Category Archives: Memories

Art and Culture, Elk Run, Health, Humanities, Memories, Minnesota

Some Angle

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A sticky floor. Vibram soles. Caught myself-ha-on my left forehead. Whack on the dining room floor. Ouch. Looked over at my right hand. You know how fingers look. My little finger’s top two joints pointed away from my hand at a 70 degree angle. Well. That didn’t look right. What the nurse said in the E.R. Doc Miner, too.

I will be happy to put 2026 in memory. Not been a great year. In this visit to the ER, required due to my head banging, I felt no pain. Until. Dr. Miner got a syringe full of lidocaine and stuck a needle in the soft tissue of my injured little finger. He worked the needle around the bone. OMG. That hurt.

After he picked up my hand in his. “That’s done.” Sure enough, I had a straight finger. Easy. If you ignore the fall, the ambulance ride, and that damned needle.

Also. CT scan. No skull fracture. No brain bleed. No neck injury. Time to go home. So glad I’m at Elk Run.

 

Same day. After I was back in 308. The mail. A thick card. Who’s this from? My fellow docents of the class of 2005(I think.) had written messages while having a lunch together. Unexpected. Sweet. Couldn’t have come at a better time.

 

Dogs, Feelings, Memories, Minnesota, Travel

Good Dogs

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Friend Rich Levine came by for breakfast. He asked me what my most exciting outdoor adventure was. I thought: screwing up my courage so I could traverse “fat man’s misery” and do the Mammoth Cave tour. Maybe running through the rain at Turkey Creek State Park in Indiana.  Hiking up the switchback trail of Haleakala’s caldera and down into its cloud-filled basin.

Nope. I remembered. The whiteout on Lake Saginaw. On a dogsled trip in the Boundary Waters. Coming back from seeing petroglyphs, our teams following Arlie, our guide, heavy snow and high winds blinded us to each other. No guide. One day into dogsledding and I had no idea where to go or what to do.

Trust the dogs. That was it. They knew where the camp was and they wanted to get fed. Took my foot off the brake. Yelled, hike! And off they went. I stood on the sled and let them carry me through the whiteout and back to camp. Good dogs!

Fourth Phase, Great Wheel, Memories, Plants, Weather +Climate, Wild Neighbors

Amorous Bulls and Hyperphagic Bears

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The nights grow longer. Temperatures have cooled. The main harvest is only weeks away. We’re moving toward Samhain, or Summer’s End. First though we gather the bounty of the growing season over the long harvest that begins in Lughnasa and extends toward the end of Mabon.

I’ve written about back to school nostalgia. There’s also, for this Midwestern boy, memories of coming over a slight hill on a gravel road. Once in a while, during this time of year, a lumbering combine or a big John Deere pulling a corn picker can suddenly appear. Brakes. Gravel dust. Becoming part of the slow procession.

In the fields corn stands tall and green, its ears prominent in their maturity. Row after parallel row of corn. A major crop where I grew up. Alfalfa, too. Not much wheat, the fields often too small. Unlike the vast plantings in Nebraska. Soy beans, a lot of soy beans. Farmers would say, “I grow corn and beans.”

In my life harvest is not abstract or metaphorical. It is basic, predictable, woven into our fall days. Up here in the Rockies fall announces itself through hyperphagic bears tipping over garbage bins and that strange sound, the bugling of an amorous Elk bull. After 67 years in the Midwest I still look for slow-moving harvest machinery.

 

assisted Living, Family, Fourth Phase, Memories, Minnesota, Shadow Mountain

Doorways

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Mary came on June 2nd. She will have been on Shadow Mountain for almost three months when she leaves on August 31st. Her timing was fortuitous. I needed buoying up and her simple act of showing up helped. A lot.

About a month later her presence proved critical as I hit the E.R. at St. Anthony’s and didn’t come home until 27 days later. Mary took care of Shadow and the house while  I recovered.

She and her partner, Guru, have demonstrated with actions what family can mean. Thanks, Mary.

 

We will slip into a transition zone, if we haven’t already. A zone in which I am leaving Shadow Mountain, but not yet; and, where I am moving into Elk Run but not there. Between. A liminal space in which old ways and purposes can transform.

I’m going to let those changes emerge as Shadow Mountain fades and Elk Run comes into focus. Three weeks.

We all have these threshold moments in our lives. Another occurred for me in 1970. My job, rag cutter at Fox River Paper, offered no intellectual stimulation. Which I need. When Reverend Curtis Herron broached the idea of seminary, I laughed. At first.

Later, while jumping into the rotary boiler to pack in the cut rags, I realized. What am I doing? Judy and I were in a bad patch in our open marriage. There was no future in cutting rags. Seminary didn’t seem like a bad idea.

Twenty or so years later I left the Presbyterian ministry to write novels. (Thanks to Kate.) That threshold moment in Appleton, Wisconsin had steered me onto a surprising life path.

What threshold moments do you recall?

 

Memories

See You in September

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The end of August. Lengthening nights. Cooler temperatures. School starting. Here on Shadow Mountain it will see long time friends Adrian and Tara exiting a Dopy Don infested U.S. for Costa Rica. Mary returning to the land down under. I stay here, so far limited in movement to my lower level domain.

I remember this time with fondness. A new school year. Leaves turning. What would I learn? How would the new year be different?

Before my freshmen year at Wabash, I leafed through copies of Gentleman’s Quarterly. In addition to madras shirts and sport jackets G.Q. suggested a navy blazer and charcoal wool pants. Not clothing items I’d ever need in Alexandria. Just considering them told me I had begun to push into new territory. Exciting. Confusing. Equal parts.

Equally so was getting the list of school supplies each of us had to bring to our new grade. #2 lead pencils. Elmer’s glue. Crayons. A ruler. A protractor. Pink eraser. I loved shopping for these items. To this day I love office supply stores.

For some reason I think today’s students may not have the same feelings. Smart phones. The internet. Tik Tok. A lot of cultural noise that we didn’t have in the late fifties, early sixties.

Fourth Phase, Friends, Greenhouse, Memories, Politics, Shadow Mountain, US History

Decoration Day

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Shabbat. Melissa came, drove Ruby to Mangy Moose Trail, and picked up my six heirloom tomato plants. Healthy and strong, straight out of the Heirloom Tomato Farm greenhouse.

Not sure if they’re gonna live. My heater didn’t keep them warm enough last night. 47 degrees. Way too cold for tomatoes. I’ll have to check on them today. A long walk in my current weakened condition. I do have the Inogen charged so I can carry my O2 concentrator.

If they’re ok, I’ll give them a drink. Artemis drawing me into movement. A good thing.

Janice planted the tomatoes. Coming back in occasionally with pictures. Sweet of her to do that.

Ginny, her partner, helped with thin skin wound treatment. She’s a nurse. And an opera singer. And a theater director. And a student of Torah and mussar.

Monday entry

Tanks wrinkling hot asphalt. Last year’s homecoming queen riding on the back of the realtor’s Cadillac convertible. The color guard wearing uniforms that fit them long ago, now bulging, showing a bit of white skin.

The Decoration Day parade in Alexandria. We waved tiny flags and cheered the baton twirlers. The whole town lined Harrison street, baby boomers like me still in elementary school.

The official start of summer. The pool in Beulah Park opened. I still remember the small pool of chlorine laced water we all had to step in before we could enter the swimming pool itself.

I skipped the long speeches and decorating of veterans graves. Pretty boring for an eight year old.

Long after I left Alexandria, Decoration Day became Memorial Day and shifted in time from May 30th to the last Monday in May. In my mind Memoria Day remains on May 30th as does the annual running of the Indianapolis 500. I still occasionally miss the Indy 500 for this reason.

School ended the week before Memorial Day and began again the day after Labor Day. It shocked me to learn that schools in Colorado routinely begin in mid-August. Seems cruel and unusual.

 

Dopy struggles his way toward a deal with the Iranians. Number one? Opening the Straits of Hormuz. Which weren’t an issue until we invaded. So Dopy brokers deal to solve a problem he created, one which was never listed as a war aim. Go, Team America!

 

Memories, Men, World History

Braided Lives

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Spring and the Trial Moon

Shabbat gratefuls:  Love. Justice. Compassion. Our winter weekend. Less illness overburden. Dishwashers. Slavic.

Rene Good. Alex Pretti. Say their names.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Cold night

 

Kavannah: Netzach. Perseverance. Trial begins on Wednesday. I need netzach as I enter this latest round of treatment.

Tarot: paused

One brief shining:  Gathered in a circle, arms on each others shoulders, we Woolly Mammoths sang at the close of our monthly home meeting: We circle around, we circle around, the boundaries of the earth, spreading our long wing feathers as we fly.

 

Not sure how we got this Ghost Dance song, but the memory of singing it with my Woolly brothers remains powerful and haunting. We met twice a month for over twenty years.

One meeting was in a Woolly home. Warren would serve his turkey chili. Frank always took the March meeting: corned beef and cabbage, boiled potatoes. Though the host picked the topic, Frank would often punt with–wild card.

Just before we left, we sang.

We also had lunch once a month. More casual. We’d talk over breadsticks, egg drop soup, shawarma. Catching up, discussing the news. Friends. Sometimes there would be heated arguments, most often between the two Charlies.

An annual retreat. I tried to arrive early–to claim a private room.  Many bags of groceries collected on the counter. Sleeping bags, hiking boots, heavy coats. The retreat was usually in January. A Minnesota January–bitter cold.

We stayed in Catholic retreat centers like Blue Sky Monastery, a lodge in northern Minnesota, and in a large lake cabin/home designed by one of our members.

Gathering at Emily’s.  Lunch.  The upstairs room–ours. I liked the raw kibbi. While we ate, Mark might tell us of new exhibits at the science museum. Tom might regale us with blowing up cars. For work!

Each Sunday morning five of us gather on Zoom. Bill’s white hair, a year from 90. Paul’s caps: WTF. Tom and his cat Rascal. Mark and another good week.

Paul, in Maine, moved away first. Then Jimmy headed to South Dakota. Finally, Kate and I moved here to Shadow Mountain. Diaspora Woollies, yet still bonded.

We’re all still alive. We have one Nonagenarian, Frank, who is 93 now. One of us, Bill, will join Frank next year. Most of us cluster in the late seventies to early eighties.

Architect, ob-gyn, clergy. Not a poker club. Not a  beer and the game group.

We did banish a member. His concerns hijacked meetings.

Bill stood by Regina’s bed, stroking her hair.

Tom and Roxann got married in a mandorla.

Ode lost his prostate.

We showed up.

Building trust, shared memories. Almost exactly half my life.

Sure, some of us, like me, have significant health challenges. Yet our lives are ongoing. Braiding together like sweet grass.

Time, braided.

We fly.

Wing feathers catching air.

Cancer, Fourth Phase, Health, Memories

The Trial

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Spring and the Moon of Liberation

Friday gratefuls: Cool night. Starting my morning. Tamales. Cheeseburger. Mark in Hafar. Mary in Melbourne. Joe and Seoah in Osan.

Rene Good. Alex Pretti. Say their names.

Sparks of Joy and Awe:  Morning Darkness

 

Kavannah: Areyvut. Mutual responsibility.  All humans are accountable one to another.

Tarot: King of Vessels, Heron. Quiet presence. Emotional balance. Waiting for the trial to begin.

 

One brief shining: I want my cancer on its heels. Samantha, trial coordinator, called. I need to go back in, redo an EKG, sign more papers. Tired of all the preparatory work. I want to start the trial.

 

Trial. I’ve had jury duty several times. All in Minnesota. A lot of sitting around, reading. Waiting. I served on one jury, an unmemorable case. We found the defendant guilty.

Juries fulfill the promise, made two-hundred and fifty years ago, that I will not judged by aristocracy, but by a jury of my peers.

This clinical trial brings together a jury of my peers.

The full trial lasts nine months. The sentence will be handed down by my body and the actinium’s aim.

No guarantees. My participation is voluntary.

You could call this a capital trial. Some of us will get a reprieve. Hope I’m one of those.

Science. I had polio, measles, and mumps. Polio was long ago, when I was about a year and half old. Yet it continues to impact me at 79. My head drops. My left diaphragm is paralyzed.

I remember mom coming in to check on me. A dark room. I was sensitive to light. Mom would bring me soup or a sandwich, lay a cool rag over my forehead. Measles.

Here’s the thing. When I was eight years old, I had to stand in line in Thurston Elementary. To get a shot. The polio vaccine. I felt this as a keen injustice since I’d already had polio. Result? By 1979, twenty-five years later, polio no longer menaced the U.S.

If only I’d had the MMR vaccine, first available in 1971, I could have avoided the measles and the mumps.

I know, from direct experience, the need for vaccines.

I have benefitted from medical science. I may have been born too early for the polio and MMR vaccines, but I’m pleased my son Joseph could get them.

Not to mention the many different protocols that have extended my life after my cancer diagnosis. I feel good about participating in the clinical trial. It’s medical science which will  help not only me, but thousands of men in the future.

I’m living proof that medical science matters. At the most personal level.

I’ll go in.
Repeat my EKG.
Sign the papers.

 

Fourth Phase, Memories, Minnesota

Shining Through

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Spring and the Moon of Liberation

Shabbat gratefuls: Christina. Sam. Jamie. Luke. Two Wendys. Gary. Ayelet. Ode. Tom. Paul. Bill. Neck brace. Writing. Parsha.

Rene Good. Alex Pretti. Say their names.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Chesed

 

Kavannah: Areyvut. Mutual responsibility.  All humans are accountable to each other.

Tarot: Five of Bows, empowerment.  Returning to the homeland of your soul. I write.

 

One brief shining:  I have a coffee mug. A male moose stands in shallow water, looking away, toward the boreal forest. Below him is an inscription: The Gunflint Trail. I bought this mug over forty years ago. It has survived moves, constant handling. A Velveteen Rabbit.

 

Legacy cannot be purchased; but it is inescapable.

 

Ruth and Gabe will remember me.  Ancientrails, words and ideas over time.

Legacy arises from life. It cannot be created by a name on a building or a ghost-written biography.

My social worker, Rachel, believes in the ripple effect. She sees  our interactions with others expanding, rippling out. Rachel is a kind and sensitive woman. She treats me with kindness. Her soul expands further into the world when I unconsciously treat another with kindness.

That coffee mug. Has had a ripple effect. On me. Holding it I remember Raeone and a night on the Gunflint Trail when we heard a banging, clanging sound. Opened the door to a black bear, head in our garbage bin.

I remember M.J. We were close, then not.

Holding it I remember the boreal forest which fills the Arrowhead region of Minnesota. Wolves, bears, moose. Glacial lakes. A border with Canada. A long coastline on the Great Lake, Superior.

The ripple effect. Ceramics capture ripples. Over the years since that banging, clanging night I’ve often picked up this mug, filled it with cold coffee, and signed on zoom with my Ancient Brothers, three of whom still live in Minnesota.

The moose has a few spots where its glaze has worn off to reveal the white glaze of the mug’s first firing. Constant use has changed it from a souvenir to a vessel of memory, more filled with Grand Marais and the North Shore than the gallons of coffee I’ve drunk from it.

The mug’s legacy. An emptiness bounded by glazed clay. It’s that emptiness, the cylinder-shaped nothing. That makes it useful.

That’s legacy. Unintended. Yet inevitable. Our lives create an empty space which others can pour themselves into.  At my age much of my glazing has worn off from  constant handling. The self–my neshama–once glazed over by convention and routine, now casts a gentle glow through my long frayed exterior.

Pick up the mug.
Fill it.
Remember.

Family, Memories, Minnesota

At the Capital Grille

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Imbolc and the Moon of Tides (2% crescent)

Tuesday gratefuls: Tamales from David’s mom. Ruth smiling. Winds. Melting snow. Final C.T. of this round. The lives of our days.

Rene Good. Alex Pretti. Say their names.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Young love

 

Kavannah: Histapkot. Contentment.   Seek what you need, give up what you don’t need.

Tarot: #4, The Greenman.  “…he brings order, discipline, and the “organized action” needed to manifest ideas into reality.” May it be so for my writing.

One brief shining: Ruth and David came up, their new, tender relationship feeling its way. David, “I’m nervous.” Patriarchs, eh? We sat, David on the ottoman, Ruth in the chair, me in mine, and talked of many things.

 

Do you remember? Meeting the parent or grandparent? I do. When I met Kate’s mom and dad, Rebecca and Merton, I had had, as Ruth said David had, a pep talk.

I was not nervous. At 42 I knew who I was and what I was doing in our relationship. I loved Kate. We were getting married.

Rebecca opened, “So, I hear you’re weaving a story.” Oops. She had taken that line from her loom. She was an accomplished weaver. Her slightly forced smile, her body language. The tone.

Merton, the anesthesiologist, was quiet. He twisted his ring a bit, one he set with a stone from his rock tumbler.

Part of the pep talk prepared me for this. “Mom and Dad think you’re after my money.” Since Kate made four times what I did as a Presbyterian clergy, I could just understand. An odd suspicion. Without evidence.

In retrospect it may be that Kate had told them that after we married I would resign from the ministry to focus on writing, cooking, Joseph.

See. That proves it! He’s taking advantage of her. I could feel certainty behind her not reaching the eyes smile.

I ignored the implication. “Yes, that’s right. A novel, Even the Gods Must Die.”

The booth at the Capital Grille got smaller. The sound of cutlery on China. I shifted my napkin in my lap. She had heard what she expected. I did not then, nor did I later try to dissuade them.

Moral grounding can only show up in deeds. Words are too slippery. Too often shaped to the ears of the other.

They never changed their perception. I didn’t care. Kate and I knew each other. Who we were. What we wanted.

When she came home from work, I had a hot meal ready. The dogs had been fed. I’d written my thousand words for the day. We could be together.

Our life blossomed. Let Rebecca and Merton stay in their xeroscaped home deep in the labyrinth of Sun City, Arizona. Seniors only. Golf carts mandatory.

Here’s the irony. I got the money. When Kate died. I felt sad about her not getting to enjoy more of it. Relieved that I would have enough. So much more than I ever expected.

Rebecca and Merton died long ago. I scattered their ashes into a river flowing into Burntside Lake, near Ely, Minnesota.

Who knows whether Ruth and David have a future. They don’t, not yet. I don’t. If they do, I hope David sees me as welcoming, trusting of his intentions.

That’s all I wanted.

In that booth at the Capital Grille.