WalMart Protest

After walking Rosie this morning, I visited with Karen and got her routine information for Tinkerbelle and Charlie for this weekend.  Then I went to my Credit Union, made a deposit, got checks, and wandered over to the newly opened WalMart.  The WalMart Neighborhood Market opened its' doors to the public at 7:30 this morning - the first WalMart of any type in the city of Boulder.  The local newspaper has given a lot of publicity to the "Unwelcome Party" that was planned by the Coalition for Social & Environmental Responsibility in Boulder, and I was prepared to see a large number of protesters outside.  When I arrived, a few minutes past 10, there were two people holding a large, hand-painted sign that read, "Walmart Out Of Boulder."  That was it.  I went inside and was warmly greeted by the management and staff, and went looking for my friend Bea, who is now employed there.  She introduced me to almost everyone working, and then hurried off to set up the welcome table with free cake, water and sodas.  The store is huge, with wide open aisles, and an airy, spacious feel to it.  WalMart carries several items that I grew up with, and that I haven't been able to purchase in other stores (except by special order purchase, that must be at least one case of whatever I want). So I am very happy to see this WalMart store open in town, and directly on the bus line.
  When I left the store, there were about 20 protesters gathered outside... and I was told that the local United Food & Commercial Workers Union would be protesting from noon until 1:30.  I just wanted to blow a raspberry at everyone.  My friend Beatrice (Bea), worked for Safeway for 5 years - when she had been hired, she had been told she'd get 20 to 36 hours of work each week, and that the total hours would be "at the higher end" of the quoted numbers.  For the past two years, unless someone was on vacation, she worked 18 to 20 hours, plus had to pay her Union dues out of her paycheck.  WalMart hired her, paying her more per hour (and without any Union dues) than Safeway was paying her.  She is guaranteed 32 hours of work per week, with an occasional 40-hour week and over-time.  She can actually live like a real human being again, with a much larger paycheck than she ever got at Safeway.  - And, most especially, the management at WalMart treats her like a person, listens to her suggestions, and thanks her for her comments about the store and  for her work ethic.
   The one thing I was excited to see?  They carry the Red Lobster Cheddar Bay Biscuit mix, which I had never seen before.  And, Adiena, the manager, has made certain that local brands are well represented on the shelves - Navajo Pride flour, Wolf's brand chili, Boulder Sausage, Boulder Canyon chips, and all sorts of fresh produce and (right now) locally grown pumpkins....  I'm going to like having this store here in town, and open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

This Weekend: Frozen Dead Guy Days

There were two more fires of a suspicious nature last night in Accomack County - the first in Wachapreague, and the second in Tasley. Investigations are being done this morning to see if two more fires get tallied up by the Accomack Arsonist. This is just so incredibly wrong. .... And in Wakulla County, Florida, in the Crawfordville Walmart (near Tallahassee), a woman tried to use a $1 off coupon that she had printed from her computer. The cashier declined the coupon. Mary Frances Alday of Crawfordville, was arrested Friday and charged with four counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and one count of battery, for allegedly ramming an assistant manager with a shopping cart. She was also charged with resisting arrest and battery of an officer, according to the arrest report. According to the report, the woman threatened the assistant manager and was followed into the parking lot by the manager and three other employees. The woman pulled a handgun, in a holster, out of her vehicle and threatened to shoot "all of" them. The police were called, and stopped her on a road. She verbally threatened the officer, and, after being asked to get out of her vehicle twice, the lady leaned toward the passenger side of the car. She was tazed twice. A loaded Smith & Wesson was found in the console of the vehicle between the front seats... Yowza!

  All the snow that fell in my back yard Monday afternoon has melted away. That has made Nedi and Lovey very happy, and they are leaving muddy paw prints all over the place. I'll soon be leaving to walk Rosie and Remy - hopefully Remy will be doing well enough to take him to visit the Snow yard today.

  Frozen Dead Guy Days, in Nederland (up at the head of Boulder Canyon), will kick off their celebrations on Friday, and it's supposed to snow on Saturday and Sunday for the rest of the celebration... Frozen Dead Guy Days events include:

     Coffin races

A slow-motion parade

“Frozen Dead Guy” lookalike contests

A tour of the Tuff Shed where Grandpa is still frozen

A “polar plunge” for those brave enough to go swimming in Colorado in early March (which generally requires breaking through the ice)

A dance, called “Grandpa’s Blue Ball”

pancake breakfasts

A market showcasing local artists

Snowshoe races

Snow sculpture contests

  Glacier Ice Cream, headquartered in the nearby city of Boulder, makes a flavor specifically for the festival (named, appropriately enough, Frozen Dead Guy), consisting of fruit-flavored blue ice cream mixed with crushed Oreo cookies and sour gummy worms. Tours of the Tuff Shed where Grandpa is still frozen were suspended after 2005, after Grandpa’s family “became frustrated with Frozen Dead Guy Days”, but they resumed with the 2010 celebration.

  In 1989, a Norwegian citizen named Trygve Bauge brought the corpse of his recently deceased grandfather, Bredo Morstøl, to the United States. The body was preserved on dry ice for the trip, and stored in liquid nitrogen at the Trans Time cryonics facility from 1990 to 1993.  In 1993, Bredo was returned to dry ice and transported to the town of Nederland, where Trygve and his mother Aud planned to create a cryonics facility of their own. When Trygve was deported from the United States for overstaying his visa, his mother, Aud, continued keeping her father’s body cryogenically frozen in a shack behind her unfinished house.
  Aud was eventually evicted from her home for living in a house with no electricity or plumbing, in violation of local ordinances.At that time, she told a local reporter about her father’s body, and the reporter went to the local city hall in order to let them know about Aud’s fears that her eviction would cause her father’s body to thaw out.
  The story caused a sensation. In response, the city added a broad new provision to Section 7-34 of its Municipal Code, “Keeping of bodies”, outlawing the keeping of “the whole or any part of the person, body or carcass of a human being or animal or other biological species which is not alive upon any property”. However, because of the publicity that had arisen, they made an exception for Bredo, a grandfather clause.
  For further information about this unique celebration in Nederland, Boulder County, Colorado, please visit http://www.frozendeadguydays.org/