The Numbing Process

I've started noticing signs that I'm adjusting to life in northern Minnesota. It's a worrisome prospect, but my mother has promised that if I stay up here too long she'll drug me and drag me back to New England by my hair under cover of darkness. So that's a comfort.

Signs that I've adjusted:
--When the checkout girl at the grocery store asked me what pesto was (first off, it took me thirty minutes to find it) I graciously explained instead of returning her gaze and saying "It's pesto."
--I bought shoes made out of a moose. Everybody who's anybody in town has them. They keep yer feet real warm, dontcha know.
--The other day I saw a woman walk out of the used bookstore in town carrying a shotgun in each hand. She was not carrying a purse. Had that happened in New England I would have muddied up my Sevens by crawling under the nearest car and weeping, but I didn't bat an eye.
--I hardly even notice the four hour drive to Minneapolis. If I drive four hours south from Maine I'll pass through at least four states.
--When I do go to Minneapolis, however, I'm put off by having to pay $4 for a beer, since you can get a $1 pints of beer four nights a week in town. And frequently 50 cents.
--I hang out with Republicans. Kind of by necessity, but also by choice.

Don't worry though, New England. I'm still irrationally irritated by people who sprint across the street to hold the door for me if I'm carrying something and then think that's a basis for a conversation about the weather. The only reason strangers should cross the street to talk to each other is if they're both wearing Bean boots and haven't yet gushed to each other about how awesome they are.

Saturday Night

Yesterday was the first snow of the year; a fluffy six inches had already fallen by evening, and children flocked outside to celebrate by building snowmen and throwing snowballs at passing cars. The teenagers and twenty-somethings (few of them though there are) were also out in force celebrating the first snow in their own special way, which is packing a bunch of people into a car, drinking a case of beer, and spinning donuts on street corners. I spent the first half of the evening pushing a friend's car out of the ditch, covering up the evidence that they had utterly demolished two road signs on their way into said ditch, and helping them get their car open after they locked the keys inside while it was still running, still in the ditch, and still full of empties. I spent the second half of the evening learning the finer points of a power slide in a muffler-less 1993 Ford pickup, Hamm's in hand. Smell that? That's Americana.

Minnesota Nice Classifieds

Telling you, as nicely as possible, that you are an awful person.

--To the individual who took the package from the step of x Washington St on Friday Sept 10 between 2:21, and 4:00PM it is no doubt of little value to you, however it won't be replaceable anytime soon. My daughter has fought Cancer for 16 of her 19 years, This was something to make her life a little better. Please consider returning it.

--STOLEN FROM MY HOME at x Sheridan St Weds: small grey cloth drawstring bag containing wedding ring set in shape of round flower with diamond leaves, pearl necklace and pierced pearl earring and my DECEASED mothers Opal earrings.If you know who took these, please contact the Ely PD or me at ---_----.

Classifieds Selections 9/12

As always, exact grammar and spelling intact.

--Avoid the slow boat from Finland and order your Nilsmaster Ice Auger now with Pre-Buy at Red Rock. Make sure you have it by the time the ice comes in or you'll sweating with your Lazer later.

--TWO PARAKEETS with cage and everything. Seven years old. One if friendly, talks & will sit on your finger. His friend just likes to stay in the cage. Small adoption fee to a good home. ---_----.

--TO THE METER MAN: Thank you for stopping and helping me when I fell down the stairs. You were in the right place at the right time. God Bless, Shale.

--Fresh Moose Urine is now in stock along with fresh deer urine by Black Widow. Get yours while you can at Red Rock on the Fernberg Road. Open 9-5 Daily in September.

Here's Looking At You, Ely

So, after a three month hiatus which included 6,000 miles of driving and a whirlwind tour of northeastern North America, I am back in Ely and back online. I spent the summer running the office of an academic summer camp (read: nerd camp) outside Boston, which meant that I spent my days making soothing noises over the phone to hysterical mothers who were calling to make sure their child was sleeping with two pillows under their head and drinking nothing but chilled and diluted Gatorade. In a word, culture shock.

After my New England summer immersed in Democrats and designer jeans, I'm readjusting to being back in rural Minnesota, but enjoying it. Here's an update of my last 36 hours:
--This morning a woman told me that I talk too fast.
--My right flip flop is being held together by two fish hooks.
--I have a small scratch on my eyelid thanks to the squirrel that ran over my face during a camping trip.
--Last night at 5am, fanless, A/C-less, and desperate for relief from the unbearable heat in my apartment, I stumbled to the freezer and feverishly collected everything in it. I then packed a wall of frozen bread, peas and water bottles around myself and congratulated myself on my ingenuity. The plan worked beautifully until I woke up this morning wallowing in a soggy loaf of bread with fistfuls of peas smooshed into my dampened sheets.

Welcome back to the northland, friends--stay tuned for further updates.

Remember the mayor?

I seem to be the only person in town who's embarrassed by this.

http://www.startribune.com/local/94262534.html


Back from the canoe trip with so many bald eagle sightings under my belt. Also so many bug bites. We also had an AlAnon meeting every night of the trip, because that's how Ely rolls. My food lasted, my wounds have finally stopped bleeding, the sun came out, and I got a sunburn so scorching that I'm virtually radioactive. I've so far had four strangers stop me in the grocery store or library to tell me that I have a sunburn. Thank you, Strangers. Were it not for your input I would have had no idea.

Out of office, somewhere in Canada.

Readers: I'm leaving tomorrow morning to go on my very first BWCAW canoe trip! Since the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness is basically what Ely is famous ("famous") for, this is very exciting. My boss planned an eight day trip for me, her family, and two of their 50+ friends. We're going to paddle north across the Canadian border many, many, many miles and cross several portages. There will be no other humans and millions of mosquitoes. I will probably return seven pounds heavier because of my bug bites. Definitely not because of eating too much though, because I just laid out all the food I bought for myself for the trip and realized it's probably not enough. No teacher like experience, right? Also, snow is forecasted for the next three days.
Everyone else on the trip has acknowledged that I am woefully unprepared for it. I actually have a fair bit of camping experience, but in contrast to five people who live off the grid and cut ice out of frozen lakes with chainsaws for their refrigeration, I'm hopeless. I have no idea how to set up a camping stove, I had to be lent every single piece of equipment necessary (even Ziploc bags), I've never portaged a canoe, and I had to buy watershoes today because I haven't owned a pair in years. I will be the token City Girl on the trip, the girl who has never been seen without a hair ribbon and cardigan, the one who was naive enough to ask if I should bring toilet paper. (The answer is no.) Expectations are pretty low for me. But they are underestimating one thing about me, and that is how happy I will be not bathing or changing my clothes for eight days.
Wish me luck! I will be untraceable and probably hungry for the next week.

Also, this is completely unrelated, but I can't resist. Tonight I attended the graduation ceremony for the local community college. It was way longer and more arduous than it should have been, but one thing lightened my spirits. A very large male graduate sitting in the back row of chairs didn't notice that he had ripped an eighteen-inch hole in the butt of his graduation gown when he sat down, and whatever he was wearing underneath it was hiked down too far to be seen. So throughout the two hour ceremony there was a pasty pyramid of flesh smiling out at the crowd. I noticed that I wasn't the only one who took a close-up picture.

Classifieds Selections 5/5

--Meat Raffle Saturday, 5pm. Sponsored by Ely Igloo Club. Followed by Karaoke at 8pm.

--Twin Cities Man (70-ish) looking for a fishing partner, friendship etc in & around Ely. ---_---_----. Leave message.

--FOR SALE: Fresh Beaver Carcasses, call ---_----.

Monster Trucks

Spring has come to northern Minnesota. Flowers are starting to crawl out of the ground. The birds have come stumbling home. More than two restaurants are open. Most tellingly, the monster trucks are out. Now that spring is here the townies put away their snowmobiles and break out their spring line of transportation. I started seeing these babies around town once the ice on the roads had melted enough that it no longer took the trucks four blocks to come to a stop. (I encountered one this winter at a four-way stop, which was an eye-opener for sure. The truck bombed through the icy intersection, ninety degrees to the flow of traffic, as the driver laid on the horn to announce that he wouldn't be stopping.) I have five or six favorite trucks that I see around, all of which have cabs that start at eye level and wheels the size of bears. One of my favorites has a deer antler welded on above each window. I initially thought these trucks were charming, but I'm developing resentments. Now that it's spring I can indulge in one of my greatest joys, which is sleeping with my windows open. However, I live right on the main drag, and truck owners have lately been rejoicing in that quintessential small-town pastime of cruising around town without mufflers. But, Ely is a very small town. If someone's in the mood for cruising they're on a six to nine minute loop, depending if all three stoplights have started blinking. Guys, we recognize you. This is the seventh time in an hour you've roared past the grocery store. If the ladies didn't flock to your truck on the first pass, they're definitely not going to on the seventh.
So now it's sort of a love/hate relationship. I would rather the drivers find another nighttime hobby (maybe learning how to read? Too harsh?), but I still find the trucks spectacular when parked. I've been trying to surreptitiously take photos when nobody's around. I found this one right outside my apartment. That's my landlord's not-actually-tiny car in the background.

"Those letters are just so close on the keyboard, you know..."

Yesterday I was working on my computer in the coffee shop downstairs when the middle-aged woman sitting in front of me stood up and started pacing back and forth in front of my table. Lord forbid a Minnesotan would ever just start a conversation unbidden. After being sufficiently distracting that she got me to make eye-contact, she said "Oh, goodness, excuse me--would you read my cover letter?"
This came a bit out of left field. She clearly thought I was a stranger, though we had in fact met before. Actually, she had driven me two hours to Duluth to catch a bus and still didn't recognize me, so I decided to relish the half-fact that, as a publishing intern, I radiated such professionalism and grammatical confidence that cover letter-bearing strangers were drawn to my very presence. The woman was applying to teach mathematics at the community college. Now, I am not a crackerjack speller. I always have a very difficult time spelling eighth, for example. I rely heavily on Spell Check. But I was able to spot where she had typed A instead of S so that one of her sentences read:

"As a longtime math tutor, I have developed many of my own teats."

Reader, I betrayed my immaturity. I laughed myself to conniptions in the middle of the coffee shop. I had tears all over my keyboard and I pulled a muscle in my abdomen. Fortunately, Minnesotans have a great ability to laugh at themselves. The woman had a good laugh, I helped her finish her cover letter, and she invited me to go canoeing, because why not?

Overheard in the Ely community college library

Student explaining the thesis of his upcoming paper to a friend:
"Our U.S. constitution protects its citizens, not some little Chinaman in, frikkin', China."

Guns out Fun's out

Unwinding with friends. And guns.

Sort of like s'mores, I guess...

Last night I attended a potluck/bonfire/Bye, Have A Nice Time Hiking the Appalachian Trail party for a girl I work with at my second job. It was a lovely evening with good company and mostly standard potluck fare. I brought fresh beer bread. Heather brought hot dogs and buns. Sarah provided the bonfire and chips n' dip. Mike brought a dead rabbit he had shot that afternoon from his back porch with a 9mm handgun. ("It was the first gun I grabbed, ya.") He skinned it, cut it into parts, skewered said parts on sticks, and we roasted them over the fire. There was no dessert.

Things I wanted to buy today that the grocery store does not sell:

1) Tom's of Maine natural deodorant. No, I do not want Lady Speed Stick.

2)Those delicious Cadbury candy-shelled milk chocolate Easter eggs. No, I absolutely do not want Brach's brand substitute.

Things the grocery does sell that I do not want:

1)Everything in the unrefrigerated "reduced for quick sale" meat bin. Just no.

Square Dances with Wolves

A couple weekends ago two of my good friends came up from the cities to visit for the weekend. I cannot stress enough how much of a good time this was. Delicious meals! Saunas! Rampaging on toboggans down sledding hills stuffed with 7 year olds! However, I would say my personal highlight of the weekend was the "square dance" I talked them into attending with me. It was held in a town about an hour south of Ely that's so small it's not actually incorporated, and is more like a clump of people living in the woods very far away from any other towns. We put on our dancing shoes. We found directions to a town that Google says doesn't exist. We showed up. We started square dancing. We gradually realized that it was not the open-to-the-public square dance I had thought it was, but was actually a retirement party/dance for a woman none of us knew. "Standing out" doesn't quite do justice to what we were doing there. It took me longer to come around to this realization than my friends, which was embarrassing for a couple reasons. Namely, it made me realize that my social life is such that I can no longer tell the difference between gate-crashing a retirement party and a typical Saturday night (actually an above-average Saturday night).
Not to be stopped, we had a great time. We danced many polkas. We waltzed with elderly men in suspenders. We took home commemorative Smokey the Bear teaspoons shaped like shovels as party favors (I actually took two- ask me about them some time). We exchanged warm goodbyes and congratulations with the women whose party it was.
And, best of all, while driving home an enormous white wolf crossed the road in front of us, then stood majestically on the side of the road for a few moments while we slammed on the brakes and shrieked and backed up for a better look and just generally freaked out. Best Saturday ever?

Classifieds Selections 3/6

--Wanted: electric meat grinder. Have poor teeth. Will pick up.

--Stag Party! For Terry Kerntz! Saturday, At His House.
(this was literally the entire ad)

--WANTED: Handgun, what have you? Call ---_----. Please leave message if not home.

T-shirt at Saturday's bluegrass show

"Exercise your right to burn my flag, and I'll exercise my right to break your face."
Naturally with the stars and stripes waving behind the words. He finished off the look with a skeevy blond mustache, backwards snowmobiling hat, and a PBR tallboy in each hand.

What this gentleman was actually doing was exercising his right to dance the hell out of the banjo numbers, with lots of knee-jerking and upside down arm-pumping and kicking up of heels. So mostly exercising the right to exercise, I guess.

Fact about Ely

There are many four-way intersections in town, and very few stop signs.
Uniformly, intersections three blocks away from the main strip do not have stop signs. I noticed this in the fall and asked someone about it.
"I guess everybody in town just knows which streets don't have them and keeps an eye out."
This answer did not explain how a lack of stop signs could possibly be legal, or why an army of wild-eyed local mothers have not yet marched on town hall. I played a harrowing game of XY axis chicken with a UPS truck yesterday. (I won, but I don't feel good about it.) After a minor car accident last year, I have given up the giddy teenage driver phase and moved straight into the 72-year-old grandmother of nine driver phase, and will gladly join the stop sign revolution whenever it begins.
Though actually I would get a few Out-of-Towner points knocked off my reputation if my car lost a game of chicken and looked less like a 2006 cutesy novelty-SUV and more like it was built by Orcs and stored underwater two months a year, like most other Ely vehicles. One of my first lessons in town was to unlock my car door by hand and not with the beeper on my keychain.

MUKLUK BALL '010!

This past weekend I attended the Mukluk Ball, an annual charity dance that is the premier winter social event on The Range. People flocked to the casino in Tower (pop 502) from hundreds of miles around. Even a celebrity newscaster from the Twin Cities showed up to be the overly tanned Emcee.
Where to begin. The evening was ridiculous. My face was sore by the end of the evening from laughing, and my boss was hobbling around the office the next day because she danced so hard (really, so hard. And she's in her 60s). I wore a modest skirt with long johns and Bean boots (see above) and found myself overdressed. The dance floor was dominated by flannel, denim workshirts, camouflage vests, stone-washed jeans, glittery matronly sweaters, and mukluks, the extremely heavy duty snowboots Ely is famous for. Also a skunk pelt hat which was appeared to be stitched together with twine. The bullethole was still visible.
I went with my boss and some of her friends and had a fantastic time. There was a blues band and a cash bar and an appetizer buffet stocked almost entirely with cheddar cheese cubes and sweet n' sour meatballs. ("Wasn't that buffet nice?" "I was just going to say that the buffet was so nice!" "It was so nice! Just delicious.") I definitely saw Phyllis from The Office in attendance.
I danced a bit, but mostly spectated. Having come straight from college dances, where the trend these days is entirely too much hip movement, watching middle-aged Minnesotan couples dance together was a refreshing, and surprisingly tender, change of pace. All these people who have forgotten what their own skin looks like under their winter clothes were now wearing sweaters with a hint of a neckline and rediscovering their joints in public. ("Knees? Ok got the knees. She's moving her elbows- I should do that too. Maybe even my shoulders? I'll wait until the next song for the shoulders.") There were women who clamped their arms to their sides and shuffled sideways across the dance floor at great speed, because that was what came naturally to them. The whole thing was embarrassing and heartwarming and joyful all at once.
There was one couple, however, who knew exactly what they were doing. They looked like everyone else while they were coming through the door and entering the raffle, but when they took the floor it was clear they were in a league of their own. The man wore a slimming black suit with a silver bolo, and the woman tore away her parka to reveal what appeared to be one of Tara Lipinski's cast-offs. Skin-tight red lycra, one sleeve, a slit up to there, perm, coke-bottle glasses, sensible shoes. They proceeded to dance as if giving a celebrity performance on Dancing With The Stars--twirling, dipping, lunging in unison, maintaining smoldering eye contact. Just absolutely steamboating all over the floor.
"Looks like those community dance lessons really paid off," the women next to me murmured in admiration.
Yes, it was quite the evening. I didn't mention that I'd also been up since 6:15 that morning to work our booth at the community craft fair, and had to listen to the man across from us play seven hours worth of 'Amazing Grace' and 'My Heart Will Go On' on his panflute. Also that the previous evening I'd watched a high school marching band/local bagpipe band play a duet. This was just one heckuva northland weekend.

Listen Up Minnesota

You did not invent winter. Other places have it too.
My patience is gradually fraying with the "colder than thou" mentality I so often come across. When I say I grew up in Maine, the correct response is something like "My! What a lovely coastline!" and not "Hoo boy, you better get ready for some cold!" My jaw has started to clench during these interactions. Many Minnesotans seem to think that every other state is populated by flamingos and they are the only state which knows what snow looks like. I'll give it to you, Minnesota. You truly do have vicious winters. But you're not the only state which sells winter coats, so stop telling me to go buy myself one. I have ice-skated on the Atlantic Ocean because it was cold enough to freeze over. I am well versed in frostbite. I know what long underwear is and am likely wearing some right now. I'm not intimidated by the temperatures until they hit about -20, because in my experience (again, experience) that's when my eyeball liquid starts to freeze. I may be from out of state and need to puff my inhaler before stepping outside, but when I comment on the cold it's because I am a human with a functioning nervous system and probably not because I left the house in my underwear, as you seem to be implying.
Plus you don't have anything close to a respectable ski mountain, so pfffft.


I have needed to get this off my chest since the day I arrived.

Checking in with the senior crowd

I just returned from watching the Vikings blow their chance to make it the Super Bowl with the 55+ crowd (there was a copy of Eat, Pray, Love on the counter, which cemented the age bracket). The ladies were wearing all purple, furiously chain-smoking, and alternately wheezing and shrieking things like
"The HELL you smiling about, you SHMUCK!" (Better if you imagine the exclamation point as a middle finger instead of punctuation)
and
"I can't breathe...I think I'm having a stroke..." (Totally plausible.)
I mostly focused on making a rainbow out of peanut M&Ms. It was held at the apartment of the same woman who, when her cat chewed its stitches out last week, held the cat down and super-glued the wound closed. Never a dull moment.

The Perpetual Tourist

So, I'm pretty sure I'm in an identity crisis.
I have always considered myself a rural girl. I camp for fun. I can use a chainsaw. Getting stuck behind a tractor while driving is routine. Probably 30% of everything I own is from LL Bean. My rural-ness was greatly underscored while on my winter break visiting Madrid and New York City, where I had to be led by the hand through metros lest I get overwhelmed, and one night bought pizza at 3am and didn't stop talking about it all week (3am!). Pardon my french, but Manhattan blows my goddamn mind. 1.5 million people all standing on the same 34 square mile patch of land. That is so many people on so little land. How do they all fit? I can't think about it or I get agitated. So many people.
And yet... I am completely out of my league in Ely. I don't hunt my own meat. I have ironic sunglasses and large headphones. I don't dogsled to work (my boss does). I don't carry four knives on me at all times (my boss' husband does). When apartment hunting I had to emphasize that I wanted both electricity and running water, which narrowed the search. Sometime I layer my clothing for style and not for warmth. I've never seen a wolf or the northern lights.
Thus, I am gradually coming to terms with the fact that I am a perpetual tourist, caught in an uncomfortable limbo where I can neither use a city bus nor skin a moose.
It appears I'm destined to stumble around, wide-eyed and in culture shock, for most of my life. May as well go buy myself a visor and fanny-pack to complete the look. Unless I'm in a smallish town with comprehensive grocery stores and a major airport within a three hour drive, but no tall buildings or public transportation or more than one movie theater. Also: Ely being what it is, I have to drive over an hour away to get my disposable camera developed, and I'm irate about this.

Overheard in the Ely coffe shop

"You have a right to bear arms, and that's that."

"Honey, you can't say casserole. Here in the Northland we have hotdish."

"Good grief, I'm terrified that the government is going to pass that health bill and make everybody get universal health care. Do you know how expensive health insurance is? Plus you really don't need it. Last year when I slipped on the ice and broke my foot I just used a tuning fork to see if it was broken, and then wore a really tightly laced-up boot for six weeks and now I'm just fine. Health insurance would be a disaster."

Post Script: I glanced down at myself this evening and realized I was shuffling around the kitchen in hush puppy slippers and a hoodless sweatshirt, reheating tuna casserole (excuse me, hotdish) for dinner. Save me from assimilation.

Welcome to Winter Term

Ahem. I am dusting of my keyboard and resharpening my wit (ha HA!) and returning to the Northland. After a winter break even longer than the one my college gave me, I have returned to Ely for Second Trimester of Real Life. This time I'm taking Real Life classes in Working a Second Part-time Job (selling handmade anoraks designed for polar expeditions.... so you know, a lot like J.Crew), Editing Manuscripts, and Running a Marketing Campaign With No Experience. With hopefully dog sledding tossed in for a gym credit and more time devoted to making friends that aren't Hulu. All of them destined to be wild successes. Also, coldest temperatures in the lower 48 and Hawaii.
Welcome to winter term.