I happened to come across a reference the other day to Connor Prairie Farm, an historic farm and village near Indianapolis that recreates life circa the 1800s. The setting is authentic, as is the clothing of the staff who each must stay “in character” as they interact with visitors. Seeing the place mentioned again brought back memories, especially one in particular.

When I was a kid growing up in Indianapolis it seemed as if we had a school field trip out to Connor Prarie every other year. About 10 years ago my family was back visiting in the area and we decided to take the young Mall Diva and Tiger Lilly out to the site for a visit. Tiger Lilly would have been five then, and this was the summer between kindergarten and first grade (she started kindergarten when she was four).

Her red hair and precociousness have always garnered her a lot of attention, and when we visited the Tailor’s shop she was soon in a conversation with the tailor, an older gentleman with long, white hair, wireframe glasses, dressed in breeches and a waistcoat and stitching on some project. After they had talked a bit, TL asked the tailor why he said “thee” and “thou” so much.

“Because,” he said, with a twinkle, “I am a Quaker. Does thou know what a Quaker is?”

“Oh, yes,” was the reply. “Last year in school we read a book about Benjamin West and his cat Grimalkin!” TL went on to talk about how Benjamin West was a Quaker and wanted to be a painter, but the Quakers didn’t think painting was proper but he did it anyway and became America’s first great painter.

The tailor was quite taken by this unexpected discourse and smiled and said, “Does that tell you how important it is to listen to that small voice inside you?”

Tiger Lilly cocked her head and gave him a puzzled look for a moment. “You mean GOD?”

The tailor couldn’t hide the surprise and amusement in his face, and shook his head, chuckling. “Thou art a caution!” he said.

Indeed!

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Sometimes you’ll do something that, even as you are doing it, you just know isn’t a good idea. But you do it anyway.

Case in point: I came in the house unexpectedly today and my wife was in the downstairs bathroom, and there was this strong smell coming from in there. Now, right away, you’re saying, “Uh, don’t go there,” but what you need to know is that she was wearing rubber gloves at the time. You also need to know that there are only two things she does in the bathroom that involve rubber gloves.

One is cleaning the bathroom, which usually involves strong and odorifous chemicals but this wasn’t bathroom cleaning day.

The second thing is to, um, refresh her hair color.

I walked closer and said, “Mmmm, smells colorful.” She looked a little disappointed that perhaps a tiny bit of The Mystery had departed. She did suggest, however, that if I could only learn to apply this elixir of youth it would be a big help in refreshing the tresses on the back of her head.

I recalled the long and expensive training and certification process the Mall Diva went through in order to be licensed to do that very thing, and said, “I don’t think that’s legal.”

“Oh, it’s no big deal,” she said, “you can have Faith (the Diva) show you how.”

“Sure,” I said, “it’s no big deal for you, but what about for me?” as I remembered an old story by Arlo Guthrie. “I mean, I really don’t want to be sitting in jail and having some big guy say, ‘What are you in for?’ and me having to say …

‘Hairdressing.'”

Okay, that didn’t get me into too much trouble. Blogging about it on the other hand….

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I saw the news today that American Girl is opening a store in the Mall of America, to complement their flagship stores in New York, Chicago and LA and smaller stores in Atlanta and Dallas (the MOA store will be about half the retail space of the flagships). It reminded me of a post I wrote three years ago about a trip to New York my wife and I made with Tiger Lilly. From the “Gotham Blogs” series:

After the museum we’re out on the street looking for our next destination. Suddenly my wife grabs my arm and Tiger Lilly gasps audibly and freezes. What? Did some threat get past my radar? My wife directs my attention to the opposite corner of the intersection and I see that we may indeed be in line for a mugging. It’s American Girl Place.

A year ago I had no idea of the marketing volcano that was about to erupt under our feet. Then some black-hearted scoundrel slipped Daughter Two an American Girl catalog – the first one’s free, kid – and her life changed. American Girl dolls are a vertically integrated economic powerhouse. The dolls themselves go for nearly $100 a pop, but that’s just the threshold – the dolls represent different eras and ethnicities in American history and most are the stars of one or more books put out by the company and has full line of accessories, not to mention the magazine (catalog) that appears regularly at our house. My daughter and her friends now can recite model numbers, back stories and accessory details with each other the way my friends and I once were able to argue the finer points of a ’63 Impala or ’67 GTO.

When Tiger Lilly picked her favorite from the catalog – an American Indian called Kaya – we said that if it was that important to her she would have to earn the money herself. A born entrepreneur she quickly grasped the profit and loss mechanics of a lemon-aid stand and the economic rewards of an untapped market – extra chores – to build liquidity. With a seed loan from Mom she bought lemons and sugar, and with marketing advice from me (“put ‘Fresh Squeezed’ in big letters on your sign”), along with her natural charm and location, location, location she quickly covered her start-up costs and had money to plow back into her business as well as show a profit. This was repeated a couple of more times, and along with the household moonlighting she soon had the necessary discretionary income to buy her doll.

And now we were unwittingly across the street from Mordor, I mean, American Girl Place. It was like setting out for Oz and finding Mecca along the way. I looked around and saw a definite flow of young girls, many with dolls in arms and all with parents bobbing in tow, converging on the store from all directions. We were swept up in the current – as if we ever had a choice – and into the store. The store is impressive in both detail and scope, with three floors of merchandise and a restaurant where you can have lunch with your American Girl doll for just $22 per person. If I’m going to spend that much for lunch with a doll, I want to see the doll cook the meal and then serve it and then give me a quote on painting my garage. Nevertheless the store is jammed on every floor and countless cashiers and floor associates are – like everyone else in New York – working hard. Fortunately there were no meltdowns to be observed such as those we’d witnessed at Toys R Us in Times Square the night before, but I did notice a lot of earnest young faces making a case point by point. After Tiger Lilly parted with more of her profits she’d been saving for this trip we went elsewhere for lunch (Kaya would just die if she knew we’d eaten at American Girl Place without her) and then, since it had stopped raining, we went over to the Central Park Zoo.

We arrive just in time for the Polar Bear feeding and to see another New York career option – bear feeder. At this zoo they feed the Polar Bears by first luring them out of the habitat enclosure and into their dens where they can presumably be locked up. Once that is accomplished a zookeeper enters the habitat and hides buckets of food – fish, apples and some veggies frozen in a block and smeared with peanut butter – in the enclosure. While we’re watching this preparation we speculate that there’s probably some initiation for rookie keepers where, once they’re in the middle of the enclosure with bear chow and an open jar of peanut butter, someone plays a loud recording of a Polar Bear huffing and roaring.

Perhaps TL will grace us with a post of her own with her thoughts on the new store.

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I took last week off from work, yet it still turned out to be a pretty full week. It actually started out the Saturday before last when I landed a free “Supporter” badge to the US Women’s Open. My company was hosting a Sky Tent on the 14th Hole (in Carl Pohlad’s back yard) and the guy who put it all together could only stay the first half of the week and left me his pass, which he said would get me in anywhere but the Patty Berg Pavilion and the women’s locker room, I think.

I arrived Saturday during the weather delay and met up with a woman from work who had had to evacuate the Sky Tent during the weather watch. While we were waiting by the ropes for the all clear and looking very official an older couple walked up to us for an update on the conditions. Noticing that my impressive badge said “SUPPORTER”, the gentleman asked what that meant. “It means that I’m an athletic supporter,” I said, straight-faced. “Let’s ask her,” the woman said, pointing to my partner.

Sunday was the unfortunate incident with the small but expensive container of chocolate ice cream.

On Monday I told Tiger Lilly we could go to the matinee show of WALL•E, which made her very happy, until I told her I just had to do some e-mails from work first, which didn’t. Work e-mail is like a cancerous growth that keeps dividing and multiplying when you’re not looking and I knew that if I didn’t try to prune it a bit even while on vacation it would turn into a hazardous blob that would frighten Steve McQueen by the time I got back to work. Still, there’s a reason I refer to my laptop computer as a “laptrap” and Tiger Lilly flopped resignedly on the couch. (I well know her feeling because when I was a kid my father owned a gas station and every time the family got into the car the trip was sure to include at least one stop at “the station” where he would disappear inside while we waited in the car with nothing but AM radio.) Sure enough, an hour and a half later I was ready to set out, and we made it to the movie in time though we missed about half of the “Play Green!” propaganda being shown on the movie screen to the captive, mostly-kid audience. Darn. Oh well, the commercials will probably have the same effect as those PSAs telling kids not to do drugs.

The movie itself was pretty cute, if not Pixar’s best, though I hear the “critics” are lauding the film to high heaven. That’s presumably because of the environmental “message” of humans filling the planet up with so much garbage we have to take to outer space. Of course, this is the same medium that would have you believe that Wile E. Coyote can really afford all that stuff he buys from ACME. The first half of the movie was kind of odd as the only “words” came from the communicative noises the robots made, though this wasn’t any harder to understand than, say, Arianna Huffington.

In an interesting (to me) contrast, later that evening I watched a show on the Discovery HD channel about what has gone on in the Ukrainian village of Prypiat, which rests next to Chernobyl and was evacuated in 1986. There are those who would have you believe that Prypiat and the 18-mile “Exclusion Zone” all around it are a nuclear wasteland, yet in reality it has become a booming, if unintentional, nature preserve as the forest has taken over much of the city and flora and fauna are thriving. Bears, wolves, elk, birds of prey and all manner of rodents and insects have moved in an thrived, including many species that were thought to be extinct or nearly extinct. You could tell that the narrator, and presumably the producers, were struggling to make sense of this, one moment intoning about this “greatest disaster of mankind” and the “evil unleashed on the earth” in this area that will be unfit for habitation for another 300 years, and in the next moment marveling at the health and diversity of the wildlife that has flourished there over several generations, apparently without ill effects.

Wednesday was the funeral for our friend Joe, which also happened to be the first funeral my wife has conducted. Appropriately, it was pretty much a biker affair as a row of Harley’s lined the street in front of our church and filled the funeral procession out to Fort Snelling (Joe was a vet). The Reverend Mother is a biker, too, though she dressed more formally than the majority of the folks who came to the service. She should have worn her “Biker Chick” pin on her dark knit suit, but otherwise the service was flawless and touching.

On Thursday the girls and Ben took off for the cabin, leaving my wife and I home alone and without any plans. We made do, enjoying dinner at a new place, Aura in Calhoun Square (try the great “small plates” – like tapas but slightly larger portions, great for combos), grilling steaks on Friday night and going to our favorite place, Muffuletta, on Saturday night where I enjoyed a fabulous watercress puree and blue cheese cold soup (refreshing!) with orange aioli and cracked pepper for starters, while my wife thoroughly enjoyed an asparagus and horseradish appetizer and a beet salad. The menu changes regularly here so it’s always fun to try something new but that night I opted for an old favorite, the Asian burger (ground pork, spicy thai peanut sauce and Chinese cabbage). It was a lovely evening as well, so we sat out on the deck and enjoyed the evening, the neighborhood and each other’s company. It’s a fun and romantic place, just the ticket if a certain someone wanted to take another certain someone to someplace special for a meaningful dinner!

All in all, I think it was one of the best vacations I’ve ever had. I felt refreshed and rested all the way up until Sunday afternoon, when I started hacking at the e-mail jungle again!

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The other day I stopped at Cold Stone Creamery and bought a small container of their Ghiradelli chocolate ice cream to share in a little private quality time with my wife.

Unfortunately, when I got home — and before any such quality time could materialize — I tucked it into the freezer of our kitchen refrigerator. This is an environment generally overstuffed with items that would enthrall an arctic archaeologist analyzing the lifestyle of my family. Hiding a small, innocuous container in there should have been relatively safe. Except. Except that I live in a house with three women and their chocolate-senses started jangling as soon as they all returned and entered the kitchen together.

Later I went into the freezer and saw that the container and been disturbed. And decimated. There was also a post-it note stuck to it, with large letters in Tiger Lilly’s hand-printing: “FOUND YOU!”

There was only one thing I could do.

I took the post-it note and in red ink struck a line through the word “found” and replaced it with my own “I WILL FIND” and stuck the note on the freezer door.

Let me know if you see any of them.

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This was a very full weekend. It started off with my family getting to meet a new-to-us family member, my grandmother’s great-niece (not sure what the proper term is — 2nd, 3rd, 4th-cousin?), and fine young woman named DeShae who is spending the summer in Minneapolis with the Youth Works ministry. This has been a season for meeting extended family, as my wife’s cousin from New Mexico has two grown daughters currently in the Twin Cities as well who we’ve enjoyed having over to the house. We’re hoping we can have all these lovely young ladies over at the same time.

That will be a good-sized group but still small compared to the crowd that turned out for the first annual Father’s Day party hosted by Chief. Besides the opportunity to see many of our MOB friends it gave us the opportunity to give Kevin Ecker his birthday present. Somehow or another, Kevin had gotten the crazy idea that my wife had bought him a howitzer.

Admittedly, that would have been pretty cool, if a bit difficult to gift wrap. Instead my wife had picked up something that made her think of Kevin the moment she set eyes on it.

Unfortunately we couldn’t stay late at the party because we had to head up to to Brainerd Saturday evening in order to be on hand to conduct the chapel service during the opening weekend at the Parker Boy Scout Camp. Instead of staying at the camp we stayed at my brother-in-law’s nearby lake cabin. It’s quite cozy, but surrounded by hordes of hungry mosquitos. We grabbed our bags from the car and made a mad dash to get inside but a couple of dozen of the little blood-suckers made it in the door with us. It could have been a long night, but my daughters decided it was a suitable time to give me my Father’s Day gift: the bug bat I had said I wanted a little while back. It looks like a badminton racket, but in place of strings it has wires that you can electrify by pressing a button on the handle. What a fly or a mosquito (or perhaps a parakeet) and ZZZZZTT! — instant crispy critter. I, of course, got to try it out first and if you think my maniacal glee was a bit effusive you should have heard the Mall Diva and Tiger Lilly! “Hahlo, I am the Mall Diva, you bit my sister. Prepare to die!” I christened (actually, you shouldn’t get it wet) the newest addition to our arsenal as “Old Sparky”. This morning we again had to run the gauntlet to the car, during which many more skeeters tried to come along for the ride. The Diva was on the job, however!

The chapel service went great, though we were almost late due to having to take some unexpected detours. The Reverend Mother had planned to do a specific message for this morning, but with the news of the scout camp in Iowa getting hit by a tornado last week (killing four scouts), she decided on a different approach, including a special song by the Mall Diva. She once again was able to work the flash paper into her short message and it went over famously, as always. Afterwards two of the scouts even came up to us and, in unison, shouted “Best church ever!”

After that it was time to come home and complete the Father’s Day assignment given by the Mayor of the MOB, King Banaian, in his decree, that being to grill meat. Since we know King is a vegetarian, however, we (Ben, the Diva and I) felt we needed to prepare a special course in his honor:

Finally, it was good that we had so much to do throughout the weekend since it kept me from dwelling too long on the meaning of the holiday. It was the first Father’s Day for me without my father, and there were a a few tough moments throughout the weekend when things that happened would remind me of him. I expect this will be an ongoing experience in years to come. There was another first this year as well; I got my first Father’s Day card from prospective son-in-law Ben, something I also anticipate more of in the coming years!

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