Happy Holidays, Not

"A civilian burial party stands by their wagon filled with the frozen bodies of Native American Lakota Sioux, in a ravine south of the camp at Wounded Knee Creek. Mounted U.S. Army officers look on from a hill above."

"December 29, 2007 will mark the 117th anniversary of the slaughter of innocents at Wounded Knee. As is their custom, the Lakota people will gather at the mass grave where the bodies of men, women and children were dumped and they will pray and ask the United States government to apologize for this day of death. They will pray that the Medals of Honor handed out to the murderers be rescinded and they will pray for peace between the Lakota and the rest of America. There will be a ceremony called "Wiping Away the Tears," and this ceremony will conclude a day of mourning, a day when the Lakota reach out to the rest of America for peace and justice."

"In early December of 1990, as the 100th anniversary of the massacre at Wounded Knee approached, I wrote the cover story for USA Today. I quoted an editorial that appeared in the Aberdeen (SD) Saturday Review on January 3, 1891, just five days after the massacre. The author wrote about those terrible "Redskins," his favorite word for Indians. He wrote, "The Pioneer has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extermination of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one or more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth."

"That editorial calling for the genocide of the Lakota people was written by L. Frank Baum, the man who would later write, "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz." There have been many others before and since that called for genocide against a race of people. Adolph Hitler and Pol Pot come to mind. But then they never followed up their calls for genocide by writing a charming book for children. It appears to be unthinkable to most Americans that such a wonderful man as L. Frank Baum could be compared to other inhuman beasts that called for the extinction of a race of people."

O Happy Happy Christmas

My Christmas wish was to go downtown to do a little night photography on Christmas Eve. After taking this last shot at 5:30 we drove the ten miles back to church for the 6:00 Candle Light Service. Green lights all the way!

Double click the photo and it will fill your screen, maybe

O Antiphon, O Christmas

Last Evening's service of Lessons and Carols of Advent at Holy Cross Lutheran Church filled my heart, as did being in the presence of friends.

We sat beside the beautiful cantor who sang the seven Antiphons. Her crystal clear voice poured into our ears and into our hearts, as we responded with the seven hymn stanzas of "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel."

The seven titles attributed to Jesus in the antiphons are Wisdom (Sapientia in Latin), Ruler of the House of Israel (Adonai), Root of Jesse (Radix), Key of David (Clavis), Rising Dawn (Oriens), King of the Gentiles (Rex). and Emmanuel. In Latin the initials of the titles make an acrostic which, when read backwards. means: "Tomorrow I will be there" ("Ero cras"). To the medieval mind this was clearly a reference to the approaching Christmas vigil.

The Fifth Antiphon refers to the Rising Dawn: "O Dayspring, splendor of light everlasting: Come and enlighten those who sit in darkness in the shadow of death."

Winter Solstice

It is good to have the cabinets on the wall instead of in pieces on the table. I tried not to get crabby. He Who Must Be Obeyed worked very hard for at least 10 days on this project. He didn't do much to curb his grumpiness. Grumpy and Crabby are not good bedfellows, or any kind of fellows. But that is a thing of the past and with a little work here and there it is done. Clean and tidy do wonders for us.

I love the first day of winter. Though the Winter Solstice lasts an instant, the term is also used to refer to the full 24-hour period. Sometimes it is called Midwinter.

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

The pink link to Midwinter takes you to the midi tune and a bleak picture. This is absolute pure melancholia. I will take the opportunity to wallow in it, for the rest of the day anyway. Then I must, must, must finish my now too late anyway, cards.
If I don't see you here in the next couple of days, have a Wonderful Christmas.

December Wonder

December 21st. The invitation for Christmas Dinner has been extended. A son is able to come. We are grateful for his acceptance.

The last Advent Service was Wednesday. Hands full of Christmas cards and letters come in to our mail box daily. I marvel at the number of friends that send them to us. My people light up my life. The Nation's Center News came today. Weekly newspapers from small towns are almost like reading a letter with dozens of photos of high school sports and rodeos. People visit, get cars repaired, go to various meetings, hunt coyotes, have birthday parties and it all gets reported.

A former school mate writes of Christmas Programs in one of the many Harding County one room schools in the 40's. Another school mate writes with the easy knowledge of Prince Bandar, who was "born near Taif in 1950 to Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud, son of the King at that time, and a dark-skinned servant girl that would be classified as a concubine rather than a wife." "Prince Sultan, Minister of Defense during my time in Saudi Arabia, came to my school for graduations and other formal situations."

Our small high school in the 'hinter land,' as one of my Augustana College professors referred to it, graduated students that became people of distinction. People with the core values that made them outstanding in their chosen professions; all from a community and neighbors that cared as much for them as their parents. These people are my people. I am fortunate to have been born and raised there; I am fortunate to be able to go back occasionally and breathe the petrichor and see the people.

The Christmas program story takes me to the Grand River Lutheran Church Christmas programs in the basement before the church was finished. I loved the darkened room, the shiny little red chairs we sat in waiting our turn to sing or recite our 'piece.' I loved my Sunday School teachers, but can't remember the pastors. Mothers dyed gauze material a light blue for the angels gowns and boys pushed and pinched in their bathrobes and jousted with their sheep hooks.

I use another breath taking photograph by the Finnish photographer, who is also a fine artist, I see, as I explore his various web sites. No, I can't read Finnish, so I miss out on descriptions and there are 181,000 hits, some for films, some for Master's Thesis in Public Law, too many to list.

An Example of Finland's Nighttime Magic

The copyright marks are worthy protection of Pekka Parviainen's beautiful photography.

Amazing Night Photography

Several years ago I emailed Pekka Parviainen for permission to use one of his aurora photos on my Christmas letter. I lost track of his Web Site over the years and was guided to it again from a blogger. Night photography is fun and fascinating...cold this time of year though.

I miss the dark skies and occasional aurora in Harding County.

Dick Hutchinson from Circle, Alaska is another longtime photographer of the aurora.

Advent Angst

A woman loves more cabinets, but not on her table for five days. I wouldn't dare complain, after all I just got the last clear coat of finish on them yesterday. He Who Must Be Obeyed is wiring an outlet, painting around the place they will be hung; and eventually we will have a new range hood, microwave, and cabinets. Nearly every improvement is prefaced by the worst mess imaginable.

Miraculously, we agreed on the paint color for the ceiling. We abandoned the starkly blueish white for a softer peachish white. Our kitchen could be nominated for one of those worst nightmare kitchens we look at with disbelief on television. The items we are trying to match, not quite the right word, are some 50 year old knotty pine, walnut stained birch cabinets, red kitchen chairs and some 30 year old blue wallpaper that HWMBO loves. Or loves too much to endure the ghastly removal? You can see all of it in the pathetic photo.

I call the house early ugly, it started life in the '40's as a barn and then some desperate soul added on to it and moved in. It is now our "purchased under duress" legacy from the early '70's. I think more desperate people than us, have called it home. It isn't my dream home. But it is functional; that is what a deceased electrical engineer brother in law called it on a visit 20 years ago. It is still functional, although I might have disputed that statement when the john plugged up and ran over a couple of days ago. Another reason not to ever, ever carpet a bathroom. The entire functional house smelled of Clorox for two days...the carpet is white again.

Advent Blessing

Wednesday evening as we sang our way through the Holden Village Advent Evensong, it was a little alarming to see the third Advent candle lit already. Christmas is close. I love the thoughtfulness and anticipation of Advent.

Many Catholics may be surprised to learn that the Advent wreath actually came from Lutherans living in East Germany. It is a simple wreath made of evergreen and adorned with four candles equidistant from each other. They usually correspond to the liturgical colors of the four Sundays of Advent, dark purple or dark blue.

Holy Cross is using the Holden Evening Prayer service by Marty Haugen. Listening to our faith-filled pastor sing the Service of Light was breath taking and singing the 141st Psalm in two parts nearly brought me to tears. It is a beautiful service.

I love it when He Who Must Be Obeyed joins in the singing. Worshiping together is a wonderful way to observe the coming Christmas in a manner that sidesteps the cacophony of the insane commercialism that overtakes some of us. Maybe all of us at one time or another. Tomorrow night he has volunteered to set out the luminaries that for a block guide the visitors to the Living Nativity in the church lawn. A search light will alert that part of the city that the Christ Child lies in the stable; with the camels and donkeys as cold as the choirs of small angels.

The People's Chief

This proud fellow is an artist's (my dad's) rendition of the feelings of many a Chief when the white's took their land, shot the buffalo, and placed The People on poor quality reservation land. It was painted in the 1960's.

Red Viking

Another image of a Red Viking. This one was painted by my dad, Axel Sacrison, when this Viking was about 26 years old.

Viking Tribal Chief

Bryce the Red,
Champion Viking.


Don't let the
sleepy demeanor
fool you.

This guy puts on his tribal headgear to celebrate family every other year.

He took his younger brothers deer hunting the fall he turned 20. He taught them to make a living pouring concrete. He built his bride a house when he was 21, and a second one when he was 24. He saw to it that the town of Belle Fourche ran smoothly when he was 26. He wrestled in glass on the Standing Rock. He was a wild vikinger till he got blood on his own shirt.

Besides, he drinks string bean juice right from the can. How tough is that!

Cake as Symbolic

Cake has a deeper meaning than the amount of calories in each slice. Kids grow up with memories of their birthday cakes, brides look fondly upon photos of their wedding cake, young wives of my era were askance about the 'box cakes' that were new to the grocery shelves. "Oh, it is just a box cake," we might say at the coffee after church.

As my children started to read, I encouraged them to make cake when they could read the directions on the box. I handed the cook book to one of my sons when he was a third grader and was almost horrified when he proceed to make cream puffs and boil the vanilla filling. But a promise is a promise and the results were astonishing.

Early American cooks considered cake, especially chocolate cake, a symbol of well-being. A couple of days ago I made a cake with Seven Minute Icing for my beloved. It was a token of love and well-being. I thought it was beautiful.

You Tubers and Birthdays

You Tube has become the insanity of the serious. The questions on last night's debate were as droll and unrealistic as my favorite satire, The Wittenberg Door. This morning's denial by CNN and the Clinton campaign people that they knew nothing about the plant in the audience is as laughable as the "Lifestyles of the Rich and Religious."

The news just kills me. This morning I read that South Dakota has the lowest rate of depression in the US; in the same article their suicide rate is among the highest. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that one out.

Today is the birthday of three of my favorite writers, the authors of Little Women, The Chronicles of Narnia, and A Wrinkle in Time. L'Engle said, "You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children."

50/50 My Eye

On this day in 1095 Pope Urban II called for the first Crusade to recapture Jerusalem from the Turks. According to the Writers Almanac, there was no imminent threat from the Muslims but Urban noticed that Europe was becoming increasingly violent, with low-level knights killing each other over their land rights, and he thought he could bring peace to the Christian world by directing all that violence against an outside enemy. So he made up stories of how Turks in Jerusalem were torturing and killing Christians, and anyone willing to join the fight against them would go to heaven.

I think I have heard the same thing more recently. "We express our determination to bring an end to bloodshed, suffering and decades of conflict between our peoples; to usher in a new era of peace, based on freedom, security, justice, dignity, respect and mutual recognition; to propagate a culture of peace and nonviolence; to confront terrorism and incitement, whether committed by Palestinians or Israelis." Peace talks in Annapolis, MD.

On a lighter note, the better cook in the house and I made an apple crisp last night. It was very tasty. I love it when we cook together. Actually I love it when we work together at nearly everything except when I am right about how it should be done and he insists that he is. If it comes to the proving, I am almost as chagrined as he, when I am right. I am not very good at celebrating my accuracies. 50/50 my eye.

Helsinki Complaint Choir

Being a consistent watcher of CBS Sunday Morning from my cozy bed is one of my favorite routines. As I told our newly ordained Pastor Jan last night, I am so very thankful for Saturday evening services..but I didn't mention Sunday morning TV in bed. Anyway, their closing clip this morning was the Helsinki Complaint Choir.

It tickled me a couple of years ago when I first discovered it, and in my attempt to share it here this morning, I see the captioning is so small it is nearly worthless. If you really want to know what they are complaining about in Finland get out your magnifying glass. It is the same stuff people complain about everywhere.

I am a hopeless nerd-not. I tried to add a readability test to this blog and couldn't seem to get it to happen. When I tested one of my pages it was high school level, then another one was genius level. I decided it was probably worth what it cost, nothing.

Another Kind of Wonderful

We are going with a different kind of thankful this year. Our predictable dinner was traditional. Dishing up was done while I was stirring gravy, eating was a fast gulp, and the door shut behind the guests 45 minutes after they arrived. Stuff happens. It wasn't good, it wasn't bad, it just was.

I clicked over to Real Live Preacher a few minutes ago and saw the most amazing YouTube Video from Kansas State University. Maybe it is the old librarian in my brain that made me appreciate it so much. It is the flip, flip, flip of the card catalog I occasionally miss...not much though. They produced another one called "The Machine is Us/ing Us." Video for information nerds.

While He Who Must Be OBeyed watched for a shirt tail relative do some rodeoing on TV, I listened to Dr. Ben Carson, from Johns Hopkins Hospital lecture to a group in Baltimore. I have heard him before but the second time around was good again. He said there is no such thing as wasted knowledge; which could make one wonder as we finished "The Exploits of Ben Arnold" by Josephine Waggoner's interview notes.

Is it good to read the words of the scout, who in 1876 rode hard for $200 to deliver the first message of the Custer Massacre (Ed Lemmon's words) on the Greasy Grass from General Reno to the outside world? If you can call General Crook on the Powder River in Montana the outside world. Then there is the other version. Is all knowledge good? Some is a trivial pursuit and questionable.

Dr. Ben Carson is spot on with his wisdom and philosophy.

The Good Life

Our weekend was made happy by the visit of a son and daughter-in-law and another son stopping by to join us for dinner. Having time to sit down with ones grown sons to exchange ideas, viewpoints, opinions and information is the sweet culmination of rearing a house full of little boys. If one can call four sons a houseful of boys. He Who Must Be Obeyed was the fifth of ten, eight of them boys. That is a house full of sons.

Then there is that Finnish research about mothers of sons and the immunosuppressant testosterone that shortens her life. No wonder my real age is 15 years over my calendar age. It is, however, worth it for the hilarity that many sons bring to the dinner table of life. We heard another story that would have horrified us at the time; some hilarity is best saved for parents in their old age.

Today is the day in 1863 that Pres. Lincoln gave his Gettysburg Address at the dedication of a new cemetary. His speech followed the two hour keynote speaker. Most watched the photographer set up his equipment and didn't hear a word Lincoln said. His address was ten sentences, just 272 words, and one that the school pupils in my era memorized. This was in the Writer's Almanac today, with Garrison Keillor.

In my inbox was a Tale Spinner story from an e-friend, Zvonko, of how he helped build a new nation of Tito's Yugoslavia. It begins: "I got out of the POW camp on August 15, 1945. I was happy to be back home in Osijek after the most frightening and dreadful four months of my young life. Several weeks passed before I recovered part of my body weight and some strength returned after sleeping many hours in my own bed. Slowly and persistently I succeeded in burying deep in my subconscious all the horrors and humiliations I had been through."

I have one of his books in my "To Read" pile. Joining it is a thoughtful book review from a learned cousin that arrived last night. Life is good.

Russian Thistles

As a barefoot kid I first loved the soft green Russian Thistles that lined the dirt street in front of our house on the west end of Buffalo, SD. The first green leaves were as soft as the fur of a long haired cat. Green of any kind was good and soft was welcome.

Then the lovely roundness of the bushy plant turned on us; and except for the cowboy song,we never called it a tumbling tumbleweed. I found out this morning that the round, bushy, "much branched plant growing 1 to 3 1/2 foot high originally hitched a ride from the steppes of Mongolia with a shipment of grain. The first soft branches fall off and the next set of leaves are short, stiff, spiny and about this time of the year the plant breaks off at the base and winds like we have had in the high plains bring it to life, so to speak.

This week, according to the Rapid City Journal, "The high winds that whipped through the region over the past two days drove hundreds of tumbleweeds into the town (of Fariburn) 30 miles south of Rapid City.

"Tubleweeds now fill the basketball court at the Fairburn Elementary School, clog the ditches, cover the side of at least one house, surround vehicles and cover Tammy Shepherd's backyard. ... The tumbleweeds rolled in Tuesday afternoon with the wind.

"The song was penned in 1934 by Bob Nolan, one of the founding members of the Sons of the Pioneers. Gene Autry sang it in the 1935 movie of the same name, and it was later performed by such noted cowpokes as Diana Ross and the Supremes..."

Personally I don't think the latter were exactly 'cowpokes,' who knows what they were poking. Probably fun at those of us who started wearing shoes when Russian Thistles rolled into town.

The tumbleweed snowman? http://www.dukecityfix.com/index.php?itemid=1282

Armistice Day

Today is Armistice Day, or Veteran's Day here in the US.

Kurt Vonnegut was born Nov. 11, 1922, died this past April. They seldom list his book, Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!, which was one of my favorites. Vonnegut explains it thus in the prologue:"This is the closest I will ever come to writing an autobiography. I have called it "Slapstick" because it is grotesque, situational poetry -- like the slapstick film comedies, especially those of Laurel and Hardy, of long ago. It is about what life feels like to me." Here is that 'cosmic loneliness' from which I suffer from time to time. No wonder I liked the book.

Right now I am listening to BBC Radio Player's Broadcast on the Radio 3 Night Waves Nov. 8th discussion "Exploring the cultural legacy of Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse-Five, which focuses on the Allied fire bombing of Dresden during WWII.

"On December 14, 1944, Vonnegut was captured in the Battle of the Bulge. He was held as a POW in Dresden, a beautiful German city with no major industries or military presence. The bombing of Dresden was unexpected. Vonnegut and the other POWs were some of the only survivors. They waited out the bombing in a meat cellar deep under the slaughterhouse."

While poking about the Web, I discovered this Gradesaver written by Harvard students. I suppose now that I am not concerned about grades, as such, this is a wonderful site. Maybe it is more detailed than the more known CliffsNotes. Cliff was a graduate student in geology and physics at the University of Nebraska in the dirty thirties. Working out of Lincoln, Nebraska, Cliff built the company that produces the most widely used study guides in the world. Cliff's message for students was to use CliffsNotes to better understand literature.

But I digress. He Who Must Be Obeyed has washed all of the windows already this morning, his having gone to church last night. I stayed in my cozy bed, having had one of those new inoculations for shingles yesterday. I asked the pharmacist who drove over to Belleview to get the prescription, what shall I expect. He had no idea as it was so new. That wasn't exactly comforting. I am hoping I don't break out in an elderly version of chicken pox. "Let me know," he requested. And so it goes.

Six Degrees of Separation

Some of the younger generation, who tell me they 'hate history,' might be surprised to learn that this theory was first proposed in 1929, by a Hungarian writer in a short story called "Chains." Then in the 1950's a couple of guys from MIT and IBM set out to prove the theory mathematically.

Stanley Milgram devised a new way to test the theory in 1967, which he called "the small-world problem." Milgram's findings were published in Psychology Today and inspired the phrase "six degrees of separation." A play, movie and one of the "Ten Best Web Sites of 1996" have followed.

In 2001, Duncan Watts, a professor at Columbia University, recreated Milgrams experiment on the Internet. Watts' research, and the advent of the computer age, has opened up new areas of inquiry related to six degrees of separation in diverse areas of network theory such as as power grid analysis, disease transmission, graph theory, corporate communication, and computer circuitry.

Is this a bunch of mumbo-jumbo? How did you say you found this blog?

My Aunt Liz

I finally put summer away and have started my latest book project. My Great Aunt Elizabeth was one of those pioneer teachers who was often smaller and probably younger than some of her students.

She told one of her sons that she had to resort to carrying a quirt to school to keep order in one of her soddy school houses. How I loved her; and how I pray I can write her biography with the honor she deserves.

I have a box of her letters, papers and photos beside the computer and I plan to begin the task of compiling them into a lovely little book.

RealAge and an Epiphany

A former neighbor, Sebastian, stopped to say hello as I was pushing the mulching mower around the front yard yesterday. He and his wife invited us over for dinner about 30 years ago to meet his mother from Sicily. She didn't speak English, but people can gather and enjoy one another's company over ethnic food.

During Sebastian's visit, a little flash of clarity hit me. While He Who Must Be Obeyed and I were so terribly busy raising our own five children (BP-Before Pill), taking in needy children for periods of from four to 12 years, trying to get ourselves through the University before we turned 40, and working at our chosen professions; all of those years I always had a dream that when it was completed, there would be 'something wonderful' out there for us.

Up to yesterday, I felt the elusive 'something' was always out of reach, even after 12 years of retirement. Family demands continue their deadly grip; a one way thing; which is, of course, the Heart of Christianity, to quote Marcus Borg.

Sebastian's visit made something click in my head and a glimmer of the epiphany happened. Our life right now is the 'something wonderful,' this hour and today and tomorrow. How simple can that be? Why was it so hard to see? This is all there is and to flip that, this is everything it is! And it is Something Wonderful, sometimes big and sometimes very small...but it IS. Clinton was right, it is "the meaning of IS"

AND THEN...

I have always been a fool for those little tests on the Internet that are designed to tell you everything with 12 questions. Last night there were many more questions and the outcome was dismal. I had better keep my closet clean as it appears that I could slip over the edge any day now.

Seems tricky that I mow and mulch leaves, which I did twice this week, with one foot in the grave. My lifestyle and situational stress is doing me in before I am finished. I had better get busy with my Aunt Liz's biography. All of that work doesn't just jump into the computer by osmosis, no matter how close I keep the box full of letters, papers and photos to my computer. When I finish that task, the grim reaper can have his way with me, but not until I hold those sweet little books in my old arthritic hands.

The results of my RealAge test were "Calendar Age, 72.8, Difference +15.0, RealAge 87.9. If Mehmet Oz has his face on the home page it must be true. Alas.

I do feel like 87+ most days. I wonder how much stock I can take in this seemingly innocuous test? I got an email this morning with "just a few of the RealAge tools that can help me look and feel younger in as few as 90 days." Isn't that swell!

Hawaiian Wedding

The fourth of our six granddaughters married her best friend in Hawaii late this summer. They are a beautiful couple.

It was thrilling to see the photos this afternoon.

We also have six grandsons. None married as of yet; four of them are in college.

Supercell over Cave Hills

I continue to be amazed by the Internet. Browsing around Google Earth Images I found this Supercell photo by Chris Siewert. One can type in a location and if there are photos that someone has uploaded, there you are...I was transported home once more. I was amazed by the cloud over my grandparent's homestead, 14 KM from Redig, SD, it says. I would recognize that horizon even if I only saw a small segment of it. Many thanks to Chris Siewert for the sight.

A Marcus Borg Story

Marcus Borg spoke in Omaha this past spring. A friend loaned me a CD she purchased at the Christ Community Church where he conducted a workshop. Of course I know he is controversial. His sermon was "Being Christian in a Time of Christian Change." The following is a story he tells:

"One of my favorite stories concerns a young married couple who had a three year old daughter and the mom was about to give birth to the second child. The little three year old girl was really excited about having a new baby brother or sister, and when the new baby got home, the three-year old girl was absolutely insistent that she be permitted to be in the baby's room with the baby alone with the door shut. The parents were a little bit nervous about this, and then they remembered that they had an intercom system. So they let the little girl go into the room; the door was shut; they ran to the intercom, and then they heard the little girl say to the baby, "Tell me about God. I've almost forgotten." I think it's a haunting story because it suggests not only that we come from God, but that we have a memory of that. And that the process of growing up, being socialized, learning language, all of that, is to a large extent, a process of forgetting."

2 Timothy 3:1-9 Godlessness You must understand this, that in the last days distressing times will come. For people will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, inhuman, implacable, slanderers, profligates, brutes, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to the outward form of godliness but denying its power. Avoid them! For among them are those who make their way into households and captivate silly women, overwhelmed by their sins and swayed by all kinds of desires, who are always being instructed and can never arrive at a knowledge of the truth. As Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these people, of corrupt mind and counterfeit faith, also oppose the truth. But they will not make much progress, because, as in the case of those two men, their folly will become plain to everyone.

National Geographic Magazine provides desktop wallpaper. There are truly beautiful photos to choose from. It appears that I will have to resort to other people's autumn photos for my fall colors. I am still hoping the back yard pear tree will develop its usual display.

Today was one of those bright but crisp sunny calm days that calls for a person to be outside even if they have to invent a purpose...other than reading in the hammock with a blanket. I moved some rocks, sacked up some tomatoes and flowers that will surely freeze in a few days, and and rolled up a couple of hoses. Working in my back yard is one of life's pleasures. This afternoon was especially good.

By the time He Who Must Be Obeyed came home from a day of cleaning carpets I was ready to share the left over meatloaf, acorn squash, and baked potatoes from last night with him. Should a 74 year old man be cleaning carpets? Now he thinks he should do a couple of our own rooms. I don't think so. But he is filling up Rug Doctor as I speak so what can I say.

Ordination

An Ordination is an amazing event. Our Vicar Jan is now a Pastor and we are a joy filled congregation. Our Nebraska Bishop delivered the sermon and conducted the ceremony. He is a man with a soft, warm, compassionate voice; he lives in grace and grace is what he bestows in the name of Jesus the Christ.

He Who Must Be Obeyed and I picked up a friend, who joined Holy Cross the same summer we became members. Events are made all the more memorable when they are shared. The church was filled with joy and joyful people. We missed the ordination of a great niece and are saddened for not being there.

My thoughts went to ordinations past and ones to come. At this moment we have a dear friend in my email folders as "Sara from Senegal." She spent a couple of years there in the Peace Corps and is now at Pacific Lutheran Seminary. She already pastors me by email.

A beloved cousin, Pastor HMS was ordained in my home town. My mother purchased his first stole. He wore it delivering her memorial service in the Cave Hills Lutheran Church. I thought of him, and her last night from my vigil seat at the ordination service.

One of my dear, dear friend's son's is a Catholic Priest. His ordination was unforgettable, drawing tears of holy wonder and thanksgiving. He studied at the Vatican and the Cardinal Red was an impressive sight as he took his vows during his ordination in Omaha.

Our red ecclesiastical paraments are only used at Pentecost and Reformation Sunday; and they were used last night. The attending pastor's stoles were red over their white albs. It was beautiful. Red for this Nebraska transplant does not remind me of football. It reminds me of my most holy spiritual beginnings.

Long Shadows

The late October sun casts long shadows in the back yard. The breeze is holding its breath and the trees reflected in the water are prettier than the real deal. When, I wonder, will the pear leaves turn their enchanting red, burgundy and gold?

Frogs on Watch

If you have watched CSPAN II and weekends of Book TV, you know that it leans to the left during normal viewing hours. This morning at 7 A.M. Central time, I watched an hour with three panelists that recommended books for college students to read. Probably to give them some perspective in light of what they are experiencing in their college classrooms today.

The event was hosted by the Young America's Foundation. The publishing houses of Regnery, Encounter Books, and the author, Wynton Hall, who wrote "The Right Words: Great Republican Speeches That Shaped History" made up the panel. All concerned conservatives apparently.

Nothing pleases me more than hearing words that confirm my own ideas, habits, ways of living. To be told to make margin notes in books, keeping about five books going at one time is a perfectly fine, and if a book you start isn't interesting, quit reading it; advice a bit horrifying to an old librarian. Thus, how happy I am to be given permission to do what I have been doing for years.

The list of books they recommended for college students to read is good advice for me. When asked by a student, "what should I start with?" this is what was suggested:

"The Conscience of a Conservative" by Barry Goldwater
I found a strange thing as I looked this up on the web. Amazon's price was $250.00 to $8.94. The customer reviews at Amazon are interesting. There are at least three free hits on the web that give it in its entirety. I include only one from Heritage.

"Witness" by Whittaker Chambers. Again the reviews of readers at this Amazon site are interesting. Having a great-grandmother that voiced her strong opinion in Butte, Montana, might be reason enough for me to read it. It takes the reader from 1920's to the 1950's.

"A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles" by Thomas Sowell. Quoting one reviewer in part, "It is unfortunate that Dr. Sowell's reputation as a conservative will probably keep many people who consider themselves liberals from reading this book. They would profit by understanding the perspective of those people with whom they are in an eternal debate... They (conservatives) might be quite surprised to find that Dr. Sowell is very non-judgmental in this book and does not side with either vision."

"What is So Great About Christianity" Dinesh D'Souza. Once again quoting one of the Amazon reviewers: "He accomplishes what the purpose of the book is meant to do, show the sheer folly of the over-the-Top rhetoric of Harris, Dawkins, and Hitchens." The link to D'Souza is from LexisNexis News.

Prophetic Radio

Yesterday as I got ready to spend some time with seven former co-workers, I curled and halfheartedly listened to a program on elders and falling on National Public Radio. We fall because we and our homes are old, we fall because of our poor vision, our poor balance, and the hazards of our housekeeping.

Our hostess had a newly remodeled kitchen and we gathered to laugh around the table. I wasn't laughing a whole lot, as just prior to sitting down for lunch, I misjudged a step and fell. Falling at my age is startling to say the least, and it seemed to be as equally amazing to the observers.

Being on the floor is a familiar place for me. Cleaning can do that to you, as can just about everything about life. Sometimes I get down just to practice getting up again. So yesterday, I had an impromptu opportunity to practice getting up once again.

Just a note of personal observation, we old folks seem to be falling for a lot of reasons, we fall for scammers, we fall for pleas for cash, we fall for telemarketers, we fall for the lies we are told, we fall for things we would never have fallen for a couple of decades ago. Maybe a fall or two will sharpen up my brains a little; as well as my ability to get up and take another try at life.

Husker Maniacs

We went for haircuts Saturday afternoon in the middle of the third quarter of the football game in Lincoln. As I settled into the chair, I asked my beautician how she was. "I am depressed, very sad and kind of angry," she said. I didn't make the connection to the game until too late. I should have gotten up and said I would come back another day...but then He Who Must Be Obeyed was in the next chair telling his person not to mess up his comb over.

"I just want the edges trimmed," I told V. She probably didn't hear me nor did she care. Transparency is the hazard we older INFP's deal with. I haven't learned how to navigate those waters yet and I spend more time than I like with the results of it.

She handed me back my glasses as she whisked the last of the clippings down my shirt; in her depression, she not only trimmed the edges, she nearly scalped me. I am not even a football fan, geeky me, in this society of depressed Nebraskans who are bemoaning the team, the coaches and the administrators who profiteer from all of it.

It will take me six weeks to get over this last game. V. will never see my white head again. I have had very bad luck with hair cutters. The last one scammed me out of several hundred dollars, the last time I saw her was as she left my living room with a check for $250 for her latest emergency. She was going to pay me back the next day.

I am a darned fool and maybe I will let my hair grow and wear it in nice bun like my own Mummu did.

Mindful of Sweet White Sheets

"Economists are now studying attention – and the religious are studying mindfulness. Mindfulness keeps us focused and attentive to an object, event or series of thoughts of our own choosing. The work of mindfulness requires calibration because the demands upon our attention are numerous." Father Gawain

Mindfulness gets me nowhere on a web search. Only one hit in a search in the ELCA site, that being hidden away in a list of New Theological Directions. "Jesus' emphasis on eschatology is minimal, hence his devotion to the godly life now; Paul's mindfulness of the end of all time is greater. Jesus' teachings on church-as-institution are minimal; Paul's are necessarily greater."

Last night we made our bed with the bedding right off of the clothes lines. The smell of line dried sheets is right up there with the smell of my mother's homemade bread. I have helped her take frozen sheets from the clothes line, as hard as boards, and hung them on a temporary line in the living room to finish drying. That aroma penetrated the whole house.

We were mindful of our blessings as we settled down for rest after a day's labor. The bright whiteness of the bedding, the wonderful ozone aroma, and the luxury of our new mattress and box spring were about the best that this world has to offer.

How to Make a Grapevine Wreath

Today I had to recover the two, nearly three lines of the clothesline. I didn't know what I was getting into when I coaxed the grapes there by pinning the little tender shoots to the wire with a clothes pin. Stuff that one day seems like a good idea can turn on a person.

Today undoing the mess took a lot of pulling and cutting with both my small trimmer and the longer handled one. Once more I can hang all my sheets, devot, and pillow cases on the lines at one time; they are finally wiped clean of grape and city grime.

After cutting all the leaves off, I pushed all of the longer vines into the swimming pool to soften up a little. Then He Who Must Be Obeyed wound them up like he used to wind up barbed wire. It is 'over the top and to one side and then over the top and to the other side. All ends get tucked in and up and over.' I will show you the process and the finished work.

The Hardest Knot

Before we moved away from our three summers/two winters life in Nemo, South Dakota, Frank Troxell tied this knot and gave it to us. It has hung on our back porch wall for almost 40 years. Frank Troxell was a story teller and as he rented a former Homestake house to us, he would come over often to check the house, drink coffee and tell me wonderful stories. I had a blatant love for him. He must have been in his late 70's or even 80's then. I a very lonely little mother with a brood of five in this community of less than 45 colorful folks.

When I Googled Frank's name, I got three hits, each one with fond memories of that little historic community. He had purchased the entire town in 1946, had rebuilt it in to a working Guest Ranch, complete with cattle, horses, a small general store and post office. I worked in the cafe during hunting seasons and helped with the cabins in the summers. This link will take you to a short history of Nemo.

After Homestake moved its milling operation to Spearfish in 1940, Nemo was virtually a ghost town until a Martin cattle rancher brought new life to the dying town.

Frank Troxell bought the town in 1946 and his dream of Black Hills dude ranch became a reality. Naming the resort for their 4 T brand, the Troxells set to work restoring the aging timber camp buildings. Homestake's office building became a western-themed restaurant; vacant homes and the old meat market were remodeled into lodges and cabins; the old Hotel Annex became home to Troxell family members.

Hollywood discovered Nemo in the 1950s. Western film makers shot location scenes at the 4 T, utilizing as authentic props the antique stage coach and chuck wagon still on display at the site. From Deadwood Magazine.

Life there was like living in a movie set, with old time barn dances down the road, ropes for the children to pull, tolling the beginning of school classes and church service.

Younger and Wiser

Wise souls are the ones we seek out when out life spirals out of control. I find them everywhere; usually in the most unexpected places. Sometimes by chance, sometimes by a little searching, sometimes face to face; more often by reading. Where would we readers be if we could no longer pick up a book or web hop?

The anger welled up in my throat again this morning. I found a piece of good advice from SIMPLICITY, the link to the right of this. Good advice is good. Thank you J.M.

This is the last paragraph from his THE WORST THING ABOUT THINKING THE WORST IN OTHERS: "The best route is to avoid situations of thinking ill of others by enacting exemplar behaviors yourself. You are likely to be in a better position as you are in a better mood and more resilient to adopting negative behavior -- thus affecting your surrounds with the positive energy necessary to do amazing things in this world."

And this is what I grew up with: "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres." I am so thankful for parents that set this before me, not that I can live up to it. Perhaps the striving for it is the hope one needs.

Crazy Horse

According to the Black Hills News Bureau "South Dakota's 18th annual Native American Day celebration yesterday at Crazy Horse Memorial featured a traveling high-tech classroom and opportunities to experience Native culture." The SD Legislature established the holiday in 1989.

He Who Must Be Obeyed knew Korczak Ziolkowski, as he loaded dynamite into his pick up for him; the dynamite in the back, the blasting caps and primeacord, to set it off, in the glove box in the cab.

During his School Of Mines and Technology days, he worked at a variety of jobs, as he was one of the students 'working their way through college.' One of his jobs was for a specialty building supply company. J.S. Kibben, the owner, was blind, and HWMBO was at times Mr. Kibben's right hand, so to speak. One of his tasks was to off load dynamite from semi tractor-trailer trucks into the dynamite magazine at a quarry, north of town. When colorful Ziolkowski came to Rapid City with a fist full of five dollar bills for dynamite to blast rock off his mountain, it was HWMBO who loaded his pickup.

"Sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski started carving Crazy Horse Memorial in 1948. His wife, Ruth, and seven members of their family have continued the work since his death in 1982. His tomb is near the foot of the mountain carving.

Potlatch

Today I celebrate a sort of potlatch alone. Once one of my fellow library science students did a "Pathfinder" on the potlatch. That semester in 1974, each of us created four or five of them; this is how it went: We had to find every single reference to the subject that we chose and our paper was not the information we found, it was the bibliographic sources we found in the University library.

Potlatch is a Canadian word from Nootka. According to one definition it is the "ultimate manifestation of the principle that it is more blessed to give than to receive...Potlatches were part of the way of life of many of the Indians of the northern Pacific coast of North America. Traditional gifts included weapons, slaves, furs, and blankets. Some reports say that a particularly ostentatious host might burn the blankets that guests weren't able to take. The Canadian government banned potlatches in 1884, but they continued anyhow, becoming fully legal again in 1951.

So today I am in a give-away mode. I will never know the recipients; I will know however, that someone will stay a little warmer this winter because of my clean out and my give away. However, I will not burn down the place because I didn't give it all away. That will be the great and final potlatch, and we will know it is over "when the fat lady sings."

Try, Try Again

The Harvest Moon at 9:15 p.m., Sept. 27, 2007. Gray's Anatomy does not pre-empt this wondrous sight, nor the half hour of experimental photography. Is it any wonder our pre-history forefathers spent nights in worshipful amazement.

Harvest Moon

After collecting garbage for the morning pickup, pulling some weeds; O.K., and replanting some ferns, a warm swim as the Harvest Moon was rising was almost an adrenaline rush. Night photography is tricky and I don't have it mastered, but the results are nearly always surprising.

Correction

Hildred of daybyday is an amazing blogger from British Columbia, Canada. I have had an error to her link. I believe she is of such consequence that I spent a bit of time this morning trying to correct it. I believe I have. It works for me now and I hope it does for you as well. Sorry Hildred.

Such Sweet Swimming

I had a lovely swim in the rain a couple of nights ago. Am I a poor steward of God's goodness when we heat our water to a comfortable 90'? I get a little twinge of guilt about it, even if it is almost as therapeutic as a Finnish sauna.

Now there is a nice idea: have a Finnish sauna and jump into a cold swimming pool. No matter, I luxuriate in happiness and am glad for a few moments when I swim in the rain, snow or sun. Who would know that when we built the small back yard pool when we were in our 40's that we would enjoy it more then ever in our 70's. Life is good.

Good for Google

I have a Google Alert on my beloved homeland, "Harding County" to be exact, of South Dakota. It astounds me at what I learn from them. Today it picked up a news article from the Black Hills Pioneer newspaper.

"According to Mark Gabel, BHSU emeritus professor and curator of the Herbarium, the primary goal of the Herbarium staff is to document the little known flora of western South Dakota and the Black Hills including the Bear Lodge Mountains of Wyoming. An example is the ongoing study of the flora of Harding County that is an example of combining field studies with collection based research. The Herbarium is a vital resource for conservation research.
"The flora of the Black Hills (including the Bear Lodge Mountains of eastern Wyoming) is unique, with elements of the eastern deciduous forest, the Great Plains, the boreal forest, the Rocky Mountains and southwestern United States. Species of plants previously unknown in the region are being discovered from the Black Hills every year," Gabel says.
The Herbarium obtained a major grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to create a database all of the plants from West River South Dakota and eastern Wyoming. The grant will provide a Web-accessible database with all label data from over 100,000 specimens by 2009.

For this past prairie walker, who loved the plants I pondered as a child, this was indeed good news. Now I will be able to explore the prairie floor once more.

Contradictions

The Museum of Religious Art in Logan, Iowa, was one of our destinations last Tuesday. It was indeed amazing. The early southwestern-style mission chapel above consists of pieces from a variety of sources - including area churches, and even a local barn. A quiet place for reflection.

Life is full of contradictions. A term used by Karl Marx to refer to mutually antagonistic tendencies in a society.

After NE State Senator Chambers made public his lawsuit against God, today's Omaha World Herald has a column in the Living section, "Nonbelievers Finding and Audience." It alludes to this as the age of the New Atheism. "So-called new atheists are distinguishable from the old by the nature and tone of their attacks on God and religion, said Hector Avalos, a professor of religious studies at Iowa State University." Avalos is an atheist himself. "In fact the New Atheism challenges religion as an immoral and destructive force." I wonder how many athiests teach religious studies at our universities in the US?

Martin Marty, Christian Theologian Nebraska native considered one of the nation's foremost religion scholars, said "Your average Baptist, Catholic or Lutheran is undisturbed by them (ballyhooed atheist books). Marty said religion's most recent critics don't hold a candle to such "great God-killers of modern times" as Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud.

Marty goes on to say the worst enemy of Christianity is indifference.

Really, Really Mad at God

I would imagine that most of us, if not outright mad at God, sometimes wonder about all of the bad things that happen to good people. Our Omaha, District 2 State Senator, Ernie Chambers, has filed a lawsuit against God. I love the photo that Jeff Baker has of the noisy senator in his blog "Defend us In Battle" It has been said that he is the angriest black man in Omaha.

We all know it is to prove a point about frivolous law suits...but I think it was actually to get the attention of the media. The honored senator is a self proclaimed atheist. For an atheist to sue God, you'd think he might think God is 'out there.' He could have sued Santa Clause, to prove a point as well. If you follow Jeff's links you will be able to read the whole story.

Sometimes when our Nebraska Unicameral is in session and times hangs heavy in the house, I go to the channel that carries the loquacious Chambers in session. He obviously loves a captive audience. Once upon a time I had a student documentary crew that chose him as their subject. He was receptive to their interview and as always, not at a loss for words.

Salty Salsa Dancing

It is easy to read a few hours away. Having our computer between the kitchen and living room is good when there are children in the house; but when one is in their own second childhood, the location is much too tempting. I was on my way to a different task but got side tracked by a well written priest.

The Salty Vicar's column in the SOMA Review was great fun to read. I can identify with his getting caught up in the moment of dancing, in or out of his collar. For this one time jitterbugging/schottishing country girl, his description of the dance was my own reverie of an unsophisticated time and place.

Cattle Gates and Buffalo

A trip home gives weeks of pleasant memories. Photos are a reminder of the sights seen, sweet prairie smells, the sound of a meadow lark.

High Plains Sunflowers

Coming home to Omaha on highway 20 which follows the Niobrara River is a beautiful drive. I had an opportunity to take a few photos of sunflowers and we stopped at the Museum of the Fur Trade: Traders, Trappers, and Indians. It is a marvelous place. It was good to learn more about the early American entrepreneurs.

I wish it were closer so I could spend more time in their book room.
The museum publishs books also. I learned that the Josephine Waggoner papers are in England being edited by a British historian, Kingsley Bray, and will be published by the Museum in a couple of years. The actual work of printing and binding is being done in China. That was an epiphany.

Josephine Waggoner was the grandmother of Carl Braine. "Hokshila Waste (Good Boy in the Sioux Language) was born in South Dakota on the Standing Rock Reservation, once the home of famed Hunkpapa Sioux leader Sitting Bull. In those days woman still carried their babies in shawls on their backs and from that high, snug place Carl watched his Teton Lakota grandmother stir big kettles of corn soup on an outdoor fire. When it rained or the wind blew, Carl's mother covered him completely and he bobbed along against his mother's warm back."

Looking Through Blue Windows

It is always good to go home for Labor Day to see friends, classmates, cousins, and have breakfast on the Lion's Club with the other Old Timers. Once again we hung two prints of my dad's paintings. While we were at the Harding County Museum, a group of cousins and friends took over a table and had a good visit.

I need to go there for a few days to read old newspapers for a writing project I am attempting, the biography of my Great Aunt Elizabeth. But before that I have a stack of papers from Aunt Liz's sons to go through. They take me back to my own childhood as she lived in the same end of town as we did. Actually the entire northwest end of town had been originally in my great-grandparent's name and so consequently there settled my grandmother and two of her brothers and two of her sisters as well as my parents. I grew up with about 14 cousins, mostly boys.

Our strange little house had windows Mumu Haivala brought from the Lead/Deadwood area and were concave and turning blue with age. I loved them; they were wonderful windows. I just bet the glass was beveled.

It is good for the soul to go home.

Good-Bye O.K.

A good neighbor and friend died Saturday morning. His funeral is tomorrow. We were awakened Saturday morning to the knock of an Omaha policeman, asking if we could come and stay with his wife until the mortuary fellows arrived. He wanted to die at home and he did.

O.K. was Oliver Kriss P., one of those best generation fellows that sailed the Pacific during WWII and the Korean war, manning the guns of the Destroyer, USS Brown. He was keen with dates, places and names and for 12 years he organized the Brown's Navy reunions. The Brown had docked in Hiroshima, Japan one month after the big bomb. O.K walked the streets of what remained of that city so shortly after the Enola Gay dropped the bomb that was the end of the war and the beginning of the Atomic Age.

O.K. always had a story ready and enjoyed a cup of coffee with a neighbor, I will miss him a lot.

Nebraska: The Good Life

A little swim, a little weeding, a little reading!

Knock, Knock, Who's There?

The knocking is on my forehead and I swear nobody's home. I wander around with no purpose except when I am in the pool with a brush chasing red algae. I log on and stare at a blank screen and wonder what I am doing.

I can't write so I hunt around for bloggers that make sense. I found three that I think are remarkable. First it was Hildred with her wonderful writing and beautiful photographs of her area in British Columbia; next it was a mother with five little boys reminding me what it was like to have five babies, although I only had four little boys; that blog's comments took me back to Omaha with Jeff who keeps our city safe and is a recently baptized Catholic convert. All three write so well and with such purpose. Sometimes maybe it is good to stop and read. Reading is good.

It is obvious to me that somebody is home out there.

Buffalo Commons Again

A cousin, Lawrence Brown, no longer living, wrote "Buffalo Commons Memoirs" in 1995. He spent a lot of pages on the debate of what should be 'done' with the Great Plains in the beginning of his book. He not only wrote to the Poppers, Frank who taught Environmental Studies at Rutgers University and Deborah who taught Urban Studies at New York University at the time, but he invited them out to his ranch in northwestern South Dakota to have a look at the land and people for themselves, which they did.

A Google alert led me to a hit this morning that starts "Summers are scorching and winters frigid. The wind whips through the grasslands year-round, its wailing adding to the hypnotic desolation of the Great Plains." Immediately under this statement is a photo of the animals of the Serengeti, while the text reads about our Great Plains and Kevin Costner's location of Dances With Wolves. How irritating I find it.

"It’s vindication of sorts for East Coast professors Frank Popper and his wife, Deborah Popper. The two were maligned by residents here for predicting 20 years ago that Plains population losses would be so dire that government one day would take over large expanses of the region and return them to their natural state by creating a “Buffalo Commons” — a national park where bison would roam." “Now, the Buffalo Commons has become a lot more plausible,” says Frank Popper, a land-use planner and professor at Rutgers University. “There are five to eight different ways this is all going on right now."

I found it interesting that the writer includes this statement of the location of my family reunion this summer. "Rural areas continue to grapple with young people leaving and old people dying. In Vale, a tiny town near Rapid City, S.D., the school closed and the Last Call Bar moved into the old schoolhouse. Alumni still gather there for reunions, owner Kathy Wood says. Weddings and banquets are held in the old gymnasium. Local children now are bused to a school 5 miles away."

My defensive feelings well up in me as I read through the article; it started with the zebra and gnu in the first picture and never got softened up by the last paragraph; "The Poppers are happy about the changes on the Plains."

“It’s got to be better economically,(Economic opportunities now include energy — oil wells are being drilled throughout the western Dakotas and investments in renewable energy sources (wind, solar) and bio-fuels are up — and tourism.) even if it’s a gamble, than the continued slow-leak decline,” Frank Popper says. “It’s got to be better than things like casinos, prisons and hazardous waste dumps. … What we’ve got is a Plan B for a region whose Plan A has been failing it for well over a century.”

This is probably true, albeit indelicately put by someone obviously not living in the area. I couldn't find the author. My name was required to leave a reply but I didn't know to whom I would be replying.

More Rocks

Sometimes He Who Must Be Obeyed brings gifts. On Monday I was ceremoniously presented two lighted rocks, one a rough pink quartz and one a single smoky quartz point; both are beautiful in their own right, but really quite spectacular when plugged in to sparkle our night wanderings.

That was the first; the second really set be back on my heels. He off loaded 400 pounds of South Dakota sandstone moss rock which he had hand picked, weighed, and then loaded into his pickup box. He actually handled the 400 pounds three times before I got my eyes on it.

Yesterday morning the minute HWMBO drove out to do his Omaha daughter duty, I got a little two wheeled appliance mover and hauled them over to a row of bushes beside a walk and proceeded to level the dirt and lay them in as orderly and logical manner as I could determine. I like the rocks, I like the results of my own sweat equity. The photos do not do them justice. They contain the color palette of my artist father's South Dakota landscapes.

And So It Goes

Kurt Vonnegut used the chorus "So it goes" every time a passage deals with death, dying or mortality, as a transitional phrase to another subject, as a reminder, and as comic relief. It is also used to explain the unexplained. There are 106 "so it goes" anecdotes laced throughout the story. (Slaughterhouse-Five)

This morning it all started with a blogger writing of the Zen of Picking Berries. Another of those in your blood things passed down by Finnish grandmothers, perhaps. We northwestern South Dakota berry pickers didn't have to stand in swamps to pick cloud berries, we stood in prairie creek bottoms, swatting our own brand of mosquitoes, jumping rattlesnakes, and eying poison ivy to fill our buckets with June berries, wild plum, chokecherry and later in the summer or early fall the buffalo berries that sweetened with the first frost. I can easily understand the zen of it.

Kurt Vonnegut wasn't the only author that intrigued me; when I read "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," it was neither the mushroom experiment nor the repair of motorcycles that intrigued me, it was Pirsig's exploration of the meaning of the concept, "quality." He explored the term by assigning his Montana State University students the task of defining the word. Then he said it cannot be defined because it empirically precedes any intellectual construction and it (Quality or value)is the knife-edge of experience known to all. This is all out of wikipedia, and we don't know what that is worth. It fills space and so it goes.

Paralyzed by Hate Mail

Some letters should never be mailed. Our bi-polar daughter sent He Who Must Be Obeyed a 16 page letter detailing my parenting faults. A lot of hate for me was spewed out in it. Apparently she spent days on it as it was dated on various pages. "You sure picked a winner!" she told him.

She and her daughter agree on one thing; I am a mean, selfish, hateful woman. My working was among my wrongs. Apparently both of them would love to drum me right out of the family.

Have you, dear reader, ever experienced real hatred? It is difficult to get through day to day knowing that if you were not alive, it would make some people happy. I wonder if every person experiences this? If they do, I have never been told about it; if they don't, that must make me as horrible as the letters indicate. Am I the only hated person on the earth?

I wonder if I am being delusional and my perception is skewed. I was told to 'forget it.' Some insults are seared into ones brain and are not easily forgotten. I see that HWMBO burned the letter in a trash can. I dove in for the scraps of it this morning reading through and around the scorched and blackened uneven edges of the few pages that were left. I just wanted to see if what I had read a few days ago was real or my imagination. It was real. It was damning. How dare I set foot in church, sinner that I am, I was told by both of them.

Finnish Grandmothers

If it is in the Scientific American, must it be true? The article is "What Finnish Grandmothers Reveal about Human Evolution."

"The 33-year-old Finnish biologist, aided by genealogists, has pored through centuries-old tomes (and microfiche) for birth, marriage and death records, which ended up providing glimpses of evolution at work in humanity's recent ancestors. Among them: that male twins disrupt the mating potential of their female siblings by prenatally rendering them more masculine; mothers of sons die sooner than those of daughters, because rearing the former takes a greater toll; and grandmothers are important to the survival of grandchildren. "I'm trying to understand human reproductive behavior from an evolutionary perspective," Lummaa says."

"The evolutionary biologist has also used this historical data set to ponder the conundrum of grandmothers. That is, why human women often live long after they are able to reproduce (on average around the age of 50), unlike almost all other animals. "If your ultimate purpose in life was to create as many offspring as possible or pass off as many genes," Lummaa says, "it's kind of strange that human women stop halfway."..."That suggests that perhaps one reason why women do carry on living is because they are able to help."

Me here again: What an irony to have sons, destroy your immune system, die sooner; but not before you help, or raise, the grandchildren. It is interesting that Lumma theorizes that it is the testosterone flooding the womb to make boys that destroys ones immune system. The article was interesting.

Lummaa has now turned her attention to the effect of grandfathers on grandchildren. If grandmothers improve survival odds, what do elderly males contribute? "If anything there's a negative effect," she says. This could be because of the cultural tradition of catering to men, particularly old men. "Maybe if you had an old grandpa, he was eating your food," she speculates.