A Quiet Evening, Aside From a Tornado Watch

This is going to be a much less routine night than I expected. There's a tornado watch out for this area.

You can see why:


(From Wunderground.com, Minnesota, used w/o permission)

I'm not surprised. It's been hot, humid, and windy all day - 'thunderstorm weather.'

Here's about as much as I know about the watch, so far:

"Statement as of 9:40 PM CDT on August 30, 2010

"Tornado Watch 636 remains in effect until 200 am CDT for the following locations

"MN
". Minnesota counties included are

"Chippewa Douglas Kandiyohi
Lac Qui Parle Pope Redwood
Renville Stearns Stevens
swift Todd Yellow Medicine"
(Wunderground.com)

I'll be keeping an eye on this set of storms, obviously. At the rate they're going, I figure it'll be a half-hour, maybe an hour, before the excitement starts here.

If I seem overly-calm about this: I'm pretty confident in the storm-spotters who get deployed outside town in this sort of situation, the warning sirens have been inspected and serviced recently, and - like I said - I'll be staying up to keep an eye and ear out.

There's a view of a Sauk Centre neighborhood on this webcam: Small Town America: Minnesota .

Rape on the Lake Wobegon Trail: Good News/Bad News

This may not make the news, at least for a while, but yesterday a 14-year-old girl was raped on the Lake Wobegon Trail. She made identification of her assailant easier, by giving him a bloody nose.

Subsequent to the assault, she flagged down a local priest, who had a cell phone. Her cell phone was inoperable. The local priest called law enforcement, and police apprehended the alleged assailant (I trust that's cautious enough for American usage).

My wife called a family conference a few minutes ago, updated all of us on the events, and outlined changes in routines and procedures which are now necessary. We live within a block of the Lake Wobegon Trail.

Good news: The alleged assailant was apprehended, and may be discouraged from committing assaults in the future. And, the 14-year-old girl was able to get assistance in a timely fashion.

Bad news: This is 'small town America,' but we've got the same issues that the rest of America faces. Being on the Interstate and having a bike trail connection to larger population centers probably doesn't help.

I'm not one bit happy about this situation. I could maunder on about 'loss of innocence' and 'the good old days' - but the first is beyond recall, and I've got too good a memory to fall for the idea that 'Things Were Better When I Was Young.' They were different: but I'm not at all convinced that, for example, sniffing paint was better than burning out on meth.

Finally, I've redacted some details.

Tuesday: I Overslept

My body's probably trying to tell me something. I overslept this morning.

But, once up, I got some writing done. After lunch, I went to the place where I used to work and sorted through a few cubic feet of papers - part of an effort to clear unnecessary stuff out of the building. That left me with some time to check out an item at Wal-Mart, and get photos of the Ash Street Project.

That street and utilities replacement and improvement project is coming along well, as far as I can tell. Today's obvious bit of progress was a long stretch of sidewalk getting poured on the west side of the Stearns County Fairgrounds.

Our son got home before I did. He spent most of the day at the Arrowwood Water Park, up in Alexandria. Near Alexandria, actually, if it's the place I'm thinking of. I'm told that he had a good time. This has been a big week for him already: two major go-and-have-fun field trips in a row.

My wife and #3 daughter moved at least half of the furniture in the north room around this morning. She tells me that it's in preparation of more stuff coming in.

That gives me quite an incentive to get busy at organizing my stuff - and getting rid of the extra/outdated/useless papers.

The School, the Woodpile, the Skunk, and the Dynamite: A Small-Town Memory

Times have changed, here in 'small town America,' just like everywhere else. About 4,000 people live in Sauk Centre today. About 90 are meth users live here, and gang graffiti has shown up in town ("Small town, big city problems" (Sauk Centre Herald (April 29, 2008)).

The 'good old days' had problems, too. A case in point:

Back around the period when my in-laws were growing up, kids brought firearms to school on a pretty regular basis. Hunting rifles. This is still a rural area, and back then quite a few kids liked to get a little hunting in on their way home.

It was during that time that some kids noticed a skunk in the school playground. They didn't want it around, for obvious reasons. Worse, it had gone to earth in a woodpile leaning against the school. It wouldn't budge, and the kids wouldn't rest until the the skunk was gone.

One of them ran home and returned with dynamite, fuse, and a detonator that the family used routinely to shift recalcitrant stumps and boulders.

The kid knew how to set a charge, and within minutes the skunk was gone. Along with the woodpile and most of the paint on that side of the school.

These days, Sauk Centre would have been in the national news, some of the kids in therapy, and legal wrangling in the courts for years afterward.

Back then, the kids weren't off the hook until they re-painted the wall. After that, life went on.

Tuesday, Ice, Small Town Communications

My tutee (?) (the person I've been tutoring) called this morning. He drives into town, and learned it was very foggy. We postponed our session until tomorrow morning.

I thought that the re-scheduling was just as well, since my wife and I had a meeting this morning, and the timing would have been tight. As it turns out, we got there an hour early. There'd been some confusion about the time.

There was a funeral at St. Paul's church, so the parking lot we used was nearly full. I had to park in a spot where we'd be walking up a slight slope.

Normally, the slope would be no problem: these new hip joints make walking as easy as - a stroll in the park? Today, with temperatures just above freezing, the parking lot was surfaced with a mix of ice, slush, and water. On a slope.

On our way back to the van, my cane slipped, or one of my feet slipped, or maybe a little of both. A moment later, I was flat on my back, my head pointed roughly south by southwest.

My wife tells me I vocalized, rather loudly.

An older couple offered help: which I really didn't want. Partly just pride, partly because I didn't want to risk bringing one of them down, too. My wife and the gentleman overrode my objections, and helped me up.

No harm done, apart from getting shaken up a bit.

That was mid-morning. My wife and I went back at the right time, had the meeting, went home, and ate lunch. Early in the afternoon, my father-in-law called. He'd heard that I'd fallen, and wanted to know if I was okay.

I like living in this town. Like many small towns, 'if you've forgotten where you've been that day, ask someone: they'll know.' We don't have the "privacy" (anonymity would be a more accurate term) that so many people seem to crave, but I can live with that. What's remarkable is how many people care about their neighbors.

Routines occupied the rest of the day. Our son got home from school, we ate supper, after a while I read Garfield to our son, and now I've finished this entry.

Goodnight.

Friday: Sidewalks, Street Lighting, and Homeowners

I was at a neighborhood meeting this morning. Details of the Ash Street project are changing, or getting more definite. There's talk about putting new sidewalks on both sides of Ash, from the Lake Wobegon Trail down to 12th Street.

At least a hundred feet of the west sidewalk would go through the driveways and parking lot of John Weis Ford, and cross two driveways for Coborns. I can see the point of folks who would rather not have a sidewalk there. Playing dodge ball with cars wouldn't be fun.

A pretty good idea seems to be to have a sidewalk on the west side of Ash running north from the Lake Wobegon Trail, a crosswalk at the trail, and a sidewalk on the east side of Ash from there, south to 12th Street. Of course, it's easy for me to like the idea: I live on the east side.

Just the same, using the existing sidewalk on the west side, north of Lake Wobegon Trail, and putting a new sidewalk on the east side from the trail to 12th makes sense.

• For starters, it should be less expensive than putting new sidewalks on both sides.
• I'm not convinced that a well-marked crosswalk would be more dangerous than a sidewalk running through an active auto shop's lot.
• Coborns' driveways wouldn't be a picnic to cross, either.

There's the matter of who pays for the sidewalks, too. I've heard and read that they're needed so that Sauk Centre has pedestrian access to Wal-Mart, and the retail area that's planned south of the fairgrounds, That's reasonable, but if that's so I wonder if individual homeowners should be assessed for the sidewalk.

I'm hardly neutral on this: It's likely enough that I'll be one of the homeowners.

Three thoughts, and I'm done for now.

• Talking over a project like this is a good thing, bringing up good ideas and exposing not-so-good ones.
• Projects get much more efficient, when people (and organizations) are spending their own money.
• Holding public office isn't fun - No matter what you do, someone's going to complain.

Small Town Life: a Poetic Link

Famous in a Small Town is a post on another blog that does a pretty good job of distilling one aspect of life in a small town.

I know: This post has "Poetic" in the title, and "Famous in a Small Town" gives the lyrics of a country song.

That's poetry: some combination of experience, thought, emotion, and awareness; combined with careful attention to what words imply and refer to as well as their "dictionary meaning," as well as the sounds which form the word; sometimes, but not always, in rhyme.

Sinclair Lewis Days Parade

It takes a little over an hour to go by, it happens every year, and I enjoy it every time.

The Sinclair Lewis Days Parade is one of the events that wraps up Sauk Centre's Sinclair Lewis Days. There's a street dance, too, downtown, and the First Lutheran Church Pie Social: both kicked off about 45 minutes ago, if they were on schedule.

All in all, quite a celebration.

There's more at the Sauk Centre Chamber of Commerce website, on their Sinclair Lewis Days page.

The streets, around here anyway, are lined with folks: about one every for or five feet, on average, I'd say. What's amazing is how little litter is left afterward. This year there was less than usual.

My camera's stopped downloading video from the parade, so I'd better start working on that.

Through One Dad's Eye in the Big Blogosphere?

Maybe not, but I finally got around to creating a Technorati Profile. Technorati.com looks like a pretty good service for finding interesting and/or useful blogs.

Also, I'm going to see if Technorati can help more folks find this blog. We'll see how it goes.

Paris Hilton's House and Living Well in Minnesota

A detail that emerged today made me appreciate how well-off my family and I are, here in central Minnesota. Paris Hilton's "pocket-mansion" is a 2,707-square-feet residence. What struck me most was that Paris Hilton's hideaway is about the same size as the house my family and I live in.

And we seem to have a bigger yard.

I'll grant that Ms. Hilton got her two million dollars worth, with three baths, four bedrooms, a seriously large outdoor deck, and Mediterranean styling. And, the neighborhood's much more posh there in West Hollywood.

I wouldn't trade places, though. Our house is a good size for a family with four kids and miscellaneous cousins who come to visit, we've got a lived-in yard that's large enough for the kids to play in, and the housing code allows our neighbors to set out garden gnomes and flags.

And we didn't pay anywhere close to a million dollars.