Monthly Archives: April 2011

The Marvelous Magical Library!

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Library!It’s National Library Week this week!

The Nobles County Library in Worthington is offering its annual book sale, so my coworker Julie and I wandered over there to check it out. There’s still a great selection! They’ll be open during their regular hours for the sale through Saturday.

I adore libraries, and I always have. Old pillared stately-federal libraries, funky postwar modernist libraries, and streamlined glossy recent libraries–they’re all wonderful. When I’m in Jackson I love to sit in the front of the library and look out at the city, sipping coffee (yes, they let you do that!) and writing or researching on my laptop. It’s lovely.

So! Thank your local librarian this week!

Pink, Blue, Red Lights, Black Thoughts?

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As an English major in college, I always paid special attention any time a color showed up in a text. Sometimes red just meant “red,” but other times, it meant anger or heat or passion or love or… well, it could mean a lot of things.

Now I mostly studied Western literature in school, so I’m more aware of Western color symbolism, including the traditional colors of mourning (black, then purple and gray for half-mourning). However, I’ve also learned that wedding dresses are red in some cultures (India and China, I believe) and that white means mourning in some places too.

Here’s a handy comparison, for your edification (click on the link or the picture above for the larger image). It’s fascinating to see what colors we see with the same meaning and what colors differ, isn’t it?

But here’s another intriguing thought about color-coding. When did children become gender-color-coded in pink and blue? What does it mean for our kids?

150 Years After the Civil War

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1st MinnesotaToday marks the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the American Civil War.

I recalled from my sixth-grade Minnesota History class that Minnesota was first to send volunteer troops to aid the Union during the Civil War, and sure enough, the 1st Minnesota Volunteer Infantry was organized at Fort Snelling on April 29, according to Wikipedia.

They are most remembered for the horrific casualty rate (82 percent) at Gettysburg, and also took heavy casualties in other battles, though they seemed to have acquitted themselves well.

Several men from the 1st Minnesota seem to have settled in the area.

Here’s a portrait; a much larger version of that above.

Spring, Spring, Spring!

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Spring spring spring

At last, spring has begun in earnest — the season of life, love, and baseball.

Less romantically, it’s also the season of mud.

Early spring in Minnesota is wonderful for those of us who live here and are just sick of looking at snow, but it’s not so impressive for people from other states, who look around and wonder how we can stand all the mud and still-dead grass.

At this time of year, we Minnesotans love the gloppy ground and brown, stunted grass. If nothing else, there’s novelty in it. We haven’t seen the ground for months, remember? Anything is better than snow.

All that’s left is snirt now, that disgusting, black-encrusted mound of filthy ice-snow that refuses to melt until King Arthur returns and the Twins win the World Series.

Snirt is the last hold-out of winter, the winter equivalent of the tactless guy that sticks around long after the party is over when you’d really like to start putting the Chex Mix away. You’d like to tell snirt to get lost or take a shovel to it, but you’re just too polite, and it’s easier to just wait it out anyway.

And then there’s the fun of seeing what the melting snow reveals.

Do you remember that toy your child cried over for three days? The pair of sunglasses you thought you left at church? Or maybe even your car keys or wallet?

Everything is buried in a snowbank somewhere, it seems, and now that spring is here, it is becoming unburied. I half expect Jimmy Hoffa or Judge Joseph Crater to wander out of the yard, looking confused and wondering where the time went.

Pretty soon flowers will start blooming, and even people from far afield will recognize the merit of Minnesota mud.

Let it be a monument to the fallen snirt.

Rare Frog Discovered in Region

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Construction projects across the area have been suspended after Thursday’s discovery of a family of tiny, extremely rare blue-and-yellow frogs residing under a bridge in Worthington.

The blue-and-yellow poison arrow frogs are close cousins to the Golden Poison Frog, the most toxic of all frogs.

Due to the dietary restrictions imposed upon them by residing in Whiskey Ditch, however, the blue-and-yellow frogs are not ca-pable of producing poison sufficiently lethal to kill anything but carp.

The Department of Natural Resources (DNR) speculates the frogs have always lived in the area, and have been reduced to a small population by the northern glossy frog, which was furtively introduced to the area in 1981 in order to halt the spread of carp and increase the clarity and quality of Lake Okabena.

The action was well-intentioned, but fundamentally misguided, biologists said, warning potential frog-dumpers to beware lest they cause an ecological disaster.

The northern glossy frogs quickly edged out native poison dart frog species, including the blue-and-yellow poison arrow frogs as well as the better-known beautiful deadly poison frog, both of which roamed the shores of Lake Okabena by the hundreds in the 1870s.

As frog-hunting became a popular pastime throughout 1900, the blue-and-yellows declined, slaughtered by the hundred for their brightly-colored skin. In 1909, after the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, a frog-hunter of extraordinary tenacity who helped propel the sport into the 20th century through his writings, frog-hunting’s popularity began to decline.

While the beautiful deadly poison frogs saw a resurgence, the blue-and-yellow poison arrow frogs virtually disappeared. Occa-sionally, someone would report a frog-sighting to the DNR, but because no photographic evidence could be supplied, little credence was given to frog-related claims.

In 1994, the Alliance for Poison Dart Frogs applied for federal funding and tax-exempt 501c3 status and was denied. It seemed the day of the poison arrow frog in Worthington was over.

Now the brightly-colored blue-and-yellows have been rediscovered, living under the noses of the very scientists who claimed their extinction. Construction projects have been put on hold indefinitely while the species’ endangered status is verified by federal offi-cials, who hope to save the frogs from a second near-extinction.

The frogs are back in town — or maybe you should check your calendar. Happy April Fool’s Day!