It’s Minnesota Primary Day!

I’m getting out to vote this afternoon, and generally my choices are straightforward. I’m voting for Peggy Flanagan for the US Senate; she’s vying with Angie Craig, who has made some bad decisions, for instance, pandering to the crypto boys. Flanagan will be a good progressive.

For my local state representative, I will vote for practically anyone against the horrid Republican, Michelle Fischbach. She’s probably going to win, because we live in a deep red district, but we’ve got to choose between two DFL candidates, Erik Osberg and Steve Carlson. I’m voting for Osberg, a 54 year old kid, rather than Carlson, who is too old for the job at 75. Carlson is also a fanatical anti-choice advocate which is sufficient to make me detest him.

Probably the highest profile race is for Governor. We have a swarm of 7 people trying to serve as our DFL leader. I worry that one pair will get a significant number of votes purely on the basis of their names: Ole “Viking” Savior and Ashley “Skol” Johnson. Every election we get some weird fringe candidates, and having the name “Johnson” and a Scandinavian connection always gives an unearned boost. I think Amy Klobuchar is going to steamroll everyone else — she has the election machine. I know that ridiculous clown, Mike Rindell, is on the Republican side, and he might get that nomination, but I don’t think he has chance in the main election in November.

I don’t expect any drama from a Minnesota election, but we’ll do our duty.

What did I live on in the years from 0 to 30?

It’s lunch hour, on my first day back at full-time work, and I’m thinking about food. I’m in transition; all summer I’ve been mostly at home, in part because I’ve been laid up by knee surgeries and some surgeries, but that excuse doesn’t work any more because I’m mostly recovered. My wife has been working a regular 7-3 workday most days, so I’ve gradually evolved into a house-husband. I do most of the cooking, and also laundry and dishwashing…yeah, you could say I’m whipped. And that’s OK. After years of leaving most of the housework to my wife, I’m gaining a new appreciation of household labor.

One of the things I was thinking about was that I’ve got it pretty easy now, since it’s just me and my wife cooperating to run the house. Two people. Simple. Manageable. But still a real amount of work, and while I enjoy cooking, I don’t enjoy cleaning up the aftermath, even though it must be done.

But then it struck me: my parents had six kids, one after another, and I realized that I didn’t see a sink piled high with dirty dishes until I moved out and lived alone and was a lazy sloppy bachelor. My late mother must have had a system: with as many dirty dishes as 8 people would produce at every meal, she must have been diligent about not letting them accumulate — I had never properly appreciated all the labor my mother must have invested in basic maintenance. Thanks, Mom, I’m sorry I never said so while you were alive.

It also made me appreciate the reason that my parents almost divorced when I was 7 or 8 years old. Mom wanted to get a job outside the home, and Dad reacted with great hostility. He, and the rest of us, were dependent on all that hard work Mom was doing. (They must have figured out how to manage the situation, because they reconciled, and Mom got a part time job at Boeing.)

Remember, though, I was thinking about food, and I was trying to remember what Mom did for dinner. Eight places were set at the table, and she had to provide bowls of food we’d have to pass around and serve ourselves…something. That’s where I drew a blank. What the heck was I eating while growing up?

Maybe you have a better recollection than I do. I was getting mostly forgettable, bland food.

There was a very anthropological distinction between my parents’ roles. Dad did the glamorous, high protein stuff: a big slab of smoked salmon, a beach trip where we’d come back with buckets of clams, barbecue in the summer. But that was an occasional treat, not even every week. Mom would do the basic low-budget, economical stuff every day, which now I’ve mostly forgotten. Lots of peanut butter sandwiches for lunch, cereal for breakfast, and potatoes, corn, broccoli, etc. for bulk at dinner, and I recall tuna casserole a few times a week (which was OK, I liked tuna casserole), but probably the most memorable favorite was putti klub, a potato dumpling wrapped around a bit of meat, and then sliced and fried and soaked in maple syrup. We also had a filling stew with root vegetables and mystery meat (I knew exactly what it was, heart or tongue, cheap organ meats, cubed and cooked to be unrecognizable), and sometimes a platter of breaded pork chops, or better still, liver and onions. I used to terrify my kids with threats of serving liver and onions for dinner, because I actually liked it, while they were grossed out at the very idea.

But man, the work involved in making meals for 8 people every day, and doing it on a very tight budget–I couldn’t do that.

Now you might be thinking that I had 3 kids and had to have known the struggle of feeding 5 people every day, but I don’t. I remember cans and boxes from the grocery store, and that’s about it. Maybe I could ask them what they remember, but I think they all died of malnutrition, kwashiorkor, beriberi, rickets, and scurvy, and even if they had survived, wouldn’t have good memories of family meals.

How about you? Do you have fond memories of good food on the table?

It’s that time

Time to go to…work. I have to go into my lab/office and get my class in order for the start of Fall term in two weeks.

Oh well. Next year at this time I’ll be retired, and nobody can tell me to go to work ever again. (Also, my “work” is enjoyable stuff anyway.)

As I was walking into work, I spotted a bouquet that reflects my feelings perfectly.

A little more time, and those flowers will be buried in snow, and I won’t have to look at them anymore.

In case you were wondering, Mel Gibson is still a colossal asshole

The fundamental feature of Christianity is that its believers are all committed to the idea they are especially beloved by a super-being, which makes them particularly insufferable. Mel Gibson is the pinnacle of this brand of intrinsic narcissism.

Mel Gibson: I was not chosen by men, nor by Hollywood, nor by the powers of this world.
I was chosen by God.
The Lord put a fire in my bones and a cross on my shoulders.
I will carry it until my last breath.
No darkness, no enemy of this age will stop what Heaven has already decided.

Betty Bowers called it: “Is there a more potent brand of blasphemy than a shitty narcissist claiming they are the way they are all because of God?”

Don’t watch Mel Gibson movies.

We are kidnappers!

Mary and I thought our yard Argiope was looking lonely, so we visited a local breeding ground and snatched up a couple more. This is a new female, already adapting to life in our yard.

We also grabbed a couple of smaller Argiope, which might be males, or are simply too young to have the markings. They’re lurking somewhere in the underbrush.

A little body horror

We’ve got a few monarch chrysalides around the house, but we’ve also noticed a lot of mortality among the caterpillars, which is normal. This morning we spotted this caterpillar, motionless and dying, clinging to the side of the house.

There’s something horrible stuck to its side. I don’t know what it is, so I present it to you, all you caterpillar MDs. Any diagnosis?

Did you know…

That you can use your home computer as a spider incubator?

I keep several containers of Parasteatoda on top of my Mac Mini, where they thrive in the warmth and provide endless hours of entertainment while I’m working. All four of these contain egg sacs, and three of the four have hatched out this morning!