‘Raise Your Voice’ Archives
Fishing Trip
by Peter Molenaar It is good for an inland worker to visit big water from time to time. My father and I are just now returned from fishing Lake of the Woods in northernmost Minnesota. The curvature of the horizon is discernable to the eye there. So, thank you Smith Foundry for letting me go. As I was not pressed to engage the machine, the promising sunrise then lingered. The inlet bay of our camp offered a calm cold mist among the green cattails. But the big water answered with wind and waves. Several flotillas of cabin cruisers located the walleye far from shore. But we with our smallish boat opted to troll the shoreline for northern pike or maybe a musky. We had paid a high price for a day”'s worth of frustration when, wop, “FISH ON!” I shouted. It made one glorious straight up leap-- “YEOW! It”'s a bass!” Such an extraordinarily handsome specimen of a smallmouth bass it was. I gently removed the [...]
Doo Wop And Cannon Falls
by Peter Molenaar The luckier members of my generation were again able to watch public television”'s annual review of the Doo Wop Pop Rock music emergence (late ”˜50s””early ”˜60s). As always, it was an awesome emotional head swoon. Moreover, let us self-reflect, the splendid performances of so many popular Black artists served to educate and humanize millions of white Americans Note: I was born August 26, 1950”¦ How is it that these tunes are lodged in my brain and subject to recall? Probably it is owing to the daily school bus rides into the town of Cannon Falls. The good bus driver had the radio on all those years. Yet the town remained white, with just a touch of Dakota blood mixed in. Any outside person of color was sure to incite such internal red flags as: Get a grip, be nice but do not touch. It was from elsewhere, moved by the music, that some white folks went South to confront the terror regime there. The news trickled in. We learned [...]
High Heat
By Peter Molenaar The weather we”'ve endured recently has produced the oft heard comment: “It”'s not the heat, it”'s the humidity”. Well, OK. Let”'s bear in mind, however, that temperature is a measurement of how energetically molecules are vibrating. Note: In the desert we feel comfortable even at relatively elevated temperatures. Why? Dry air is less dense, i.e. has fewer molecules vibrating against the skin and so manifests less “heat”. Conversely, humid air manifests more heat. So then, its not the humidity, it”'s the heat (more heat). Right? (more…)
