What christmas legos are supposed to be...

...if your dad wants to raise another nerd.

Waiting for the dentist...

I wish they had Waldo when I was 5.

What my wife and kids did today. . .

was make me fatter.

Waking from a long slumber. . .

My Dad came and had Thanksgiving dinner with the family for the 1st time in 30 years last week. And so I am inspired to write about my Dad. But, being afraid of complete sentences, here is a list of things I have learned from my father.

How to cook with no recipe.

How to find my way home from anywhere.

How to help people when they ask (and sometimes when they don't) with no thought of reward.

How to insist on being right, even when I am not.

How to hate grading.

How to enjoy nature.

How to love my country for what it could be.

How to wear a stocking cap.

How to listen to public radio.

How to be late all the time.

How to fish.

There's more of course. Maybe I'll try to write a blog post about each one of these as a way to reflect and tell some stories. Check back soon, as semester break will no doubt leave me with blogging time. Right?

Today I am a man...

A friend with an extra ticket and suddenly I'm sitting in the lower deck watching an actual pro-football game. And it was awesome. Thank you Chad and thank you Vikings for almost losing just to make it fucking awesome when you didn't. 

Going strong since 1940. . . .

A few images from my weekend:
Driving home late in a light snow flying into the wash of my headlights, I had to drive on the shoulder to avoid combines, grain wagons and semis hauling. An early winter in Minnesota.

Driving into town with my boys in the truck, the younger asleep, the older leaning on the glass and gazing out the window, just like I did. And, for the first time, my son laughed and said "that's funny" when listening to "A Prairie Home Companion."

Sitting in the grass disassembling and reassembling the two fans on the side of my largest grain bin, my boys fetching tools and holding the back wrench when something needed breaking loose.

A weekend of the life I've always wanted, though I have not always known that.

Our revels now are ended. . .

I always try to wrap up the Renaissance Festival in some way. I have written blog posts, told it to my students, tried desperately to communicate it to my wife, who doesn't need words to understand me, so doesn't react the way I expect (as if I am opening a shining door into my very being) so it always feels less than adequate.

This final weekend of the festival was different though. I brought my daughter. In the past, I have banished my kids from the last weekend so I can be free of any obligation other than drinking in the joy and spending as much time with the audience as possible. Hannah is 11 now and has been a costumed participant in the show for 9 seasons. She acts 23 most days and so, I thought, sure she can spend one more weekend with her friends wandering the village like a pack of teenagers at the mall. She chose to spend the whole time with me. She followed me around the way her brothers do and she never has. After two long days of keeping up with me just fine and needing no real concern from the old man, we sat together and watched the closing gate show.

An old tradition largely fallen by the wayside, the closing gate show does now what it always should have. It gives a grand finale and a curtain call to this great piece of theatre and allows us all to feel okay with closing the trunk and taking down the signs for a year. I saw the quiet joy at being a part of it in my little girl's face and gave her the first rose I have ever caught from the hundreds I have seen thrown from atop the gate. We sang some songs, packed up our stuff, helped my mother do the same, and I hugged some friends goodbye.

On the drive home, just shy of 10-oclock at night, we stopped at McDonald's for some greasy burgers (a tradition) and I asked her if she'd had a good weekend. Looking at me, as only women can, with a look that asked me as if I was foolish enough to think there was doubt, she said simply yes. Then she smiled, and soon fell asleep in the backseat as if she had gone from grown woman to my little girl again in those few moments. I am always entertained by my fellow performers out there. I am awed and often struck dumb by one in particular who knows what I think so I hope he knows that. And I am endlessly grateful for the gifts the audience brings us in the form of laughter, happiness and sometimes wonder. But it is somehow surprising to me, after all these years, that it is in the eyes of my daughter that I see most clearly what I love about it all.

The end of the grilling season approaches.

In a week it will seem impossible that it was this unfinished

Maybe the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

Reason number 252 why I should leave the building more often.

Once more into the breach, dear friends.

My first class of the semester starts in about 30 minutes and here I sit thinking about teaching.  My Dad was a college professor for more than 30 years.  When I was a kid sitting in his class room, or because he couldn't turn it off, just sitting down to dinner with him, I saw my Dad inspire people to discuss, to explore and to think critically about what it is we do in this world.  My Dad taught sociology, which makes that sort of investigation and questioning kinda the point.  But the thing about all this that makes it relevant to me now is whether or not it is even possible for me to have the same impact on my students.  The class I will began teaching in 20 minutes covers stagecraft.  Or, put less snootily, building stage scenery.  Questioning the foundations of society rarely comes up.  Like most men in the western tradition, my self worth is quite tied up in being at least as good a man as my father. Now in some ways I feel pretty damn successful, but here I pause.  Can I make them think and feel and care as I describe the vagaries of plywood and the evils of luaun?  Probably not.  But today I think I will start with a simple discussion of why we are in the theatre.  A question they can answer and, hopefully, I can tie together into a cohesive and interesting lecture on the beauty inherent in building scenery for a living.  We'll see.

This little fella was hanging out behind my garage today. I failed to take a picture of me, in super manly fashion, using a 9-iron to carry him across the road to hopefully find a new home.

I haven't actually "written" a blog in quite some time.  Maybe that explains some things.  Tuesday night a new kid joins my family for a while.  Unlike the others she will be 16 and Danish. It's weird when you don't actually know the person. At all.  That's been on my mind lately along with the imminent return to work that August brings in a violent way.  Festival and school starting all at once.  All this seems silly however as today I got a call that one of my students who I have become quite attached to, was beaten into the mayo clinic by the guys he was trying to protect a stranger from.  His fractured skull will heal, I am positive, but that doesn't make it all make sense. I'm really confused about that whole thing where, in the movies, if you do something selfless, it doesn't end like that. I know I sound like a child saying that, but I have always lived with the belief that if I were in that situation I could and would solve the problem.  I count on the fact that my strength can fix things. It makes me feel better about the world.  Well if this guy can't get out of this without getting airlifted to mayo, I'm fucked.  I am left feeling weak and unsure.  That I suppose is what everyone feels. Maybe if I go to bed now, I'll feel strong in the morning. Cross your fingers for me.  He doesn't need help.  He's too strong to give in to something as puny as head injuries. Trust me.

How to fix your shitty morning

Lunch on the loading dock with my boy.

Sending Philipp home.

I will tell you where your reality lies.

Styrofoam makes my world go round.

The great escape.

The cab to the train to the plane, ya'll.

What the fuck river runs through Chicago, anyway?

Underneath chicago.

Where I belong.

Freedom ain't free.

A flurry of action saw the pigeon depart, early last evening. I'm sure the suspense was killing you.

Country mouse visits city mice.

Chicago, that toddlin town.

On the mend.

He seems to be trying to fly some. Still looks a little red under the wing. Odd how I went from cursing the damn pigeons in my barn to trying to nurse one back to health. I'm such a softy.

Movin' on u-u-up. Sorta.

See if a little food and water(and less motion sickness from my driving) can fix the pain the world has caused.

The hitcher.

Migration made easy. A pigeon living in the bed of my pickup.

Making movies on a friday.

Movie shoots where you have to make it look like you're digging up the dead in a functioning Catholic Church can kinda be fun. . . .

Ahh.

The greatest part of anyones day.

Safe and unsound.

Where 4 of my students lived. They're all un-hurt and have lost everything they owned in the world. Talk about losing your innocence in college. . .

Hotels. Whatever.

For those of you who travel in the lame style of he businessman feast your eyes on where I wake up this week. Hah. Take that corporate america! I wonder if there's a bed and breakfast by my house I could just move into. . . . .

Old school

I always feel so much more awesome boarding on the tarmac. Sure, it means a tiny plane, but I will suffer greatly for the chance to feel like indiana jones. Will someone draw a red line from Minneapolis to Cincinnati on the nearest map? Thanks.

"modern technology"

This is what it takes to fix a coolant leak on a car made this century. Yay progress.

Shrimp are kinda scary looking.

God posted a link to his Twitter that I actually bothered to click on. (My faith is shaky sometimes)  This is a pretty decent point, (as are all arguments against idiocy).  But one that kind of caught my eye today, so I thought I would tell all 4 of you that read my blog.  A quote from a deeper page on that site:

"Jesus never mentions homosexuality in the Gospels, not once. If it was so important that we had to clamp down on it anywhere and everywhere it rears its terrible head, don't you think he would have at least, you know, brought it up? There is on the other hand, a specific condemnation of divorce in the Gospels, spoken by Jesus, and yet I don't hear Focus on the Family saying anything about divorce."

Labeled floors rule.

Not sure I want to put it there.

Does America look different?

Maybe better lit.

Even better.

That's what I'm talkin' about.

If you have to go anywhere and get 5 hours of sleep to go to a bunch of meetings, this is a good way to wake up.

My office is in the basement away from other people.

I am back at work, so naturally, I will start actually writing blog posts again. Only when getting paid to do other things can I find time to write a blog, apparently. I have spent my entire "semester break" (read: "vacation for a religious holiday that all state institutions are pretending just worked out that way by coincidence") away from computers and stuff mostly because I have had other things to do. This has proven to me that the only reason I spend any time on the internet is because I use it to procrastinate. Are other people like this? Is there real value in this thing? Occasionally I go to my computer to look something up, but I am usually done with it in less than 5 minutes and move on to other things. Perhaps the reason the internet is so ubiquitous is that society has moved away from jobs that are totally focused on results. Old professions are immune. Hookers and mechanics rarely spend their day on facebook.

So I hear.

About hookers.

Dammit.