ELM TREES

In 1960 as I graduated from high school in St. Paul  the first trees were identified with the Dutch elm disease. The  trees over arched most of the city streets& sheltered all.  Ten years later Minneapolis  and St. Paul lost virtually all of their street trees. Crews had removed tens of thousands of diseased elms to slow the spread . All to no avail .Eventually elms throughout the state were under attack & only a scattered few in the woods here and there survived.  I live on Oak Hill Drive in SpringValley, Minnesota and a large tree died in our woods this summer, so without looking close I assumed that it was an oak tree. Wrong. It was an ELM. Age &comon sense mean I don' cut down huge trees any more . A local tree service did the job that elm tree must've been around the hundred feet tall. Take a look.

The last of the iconic Giant elms fell in my woods

and on the same day another giant fell. Supreme court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Her landmark decisions opened up a new world of   opportunity for those previously excluded. 

Towards a more perfect union with equal justice for all. My son & family

River Boat Captain

Fifty Five and Alive teaches one should be at least one car length behind the car in front of you for each ten miles per hour your going.   This is safety planning ahead for an unexpected stops or evasive maneuvers.  It’s the same way on the Mississippi when your piloting one of those long river barges.  Or as I explained to granddaughter Miss. Tensae  who was operating a giant screen simulator at the River Museum in Dubuque, Iowa, “it takes a mile to stop this puppy so you need to plan ahead.  Let’s not hit any bridges.”

She was a natural,  with her Dad and older brother watching in the pilot house, we breezed all the way downriver to St. Louis quite safely.....

 

Passions and poetry

Passion and poetry

the passions of our life can come at most any stage. My first as doubtless is true for most boys was my mom. I’ve often been struck in reading war novels upon recognizing their impending death the young warriors most often cry out for their mothers. I was always a mama’s boy till the day she died. She was a saint and my role model for values and behavior. I didn’t always live up to her standards in many areas but I knew she would be disappointed when I had done wrong. She brought me to the St. Paul library when I was three years of age. There in the children’s room began my lifelong love of books which continues to this day as a great passion. Reading a lot I believe made a writer out of me and a storyteller as well. Those abilities were rewarded in high school by all my English teachers with praise and recognition. I live for that praise today through the venue of my blogs and book reviews. Since I do that for free it obviously is a passion that rewards itself. Hobbies can also develop into  passions and the following poem by author Robert Trevor is an example from my own life. I'm going trout fishing in the woods today. Would you like to come along?

These small valley's are carved by spring fed streams. Limestone bluff on one side, hardwood forest on the other. Feel how cold the water is. The trout thrive here.

Insect hatches often come off the riffles. Trout feed on them. But not today. I'll fish the quiet pools and deep edges along the banks. It so quiet here in the woods. I rarely see anyone else. Let's sit on the bank and listen. Sometimes a doe and a fawn can be seen coming down for a drink.  In the spring there are warblers everywhere. Well, the fish weren't biting today. Still, I don't think our time was wasted. Do you?

I must add that I loved my teaching career best but fly fishing was my favorite outlet. People would occasionally as me what the attraction was and I had a hard time putting it into words.  Famous Michigan Judge and fifties novelist Robert Traver (Anatomy of a Murder) said it best.....

“I fish because I love to. Because I love the environs where trout are found, which are invariably beautiful, and hate the environs where crowds of people are found, which are invariably ugly. Because of all the television commercials, cocktail parties, and assorted social posturing I thus escape. Because in a world where most men seem to spend their lives doing what they hate, my fishing is at once an endless source of delight and an act of small rebellion. Because trout do not lie or cheat and cannot be bought or bribed, or impressed by power, but respond only to quietude and humility, and endless patience. Because I suspect that men are going this way for the last time and I for one don't want to waste the trip. Because mercifully there are no telephones on trout waters. Because in the woods I can find solitude without loneliness. ... And finally, not because I regard fishing as being so terribly important, but because I suspect that so many of the other concerns of men are equally unimportant and not nearly so much fun.”



 

Ozymandias

Okay , I will confess that my use of  my next favorite poem Shelley’s OZYMANDIAS in the wisdom of hindsight may be a bit over-the-top. In the wake of George Bush II the seconds ill advised and ineptly run assault on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in search of weapons of destruction that did not exist, well the facts were wrong and the advice was worse. I thought at the time he would go down in history as one of our worst presidents by far. Needless to say given what we have in the White House at the present makes Bush look a whole lot better. And added to that when he left the office he refused in good conscience to turn around and say one single word against Obama who followed him. I would say on that alone he was and is an honorable former president

You have a bad toothache and its a few days before you can see the dentist. It hurts and you find your tongue unconsciously reaching for the spot and it hurts even more. Mrs. T dropped me off at the barbershop in Rochester and after finishing my business and still awaiting her return,  I headed around the corner for something to do.  Thus,  I found myself in the Goodwill store  picking up a few books at a super bargain price.  There was the classic The Call of the Wild by Jack London read long ago as a teenager. Then I found The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. Having recently read her new novel Flight Behavior I wanted more.  The State of Denial by Bob Woodward was next to be dropped in the basket.  Yes it was the later that caused the pain. I knew it would be painful to read yet  I still took it home.  After reading the book I decided that  it was Woodward  who was in a State Of Denial about his two earlier sycophantic books about the Bush II administration. He appeared to be trying to make up for previous blunders.  It was  sort of a  novelistic, gossipy, fly on the wall type of documentary reporting.  The book also  contained a lot of trivia (did we really need to know Bush and Cheney liked to trade fart jokes at important meetings) , yet it also brought forth  an  overpowering indictment of the arrogance and incompetence of Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney,What a tragic farce it all was…..

The book was published praised and condemned in 2006. I had already intuited much of what was going on and being covered up in Iraq before this book came out.  In one of the few “political” posts I ever put on Troutbirder I came up with the following post.  Rather than discuss this poorly written book and its ultimate truths about the Iraq war, I’ll simply repeat what I wrote then…….

It is said that the great English poet Shelley was

visiting the British Museum in London when he

and his wife Mary (the author of Frankenstein)

came upon a relic of Ramses II. Stolen from

Egypt it remains in the museum today. This allegedly
inspired him to write Ozymandis. One of my
all-time favorite poems:

"I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them,

on the sand,Half sunk,

a shattered visage lies,

whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer

of cold command.

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,Which yet survive,

stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them,

and the heart that fed,

And on the pedestal these words appear:

"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:

Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Nothing beside remains.Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck,

boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.

I think this spare poem will stand well in the future quite well for our autocrat loving and cowardly president who will reside alone in the trash can of failed  American presidents 

As the stars fall

His name is dog. We don’t know why people haven’t named him yet. But we do know he lived in a big city in an alleyway with his pack. That is with his mother and siblings. Actually, he’s just a puppy and His mom and siblings have been taken away by the dog catchers. So this puppy is barely scraping an existence in the alleyway. He wanders about sniffing the ground for scraps of something to eat. He is alone, frightened, exhausted and meeting mean people who either ignore him or hurt him. It's a great story and here's why.
     At the beginning of a very sad introduction the book seems a little too slow till a young girl named Mia discovers Dog shivering and hiding in cardboard box. After petting the puppy gently Mia
 tells her father that Dog is injured and very sick and they have to help him. After much ado her father agrees.
     Of course, this must be a love story but remembering the author writes mysteries one never knows where he might take us in writing a book about a dog.

·        I read on to see  where the story went. It happens that cruel people abandon dogs in the countryside.  Unable to fend for themselves unless they are in a pack, dogs can only be saved by humans. We inherited such a dog when a farm family took her in on Easter Sunday and named her Lily. Later when that family was unable to care for Lily because of serious illness in their own family. Mrs. T and I in a sense  inherited a rescue dog and it was love at first sight. For certain, I was going to love this book because the story at the beginning seemed all too familiar. The first few chapters then seemed more like like déjà vu. It didn't stay that way though. Time passed and the little girl grew up and so did Kai his new human name, became a really big boy perhaps even a

  German Shepherd cross. There were Many adventures good times and much love. Mia had previously lost her mother due to cancer and so the new pack was Mia Kais Alpha master and dad. There were many adventures and much love. Kai explained all this in the way only a dog would think can understand. You see it all from the dog's point of view and that view turned darker and darker. Mia disappears and Kai doesn't understand why and he searches and searches just like he did at the beginning of the story for his mother and siblings's.

·        cancer. As the plot thickens our hero dog ends up starving under impossible circumstances. Thus like any good detective story we are drawn to the finish where the final truth will be revealed. Perhaps the  If you are a dog lover as millions are this story is for people of all ages. It is required reading. I highly recommend this book. It is indeed a remarkable and wonderful story

                                                                                                                                    

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@Barrie Summy

Scenes From The Arizona Desert where my grandchildren live.

Birthday present July sixteenth

I was born on July sixteenth 1941.  We are family.The banner was given to me in celebration of my 79th ninth birthday by my five grandchildren. They are a diverse group ranging in age from twins who are three up to a freshman in college. There are two girls and  three boys. Two are black adopted from Ethiopia and Rwanda. Three are white, born in Arizona and North Dakota

.
 The ones in school are all great kids and honors students and the Apple of Troutbirder's eye.
The banner says "in this home we believe" and that is true whether they are staying in grandpa's house or at their home in Arizona.
  The youngest boy in this picture name is Leo he will be driving two years so I called my son and daughter-in-law in Arizona to ask them what they have taught dealing with the police should he be pulled over for some minor violation. This the day of course that I watched a man murdered by the police in Minneapolis what a thing  a parent or grandparent have to do..........

Big Fish Little Fish

When I started this nature blog lo those many years ago and with a name like trout birder I vowed to keep the focus away from pictures of dead fish, fisherman's hyperbole  and concentrate on beautiful birds and flowers. So I did mostly. BUT today with tons of snow falling and my snow
blower not starting and in a mood of nostalgia I give you.........

A rare "midget" brook trout caught deep in the Montana wilderness.

Colorado grandson shows off his first ever "brookie" (much bigger than Grandpa's. )

Rookie river fisherman takes a near record smallmouth from the Mighty Mississippi....

TB goes Crappie fishin......

Northern Northern!

Ted off the dock on Lake Vermillion...

Yup. That's a biggie son....