TheBanyanTree: News Items

[Margaret R. Kramer]

The Twins are playing like the gutty, exciting team that they are.  After
sweeping the White Sox earlier this week with the final run of the series
scored by a “walk off walk”, on four straight pitches no less, they marched
on into Oakland and won the first game, which I didn’t stay up for because I
’m an early to bed, early to rise person, 3-2 in 10 innings.

That the Twins are returning to themselves, even without Joe Mauer, last
year’s AL batting champ, he has a sore quad, has given us something to watch
on TV at night.  TV continues to be a vast wasteland of nothingness.  No
wonder people do other things like watch DVDs, or surf the net, or even did
like we did on Memorial Day, play croquet in the backyard.

We’ve been getting spits of rain this week, which is great, because we’re
down about an inch.  The grass is green and long, which I’ll mow later this
morning.  The flowers are blooming.  Our small tomato plants are growing.
My mission today is to buy dirt for our new garden bed along the back of the
garage and see if some perennials are now on sale and buy some to fill up
the new beds.  Then the yard will be complete for this year.

Northwest Airlines, which is the main airline in the Twin Cities, came out
of bankruptcy this week, and promises exciting new services.  Well, the most
exciting service they have done is give all the top executives HUGE pay
raises while the unions of pilots, flight attendants, baggage handlers, and
mechanics have taken HUGE pay cuts.  Somehow that doesn’t make sense to me.
More money for the people who less work.  Hmmmmm . . .

A young teacher from St. Paul, he’s only 28, was caught having an affair
with a 17 year old female student.  He must have been stuck on her, because
even after her friends caught them kissing at school, he continued to see
her.  Even after the school began its investigation, he continued to see
her.  The police finally arrested him and he’s been charged with sexual
abuse.  Gosh, he’s so young, and he’s married with two small children.  I
always thought old and viagra needing men would go after a young woman, but
I guess I’m wrong.

Girls couldn’t wear pants or jeans to school when I was in eighth grade; we
could wear only dresses or skirts.  But it was the age of the mini-skirt
and, boy, those skirts were pretty short!  One of our dreamboat teachers,
who was young, unmarried, and quite sexy looking to naïve eighth grade
girls, would have us put a blanket over our laps in his class if he thought
our skirts were too short and were a distraction.

It’s kind of funny, because he did end up marrying one of his students . . .
It was well after she left high school, but I do think teacher/student
romances happen, not in a sexual predator way, but they just happen.

On the other hand, my high school counselor was convicted and sent to jail
for producing child pornography.  That happened years after I left high
school, but I bet he probably was doing it while I was in high school.
People didn’t pay attention to that stuff back then.

One of my fellow high school students was being forced to have sexual
intercourse with her stepfather.  Back then, there wasn’t a child abuse
place to go to, sexual abuse was known, but not talked about, and she had no
one to tell.  Finally, her friend took her to talk to our church’s pastor.
She told her stepfather, and he stopped molesting her.  The fact that
someone KNEW what was going on was enough to get him to stop.  Thank
goodness.

St. Paul’s beautiful cathedral is celebrating its 100th anniversary of the
laying of its cornerstone this weekend.  See
http://www.cathedralsaintpaul.org/about/photos.asp for pictures of the
Cathedral.  I used to live right by the cathedral at 123 Summit Ave in my
early 20s, which isn’t there anymore, an apartment building full of drug
addicts and prostitutes, and didn’t appreciate the beauty of this edifice
that so close.  My ex-husband, who was a devout Catholic, wanted to have his
funeral there.  It didn’t happen.

After a false start of the computers not working and then the machines not
synchronizing for his first radiation treatment, Ray finally had the deed
done yesterday.  He’s doing fine this morning and just has a little
discoloration on his chest.  It looks like he’s just going to have four
treatments, at least, that’s what the calendar shows from the radiation
therapy department.  He has treatments on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of
next week.  I hope that’s it and then the tumor can collapse on itself and
cause no more harm.  We’ll see.

That’s it from St. Paul, MN.

Margaret R. Kramer
margaretkramer at comcast.net
margaret.kramer at polarispublications.com

Dad, your guiding hand on my shoulder will remain with me forever.
~Author Unknown