Now you take Heathcliff

Definitely a rabbit.

Now you take Heathcliff

We see them in the summer munching on grass and flowers. The one the live trap captures I take across the river to release. Rabbits can't swim. Some say the eastsiders do the opposite and release them on our side. Still, when your garden is overrun, what are you going to do?
In wintertime, the livetrap is put away and the rabbits are night creatures. I've never seen a rabbit around here during the day in winter but the tracks reveal a busy night.
You can see the raspberry bush on the windmill was a busy place last night, tracks going to and fro.
The other location of rabbit interest was a stuffed animal wintering in our backyard.

Now you take Heathcliff

Now you take Heathcliff.
He or she was in my step daughter's collection of stuffed animals for some 40 years. When Mary grew up and married a Norwegian, she moved to Oslo to begin a new life and learn a new language. Among the childhood possessions she left behind was this stuffed bear whose name Mary forgot. She could afford to ship only a few dolls and directed me to do with the bear whatever I wanted. I put him in the adirondack, named him Heathcliff after an Emily Bronte character, and he hasn't budged since.

Now you take Heathcliff

The tracks indicate at least one rabbit and Heathcliff were in each other's company last night. I would not want to make too much of that, unless you're a child.

Mom's first long-distance phone call

When I was five, my parents took me to the 1939 World's Fair in New York City's Flushing Meadows where the UN is now. They photographed me on a scaled down model of the perisphere, one of the fair's icons. I remember that because I saw the picture frequently as a I grew up. The only event I remember without the aid of a picture is the announcement on the fair's public address system that my mother had won a free telephone call to anywhere in the USA. We were ushered to the Bell Lab exhibition building and into a glass enclosed cubicle containing a desk and a telephone. She called her mother in Detroit Lakes Minnesota. The conversation was broadcast live throughout the fair's P.A. and because grandma was on a rural party line, a number of Becker County families listened in too.

Books I liked the most in 2010

My reading habits have changed considerably in this first full year of retirement. Of the 10 books I liked the most, only one relates to my pre-retirement teaching discipline.  In no special order: 

The Four Stages of Cruelty by Keith Hollihan
North Country: The Making of Minnesota by Mary Lethert Wingerd
After by Jane Hirshfield
Omega Point by Don Delilo
Wandering Stars by Sholem Aleichem
Crazy Horse by Larry McMurtry
Out Stealing Horses: A Novel by Per Petterson
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
The Man Who Stopped Time by Brian Clegg
Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada

Tom & me

Tom & me, originally uploaded by TedSher.