CaringBridge

What a helpful website Caring Bridge is! I can't get into it except by www.daleboe.com
Then click for current updates. I feel like a doofus when my links don't work.

When you get to the welcome page, check out "my story," "journal," and be prepared to be blown out of the water with the "guest book."

Omaha is in a quandry over the many shootings we have had, seven in seven days, and purse snatching all over town, some which are dangerous as well. The state of Nebraska isn't much better as the 35 youngster was dropped off at a hospital due to the Safe Haven Law. Our Unicameral met this week and changed the age to babies a month and younger. But it is obvious that families with older children are not finding help for them if they are mentally ill or have behaviour problems. My heart goes out to them all. Two teens figured out what their mother was up to and when she drove up to one hospital emergency entrance they bolted and one still hasn't been found.

But as for our family, one brother sounded good on the phone so the lung surgery apparently went well. Dale is still on a ventilator and in a coma in Chile'. The CaringBridge organization is wonderful in this type of emergency.

Faith Trumps All

One of my brother's in law and his wife, along with groups of volunteers from different churches and SD School of Mines and Technology students, are building an orphanage in Chile'. They were alone on the mountain seventeen miles above Vicuna near the grape orchards and the goat herders when our beloved D became paralyzed with Guillian-Barre Syndrome a week ago today. He is hospitalized in Coquimbo, a town about 2 hours from the building site.

For a time he was in a coma and paralyzed from the neck down. Their daughter flew down to be with her mother during this frightening and difficult time. Another daughter has set up a CaringBridge website to keep the family and many, many friends informed about his progress toward being stabilized in order to be flown home for a lenghty rehabilitation. This is a free website and has been invaluable for those of us who await news from Chile'.

The latest Vocations for Orphans newsletter is online at http://www.vfo.org/newsletter/vfo_newsletter_fall08.pdf We are amazed and proud of this remarkable family and their endeavors worldwide. http://www.vfo.org/video.htm is from the VFO web site.

He Who Must Be Obeyed is the fifth of ten siblings. Another brother, flew home to Wyoming from Mexico and during a physical discovered he has lung cancer. Yesterday he had surgery in Montana. Until we get the news of the pathology report we pray it was confined to one mass in one lobe and was completely removed. Tomorrow the report from the lab is expected.

Today, sunny and warm, has coaxed us outside to rake again and do a final yard clean up before we get the same kind of winter our neighbors to the north have had.

My Readers are Treasures

Today I checked out my sitemeter, which tells me how my readers stumble on to 'willoboe.' One person, always anonymous and identity ever protected by sitemeter, found me through a search for "Cave Hills Lutheran Church." I then clicked on some of the hits he/she got there and found a diamond. It is an article, or an audio source to Prairie Public Radio and it takes me home once more. Thank you dear reader for your interest and your hit on the Cave Hills!

Cider House Rules

Sometimes I hear something that is so sweet it never leaves me. It comes back to mind over and over; I can hear the inflection in Michael Caine's voice as his Dr. Larch tells the orphan boys before they go to sleep, "Goodnight, you princes of Maine. You kings of New England." I wonder if I had read the book Cider House Rules, by John Irving first, would it have had such a profound and memorable effect. Every boy should go to sleep with words like that in his ears.

When I saw the movie, I wasn't aware of the fact that Lasse Hallström directed it and that Charlize Theron was in it. It was a wonderful movie, sad, memorable, full of angst. Just like life.

I don't go out to movies much anymore, but the following ones I have enjoyed on television have been directed by Hallstrom: "What's Eating Gilbert Grape," "Chocolat," "The Shipping News." According to Oprah today we should all go see "Seven Pounds" when it comes out soon.

Good night you princes and princesses of America, you kings and queens of North America. You are loved.

The FinnFlyer

The finnflyer was here for lunch today. There is always a bright spot in life. We were going to pick him up from the airport where he landed and tied down the plane he was piloting and take him to some lovely Omaha eatery. It was not to be as I am again in the midst of the vertigo and staying close to the walls, or the couches. He Who Must Be Obeyed picked him up and brought him home where we had a nice visit with lunch and without the clatter of restaurants, or a mad rush to get him back again for his flight to California and home. Pilots have a lot of fun in life, see places and people one only imagines, have close calls with weather, and live out of a suitcase or a flight bag. He barely survived a plane crash and was on the Air Force Radio station in Thailand during the Viet Nam war...our conversation drifted that direction for a little while.

We are both emigrants from our home town, a part of the Harding County, SD brain drain, the pilot and the librarian left to make the world a better place. There are times that I wonder what my life would be like had I never left there. I cannot understand why that place has such a pull on my heartstrings. Cosmic loneliness is once again oppressive and I long for the thin place where God is close and I am content and breathless from sheer joy.

My days are dizzy, somewhat downhearted, I can't eat and my steel trap mind has turned to mush. I am readying myself for a disappointing day tomorrow as I remind myself that God uses broken people as well as the 'right minded' ones. The question is just which broken duo is the American public going to choose? I think I know but it won't stop me from being a good citizen. Young Citizen's League, YCL, taught us what it means to be a good citizen.