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.

Pitchfork Fondue

This cowboy cookout served almost a hundred folks that came to the High Plains to join the family that celebrates together every other year. This rowdy bunch of Vikings stirs the souls of those of us that were brave enough to marry into the tribe. The story of their 1857 immigrants is what Western Epics are made of.

"The Norsemen, also known as Vikings, ravaged the coasts of northwest Europe from the 8th to the 11th century and were ruled by local chieftains. Olav II Haraldsson became the first effective king of all Norway in 1015 and began converting the Norwegians to Christianity. As a teenager he was given ships and men by his father to "go Viking".

Even if King Olav II brought Christianity into Norway because the Viking tribal control made it easy for him; this particular tribe brings Jack Daniel to the council fire. It seems one can control a Norse tribe, but not much. He Who Must Be Obeyed knew exactly what it meant to "go Viking."

The photos are those of a couple who were there and took the pictures to prove it. Thank you to K.B.H. and N.C. I wish I had been with you longer.

The T-Rex Stan

Family Reunions

Finns and Norwegians have different ways of celebrating families. Oh, we Finns are so solemn and serious. Our reunion started with coffee and pulla, then church and communion. We filled the little rural church front to back and we were so grateful to gather this way. The ladies of the church prepared our meal. In a new community center couples married over 50 years were recognized, door prizes were drawn, and the Finnish dance music began. We bonded with long lost cousins not seen for three years.

An aunt and cousin took me to my hometown for a couple days of blissful amazement. One highlight was spending some time with a bone hunter cousin who showed us his latest triceratops find. He was the finder of the T-Rex Stan in the Hell Creek formation in the Cave Hills, Harding County, South Dakota. You can check it out in Hill City, SD at the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research, Inc.

Minnesota Lakes

Going to our friend's MN cabin for a few days was a dream you want to last longer. K.C. had undergone her first chemo treatment, had to get a son to a swim camp at the U, and couldn't predict how she would feel. Tutu was with us but was up front about driving 40 mph if she had to. I was a decrepit back up; but I was pleased to be chosen and did do a bit of back up driving on our way home, until the dark of night blurred my aging vision.

We spent the first night with P's 91 year old mother in the city. It was love at first sight, just like it was with E.S., our friend in a chariot ie. wheelchair. Sunday morning we went to Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Minneapolis. Both K and Tutu wept through the service. K's friends were there from 20 years ago. K was with her tribe. The Crucifer carried in the Cross, hands properly gripping the pole which was pressed into his forehead with such devotion that I too could have wept for the beauty of it. Liturgical, with a Cantor; it was such sweet reverance. Later we would stop to see the Chisago Lutheran Church, built by Swedes in 1802 which was breathtaking in its restoration.

The cabin was restful and restorative. We were not without our medical alarms, however. K had a blood draw which indicated a danagerous white count drop and a need for antibiotics. Her Omaha doctor's office called immediately after the faxed results. Tutu lept upon a flopping sunfish on the dock and got stabbed in the thumb with a fin. When it redlined we took her to emergency, coming home in the dark of night, with the big dipper shining its welcome back.

Tutu sang Bengali songs to us and tried to teach me one of religion making life smooth. A neighbor gave us a pontoon ride around one end of the lake where I made a photo of the old church we looked at.I am going to try put some of the photos on Flickr, there is a nice one of the old Swedish church and the interior of the cabin.

Waiting for Midsummer

Juhannus is celebrated on the Saturday between the 20th and the 26th of June. It is the Feast of St. John the Baptist on the church calendar but we called it Juhannus and it brought every Finn, spouse, and friend, tick and mosquito, into Casper's Gulch for a picnic, homemade ice-cream, games and competitions, and my Grandpa Tuovinen auctioned off the fancy work for the Ladies Aid of the Cave Hills Lutheran Church.

Other folks came as well, and it surprised me that my hero, Frankie Clark, told me that he came as a kid with his parents from Buffalo. They were English Papists, but they must have enjoyed the congeniality, or maybe watching the Finns loosen up a little and have some fun. Anyway, he said they came every year; it made me happy to know that.

Later when I was in my 40's, my mother and I enjoyed the bonfires and dancing in Finland on Juhannus. The next day we arrived at our paternal Finnish relatives who had asked all of the clan over to see the American Cousins! After the greetings, meeting and feasting, Seppo took out his accordian and all the women danced together in the livingroom. I wanted to Polka with Seppo, but he was the music so that was out. The torte was so tall and so wonderful I have never forgotten it, and the old women dancing was a sight to behold.

When the women wore out their hips and knees, Seppo put the accordian down and took me for a motorboat ride.

Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory

"Underground science is a hot field. Physicists use deep labs to shield experiments from cosmic radiation. A “neutrino detector” that operated underground at Homestake for 30 years won a Nobel Prize for researcher Ray Davis. Deep labs in Russia, Italy and Japan have yielded results that are forcing theorists to change their view of how the universe works." From the Rapid City Journal, June 4, 2007

A little exploration, not for gold, but on the web, brought me the realization that Homestake Gold Mine, the stepping stone, or drop off into the abyss, of my forefathers, is in direct competition with an iron mine near Ely, MN. But it isn't Finn vs. Finn this time. It is state vs. state and Colorado and WA are also in the final four compteting for a National Science Foundation decision. The state that gets the tap is in for a huge grant, many jobs and lots of publicity world-wide.

Sometime soon -- maybe this month -- the National Science Foundation will announce a site for the proposed Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory. The NSF envisions a DUSEL that would also host geologists, seismologists, biologists and even experts in national security.

I discovered the Ely, MN Soudan connection in the news article. There are interesting photos of all sites on Bill Harlan's blog.

A geological engineering son's first job out of the SD School of Mines and Technology was working for Homestake doing surface exploration for gold in the Northern Black Hills. He once told me if you buy land there, be aware that you could have a gold mine for a neighbor. Then gold dropped to $42 an ounce and the big companies lost interest, even Barrick out of Canada, who bought the Homestake called it quits.

I once had dreams of living in Lead. There is a Hearst Additon of new homes, named for the Newspaper family that owned Homestake and much of the town of Lead.

In October 1877, George Hearst arrived in Deadwood to view the "New El Dorado" with his own eyes. His initial stay in Deadwood only lasted 40 days, but the impact of his visit would reverberate through the Hills for more than a century. In early November 1877, Hearst wrote back to his partners in San Francisco, describing the vein of gold ore on the Homestake claim as being 30 feet wide, 1,500 feet long, and at least 100 feet deep. He estimated that 60-70% of the assayed gold in the ore could be easily reclaimed with the correct equipment. He then recommended that 100 stamps be brought to the Homestake, stating that it would take at least 25 years to do the job. Hearst continued, telling his partners that many of the claims immediately north of the Homestake were almost as rich.

When Homestake discontinued operation, housing was available and inexpensive. But that is no more, the wealthy from both coasts have discovered the charming pristine Black Hills and land prices have shot up; not with the lure of gold or neutrinos, but perhaps Kevin Costner and his brother had something to do with it; or the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. It has been said that HBO's "Deadwood" has had some kind of impact on the viewing public leading to a new source of tourist visitors to the Black Hills.

Blessed are the folks that had the sense to hold on to the land they once acquired in the Black Hills. Unfortunately, when we left in the late '60's we sold everything we once had. Drat.

Taking Time for Thought

Mark Twain's War Prayer from a blog called The Glyphians.

I realize that 14 minutes is a bit of a sit for the average American, accustomed to having thier attention span programmed to seven minutes by the commercial break on television of our past; but this short film is amazingly produced and worth the time to listen to this little homily with two sound tracks.

Genesis and Dark Skies

14: And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
15: And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
16: And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.

Instead of walking out of doors at night for a sky check, today we have to rely on the Hubble, or artists, to show us what we are missing. How long has it been since you were able to actually count on seeing anything up there other than contrails, aeroplanes approaching the landing strips at your local terminal, or a planet or two trying valiently to beam its light to our good earth?

I am not the environmentalist that my mother was, but I do recycle and plant trees; however, there is one group that I admire and they don't get enough attention in our culture that is too busy at night with thier own pleasures to even think about the Milky Way. This is the International Dark Sky Association.
Their number one goal is to "Stop the adverse effects of light pollution on dark skies."

One of the last times I literally saw stars was on the steps of a rural church (Lat: 45.7729645 Lon: -103.5583496). He Who Must Be Obeyed, a son named after him, and I sat in the warm night facing west for a couple of hours and watched the Milky Way approach over the McKinsey Butte and sail west while a shooting star or two enchanted us. It is rated a 7 on a dark sky chart I found. One of the darkest spots in the midwest. If people knew what a show we had on those wooden steps, we wouldn't have had room to sit.

Memorial Weekend

"Finnish artists Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen collected the pet peeves and angst-ridden pleas of people of Helsinki and composed a choral work around the list of complaints. Music composed by Esko Grundstrom. This is from the expatraveler, another blogspot blogger.

We really love our country, even so much that we can complain about it to the point one would think we actually disliked it. The Helsinki choir could have been singing about America, except about turning our forests to toilet paper.

They even sigh (while singing) about outsourcing. I am surprised our own major thinkers haven't outsourced the elderly to be cared for in a foreign land. It might be worth the trip for everyone concerned.

Not Alone in the Dog House

He Who Must Be Obeyed came home two days before he told me he would. I had left some things undone downstairs; while I cleaned the garret bedroom and removed the water marks from the carpet up there from the roof leaks during our seven inch rain a while back. I love to clean house.

It is nice to have him back in the dog house with me, even if he was growling and snapping when he left. I worked off all the stress upstairs and his soft snoring will be a pleasant lullaby again.

I read a lot of Henri Nouwen and a couple of other spiritual thinkers, too. It is nice to have those guys to fall back on when I can't think straight myself. Is change all that good, if you think you are on the right track in spite of being growled at by bigger and noisier dogs?

In the Dog House Again

It would be good to get things right once in a while. Apparently, I am so mean and selfish that neither He Who Must Be Obeyed, nor this daughter/granddaughter can stand anymore of it. They are both taking a break from me.

It is my 'Christianly love'(sic) that irks them and is the reason that she won't go to church and probably the reason that he does. " You can be a very mean woman sometimes." "Sometimes you just amaze me with your Christianly love. Another reason not to go to church." It was put so pointedly within the two page diatribe.

You know the lemons thing; while they are taking a break from me; I will use the opportunity to clean the garret, take care of some correspondence, and start a long put off project. I have wanted to enlarge and develop some of my dad's black and white negatives from the 1930's and '40's and maybe this will be the opportunity to spend some time on it. When an artist takes photographs they don't need much cropping.

Sharptail Grouse

Today I discovered a fascinating description of photographing and audio taping the mating ritual of the sharptail grouse in its lek, a new word for me. "The lek is generally circular with a diameter of about 30 feet in which each bird claims a certain space for his display and confronts any other bird that enters into that space. (Dick Kettlewell/Journal staff)" By clicking on "Kettlewell" you can shut your eyes and be there yourself! By clicking on the words "sharptail grouse" you will go to the article and see a Kettlewell photo of one with his 'arms' akimbo.

Speak Finnish in Three Minutes

A person could read this list in Finnish in less than three minutes; but "Speak Finnish in Three Minutes!" is another of the Finns elaborate jokes, in the Helsingin Sanomat International. I would love to learn Finnish in three years, if I could.

I have seen this before, but this morning I got it from Dave in Soumi, a research meteorologist in Finland. He writes an interesting blog about his adventures in Finland. I am going to check out all of his links in time.

So we swim. It is good for the soul and probably good for everything that ails me. I am no athlete, I can't even walk a straight line, ever. "Look where you are going," He Who Must Be Obeyed tells me.

Mother's Day

I used to think Mother's Day felt like a lot of work. He Who Must Be Obeyed did a lot of helping or maybe it was me helping and him doing it. Anyway for several years we set the table for four generations of women, and the men in our lives. Today I can see the blessing that it was and I cherish the memory of all of us seated after church, white table cloth, best silverware.."Be present at our table Lord, be here and everywhere adored. These mercies bless and grant that we may feast in Paradise with Thee."

On this Mother's Day I think of the women that mothered me over the years, starting in January, 1935, on the kitchen table in a small homestead ranch house. The doctor got there from Buffalo, 12 miles away. I love looking at the photographs of me as a baby in my great grandmother's arms, in my grandmother's arms, in my aunties arms, and in the arms of my mother and father. How blessed is the child who is loved.

My own mother, grandmother, my aunties, and my great aunties were all women I greatly admire and love; women of great depth, large hearts, room for everyone, ever ready to take me howm with them for a stay; always willing to help one another, they loved the extended family, and held huge picnics get togethers.

I remember one time at my Aunt Lillie's when the entire clan gathered. It seemed there were hundreds of us, and maybe there were. Old aunts and uncles, little cousins, and babies in arms, two of them my own. Those dear, dear mothers in my family with the wonderful men in their lives. Men who smelled of homemade soap and pipe tobacco.

I thank God for them, every one. But most especially, I thank God for my own mother, outspoken, demanding when I was small; she saw to it that I knew how to pray, to clean house and iron clothes, and in her age softened to the point that I almost didn't recognize her. It is a happy feeling to be a mother.

Quasars and Gideon Bibles

image credit: NASA/ESA/ESO/Wolfram Freudling et al. (STECF)

The image above was the Nasa: 2007-04-19 Image of the day. It is an artist's impression showing a primordial quasar surrounded by sheets of gas, dust, stars and early star clusters. Stars are born, creating emmissions of very specific colors of the element iron and die within the first few hundred million years of the universe. So what did the first quasars look like? The nearest are now known to be supermassive black holes in the center of galaxies.

This beautiful universe, our beautiful galaxie, our beautiful blue marble; we are blessed by beauty in every direction we look. Just because we appreciate the earth do you think we need Gore's global warming book in the night stand instead of the Gideon Bible? It was one of Drudge's headlines today. Would that tempt a thief?

Bursting with Intolerable Pride

South Dakota Magazine | Filed by Bernie Hunhoff at 1:19 pm South Dakota Magazine | Filed by Bernie Hunhoff at 1:19 pm April 18, 2007

Our May/June issue of South Dakota Magazine has a big spread on the Finnish people who immigrated to the Black Hills and worked at Homestake Gold Mine. A big group of them decided to leave Homestake and take their chances as homesteaders in Harding County.

One of the Finns, Axel Sacrison, became a self-taught artist. His daughter, Willo Boe of Omaha, Neb., collected his stories, photographs and many of his paintings and put them in a big book that tells an immigrant story unique to South Dakota.


If you follow the link you will see the rest of the story with a picture of a painting. When I first read it, "I was totally embarrassed about my own happiness and had to work hard to calm down myself!" I copped this from a Finnish blogger who has the same quality of self-deprecation that comes with our genetics.

A few days ago I googled 'Finnish self-deprecation' and got 18,000 hits. Obviously the whole world knows about it. He Who Must Be Obeyed gets annoyed by it and doesn't understand it...but Norwegians don't show any problems with this character flaw.

Well, enough of this. The magazine came today. The article takes my breath away. How am I ever going to calm myself down? To further quote Matti Pitkanen, "It is very difficult for us... to tolerate the feeling that one of us, just one of these ordinary Finnish people, might possibly have done something that might possibly distinguish him or her among other Finns some day." I know just how my dad would have felt had he still been alive today. We are bursting with pride and can hardly tolerate the feeling.

Thinking Outside the Box

When things close in, become difficult, it is far better to think about others. I have some very dear 'others' who have or are facing grim health situations. Better by far to give my knees a workout, metaphorically, in prayer for them, than to whine about my own pitiful self. My friends are people of immense inner resources.

First a cousin informed me he had cancer, the same type that my father did; that rocked me to the core. Saturday night after church a young friend told about how God caught her up in the kindness of others when she was diagnosed with breast cancer a few days ago. People called her out of the blue...even Tutu called. Tutu, who is our India/American citizen, celebrating the American Dream coming true, offered to stay with her during the treatments. Family and life has to go on during the healing. Now the 'caregiver' has great need of a caregiver.

And I think of our sweet beloved Jewish friend, written up in the Jewish Press in Omaha in a story called "Silent Exodus:..." her story reads in part:
"On Aug. 8, 1962, Helene Avigdor was 13 years old. She lived with her parents, an older sister and a younger brother in Cairo, Egypt. “I came home that day and I saw the luggage by the door,” she explained. “My father kept us in the dark, and until that moment, I didn’t know we were leaving Egypt.”

Speaking to his family in French, their primary language, Maurice Avigdor cautioned his children, “Don’t tell anyone we are going!”

Since the founding of Israel, pressure mounted on Jews through the Middle East. The Avigdors, a Sephardic family, experienced a great deal of prejudice, Helene explained, “My father told me that on a number of occasions when the doorman of their four-story apartment saw him coming, he would turn off the power in the lobby, forcing my dad to walk up the four flights.”

That was not the only discrimination he faced. Her father, who spoke seven languages and had a good job working for an Italian import/export company, stated he had been stopped often on the street. There had been a number of times when, without cause, he was stopped, questioned by authorities, and occasionally arrested. He knew of others that were roughed up.

“When we left, we took only what we could fit in a suitcase,” Helene commented. At their arrival in America on April 18, 1963, Helene was 13, her mother, 45 and her father, 55. While Helene was multi-lingual, at the time speaking Arabic, French (her first language), Spanish, and some Hebrew, she and her family spoke no English."

This wonderful friend also took on the battle of breast cancer and after the rigors of the treatment has been cancer free for four years...and sadly, she suffers occasional prejudice here in our land of the 'free.'

All of these people I love so dearly, including He Who Must Be Obeyed, have looked cancer in the eye and never faltered during their challenge; becoming people of even greater compassion than before.

The Inkslinger

There is an old Inkslinger in this world that is loved by more people than he may suspect. This fellow was the editor of the Buffalo Times Herald, my hometown newspaper, when I was growing up. He knew more than anyone else in town, worked harder and later at night than anyone other than my dad, who didn't consider either his blacksmithing or his oil painting 'work,' but after a day of smithing, he was at the easel past my bedtime and was at it again when I woke up. When I was really little, I thought he painted through the night. But I digress again.

The Inkslinger "Ramblings of a Newcomer" is a featured column in my present hometown news, The Nation's Center News. In the April 5, 2007 hometown paper and also in the Arco (Idaho) Advertiser of March 22, he writes of a St. Patrick's Day evening in my great uncle's sauna.

He writes in part: "The Inkslinger and many of the buddies along with a number of real Finnish old timers would take advantage of the 25¢ fee which included the sauna bath along with a fresh towel and a bar of soap for that special bath.

Gotta tell you, those old Finns could take the extreme heat of the sauna which was almost enough to “peel the hide off” most of us. The sauna was a two room building built specially for the purpose, one room housing the actual sauna, a big old wood burning furnace with a wash tub size container on top filled with rocks. The super-heated rocks would be doused with water with a garden hose and the steam would be so thick and hot that we non-Finns had a hard time breathing as we soaked and scrubbed and sat on the benches provided. The higher up the benches, about five or six rows, the hotter it was, even though folks traditionally think of going down to a “hot place.” Of course, not wishing to be seen as “tenderfeet” by these old timers, we young bucks would take our washing tools and go right to the top."

"...The full treatment at the sauna involved, after the steam bath, a cold shower and a cooling down period in the second, or cooling room, or for the old timers, a good old near naked roll in the snowbank within about a rod of the bathhouse. After the ritual cooldown, not in the snowbank, the Inkslinger and one buddy went out to the car, in a hurry to get to the house for the special supper, a little late already. Opening the car door was a surprise of surprises. The overheated buddy was asleep on the back seat and the heat that he generated against the cold of a heavy early spring snowstorm had frosted the windows and windshield so that the boys had to scrape peepholes in the frost to see to drive. Near a foot of snow had fallen during the time of the sauna bath..."

By no means was that the entire story; but it was very plausable as all of Uncle Matt's neighbors, who were also his sisters, brothers, nieces and nephews got in without the 25 cent admission and we got the soap free also. It might have been the lye soap my mother made regularly that could also take the hide off of a person.

I don't think the non-Finnish females of Buffalo, SD trooped to the sauna like the fellows did on a Saturday night. My own two older sons got a taste of it with the town guys when we visited their grandparents; and undoubtedly my kindly old great uncle showed them 'the ropes' of the proper way to sauna.

Thanks to that elderly loved Inkslinger for reminding me of an integral part of my past that made my life easier than taking out the old round tin tub for a bath.

The Oral Tradition

"SuAnne Big Crow will long be remembered on the Pine Ridge Reservation as a spunky young leader who could shoot a basketball like few others. A youth center has been built in her honor, and stories are still told of her achievements." South Dakota Road Stories, April 13, 2007. That is the beginning and there is a link to her winning shots at the basket in the 1989 Class A State Tournament. It is worth watching.

The first time I came across a story of this young girl was when I read an expert from "The Res" by Ian Frazier in The Atlantic magazine. Tonight I live again the spine tingling story I read years ago, probably on a trip to the Black Hills. It is told in an Easter Sermon of all places:

"As the Pine Ridge girls are lining up at the door waiting to go into the gym, they can hear the white fans of the Leed (sic) High School team chanting these fake Indian chants to mock the girls. The girls at the front of the line peek through the door, and see the fans waving food stamps to make fun of the Indians. And then someone hollers out, “Where’s the cheese? Where’s the cheese?”—the “joke” being that any time Indians are standing in line, it’s for government handouts.

The girl at the front of the line turns back to her team and says, “I can’t handle this.” Sue Anne steps up and says, “I’ll lead us out.” But the girl at the front of the line, Donny Dacori, is a little suspicious about why Sue Anne volunteered so quickly, so she says to her, “Don’t embarrass us.” And Sue Anne answers, “I won’t.”

Ian Frazier tells the rest of the story like this: “Donny gave her the ball and Sue Anne stood first in line. She went running onto the court dribbling the basketball, with her teammates close behind. On the court the noise was deafening. Sue Anne went right down the middle, and suddenly stopped when she got to center court. Her teammates were taken by surprise and some bumped into each other. Coach Zamiga, at the end of the line, didn’t know why they had stopped. Sue Anne turned to Donny Dacori and tossed her the ball. Then she stepped into the jump ball circle at center court facing the Leed fans. She unbuttoned her warm up jacket, draped it over her shoulders, and began to do the Lakota shawl dance.

Ian Frazier is interviewed by NPR and tells the story in his own words. It is better than reading it.

Miracles for Easter

Easter Sunday 2007. He Who Must Be Obeyed went to celebrate at Holy Cross without me. I was hopeful at 6:30, but the occasional relief didn't occur, so I thought I might just have a pity party alone under the down in our bed, which has become a little too familiar since spine surgery in January.

It was "Grace Matters" on the radio that gave me hope this morning with a stern lecture about clinging to dirty sheets to savor ones own painful pitiful self. It was just the thing I needed to realize healing is moment by moment right now. So I got up and enjoyed a few miracles.

One was in our Omaha World Herald on the front page. It was about an Ashton, NE man who has rang the bells at St. Francis Catholic Church nearly every day since about 1960. "He is 66 and has had a knee surgery...in spite of all of that he has climbed the 17 steps up the loft, consulted his pocket watch and pulled the rope to ring the "Angelus" bell at 7 a.m., noon and 6 p.m. for three minutes, as part of a Catholic tradition calling the faithful to prayer." I learned seven paragraphs into the article that the faithful bell ringer is developmentally disabled. God chooses people that are weak and imperfect and calls them by name. Sometimes if I turn off the televison, and pull the ear buds out of my ears, and set the radio aside, I can hear even my own name being called.

The second miracle was an email from a relative on my maternal great grandmother's side of the family. He has discovered through history going back to the 1600's that we are also related through my paternal grandmother. It makes me happy to find another distant double cousin. And it makes me happy that in genetics mothers matter.

Safe Places

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.

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."

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.

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.