AncienTrails

Lughnasa                                            Monsoon Moon

Computer keyboard problems this am in Chamberlain, South Dakota. No joy when I tried to write this morning. Now, I’m able at least to use the laptop keyboard. The ergonomic keyboard crashes all entry methods. Sigh.

Appropriately for Lughnasa I drove through country with corn, beans, and wheat. The contract combines are out scything their way through early Nebraska, South Dakota and Minnesota wheat. Outside Ainsworth, Nebraska I had a rural moment when I started onto Ne. Hwy 49 and it was filled, both lanes, with a combine.

Right now I’m in the very opposite environment, on the 12th floor of the Millennium Hotel on Nicollet Mall in downtown Minneapolis. I’d have to encounter a big street sweeper or an escaped Zamboni to have a similar experience.

I’m tired. The drive was long. Though I’ve done it many times, my body doesn’t seem to put up with the effort as easily. That’s ok, though. I’m back in Scandinavian inflected country, a place where the plight of each of us counts for something. The architecture here is more familiar. But, I didn’t feel that frisson of oh, I’m back home this time. Instead, I drove into the Welcome Center on I-90 just past the state line and felt like a tourist.

Here there are memories, so many memories. They tumble over each other. The old Chestnut Tree restaurant a couple of blocks from here. The 25 year plan for the year 2000 that I helped guide into existence-in 1975. The IDS which I watched emerge from the ground when I lived in the Mauna Loa apartment buildings across from the old Northwestern Hospital, now gone. Westminster Church and its associations with my work for the Presbytery. Getting married there to Raeone to Handel’s Water Music. And that’s all just in a few blocks from where I sit now, high above my past.

I’ve decided on my brief speech for Groveland. I’ll write out here before I give it.

Gonna go to bed tonight, then get out and start roaming around tomorrow. Probably over to Loring Park, the Sculpture Garden, eat lunch at the Walker. Like old times.

No pics for right now. I forgot to bring the cord that connects my phone to the computer. When I get back.