Category Archives: Andrew

Andrew, Griffin, Maggie, Oliver, Photo, Sarah, Video

Du Nord 2025

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Last week, we managed to fit a glorious trip to Camp du Nord into our busy summer. This was our fifth visit to their summer program (see prior posts from 2023, 2021, 2019, and 2016), though we also stayed in a cabin there in January 2024.

Camp du Nord is at the tip of the turquoise arrow, about 15 miles from the Canadian border.

We stayed in one of the original cabins, built in the 1930s, called Sans Souci. It was a tiny one-room cottage perched on some rocks on the shore of Burntside Lake. The cabin itself had a single full-size bed. Next to the cabin (but oddly out of frame in all of our photos) is a spacious platform tent with two twin beds.

How did a family of five manage this? Well, Griffin was only with us for the first night. On Monday we drove him and his gear over to Camp Widjiwagan, just a few miles east, where he’s embarking on a three week canoe trip into Quetico Provincial Park in Canada. We missed his lively presence for the rest of the week.

The week included a traditional “polar plunge” into the lake first thing in the morning with dozens of other families. (It’s something of a ritual to start the day… and quite refreshing, especially in the absence of showers. Note that despite the name, the water isn’t especially cold. We have all successfully survived real polar plunges into this same lake through holes in the ice in the winter.)

Maggie and Oliver joined their age groups for activities in the mornings. Sarah and I relaxed, read books, played cards, and walked in the beautiful northern woods. In the afternoons and evenings we went swimming, did art activities, enjoyed the beautiful wood-fired sauna, and played games. The week wrapped up with hilarious skits on the stage by the lakeshore.

On our final night, we experienced a phenomenal thunderstorm. There’s nothing quite like being in a tiny cabin on the short of a lake while mother nature howls in fury overhead. (Come to think of it, Griffin was probably in a pitched tent during the storm… I look forward to hearing his take!) We learned on Saturday that the storms were even worse west of us with tornadoes in North Dakota and 100+ mph wind gusts in Bemidji (about 100 miles from us).

In the pictures below, Maggie is usually wearing her purple hat.

Andrew awoke early on Wednesday morning and took this panoramic video from the rock below our cabin at 4:30 a.m. This was two days before the solstice. You can hear those “early birds” getting their day started.

Andrew, Photo, Sarah, Teaching

Last Day Celebration

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Today was the last day with students at my middle school. Five teachers and spouses went out for an evening on the town, culminating in an outstanding Chinese feast at Shuang Cheng in NE Minneapolis (owned by the parent of a former student and serves the best Ma Pao Tofu I’ve had since leaving Oakland).

It was a bittersweet occasion because Shannon is retiring and Matt is taking a sabbatical next year. The middle school won’t be the same without them.

Some of the finest teachers in the twin cities.

Andrew, Griffin, Maggie, Photo, Sarah

Hands Off!

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The Hands Off! demonstration in Saint Paul was very well attended. Despite the outrage at the Trump regime, the crowd was friendly and in good spirits, including many creative signs.

My favorite moment was on the sidelines when an impromptu band started playing to drown out a fanatic preacher with a bullhorn yelling about how we were all bound for hell. (I don’t even think you can see or hear the preacher in this video, but he’s off to the left under the scaffolding.)

Andrew, Griffin

Neon Smoke – Update

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On February 1, I posted about a video game that Griffin and his friend, James, submitted to the National Science Foundation’s Game Maker Awards competition. According to the official timeline, judging should have finished on March 14 and the winners would be announced on April 2.

NSF Game Maker Awards timeline

Imagine Griffin’s surprise when he received this email on March 30:

Dear NSF Game Maker contestant,

Thank you for participating in the NSF Game Maker Awards. We are pausing the judging process until further notice. If an entrant was eligible for the competition at the time of their initial submission but has since aged out of the K-12 category due to delays in the competition timeline, they will remain eligible for judging and prize award. Their entry will be evaluated alongside current K-12 participants, ensuring fairness and continuity. No additional action is required from the entrant to maintain eligibility.

Please check the Game Maker Award website for updates.

Thanks,
The NSF Game Maker Awards team

Going to the website didn’t provide any additional information, though the contest pages have this information posted in the header of each page:

Also at the top of each page is a link to “Learn about NSF’s implementation of recent executive orders.”

Although it is not explicitly stated anywhere on the linked page, we assume that the competition was paused in response to these “recent executive orders.”

This is, of course, a minor thing. Griffin and James will be fine. But in our family, it felt like an ominous sign of how quickly the new administration’s priorities can directly affect us.

This may seem trite, but I am reminded of a haunting quote from The Fellowship of the Ring, in reference to the dark lord Sauron:

“His arm has grown long indeed,” said Gimli, “if he can draw snow down from the North to trouble us here three hundred leagues away.”

“His arm has grown long,” said Gandalf.

These are the words that echo through my head today.

Andrew, Maggie, Photo

Widji 2025

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I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve chaperoned our annual seventh grade trip to Camp Widjiwagan in northern Minnesota. This year was special, however, because it was Maggie’s turn to join the adventure. She’s heard about the trip for years, so she was greatly looking forward to it.

Camp Widjiwagan is on the north shore of Burntside Lake in northern Minnesota. It’s about four and a half hours from the Twin Cities. This is far enough that it is noticeably colder and snowier than the central part of the state. We left early on Monday morning and returned on Friday afternoon, spending four nights in rustic cabins in the woods.

Camp Widjiwagan is just south of the Canadian border in northern Minnesota.
This gives you a sense of the way the lakes are laid out in this region.

The only downside to the trip was that Maggie caught a stomach bug on her final day, keeping her up for much of the night. A thousand thanks to my colleagues, Cat and Mackenzie, who took good care of her in her cabin. They brought her over to the impromptu infirmary in one of the admin buildings where I was able to be with her for the rest of the night. By morning, she was over it, though I did sit with her on the bus home to try and reduce the spread of any germs to her friends. (The final pic in the gallery below is our selfie on the bus… we don’t look as sleep-deprived as we were.)

Most of the following pictures were taken by the ever-talented Bobak Razavi.

Andrew, Photo

Cold Day

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We all have a rare day off from school today due to extreme cold temperatures. The wind chill when I woke up this morning was -36°F.

Interestingly, that’s cold enough that normally pliable plastics become near solid. Practical example: Sarah pulled out our electric pump to put some air into a low tire on the car. The power cord was stiff and difficult to work with. When she plugged it in and turned on the compressor, sparks flew and the cable was severed in half! We think that the plastic effectively snapped in the cold, causing a short circuit.

This reminds me of an experience I had during my first year in Minnesota. I biked to school one morning when it was severely cold. (I rarely biked in the winter, but there was no snow or ice on the roads, so I chanced it.) My bike lock at the time was a heavy braided steel cable sheathed in clear plastic. I normally kept it coiled around my seat stem, uncoiling it to run through the wheels and rack. On this morning, however, I could not uncoil it, it was like a solid steel helix wrapped around the post. Putting all my strength into it, it finally gave a little and then shattered. I distinctly recall the sound of the plastic shards hitting the cement like tinkling glass. The steel cable itself was unscathed, but the plastic was unable to cope.

The cold does come with some bonuses besides getting a day off from school. Our sun porch, not as well insulated as the main house, forms spectacular window frost patterns.

Window frost on the window.
Close-up. (The faint leaf shape near the center is a sticker meant to deter birds from hitting the glass.)

Next week, Maggie and I are heading up north for a week at Camp Widjiwagan. This is the annual seventh grade retreat that I’ve chaperoned for many years. We’re both looking forward to it. Yesterday, however, I checked the weather report near the camp:

Morning temperature near Camp Widjiwagan in northern Minnesota.

That’s seriously cold. Fortunately, the outlook for next week is balmier. With highs in the teens above zero, the kids will likely spend all their time rampaging through the wilderness while their long-suffering teachers tend to the fire in the cozy lodge.

Andrew, Griffin, Maggie, Oliver, Photo, Sarah

Final Cabin Tidbits

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To round out this trio of cabin posts, I took a few other random pictures of the sorts of things we did at the cabin this weekend: deflating and stowing the dock, touching up some trim paint, adding some non-stick strips to the wooden dock, role-playing games, other dice games, and a marvelous jigsaw puzzle (a gift from Grummy who passed along her love of puzzles to Andrew). We also prepped the well and pump for winter and put the snow shovels up on the covered porch lest they be irretrievable if anyone visits after the place is buried in snow. (We’ve learned that the hard way.)

Lest one think that we live an irredeemably charmed life, I should also mention that we did face a few challenges. For example, although the cool weather meant that there were few bugs outside, the black flies love to hibernate under the cabin roof. When the place warms up, they emerge in droves. Herds of droves. Hordes of herds of droves. We swatted and cursed at them, but our only moderately effective solution was to vacuum them up multiple times per day.

Andrew, Griffin, Maggie, Oliver, Photo, Piper, Sarah

More Construction

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The kids got very excited to build a “tree-ish house.” They started by extending a small treehouse that the built last year. This was cool, but took up a lot of prime real estate and interfered with the view from the cabin. After some discussion, they chose a new plot in heretofore unexplored territory. (It’s only about 30 feet west of the prior spot, but it’s screened by trees.) They enlisted Sarah’s professional help, removed the old structure and built a new, improved one. The sounds of hammers and saws filled the woods today.

The first picture below shows them beginning to deconstruct the first draft house. The rest show the new one. (And Piper, of course!)

Andrew, Maggie, Oliver, Photo, Piper, Sarah

Cabin Time

We made it up to the cabin for a long weekend. The weather is perfect: highs near 70 and lows just below 50. It’s dog heaven for Piper. The kids are engaged in a construction project. We saw the comet from the dock last night. A jigsaw puzzle is underway and we played a shockingly close game of Farkle. Not a bad way to recharge in the midst of a very busy autumn.

Note that while “GO MOM HQ” sounds like a worthy homage to Sarah, it actually stands for “Griffin, Oliver, Maggie, Olive, and Murray.” (Olive and Murray are two of the kids’ best friends who regularly come up to the cabin with us.)