Bulletin Board

Our gargoyles, ourselves

Gregory J. of Dayton’s Bluff: “I’ve always thought of myself as a fairly observant person. I might have to rethink that observation. I’ve belonged to St. Mary’s Catholic Church in downtown St. Paul’s Lowertown for five years, but have been attending Mass there periodically for the past 60 years. So why did I discover only a few weeks ago that there are two gargoyles on the church building?

Continue reading “When did they put those things there?”

Life as we know it
Laundry Division

Tim Torkildson: “Subject: The Washing Machine and I.

“Today I did a load of laundry, after stopping by Fresh Market for groceries this morning. I asked the cashier, Evi, who comes from the Philippines, for $3 in quarters. The washer takes $1, and the dryer takes 50 cents, so I have enough change to do two loads. I used to spend an additional quarter on the dryer when I did my towels — but now, with summer at last making a tardy appearance, I hang my wet towels out on my patio chairs and let the sun save me the spare change. I try to bring them back in after an hour, since the limp, disconsolate things make my place look like a trailer park.

Continue reading “Like sands through the hourglass, these are the loads of our lives!”

Fellow travelers
Student Division

Gregory of the North: “With the recent discussions of class trips, I’ve been wanting to send you this recollection — but I hesitated, as it wasn’t so much a class trip as a mission trip.

“It was 1968, and those of us living and hanging out in Luther Hall on the University of Minnesota’s Twin Cities campus decided it would be a good thing for us to go to Chicago and learn about the Civil Rights movement. So arrangements were made, and buses contracted, and soon we were off to Chicago’s South Side.

Continue reading “Join this ‘stupid [but well-meaning!] white boy’ on a midnight tour of Chicago’s South Side . . .”

Now & Then

The Gram With a Thousand Rules writes: “I thought about going low-profile on this, but then I decided I would be remiss if I didn’t share this lesson I learned: If you wake up one morning and find that one of your hands isn’t working, don’t ignore it and think it will get better by itself.

“If it hangs there like a limp fish dangling from your wrist, don’t be an ostrich like I was and blame it on a pinched nerve. My brain told me it was more than that, but I clung to the belief that it could be a pinched nerve, and that if I went out and finished raking out the flower beds with my other hand, it would get better.

Continue reading “If your brain tells you something’s amiss, don’t bury it in the sand. Get thee to Urgent Care!”

Our times
Plus: In memoriam

DebK of Rosemount: (1) “My nephew Sam is about to graduate from his San Francisco public middle school. In what has apparently become a new rite of passage, the entire eighth-grade class will be treated, at (mostly) taxpayer expense, to a class trip which begins with jetting to Washington, D.C. After four days spent taking in the wonders of our nation’s capital, the entire bunch — kids and chaperones — will fly on to New York City for further educational and cultural improvement, there apparently being nothing of worth to experience in the Bay Area or elsewhere on the West Coast.

Continue reading “How eighth-grade “grads” are escorted into the Jet Set!”