The Caninization of Jerry: Our Rescue Dog Becomes a Dog

Jerry, then.

Groundhog Day is the day we chose as the birthday for Jerry, our rescue dog who came into our lives as a malnourished, neglected pup in fall 2010.

Jerry, now.

Two years later, he seems more like a dog and less like an injured soul. We call it the caninization of Jerry.

Like any dog, when he hears the words “do you want to” or “go,” he cocks his head expectantly and waits with bright eyes to hear the rest of the question. He also gets excited when I bag up the recyclables because he knows that means a trip to town.

Jerry looks like a chocolate Lab, but in reality he's a Weimaraner/Chesapeake cross. And like any Weimaraner, Jerry loves to roll in smelly things, such as the swamp that’s near the gravel pit or anything dead on the road. One day he found a half-dead garter snake and finished it off, afterwards anointing himself with the remains. Later that day he slept and woofed, his paws twitching in imaginary chase, undoubtedly dreaming that he was slaying the Basilisk.

Like any country dog, he has faced perils and will continue to face them. Last fall as Jerry splashed in the creek, he stepped into a raccoon trap. (There were no physical injuries, thankfully, but he was pretty shaken up. So was I.) Another country peril is skunks. In the past skunks have come up to the patio door, so an encounter with a skunk isn’t a question of “if,” but “when.” Three bottles of skunk removal shampoo are waiting on a shelf in the mud room for that inevitable day.

Steps like these are
no problem for Jerry.

Jerry has come a long way in his caninization. When he first came to us he weighed 61 pounds. At his last veterinary checkup he weighed 73 pounds, which the vet said was “just perfect.” At our Bruno house he never climbed a staircase. Now he bounds up and down them with ease.

He won't do that again.
I hope. 

In the past two years Jerry has tangled with a porcupine, run headfirst into a tree, and swum after a beaver. And he's managed to come away an older, if not wiser, dog. As Jerry has progressed in his journey, so have I. 

I was at the kitchen table filling out paperwork for community college and job retraining, feeling wistful and uncertain about the future. I began singing Diana Ross’s 1970s hit “Do You Know Where You’re Going To.” Immediately, Jerry cocked his head and looked expectantly at me.

What a great way to live: not knowing what the future holds, but knowing it’s gotta be something good.

Has your pet made the journey from rescue dog to just plain dog? What have you heard along the way? I’d love to hear your story about your pet’s caninization. Please share it in a comment below!

The Little Post Office that Roared

The Kerrick Post Office in east central Minnesota is on the list of 3700+ small post offices nationwide to be shut down. On November 3, over 90 people -- more than the population of Kerrick itself, which is 79 -- crowded into the Duquette Hall to make their case to USPS representatives. I learned about the meeting via Colette Stadin, editor of the local weekly paper, the Askov American. I wasn't able to attend but wished I had. The meeting was an example of democracy in action.

When a little post office roars -- or more accurately, the people who rely on the little post office -- news travels far. Duluth's Fox News station was there. Watch here.

Duluth is only 35 miles or so from Kerrick and 33 miles from Duquette. But when you're a mere "wide spot in the road," as Duquette General Store owner Curtis Gunderson put it, 35 miles is light-years away.

According to Stadin, among the people at the Duquette meeting were State Senator Tony Lourey and a representative from U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar's office. One of the solutions put forth by the USPS, says Stadin, is to "bank by carrier." Residents could buy postage stamps and such by leaving the money in a brightly colored envelope for the mail carrier to pick up. Citizens at the meeting immediately pointed out the potential for drive-by theft from rural residents who are already on a fixed income.

In this time of budget cuts, is saving the Kerrick Post Office a lost cause? Maybe, maybe not. But when a little town catches the ear of the U.S. government -- or even a city of 80,000 thirty-five miles away -- it did more than try. It roared.

Watch the Fox 21 News story by Jeremy Scott and photojournalist Kristian Tharaldson.
Subscribe to the Askov American by calling 320-838-3151.


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The Story of a Little Goat with a Black Coat and a White Spot

We're taking an elite crew of three goats with us when we move. Over the years we've stopped breeding goats because we realize we're not farmers. Real farmers don't say, "We can't get rid of the bottle babies. They're bottle babies." Or, "We can't split them apart. They're a family." Or, "We have to keep the littlest ones. They need us."

So we're taking three goats: Cupcake the bottle baby, Molly the runt, and our first goat ever, Molly's mother Baby Girl.

These photos from several years ago depict how Cupcake became a bottle baby.

Our dairy goat, Buttercup, had only thrown (or given birth to)
single kids with white coats.



Like Bluebonnet, who had been thrown the spring before.

The next spring Buttercup threw two kids, one with a white coat
and a smaller one with a black coat.

To Twinkie: "You may enter." To Cupcake: "Not so fast." 

Cupcake is busted!

We could keep the subterfuge up only for so long. Mike brought Cupcake into the house, where we bottle fed her for three weeks. Her hooves clickety-clacking on the wooden stairs earned her the nickname "Cupcake the Tap-Dancing Goat."

We call her Cupcake because of her black coat and the white spot in the middle of her belly: just where the cream filling of a Hostess Cupcake would be.

Today, she's a happy and healthy outdoor goat

but is a housegoat at heart.

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Ask the First Kids on the School BusAbout the Need for Rural Broadband

I got the school calendar and fall community education calendar from the East Central School District in the mail the other day. Always interested in lengths of bus rides, I checked the times that the first kids on the route board the bus. The earliest was 6:05. The latest boarding time (on a different bus) was 8:04. Assuming breakfast starts at 8:10 and classes begin at 8:30, the first kid on the bus has been riding for over two hours.

I've heard that a lot of students in the East Central School District are homeschooled. I can understand why. When I take my dog Jerry for a swim in a Park Township creek, I pass a school bus stop sign on a gravelly ribbon of hilly road. I can't help but wonder how long of a bus ride that student has. Imagine the driveway in the wintertime and you'll think of that old Volkswagen commercial: "How does the man who drives the snowplow get to the snowplow?" (Considered one of the 100 all-time greatest commercials, the Doyle Dane Bernbach spot appears below.)

East Central isn't an exception, but an example of what rural school districts in Minnesota face. When traveling to the end of the driveway is an ordeal, and when school budgets are downsized and shifted, rural broadband isn't an option -- it's essential.

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Commercial from nishiot's youtube channel.

Oh, Mercy! Part Two of a StoryAbout an Amazing Chicken

Author's Note: This story from several years ago is about a chicken hen who became caretaker to a flock of guinea chicks, or keets, during a summer when foxes were rampant. Part One ended with a fox sighting, Mercy with tailfeathers missing rounding up keets, and the guinea hen gone.

Mike grabbed a small plastic bucket and gathered up what keets he could find. He counted nine. Mike brought the bucket into the house, and by that time I arrived home with our son Wyatt. As Mike filled me in on what happened, we heard still more keets, their alarmed cheeping in the tall grass sounding like frog peepers.

Mercy continued to collect babies. I grabbed a cooler and put in a layer of bedding, a feeder, and a waterer. The keets from inside the house went into the cooler. So did the keets that Mercy was collecting. There were fifteen in all.

Finally, there was only one keet cheeping out in the grass. Both Mike and I tried to grab it but it seemed to vanish into thin air. We decided to get the cooler from inside the house and bring it back outside, hoping the sound of the keet’s brothers and sisters would lure it in.

But there was a problem. While we looked for the last keet, the babies in the cooler would be sitting targets for the fox. So Mike laid a screen on top of the cooler. He laid a small flatbed trailer on one half of the screen, providing security and also allowing ventilation. Then he stacked three spare tires on top of the trailer. If you wait long enough, there will be a use for that junk you have lying around in the yard.

A Fox and a Ph.D.

“Will that keep the fox out?” I asked skeptically.

“Ohyeah,” Mike assured me. “That fox would need a Ph.D. to figure out how to get in.”

“He does have a Ph.D.,” I said dryly. “A Poultry Heisting Degree.”

By this time, Mike had to leave for a mowing job. Three times I tried to catch the keet, three times it eluded me, three times Mercy herded it back, stopping only once for a quick bite of corn. (I imagine she was getting worn out.) The best I could do was keep the fox away.

When Mike got home, he tried a different tack. Rather than trying to capture the keet,  he set his sights on Mercy. It was fairly easy to net her, and deposit her into an old dog crate. Within moments the keet ventured out in search of its surrogate mother. Seeing her in the crate, the keet slipped in between the bars to join her. Hearing Mike’s triumphant “GOT IT!”— by this time I could barely stand the suspense—I knew the mission was accomplished.

Now, the only thing left to do was unite “mother” and babies. Mike, Wyatt, and I deposited the keets one by one from the cooler into their new home, an empty rabbit hutch. Last came Mercy. As we closed the hutch lid, the keets’ alarmed cheeping turned immediately to contented peeping. Even without her tailfeathers, Mercy was able to cover all 16 babies. since the closest guesstimate of keets had been 18, the fox had only captured one—and perhaps none at all.

A Champion Among Chickens

Thinking of The Widow, who had lost her life after hatching a huge clutch against huge odds, I knew I would feel more kindly toward guineas. And I was especially grateful for Mercy. So many chickens of ours have abandoned their chicks, or lost them, or continued to sit on nests of eggs that had gone bad weeks before. Mercy was worthy of a solid gold nesting box.

On our little five-acre farm, it doesn't take much to create an afternoon of high drama. But then, it doesn’t take much to create a moment of sheer joy. Thanks to Mercy.

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Oh, Mercy! Part One of a StoryAbout an Amazing Chicken

Author's note: This story was written several years ago about a chicken we owned several years before that. She's still the yardstick by which we measure poultry. Today is Part One of the two-part story.

I love chickens, but am less enchanted with guineas. Mike likes them because they eat the worms that destroy apples. Guineas, or at least the adults, are too aggressive for my liking. Last summer I tried to return a baby, or keet, that had lost track of its flockmates and mother. My reward: a sharp peck on the hand.

This year, as the summer waned, Mike and I noticed fewer and fewer roosters crowing. It wasn’t something you noticed from day to day. But by August, the inside of the chicken coop looked like a ghost town, young ducks turned up missing, and the yard grew eerily silent One morning, our miniature horse, Macy, charged across the pasture, chasing a streak of red fur.

A fox.

Our poultry had always been free range. But sadly, we realized it was kinder to pen them instead of leaving them unprotected. So Mike constructed a chicken run between our chicken coop and Poultry Towers: a high-rise poultry roost made from the old Kerrick School monkey bars, wrapped with chicken wire and topped with a tarp.

The War Against the Foxes
It was during the War against the Foxes that a guinea hen rose to prominence on our farm, along with one amazing chicken hen, resulting in an afternoon of high drama.

We purchased a pair of guineas at the Sturgeon Lake chicken swap in hopes they would breed some nice gentle keets. The rooster eventually had to be dispatched because he had killed a couple of ducklings. But he had served his purpose: the hen had laid a sizeable clutch of eggs, and began sitting shortly after her mate’s demise. The hen, who we simply called The Widow, chose a corner in an empty stall in the barn, just off the main aisleway. There was a little red chicken hen nearby, bigger than a bantam but not a large bird by any means. Perching on her roost, she called to mind a bellhop waiting to be pressed into service.

In July we rented the services of a miniature donkey, Little Joe, to breed with Macy. The aisleway in the barn was their preferred place to rendezvous. At one point Little Joe stepped right in the middle of The Widow’s nest. She escaped, barely missing being squashed. With wings flapping, she chased the donkey, the horse, and all three goats out of the barn, finishing with a loud chatter that was probably guinea language for “AND STAY OUT!”

An Angel of Mercy
It was a miracle that any eggs hatched at all. But hatch they did. First I saw three keets. Then seven. Then – oh, there must have been a dozen and a half. That many little puffballs won’t stay still long enough for you to count them. The widow did her best to herd them. But keeping an eye on so many babies was hard for one hen to do. Remarkably, the little red hen stepped up. She helped herd the keets, directing them with gentle clucks. She spread out her tailfeathers like a fan to hide the babies from nosy onlookers. She gathered them under her feathers. She even helped clean up the eggshells, which are a source of protein for poultry. I started calling her Mercy, as an angel of mercy, or perhaps a New England midwife.

After three days, The Widow led her babies out of the stall and outdoors. With all the barn traffic, it was inevitable that one should be trampled. But after the loss of that one unfortunate keet, the others became quite adept at avoiding the equines and goats. With Mercy bringing up the back, mother and babies disappeared into the tall grass, as guineas are wont to do. We knew the keets would be in good hands.

A few days later, while I was running errands and Mike was out doing chores, he heard a peeping and found a lone keet. He gathered it up and placed it by Mercy, since The Widow wasn’t around. Then he noticed Mercy was rounding up additional keets. Her tailfeathers were missing. And The Widow was nowhere in sight, the last sign of her being an agitated squawk a few minutes before.

The fox had struck again.


To be continued...

Rural Broadband Accessfor 55927? Don't Bet the Farm.

I'm having trouble remembering my new address. It's less of an address than it is a confirmation number: the house number an unrelated string of digits, the street name another string of digits without a directional. I keep wanting to add a North or South or Northwest that isn't there.

But one thing is permanently burned onto my hard drive. 
The zip code. 55927. 55927. 55927.

Picasa photo: roderick_clark

In looking for rural broadband service, I've entered my new zip code into the search engine of one Internet service provider after another: Qwest. Comcast. Frontier. Mediacom. CenturyLink. None provide broadband service to zip code 55927. I've felt like a gambling addict in Vegas, feeding quarter after quarter into a slot machine and fervently hoping I hit the jackpot with the next coin.

It's hard to believe that here in Bruno, a town of 102, we've had unlimited broadband access while  roughly 20 miles from the Mayo Clinic, broadband is scarce. Our new digs are outside of the Dodge Center city limits, falling smack dab in the middle of a triangle formed by the cities of West Concord, Dodge Center, and Claremont. It's a Bermuda Triangle of sorts for rural broadband.

Frontier expanded its broadband service to Bruno customers about four years ago, and I can't remember what life was like without it. Things may change in time. Perhaps Frontier will expand its frontiers. For now, our choices for rural broadband are HughesNet and WildBlue. Do you have service through either of those providers, or have stories about rural broadband in general? Would we love it if you shared your stories? You bet!

Greatest Goat Photo of All Time

Smile, you're on Caprine Camera!

Towering Trees and Rolling Oaks

When I walk down Shady Pine Road, sometimes the passing trees remind me of  a Hanna-Barbera cartoon background. They go on and on and on.

And sometimes they're the cathedral in which I worship. 

 We lost several trees to storms last week. 

And we've lost a few more to developers. No wonder subdivisions and developments have street names like "Rolling Oaks." The oaks are rolling because earth movers roll them out of the way.

The Small-Town Post Office:Address Unknown?

If you're a person who still writes letters, you could address a letter to me at Susan Maricle, Bruno, Minnesota, and chances are I'd receive it. 


Because once the letter arrived at the Bruno Post Office from Duluth or the Twin Cities, a postal worker like Bev or Dan would say, "Ohyeah, I know where she lives."

The Bruno Post Office.

Neighbors knowing neighbors makes a post office unique to small towns. The post offices in Kerrick (population 79) and Bruno (population 102) are on the list of 117 Minnesota post offices under consideration for closure. It's not a done deal, as residents are signing petitions and contacting their state legislators. But the fact that specific post offices (I refuse to use the term "retail outlets") have been identified is reason enough to act.

The Kerrick Post Office.

A frequent objection to closing small-town post offices is their significance to senior citizens, their role as a meet-and-greet with old friends before breakfast. If the Kerrick and Bruno post offices close, seniors who rent post-office boxes would have to either switch to at-home delivery or drive to a farther post office. If you're a senior on a limited budget, and are apprehensive about driving on icy winter roads -- Highway 23 can be treacherous -- you've just lost a treasured morning ritual. And the local diner has lost the breakfast income that follows the ritual.


From my own point of view, a small-town post office is a go-to place, a where-do-I, who-do-I, how-do-I place. When I left the Bruno Post Office this morning I ran into Sparky Nelson, who administers the food shelf and volunteers at senior dining. I asked her who I would contact to rent the Bruno Town Hall across the road. She directed me to Doug Blechinger, the mayor who lives down the road. Stand outside in front of a small-town post office with a question. Before long you'll have the answer. 


A Secret Santa and Mike the Mailman
In the event of a post office closure,  those of us with rural route delivery would receive our mail from a more distant post office, perhaps Askov or Wrenshall. I'm sure the postal workers there are great people, but I wouldn't expect them to know everything that goes on in our little corner of east central Minnesota. Like the anonymous benefactor who would buy a small Christmas present for each young child in Bruno. The toys would show up in mailboxes on Christmas Eve with a return address of the North Pole. Or when "Mike the Mailman," as neighbors called him, would leave a dog biscuit in the mailbox at every home on his route where a dog lived.

The Collectible Toy Post Office

Eight miles north on State Highway 23, the Kerrick Post Office resembles a toy building in a collectible tabletop village. Terri Stadin says an older gentleman comes up from the Cities once a month to buy a book of ten stamps because he admires the tiny building with its neatly manicured grounds.

The Kerrick Post Office was fashioned from part of the old Kerrick Hotel in the 1970s, says retired Postmaster John Wenzel. (Wenzel's own home is also a piece of history: it's a refurbished church that you'll recognize if you've seen the movie Iron Will.) 

The bulletin board outside of the post office is another reason why small-town post offices are the go-to place. You'll see notices for free will suppers, informational flyers about utility payment assistance, and assorted business cards. The bulletin board is a 24/7 news service for those who don't have the Internet, and provides local context for people like me who are too busy dashing here and there to notice what's going on.

Address Unknown,  A Connection Lost
The dominoes are slowly but steadily falling. A post office is probably next after a school in giving a town its identity, and Bruno and Kerrick lost their local schools to consolidation long ago. A desire for smaller government can lead to a greater disconnect among neighbors and communities. Is that really the outcome that we want?


Listen to the Minnesota Public Radio report: 

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A Happy Home for Our Horse and Mule

As we prepare for our move, the foremost concern in our minds was to find good homes for the farm animals.

My husband Mike found a home for Oreo, the goat he called Devil Goat because she'd bedevil us by weaseling her way through the electric fence. Mike met a couple at the chicken swap who took Oreo, and he asked if they were in the market for a class B mini-horse and mule. They were.

Macy and Sourdough, 2006. Sourdough was about 12 hours old.

It was important for us to keep mother and offspring together, so not only did we give Macy and Sourdough to the couple, we included a stipend so Sourdough could get her hooves trimmed. Mike knew how to trim horse hooves but had no experience with mule hooves, didn't want to cause damage, and just about all of the mule farriers we contacted were out of business. Happily, a mule farrier lives next door to Macy and Sourdough's new home. So the mule can get a mani-pedi anytime she needs one.

The Genesis of a Mule

The proud parents, Little Joe and Macy May.

A mule is a hybrid between a female horse and a male donkey. (A cross between a male horse and a female donkey is called a hinny, which comes into play later.) Sourdough was sired by a mini-donkey named Little Joe, who summered at our farm for a couple of years. If Little Joe were an animated cartoon character, he'd have the deep baritone voice of Lou Rawls. In this photo, taken at the end of their pasturing, Joe looks like he's singing "You're Gonna Miss My Love" to Macy.

Macy and Sourdough now live on 19 acres with several other horses, a sheep, Oreo the reformed Devil Goat, a llama, and a hinny. A large buckskin-colored horse refused to let Macy and Sourdough become part of the herd. So the owners found a new home for the buckskin. They tell us that Oreo is the sweetest goat imaginable. And their grandkids regularly take the minis for walks.

A Happy Ending for All

New horizons lie ahead for Sourdough and Macy.

Mike had plans of training Macy and Sourdough to harness, but the plan never came to fruition. The fact that we were able to successfully breed a horse and donkey is an accomplishment in itself. I haven't decided if I want to see Macy and Sourdough before we leave. If they're happy in their new home and are well taken care of, that's all that matters. And finally, a big thank you to Lynn Moore at Acres for Life for her encouragement and advice during the placement process.


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Dogs and Beavers and Water Don't Mix

Open swimming at the pond has been slapped shut by a couple of beaver tails.

And I'm lucky that my dog Jerry wasn't seriously injured or worse.

The pond on the 80 acres across the road has been low for the past several years, leaving the entrance to the beaver lodge high and dry and the structure uninhabited. After this year's snowy winter and rainy spring, the swelled pond called to more critters than swimming dogs. The exiled beavers returned.

My dog Watch wasn't a swimmer, so I'd never been to the pond when the beaver lodge was occupied. A few days ago I watched the top of a bony brown head skim through the water, followed by a ker-thunk of the surface. Jerry swam out to see what was causing the commotion, navigating the 350-yard circumference of the pond. I was thrilled to find an activity to burn up the Weimaraner's boundless energy. I took Jerry for two and three swims a day.

Sometimes the dog and the beaver would swim straight at each other, other times Jerry followed the beaver. When it dove underwater,  Jerry would swim to where the beaver disappeared. I watched with uneasy fascination. The action resembled this video. You can't help but hold your breath when you watch it.



Real beavers don't resemble this video. They're not benign, befuddled critters who chatter away with a lateral S. A real beaver is a three-foot-long rodent with nonstop-growing teeth.  Beavers have disemboweled or killed dogs in defense of their home or their young, I learned with a Google. Thus, open swim sessions are now closed.

With a territorial porcupine to the west, a bear's den to the north, and beavers to the south, the eighty acres across the road is shrinking.

But since beavers mate for life, who's to deny them their lifelong contentment.

Media sources: photo from The Wilderness Classroom, film clips from loubagel1982's and CalypsoDogs' YouTube channels.

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The Disneyfication of Wildlife

The Disneyfication of Wildlife

On a back-road trek to the Bruno Thrift Store this morning, I stopped the car as three deer darted across the road. The smallest one, a yearling, kept on running. The two adults not only didn't run, they took a step closer to the car. Their eyes traveled from the front end to the rear, probably wondering what this jazzy little yellow thing was doing in a world of two-ton pickup trucks.

I put the car in idle and wished for my digital camera, as I was close enough to the deer to see the pattern of their nose leather. When one of the deer lowered its head, my reverie was replaced by the reality of what deer can do at this close range. They can charge. They can do extensive damage. I continued to town.

It's easy, even when you live in the middle of the woods, to engage in the Disneyfication of wildlife. Had I turned on my heel the moment I'd seen that porcupine, instead of watching it as if Rex Allen would start narrating at any moment, my dog Jerry may have been spared a snoutful of quills.

Queer Eye for the Bovine Guy
When the animated movie Barnyard came out several years ago, it irked me to see the main character, a foolhardy young bull named Otis, with udders. As if children wouldn't be able to identify a cow, or more properly a bovine, without them. I fumed about it all the way home. "Mom, it's just a movie," my son Wyatt reminded me. Apparently I'm not the only blogger who raised objections to the gender-bending bull.

I'm guilty of the same practice, that is referring to bovines as cows, even the males, because the terminology is more readily understood. But a lack of precise knowledge about livestock and wildlife, in my opinion, is what results in children in zoos getting injured because they want to pet the nice animal.

You Can't Beat Fresh Eggs

How confused the hens must be of late, with one day's temperature being in the fifties and the next day's temp in the teens. But if the hens' egg production is any indication, spring is here to stay.

Dare I say it? The long winter of snow, slush, and store-bought eggs is coming to an end.

Check out this photo by blogger/musician/biologist Deborah Sewell. "I can almost see the Omega 3's," she writes.

Read Deb's  Sand Creek Almanac  post,  "Egg Comparison."

Photo copyright Deborah Sewell

Online 101: What I’ve Learned About e-Learning

In the week that my 14-year-old has been attending online school as an alternative to a three-hour roundtrip bus ride, I’ve learned a lot about online learning.

No matter how computer-savvy you think you are, you won’t get the hang of the system overnight. Especially if you’re a Mac person navigating a system that was probably designed by a PC person.

Online school requires a different mindset. The markers that give you breathing space in a brick-and-mortar school—semester breaks, inservice trainings, weekends—don’t necessarily exist in online school. Plan your work accordingly and you’ve got a free weekend. If you need to play catchup, the virtual school doors don’t swing shut on Saturdays and Sundays.

Online school isn’t going away. Researchers from Harvard have predicted that half of all high-school courses could be online by 2019.

Online school isn’t a hands-off proposition for parents. Attendance monitor, lunch lady, and PE aide are some of the roles that you play. Checking student progress through the parent portal. Making sure the student breaks up computer time with physical activity. And preparing two more meals a day that you didn’t before. When filling out the initial paperwork, I was surprised to see the application for reduced-price meals that parents see every year. (This information, I learned, is used to determine school funding.)

“What kind of reduced-price meals are served in an online school?,” I wondered.

“Spam,” said Wyatt, who wants to be a standup comic.

Like online anything in its infancy, online education gets the fisheye from people. Back in the 1990s online dating was considered for losers. Today, match.com and eHarmony have over 29 million and 9 million members respectively. Not that I’m comparing education to dating. But the similarity is this: what was once considered unseemly eventually becomes mainstream.

Controlling costs of education is a hot topic in state politics. During the Gubernatorial debate at the State Fair last September 3, Republican candidate Tom Emmer floated the idea of specializing university offerings by geographic locations: medical careers in Rochester and public safety in Fergus Falls, for example. (The actual words are at 26:22.) Emmer didn’t win. But a lot of candidates who might agree with Emmer did.

Former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty has frequently touted the idea of “iCollege.” But iCollege can’t serve the entire state without iBroadband. Independence Party candidate Tom Horner was an advocate of statewide broadband access. I hope it’s an issue that Governor Dayton takes up.

At the end of Wyatt's first week my husband Mike took him and his buddy Damion to a movie in Hinckley, followed by a stop at DQ. The movie was a comedy, Paul, a fun way to unwind after a sometimes-trying week. 

This summer our family will be moving to southeast Minnesota. Wyatt will finish out this school year online, and next fall will be attending a school that’s six miles away instead of 18 miles away. He's looking forward to it. For now, online school is filling a niche that needed filling. And it's a learning experience for all of us. 

Ninety Minutes on a School Bus: One Way

A ninety-minute one-way school bus ride will make a parent do unexpected things.

Like enrolling your kid in online school when you’ve been a lifelong public school advocate.

My family lives on a five-acre farm outside of Bruno, a town of 102 in the northern part of Pine County, Minnesota. My 14-year-old son attended Willow River School, a K-12 school of about 400 students that comprises the entire Willow River School District. Back in 2001 Willow had a student-to-teacher ratio of 13:1, which is why we open-enrolled there. Depending on the number of students riding that year, pickup time at our house was anywhere from 6:30 to 6:45 a.m., with arrival at the school at 8:10.

Vic Waletzko's bus in our driveway.

The district that we live in is East Central. Through a series of consolidations and bifurcations going back to 1947, East Central consists of four smaller school districts: Askov, Sandstone, Kerrick and Bruno. (Thank you to Deborah Sewell for this piece of research.) At one time, there were three schools within eight miles of our house. Today, the nearest school is 18 miles away. 

Over the years I got to know the bus drivers very well; anyone who transported my kid that many miles needed to know he was appreciated. At Christmas that meant making pierogi for Vic Waletzko or gifting Harvey with a tin of Burt’s Bees Hand Salve. (Imagine what cold weather does to a driver’s hands on a bus ride that long.)

The Pre-Bus Commute

 It took a 90-minute bus ride to make 
me enjoy the music of Miley Cyrus.

With Vic I worked out an arrangement that cut half an hour off Wyatt’s bus ride. I drove Wyatt eight miles to the Bruno Deep Rock in town, and waited there with him until the 7:15 pickup. We would use that extra half-hour or so to review what Wyatt would be doing that day, practice spelling words, or just hang out and listen to MIX108, the pop radio station out of Duluth/Superior. (Another unexpected consequence of a ninety-minute bus ride: you develop an ear for Miley Cyrus and Lady Gaga.)

Our family’s experiences sync up with the findings of an award-winning report by the Rural School and Community Trust. The 2002 study examined the results of school consolidations in West Virginia in 1990. Among the findings:

• ·       In four years the number of children who rode buses longer than two hours a day doubled, even though 25,000 fewer children rode buses.
• ·       In 10 sample rural counties, 100 advanced courses had not been offered in the past two years despite being promised through consolidation.
• ·       Students and parents reported stress and exhaustion. Student grades dropped, as did participation in after-school activities and time spent with family.

I can attest to the stress, especially in winter. Our house is two miles south of state Highway 23, those two miles consisting mostly of gravel and dirt roads. On an unplowed road or on an icy road, I would never know how much time was needed for the pre-bus commute.

But for eight years, we managed. By seventh grade we both began to pay attention to the commercials on MIX for online school. What finally made the bus ride unmanageable was junior high sports.

Away basketball games would mean Wyatt started homework as late as 9 p.m. and had a wakeup time of 5:30 a.m. His grades took the hit. My husband Mike and I tag-teamed driving Wyatt to algebra tutoring at 7 a.m. and picking him up at 5 from drafting tutoring. It was something we gladly did, and are grateful to the Willow River teachers who put in these hours. But 72 extra miles a day, compounded by soaring gas prices, made for an unsustainable course.

The Consolidation Conundrum

I’m sharing this story because I’m sure it’s happening in many other school districts across greater Minnesota. It wouldn’t surprise me if the wave of school district consolidations that occurred in the 1990s occurs again as a perceived cost savings. (The findings don't bear that out, though.)

At one point or another, every parent wrestles with what’s best for the community versus what’s best for his or her child. People have cautioned me and Mike about online school, bringing up the usual warnings: time management, educational standards, socialization. All things we’re keenly aware of. And things I’ll be writing about in future posts.

My response is usually this: “Would you be okay with your kid having a ninety-minute one-way bus ride?”

Picasaweb photo credit: luis alejandro es

Jerry's First Christmas

On Christmas Eve our family left the woods of northern Pine County and ventured down to southeastern Minnesota. Mike's parents live there in a hundred-year-old farmhouse on the edge of the prairie. It was the first extended road trip for our rescue dog Jerry, the first road trip that lasted longer than a trip to the vet's. The eight-hour round trip made me realize how far Jerry has come in the past three months.

When I first started taking Jerry for on-leash walks, he was afraid to walk past my husband Mike's Dodge Ram pickup. Yesterday Jerry clambered right in and lay quietly beside me, bright-eyed and alert.

It's been such a long time since Mike and I traveled with a growing puppy, we not only forgot to bring Jerry's dog food for the day, we forgot his breakfast in the flurry of morning activity. We stopped at a McDonald's to order two hamburgers for Jerry, augmented by French fries that my son Wyatt and I offered him.

At one time Jerry cowered when anyone approached him. Yesterday he basked in the hugs, hand-fed kibble, and turkey scraps which he accepted delicately with a soft mouth.

As I related the story of how Jerry entered our lives to Mike's cousin Carmen, I realized, Jerry is doing well. Though he tries our patience at times with his chewing, he's a sweet dog. And despite whatever abuse or neglect he experienced early in his life, Jerry has never had a housetraining accident: not even after drinking the two bowls of water Aunt Evvie brought him, undoubtedly needed after the salty McDonald's fries.

When we finally said our goodbyes, we left through the front door of the farmhouse and headed to the truck, which was parked at the side of the house. Jerry, though, made a beeline for the side door of the farmhouse, ready to continue the visit.

First fast-food fries, first long road trip, first Christmas, first visit with extended family. Every day is filled with mundane moments that in some small way are exciting firsts. To you lovely readers who have stumbled upon this little blog,  I wish for you a year filled with those moments.

Black Friday at the Bruno Thrift Store

In northern Pine County, Black Friday starts at 10 a.m.

That's when the Bruno Thrift Store opens.

The Bruno Thrift Store is like a Mall of America in the midst of a rural outpost, with many items priced at fifty cents apiece. I have found apparel by J.Jill, Lands End, Eddie Bauer, Coldwater Creek, and the Vermont Country Store. I once found a pair of wool blend slacks that was at least thirty years old, judging by the Sears Roebuck name and a yellowed tag that said  The Fashion Place. Price, fifty cents. In a vintage clothing shop in the Cities the slacks would have fetched at least ten times the price.

The day after Thanksgiving, traffic is light at the Bruno Thrift Store. Peggy, one of the volunteers who works there, says it's because people stop by after they're done shopping at Wal-Mart or Target. If they stopped there first, their Wal-Mart or Target run might be lighter. The beauty of the Bruno Thrift Store is, you never know what you'll find. The things you find aren't always top of mind.  A tree stand. A set of ornament hooks. Or maybe you'll find a set of dishes or a box of ornaments that will whisk you away to a fondly remembered Christmas past.

The Bruno Thrift Store doesn't have a phone number, doesn't have an address outside of "Main Street, past the railroad tracks in Bruno." It's the best-kept secret in northern Pine County. It is completely volunteer run, including the adjoining food shelf, which unfortunately has seen steadily increasing traffic. Customers come from as far away as Duluth and Minneapolis. If you're on state Highway 23 on the way to the cabin or to Duluth, turn right when you get to Bruno. Cross the railroad tracks and park in front of the yellow building on the right. You'll discover a store where every day is Black Friday. And on the real Black Friday, you get to sleep in!

The Pentagon Takes Shape

“No it won’t,” I told my husband Mike.

“Yes it will,” he insisted.

The issue being debated is the completion date of the Pentagon, the five-sided chicken coop that Mike is building. When the calendar hits November, a race begins to see which reaches the finish line first, December 31st or whatever major project is on the table.

To my way of thinking, progress is slow. If you can’t track it on an Excel spread sheet, it’s not happening.  Mike says progress in construction occurs in baby steps and giant leaps. Putting up the frame, filling in the corners and caulking up cracks are the baby steps. Putting up walls and installing windows are the giant leaps.

One of the rules on our farm, outside of No Mean Animals, is Don’t Throw Anything Away Because The Minute You Do You’ll Wish You Hadn’t. The drawback being, it’s easy for your property to lose curb appeal. The benefit, you can throw together a chicken coop for roughly fifty bucks.

The former owner of our house also believed in the No Throwaway Rule. Mike was rummaging in the garage and found a stash of small windows and a couple of sliding patio windows, making the Pentagon a chicken coop with a picture-window view.  All windows either slide or crank open to keep the interior from becoming a broaster.

The finishing touch is a set of 1960s-era monkey bars that will be joined to the Pentagon by a chicken run made of orange plastic snow fencing. The monkey bars are from the old Kerrick School and are close cousins of the monkey bars from Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. Our set will be entirely covered with snow fencing during Phase Two of construction.

Our farm has been a diploma mill for foxes earning a Ph.D.: Pilfering Hens Daily. But no more. Whenever the Pentagon will be completed, it'll be "better than new," an expression my Dad used whenever he finished a repair job. He'd be proud of Mike's work. The Pentagon's skeleton has withstood winds of fifty miles an hour. It will be sunny and spacious. Add WiFi and I might commandeer it for a writer's office!