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.

212 °F

Sometimes I wish we could just put a lid on it all. Politics USA and the everlasting commercials which have now become infomercials, the yo-yo stock markets world wide, the Nebraska Safe Haven Law which resulted in 24 children, some mentally ill, being brought from far and near by parents and care givers, our fractured family, all of the things that go bump in the night have come out of Pandora's Box and clutter the floor of my life. It is all almost too much to bear.

I am not keen on socialism, have never liked television commercials, arguing is awful, mental illness is horrible and we are getting it in spades both in the family and in Nebraska as the Safe Haven Law gets more national press, as far as things that go bump in the night...we haven't seen anything yet. Halloween is only days away.

Of course the only thing left in Pandora's Box is Hope. Even Hope has a slippery handle. Maybe I will crawl into the box myself and snuggle up to Hope until everything under the lid boils over and puts out a few fires; or maybe till hell freezes over.

A Time for Burning

Too long gone, but back once more. Life has a way of slipping by.

Our adjustment to moving here from the Black Hills, SD, included my own first experiences with racism. Riots and burnings, marching and murder were the headlines those first few years. "The Education of a WASP" was the first book I encountered after we settled in. Omaha was not the quiet little Midwestern city I had imagined. It was frightful.

It very well could erupt with racial violence again, given the political, economic, and cultural situation today.

Not too many years ago I attended some Lay School Ministries sessions at Augustana Lutheran church on the edge of the black community known as the near north side. There I enjoyed a group of people that discussed topics of the day with someone knowledgeable about the particular topic. For instance we studied the Human Genome Theory when it was a theory. One of our discussion leaders was a medical ethicist from Creighton University Medical School.

A Time for Burning is in the Omaha news again. The film explored the attempt of the minister of Augustana Lutheran Church in Omaha to persuade his all-white congregation to reach out to neighboring black Lutherans. A Time for Burning, a 1967 Oscar-nominated documentary about the interactions between two segregated churches in Omaha, Nebraska, during the height of the civil rights movement, will be screened at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences‘ "Monday Nights with Oscar" on Monday, October 20, at 8 p.m. at the Academy Theater in New York City.

The young black barber featured in the film, will be a part of the on-stage panel discussing it. Ernie Chambers, completed law school and was elected Senator to the Nebraska Legislature in 1970. By 2005 he had become the longest-serving state Senator in the history of Nebraska.

1925 Malcom X born in North Omaha.

• 1966 The documentary A Time for Burning is released and nominated for an Academy Award.
• 1966 On July 5 the National Guard is called to quell two days of rioting among African Americans in North Omaha.^[17]
• 1968 Riots erupt in North Omaha in response to assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr..
• 1968 Robert Kennedy visits Omaha in his quest to become president.
• 1969 Riots erupt on June 24 after an Omaha police officer fatally shoots teenager Vivian Strong in the Logan Fontenelle Housing Projects.^[18]
• 1970 On August 17 a bombing occurs at a house at 2867 Ohio Street, killing one policeman. Black Panther members are implicated.

Nebraska's Safe Haven Law

Last night an Iowa teen was dropped off at the Omaha Creighton University Medical Center. It was the first time an out-of-state youth has been left under Nebraska's unique safe haven law. This child is the 18th to be left at a hospital, or in one case, at an Omaha police station by a parent or guardian intending to use the law, which went into effect July 18th.

The law protects people only from being prosecuted by Nebraska authorities for abandoning a child at a hospital in the state. Because the law sets no age limit, most of the children being dropped off are teenagers or preteens labeled uncontrollable by their parents or guardians.

The Legislature's Judiciary and Health and Human Services committees have scheduled a hearing at 1:30 p.m. on Nov. 13 in Room 1113 of the Capitol.

Among topics expected to be raised are the current use of the law, possible amendments to it, and services availability for children living in crisis.

Nebraska was the end of the line for many children on the Orphan Trains out of New York City starting in 1854 and for seventy-six years thousands of homeless, neglected poor children were moved west to rural towns and farm communities. The plight of children has had a long and sad history. Even those of us who, hoping to do a good thing by taking a child into our home, has ended up wondering if we have done more harm than good.

Changes

Politics, finances, even the day to day mundane events change. It is bewildering sometimes.

The once contentious political debates seem to have taken a turn to the polite. It was nice to watch Palin and Biden as they exchanged ideas without raising their voices. Being the INFP that I am, I have an aversion to that verbal combat. It was great to be able to spend 90 minutes watching the word match the other night. Even the moderator seemed polite. Why is it that a civil debate is so amazing? I suppose because for years one expects every conversation to feel like a Sunday morning network news show.

Here in Nebraska, parents, guardians, and care givers drop wayward wards off at hospitals instead of do battle with out of control teens. A father of ten in Omaha took nine of his children to a nearby hospital to give them up to the custody of the State. Only the oldest, an 18 year old daughter, escaped his desperate decision. His wife had died, the youngest was a baby under two years old. I am sure he was overwhelmed. Safe Haven Laws were perhaps passed too quickly. Meant for newborns and desperate mothers has now become a social service for parents and caregivers who have come to the end of their wits.

We have a friend who experienced a similar thing as a toddler. He and his brothers were taken to an orphanage after his mother died and his own immigrant father could not cope with the ramifications of child care and making a living. His hell began when his dad remarried, brought his children home again and our friend endured the wrath of the evil step-mother.

It all sounds like a Dickens novel. It is too sad for words.

"Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy."

Twenty years ago, I took my high school television new crew downtown to the Vice Presidential debate between Dan Quayle and Lloyd Bentson. We were set up in the lower level of the Civic Auditorium in the spin room with all big shots. This was the real deal. Beside us were the CSPAN guys. Large monitors gave us a view of what was happening above us. The crowd was so out of control that Judy Woodruff stopped to admonish them more than once before Bentson let fly his zinger of the century.

According to the Omaha World Herald, David Karnes, an Omaha lawyer, sat beside Marilyn Quayle and remembers not wanting to look at her when Bentson delivered his body blow that is remembered by a little news crew and their teacher. Two of the Karnes girls were in my classes.

We heard the gasp from the auditorium. The spinners spun out of control. In spite of it all, the zinger didn't cinch the election. I was proud of my students, who had captured an important event for our city-wide broadcast. We were part of a little bit of history that unfolded around us.

The Wild West

The Rapid City Journal features a couple of videos of the annual Custer State Park buffalo round up. It looks like great fun.

http://videos.rapidcityjournal.com/p/video?id=2233501

Making Things

I have decided that when I never make any thing, I feel useless and stagnant. It seems as though my entire life is devoted to cleaning things that other people have made. Just think about it. A few days ago I made some whole wheat bread. I discovered that I could use a bread machine to mix up the dough and then I could roll it out flat and make a facsimile of my grandmother's Finnish flat bread. She used to bake hers on the floor of the old wood/coal stove so mine never replicates hers in either taste nor texture. It is barely o.k.

But making something, doesn't mean food. I mean objects out of cloth or wood, even paper would count. I have always wanted to make stepping stones from concrete, never have. Or carve a rock. I am not much good with tools as I have so little hand strength. So my life is lived away by cleaning the things that other people make.

I am certain that I broke a bone in my hand a couple of days ago; I was cleaning as usual. As I was pushing a couch off of a rug I heard a sharp snap in my right hand and ever since have experienced some swelling, discoloration, and pain. It hasn't affected the use of my fingers for which I am thankful. If I get careless, I am reminded that everything isn't quite right in my hand.

It is probably a miracle that we don't break bones in our hands more often, considering how much we do with them. Obviously I am not going to be making anything of consequence anytime soon.

Cave Hills Lutheran Church

A cousin's friend sent this photo the other day. They had spent some time in the Cave Hills and shared some photos of this hallowed ground.

The organist who played the little pump organ just celebrated her 95th birthday at the senior center. Tyyne's family is now planning the party for her 100th.

The church was officially closed a few years ago. The last service I attended there was a memorial service for my mother officiated by a cousin who she was so proud of.

In the cemetery to the left of the church lies four of my grandparents, my dad, my brothers, aunts, uncles, a cousin, and most all of the Finnish speaking neighbors of a time gone by. Tyyne's parents donated the land, the neighbors collected the money and helped build the church. Her father, killed in a tragic accident during those homestead days, was the first person buried on the land he gave, and with the help of loving neighbors, her mother raised five little babies alone and farmed the land.

The two Bryces and I sat on the church steps one balmy autumn evening and watched the stars take a whirl for a couple of hours and enjoyed a couple of shooting stars.

Star light, star bright,
First star I see tonight.
I wish I may, I wish I might
Get the wish I wish tonight.

Mercy Me, A Maytag

To quote a grandson: "YES i am actually washing clothes in it. it works Great, about 6 min with the suds, 6 min rinse, and then run it through the rollers. funny how something made 78 years ago is faster than today's units. the only downside is no TV time between loads it requires your full attention. "

Another Undecided Voter Decides

My son, the writer of "Abandon the GOP" to the right of this has finally written again. He keeps his dad, Who Must Be Obeyed, on edge with his politics. I had to hold my own breath reading his last post.

Another Friday

This week has been enjoyable. The Harvest Moon has been noticed and enjoyed as we swim again. I wonder if our perfect days are simply a short reprieve before fall lowers the temperatures permanently and we celebrate the autumnal equinox in a couple of days. I saw the first of the falling maple leaves on the driveway this morning. If I look closely across the city, I see a few yellow leaves.

I am learning to use a new computer on which I can access the Internet through a wireless connection. To tell the truth it made me happy to be able to configure that myself. I did have to go out for a mouse, as my clumsy arthritic fingers were like using clothes pins on the device under the keyboard. It used to be called a roller ball but now it is an unmanageable little flat disc. This machine is fast. Do people still call their computers a machine?

If I was on the other computer, I would show you what a grandson is washing clothes with. He has a 1930's washing machine that he bought for the motor...and his automatic washer shorted out. I recieved a few photos from him and it looks like something my mother and I used in the '40's. I was too small in the 30's to be of any help and would have probably run my short little arms into the wringer. He said there was no time to watch television between the washing, wringing, rinsing, wringing and whatever he does to dry them. There wasn't much time for anything in those olden days but trying to keep children alive and fed.

Like father like son. His dad, our son, was inventing welders in the third grade by finding an old cut off power cord, plugging it in and then putting the two bare wires together. It was a welder all right! I just about had a coronary when I discovered him. A mother could easily kill a boy's curiosity trying to raise them to adulthood, or even getting them to the sixth grade. I must not have yelled too loudly, for his curiosity never diminished and he can make or fix just about anything made of mineral. He is pretty good with animals and vegetables also. He has people under his spell as well.

Roald Dahl Day in Cardiff

In May of 1996 my high school friend, Carol, and I accompanied a choir tour group of college people to the United Kingdom. One of our stops was Cardiff, Wales. She and I hiked over to the Norwegian Sailor's Church founded in 1868 to serve the thousands of Norwegian sailors that were employed in the Norwegian merchant fleet.

It was a place for sailors, where they could read newspapers and magazines from home, where they could relax and chat with friends. The church's exterior was corrugated steel and had been constructed in Norway, dismantled, shipped to Cardiff and reassembled there.

Without maintenance the building fell into dis-repair and was vandalized. In 1987 the Church was carefully dismantled by the Norwegian Church Preservation Trust and re-opened in 1992.

Today, on the 13th of September, 1916, Roald Dahl was born of Norwegian parents in Cardiff. His family worshipped at the Norwegian Church and he and his sisters were christened here. To honor him a party is held for children within the church every September.

From the Writer's Almanac today. " He was sent off to private boarding schools as a kid, which he hated except for the chocolates, Cadbury chocolates. The Cadbury chocolate company had chosen his school as a focus group for new candies they were developing. Every so often, a plain gray cardboard box was issued to each child, filled with 11 chocolate bars. It was the children's task to rate the candy, and Dahl took his job very seriously. About one of the sample candy bars, he wrote, "Too subtle for the common palate." He later said that the experience got him thinking about candy as something manufactured in a factory, and he spent a lot of time imagining what a candy factory might be like. Today, he's best known for his children's book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory."

Roald Dahl also wrote James and the Giant Peach. In the olden days when I worked as an elementary librarian, I read it to a group of third graders during a few minutes of their library time. Yes, I had heard that a person should never read a book to children cold. A section of it struck me so funny I got the giggles and just about fell off of my tiny little chair. Soon the children started to laugh and would have fallen off their tiny little chairs had they had them.

Canning Grape Jelly

I woke up to noise and chaos. It was the kind of chaos that happens when a person is about to embark on a project. During this project I am the helping hand, never in charge of anything but stirring and clean-up. Everything was ready, the sterilizing, the measuring, the utensils laid out as if for surgery, the beautiful purple mixtures in two tall heavy bottomed kettles ready for boiling.

As I stirred the boiling mixtures, I wondered if my grandmother had good help. It would never have come from my sheep ranching grandpa, but as long as they were on the homestead she had sisters and children. The last beloved child was in his teens, and would have been great help, when they sold and moved to town only a couple of years before my grandpa died of TB. Her jelly was wild plum and buffalo berry, the reluctant to jell chokecherry was made into syrup.

Helping is good as stirring stirs up such good memories of smells better than back yard concord grapes. A mouse click on the picture might surprise you.

Two Weeks of Late Night TV

My goodness gracious. We were mesmerized and entertained by the extravaganza in Denver with the democrats a couple of weeks ago and this week we lost sleep with folks in St. Paul, Minnesota. About the time I thought that nothing could ever beat the theatrics at the Bronco Stadium, the Grecian columns from some theater supply house, the fireworks and the promises; then came that dynamo from Wasilla, Alaska who woke up the republicans, young and old. Maybe woke up or shook up more than the conservatives. We will see.

I didn't have anyone to "talk" to about it. "I am listening" was my standard answer even during the commercials; which were almost non-existent on PBS and C-Span. Even I, who usually dismiss such speech making as repetitive and not terribly interesting, was quite moved by a lot of it. I have a couple of cousins that would have been great fun to visit with these past days.

Did you too, enjoy the humor, the sincerity, the promises, the contrasting of personalities and life experiences, all the children with their imperfections, the flummoxed journalists who were vilified by the VP candidate who was one herself by college degree. What was not to like and enjoy? Even the late night hosts had some funny new material. No all the snow is not in Alaska...a lot of it was in the audience in St. Paul.

Wasn't it fun. I am glad it is over though, now we can get some sleep before midnight again.

The Sweetest Language

"Friday, May 9, 2008
Nothing can be softer or more harmonious
The Finns still retain their own language where their geographical situation cuts them off from frequent communication with the Teutonic and Cimbric races. "Both the Lapland and Finnish languages," says Dr. Clarke. ''are pleasing to the ear, and admirably suited to poetry, owing to their plenitude of vowels. They constantly reminded us of the Italian; and we might cite several instances of words common to all the three. Acerbi, as an Italian, sometimes understood words used by the natives of Finland. Nothing can be softer or more harmonious than the sounds uttered by a Finland peasant, when reciting his Pater Noster. It is full of labials, nasals, open vowels, and dipththongs, and is destitute even of a single guttural.''

Edward Isidore Sears: The National Quarterly Review (1863)
Posted by Kaisa Kyläkoski at 12:35 AM From Kaisa's Virtual Bookshelf, virtually a treasure trove!