Flood(s)

1969

Growing up I heard many stories about the year The Mouse Roared, 1969. The river is known as the Souris River in Canada, but the Mouse River in North Dakota. There were a couple of books, pamphlets and documentaries made about it was well as the stories of the people I grew up around. The flood of ’69 left an indelible mark on the city of Minot in April. Not just psychologically, but physically as well. There were still water stains on the classroom doors of my junior high school, Erik Ramstad. Others have written about the event much more eloquently than I can. You can find more photos here and here as well.  These photos shown here were taken by my grandparents.

This looks like it is probably the spillway at Lake Darling, about 20 miles north of Minot.

Beware purple dragons

Pay no attention to the whimpering troll in the kitchen, he’ll be fine once the java is done brewing (or I’ll take his other hand off).

The life of a shift worker sucks at times. The wife is dealing with issues at work that are bleeding into her sanity at home. Little Britches has been acting out at the same time and needed to be dealt with. This means I’m a little punchy at the moment. I got up at 6 AM Friday to get them off to school. I took a two hour nap from about 8-10 PM so the wife could rest and then came to work for a twelve hour shift. I’m currently half way through, have already finished off one Coke and a pot of coffee. I foresee much more coffee and Mt. Dew in my future this morning. Can caffeine be safely taken intravenously?

Hey, anyone seen the purple dragon with the box of donuts? I could use some sustenance. That fucker is never around when I need him.

Even more photos

I’m around half done with my grandmother’s photo album. Here are some more highlights.

 

Oscar & Elfrida

This looks to be the oldest photo in the album. These are my great grand parents Oscar and Elfrida, both born in Sweden, married in Fargo, ND, March 24, 1906. She passed away a few days after my grandmother was born.

More old photos

I scanned some more of my grandmothers old photos. Here are some highlights.

 

Elsie graduation

I think this is one of my grandmother’s nieces. Unknown what date this was taken.

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There’s no information on the back of this one, but it looks like it could be my grandmother when she was in school.

Old photos

I recently got hold of my grandmother’s photo album. Well, one of them anyway. This one seemed to have the most photos and the widest range of photos. I started scanning them this weekend as the holiday weekend is extremely slow with no camps or students around and all but essential personnel not working.

I just love working with old family photos. One of the things I’ve been surprised by is how flimsy many of these old photos are. Notebook paper seems sturdier. Most have a name or place written on the back, but it’s hard deciphering the handwriting at times. Some have no information so I have no idea who the photo is of. It’ll probably take me a few weeks of working steady to get through all of the album. In other words it’ll probably take all summer of doing it a little here and a little there.

Here are some of the highlights so far:

Bud

This is my paternal grandfather ‘Bud’. He was born in December 1923, so I’m guessing this was taken in the spring of 1924.

Bud

This is my grandfather in his uniform. He was a paratrooper with the 517 Parachute Combat Team.

It’s a Tribal thing

I see Manchester United’s bus was attacked by West Ham fans as it tried to get into the stadium. Rioting sports fans is nothing new. In fact England is somewhat notorious for its ‘(soccer)football hooligans’.

It happens here in the States and Canada as well. Last year at a Monday Night Football a Vikings fan was beaten by some 49ers fans.

In the late ’80’s and early ’90’s there were high school teams that refused to use the locker rooms at a couple of the schools located on tribal lands (cough, New Town, cough, cough) due to safety concerns. The teams would arrive on the bus in their gear, play the game, and then go from the field/court to the waiting bus outside and drive off. While I didn’t see it personally, I heard that at least once someone was shooting at one of the buses as it rolled out of town (I think that was in Parshall).

The thing is, this bad behavior isn’t necessarily a racial or ethnic thing, despite protestations otherwise. It’s a Tribal thing. But not as in ‘their just a bunch of uncivilized indians’, but rather who or what you identify with. It’s people who identify with Team X and attacking the symbolism of the ‘Other’. It’s also usually conducted by younger people, in their teens and twenties. Usually this is limited to vocal taunting and gestures, but occasionally we’ll see it make news headlines when it becomes physical.

Fandom isn’t necessarily geographic in nature either. Though local areas generally are more supportive of a team, you will frequently find fans of that team in far flung places as well.

A couple of years ago I attended a MN Vikings game at TCF Bank Stadium in Minneapolis with my Father-in-Law and Brother-in-Law. None of us is a Vikings fan. But after attending a couple of Chiefs games in KC because my Brother-in-Law is a Chiefs fan, my Father-in-Law wanted us to see a NY Jets game as well. The couple sitting next to us were Viking fans, as could be expected. But they weren’t from Minnesota. No, they flew in from New York City to watch the Vikings play. They didn’t even have any ties to the MN area.

In today’s world, at least in the US, we often choose our tribe rather than being born into it. Sometimes that tribe is the local one, sometimes not. Sometimes it’s loyalty to the team, sometimes it’s loyalty to a particular player. But once we’ve made that choice we can sometimes become overly passionate about it and lose focus on being good people. Attacking someone or something because they are perceived as ‘Other’ isn’t limited to sports either. Anything with fans falls into this same trap, though it might not always be physical in nature. Though sometimes it goes beyond mere heckling to harassment and even libel/defamation (See Sad Puppies 3 where several ‘news’ organizations had to retract ‘articles’ regarding Larry Correia).

Helpless little adults

Women are helpless. At least that’s the impression I get from a bunch of SJWs and helicopter parents.

A 19 year old female is an adult woman. Walking home alone without a phone isn’t really a high risk endeavor in this community. 20 minutes isn’t an unreasonable amount of time to walk a mile if you’re not in a hurry.

It’s probably going to come back to bite me in the ass, but adults can take care of themselves is one of those things that I hold as a core belief. If the totality of your concern is, “She’s a girl walking home alone without a phone,” you might be the problem, not her. Intoxicated/impaired? Nope. Being followed? Nope. Has she indicated she might harm herself or others? Nope. So the reason for concern is….’she’s a girl. walking home alone. without a phone.’

Even if she doesn’t have a phone herself, and left a party without borrowing the phone of someone else, there are still multiple options available had she wanted to call for an escort. There is a 24 hr convenience store across the street from where she left. There are 8 residence halls that all have phones in their entryways. There are no less than 5 emergency lights, with phones like the one pictured, along her route.

Officer Down!

Officer Down!  Officer Down!

One of the officers of a local agency, thankfully not mine, was shot tonight by a barricaded subject after a report of a Domestic Dispute and subsequent Shots Fired calls.

Over the years I’ve been involved in a couple of shootings. I don’t like them.

The first was when I was in grade school. One of my neighbors, two houses down from our house, got in a domestic and shot his wife in the face with a shotgun in front of her daughter. He let the daughter and his son (both had kids from prior marriages) go, but holed up inside the house all night taking shots at the officers. The house in between theirs and ours had a couple holes in it.

My first time working one was where a guy fled from a domestic dispute, tried to run over my officer who had laid out spike strips, and then went after another officer (from a different agency) with a machete.

These things don’t happen in Fargo very often. You can probably count on one hand the number of times officers in the area have shot someone or been shot at in a year, and have fingers left over.

Tonight one of the officers on the perimeter that was set up appears to have been shot by the suspect from the domestic. No word yet on his condition. SWAT had been called out, but weren’t set up on the scene yet.

Hopefully the officer pulls through and no one else gets injured.

http://www.wday.com/news/3945296-video-police-swat-team-swarm-north-fargo-neighborhood-after-shots-fired

 

http://www.inforum.com/news/crime/3945286-police-swat-team-swarm-north-fargo-neighborhood-after-shots-fired

 

http://kfgo.com/news/articles/2016/feb/11/gun-shots-ring-out-in-north-fargo-police-surround-neighborhood/

 

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Update:

Officer Moszer isn’t expected to live. The suspect is dead, may the motherfucker rot in hell.

http://www.valleynewslive.com/home/headlines/Police-Suspect-in-north-Fargo-shooting-is-dead-368458821.html

Value, Quality and Responsibility

Over at Mad Genius Club Amanda wrote a post that turned into a bit of a shit storm. It started out with some misunderstandings about what Kristen Lamb had blogged about a couple weeks ago. Mostly the misunderstandings happened because I feel Kristen’s original blog was rather poorly worded and could have used some editing. But, because of the misunderstandings, and the jump in hits and some questionable comments that started coming in Kristen got her hackles up, which led her to make some comments on Amanda’s post that raised the ire of a bunch of people over there. For awhile it really digressed into a bunch of monkeys flinging poo at each other. It looks like everyone has apologized and things have settled down for the time being.

Some things that we can all take from this:

• Don’t post anything when your judgement might be impaired. Drinking? Take a step back. On meds? Take a step down. High? Take a couple steps back and rethink how you got to where you are. Upset? Take a step back. Many of us are reactionary. We take things way too personally. If someone makes a criticism, step back, look again at what they said and see if what they said makes sense in context with what you wrote.
• Be clear when you say something. What you said and what you meant to say aren’t necessarily the same thing. Don’t beat around the bush on a topic. Don’t say one thing, and then a couple of paragraphs later say the opposite. If you leave something open to interpretation, people will interpret it (most likely in a way unflattering to you). Don’t hedge about what your point is. I really like “X” and use it all the time, but… When you put that ‘but’ in there you just called into question the validity of whatever you had before it.
• Don’t assume everyone is in the same boat as you. When you say something like The way it works is… people will assume you are talking about how it works everywhere, not just the one little part in your neck of the woods. Just because the library in your town is crappy doesn’t mean the library in my town is crappy. If someone can point to where things are different than what you say, you look like a fool and damage your image. This goes back to being clear, make sure everyone knows it’s based on your experience only.
• Be humble and apologize, sincerely, when wrong. Instead of getting upset, look at what was actually said. As I said before, what was said and what was meant are not necessarily the same thing. Could someone take what you said in a way different from how you meant it, and that got them upset? Could what someone said be taken in a way different from how you originally took it? Most of us don’t intend to offend. If we say something that is wrong, apologize. If it’s because of ambiguity in what was originally said, it might be a good idea to go back edit that part. Be sure to mark that as an edit though if posting. Sometimes the facts are not as we perceive them. Whatever you do, don’t behave like Irene Gallo and merely apologize because people got upset rather than for what you actually said. That’s not an apology. Mistakes can be made, don’t make it worse with a false apology. You are the only one responsible for your words.