Minnesota Dreaming on a Fine Spring Day.

A few weeks ago I received an email from the university in Minnesota regarding open positions as a professor’s assistant. In exchange for working 10 hours a week my student fees would be waived and they would pay me an additional $5,000.00 per year. Seeing no reason why I should not at least try I applied. The process was fairly simple, my curriculum vitae and a two-page application to fill out. This afternoon I received an email from the director of the history programme informing that they have approved my application and the position, should I want it, will be made open to me. After receiving a fast notice of acceptance, a quick and early response which a seemingly favourable outcome for a nice flat, excellent help in planning my degree, and now a job offer that will make my financial future certainly more secure I can’t help but thinking that I made the best possible choice in accepting the offer to read history in St Cloud.

 

April – a busy month

This month I have mainly been working (the paid variety) managing those about to take GCSE and A levels, gardening and trying to keep up with the challenge of writing a poem a day, among other things…. there’s a major garden project going on and normal life to keep up with…. a woman’s work is never done.

The blossoms are suffering from  the heavy rains and high winds….

Wet, windy weather
clusters of blossom blown down –
fragile button-holes

girls in dancing clothes
pick up the battered blossoms
to put in their hair

the cat, exhausted
from chasing whirlwind petals
lazily stretches

For the National Poetry Writing Month, NaPoWriMo, which you can find here

 

Now I see the photo competition is ‘growing’ I shall be getting the camera out in the next few days, given that we get some good light…..

Sad

Since I commented at 0715 hrs GMT today, there have been just four comments by other cherished charioteers and no new posts.

I’m afraid the principle of critical mass is coming into play. Less begets less. Sad.

Pragmatism gone mad

The phrase, ‘double Dutch’ is taking on a new value – to describe the contortions of the local politicians trying to cope with appproving/disapproving of cannabis use. Words like ‘decriminalised but not legal’ are evidence of their dilemma. And now tourists, or a third of them, damn them, are making things even more difficult by wanting to buy the stuff in the 700 coffee shops.

So in one region they can’t, unless they’re happen to be German or Belgian – then it’s OK.  Pardon me? Isn’t that contrary to some Treaty of Rome or Maastricht or Shengen or other? Just get a Belgian residence permit if you need to smoke. Better make that a Flemish one, just in case there’s a language problem. But,  but …. surely signing a visitors’ book to get access is…… illegal?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17865151

Dopey, ain’t it? Yes, Holland is going to pot. My advice: keep off the grass. But it might take some Dutch courage!

Photo Competition #26, theme “Growing”.

It’s spring here and stuff is growing, the grass needs cutting and the asparagus needs eating.  In the southern hemisphere it must be getting near harvest time and those of us lucky enough to live between the tropic lines it is almost always growing season.  so without further preamble, the theme for this months comp. is GROWING.  That can mean garden vegetables, crops, flowers, shrubs or pets livestock or children.  Lots of scope there for a rich crop of entries, right?  Closing?  Lets make it midnight GMT May 22 ,  that’s also my 68th birthday, so judging maybe a little bit delayed the next day.

The true embodiment?

I won’t trouble you with the details but suffice to say I am the plaintiff in a Court case here.

I asked that it be conducted in English, given my linguistic imitations but the Judge unceremoniously referred me to the Court rules – with chapter and verse references – and refused my request. The very same rules, it turns out, state categorically that any plaintiff who is not competent in Danish may demand an interpreter and may also submit written evidence in his native language. But the Judge doesn’t want to know. Continue reading “The true embodiment?”