Jeers to triathletes, Cheers for artisans

This weekend, particularly Sunday the 28th, might be a good time to avoid much of Southern Chisago County, unless you don't mind being delayed by a bunch of triathlon participants clogging many of the roads, including a Highway 95 crossing. Here's a link to the event's web site if you want the gory details.

a local road but not on the route, we hope

Photo by J. Harrington

Several years ago part of one of the courses included a stretch of our road. We weren't particularly pleased about that. Hindering the travels of local folks and ordinary visitors to accommodate triathlon participants aggravates us old curmudgeons. We don't object to the use of the roads, but to the way the local constabulary too often holds vehicular traffic at intersections to permit triathletes to move freely. And, probably even more curmudgeonly, we really don't give a damn if the event does benefit local businesses.

our homemade artisan sourdough bread

Photo by J. Harrington

On a more cheerful note, we call to your attention to a new addition in our listing of local artisans with whom we've done business [right han column, top]. The Marine Mills Folk School keeps offering more and more classes, several of which we find to be of greater than passing interest. Plus, we're quite grateful that we don't have to head for one of our favorite, but very distant, places in Minnesota, Grand Marais, to enjoy learning artisanal skills and practices. We invited the Daughter Person to join us for a sourdough class earlier this year. The Better Half has taken, we believe, a couple of classes in weaving and felting. We're pleased that the good folks that started the Folk School did so and that they seem to be having a decent degree of success. Lifelong learning is something to which we think everyone should aspire. And, the addition of a Folk School to our extended neighborhood provides one more thing about which we can express gratitude for living where we do.

A Shropshire Lad 19: The time you won your town the race

By A. E. Housman

The time you won your town the race 

We chaired you through the market-place; 

Man and boy stood cheering by, 

And home we brought you shoulder-high. 

To-day, the road all runners come, 

Shoulder-high we bring you home, 

And set you at your threshold down, 

Townsman of a stiller town. 

Smart lad, to slip betimes away 

From fields where glory does not stay 

And early though the laurel grows 

It withers quicker than the rose. 

Eyes the shady night has shut 

Cannot see the record cut, 

And silence sounds no worse than cheers 

After earth has stopped the ears: 

Now you will not swell the rout 

Of lads that wore their honours out, 

Runners whom renown outran 

And the name died before the man. 

So set, before its echoes fade, 

The fleet foot on the sill of shade, 

And hold to the low lintel up 

The still-defended challenge-cup. 

And round that early-laurelled head 

Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead, 

And find unwithered on its curls 

The garland briefer than a girl's.

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