First Crop in Ramada Natural Park

This is one of those unusual years where the grass is growing taller than usual. Just like those years in the 19th century that persuaded our ancestors to settle in this area probably.

I was reminded of "helping" my grandfather gather in the hay on his farm in Wisconsin back in the 1940s. I rode the mower and lifted the blade as we went around corners. Not all the critters could get out of the way quickly enough. Because he knew this saddened me he sometimes would humor me by allowing me to move some birds' nests so they wouldn't be harmed by the mowing.

One time I asked him why he fed some draft horses that he only used once or twice a year during a winter storm to get the milk to where it needed to go. He realized that his gruff way had been pierced, saying simply that the horses had worked hard for him in the past and deserved to be cared for in their dotage.

Speaking of Reminders . . . II

A couple of days ago I mentioned an article in the Wall Street Journal. By the way, if you only have time to read one paper a day this is the one you should read.


Anyway, the article goes on: "What if we want to remember more about each passing day?" Well, you could keep a journal, a tangible record of why something was meaningful, kind of like the precursor to many blogs including this one; and maybe taking photographs, organizing and labelling them, will reinforce memories too. Hmm, why does that sound familiar?


"But remember that forgetting can very useful, says Dr. McGaugh: 'If you used to go out with Bob and now you're married to Bill, you want to be able to say, 'I love you, Bill.'' " (I know it isn't very clear, but those marks after Bill are two single apostrophes, one for I love . . . and then another for If you used . . . and finally a double apostrophe for the whole paragraph lifted from the original article. Isn't this fun. Maybe some grammarian will help me out.)

Do you ever wonder where the original of this statue resides? What is an 'original' of a statue? Check it out here.

Speaking of Reminders . . .

Early Tuesday morning I was drinking coffee and reading the Wall Street Journal after finishing quickly the way too Easy Sudoku puzzle in the Billings Gazette.

Melinda Beck wrote an article entitled You Must Remember This: Forgetting Has Its Benefits. Naturally when somebody else confirms one of our long held but not quite proven ideas we take notice. She goes further than I do when I reassure friends and relatives that there are a lot of things that we don't want to remember anyway. She suggests that the more competing memories we forget the less the brain has to work to recall a specific one. Hmm. "Forgetting frees up brainpower for other tasks."

I still am amazed at the very specific and seemingly almost meaningless memories from very long ago that get called to my conscious attention at odd times, often when I detect a certain smell. Maybe the fact that it had never been called up before accounts for its clarity. For example: maybe recalling is like reconstructing a puzzle very quickly and then breaking it down. Some of the pieces get lost or put in the wrong place the more you do this. Hmm.

Studebaker Commander from the '50s Seen in Billings

While returning from a CostCo run I saw a slim, elegant automobile near the corner of Grand and 24th that started a twitch somewhere in one or both temporal lobes of my gradually shrinking brain. It looked like the one above which I snatched from somewhere on the Web, as I couldn't get my camera out of my pocket quickly enough.

When I was a kid in the 40s and 50s the photographer that most people used for graduations and weddings and such lived in an old cheese factory, precursor to loft apartments these days, converted into a home and studio, on the outskirts of Juneau WI, a Mr Norman Rambow. Whatever ever happened to that good name Norman?

Looking back most of us would now instantly recognize him as a gay man, but in those days we had not yet received the enlightenment of out-of-the-closet gaiety; we just thought them different and perhaps a little queer in the usual old-fashioned sense of that word. In any event, Mr Rambow bought this beautiful Studebaker after the company had been producing fairly ho-hum models for some years. He would drive slowly to give all those he passed a chance to admire it. He sometimes waved at the young men, though most of us were playing baseball and dreaming.

Studebaker apparently made wagons to start with, and made a handsome fortune during the Civil War, but eventually they made various kinds of cars, but by the 50s they were mostly fairly plain vanilla as I remember them. I sat and sweated in the backseat of one from the 40s being driven by a daredevil by the name of Walton Schuett. It was winter and slippery on the back roads, all gravel in those days as I recall, so you drove down the middle of the road unless you met someone coming in the other direction. I’m pretty sure we didn’t have seat belts either. In any event, once in awhile Studebaker would make a really fancy car and that is what I saw while driving home from CostCo, and what was stored away somewhere in my brain for lo these many years. A Studebaker Commander I think: at least 50 years old and in very good condition, the car, not my brain.

Let Us Remember

Unlike Mr Wolff, We Go Home Again and Again

I spent some time this morning reviewing the problem of forgetfulness in the aging. My term paper was a practical demonstration of same. Leisurely my brother and I packed our bags and methodically checked through the drawers for forgotten items. We did not look behind the door to the closet that looked like a mirror. Note to self, when age-proofing a place, do not put full-length mirrors on doors! I should have made a note when it took us 5 minutes to find the closet 4 days ago!

Then we shared a $10 taxi to Union Station when the 50 cent bus stopped across the street from the hotel. I realized that I had forgotten the clothes carefully hung in the closet at Union Station. By the time I got back there the Spanish-speaking cleaning ladies told me that they had already sent it down to the laundry. At least that is what I translated it as. Eventually I caught up with the clothes and took them back to Union Station where I stored the luggage for $15, forgetting that luggage storage is part of the deal for a sleeper ticket on Amtrak. Ah well, this memory stuff probably has some pitfalls too, which I hope to remember one of these days. Oh yes, I forgot to mention that I misplaced my tickets for about an hour but the kind lady looking after the waiting room knew where I was, and who the tickets belonged to.

I did some walking around Capitol Hill and had a nice lunch at a restaurant called Cosi. Then I checked out the Folger Shakespeare Library. They also have a small theatre there and usually very nice exhibits. Today it was on historical revisionism in the Tudor history of England.


The Capitol Limited (see above) departed from Washington DC right on time this afternoon at 4:05 pm. The steward for our car is Jameesha, the same guy we had on the way out. (See below) While coming into Harper’s Ferry WV the conductor kindly pointed out that the tracks paralleled the old canal and mule path now turned into a very long and thin national park.