Danke Schoen to New Ulm

John, who ran the Deadwood 1/2 marathon today with an even better time than the Fargo a couple of weeks back, invited me to be his guest blogger and post some pictures from our anniversary trip to New Ulm, MN. It was a quick trip, so we didn't take in all the sights, sounds, and tastes of the "most German town in the U.S." But we took in enough to know that we'll return to visit again some time.

We stayed in a wonderful b & b, the Bohemian, where Bobbi took great care of us. We took a tour of the Schell brewery, which ends with a generous beer tasting, we ate some mouth-watering spaetzle, schnitzel, and desserts (yes, plural--rhubarb bread pudding, fudge, French silk pie--if it was a sweet, we tried it), and we enjoyed poking around downtown, visiting with people. Here is a sampling of what we enjoyed.

Yet Waving

We fly our flag.

Winning and Losing, One Day at a Time

Winners emerged from the pack today, people we'll remember, who wrote their names into the history books as champions, those who ventured beyond the pack to establish some quality they had that others in some measure, at least today, were lacking. Dario Franchitti outlasted the pack and the rain to win at Indy. Duke won the lacrosse championship after their disastrous year. Fernando Alonso won the Monaco Grand Prix today. Some baseball teams won; as many others lost. Plenty other games were played, while people in Iraq and Darfur struggle to win another day of life on earth. Here in South Dakota we cherished the trophy of a relatively windless day, sunny and seventy degrees, perfect for running, playing in the park, planting flowers, riding your motorcycle, hauling rocks, or cruising round and round in your first little go-kart, no brick yard, no pit crew, no track, just a piece of rhubarb pie for everyone.

How Green was My Picnic Table

Yard work is currently the order of the day--mowing, replanting, trimming trees, planting, and cutting rhubarb. That kind of thing. Also, getting outdoor items shipshape for summer is on the agenda, so repainting lawn chairs and the picnic table worked its way to the top of the list. Now, the wife usually has a pretty good eye for color. The green of the designated picnic table color seems a little bold, don't you think?
In other pseudo-news, the father in law and I got in 18 holes of Howard golf yesterday (no yard work involved), and one of my brothers is up in South Haven, Michigan, today getting schooled on racing his vintage Norton Commando. Training today, racing tomorrow and Sunday at Gingerman Raceway. Check out the American Historic Racing Motorcycle Association (AHRMA) for more information.

Big Day in Fargo

On May 3, I threw my hat in the ring for the Twin Cities Marathon for what I think is the 14th time, so I'll be doing the 26.2 mile dance again in October, barring injury. When I entered the form required proof for getting in Wave 1 with the fast guys, where I've always managed to stay. But with age I'm slipping, with sore feet, extra baggage, and a persistent ache in my left calf, and I didn't finish last year within the 3:45 time requirement for automatic placement in Wave 1.
Okay, that's the setup. I hoped on Saturday to tune up for the Deadwood Mickelson Trail half-marathon by running the Fargo half. I needed a 1:45 in the half marathon, and although it seemed like a remote chance, my training has gone well, I tried to stay close on the cold and windy Fargo morning. The final miles told the tale, with the second half done under 8 minutes per, cooking along in the last two miles on the happy wave of knowing I had 1:45 in the bag. 1:43:16. Whoop!
The wife was in the Fargodome with friends, including one enthusiastic young runner who would earn her own medal that afternoon in the kids run.
We got a chance Saturday to poke around downtown a little and visit with my lovely daughter and her dashing beau. More good times. Days like that make a guy feel a little younger, put a little more spring in his step.

Any Way the Wind Blows (As Long as It's North)

Tuesday took us to Canada, and Wednesday brought us back. TQ and I went up to Winnipeg for the Canadian Distance Education Conference, where we talked about our efforts to use blogs and wikis for helping students find and make use of information. It was cold up there, but we had a warm reception during the last session of the conference, where over 20 people came to hear what we had to say, asking questions and offering up some of their own ideas. It was a great session, though it threw me off guard when some professors spoke matter-of-factly about their resistance to using American servers to store or manipulate information. Any non-US server was fine with them. They mentioned the Patriot Act as a concern, leaving me a little uninformed about what provisions there might pose a problem. I'll need to look into that more. But they were interested in our work.
On a lighter note, I had brought an old case of cassette tapes to play in the non-cd player car we took, and TQ noted that one tape was dated--the recording made on May 16, 1977, 30 years to the day from our travel. Yours truly, a 20 year old soldier stationed in Friedberg, West Germany, just north of Frankfurt, making recordings. It was cosmic forces at work, so it was fitting the music was from the Canadian band Klaatu, and the first song? Check out the photo: "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft."
The trip also featured good Korean and Italian food, a nice cool run around windy Winnipeg (where in their 50 degree weather people sported t-shirts, rode their motorcycles, and cruised with their convertible tops down). We shopped very briefly and scooted back south again on Wednesday, flashing our passports at the border, two occupants of international craft coming home (without having had either Canadian bacon OR Canadian Club.

Comic Interlude with Scott McCloud

The author of Understanding Comics, Reinventing Comics, and Making Comics was in Sioux Falls last night and talked about the growing field of cartooning, and JB, TQ, DW, and I were there for the event, taking time out from grading papers and figuring final grades. He makes a great presentation, with a slide show of something like 700 images, he said. The high-schoolers in attendance were enthusiastic about the genre and made that known.

McCloud and his family are on tour promoting his new book, appearing next in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and then on to Montana. If you haven't seen any of his work, check out his online comics or trundle yourself on down to your local comic book store and pick up a copy of Zot or one of his other works.

He's working on a new book about the story element of the comic genre, he said.

It was good to see some DSU students there.

Light at the End of the Tunnel

Saturday was graduation day for 193 DSU students who navigated the rigors of college life and came out of it successfully. Their professors too are pleased to see this stage of the process. I don't know what I would do without the rhythm of school and vacation, the arrival of spring and the end of the school year. Each fall I look forward then too to the onset of the year. Like farmers, we plant, we nurture, and then we see what grows. When crops are good, the reward is like no other.

An Iott's Guide to Spring

Spring at our house usually requires at least one or two trips to Iott's Greenhouse and Gardens near Ward, SD. My first trip there was with the wife on the way back from Canby, MN, and the wife, sister, mom, and friend made another this week. Their mission? Beautify Lake and Miner Counties.

College Students and the Grass Situation

A recent report by the U.S. Surgeon General mentions little about the effects of air-borne pollens upon post-secondary students and their study habits, but recent observations have shown (see illustration below), that college students faced with the prospect of studying for final exams will seek any distraction, which may include starting up lawn mowers left idle during months of winter.

Landfill of Plenty

Spring turns some people's thoughts to planting, cleaning, slimming down, and shedding the unnecessary. But culling your possessions takes recognizing what's worth keeping and what's not. Madison's spring cleanup gives the curious a chance to see what others are purging.

Big Brother and the Comstock Lode

Up in Silver City, Nevada, people are shooting my brother! But he's a tough cookie, and he'll survive, his name in the credits of yet another movie; this one's "Coyote Hole," a western that focuses on the plight of a young woman stuck in the barely-civilized frontier town in the 1870's (where Mark Twain got his start as a "journalist"). Joe might look like a rough customer here, but his good-guy squinty stare has to counter the evil dudes menacing his niece. Check out the story in the Nevada Appeal here.

Kayuda and Collaborative Workspaces

My friend DW moves at a pace unlike the rest of us. He's always got an eye out for cool new technology for improving student writing and helping them see their computers as tools rather than toys. And he's always finding them. Me, I'm thinking about the final I'm writing, or how I'm going to strip the paint off the scavenged dressers now waiting in the garage, or what's on tomorrow's workout agenda. Maybe I'm thinking about laying out my courses for next fall. But D? D's like a commander general unfurling the battle map, placing his units strategically, devising new uses for old equipment, ready to engage. Today his trumpets cry, "Kayuda!"

I checked it out, briefly. Kayuda looks very promising, allowing for online collaborative brainstorming and composing. What does it look like? Think Freemind mindmaps you can build in teams. Pretty cool, aye?

It made me think about the cool teaching I can do with a tool like this, and the potential for groups to engage in meaningful writing. Thanks, D!

StoryCorps Coming to South Dakota

Your mom's got great stories, your grandparent has experiences you want told beyond your family. What do you do? Check out StoryCorps, a program on NPR that features recording sessions "offering participants the opportunity to record the stories, voices and wisdom of friends and loved ones." This group is coming to Sioux Falls with their recording studio, sponsored in part by SDPB, from June 7th to June 30th. You can make reservations for recording times and use their recording equipment, and the really good ones will be on the air. Check out the story on SDPB's website.

Sorting Through Manuscripts

Yesterday afternoon a group of volunteers worked through the manuscript submissions for New Tricks, the DSU literary magazine. Check out the photos of these hardy souls worked through a good, solid group of writings and artwork. Some volunteers had left by the time yours truly realized that taking photos might be a good idea!
Thanks to all who helped. There's still work to do, but a big chunk is done. Look for an announcement here soon about publication.

YouTube Rivals

YouTube might have cornered the market on videos depicting the disasters of skateboarders trying to grind down a stair railing or young women shaking their behinds, but others video websites such as Daily Motion have a wide variety of offerings (I'm sure YouTube does too, but they're not featured the same way). Another French site featuring music and video is The Takeaway Shows by Blogotheque. Check out an animated version of Hamlet on Daily Motion below! It's the product of Moonfleet, a Spanish outfit.

Shakespeare-The Animated Tales: Hamlet
Uploaded by jeremyfox

Ja haben wir keine Bananen

When it's too early in the morning after a long day and night of grading papers, going to meetings, going to more meetings, teaching classes, and eating donut holes, it's no sense trying to make sense, so I won't. What do you do with a pack of dogs that won't run, a flock that won't fly, a colony of ants that seems to be distracted by the glow of a distant object? Dogs aren't dogs at that point, nor birds birds, and ants will disappear like the bees are doing. Curious times.

Nature's Busy Nature

Weekend weather in Madison was the sort they have nearly year-round in places like San Francisco or on Maui, so it was a pleasure to get out and enjoy some of it, whether sitting in the stands at a baseball game, perching at the rail during a track meet, sitting in the back yard having a cold one with friends, cruising down to the TCBY for another kind of cold one, or enjoying an Irish breakfast with friends. Even cleaning out the cars on Saturday morning and mowing the lawn on Sunday afternoon for the first time were pleasant tasks. Yesterday a bike ride up to Ramona was in order, and the dune buggy is back on the road for another summer of cruising the streets. At least we don't, here in stodgy SD, have to worry about our commute over water or through fire and collapsing roadways.

My Kingdom for a Crown

I've got plenty to do, people waiting on various projects or papers, work on writing that I'm doing, leading the local historical society, putting together a newsletter and a creative writing magazine. So what am I doing accepting the position of faculty chair? Maybe it's just for the crown. Maybe I'm just a sucker for the swag--the free books and magazines at the conference, the chip bag clamps at the insurance company, the toothbrush and floss at the dentist, the medal at the end of the marathon. Would I have taken on the chairmanship if it weren't for the tarnished and tattered crown? Who knows. Ludwig can wear it for the time being. He doesn't seem to have much to do besides look stern.

Short Visit, Lange Ride Home

Besides the triathlon, the weekend included a great retirement party for the wife's dad Friday night, 1,400,000 miles after beginning with the USPS, no crunched cars on his record. Saturday morning came early, with a flat tire on the road bike and a wardrobe malfunction, and Saturday afternoon took me into the cities, where A and C took KC and me around the new neighborhood (starting Thursday). We got a start on packing, we enjoyed some retirement barbecue, and I practiced my fatherly advising. We all survived that, and Sunday brought more packing and hauling away of extraneous stuff. The new neighborhood looks good, the house is a good starter, and all appears well with the world. It was a meaty weekend, with a stop at Lange's Restaurant in Pipestone for some dandy dessert on the way back. Monday morning came early, and so will Tuesday.

What do you do when you're branded . . . ?

I might not be the kind of hero Chuck Connors was in "Branded," but I did survive the Madison triathlon yesterday and have the fading magic marker 41 on my legs and arms to prove my participation. Today I'm getting internal signals as well of how I spent my Saturday morning.

Two Tragedies

The incident in Blacksburg wasn't enough, so the wife and I drove north for a performance of Macbeth last night and a supper at Guadelajara's, our favorite restaurant there. Shakespeare's play was one tragedy, and a showing tonight at DSU of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth," which I had not seen until tonight, was another. Not that the film was a tragedy, but rather the sorry state of things that the film depicts, a planet quickly becoming a victim of human carelessness. There's still a chance to address the second.

33 in Blacksburg

Candles won't bring back the students and faculty who died in the shootings in Blacksburg, Virginia, yesterday. Visits by politicians, elegies for the dead, investigations, programs on TV, web graphics illustrating the series of deaths--none of those things will return the 32 victims and their killer to the living. But for the people closest to those who died or were injured, the outpouring of emotions and activities are reminders that we live interconnected, interwoven lives, that each person is the hub of a universe they populate with friends, enemies, teachers, and family, with a world of people on the fringe. We are all part of one world, and the tragic loss of so many people with dreams is a tragedy that touches us who live far from this western Virginia campus.
Peace.

Long Slog Through the Rain, Boston Style

They're running the Boston Marathon today despite the rain and wind, so it must be Patriot's Day. Check for updates on The Boston Channel or Boston.com's sports page. Runner's World is following the race mile by mile.

Change of Weather, Change of Pace

The thermometer reads 66 degrees, and the Conk needed the dust knocked off it, so a few miles helped blow out a few cobwebs, the kind in its guts and my head. Whoop!
Plus, eight miles running this morning and so far, no ill effects. Double whoop!

Running Weather

My daughter's out running a 5K this morning, along with some friends in Minneapolis. Meanwhile, these legs and feet are feeling good, getting me down the road a little more like they used to. After 6 miles yesterday, they feel pretty good today. I'm looking forward to hearing the 5K report.

Brian Bedard and a Litter of Corpses

In celebration of his new collection of short stories, Grieving on the Run, USD professor Brian Bedard conducted a reading of two stories yesterday in Vermillion that JB and I were able to attend. Brian is a great practiced reader for events like this, and he makes good selections, ones mixed with humor and pathos, his work always textured with odd moments of human experiences, including the humane kidnapping of a parrot and the sudden appearance of a woman carrying a world-class catfish into a nursing home. We joked with him that corpses seem to litter many of his tales, which makes dialogue easier to handle, I suspect. It's a good-looking collection of stories, and since he read the first at the event, the third one looked short for a nightcap, and yet another corpse appeared in the first paragraph. But what good stuff.

Too Many Books? Is it Possible?

I had to walk away from the copy of the Hazel cartoons from the New Yorker, but I did pick up three volumes--a W.S. Merwin translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Stephen King's From a Buick 8, and a collection of fantasy stories.
Through the week at the Karl E. Mundt Library, new books every day. I'll probably have to go back.

It was snowing, and it was going to snow . . .

Wallace Stevens aside, the snow this spring is just not that much fun any more. Some kick-ass snowmen might be possible with the wet, heavy blanket of snow we've got, but the joy of splashing through dirty slush is wearing a little thin. Still, the trees coated with snow do have some charm. I'm sure W.S. would have had 13 ways of looking at our spring surprise.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude in Madison?

Someone driving through Madison yesterday might have wondered whether they were witness to a project by the divas of the art world, known for draping London Bridge, the Reichstadt, and other objects and transforming landscape into art. Christo and Jeanne-Claude DID wrap some trees (see here), but the Madison version was more a home-grown affair, just as lovely, though, judging from the weather today, a more pragmatic effort.

First Easter Road Race

I always liked the story of the Easter morning run of the two disciples to the empty tomb. I got to hear it again this morning. The gospel takes a moment to indicate which one outran the other and what the winner did when he got there (looked in) and what the other did when he got there (went in). Those little details--and how they looked over the linens--were one of the things that my child's brain could latch onto.

Marquart Comes to DSU

Through the efforts of a number of people, Debra Marquart spent the day at the DSU campus yesterday. Here's the story and some pictures I meant for the school newspaper, written too late for printing:

Poet and writer Debra Marquart met with faculty, students, and the DSU president Dr. Knowlton during her visit on Tuesday, April 3. Marquart, who teaches in the English Department at Iowa State University, was on campus to meet with students and to read from her newest book, The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere.

Marquart capped her day with a reading and discussion of portions of her memoir in the Mundt Foundation at the Karl E. Mundt Library. She was preceded by Lisa Huff, an English major who read a short memoir titled “Thunder Rolls,” about growing up near Colman. Huff was followed by Dr. John Nelson, who read an Easter story from his memoir in progress. Nearly 75 people attended the event, hosted by Jenny Seitz and Megan Flynn, two English majors.

Marquart met with Dr. Nelson’s class in the memoir on Tuesday morning. Students in the course and guests were treated to some reading and discussion of Marquart’s memoir of growing up in North Dakota. “I was a farm girl, and I wanted nothing more than to leave North Dakota,” Marquart told the class. “But a lot of people like me end up wanting to come back.” Marquart told students that a writing group, such as the one she was once in with Dr. Maureen Murphy in Minnesota, can be a major benefit for any writer.

The writer then joined a group of faculty for a regular soup lunch shared in Beadle Hall. In the afternoon, Marquart met with Deana Hueners-Nelson’s Introduction to Literature class, reading and discussing her poems and poetry writing in general with students.

In the afternoon Dr. Knowlton hosted Marquart and English faculty and students at a tea in the Girton House.

The event was sponsored by the College of Arts and Sciences.

Thorton Wilder's Our Town at DSU

Friday evening the wife and I made it to the DSU production of Thorton Wilder's play, "Our Town," a play depicting turn of the century life, first produced in 1938. It was very well done, a commendable performance by our students, especially since we don't have a theater major. I have to confess I'd never seen it, and I found myself moved by the sense of changing times and the yearning for meaning in small-town life. Two more opportunities remain, Monday and Tuesday at 7:30 at the Dakota Prairie Playhouse. Go.