Pair-A-Dice Lost

There's more to Fourth of July celebrations here in Minnesota than just fireworks.

There are flags displayed in front yards, grills set up for traditional cookouts, and mosquitoes. Lots of mosquitoes. The little bloodsuckers aren't good fliers, so the windy weather we had this week keeps them grounded. Except in sheltered spots.

I spent a Fourth of July weekend with friends at a place like that once, a few years back. It was a little patch of water and weeds that might be called a lake in dryer states.

We were staying at a secluded place someone had called "Pair-A-Dice." The owner had set a couple of concrete cubes at the end of the drive. One had five indentations on all five of its visible faces, the other had two on each.

We'd have had more fun, I think, if there had been some wind. Any wind. A light breeze would have helped.

It wasn't particularly hot, maybe 85, but it was humid. Thick. Near-ideal flying conditions for mosquitoes. By late afternoon we'd gone through our supply of insect repellant, and the mosquitoes were closing in.

Someone - we couldn't decide, later, whose bright idea it was - said that mosquitoes don't like smoke. So we should build a fire, and put wet wood on it. The smoke discouraged the mosquitoes: but it wasn't doing us any good, either. With a couple hours left before sunset, eyes bloodshot and skin itching, we conceded defeat and surrendered Pair-A-Dice to the mosquitoes.

"I am a Feather for Each Wind that Blows" and Other Cheerful Thoughts

A chill wind drives leaden clouds across the sky. Trees wave their branches: beckoning, perhaps, for sunlight and warmth to return; or gesturing supplications against the boreal force.

It's been downright chilly in central Minnesota this week. Winds like this and highs in the sixties are fairly normal during autumn: but this is mid-July.

I should have said, "average during autumn". "Normal" in Minnesota covers a lot of ground. As they say: Minnesota doesn't have a climate: it has weather.

I think a writer overstated it a bit when, discussing "the future" (as imagined in 1964), he described living in Antarctica this way:

"...you too can take up residence in a barren desert of ice and snow where it's dark six months of the year and blizzards howl as they blast flesh-cutting shards of ice through the subzero air.

"A bit like living in Minnesota, actually." (Tales of Future Past, Futurama '64 (4), David S. Zondy)

There are, after all, many calm days during a Minnesota winter, and the sun is above the horizon for several hours. Of course, you can see the sun best on those days when it seems too cold for clouds to form.

My reason tells me that summer will return, along with blue skies and sunshine are not merely dim memories from another life; legends of an age when joy and laughter had not forsaken humanity, when wind and rain didn't have the ducks walking; tales recalling that epoch when I didn't have a cold.

I Love This Place: I Really Do

That's me, as sketched at my desk by one of my co-workers yesterday afternoon.

My office at the Loonfoot Falls Chronicle-Gazette is part of the upstairs coffee room.

In the summer, it's a little on the warm side. Air conditioning is a luxury which wasn't extended past the editorial room, at the front of the second floor.

Yesterday, though, was one of those days when it's about ninety in the shade. No clouds. No wind to disturb the serene contemplations of a fly which sat on the coffee room windowsill. The room was warm: a soft, enfolding warmth which gently discouraged, rather than forbade, strenuous activity.

The offices were quiet, except for the sonorous droning of the fan behind my chair.

I sat, gazing now at my computer's screen, then at the contemplative fly, and beyond,: to the azure abyss in which, perhaps, I would find inspiration for this week's column. And, throughout this journey of the mind from a blank screen toward infinity, the fan droned.

I fell asleep.

Candace Kane, the advertising assistant, drew that sketch during coffee break. I have to admit that she caught the moment quite well. My boss, Mr. Johnson, agreed.

Then he and I had a serious talk. I get to keep my job, and my office. Mr. Johnson says he'll see about getting air conditioning into the rest of the second floor. I believe him. We had our talk in the coffee room, after the break, and it hadn't gotten any cooler.