heartbroken

As the credits rolled, I was heartbroken -- it was not 1920, this was not rural Minnesota, I was not a pioneer with a thick accent, and there was no wheat to harvest. And the story was over.

Whoever wrote to go see "Sweet Land" -- you were right. It was gorgeous. I loved it as a Minnesotan, as the descendant of German and Norwegian immigrants, as a novice genealogist, as an admirer of the prairie and fields, as a lover of fiddle music.

It's probably not for everyone, though. It is not as Janette Oke as it sounds like it could be.

God only knows

Lately, I'm not sure quite what to think about God.

Well, there are many thoughts. They are not, however, communally coherent.

• God is not a feeling. God is a fact. My attitude toward him does not alter his existence.
• I believe in God. I believe in Jesus. I believe the statements of the Apostles' Creed, etc. But do I love God? This sounds incredibly sacreligious, but, do I love Abraham Lincoln for doing what he did about slavery? Do I love George Washington and miscellaneous veterans for fighting for my freedom? I am thankful for them and grateful to them, would be in awe of them if I ever met them, respect them. Yes, what God has done for me is on a whole other playing field. But I categorize the crucifixion with that kind of fact -- in 1861, the Civil War started. In the early decades of A.D., Jesus died on the cross. Does this make any sense? I know I should love God.
• I do not love church as, again, I know I should. I do not love people, the human race, as a whole, as I should.
• The contemporary Christian church culture disturbs others, as well -- I was talking with a good friend this weekend and was surprised to learn she dislikes her megachurch, but it's the only one with a twenty-somethings group.
• I do not suffer. I avoid suffering. Suffering breaks me down. I do not suffer well.

the surprise party

My grandma has a birthday every St. Patrick's Day. This year, her kids decided to throw her a surprise party. This was the picture on the cake -- Grandma as a baby with her mom and brother. This is known as the picture -- as in the one everyone wants.

As Grandma lives in Madison, the party and the travels thereto ate up the vast majority of the weekend. I rode in the minivan with my parents and sibs five hours each way -- sadly, the van ride probably being the most pleasant part. It's very stressful to be cheerful in festive in a roomful of people you've never seen before.

Riding in the car on the trip through Wisconsin really was enjoyable -- I don't get to ride in a car all that much. If you've got to travel on I-90, Western Wisconsin is the stretch to see, what with the hills and bluffs and wooded areas. I wanted to take pictures all the time. I was, in fact, inspired to start a photo project this spring. Two, actually -- one is area cemeteries, and one is just plain the area.

And on the ride, I listened to the new Norah Jones CD. She has such a pretty voice.

'Twas the night before St. Patrick's Day

...when all through the house, not a dish or sock was clean, not even a blouse.

'Blouse' is on the do-not-use word list.

Tonight we shall eat our corned beef and cabbage. It is an organized effort whereby each member of the family must be consulted about a time they can come to partake. My mother, who assembles the meal each year, is not even remotely Irish. The rest of us probably are a smidgen. We were more Irish before I found my genealogical blunder in January.

I like corned beef. I also like the Reubens that result from its leftovers. My brother was so excited he volunteered to purchase the sauerkraut. (Now, is a Reuben German or Irish? Sauerkraut certainly does not seem to be Irish.)

Yesterday we were going so stir-crazy at work that we -- the editorial assistant and I -- decided to give the 'new' (two months) lady a tour of downtown. This consisted of making a bee-line for the assistant's favorite coffeeshop and quickly marching past everything else with a half-baked explanation. Tomorrow, one of them later said, we will need to make three coffee runs (asst. usually does one, yesterday two). It seems unusually dead with the reporter gone -- there are six cubicles, and she was in the middle row, and the other person in the middle is the sports guy who's never in 'til mid afternoon. So we're always standing up now, hollering over the walls to each other, bored and unmotivated. This will come up to bite us quite soon as we start trying to cover the extra beats.

Clouds again today.

brr!

It had gotten so warm that I turned my heat off. Now it is not so warm anymore. I had to turn the heat back on this morning for the one hour I'll be here.

I'm reading "The God of Small Things" by Arundhati Roy. Only a few pages in, but she writes beautifully -- offhand, I remember her in passing referring to people with "sad hips" at a funeral.

Brrrr.

The office is now one person emptier. It will be an adjustment. Hiring a new person is a big job, almost like interviewing for what child you are going to adopt to keep the other kids company. And if the kids don't like your choice ... well, things will be a little more difficult.

The Pontiac is still cursed.

oh, DST

This whole spring-forward thing isn't working out for me. Some days I wake up at what was 6:30, now 7:30, meaning that night I fall asleep at what was 9:30, now 10:30. Then the next morning I'll sleep 'til what was 8:30, now 9:30, and 9:30 kind of throws the day off. And I don't appreciate eating supper in daylight.

Spring is generally a stressful time for me. I'm not so much a fan until the end of it.

My sister got her hair cut because this weekend we're going to visit relatives. Now I don't want my hair to look silly and unstylish like it does... hmm.

I'm trying to decide whether to buy a couch this morning.

The Curse of the Pontiac

If you know me very well, you have heard a vehicular saga or two spawn from my life story. And if you doubted whether I was truly vehicularly cursed, well...

Here's one for the books.

Saturday morning was a time I've been looking forward to for a few weeks now -- I had signed up to take a class at the state historical society, one of my favorite places on God's green earth. At 7:30, a time I don't see most days due to my cushy reporter's hours, I'm springing out of bed and gathering my library ID and my copying card and my census binders into my backpack. I tossed the haphazard nonperishable food items left in the apartment into a plastic grocery sack for lunch and headed for the gas station to fill up.

It was a pleasant morning, with the thick blanket of snow rapidly melting and the sun up shining cheerfully in the sky. I was thinking about how much I loved Saturday mornings as I switched interstates.

A few miles down the road from there I found myself behind someone who clearly was not in a hurry. I went to signal left.

I pushed down to turn left.

Then I pulled up a little to turn the signal off. But as I pulled up, I noticed I could pull the turn signal rod in absolutely any direction I chose -- up, down, left, right, in circles -- but none of them were going to cause the turn signal to cease blinking on the left side. It instead now hung rather limply, almost dangling from the steering wheel column.

25 miles from home. 25 miles from the library. I had left early enough to leave plenty of time for library research before the class, so I turned around and drove the half hour back to my parents' to borrow another car -- with the left turn signal going that whole time, mind you.

When I returned back to my parents' that evening, my dad showed me the steel-cast part from inside the steering column that had simply decided to crack into several pieces. Though he can weld most of it back together, whether he can reassemble it properly with the connected mechanisms and fit it all back inside the steering column is still a matter of question.

Meanwhile, this tiny cracked piece -- since when does steel crack? -- has nearly caused my dad to take a sick-day from work and has created tumult in the family driving arrangements.

(Tumult's a great word. We're constantly making good and bad word lists at work lately...)

For three days now I have been trying to log in to my blogger account...

Not that there's anything really to be said!

Today we are having a snowstorm. Legally it's not a blizzard and I can't say what it's like, conditionwise. In the city it's hard to gauge. It did snow in a respectable heaviness for part of the afternoon. From the newsroom, we were privy to all the rumors going around -- that "they" were going to close the interstate, that they already had from Owatonna to Albert Lea (which they had not), that the county had pulled its plows off the road because it couldn't keep up, that MnDOT was about to follow suit, that you couldn't find the road in outlying areas... I managed to get some snow in my clogs and get extremely bored at work (as 1/3 of the newsroom could not make it in and no one was at their places of employment to be interviewed anyhow), but that was about the extent of the inconvenience to my life to date. I went home early and had a pleasant chat with my mailman whilst he made his distributions at the apartment complex's mail center.

Though it is not generally accepted, I do believe that conversation about the weather has some merit. (Have I said as much before?) It is something we have in common; it is something true; it is something that does have significant effect on our lives. For instance, my conversation with the mailman began with, "Nice day for you to be out, eh?" and he made a comment to the effect that he had started early but would likely not be done even by normal finishing time. And he continued that he lives about 35 miles away, and, though they may be the more shallow details, we now know each other a little better.

What else is new? Hmm. A reporter quit. My grandmother's surprise party is in two weeks. There is an newsroom disturbance regarding the aesthetics of the word "armada." (I say that it is nearly bastardized because it sounds part like "arm" -- armpit, army, German harshness -- and part like a passing Spanish breeze. It needs to commit to one or the other. The school board reporter disagrees and intends to someday name an all-salad restaurant after the term.) Next week I am looking forward to another genealogy class. I might be training to be a local museum tour guide in April. I gave up chocolate for lent, but not very devotedly, and so so far I think I've had some about every day, so I may just quit. My intentions were not altogether holy anyhow.

I've found yet another Brit com to my liking -- "A Fine Romance" with Judi Dench and her real-life husband; there aren't any more "Foyle's War"s at the library that I haven't seen, much to my disappointment; my sister and I resolved to go see "Sweet Land" at the theater, only to find we had waited too long and now it's gone; and I've killed a few trees printing out my favorite front page design ideas.

Does anyone still read this crap? Don't leave your name, but just leave a 'yes' comment. (Since you are, clearly, reading this.)

March is coming in like a lion, but with the color of the the lamb. ;)

me

An important part of my life has been absent for far too long: Frito bars.

Michelle made them often for our RA meetings. We consumed them by the pound. They are the perfect girl bonding food -- frito, chocolate, peanut butter, sugar. They make me feel all warm inside just thinking about them. Last night I realized I had Fritos, chocolate chips and peanut butter in my house -- everything necessary.

Another thing I was missing today: Iowa. Tied to the previous? I did get a letter from a roommate today, too...

While this place is not urban, per se, it is urban, relatively. I miss driving past the corn to get anywhere. I miss driving that does not involve stoplights. I miss knowing when to plug your nose relative to the passing of a pig truck. I miss my good red pen from the Beacon, and Pizza Ranch, and nice Hy-Vees (Minnesota Hy-Vees are kind of ghetto), and driving, and making fun of other newspapers, and the Loess Hills, and the high-quality Chinese food of small Dutch towns, and Tropical Sno, and my roommate's stepstool, and the Puddlejumper, and the Tolsmas' swiffers, and criticizing JVDW's freshman poli sci students' essays, wrapping Beacons in garbage bags to avoid rain, and very much roommate story time.

(Do I want to move back to Iowa, though? No. No, this is the right place.)

I felt a strong need to read aloud today. It has not yet been fulfilled.

Tonight I re-watched "Cold Mountain." Nicole Kidman is so eerily lovely. They make me want to quilt and make pot roast. Ooh, boiled potatoes sound kind of good right now. Boiled baby potatoes with butter.

return from the edge of florida

It was 10 below zero when we got up to go to the airport last Sunday morning. The temperature rose about 80 degrees by the time we landed in Florida.

It wasn't the warmest of weeks to be there, especially the first few, but at least it was warmer than it is here!

Wednesday was ladies' beach day, unfortunately our first one. Above you see a view from that beach. The water was chilly and no one was swimming, but the beach was nice and warm and I burned my scalp quite nicely.

The beach we went to was on Sanibel Island, facing the gulf. It took far too long to get there and cost too much, we felt. Once we finally reached the beach, though, we agreed it was worth the effort. It was a large, sandy beach far from any buildings or streets with an unadulterated view. It's also known as a great shell-collecting beach, and we could see why. You can stand in the shallow water and feel shells run over your feet as the waves come in.

I went with my whole big family for ... five days, I suppose. We flew down and rented a fantastic vacation house, a million times better than a hotel. Most people (including one or two of us) would say we are really boring vacationers and that we waste a lot of the time -- we did very little while we were there, relatively. The point, however, was to be somewhere warm and to take it easy. That we accomplished fairly well.

Sunday: We traveled, basically.

Monday: We began learning about the road system in Fort Myers and paid a visit to the Edison museum. It was an overpriced letdown. Highly disorganized and dislabeled and disappointing. It has potential but needs work.

Tuesday: The ladies went to a mall and played "What Not to Wear," sort of. We exchanged names and had twenty minutes to pick out a complete outfit for someone else. Made shopping a little more interesting, considering none of us intended to purchase anything, really. When we got 'home,' we blew up the pool toys and jumped in our nice warm pool.

Wednesday: Sanibel beach day.

Thursday: The ladies attempt a second beach day at Fort Myers Beach. Traffic is bad and parking is worse -- we pay someone $7 to park in their lot for the day, only to find there are beach restrictions and noise hampering our experience. We stay a couple of hours and go home to our pool.

Friday: We sleep in a little, only to learn we have a check out time, and that it is in 15 minutes. The ladies throw everything in suitcases while the men are golfing, then sit next to the suitcases in the driveway (yet happy in the sunshine) until the men return.

On all of these days, those of the male persuasion played one or two rounds of golf.

Vacations can be interesting in groups, of course, for the group dynamics. I always learn more about myself and my family. Mostly I still like all of us. :) This trip was largely a peaceful success, considering the unplanned nature and it being our first time with my brother-in-law along. I don't know that he had the best time just because he's a more active person than the rest of us, but it certainly could have (and has) been much, much worse.

I'm relaxed. Enjoyed not working! (Though I do enjoy my job.) This was my first real, paid vacation EVER. It was amazing. I can't believe someone paid me to be gone.

Mine was kind of like this but cooler and published two days sooner! (A chalkboard and chalkboard font but mine was real picture of someone standing in front of a real blackboard and I wrote on the board in Photoshop freehand with a chalk-like brush) The blurb below on this page says there was lots of explanatory journalism that weekend (which mine was, also!). I know they were all copying me... :)
http://www.brasstacksdesign.com/bfd/012107.html

news design

(Ignoring the blah design of this worthless blog,) I'm getting that news designer's itch again. I want to make something cool.

About a week ago now I thought up this darn nifty photo illustration (inspired by the NWC website, nonetheless) that definitely drew reader attention to the not-that-fabulous article connected, yet I've gotten so many compliments on the story. I wrote the story, I know it's crap. It was the design that made it stand out.

Every page since that day has felt like a cop out.

Now I'm looking at newspagesdesign.com and brasstacksdesign.com. Mostly they make me feel inadequate. When I get back from vacation, though (one week to the beach!), I hope to start making some changes to the way I do layout and editing.

I love this in the middle here. http://www.brasstacksdesign.com/bfd/122806.html
(I have a permanent rail in the left column of my front page to work around, which really limits your design options. On the other hand, it's kind of nice to have the pool limited down from every possibility out there to a few less.)

I would have done that page all black and white, though, I think, anyway. Or at least that photo in the upper right seems wrong to me. And I'd have raised the drop-cap G up a few more points. And the three legs of body copy need some more room above them to breathe. I do like that tan. And the apple! The 'president', though, should be the same height as the three lines combined next to it. But nice use of space as a whole. And nice way to tie the photo into the page. I love that. I want to do it more. But it takes time and the right photo and forethought, which equals more time. So mostly time. Which I am definitely in the negative column on.

yo

Hi. This is a strange sensation -- downtime, the feeling that I could read a book and have time to watch a movie later. Work's been a little insane lately.

(By insane I mean I'm working more hours than I'm used to. Certainly many people I know work many more hours than this.)

Outside the wind is audibly picking up. Rumor has it it's supposed to get "cold" -- as in not get about 20. This is not January "cold" in my book.

What's new... I bought some yogurt.

I found a few tables I really like at Menard's. Now I just have to decide how much I like them.

We have a new in/out board at work. We got way too excited about it. (And that has gotten us in some trouble.)

I guess I can't think of anything else. And I'm getting both stir-crazy and drowsy. New drugs. Go figure.

thanks

Thanks for the many birthday wishes. It turned out to be a very nice day and weekend, easily topping last year. :) Other than the very beginning, when I got in my car and backed into something (just some scrapes in a small area, but still), it was pleasant.

I felt kind of guilty later in the day that I elected to spend so much of it alone. I figured that if it was my birthday, I should spend it doing what I wanted to do -- which happened to be things that are better done alone. Perhaps that was too selfish. Ah, well. What's done is done.

I spent much of the day at one of my favorite places in the world -- the state historical society library. :) I didn't find a whole lot and it was pretty busy, but there was some parking discount so that was nice.

Next I visited Ikea. It was my maiden voyage -- I hadn't realized before I got in the door that it's more of an experience than a shopping trip. You can't just swing by. It takes some time commitment. But I liked a lot of their stuff -- also didn't like a lot. Bought myself a children's tea set. :)

Later went to a cheesy movie. Meanwhile, my family calls my (dead) cell six times, worried that I'd been abducted or in an accident because I'd said earlier I might drop by as soon as 6:30. This is where I feel guilty -- spent the whole day without them, declined two lunch offers and another for a beer.

But today we did a nice family thing. My mom and my sister planned a nice Italian lunch, and then we sat around watching TV on mute and making fun of the people on it. (I always watch TV with closed captioning and sound. My dad and my brother prefer to watch it on mute with no closed captioning. My mom and my sisters are irritated by both of those habits.)

This should be another interesting week of work! Aren't they all...

one of these things is not like the others

a dog day in review

I've been working so much this week that I haven't had time to write about the Ford funeral. (Or not time to write about it for my blog. I've definitely spent time writing about it, or trying to write about it.)

I know next to nothing about Ford. About every fifth time I think about him I think his name is Henry Ford. Until this evening I was pretty sure he served after LBJ. I think I know more about Betty Ford. She's the one with the clinics.

But why his death is exciting (excuse the morbidity) is the whole state funeral. I was in DC when the last president (Reagan) died for my study abroad (okay, study off-campus). And, to add to that, we were also reporters, so that meant we really dug into the whole thing (or had the chance to. I chose to run away from the parade when there was a false bomb scare at the Capitol. But I did see the plane salute from the roof).

What I really remember, other than hearing the stories of my classmates who actually did cool journalist things, is standing in line to view the coffin at the lying in state at the Capitol rotunda. I don't remember that much about seeing the actual coffin -- it's the standing in line I remember. It took six hours. But six hours in a I'll-remember-this-forever sense and not a this-sucks sense. Laura Keith and I got in line at 8:15ish p.m. after an eight-block walk from my dorm. At 2:30 a.m. we were in the rotunda. As we left the Capitol you could look down the mall and all you could see was lines of people (the line would zigzag the length of each block 12 times before moving onto the next), and you knew the ones way at the end might never get in because rumor had it they were closing at 6 a.m. And there were so many people. And they were America.

ha

I love it -- two big papers have been taking jabs at each other all year. The Pioneer Press was recently sold and more recently took significant cuts in its newsroom staff. Today, the Star Tribune announced it had been sold to a company that owns no other dailies. Their articles on the sale are very different -- and therefore very funny.

The Strib says:

The McClatchy Co. capped a year of dramatic changes in the newspaper industry Tuesday by announcing the surprise sale of the Star Tribune, its largest newspaper, to a private investment group.

The $530 million sale will place the future of Minnesota's dominant newspaper in the hands of Avista Capital Partners, a New York-based partnership of former investment bankers. It also continues a trend that accelerated this year in which large newspaper companies, such as McClatchy, Knight Ridder and Tribune, either winnowed their holdings or put themselves up for sale. Private owners have emerged to bid for many of the big-city papers that have come into play as a result.

McClatchy has played a major role in that change, agreeing to buy all of Knight Ridder Inc. last spring. Sacramento, Calif.-based McClatchy then sold a number of the Knight Ridder papers it considered to be less desirable, including the St. Paul Pioneer Press, which is now run by privately held MediaNews Group Inc. of Denver.

Those sales concluded by the fall, however, and the Star Tribune had not been viewed within the industry as a candidate for sale.

McClatchy paid $1.2 billion for the newspaper in 1998. Although its circulation and advertising results in the past several years had run into the same headwinds that other large dailies have encountered, the Star Tribune remains solidly profitable.

And the Pioneer Press says:

Newspaper publisher The McClatchy Co. said on Tuesday that it will sell its flagship newspaper Star Tribune to a private equity firm for $530 million, a sharp drop from the $1.2 billion it paid to acquire the newspaper just eight years ago.

McClatchy said it decided to sell the newspaper to Avista Capital Partners through a private bidding process "after a strategic reevaluation of its portfolio of holdings" following McClatchy's purchase of Knight Ridder for $4.5 billion earlier this year.

McClatchy faces a large tax bill from selling off 12 other newspapers earlier this year as part of its purchase of Knight Ridder. It said the tax benefit of selling the Star Tribune at a loss is worth $160 million, raising the total value of the deal to $690 million.

McClatchy chairman and CEO Gary Pruitt said in a written statement that the Star Tribune "is a profitable business that has generated significant returns for the company over the years. However, as we continue to analyze our business following the Knight Ridder acquisition, it became clear that selling the Star Tribune strengthens McClatchy's competitive position."

scratch 'n sniff Jesus

Some background info:

1.Once I spent a week in Chicago with a group learning about the the workings of a city. The trip isn't pertinent, but one of the trip leaders is. One morning he lined us up looking out the windows in a sixth-floor room. Then he prayed and asked us to join him, but with our eyes open. I like that best now -- praying with my eyes open, looking especially at textures, to sink in that this God I'm addressing was once of this dry, patterned flesh. If I close my eyes, it's easy to conjure up a film character instead.

2.A church in the suburbs did this "Christian haunted house" when I was in high school. It portrayed Hell, and you walked along from room to room and it was horrible. They'd have to move many people in the middle of a room out of the building because they couldn't handle it.

It would be neat to see a scratch 'n sniff Jesus ... well, display's not the word. Something where they're reading a story -- maybe even showing, maybe -- from one of the gospels, and instead of just seeing, it uses your other senses. (This is not for evangelical purposes according to this proposal.) For example, you're hearing (and maybe seeing) the story of the Last Supper and you stick your hand in something and feel/smell Jesus washing dirty feet. Then you hold the chalice and taste the bread and wine. Another spot, you might smell the alabaster jar's contents as it's broken. Feel nails in his hands (ick), mud on un-seeing eyes, feel the water Jesus walked on, a basket of loaves and fishes, hold the baby wrapped in swaddling clothes, smell the stable, feel the rough hay of the manger. Feel his face. The crown of thorns. See his hairy arms. Smell his B.O.

There we are. You're right, the other one was trippier.

The problem with working so late is that my brain is still wound up when I get home, so I have to stay up even later doing nothing to wind it down. So now ... I guess I'll read a book.