first efforts

Happy Father's Day, Dad!

Chase-ing family history

We're off to the Mother Ship this week to celebrate a bit of family history. From the 1890s to the 1940s, my dad's grandparents and parents owned and ran the Chase Hotel in Walker, Minnesota. The first Chase Hotel was located in the middle of town, but in 1922 they opened The New Chase (pictured above), a gorgeous and modern structure built right on the shores of Leech Lake. Dad spent his childhood summers there, working as a bellhop, sometime fishing guide, and in general having a pretty cool northwoods boyhood.

The family sold the place in 1945 when my grandfather died suddenly and neither my dad or uncle (both in service at the time) could take it over. It changed hands many times over the years. The last time I visited Walker, in 2003, the Chase had been nearly abandoned after a fire destroyed the dining room. It was bought by developers in 2006 and this coming week it's re-opening as Chase on the Lake, a resort with luxury guest suites, condos, spa, and even a bowling alley (though these last two won't open till fall).

Some of the finnfam siblings are going up for this week's grand opening; we'll be standing in for my dad, who can't travel yet after his surgery. In addition to lounging around and getting out on the lake, my beloved and I hope to do a little hiking and biking on parts of the Heartland or Paul Bunyan state trails, two parts of Minnesota's amazing rails-to-trails system. We'll also visit Itasca State Park so my beloved can experience the thrill of walking across the Mississippi at its headwaters.

My dad and I have a piece on our family history with the Chase Hotel coming out in the journal Minnesota History next summer; a different version of the story we'll tell there is being published in the Walker Pilot-Independent to coincide with the new hotel's opening. You can check it out here if you're willing to register as a user.

Things you learn while hanging out in the ICU family waiting room*

You can learn a lot about a person by hearing only their side of a cellphone conversation.

Women still perform the caretaker role: 80% of the people in this room are women.

Very bad stuff happens to people every day. Of all the things that might bring you to an ICU family waiting room, heart surgery - though scary and difficult - appears to be the least dramatic.

While wireless internet might be overkill in the wilderness, it's really handy in the waiting room.

"Law and Order" really is always on!

*no worries; my dad's recovering nicely...

A congeries of Caras

In the fifteen years I have been teaching, I have never had a student named Cara. This semester I have two in one class (okay, one of the Caras is actually Kara, but  she pronounces it the same way so that's close enough). Apart from teaching, I have met very few Caras. There just aren't that many of us out there.

Despite suffering a lifetime of mispronunciations and mistakes (Carol, Karen, Carla, Clara, Tara), I've always liked my name. It's different enough to be memorable (especially when compared to the dozens of Jennifers, Amys, and Heathers I went to school with in the seventies). One Cara I met a few years ago when I gave a talk at the FDR Library told me she was named after a minor character in the novel Brideshead Revisited. I read the book years ago, but have no memory of that Cara; my mother claims no knowledge of her, either. The standard finnfam story has it that there were two name options for me if I was a girl and my brothers argued that the other option was too girly. So Cara it was. Still doesn't explain how they came up with Cara in the first place, but that keeps it mysterious. And anyone who knows me knows I love being mysterious.

But what if you're the sixth child?

In the last week a number of news outlets, including the venerable New York Times, featured a study by Norwegian researchers claiming that firstborn children tend to score higher on traditional assessments of intelligence (I.Q. tests) than non-firstborns. The researchers are quick to point out, however, that it's most likely a difference in the way parents treat their children than anything biological. For example, parents often rely on older children to mentor younger siblings; this mentoring may in fact be more beneficial to the older child than to the younger ones.

As the New York Times points out today, people like studies like this because they seem to validate stereotypes we already believe about sibling dynamics, i.e., stereotypes about "responsible" firstborns, "rebellious" middle children, and the like.

Research like this only goes so far, though. Take me, for example. I am a youngest child and my siblings will tell you I have many of those qualities. Meaning, of course, that I am pampered and spoiled. But because of a pretty big age gap between me and my siblings, I also have many qualities of a firstborn or even an only child. I don't know what this means "scientifically," but I do know that it was a pretty interesting way to grow up.

Of cool countries and t-shirts

My Brother the Dean and the Dean's Queen (aka sis-in-law Jan) are visiting Iceland this week. I'm very, very jealous. I have been to Iceland twice and loved it, loved it, loved it. So much so that this is how lame I am: I actually took a photograph of my favorite t-shirt, one I bought at the University of Iceland bookstore three years ago, e-mailed it to them, and begged them to bring me back another one exactly like it. Because the one I have is nearly threadbare. And because that specific design, featuring the seal of the University of Iceland in Icelandic and Latin, has this Soviet-block-state-in-the-1980s graphical look that makes me feel very, very cool when I wear it.

Engineers: They can do stuff!

Nephew Ben graduated a week ago from the U of I's super-highly-ranked engineering program; he'll continue on in their master's program next fall. Now he that he has graduated, I can officially call him Bengineer!

I am really looking forward to having Bengineer around for two more years -- not only because he's great to hang out with, but also because he helps out with household chores (usually in exchange for food or beer). And let me tell you, having an engineer around the house is very, very handy. Because engineers have skills!

 

Sisters, sisters...

Sissy 1 and Sissy 2 arrive today for our official Sisters' Weekend, which will include fun, sisterly adventures like this. We will also spend plenty of time hanging around the GAC(K!), where we will eat and drink and do each other's hair and talk about boys. And who knows? Maybe we'll even gossip about you. Because I'm sure you've done something to deserve it.

The West's Top 10 Environmental Success Stories

I tell you, Finnfam is simply everywhere. EVERYWHERE!

Stop the presses! Get me rewrite!

Last night instead of going to bed at my usual time, I got caught up in All the President's Men. It was airing on AMC as a part of what they were marketing as "DC Intrigue" night -- timed, I'm sure, to coincide with the opening of Scooter Libby's trial (and aimed at those of us geeky enough to make the connection). I have seen the movie before, but not until last night did I realize that this movie is my childhood. I don't mean in the sense of being a kid in the seventies, a decade defined by Watergate. I mean, this movie is my childhood.

The movie's newsroom is exactly like the newsroom where I visited my dad at work. The same clackety-clack typewriters, endlessly spewing wire machines, and heavy black rotary phones. The same bad seventies hair, big glasses, and wide ties. The same young hotshot reporters and seen-it-all editors, some of whom actually smoked (smoked!) at their desks. And Jason Robards as Ben Bradlee? Striding out of his glass-walled office, pulling out his red pen, ripping the hell out of Woodward and Bernstein's prose, and commanding them to "come back to me when you have some facts"? That's Dad! And that's real journalism, people!

I know the movies and tv don't always get it right. As Dad used to tell me when we watched Lou Grant, "That's not real, you know." I knew. Like All Star Wrestling, tv and movie journalism is fake. Dad didn't get to shout "Stop the presses!" and I'm sure he never got to actually stop them, which Lou Grant seemed to do like every other week.

But that movie newsroom, man? That newsroom was real.