Favorite Carol / Favorite Church

In the bleak midwinter

Frosty wind made moan,

Earth stood hard as iron,

Water like a stone;

Snow had fallen, snow on snow,

Snow on snow,

In the bleak midwinter,

Long ago

Although the lyrics were written as a poem by English poet Christina Rossettibefore 1872, it was published posthumously in Rossetti's Poetic Works in 1904 and became a Christmas carol after it appeared in The English Hymnal in 1906 with a setting by Holst.

LibriVox

The subtitle to LibriVox is "acoustical liberation of books in the public domain."  What a treasure trove for me.  I suppose the laptop might be a little awkward to drag around the house as I find  a blanket, a pillow, and a cozy corner to listen to a story; or read one myself.  Almost as good as Kindle, but one will not find the newly published titles here.

What a nifty perk on the Internet, just for the taking, free audiobooks. This evening I browsed around and found a some random samples.  If you haven't heard a child's voice lately, "Twas the Night Before Christmas" read by a father and a child is charming.

Angus Heritage Honored

Hugh and Eleanor Ingalls

American Angus Association^® inducts six Angus enthusiasts into the Angus Heritage Foundation.

"A registered Angus owner since he was 12, Hugh Ingalls has been a strong advocate of the breed. From his first heifer calf, which his father, Lawrence, transferred to him in 1942, he has built a cow herd that won the 1983 American Angus Association-Centennial Angus Herd Award.

Ingalls’ grandfather purchased an Angus bull in 1895 with the registration certificate number 19975 and a hand-written pedigree, giving this herd the distinction of being the oldest Angus herd in South Dakota. 

He is the only recipient of both the “Stockman of the Year” award and the “Hall of Fame Silver Spur Award” from the Black Hills Stock Show. Ingalls is known as “a true stockman” who has unselfishly volunteered to promote the cattle industry and the Angus breed."

     What a blessing these two are to the cattle industry and to our family.  We honor their life long diligence and work. Hugh is a cowboy's cowboy and Eleanor is a ranch wife's roll-model. Beside that, they are kind and lovable.  Good looking also, I might add.

Lie to Me

I became so single minded that I thought about nothing else than getting my "Aunt Liz" work re-edited and printed; the task kept me from nearly everything that normal folks do.  Now the book is in boxes in the living room and I am happy to have it finished, imperfect as it is.

It still eats up a lot of computer memory as it is full of old photos. I have saved pieces of it under the strangest titles so it is taking some time to get it all deleted.  It ended up nearly 150 full pages in three sections, both making tables of contents and pagination were much more time consuming than writing the book.

When one takes so terribly long to finish a book project it courts problems.  I used two computers, three MS operating systems, and as many MS Word programs.  I was not about to let those things get me down even if it was a constant steep learning curve.  My Aunt Elizabeth was a kind and amazing woman.  I pray I have done her justice.

I certainly have a goodly number of things to be thankful for as we think about Thanksgiving coming up so soon. A kind reader called me on the phone to see if I was o.k. because I had been so absent from here .  A note to him: your photo in the South Dakota Magazine on page 83 is one of my favorites and I used it last year as my 'wallpaper' or whatever it is called for a long time.  I am thankful for you readers, very thankful.

The article "My Father the Painter" is still featured in the on line past issues.  Speaking of my dad, a son gave me an enlarged photo of him in his blacksmith shop behind his anvil.  I am going to have it framed and take it to the Harding County Museum in Buffalo, SD next time I get there.  The photo is a little close to my raw emotions and a tear blurs my sight when I think of him teaching me to weld when I was a high school girl. He was such a kind, quiet, unassuming man.

This is beginning to sound a little like "Dear Diary" so I am going to stop right here and do some other normal thing.  I do not intend to use this as a diary.  Up to now, though, I have not told an untruth here that I can think of.  I have been filling this up since 2004.

 There are times I wish I could write a novel and fill it up with a pack of lies.  That would be a change from history and biography.

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Little White High-Top Shoes

In the Ted Kooser column in the Sunday paper was an insightful verse on Parenting.  Kooser,  a Nebraskan, was the U.S. poet laureate from 2004-2006.  He included a poem about parenthood, and about letting go of children, by Chana Bloch, who lives in Berkeley, CA.

Through a Glass


On the crown of his head
where the fontanelle pulsed
between spongy bones,
a bald spot is forming, globed and sleek 
as a monk's tonsure.


I was the earliest pinch of civilization,
the one who laced him 
into shoe leather
when he stumbled into walking upright.
"Shoes are unfair to children," he'd 
grouse


Through a pane of glass
that shivers when the wind kicks up
I watch my son walk away.


He's out the door, up the street,
around
a couple of corners by now.
I'm in for life.
He trips; my hand flies out;


I yank it back.

Face to Face on Facebook

Starting a day with a good laugh is invigorating.  I found this on a 3rd cousin's Facebook page.  Maybe she is a first cousin three times removed.

Familial genetics are such a mystery.  I had babies that looked so similar that I could have taken this one home by mistake.

Excellent photo perhaps by a parent of this baby.

Magical

I have waited nearly all summer for "House."  The plan was to watch it from seven to eight and then go sauna and swim.  The program turned out like all the others.  Way too much intimacy for us, be it a hallucination or not.  The off button is an easy out.

After 10 or 15 minutes of 130 degree steam heat, just the thought of the pool was inviting.  The warm pool seemed cool enough and getting used to 88 degrees was a very quick adjustment.  If that were not enough, the moon was full and in the city lights only a couple of stars, or more likely planets, were visible.  No amount of planning could have made the evening more delightful.

Sauna

Perhaps I have come full circle.  My childhood was filled with visits to neighborhood sauna nights.  This summer He Who Must Be Obeyed has worked on making a sauna off of our back porch.  The Sauna stove with rocks has a Finnish name and works wonderfully.  We have sauna-ed three times now and plan another sauna this evening; to be cooled off in the heated pool.  I don't think that is even fair.  The childhood sauna never had the cold lake nor the snowbank cool-off.  It was completed with a steamy toweling off and getting dressed with all the neighborhood women talking in Finnish.  They could talk breathing in and breathing out.  It made for a lovely lullaby for a child who slept on the way home to my grandparent's sheep ranch.

My mother and I met relatives in Finland in the sauna.  Their summer cabin was on an island with a sauna connected to their boat launch.  The wooden floating dock must have been 70 feet to the end.  After a session in the steam, we all walked to the end of the bouncing dock for a dive into the cold Finland lake...about three times.    It was a no clothes, no towel, no swim suit event.  All women, grandma, mother, daughter, sister, wife, and small child welcoming the visitors from America with a sauna, we got new birch switches, we were scrubbed, rinsed, and given siima, a strange delicious mildly fermented lemon and raisin drink and finally taken to the cabin to the coffee table to meet the men.  How could one not feel like family!

My life has been full of these "Marcus Borg" thin places.  Those holy places where God is so close you can smell his presence.

Yard, Jungle, or What?

Sometimes it is hard to tell.

Is it a weed?  Is it a flower?

Whatever, it is a joy.

Cricket Cage

When the job moved us to Omaha in 1968 or 69, one of our little sons made a cricket cage and brought a Black Hills cricket with us in the car.  Both the cage and the singing cricket were really quite charming.  I don't know how we made it with no AC, five children, a big German Shepherd, and the cricket of course.

A few years ago I found a wire screened and plastic bug cage at a garage sale for my visiting grandchildren.  For a few summers it was filled with fire-flies but now as the grandchildren grew out of the bug stage, their grandmother has gone back into it.  The last time I was alone a few days a Praying Mantis found its way into the house and I put a door stop on it and waited until He Who Must Be Obeyed came home to save me from its prying eyes and long reaching front legs.

Last night a very loud cricket with an operatic voice sang in the living-room.  I thought I let it outside but no, as soon as I got back in bed, it began its loud song again, for a mate, I suppose.  If it tries to sing me to sleep tonight I am going to cage it and let it sing its heart out.  My only fear is that I will break its legs in my desperate attempt to get it in my cricket cage.

All of this does not sound very dignified for a grandmother.

A Bird in the Hand

Not only did I have a bird in my hand, I had it in a bug cage while it recovered from hitting our glass storm door.  I found the little yellow bellied wren on its back on the cement with a menacing cardinal watching it from atop the bird feeder.  I should have taken a photo of it.  It was so beautiful and small.  I gave it a few minutes to recover and freed it in the back yard.  It is a rare opportunity to have a bird in the hand.

As long as I can recall, I have had an affinity for a furry or feathered bundle with a beating heart.  Our morning started out with this pink nosed and toed pear eater.  After I got a picture of him, he went off to the humane society to be released a thousand feet/yards from his capture address.  It sounds like a revolving door to me, but maybe he will avoid this unpleasant experience.  I can't say I much liked his looks, but the flies did.

 Mouth open and showing teeth, it drooled.  So very unpleasant and unappealing.

I Knew it All Along!

" Finland declared best country in the world

Finns are delighted that a panel assembled by Newsweek magazine has decreed Finland the best country in the world, The Times of London reports.

The panel of economists and social policy experts measured countries according to quality of life, education, health, economic competitiveness and the political environment. Finland came first ahead of Switzerland and Sweden. The US and UK ranked 11th and 14th.

Aki Riihilahti, a player for the national football team, told The Times he thought Finns were "actually quite exceptional". Finnish handshakes were among the best in the world, he added."

           I love all things Finnish.  Well, except the alcohol problems.  One of my wishes is to relearn the language before I can no longer talk.  Imagine that, too old to talk.  

Isabella and Clio

KELO in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, ran a story on a friend's granddaughter who found her dog at the play "Annie" in Sioux City.  I heard it from Isabella's grandmother yesterday.  Isabella is the oldest of the four little girls.  This is a photo of a beautiful happy mother who literally has her hands full.  Click the link KELO for the video news.

An Anniversary

August 7, 1954.

Roofers Stargazing

Back in my teaching career days, I had a student that had such a quick wit that he was a delight to be around.  He is on face-book and when I wrote on my wall that I have shingles and felt like I had bumped my head on a cabinet corner, his retort was 'roofers on a roof seeing stars'. How delightful.  You know what they say about punning, it is most certainly true, as we memorized in our confirmation lessons.

My awakening dream took me back to my teaching days and the high school where I worked for 16 years as a television production teacher with a group that put the school news on the cox cable access channel in Omaha.  My nightmares have gone from rattlesnakes to teaching and I can see the correlation.  Anyway, I felt such profound relief, in my dream, when I told a fellow teacher that this would be my last year.  "Now, if I taught say, English Literature, I might go on."  How strange is that a thing to say.  Maybe not too much so;  I got my first ulcer with those cable deadlines.

I found out what the facial shingles really feel like this morning after my spinal- stenosis med wore off during the night.  I felt like I had been kicked in the face by a horse.  Thank heaven the nerve medication works for the shingles also.  I don't mean to rattle on about myself so much.  Life is so much more than our bodily miscreants.

Again today, I will work on the errors in my Liz book, while learning MS Office Word 2010.  All of those upgrades in the past three years would give anyone the roofer's stargazing syndrome.  However, I find things in this upgrade much more to my liking, even if the learning curve is still there.  Hopefully, I can master a little bit of it that I need to plod on.

Rattlesnake Venim Like Warfarin

It is remarkable that our prairie ancestors, nor their 12 children, nor their innumerable off spring, ever were bitten by rattlesnakes on that northwest South Dakota prairie.  The immigrant father made the children moccasins which were not protection for the fangs of a snake, and not much better for the cactus on the flats.  Ranching was close to the ground work and no hole, outcrop of rock, nor patch of brush was off limits.

A home town son, grown man now, was bitten by a rattlesnake recently and was so near death the ER doctors did not think he would live.  His loss of blood was startling and the antivenin and transfusions were nearly non stop for the first days.  The snake got him in the ankle and right into an artery, he went unconscious immediately.  A heroin found him just when he was bitten and called 911.

I wonder what you think of the Facebook phenomenon?  When I first signed on I found it so overwhelming after two days that I went off and didn't log into it for many days.

A few days ago I had a fairly long discussion in the little box on Facebook, with a brother in law who was on at the same time.  He wondered why I didn't call for his email address instead of having him email it to me.  I told him I was a phonophobe.  I would rather write three pages of stuff than dial a phone.  He thought it very odd.  Another brother in law asked HWMBO why I didn't talk to him on the phone.  He told him I don't talk to anyone.

I do, of course, talk to people on the phone.  In fact on the days that I feel lonely and friendless, I am glad for a telemarketer who is taking a poll and has lots of questions.  When I call the Microsoft help people in India, it is nice to know what time it is there and how is the weather?  I spoke to a Sony Television fellow from the Manila who helped me find all those digital channels that the new sets decode without purchasing cable.  It took forever for both of us, me letting the channels roll along, he waiting.  We got quite well acquainted.  When that was done, I could have gone through the same thing for the analog channels but I was exhausted and he probably needed to clear his head.

But I can't go on and on this way about the telephone.  Once I wished I had a cell phone.  What would I do with it but call AAA with a car problem.  Not having driven for a couple of years, I sure don't need one anymore.  I can put a house phone beside the walking machine, if I think I will fall off of that.

Wounded Healers

Listening With Our Wounds
"To enter into solidarity with a suffering person does not mean that we have to talk with that person about our own suffering. Speaking about our own pain is seldom helpful for someone who is in pain. A wounded healer is someone who can listen to a person in pain without having to speak about his or her own wounds. When we have lived through a painful depression, we can listen with great attentiveness and love to a depressed friend without mentioning our experience. Mostly it is better not to direct a suffering person's attention to ourselves. We have to trust that our own bandaged wounds will allow us to listen to others with our whole beings. That is healing."  Henri Nouwen

That Henri Nouwen had a lot to say about the human condition.  I suppose we all need a wounded healer as a listener now and then and sometimes on a daily basis for a spell.  I am not indicating that I need a listener just at the moment; only recalling when I could have used one.  I think about others that need this sort of listener.  My brother in law at the moment is suffering the wrath of Guillian-Barre' Syndrome.  What a wicked disease.

Our trip to the Black Hills to my maternal family reunion was balm to my soul, as I so seldom see my own relatives.  I took my three year project to give away in the "Proof Copy" state in which I still am at the moment.  So swallowing my pride, with my humble hat in hand, I gifted 80 copies to the relatives of my "Aunt Liz."  During the period of research, editing, writing, scanning in photos, and thinking on those brave immigrants, I fell in love with all of them once more.  I say all, as Aunt Elizabeth was my Grandmother's sister and one of 12 children of their parents who immigrated from Finland at the ages of 19 and 15.

I will work again on proof reading.  He Who Must Be Obeyed is an excellent proof reader and he indicated he will read it a few times, also.  Then I will send a couple of copies and request a copyright and cataloging  from the Library of Congress.  I am not certain if it would have a wide enough audience to seek a 'real' publisher or not.  Perhaps I will querry the SD State Historical Society to see if they might be interested.

It is good to be back here again.  Thanks to you dear readers who have checked to see if I am back online.

Tankaceratops sacrisonorum

Talk about wild life!  This herbivore lived right over the hill northwest of the Cave Hills buttes in my header at the moment; albeit his family probably ate the lush jungle plants 65.5 million years ago.  Today they have all gone to oil except for the fossil remains of  more dinosaurs than one can shake a stick at...while threatening the rattlesnakes of today.  How amazing and how good to have cousins that doggedly dig and come up with new bones with no names..until now!

A few years ago another dinosaur was named "Willo" for the rancher's wife on whose land it was found.  Now my own maiden name shares a little of that glory.

 I first read about it in my home town newspaper, Nation's Center News.  Google directed me to a few more sites worth exploring.

" This skull and its accompanying partial skeleton were discovered and collected nearly a decade ago by Stan and Steve Sacrison, respectively of Buffalo and Bison, South Dakota, in the Hell Creek Formation of Harding County. These twin brothers have distinguished themselves over the years in their paleontological discoveries that include three Tyrannosaurus rex skeletons. One of these, "STAN," is the second most complete T. rex skeleton ever discovered.

Implications of this discovery point to concerns held by scientists regarding the proposed route of the Keystone XL pipeline, which crosses Montana and South Dakota near other important paleontological sites."

The genus Tatankaceratops is derived from "Tatanka," the Lakota name for the American Bison (Bison bison), in reference to a similarity in size between the two animals. The name also intends to honor the Lakota Sioux Tribe who inhabited the region. The Latin "ceratops," means "horn face," and is commonly included in the names of creatures in this category. The species name, sacrisonorum, is a tip of the hat to Stan and Steve Sacrison. The new specimen, # BHI6226, is reposited at Black Hills Institute, Hill City, South Dakota."