29\u00a0 90%\u00a0 26%\u00a0 5mph NNE bara29.84\u00a0 falls windchill25 Imbolc<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waning Crescent of the Winter Moon<\/p>\n
In spite of the fact that this is Minnesota, how soon we forget, I had REI all to myself this\u00a0morning.\u00a0 Monday morning shoppers scared back into their easy chairs by, gasp, SNOW.\u00a0 OK, I did think about turning around and heading back, then “I am a Minnesotan and I am not afraid,” soared through my mind and on I drove.\u00a0 Slippin’ and slidin’ to the\u00a0mall.\u00a0 Just like when I was a kid and we had to walk four blocks all the way downtown to buy a pair of shoes.<\/p>\n
Anyhow, a helpful young lady, blond and cheerful, quite normal except for the hoop through the right nostril, which, I suppose, makes her normal in that world formerly inhabited by adults now over 60, guided me through the hiking\/walking show selection process.\u00a0 The first pair pretty much fit me, though they were a little snug.\u00a0 Then, “Oh.\u00a0 These are a women’s 8!”\u00a0 Wouldn’t you know?\u00a0 Still we did\u00a0find an appropriately masculine pair of Keens, “They started out making water shoes so they know slick rock.”\u00a0 One of the problems in hiking Hawai’i is water slicked rock;\u00a0 I’ve learned this with bruised ankles more than once.<\/p>\n
Nearer to\u00a0 home at the Anoka Co-op I went searching for Minnesota cheese (Bongards, in this case) and Minnesota bread (oddly, Holy Land Pocket Bread, made in Minneapolis) for my presentation at the Woolly retreat.\u00a0 Then, sliding my way back home.<\/p>\n
All the while I listened to Tom Wolfe’s\u00a0 I Am Charlotte Simmons<\/u>.\u00a0\u00a0 Anyone who encountered college after academic stardom in a small-town high school, like me for instance, can identify all the over place with Charlotte Simmons, the little mountain girl from Sparta, North Carolina and a Presidential Scholarship.\u00a0 Well, I never had a Presidential Scholarship, but there’s some connection, anyhow.\u00a0 Wolfe has made a living out of closely observed novels of manners of our time, a sort of Dickensian project in hip, post-modern tongue in cheek prose.\u00a0 This one may not be great literature, but it’s a great time-machine back to those magic years when everything seemed possible, if only you could figure anything out.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Those moratorium years didn’t work out so well for me.\u00a0 Instead of sticking to my guns\u00a0or buckling down with heroic intention fortified by small town common sense and parental support, I got drunk, wasted, started smoking and wandered without purpose for so many years I don’t even know when I stopped.\u00a0 Sigh.\u00a0 Oh, I did fine academically, but not as\u00a0well as I might have without the marijuana and hash–yes, I inhaled–the LSD, mescaline, psilocybin, beer, 151 rum, cognac and single-malt scotch.\u00a0 I floated out of college and stayed afloat all through seminary and well into my first years in the ministry.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Treatment.\u00a0 Second divorce.\u00a0 Flounder around.\u00a0 Discover writing and Kate in the same year.\u00a0 Now, in my final third of life, I’ve picked up steam and gotten the ole head and heart straightened out.\u00a0 Thank Mother Earth.\u00a0 Still, it is really better late than never.\u00a0 I’m living proof.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
29\u00a0 90%\u00a0 26%\u00a0 5mph NNE bara29.84\u00a0 falls windchill25 Imbolc \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waning Crescent of the Winter Moon In spite of the fact that this is Minnesota, how soon we forget, I had REI all to myself this\u00a0morning.\u00a0 Monday morning shoppers scared back into their easy chairs by, gasp, SNOW.\u00a0 OK, I did think about turning around … Continue reading The Moratorium Years Didn’t Work Out so Well for Me<\/span>