The camera adds ninety pounds

Have you ever tried something repeatedly and it just doesn't work, so you quit wasting your energy and don't try it again? Well, that's how it is getting our dog to cooperate during family photos.

This year we sort of forgot how hard it is; it's been too long and it slipped our minds. I especially like my face, trying to smile while keeping a death-grip on his collar.

Rembrandt at the Dixie place

Last spring, when we were in Dixie with my dad's family, we were told to go through Grandma's house and take what we wanted. She had moved out, slowly and painfully, and taken with her what she valued. Everything else was fair game.

So, the Spouse and boys and I walked through the place. This was a bit sad, but above the basement fireplace I found this, which made me smile:



This print hung in the basement of my childhood home, and therefore I rarely entered the basement alone. After a brief search online, I discovered that this painting enjoyed a surge in popularity during the 1970s, and many kids of my generation felt traumatized by this man staring from some wall in their house.

"The Man with the Golden Helmet" is attributed to Rembrandt van Rijn, one of the great seventeenth-century Dutch masters.

In the mid-1980's, as far as I can tell, someone suggested that Rembrandt didn't paint "The Man with the Golden Helmet." There was a to-do about it, and now some people say the painting is "attributed" to the master, or that it's from the "Rembrandt school."

In Time magazine (December 16, 1985) Otto Friedrich lamented the whole debate, suggesting that people believe Rembrandt painted the Man whether he did or not. Friedrich claimed, tongue in cheek, that the myth surrounding the painting is valuable in that it makes us happy, like believing George Washington chopped down a cherry tree makes us happy, or like believing Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare makes us happy.

I'm not concerned about who wrote Shakespeare; whoever did produced an impressive body of work. Maybe it was a writing team. Now, how am I going to wrap up this post when I need to start cooking dinner?

I'll do it this way. I'll tell you that I left the Rembrandt on the wall in Dixie. I didn't take anything. My oldest son, however, brought home his great-grandfather's hard hat. So there is still a man with a golden helmet in my house.

Keweenaw - Chicago (4 of 4)

Most places in the world have a distinctive regional cuisine or dish, and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan has the pasty. You pronounce it with a short "a". Pasties resemble calzone, except they don't usually contain cheese and the pastry can be flaky - not yeast dough. They usually contain meat & vegetables; rutabaga is popular.

Pasties are substantial and portable, which made them popular with the miners in the UP. Today, they're comfort food to many yoopers and ex-yoopers (if the term yooper is unfamiliar, think UP). I ate one, with lots of ketchup.

My favorite meal of the trip, however, was lunch at Frontera Grill in Chicago, right before we headed home.



We considered getting pizza, which would make lots of sense in Chicago, but have you ever sat four hours on a plane with a stomach full of deep-dish pizza?

Tamale:



Enchiladas:



I doubt I'm the only wife with a mental catalogue of good, relaxing meals eaten with my husband.

Keweenaw - Chicago (3 of 4)

In Houghton, we stayed at the Downtowner - a little, old, spotlessly clean motel right beside the lift bridge.

I wish I could've got a photo of the lobby, but I didn't, so I'll try to describe it. Imagine a small, dim living room that smells faintly of coffee, cigarettes, and some sort of chemical used to mask cigarette smell. The walls are covered with photos, tourist info and signs with smart-aleck sayings on them. On every available surface are gigantic, sleeping cats. Behind a little counter is a nice lady who looks a bit like a cat herself. She and her husband have owned the Downtowner for thirty years.

We loved it there. On our last morning, the Spouse stepped outside the room and photographed the Ranger III ducking under the lift bridge on her way out to Isle Royale.



That night, we looked out our new hotel room at downtown Chicago.



In the morning, I photographed an El stop on the street below (well, technically above the street below).



The Spouse used hotel points to get us a room at the Palmer House Hilton. This place was built in the days of the "grand" hotel, where people could stay and be important and aristocratic. The lobby was impressive and overblown and fun. The current management ruined the effect, however, with really loud, strange music that filled the atrium and drowned out that nice murmuring, clinking-silverware hotel lobby sound.









I call this statue the Sleepy Golden Woman. This is what I look like first thing in the morning:



"Ha," said the Spouse.

Keweenaw - Chicago (2 of 4)

The Spouse's great-grandfather was a copper miner on the Keweenaw peninsula. The area is dotted with old mine shafts and remnants of the mining industry.

Once during college, the Spouse got to descend one of the shafts with friend who was taking seismograph readings underground. You can still descend the Quincy shaft, but I said "no, thank you." There was enough great stuff to see on the surface.

Smelter, odd building, slag boat:







The soil is so full of iron that the roads look pink, and many of the village buildings are made of the local, red rock.





The red leaves had fallen, but the golds were still there.

Keweenaw - Chicago (1 of 4)

"I'm sorry I'm acting like a kid in a candy store," said the Spouse. We were driving around the Keweenaw peninsula - a wild, beautiful part of Michigan that juts northeast into Lake Superior. The Spouse went to college here, and for thirteen years he's been telling me about it. Last, week, he finally took me.

I told him I don't blame him. Who wouldn't want to go to school on a campus that looks like this?





This lift bridge connects the towns of Houghton and Hancock over the Keweenaw waterway, a portage canal that crossees the entire peninsula. Trains no longer use the trestle underneath, but in winter it's open for snowmobiles (although people drive across the ice, anyway).



The structure on the hilltop is the Quincy mine shaft. More on the copper mines in a later post.





The Spouse has a back-in-the-day story about a college buddy driving his car over the jetty to this lighthouse. That story, and a few others he told me, made me conclude that you can attend and succeed at a challenging engineering university and still lack a shred of common sense. "Ha," said the Spouse.



More to come.

Gonzo Homeschool Post

After a recent conversation with his neighborhood friends, R told me, "Mom you need to know this. A is for axalent, B is for bad, D is for determination, and I don't remember what F is."

That got me thinking. We're in our third year of homeschooling, and I think I know what F stands for.

Faux Latin

Latin is the basis of many languages, including fake ones. If, early on, you point out to your children all the Latin elements of English, and tell them that most things in nature have Latin scientific names, they'll become little smart alecks who spout Latin ad nauseum.

When I refer to fake languages, I'm not talking about pig Latin. I'm talking about gibberish that sounds Latin because the vowels and consonants are arranged in a certain way. For example, the other day J rushed into the house with an insect, and wanted to know what it was called. Without looking up from is book, R said, "It's anthinus dinornimus."

Don't look it up. There is no such word.

Frame Questions Carefully

R, who is doing third grade, is completing a workbook about American Indians. After an essay on smoke signals and sign language, the study section included this question: How would we visit someone fifty miles away without using wheels? My son's answer? "Helicopter, Skype, walk."

Flatulence

If you teach boys, flatulence will be a predominant part of your life. If they can't manage to produce methane loudly enough to interrupt school activities, they'll find a way to talk about it.

Last week R finished reading Charlotte's Web to his brother. They settled onto the sofa to read the last chapter.

R: "Chapter twenty-two. A Warm Wind."
J: "A Warm Wind?"
R: "A WARM WIND!"
R and J: "HA HA HAHAHAHAHAHAHA HOOOOOOHAHAHAHHHAAAA!"

Fractured Literature

Yesterday, we read the poem Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night, by Dylan Thomas. This poem is a villanelle - a nineteen-line poem with a very careful arrangement of rhyme and repetition. Villanelle is supposed to be difficult to write, and some say Thomas' poem is one of the finest examples.

Thomas wrote Do Not Go Gentle about his father's impending death. It is sad, loving, powerful, beautiful. The boys and I discussed all this.

Eight hours later, we were all in bed. The boys weren't settling in well; instead they were giggling and cracking jokes between their bunk beds. As I lay there, trying to relax and sleep because tomorrow I have to teach them more stuff they can't live without, I overheard them amending lines from the sad, loving, powerful poem:

"Do not go gentle into that good burp!"

"Rage, rage against the dying of the refrigerator!"

Arcadia Beach

I won't bore you with all the reasons I haven't posted in so long. We do have some fun shots, though, of last Saturday's annual trip to Arcadia beach, just south of Cannon.

The Spouse & boys camped on the coast the night before, so got to the spot early and took photos. I got the camera later, but spent so much time visiting (shock!) that I didn't get many photos of the group. Thanks again to the Roberts for all your hard work.

Non-virtual Activities

It's amazing how much time a person can spend not online. At least, I've been not online quite a bit lately. I have no photographic evidence of my activities, but my kids and Spouse have recorded their movements over the last month. Here goes...

Cousin Conner visited, and the Spouse took him all over the place










Moulton Falls




Beacon Rock


APE Cave






Odd-looking but tasty (the birthday dessert, not the Spouse)




A couple new friends