On March 29, Bernie Hunhoff of the South Dakota Magazine wrote about the book, "Montana 1948." When I first read it a few years ago it both mesmerized and bewildered me. I couldn't put it down once I started on it. It is true that we bring our own experiences to that which we take in, be it film, books, television, or a story told one more time by He Who Must Be Obeyed.
"Montana 1948" dredged up many of my own small town memories of the way things were that year and until 1953 when I graduated high school and moved on. I was going to say 'moved away.' but I have found that I never really moved away.
I had two Great Uncle brothers who were Sheriffs of the county over those years. We thought everybody knew everything about every one. But of course we didn't. After I sent a book about my dad to the then editor of the local newspaper did I learn how much I didn't know. This august editor and my dad had served on the first township board when my hometown was organized. In a letter he shared some of the events of that town board, and a later one that he served on with a cousin. These events included a car bashing and an arson that could have been intrepreted as an encouragement for some members of the board to comply with one group's issues.
Small towns may not have always been the safe places we like to remember of our childhoods.
Saturday, March 31, 2007
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Heartbreak
I read once that love and hate are so closely linked in the mind that each emotion can come on the heels of the other in seconds. When the hearts break close to home it breaks our own hearts. When one of our own goes through a divorce, we find ourselves divorced from a family we have grown to love.
Our broken hearted one sent this to me over the Internet this morning from work.
"People are often unreasonable, illogical and self centered.
Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies.
Suceed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, People may cheat you.
Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building someone may destroy overnight.
Build anyways.
If you find serenity and happiness they may be jealous.
Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow.
Do good anway.
Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough.
Give the world the best you've got anyway.
You see in the final analysis it is all between you and God
It was never between you and them anyway."
Our broken hearted one sent this to me over the Internet this morning from work.
"People are often unreasonable, illogical and self centered.
Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies.
Suceed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, People may cheat you.
Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building someone may destroy overnight.
Build anyways.
If you find serenity and happiness they may be jealous.
Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow.
Do good anway.
Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough.
Give the world the best you've got anyway.
You see in the final analysis it is all between you and God
It was never between you and them anyway."
Saturday, March 17, 2007
Stomping on the Clock
In other words, I am still killing time. It isn't that I don't have a dozen things I could do right now but I wait for pain meds to kick in again; I am keeping quiet as we have a sleeping baby in the house; I can't get out and do the yard things I would like; and I am flummoxed as to how to get a handle on the Lutheran Women Today Bible Study for March...which I lead on Tuesday. Mostly, I am the world's champion procrastinator.
So I poked my nose into SOMA, The Society of Mutual Autopsy, and read around in their links list where I found a couple that I subscribe to. Being so incurably introverted it wakes me up for a while and certainly gets my mind off of everything going on in my world. To give you an example of what is uptop today: "Jesus Christ Ass Kicker" by John D. Spalding got my attention. Just when I was commenting to He Who Must Be Obeyed that our pastor conducts a lovely worship service I read this: "get to the part where the Lord goes ape in the Temple. Now that's a man for Men, or more specifically for GodMen, a growing group of Christian guys who believe that traditional church services are too feminine and sissy, explaining why less than 40 percent of churchgoers today are male."
To tell the truth, I like a sissy church service. I know a few others who do also.
One of the links on SOMA was the Martin Marty Center. I have subscribed to "Sightings" for over a year now and always like it when Marty writes. He starts his March 12, 2007 essay, "Getting Religion Wrong" this way: "In 1970, as remembered in a story I've (too?) often told, for my sins I became associate dean at a Divinity School. Dean Joseph Kitagawa, scholar supreme and human being to match, did not like to raise money — so he equipped me with a tin cup. As I headed out on the trail, I posed this question to a colleague: "Given all the world's problems, on what grounds dare I ask for money to fund the graduate study of religion?" Answer: "On the same grounds as those for undertaking college-level sex education. Sex, if you get it wrong, is very dangerous. So is religion."
My question is what if you don't 'get' religion at all? This March study is how we see God in our suffering. There is something in me that doesn't much want to associate God with suffering. When my neurosurgeon tells me in the kindest way he possibly can, "you will have pain the rest of your life," where is God in that? Now, dear reader, where is God in all of that? Not only my own 'suffering' but all suffering, all bad stuff, the damned ungodly people that mess up lives in spite of liking sissy church.
All of that responsive liturgy, sung or not, the sitting up and the sitting down and kneeling when we had kneelers, the standing up and the standing down, (sic) just the getting through it all and the anticipation of the deep intellectual, down to earth sermon and finally the Holy Communion, is that SO SISSY? The older I get it almost seems intellectually and physically athletic.
So I poked my nose into SOMA, The Society of Mutual Autopsy, and read around in their links list where I found a couple that I subscribe to. Being so incurably introverted it wakes me up for a while and certainly gets my mind off of everything going on in my world. To give you an example of what is uptop today: "Jesus Christ Ass Kicker" by John D. Spalding got my attention. Just when I was commenting to He Who Must Be Obeyed that our pastor conducts a lovely worship service I read this: "get to the part where the Lord goes ape in the Temple. Now that's a man for Men, or more specifically for GodMen, a growing group of Christian guys who believe that traditional church services are too feminine and sissy, explaining why less than 40 percent of churchgoers today are male."
To tell the truth, I like a sissy church service. I know a few others who do also.
One of the links on SOMA was the Martin Marty Center. I have subscribed to "Sightings" for over a year now and always like it when Marty writes. He starts his March 12, 2007 essay, "Getting Religion Wrong" this way: "In 1970, as remembered in a story I've (too?) often told, for my sins I became associate dean at a Divinity School. Dean Joseph Kitagawa, scholar supreme and human being to match, did not like to raise money — so he equipped me with a tin cup. As I headed out on the trail, I posed this question to a colleague: "Given all the world's problems, on what grounds dare I ask for money to fund the graduate study of religion?" Answer: "On the same grounds as those for undertaking college-level sex education. Sex, if you get it wrong, is very dangerous. So is religion."
My question is what if you don't 'get' religion at all? This March study is how we see God in our suffering. There is something in me that doesn't much want to associate God with suffering. When my neurosurgeon tells me in the kindest way he possibly can, "you will have pain the rest of your life," where is God in that? Now, dear reader, where is God in all of that? Not only my own 'suffering' but all suffering, all bad stuff, the damned ungodly people that mess up lives in spite of liking sissy church.
All of that responsive liturgy, sung or not, the sitting up and the sitting down and kneeling when we had kneelers, the standing up and the standing down, (sic) just the getting through it all and the anticipation of the deep intellectual, down to earth sermon and finally the Holy Communion, is that SO SISSY? The older I get it almost seems intellectually and physically athletic.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
A 2007 Immigrant Story
Night before last a friend held a going away party for our friend, now a naturalized citizen. Actually all of the eight or nine there, myself being an exception, had been fired by Tutu, who had cleaned for them at one time or another. She has a bit of a problem with American ways and who fires whom in these relationships.
My mother introduced me to Tutu, who was working at New Cassel, a retirement center, where my mother lived for four or five years. One afternoon as I was entering the front door, Tutu met me as she was leaving. "Your mother is so ill," she told me, "I will do anything you would like me to. I will spend the nights with her, help her with her bathing, wheel her to meals, anything." "Weello, I love your mother so much," she said. I went up to Mother's room with her mail to find she had died during her afternoon nap.
My friendship with Tutu began as did my education about her childhood in Calcutta, India. This darling young woman's marriage had been arranged by both sets of parents when Tutu was 15 and Harry was 19. She was schooled by Catholics so had a fair grip on English but Bengali was spoken at home. She had been taken to see Mother Theresa with her grade school classmates. Both sets of parents remained in Calcutta.
Harry invited Bryce and I to his father's one year death anniversary. Father Tiegs at New Cassel circled the five of us and another resident on chairs around a candle in front of the chapel altar and conducted a memorable honorary service for this Hindu father of Harry. A few years later Harry invited us to his graduation dinner.
She went to church with me for almost two years. I offered to read English with her. She would read to me until it exhausted her and I would finish the chapter. We were well into "The Diary of Anne Frank" when she told me she didn't think this was going to have a happy ending and that was the end of that. So she worked at New Cassel and cleaned for the women that honored her before she and Harry move away today.
Harry graduated with a MBA from Creighton University, Tutu worked, they purchased a house, two cars, she studied and last summer at her Naturalization Ceremony had her photo taken with President Bush and our Nebraska Governor. She battled breast cancer in the fall and now she an Harry will go to Dallas where he will be a Bank Vice President and while they are in temporary housing, Tutu will have a maid.
My mother introduced me to Tutu, who was working at New Cassel, a retirement center, where my mother lived for four or five years. One afternoon as I was entering the front door, Tutu met me as she was leaving. "Your mother is so ill," she told me, "I will do anything you would like me to. I will spend the nights with her, help her with her bathing, wheel her to meals, anything." "Weello, I love your mother so much," she said. I went up to Mother's room with her mail to find she had died during her afternoon nap.
My friendship with Tutu began as did my education about her childhood in Calcutta, India. This darling young woman's marriage had been arranged by both sets of parents when Tutu was 15 and Harry was 19. She was schooled by Catholics so had a fair grip on English but Bengali was spoken at home. She had been taken to see Mother Theresa with her grade school classmates. Both sets of parents remained in Calcutta.
Harry invited Bryce and I to his father's one year death anniversary. Father Tiegs at New Cassel circled the five of us and another resident on chairs around a candle in front of the chapel altar and conducted a memorable honorary service for this Hindu father of Harry. A few years later Harry invited us to his graduation dinner.
She went to church with me for almost two years. I offered to read English with her. She would read to me until it exhausted her and I would finish the chapter. We were well into "The Diary of Anne Frank" when she told me she didn't think this was going to have a happy ending and that was the end of that. So she worked at New Cassel and cleaned for the women that honored her before she and Harry move away today.
Harry graduated with a MBA from Creighton University, Tutu worked, they purchased a house, two cars, she studied and last summer at her Naturalization Ceremony had her photo taken with President Bush and our Nebraska Governor. She battled breast cancer in the fall and now she an Harry will go to Dallas where he will be a Bank Vice President and while they are in temporary housing, Tutu will have a maid.
Monday, March 05, 2007
Why We Are the Way We Are
Everything below comes from Virtual Finland: People or The Finnish Way of Life.
It seems to be how it is, coming from four Finnish grandparents, three of them immigrants to the US before the 1900's.
I used to wonder why my matriarchal elders were so spotted. If you notice the second thing that makes Finns happy is sunny weather. None of us spent any time indoors when the sun was outside. Sunscreen in those days of wicked sunburns was a long sleeved shirt. I was 23 before I discovered I would never burn if I took the sun in small doses for a week or two. After that I could spend all day in it without burning. Now that I am well aged, I am spotted from my head to my toes just like my mummu, her sisters, and my mother and her sisters were.
It made us happy, almost as happy as cleaning house which is number six. I notice that He Who Must Be Obeyed doesn't get so happy over a clean house as I do; especially if he is the one pushing the vacuum cleaner and picking up the piles that accumulate around his favorite chair. But then he is a Norwegian and I am not certain just what makes them happy. Maybe nothing. I jump to that conclusion from spending time in the National Gallery in Oslo. There are some very grim paintings there.
So below is the happiness factors right off the Internet:
What makes a Finn Happy? "Very recently, one of our big circulation, middle-of-the-road popular magazines, entitled Seura, meaning roughly (good) company, commissioned a big survey to find out where happiness lies. The magazine used a wide sample of 1,015 individuals, who were each given 678 questions to answer. That produced a massive 688, 170 items of information. Well, I'm not a statistician so let's just get to the point, which is to set before you the Finnish nation's top ten happiness factors.
First on the list was home sweet home, a home of one's own - expressed in Finnish by the proverb "Your own home is as precious as gold." Then came the weather. This is not as surprising as it may seem, since Finland has four very distinct seasons, but one of them is too long. Thus, the second feel-good factor was sunny weather.
Now we move into the Finnish soul. It never takes long in a country where people on the whole lack a small-talk culture, but are ever ready to open a seminar on "Why are we here, where are we going?" So, happiness factor number three in the poll was an honest relationship, and number four was so closely related as to confuse the unwary. It was a trusting relationship. Number five reveals something of the Finn's innate independence of mind, and it is simply the freedom to be oneself. No mention yet of money or worldly possessions - apart from the initial roof over one's head.
Feelings beat materialism
No, instead of materialism we're in for more relationships, but not before number six, which is a freshly cleaned home. It would be truly interesting to have on hand a comparative survey covering countries both far from and near to each other. I wonder which ones would replicate the Seura people's replies from seven to ten, which were: friendship, gestures/words in a relationship, friendship, actions in a relationship, fidelity in a relationship and security in a relationship. The survey findings go on in much the same vein.
People are obviously content with simple, honest pleasures such as the smell of newly washed laundry, falling in love or walking in the countryside. The first direct reference to money appears at number nineteen and it is that great feeling: "there's more money in my account than I remembered".
It seems to be how it is, coming from four Finnish grandparents, three of them immigrants to the US before the 1900's.
I used to wonder why my matriarchal elders were so spotted. If you notice the second thing that makes Finns happy is sunny weather. None of us spent any time indoors when the sun was outside. Sunscreen in those days of wicked sunburns was a long sleeved shirt. I was 23 before I discovered I would never burn if I took the sun in small doses for a week or two. After that I could spend all day in it without burning. Now that I am well aged, I am spotted from my head to my toes just like my mummu, her sisters, and my mother and her sisters were.
It made us happy, almost as happy as cleaning house which is number six. I notice that He Who Must Be Obeyed doesn't get so happy over a clean house as I do; especially if he is the one pushing the vacuum cleaner and picking up the piles that accumulate around his favorite chair. But then he is a Norwegian and I am not certain just what makes them happy. Maybe nothing. I jump to that conclusion from spending time in the National Gallery in Oslo. There are some very grim paintings there.
So below is the happiness factors right off the Internet:
What makes a Finn Happy? "Very recently, one of our big circulation, middle-of-the-road popular magazines, entitled Seura, meaning roughly (good) company, commissioned a big survey to find out where happiness lies. The magazine used a wide sample of 1,015 individuals, who were each given 678 questions to answer. That produced a massive 688, 170 items of information. Well, I'm not a statistician so let's just get to the point, which is to set before you the Finnish nation's top ten happiness factors.
First on the list was home sweet home, a home of one's own - expressed in Finnish by the proverb "Your own home is as precious as gold." Then came the weather. This is not as surprising as it may seem, since Finland has four very distinct seasons, but one of them is too long. Thus, the second feel-good factor was sunny weather.
Now we move into the Finnish soul. It never takes long in a country where people on the whole lack a small-talk culture, but are ever ready to open a seminar on "Why are we here, where are we going?" So, happiness factor number three in the poll was an honest relationship, and number four was so closely related as to confuse the unwary. It was a trusting relationship. Number five reveals something of the Finn's innate independence of mind, and it is simply the freedom to be oneself. No mention yet of money or worldly possessions - apart from the initial roof over one's head.
Feelings beat materialism
No, instead of materialism we're in for more relationships, but not before number six, which is a freshly cleaned home. It would be truly interesting to have on hand a comparative survey covering countries both far from and near to each other. I wonder which ones would replicate the Seura people's replies from seven to ten, which were: friendship, gestures/words in a relationship, friendship, actions in a relationship, fidelity in a relationship and security in a relationship. The survey findings go on in much the same vein.
People are obviously content with simple, honest pleasures such as the smell of newly washed laundry, falling in love or walking in the countryside. The first direct reference to money appears at number nineteen and it is that great feeling: "there's more money in my account than I remembered".
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