The life and times of a little hippie in the Bersagel-Briese clan.
Another big rain event this late-afternoon. It’s been really good for everything out here – really hard to believe how green everything is for August. During the storm, we were playing inside and Ezra put a CD in the player that is the music that he goes to sleep with. He immediately commented (jokingly) about it being night time, ran and got a blanket, then asked if I would lay on the floor with him. We pretended to be asleep while the music played. Ezra laughed. I wished for it to be true.
The Boy Scouts of America are celebrating their 100th anniversary right now. They are celebrating by having their annual local camporees, and by having the every 4 year National Jamboree in Virginia (one that I went to in 92). They are celebrating by having stories on almost every news program for the past 24 hours. They are also celebrating by not talking about the fact that they are a discriminatory organization that preaches bigotry from it’s highest ranks.
Did that get the blood flowing a little? I know that there are a lot of you that read this blog that spent a lot of time (and still do) in, around, and with Boy Scouts. As a matter of fact, that is how I know a lot of you – life long friends made through my time in a troop. For those that don’t know, I spent my entire youth affiliated with the Boy Scouts…all of the way through Cub Scouts, through Weblows, and through the ranks of Boy Scouts until I earned my Eagle Scout rank. I was a crew leader for a Philmont trek, and subsequently worked at Philmont for the summer of 1994. Never in my time in Boy Scouts was it apparent or obvious to me the national policies that are so wrong….especially the incredibly aggressive policy prohibiting homosexual leaders or scouts (only in America, by the way. Canadian scouting allows for homosexual membership).
Before you get into it, I know that the Supreme Court upheld the BSA’s ability to have this stance – because they are a ‘private’ organization (so private that they are often sponsored by public institutions and often meets in schools, fire stations, etc). Just because they have the legal right to do it, doesn’t make it the right thing to do. As a matter of fact, for an organization that is still seemingly so influential in our society – Obama was supposed to speak at the National Jamboree tonight before having to cancel at the last minute – it makes it even more wrong for their stances. The BSA is an organization that has so aggressively defended these ideas, that bigotry has become part of it’s dogma.
As the BSA celebrates it’s 100th anniversary, there is no better time than now to grow up. Show all of your members a shining example of leadership and change – in spite of the incredibly influential Catholic and Mormon members. Drop your prejudice, your intolerance, and your ignorant ways. Allow for different opinions on religion. Allow for homosexual members. Allow for different genders (sacrosanct, I know). Learn from the Canadian or Swedish scouts and they great successes that they have. Change, change, change. For if you don’t, you can count on two guarantees: no child of mine will be part of any of your groups until you do; and in 50 years your membership will only consist of religious and conservative zealots.
PS – A quick note to all news organizations, cities, towns, public or private groups: by supporting the Boy Scouts in your area, you are supporting their beliefs. There is no way around it. And until you stop, change will be nearly impossible to come by.
What the heck was that?! Almost 2 inches of rain in 45 minutes. 50 mph winds. Small hail. Street flooding. Building flooding. Car accidents. Tons of lightning.
I’ve never seen anything like it before, and I had the joy of it happening while I was at the fire station. The department did 17 runs in 3 hours….we did our share of time in the rain. The photos are from the inside of the apparatus bays at the firehouse – in the #2 photo, that’s inside the bay….the line is the mark where the garage door comes down. The video is shot directly outside of the back of the station and is at normal speed (looks similar to a Weather Channel report from a hurricane).
Things are finally starting to happen….just in time for them to stop for a while – at least a couple of weeks. Before we even moved in, we picked out and ordered the cabinet hardware. There was a plan for me to install them one night after Ezra had gone to bed at the old house – during the move. Needless to say, it didn’t happen. It took a cool 7 months, but they are finally installed and looking sharp.
The second major project completed recently was the installation of window shades. It’s been an ongoing event since we moved into the house – choosing the type, color, quality, cost, etc. Officially, we were super sick of the temp shades that we had up…and they really limited how much we opened and closed them. Consequently, the permanent ones have been great for two reasons. The first reason was just eluded to: we open them a lot more frequently and thus get a lot more natural light into the house. The second reason that we love these is due to their insulating power. It’s a noticeable and marked difference in the amount of heat that comes through the windows that are in the direct sunlight when the shades are down. Here’s to more sunlight and less cooling costs!
PS – it’s hard to figure out how to show off the new shades in photo form, so the first photo is my effort. I also decided to grab a couple of other shots of the house while I was outside.
These are the last photos from the Wisconsin/Iowa trip. On our last day in town, we went down to the LaCrosse Children’s Museum. It’s a great space for a town that size, and what was special about the place is that Ezra could participate in nearly every single aspect of the museum. At the one in Denver, Ezra can play with about 50% of the stuff there because it is designed for a large age audience. The one in LaCrosse is (in our opinion) designed for kids 5 and under; although older kids can have some fun there as well. They did also have a train set to beat any train set that we have seen yet – one that you can crawl under the table and pop up in 5 different spots to play with the trains. Ezra thought it was pretty cool.
After a week of a serious heat/humidity combination, the weather pattern finally broke following a massive series of thunderstorms. Unfortunately, that was after most of the rest of the family had to go about their own ways…but fortunately for us, it was just in time for the annual LaCrosse County Interstate Fair.
It was home to all of the typical county fair stuff, so no going into boring details there. Ezra did have the chance to see a sheep get sheared, meet a horse named Stella, and pet a couple of goats that were out on a walk. Perhaps most memorably, he got to ride his first amusement rides by himself. We started with the slide (something he really enjoyed last summer in Colorado), then headed to the fairly mellow car-go-round. Following that, we spotted a ride where Ezra would sit in a dragon and have a gentle ride in circles for a while. We opted to let him go by himself.
The ride started and immediately went a little faster and a lot higher than we thought it would (so much for scouting it out beforehand). Ahna and I both wondered out loud what we just did…but then the screaming, laughing, and smiling Ezra came flying around the bend….again, and again, and again. He LOVED it. After the dragon ride, we hit a similar ride that featured turtles, this time knowing what we were getting Ezra into. Guess what? He LOVED it. We are so proud of him for riding by himself and showing us what a big boy he is becoming.
There is a boat tour just off of the La Crosse boardwalk that is advertised as an eco-tour of the Mississippi….you get on a boat, tour around for 1.5hrs, and look for birds, animals, and other signs of nature (road building supplies, huge barge ships, etc). The trip was a lot of fun – albeit hot – and we did end up seeing some pretty cool things, like a bald eagle, some cool birds, and a beaver dam. Ezra and the other cousins did great on the boat despite Ezra seemingly only wanting to do the things that he wasn’t allowed to do, like drive the boat.
It’s not too often that a single event during a single day is cool/important/different/fun enough to earn a post all by itself. Ok, maybe that’s not entirely true since almost every post on this blog is about that exactly…but the trip to a park in La Crosse and the morning spent at the Kid’s Coulee was pretty cool.
As you can see from the photos, the Kid’s Coulee is a GIGANTIC playground. Unlike one that I have ever seen before. It’s super fun and super easy to loose your kids inside of. Hours and hours could potentially disappear into thin air spent at this place. For a minute I will digress and attempt to explain what a coulee is for those of you reading this not from the midwest. A coulee is a mysterious natural phenomenon that as far as I can tell only occurs in the La Crosse area. It’s smaller than a mountain but larger than a valley…because we have words to describe those. At one point, I believed that it was the word for all of the hills (called bluffs here). Now, I believe that it means something similar to, but different from a valley. Who knows (even Wikipedia is confused as to it’s meaning). However, when it it placed on a wooden sign after the word ‘kid’s’ and put in front of a huge playground, it means: coolest park this side of the Mississippi.
The larger park that houses the playground is also home to an education center that has many things for kids to do including learning about animals, feeling animal fur, looking out into the marshland, and observing a hive of bees (the hive is actually located indoors – which is nice on a super hot July day – with an access tube to the outside for the bees to crawl through).
The annual trip back to Wisconsin is always highlighted by the reason for the July journey: the trip to the farm to celebrate Bestemor’s birthday. This year marks something insane, like 98. The folks at the farm decided on doing things a little differently this time around: Saturday dinner was a ‘celebration of every holiday’ (including July 4, Easter, Christmas, and others), and Sunday was a ‘celebration of everyone’s birthday’. The idea was that for 2010 we could be together for every holiday and every birthday…:-) It was lovely.
Sunday morning was special, not just because it was Sunday morning, and not just because there was a church service. It was special because the church service was done with only our family, sitting in the new addition at the farm, and performed by Ezra’s Papa. As the designated one in sort-of-charge of the church nursery, I spent a lot of time in the back of the room chasing kids. That did, however, allow for many moments of pause to look at the entire group gathered. I say again: it was lovely.
PS – You may be asking yourself, “Self, I wonder what part of the trip to the farm wasn’t so lovely?” Lucky for you I have an answer to ease your mind: the mosquitos.
The Life of a Little Hippie 