Why is it cold in Duluth / Recollections

 Well, anyway, anyone who has read this far, has got to be extremely frustrated at this point.  First, the lack of fiction so far.   Let me just point out, we maybe haven't gotten that far, so all we can do is remain hopeful.  I guess, there is always, " that shade of grey ".   So back, back to where is this confrontation?  Well, I guess we could just go back to Star Wars, for a bit.  Big confrontations and such.  Social , ( un-rest ? ), upheavals, people traveling here and there, like in un-godly short time spans, and what do you end up with ?  Clocks that run backwards? So then, is it hot or cold ?  Well, if what we are really talking about is " clocks ", not sure, just not sure.

  Now, this can go on, and on, but no one should be able to deny the connection between The Lakota Nation, ( Lakota with two a's ), and of course Sioux, which translates as snake, and so, there you go. Now, you should know that the Lakota, are considered to be plains ( indians ? native americans )  folk, ie, Midwesterners ,  or you might think about it as the folks that say --- not too bad --- , a lot.  But that is a bit of a silly notion about this particular group or Nation.   Now, as I have  been led to consider, the origin of this Nation may be somewhere in Chile, which I have no actual evidence to assert.  But whether or not that was true, it is highly likely they traveled --- all over the area that we now call the U.S.A. referring, of course, then, to both a geographic region , as well as kind of a " geo-political ", gathering or collection. This collection also includes : States, as the name might suggest, and of course the U would likely s...

 I think that, when it comes to rules, we all generally, follow them, ignore them, or sometimes, just don't know about them.  We find out about rules at different times, and who makes the rules, or who tells us about them will vary over time.  But this has nothing (nothing?) much to do with the rules,  but more about how we perceive them. So, if I had to pick a point in my life where I experienced some sort of irreversible change, it would be after seeing the movie, Butch Cassidy and the Sun Dance Kid.  Not sure why it was a movie or why that movie in particular.  Certainly Sometimes a Great Notion hit me harder, in many ways, possibly because I read the book, ( I think ), before I saw the movie, but it was a different time, and even a different place.  But, the rules were different then, between the location and the time and the situation, so really not a lot of comparisons.  Both movies did appear in what you might call a " pivotal" moment in hi...

 Probably one of my greatest pleasures while residing in the area, I do, is of course the big lake, that some will even call a Great Lake, and noticing, as I sometimes will, the variation in the colors of blue, which also stretch into some grays, and of course you have the little punctuation marks we generally refer to as clouds.  Sometimes, the clouds like to " dominate ", the whole show, if you want to call it that. But, having those two colors of blue, mostly it seems, harmonized, I always find , well mesmerizing, and also, both intriguing and arousing my curiosity.  So, one of my physics professors, from sometime in the past might say they have a resonance, maybe, of some kind.  So the whole idea of resonance was how he viewed things, and I also will note , that he felt that the " energy ", transmission grid, could not be improved.  I don't know if you could get it in writing from him, but he did mention that in a conversation. So, I wouldn't try, but of...

  So, this is a time, and most likely a place, that might be easy to pin point by the end.  The entire story revolves around making homemade root beer, which I took some pains in figuring out how to do, and even so far as to somehow acquire a device to affix bottle caps to bottles, which I was also somehow fortunate to acquire.  Well, I just have to say that there seems to be an unwritten law or maybe rule, that in order to make homemade root beer, an important requirement for that, is it needs to be made in the basement, since it takes a certain amount of time to --- just say --- affix the ingredients in order to succeed with the right --- brew. Now, at the same time as this was going on, large amounts of wild strawberries were coming up all over, and being picked wildly, by many, and so at the end, a significant amount had been turned to jelly or maybe jam, not sure. Anyway, at this point it is now evening, and by my recollection, dusk or dark, and of course you might g...

  And so, two guys, you know how often the set up is two guys?, sitting around, as you my note is often the case, as one guy says: " Heh, you want to play a game? " " Sure, why not ? " "K, the game is chess, but hasn't been invented yet .. " "K... " Guy 1 goes off stage for 15 minutes, while guy 2 fiddles with the controls on a non-existent t.v. Guy 1 returns, "K, got the board, .. " Sets the board down. " Now, before we play, we begin by solving all the problems in the world ". " K ". " You got rice ? " " Yes, many barrels, and huge surplus " " Okay now, you must get one grain, and put it on this 8x8 board, and then on the second square place two grains of rice, and then on , the third square, you place 4, and on the fourth square 8, and so on, and so forth. Got it ? " "Sure, okay, no problem ". 2 ** 64 = 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 fade to purple, orange, and green

 I am somewhat concerned that I made a " horrible " mistake, by introducing some concepts from Star Wars , into this -- collection --- , but, hopefully it may not be -- so bad --, especially when you consider that the original Star Wars, was renamed, a New Hope, which is optimistic and all, but it might muddy up the whole notion of --- good & evil --- , but then, who knows? So, I was just thinking about the what a xxx - cross - between, Douglas Adams , and the -- Star Wars -- epically , epic canon, might entail. Now, in that scenario, the guys, from Hitchhiker's Guide, would, be in some kind of communication with , oh say, the Emperor's folks , about replacing the planets, that had been destroyed on account of the " toxic " relationship , between a father and a son.  Maybe, the Mr. Emperor, was really a " nice guy ", who just got some bad, P.R., and I'm sure you know about those guys, ( you ? ).  You know, fixing planets, or replacing plane...

  So , I have to start out with a friend, with many interesting intersections for me, on this road, that some might call , life.  So , he was, to the best of my knowledge,  a Mennonite Missionary, which of course I have very little clear understanding of what that might mean, but he did tell me once , not to fight evil, which I have briefly muddled with that thought from time to time.  Yet, if I could describe him briefly , it would be as a champion or Champion of justice (Justice).  ( it is not clear how this capitalizing or not capitalizing somethings is really all that helpful )   Anyway, we have some strong cultural influences on us, that strongly influence our thinking and feeling on this subject.   Anyway, back to Stars Wars, which actually I don't know where I would go --- back to ---, some kid, finds some hologram of some lady ( later we learn the lady is his sister ) ... and decides to go on a heroic crusade , kind of against the " c...

 Not really McDonalds? So, when I was about 7 years old, I had to walk past a McDonalds on my way home from school.  Kind of a hard thing for a 7 year old, but really it was not so bad.  I often would walk home with other kids, who were as broke as I was and unable to scrounge up $0.10 for a burger, which was kind of big money back then, but that was okay, since we were all on our way back home, and generally we all had our marbles, those great treasures of youth. When I first got to Duluth, I do not remember a McDonalds , but I do remember Big Boy, near the shore, but , I know there was one, very soon after , because I worked there for a short time, then moving down the road, to where the burgers were even bigger.   Flipping burgers, I can only imagine, that it was not too cold, in front of a hot grill.  Once upon a time.

  So, I had an Amish cup, which I have been drinking coffee out of for approximately 10 years.  I had a pretty genuine perception that if that cup would vanish, that would be pretty much the end of everything, and have had the experience of searching desperately for it, suspecting that it had vanished.   Anyway, it shattered right in front of me.  Complete structural collapse.  So, I witnessed in like a second, what I always imagined would bring a complete end to the reality , I thought I knew. So, what do you do at the - end of - that world?  Well, pick up the pieces, find another cup, and try , as best as you can, to continue on with your life, the best you can.

 It might have been cold, but it was winter, and I am pretty sure it was 1970, but I can't be sure about any of it.  I do remember that there was supposed to be a lunar eclipse at that time, but my memory is not clear on that point.  Several horses traveled maybe south west through the Minnesota woods, for hours to reach that destination. Special was, of course, Special Discount, a quarter horse mare, an incredible animal who would go on to compete in barrel races, in a future I did not see. A wonderful and amazing quarter horse, who could go almost any where, and through anything, and also go quite fast.  How well do I remember that day or those days?  I know there were trees and I know there was snow.  And I have to quests that somewhere along that line there was ice.  But I can't remember the other horses then or if I was alone or if there were others.  I guess that time is a bit of a blur for me, today.   Yet, for all that, it does s...

  So it is quite likely that few people know that William Faulkner worked on the script for the movie The Big Sleep, which is from a 1939 novel, The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler. Most likely pretty fictional. But, makes me think how much " fiction " was added by William Faulkner.  Great motivation to go back and reread all of Williams Faulkner work to determine how much is genuine fiction. So, I do have several incidence that can strike you as somewhat fictional, and yet are " apparently " quite real.  A simple incident might be called - Special and the Stud, from the winter of 1970, pretty sure, around Duluth.  But yet quite sure it was real.   Certainly one that would fall into that same or similar category would be the day I started out to go to Disney Land and ended up in San Rafael.  Was it an error, a miscalculation or simply fiction?  Well, I am more comfortable believing it was real.   Perhaps, moving more into the direction of...

 So, this was going to be a much different recollection, but for now, I'm not sure that I am recollecting anything.  But simply, as you may know, Duluth is located as most cities in the U.S., in a state.  Of cours,e there are two cities in the U.S. called Duluth, quite oddly, and so one is in Minnesota, and the other is  in Georgia, which is also the state I believe that the song 7 Bridges Road, by the Eagles is based in.  But in this Duluth, which features so prominently so far , is in Minnesota, and by my reckoning, that state is pretty deep.  I guess I say that because so much of the iron ore, that the steel we have in the U.S., comes out of  Minnesota, and hence,  that state has gotten a good deal deeper over many years, on account of so much of it has been spread all over the rest of the country.  In addition, a whole bunch of the wood from our state has also ended up in many peoples homes, sometime as doors or windows or other household...

 So, to start out with, if there is a reflective mind, then is there a difference between reflective and refractive mind, or , / but, anyway probably another topic for another time like mind / no mind. Anyway, the determination of  'hot' or 'cold', would implicitly , kind of, refer to a location, or a distance, or something like that, and so if you / or we / or somebody , comes up with a remark like, ' it's cold as hell ', and all you can think of is, (( => is hell actually cold ??? )), like I was brought up on the " right side " of the tracks, and therefore, because of my very young religious education , hell was always " hot " ... Maybe, that's why Louis Armstrong's band was called the " Hot Five " ? Some of these questions, may not produce immediate answers.  Maybe some are not worth asking, but then once you --- ask a question --- , can you un-ask it ?  .    

 So, it is kind of curious how memories from 40 years ago, can return home to you, to such an extent, that they almost haunt you. Of course, ir always takes awhile until you can reach the point that you have those kinds of memories.   Of course, that period of my life, was clearly essential for what came after that.  So, I will just go into one recollection from the fall of 1986, when there was frost on my windshield as I drove to the airport on my way to Miami.  There is probably no better way to determine how cold it is if you live north of Miami, than to fly to Miami.  You don't have to live very far north of Miami even for that to happen.   So, on this particular day, after cleaning the frost from my windshield, I arrived in Miami, in the evening. I arrived at possibly the " hottest " place in the city , which is the - airport.  So, that would be a temperature difference of around 60 digresses, a noticeable  jump.  So, on that p...

 I did not grow up in Duluth, and I have a bit of a hard time imagining that I could have.  That does bring up the issue of growing up, which I must leave to the side, but as a young person, I did have a very important role model in the form of Davey Crocket.  However, at perhaps some younger time, a friendly local baker would call me "Cisco " when I went into his shop.   In sort of another life, my father was a pilot, and before I was born he would fly a sea plane into this area from New York.  Therefore, at a very young age I had this awe for what at that time, I only knew to be " the North Woods ". This would be oddly around the same time frame as Humbert Humphrey's speech to the Democratic Convention, in 1948 and that link follows::  americanrhetoric Of course, I never learned of that speech until much later.  I did in fact actually meet Mr. Humphrey , here in Duluth, after I began college, after serving in the U.S. Army.  I approached hi...

 So I finished watching 1951, The Day The Earth Stood Still, based on a 1940 sci fi , story, and feeling kind of grateful about a robot not destroying the earth in 1951.  You think about it , Robin Williams would never have been a thing.  There would never have been a - Good Morning Vietnam, or a JFK, or LBJ or MLK or even the Beatles. But the notion that a group of intergalactic folks might decide that aggression would be automatically addressed by total destruction, is a little bit unnerving.  It doesn't really explain why it is cold in Duluth. Of course at this point I have not really determined clearly, whether or not, in fact, it is even cold in Duluth, but I can say there is a substantial group of runners, some in the middle of the race, ie, Grandma's Marathon, who are grateful, and hoping it does stay cool this a.m.   Back to 1951, there was no Marathon in Duluth, at that time, but there may have been more people here..  Generally, you might cal...

  Now, I can imagine there may be those - unable or otherwise just not connected - that could confuse a pig whistle and/or a kerfuffle.  But, I have, personally witnessed, with my own two eyes, both a kerfuffle and a pig whistle at the very same time, not more than 20 feet away. Could I forget something like that? Of course many people do have differing views on both kerfuffle s and whether or not pig whistles do actually dance.  This might in some respects seem on it's surface that if you come down one way or the other you might be down that quite slippery slope where pig whistles can do all kinds of things, that they may be not able to do.  I tend to believe, they probably do dance, but likely not often, and they are most likely shy. Now, back to the extremely fascinating topic of kerfuffle s, like who, what, or why, well first I need to mention we do have a goodly number of folks, some times referred to as police officers or officers of the peace, who seem to know...

  Intro: So, imagine peacefulness and tranquility. There is an island, or an ocean, maybe a sea, on the horizon, and maybe you wonder about, how is it possible?  Or perhaps, you don't think about it at all.  Why would you? Why should you?  It is only sky, and air, and clouds, and of course earth, because as soon as you get into some kind of mind set about air and sky and clouds, why then, you might think you are simply dreaming or maybe watching some anima, but then you got the earth underneath all that and you have some confidence, some assurance, okay, then, real or not seems pretty interesting or engaging, so I'll buy in.   Seems real enough for most practical purposes, what ever those may be, and there are roads, and telephones, all kinds of --- marvelous --- things.  Other people, goats, tomatoes, barbeques , cold slaw, potato salad and probably beans.  So, when you get back to thinking or dreaming or speculating some, on what is real and wha...