was mistaken for a homeless person in Grand Central Station. But you know what? The sandwich man’s observation wasn’t far off.

About halfway through the nine-month expedition, a certain feeling started. Our yellow school bus would drive through towns in the evening and I’d look out at the homes with lights in their windows. Families would be gathering at the table for supper or watching television together in their living rooms. I envied the comfort, safety and security those people seemed to have. They didn’t have to cook on camp stoves, put their tent up in the dark or move on the next day.

Although the experience was a great adventure, I was starting to feel rootless. And although the expedition gave me the outdoors of America, Canada, and Newfoundland as my home, I was beginning to miss a home of my own – not so much my parents’ home back in Minnesota, but a place of my own.

I suspect that feeling was one reason why I didn’t continue for the second scheduled year on the expedition. I’d had my fill of traveling, and was ready for some roots. So after our bus broke down out West, I headed back to Minnesota and I’ve been here ever since. I’ve been lucky enough to have opportunities to travel and explore my own back yard over the years, and was always happy to come home. I’ve been in my current house now for sixteen years.

But dare I say it, as things have changed and my boys have become more independent, a certain meandering wanderlust is beginning to whisper in my ear. It’s saying, the world is waiting . . . . It’s dangerous when that happens. I know from the past that things tend to change when the restlessness begins. Maybe not right away, but eventually.

Don’t be surprised in a few years if you see a young-for-her-years gray-haired lady sitting on a bench in a train station, surrounded by bags, or sailing away with all her possessions in a boat. It just might be me.

The ‘Castle’ has Fallen, Spring Must be Coming

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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.

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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.

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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

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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

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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 Recent Embarrassment with White Culture

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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

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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.

Another Winter, Another Ice Sculpture

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Iceman 2016 008

The ice formation, viewed from behind. Above it is one of the four towers that sprays water to create the structure.

A European-style castle is being built a few steps away from my office. The building materials? The reddish brown water from the Duluth-Superior Harbor.

From the four blog posts I wrote last winter, you may recall “Ice Man” Roger Hanson’s adventures trying to build a world-record ice sculpture on Barker’s Island in Superior, Wis. (To read the posts, type “Roger Hanson” into the search box on my blog.)

Let’s just say he learned a lot from that experience, and is at it again. Roger has a contract with the City of Superior to provide ice sculptures as a tourism attraction for three winters, and this is his second.

Last year, Roger was going for height, but a February thaw and shifting ground toppled his world-record attempt. This year, he’s going for width and mass. Plus he has a heckofa large supporting ice base on his formation that looks like it might not melt until July.

Roger builds his creations with the help of towers that periodically spray water he pumps from the harbor. He controls the actions of the towers through a computer set-up he has in the trailer he lives in near the sculpture.

He plans to spray a ninety-foot-wide, seventy-foot tall, eight million-pound structure, complete with castle turrets and a doorway in the middle.

He had one small set-back a few days ago when high winds blew apart part of the formation. Roger has since recovered, and the structure is now sturdy and thick enough that winds should not be an issue. But it’s an El Nino winter, which typically means warmer temperatures for this area. The weather has been cold enough lately for ice formation. Who knows what the rest of the winter may hold?

 

The Most Convincing Numerical Reason to buy a Powerball Ticket (In Addition to the Amount of the Jackpot)

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With the most recent Powerball $1.6 billion jackpot, all sorts of numbers have been thrown around in news reports. The newscasters say you have the same percentage chance of winning the lottery as you do becoming president of the U.S., getting hit by lightning, and attacked by a shark, combined. The odds are one in 292 million.

I have always scoffed at entering the lottery in the belief that such activities are for the mathematically illiterate. But it got me this time. The jackpot was too large to ignore.

I bought two tickets’ worth of numbers for last week’s drawing, and one ticket for this week’s based on the most compelling percentage of all: You have a 100 percent chance of NOT winning the lottery if you don’t enter.

Sigh. I didn’t win, though.