Ithaka

Success is a journey, not a destination. The doing is often more important than the outcome. — Arthur Ashe

I ran across the above quote someplace, and it let me remember a favorite poem of mine entitled “Ithaka” by Constantine Cavafy. Ithaka was the Greek city that Odysseus, the wandering hero of The Iliad and The Odyssey, kept trying to go home to. How many years pass by in the stories? I think he traveled and experienced great adventures for about ten years before he finally made it home to his wife, probably just in time since men of the community were trying to woo her. The poem reads, in part:

When you set out for Ithaka
ask that your way be long,
full of adventure, full of instruction.
...
Have Ithaka always in your mind.
Your arrival there is what you are destined for.
But do not in the least hurry the journey.
Better that it lasts for years,
so that when you reach the island you are old,
rich with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to give you wealth.

Ithaka gave you the splendid journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She hasn’t anything else to give you.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka has not deceived you.
So wise have you become, of such experience,
that already you will have understood what these Ithakas mean.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Many’s the time when I have reached some goal, I find that it did not satisfy me all that much. It was the getting there that was memorable, not the owning it, or reaching it, or seeing it. I have both The Iliad and The Odyssey in my personal library, and I fully intend to go back and read them. The message in them is thousands of years old, but it still stands today.

At Rest

Last Friday evening we attended a geneology program at the Heritage Center in Bismarck. The speaker was well-acquainted with his subject and has spent a good deal of time and effort in pursuing his own family lineage. He spoke of the crowded cemeteries in the eastern part of the country and the tendency to start using the cremation option. He had an Italian background and has traveled back there researching some of his long-dead relatives. In that country tombs are stacked on top of the ground, maybe five deep. They cannot stay there forever because when the family’s 40 year lease on that space expires and if it is not renewed, the bones are removed to make room for another deceased person and are placed in a common ossuary to rest for eternity.

Our part of the country does not feel these pressures (or does it?). There is an old cemetery just south of us a mile or so that seems to be in the way of progress. The city wants to build a new water tower on its acreage, and they are in a fact-finding process now. Never were there many buried there, but it sits on a 40 acre piece of ground that a farmer in the 1970's decided to clear and farm over. Several of the tombstones were buried or pushed aside, but due to some misunderstanding in the terms of the lease, he never got in trouble for desecrating the site. One of the stones still visible carries the inscription, “Stranger, call this not a place of fear and gloom. To me it is a pleasant spot, it is my husband’s tomb.”

I know of another farmer some years back who in a similar vein decided the stones of a burial ground were in the way of his machines so he pushed them aside. I don’t remember many of the details, but I do remember driving by them and seeing them in disarray. It seems to me that when I am planted in the dirt I won’t want to be disturbed or have my marker moved. I want a few people to be able to find me for a generation or two. Edgar Lee Master’s Spoon River Anthology carries the stories in poetic form of about 250 residents of a cemetery. They seem to have plenty to say in their rest.

Prohibition Ends

An advertisement in the Sunday newspaper caught my eye. A local beer distributor celebrated the 75th anniversary of the repeal of prohibition in 1933 with a half page ad that added a tag behind the old saying “Happy days are here again” with the word “Again.” This comes from a rather large distributorship operated by a family that more than likely makes a nice living from their product. They write elsewhere in the ad’s script, “Thanks for bringing Budweiser back!”

This 18th Amendment banned the “manufacture, sale or transportation of intoxicating liquors for beverage purposes” and had taken effect January 29, 1920. Prohibition ended 75 years ago on December 5, 1933, however some states continued to maintain temperance laws.

I was prompted to recall something I experienced over 40 years ago, probably in June of 1965. After one year of teaching I looked for something to do in the summer months, and it did not take long for someone to approach me — to be a combine operator on his harvesting crew in Kansas and Nebraska. I consented and it wasn’t long before I was herding a beat-up truck with a big combine loaded on it down Highway 281. After a three day trip we arrived in Medicine Lodge, Kansas and parked in a pot-holed parking lot by a truck stop. It had been raining in the area, and we had time to kill. The sign on the building next to us proclaimed itself as being a museum dedicated to the memory of Carrie Nation. Who was that? None of us knew, so a question asked of a local provided the answer. She was a famous Prohibitionist who went around smashing up bars and saloons with her hatchet. She attracted some followers, and they made quite a name for themselves at the time before Prohibition was established. Between 1900 and 1910 she was arrested over thirty times, and a wide-spread barroom slogan of the time was “All Nations Welcome But Carrie.”

She was a leader in the temperance fervor that resulted in the 18th Amendment’s adoption. She called herself “a bulldog running along at the feet of Jesus, barking at what He doesn’t like,” and felt she followed orders from Heaven to promote temperance by smashing up bars. I remember my time down there and how good the cold beers tasted at the end of the day in the little bar in Sun City, Ks.

Blood Donor

“It is every man’s obligation to put back into the world at least the equivalent of what he takes out of it.” — Albert Einstein

On two occasions in my lifetime I have needed blood transfusions. Today, for the first time, I became a blood donor so that I can help someone else who may need it. It seems as though there are different types of donating, something I learned today. I chose to give 2RBC which translates as donating two transfusable units of red blood cells which may be used to help one or two patients. In addition, patients who require multiple transfusions benefit from receiving products from one donor because there is less of a chance for a transfusion-related reaction. With this type of donation I am only able to give three times a year. This 2RBC is apparently a relatively new procedure, being in use for only a few years.

I gave a quick look on the internet to learn a bit more of the procedure and its product. One site said these collections increase the number of red blood cells units available to the U.S. blood supply yet decrease the transfusion risks to patients because they do not have to be exposed to blood from as many donors which is pretty much a rehash of what I learned at the blood center.

I believe the people who draw the blood have the title phlebotomist. The
young lady phlebotomist who did my intake interview apparently had done many of these and tended to read the many questions rapidly with a slurred pronunciation. More than once I had to stop her and ask her to repeat what she had said. I wanted to say, “Miss, I have taught speech classes and drama in school, and I want you to slow down and start enunciating your words!” I have only been a donor this one time; I will have to go several times more before I am caught up with what I have been given.