Musings of a Technonerd

Got up this morning at my usual time, around 5:45. Took my shower, shaved, got my lunch ready to go, had a little breakfast, dressed, all the usual stuff.

Lately, there's been a new addition to my morning routine. Having always been fascinated with weather, I've enlisted in a program in my county to record and report rainfall and snowfall amounts. In addition to writing down the observations on a chart and mailing that in, I also enter in the numbers on a website.

So there I was, out on my back deck at about 6:30 in the morning, looking at the rain gauge, when I took a minute to notice the surroundings.

Now, we'd been having a bit of a drought in Minnesota lately. We received hardly any rain whatsoever during the months of June and July. I'd all but given my yard up for a goner, and had also taken to giving my trees much needed drinks of water so they wouldn't go into stress. I don't even want to talk about how much water I poured onto my tomatoes! But all that changed in August. Since the 5th of August, we've received 9.83 inches of rain in my back yard.

This has done much to bring everything back to life. My yard is now lush and green again, and I haven't so much as touched my hoses for anything.

The temp was 52 degrees, and the sky was clear. The air was crisp, and filled with the aromas of early fall. I could smell pines, mature tomato plants, and other signs of late fall/early spring. The birds were noisy too. They're busy, along with the squirrels, at their job of fattening themselves up for the upcoming winter. So they were flitting around this morning, picking up various worms and bugs to eat. It was quiet, and life was good. After a couple of minutes, I pulled up a chair, and simply enjoyed what I was experiencing. The rush to get to work could go to hell as far as I was concerned.

My grandfather, an Ojibwe Indian who'd lived along with nature all of his life, had an uncanny knack for being able to judge the type of winter we had coming. There was no magic sign, such as a wooly caterpillar, or anything like that. It was everything. All of it. And he'd been around long enough to be able to interpret all the signs and put it all together. I used to go visit him for Thanksgiving and would go to his woodshed to see how much wood he'd stocked up. (The grandparents lived on a tree farm south of Ely, Mn.) If he'd stocked up quite a bit, invariably, we'd have a stout winter. I asked him once how he did it. "It's no any one thing," he told me. "It's a combination of a whole bunch of things. You just have to pay attention to what's going on around you, and figure it out." Of course, being a know-it-all kid, that went in one ear and out the other. He passed away in 1983, and I've missed him dearly ever since. I sure wish I'd paid more attention to what he was trying to tell me.

So I sat there this morning, doing something most city people rarely do anymore, and just watched and enjoyed the wonderful sights and sounds of nature for a while. It was wonderful and very refreshing.

"Are we going to work or not!" Oops. I was yanked back into "civilization" quickly and efficiently by my wonderful (but punctual) wife. It was indeed time to get the hell out the front door. But I gotta tell you.

That was the best ten minutes I'd spent in some time.

"How strange that Nature does not knock, and yet does not intrude!" ~Emily Dickinson

But we sure do seem to miss it now.



It's been a week since the 35W bridge collapsed. It's taken this long for me to sort things out and get my brain around the fact it's gone. I was in the middle of fetching a relative from the airport. I'd not been listening to any sort of media since about 5:45pm as I was in a headlong rush to make all of my destinations that night. The kids were watching a DVD at home, so there were no news reports on TV to see. Just as we were headed out the door to get to the airport, the phone rang, and it was our eldest son's girlfriend wondering about "the bridge that fell by the river." In the back of my mind, I went "huh?" and dismissed it. While waiting for a stop light, my wife, who was behind me in another car waved frantically, and yelled "TURN ON THE RADIO!" I was stunned when I heard what had happened. As we sat on Post road, the local area here to watch aircraft from, and waited for the relatives' plane to arrive, we could see smoke from the bridge's area rising in the horizon. We could also hear ATC calling to helicopters over the crash scene. It was all pretty eerie.

Since then, the citizens in this burg have behaved themselves for the most part. They've already adjusted to the new traffic patterns, it would seem. Rush hour traffic hasn't been as snarled as I thought it might be, although it's still summer vacation season. The University, is pretty much shut down for the summer with very little activity. The true test, I believe, will be after labor day, when all the schools go into full swing and most people wrap up summer activities. Then things will probably be a bit more hectic around here during drive time.

The initial shock seems to be wearing off, and people are starting to ask "Just what the hell happened here?" And the answer, since the investigation isn't complete yet, is "Who the hell knows?" The NTSB, one of the world's premiere forensic investigation organizations, is on the scene. These folks are some of the best we have. As an example, during airliner crash investigations, they figured out a way to tell if a indicator lamp from an instrument panel was on or off when damaged. That's pretty good. If anyone can figure this mess out, it'll be them.

Our LT. Gov., Carol Molneau, also happens to be the head of MnDOT. She was appointed by our Gov Tim Pawlenty as one way to "shrink government." Never mind the fact that her main back ground is in farming. Old Tim figured that somehow, she'd make a dandy transportation commissioner. I've a feeling that he appointed her not so much for her knowledge about things like roads and bridges but more for being a reliable rubber stamp who has, for the most part, done what he wants her to do. She's been in office for about 5 1/2 years now, during which, several reports on this bridge were submitted, and decisions made about what to do about them. We've gotten to the point where they're starting to ask "Who knew what and when did they know it?" I've a feeling she's got some questions to answer. Although Pawlenty in standing behind her (The rotten tomatoes will hit her first?) I've a feeling her days as head of MnDOT may be coming to an end. She's a former state senator with a pretty caustic personality who made a lot of enemies and burned a lot of bridges during her time there. Her confirmation has never been brought to a floor vote because she simply does not have enough support in the Senate. A gentleman's agreement between the Gov and the Senate leadership keeping her nomination in the committee is the only thing that's keeping her in office.

I was talking with my wife during the drive into work this morning. She told me that one of her co-workers was on her way to South Minneapolis on the evening of the 1st. Her toddler, supposedly reliably toilet trained, thoroughly messed his pants in a convincing manner. It took her a few extra minutes to clean things up. Afterwards, running late, she headed to her destination via her usual route, Southbound I35W. As she approached the river, traffic came to a standstill. She couldn't see the bridge, and didn't know what happened. After she spotted smoke, she turned on the radio and found out about the bridge. Figured she missed it by 2 minutes at the most. Because they were past the last exit before the river, there was no possible way to go any further. After sitting for a time, cars around her eventually started making u-turns and headed to the nearest exit upstream. Since then, she's decided to make some job and education changes in her life she'd been putting off. She also reports her husband has been much more loving and attentive.

We humans tend to put ourselves into "autopilot mode" as we go through life, and take things like seeing our kids and spouses after work for granted. That sounds pretty silly at face value. I mean, think about it. See my spouse again after work? Why wouldn't I see her again after work? Well, I can think of five concrete examples up here where people DIDN'T see their spouses/kids after work, with eight more possible examples, depending on what they find when they start pulling the debris out of the water. I've harped about this subject before. Not taking your loved ones for granted, and smelling the roses. But I'm bringing it up again because we're all creatures of habit, and tend to slip back to our old ways after a while. I'm one of the worlds worst offenders and I need to constantly remind myself about what the really "important things" are. I hope you think about that too.




"Man does not weave this web of life. He is merely a strand of it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself." Chief Seattle