How about
…Landing a big walleye and a small-mouth bass or two
Sixty-game baseball season
Seniors hired back not so well
The ‘Hamilton’ effect
What’s missing from this list of news headlines and headline fragments? Take one guess and my bet is you will have the answer.
It’s pandemic or coronavirus or Covid-19. The idea here is that maybe it’s time to give our attention a break, focus briefly on other matters. How refreshing for once perhaps to hear or read about something other than the pandemic.
It’s not that the pandemic isn’t important any more or that it has suddenly lost its power to destroy lives. Not at all, sorry to say. But for just one blog let’s try visiting about something else.
The idea of the need for a dose of diversion came to me from two good friends, the mother and son team of Marty and Derek Rasmussen of Minneapolis. Marty, like myself, is a senior occupant of Augustana Apartments. Her son Derek is a businessman working diligently to establish use of powdered metal by metal product manufacturers.
Cassia, as you know, is the new senior care company in town, created by the affiliation of Augustana Care and Elim Care, this Web Site, and home of this blog. Cassia is a major company headquartered in Minnesota that operates over 40 senior communities including independent living, assisted living, and long-term skilled nursing care.
Catching two big walleye can be better than catching one great big walleye if it’s dinner time. Those great big fish produce more new little fish right away that then become your catch in future years.
Official Minnesota fishing regs require that you toss back the great big walleye; you can keep (and eat!) the two not-so big ones. The length in inches of both sizes of walleye are vital, so check the rule book carefully. In the cleaning and eating department the two not-so-big walleye might provide an equal or slightly greater amount of eating (four servings) as the one great big walleye that you had to toss back into the lake.
When I asked friend Don, who fishes regularly, what was the largest walleye he ever caught, he responded with the two-walleye-are-better concept above. On a long summer day, after work, he drove north from Minneapolis to Mille Lacs Lake and jumped on Eddie’s walleye fishing launch. They did well, catching two walleye big enough to yield sizable fillets but not the big size that had to be released.
A few years ago, Don and myself spent a week’s vacation time on a privately-owned island on Minnesota’s Lake Vermilion. Early one morning right off the dock he reeled in two very nice small-mouth bass. The meal-sized fish hadn’t been out of the water more than several minutes when they hit our breakfast plates accompanied by eggs over easy and hot buttered toast. It was the kind of day that makes your vacation trip memorable. We went back to the island again the following year.
A 60-game baseball season! As the timing and planning and jostling for position for the start of 2020 Major League Baseball drew closer I began my own big league anxiety. I counted down the days before our own major league opener. Just think, 160 games and I can watch many of them, almost all, plus the post season. Wow! What a show of talent.
Then it struck me. According to the news, our season had been cut to 80 games, then further to 60! Well, that’s better than no baseball season at all. But it’s a bummer.
A recent Star Tribune article suggests that senior workers do less well at getting hired during the current recession compared to workers slightly younger. Unemployment was 15.4% for seniors 65 and older compared to 13% for persons age 25 to 44, according to university economists. One result is that seniors are being forced to consider retirement earlier.
Hamilton is here….. If you paid attention in American History class, the current entertainment news about this double-length television feature on Disney Channel surely caught your attention. It’s a musical, but apparently does follow the true history of the man as well, say those who tuned in.
One who did tune in, I learned as I sat in his barber chair this morning, was Andrew, my barber here at Augustana’s beauty/barber shop. Martens enjoyed the program very much, he said. “Hamilton” appears on-line on your computer’s Disney Channel and lasts three hours, with one intermission, according to Andrew. Along with the hip-hop music, you will follow the history line that includes Hamilton’s vice presidency and his “legal” duel with Aaron Burr.
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