Linda in Northfield, Mensagenda Editor
About Mensagenda
Minnesota Mensa published Vol. I, No. 1 of our newsletter, then called the Minnesota Mensa, in June of 1965. Approaching six decades later and winning awards along the way, we continue to provide a monthly publication, now called Mensagenda.
As expected in a newsletter, we inform our local membership with organizational updates and provide details about our events. The real benefit is that, just like our events, Mensagenda is for our members, by our members.
The love of learning in Mensa is not just about supporting our scholarship but in enriching your own mind and sharing your knowledge, skills, and interests. Read articles and regular columns ranging from scientific explanations to humor in everyday life. Check out our members’ photography, drawing, painting, knitting and quilting, and crafting skills.
What would you like to share? Do you have expertise in a particular field of study or hobby? Want to express your opinion? Have you traveled recently? Do you write poetry? Can you create word games, numerical puzzles, or trivia questions? What could you say about…well, you get the picture.
Mensagenda is another way that Minnesota Mensa provides “a stimulating intellectual and social environment for its members.” What could you contribute if you joined Mensa?
There’s More to Read
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Featured Cover Art
Gretchen as Glinda. Photo by Linda in Northfield.
Gretchen Bonfort entered the Costume Contest at Chicago’s HalloweeM this year, dressed as Glinda from The Wizard of Oz. Each of the 50 contestants was allotted one minute at the microphone, to introduce themselves and explain their costume. Gretchen used her minute to sing part of Glinda’s opening song to the Munchkins after Dorothy’s house fell on the Wicked Witch.
Come out, come out, wherever you are
And meet the young lady who fell from a star
She fell from the sky, she fell very far
And Kansas she says is the name of the star.
“I sang in front of 500 people!” Gretchen told me. “And I won for ‘Best Traditional Costume’!”
The costume is lovely, and accurate even to the crown and the wand. But I suspect it was the song that provided the winning notes.
“I saw the movie as a kid many times of course, but I have been really into all of its songs since high school,” Gretchen said, “from singing them with friends during long-distance marching-band field trips.”
She sent a youtube link from the 1939 movie that contains Glinda’s whole song, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugYOClFd-uY, as well as the rest of the scene with the Munchkins, about six minutes in all.
Spider
by Cheryl in Roseville
You can find out the oddest things in the oddest places. The Beloved and I were at an appliance parts warehouse looking for a little plastic doohickey. The clerk caught a glimpse of the bug art on The Beloved’s T-shirt and asked, “Are you into lepidoptera or anisoptera?” We whipped our heads around. The guy knows his butterflies from his dragonflies, pronounces the Greek suborders correctly, and can find a drawer slide for an ancient oven? Our kind of Renaissance man! The Beloved flashed him the back of the shirt, which promoted the Minnesota Dragonfly Society.
“No way that’s real,” said the clerk.
“This is America. There’s a group,” we replied in unison.
The clerk had had a couple of elective credits to blow in college, so he signed up for a couple of courses in entomology and ended up helping with the prof’s Ph.D. project. He still loves bugs. Well, most of them.
“How do you feel about spiders?” I asked.
“Ugh! Can’t stand them. They creep me out.”
He’s not alone. I’ve met veterinarians who love all critters save for bugs in general and arachnids in particular. I guess that makes sense. The poodles’ vet has never had to treat them for some horrible disease after removing a blood-engorged Swallowtail from their flesh.
Other professionals surprised me, though. My friend Sharon and I once attended an adults-only criminology evening event at the science museum. (Tacit subtheme: “Don’t do it. Look at how we’ll catch you.”) The forensic entomologist stood behind an array of preserved fly larvae positioned in front of photos of a pig carcass in progressive stages of decomposition.
“Wow, the rest of us just yell when a bug pops out of nowhere. You probably call it by its common and its scientific name,” I said.
“Yup. Except for spiders,” she said, “I can’t stand spiders.”
“Huh?!?”
“Too many legs.”
I was prepared to ask why six legs were acceptable but eight were repellent and if that didn’t demonstrate some sort of reverse ableism, but Sharon felt the need to hit the cash bar at that moment.
I’m thinking of spiders right now because of the holidays. (No, really.)
I loved our Christmas tree decorations when I was a kid. We had a set of little flocked-styrofoam snowmen dressed as drummer boys and some glass baubles that managed to be purple and deep blue and gold all at the same time. I liked the shiny silver tinsel. (Well, I liked it until I learned there are wackos who put that stuff on one carefully considered strand at a time, instead of joyfully thrown by the handful as Santa obviously prefers.)
One year, though, Mom bought some new swag to boost our hall-decking game. It was called “angel hair” and it was a bag of fine interwoven white filaments. I was puzzled. Who decorates with hair? Mom didn’t even let us have a dog that shed, and now she wanted to fling tresses from the heavenly host all around. Go figure. What’s more, one teeny bag of the stuff expanded to drape our medium-size tree many times over in diaphanous webbing. Our little fir looked less “visited by seraphim” than “attacked by ravenous spiders.”
We never decorated with angel hair again. We learned it was a chore to get it off the tree, the lights, and the ornaments. We also learned why we were itching and coughing so much. Angel hair of the 1970s was made from fiberglass, a known lung, eye, and skin irritant.
Letting spiders at the tree might have been a better idea.
©2024 Cheryl Laurent