(no subject)

[lydamorehouse]

I have little to report other than the fact that we drove down to New Ulm to finish up my vaccine set on Saturday. New Ulm is no more than 2 hours away, but we left early and did some meandering. We stopped to do a quick stretch in a random lake called Cedar Lake and, of course, took time to see New Ulm's famous statue, "Hermann the German."



Image: statue of a German brandishing a sword.


If you are curious what that German is so mad about, there is a lovely description: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Heights_Monument.

New Ulm, despite being a lovely place to me because I was able to get my vaccine there is actually kind of problematic town in general, being fairly central to the US-Dakota War... and sort of on the wrong side against the Nazis, because: Germany. Their mayor was apparently removed by the MN Legislature under the sedition act. However, there is a lovely glockenspiel in town that chimes on the hour and has terrifying animatronic dancing horrors. Several years ago, Mason and I made an impromptu visit to this town just to check it out. (I took a few minutes to re-upload all the photos so that if you go to read it, the images are there.)

Yesterday, I just slept. I didn't think I was effected at first, but then after being awake for an hour or two I conked out hard and basically spent the day in bed. I had a bit of a headache that seemed to be sinus pressure, but otherwise I feel fine. 

Comments

[bcholmes]

I have seized the phrase "terrifying animatronic dancing horrors" for the revolution and will redistribute it to the needy.

[sabotabby]

Thank you conrads. The Antifa High Council thanks you both for your service.

[lydamorehouse]

I'm glad I could contribute to the revolution, even if only in this small way.

[dreamshark]

Unless I'm mistaken (which I might well be) doesn't Herr Mann mean "Mister Man"? It suggests a severe lack of imagination among the 18th century "German Protestant intellectuals" trying to come up with a nice German name for the guy.

More recently, the local intellectuals mounted a very silly Fringe show about a pitched battle between New Ulm and Owatonna for the tourist dollars of state history buffs. Owatonna has all those beautiful historic buildings with plaques and a trolley tour but all New Ulm had was Hermann. So they whipped up some new folklore about Hermann coming down off his perch and tromping around town leaving big footprints. I THINK that the shady politicians in the play were fictional, but Owatonna is real.

[lydamorehouse]

Interesting! I am always fascinated by the ways in which small towns attempt to promote themselves.

[dreamshark]

Then you will love this.

https://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/11260

The Fringe show WAS a real story!

[pameladean]

The vaccine fatigue is pretty sneaky. I did take some unscheduled naps, but mostly I just found I liked sitting and staring at the wall for lengthy periods of time, thinking about what I should be doing but without the usual accompanying guilt. I'm glad you had both shots. Every time I hear that from somebody I feel the amount of stress in the universe going down.

There's a nice state park in or near New Ulm. I had to look it up -- it's Flandrau. It's on the Cottonwood River, which charmed me by reportedly being so refractory in its flooding and wandering habits that the people trying to make it stay in one place just gave up entirely. There's one defunct dam from this attempt in the park, imaginatively called Old Dam. The landscape accordingly has a lot of winding river, oxbows, big sand flats with dragonflies and other cool insects, and high bluffs with views. The park also has goat prairies and a lot of birds. What good this information does you NOW I cannot imagine. The people doing the problematic things may have been thwarted by the river in the end, but they still did the other things.

P.

[lydamorehouse]

To add to your declining stress, even though you don't know her at all, my wife just got her first vaccine shot.... well, to be fair, even if it it doesn't add to your destressing it certainly adds to mine!

I think we drove past the entrance to that state park. I am very fond of state parks and had Mason been with us, I'm sure we'd have explored it. It's such an easy drive, however, perhaps we'll make it back before he heads off to college!

[pameladean]

P.S. I forgot to say, if Mom really either just dislikes living alone or can't manage with whatever help we can come up with, that changes a lot of the equation. There don't at the moment seem to be a lot of viable options in this area for her, and the option you suggested would be very viable indeed and contain much that Mom would really love.

I also don't mean to over-emphasize the problems Lily the cat might have. She wasn't coming from a stable situation when Mom adopted her, so the two things are not really comparable.

P.

[pameladean]

It does add to my declining stress, though. You write about your wife and son so well, it doesn't seem to make a difference that I don't know them.

The park's own idea of its main attraction is the Swimming Pond, which seems to be a nice enough sand-bottomed pool of the river where people are allowed to swim. It's closed for the year because of COVID. But the hikes and trees and birds are still interesting. We saw some nifty shore birds and some great dragonflies.

P.