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.

Damn Politics

Now they say the Democrats are fighting amongst themselves because of the Obama-Clinton race for the nomination. Hillary is behind in the delegate count, but because of her (and Bill’s) sense of entitlement, they can’t take defeat and get on with business. Somebody once said, “I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.” I believe that is where we are at with the situation: too many people are a little afraid of the young, half-black, short on experience Obama. I’m sure he would do fine. I know for certain he is a rational orator.

History tells us that Harry Truman admired the story of Cincinnatus, a citizen soldier in old Roman times. Cincinnatus found contentment in his humble farming occupation, but known to have leadership ability, he was asked to lead his country in a time of peril. After the danger passed, he insisted on returning to his farm rather than remaining in an authority position which he could easily have retained.

Both the Bush and Clinton families hold different values from Cincinnatus, and, instead of returning to quiet private lives, they want to retain power, even if it means passing it back and forth. A couple years ago the Bush brother who was governor of Florida was being mentioned as potential presidential material. How about Chelsea?

Another quotation can bring a conclusion to my thesis: “Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward. They may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.” Wolfgang von Goethe.

Meuse-Argonne

The Dakota Cowboy Poetry Gathering is scheduled again for the Memorial Day weekend, May 24-25, in Medora, and I am getting ready to participate again. It must be a case of some hidden desire I have to get up in front of an audience and perform something I’ve written. Whatever the motivation is, I have enjoyed doing it. I’ve been in attendance several other years, too, but I do not remember hearing many presentations that relate to the memorial holiday. I thought I would set out to bring something to the event that was holiday related, and after searching about I finally stumbled onto something that I am developing.

My Grandpa Sandvig was a World War I veteran and fought in the bloodiest battle in U. S. history — The Battle of Meuse-Argonne. I knew from records that he was a member of the 91st Infantry Division, 362nd Regiment. A bit of research told me many of the men in it were cowboys from Wyoming and Montana, so it became known as the “Wild West Division.” One more bit of Western lore became attached to that outfit, too. They adopted as their battle cry, “Powder River, let ‘er buck” from a river running through those states, which was sometimes said to be a mile wide and one inch deep. At any rate, the cowboy connection has been made, and I am at work developing the idea.

A great resource I have acquired is the recently published book To Conquer Hell: The Meuse-Argonne, 1918. Numbers associated with this battle have boggled my mind. The 91st Division alone suffered 4,700 casualties in the short period of September 26-30. The whole affair was made more vivid in my mind after reading Grandpa’s September 26 journal entry in the blank leaves of the small Bible he carried: “6 in the morning. We started the drive about 20 K.M. west of Verdun and we were in 17 days...” Over one million American soldiers fought here on a 26 mile front suffering 120,000 casualties including 26,000 dead.

Yes, I have found the cowboy connection I wanted for the Poetry Gathering. I just hope I can do justice to it from the humble viewpoint I bring to it.

Just emptying my head

How about a joke today. A drunk comes in and orders five shots of Crown Royal, “Quick!” He slams down 1, 2, 3, without stopping to take a breath. The bartender says, “Hey, slow down, that’s expensive sipping whisky.” As the drunk slams down the 4th, he says, “You’d drink fast, too, if you had what I’ve got!” “Well, what’ve you got?” The drunk slams down the 5th, “Seventy-five cents.”
. . .
I agree with the old farmer who told me one time, “The trouble with a milk cow is she won’t stay milked.”
. . .
Ole had been drinking much too often, so Mrs. Larsen suggested that Lena rent a devil’s costume and try to scare him into sobriety. Lena thought that was a fine idea and rented a devil’s suit at the costume shop. The next time Ole came home drunk, there was the Devil waiting for him at the door. “Who are you?” Ole asked. “I am the Devil,” said Lena in a disguised voice. “Vell,” said Ole, “shake hands, brother, ‘cause I married your sister.”
. . .
There isn’t much out of the ordinary happening at our household lately. One remarkable occurrence was the sunrise this morning. At first it reminded me of a live coal in a fire, then as it rose, pink and orange shades glowed all over the eastern sky. With the early spring temperatures coming now, it won’t be long before the trees in the valley will start to bud and leaf and turn beautiful, as it does every year. Many people want to share the beauty of the river, evidently, as there is more and more housing development occurring all the time on the bluffs and along the banks.
. . .
Mary got a new computer system set up and running. The prices of them has definitely dropped, but we decided to go with their set-up costs, software, and warranty which about doubled the purchase price. So much for cheap computers!

...so few words

On our recent trip to the southeast part of the country we passed through Independence, MO and stopped to tour the Truman Presidential Museum and Library. While browsing through the many exhibits, I stopped and lingered for several minutes in front of a pencilled message that he had written to the Secretary of War giving his authority to use the atom bomb on the Japanese homeland in World War II. It simply said, “Sec War, Suggestions approved. Release when ready but not sooner than August 2. HST.” The date August 2, I’ve gone on to discover, was when he’d be on the way home from a meeting with Stalin and Churchill at the Potsdam Conference. He did not want them to know of his intentions while they still met and did not want them to react before that meeting adjourned.

At any rate, I thought that I would like to have had a photograph of that message which is being displayed behind glass, but photographs were not permitted. Not long ago we attended a fund-raising supper at Bismarck St. Mary’s High School where I entered a room where they were also sponsoring a used book sale. There I spotted the historian David McCullough’s biography entitled Truman and promptly bought it. In the photograph section of that book was a picture of the note, and I have spent some time reading and pondering that brief note and all the power its simple message expressed:

So much said with so few words!
That message poured a heady brew
which rose, foamed and overbrimmed
its turbid glass and flooded
those victim cities with waves
of fire and death. A firm hand
holding humble pencil wrote
this enjoining command. Kill
them to save American
lives went the argument, and
as written, so it was done.

The Outer Limits

I can say without fear of contradiction that if you sat down the ten smartest people in the world, you could ask them questions for which they had no answers. I read once that if human knowledge was seen as a growing island and its shoreline was the unknown, it could be said that the unknown grows, too, I suppose because new knowledge lets us ask new questions. I’ve long been a student of how we all come up against the limits of our knowledge for reasons such as aptitude, vocabulary, education, or whatever. I like to try and keep stretching and reaching for new territory. I hope I do not belabor the following metaphor:


Here at a scarred library
table salvaged from a one-
room country schoolhouse I sit
pondering fugitive thoughts.

Running bold and rowdy like
desperadoes in unmarked
territory, they escape
through dry desert arroyos

or ragged canyons that gnarl
and prejudice the terrain.
No map or highway signs
exist, and I walk unread

and unknowing. Pictures carved
on this desk have no meaning;
knowledge hid in the dark is
blocked in this narrow canyon.

Just a Few More Snippets

An old cowboy once told me, “Forgive your enemies, it messes with their minds.”
. . . . . . . . . . .
A big change took place in our household this week, we got hooked up to broadband internet, and I am enjoying myself one heck of a bunch by roaming around the internet as fast as I can read. Now, it won’t be so frustrating to download all those jokes and cartoons that so many people persist in forwarding. Now, I can download ‘em in a wink and trash those suckers before you know it. I’ve always enjoyed and appreciated personal messages, but we don’t get enough of them. With the changeover we have new email addresses, and I will forward them to the people in our address book.

A Montana internet radio station caught my attention a couple years back: www.kxzi.com. I was never able to receive it well with the old dial-up service and forgot about it. I rediscovered it again and have been playing it almost steady when I’m at my desk. He plays blues and bluegrass tunes which I like. He talks very little, mostly songs playing. It’s a great change from the same old stations I’m used to listening to.
. . . . . . . .
Spring approaches. I can tell since Mary is studying the seed catalogs for long stretches each day. This morning she’s attending a workshop at a local plant and tree store getting herself ready for the growing season. She has set a table up in the furnace room and is charming seeds to emerge from the pots with her magic flute and a fluorescent lamp.
. . . . . . . .
I heard a good Ole and Lena joke the other day. Ole was bragging to his buddy Sven about what a good hunter he was. When they got to their cabin in Canada north of Winnipeg, Ole said, “You start the fire and I’ll go shoot something for supper.” Ole walked in the woods only 3 or 4 minutes when he met a black bear. Dropping his gun, Ole hightailed it back to the cabin. Just as he reached the steps, he slipped and fell. The bear was running too fast to stop and skidded right in through the cabin door. Ole got up and slammed the door from the outside and shouted to Sven, “You go ahead and skin that one, and I’ll run out and get us another.”

More Snippets

More this-n-that

I wise cowboy once said, “Don’t name a calf you plan to eat.”
—
I just received an email from a cousin in California. They are making the most of their retirement years. She and her husband are leaving for Jordan soon, and, to add to the trip, will stop in Italy to visit friends. This trip is one of many they have taken to interesting spots in the world.
—
We need to take another step to join the modern world. Our dial-up connection is way too slow to enjoy much of what is on the internet. Since Bush plans on giving us some money back, I think we just might find a high-speed plan. I spend a lot of time in my study with a computer so why not have the latest!
—
Another wise cowboy quote, “Don’t corner something meaner than you.” I am in the middle of writing a poem about a fight to the death I witnessed as a young boy between a dog and a badger. The dog had been sicced on the wild one, but it was more than he could handle. The fight continued on to its miserable end.
—
I am reading a biography of Gerald R. Ford written by one of the newsmen assigned to reporting on the president. They became friends, and Ford told him much, so much that Ford swore him to promise, by jerking on his necktie, that he would not divulge the content of their conversations until after he died — Write It When I’m Gone by Thomas deFrank. Ford told him what he thought of Carter, Reagan, the Bush’s, and Clinton. Interesting.
—
Today is Valentine’s Day. I drove to our neighborhood store to buy flowers and a card. It so happened there were three of us in the same checkout line with flowers. I was amused by the gentleman behind me who said he just bought her a new car and thought that should be good enough. But no! He thought she was worth it, though. She’s been with him twenty-one years. The first one lasted nineteen.

A Real Message

The political campaign gets stale and starts smelling like dirty laundry. The candidates beg us to let them lead, and someone will get the majority of votes one day, but I wish it would hurry up and be done. Self-appointed experts, one and all. Having spent a working lifetime in education, I took plenty of classes from professors and read lots of books proclaiming wisdom in certain fields. After awhile it all started ringing hollow.

Yesterday, though, I listened to someone who had suffered a terrible rite of passage whose words carried lots of weight with me as well as most of the large crowd who heard her. She had EXPERIENCED the message she brought. Immaculee Ilibagiza spoke at the annual University of Mary Prayer Day to a crowd of about
2,500. She told how her life was dramatically transformed in 1994 during the Rwanda ethnic-cleansing genocide when she and seven other women huddled silently together in a cramped bathroom, three feet by four feet (Yes, 3' by 4'), in a local pastor’s house for 91 days! (Yes, 91 days) They were hiding from machete-wielding killers who were hunting for them. While in there her family members were killed along with about one million other Rwandans, mainly because they were not of the right tribe.

I still can hear her say “... just to feel the wind on my cheeks.” She had been denied that sensation for three months, and it was memorable for her to feel it again. She came to the United States, married, became a mother, and now works for the United Nations. Her message was one of forgiveness and how she had discovered the meaning of unconditional love — a love so strong that she was able to seek out and forgive her family’s killers.

Snippets

Snippets

Leave it to a cowboy poet to make this comparison: women are like cowpies. The older they get, the easier they are to pick up.
—
The granddaughter of President Eisenhower stated that she will support Obama in the election.
—
Place a Christian army in the middle of Muslim territory, and you can expect problems.
—
Harry Truman thought politicians should pattern their lives after Cincinnatus, a Roman patriot farmer, who was persuaded to lead his country in a time of peril, won the war, then willingly gave up his authority to return to his farm and plow.
—
The Mormon leader just died at the age of 97 years and had said about his longevity, “The wind is blowing, and I feel like the last leaf on the tree.”
It reminded me of the O. Henry short story entitled “The Last Leaf.” A man, very ill, lay on his hospital bed and noticed a vine outside his window losing its leaves to fall winds while his life slipped away commensurately. When the last one would fly he knew he would die. That night, an artist painted a leaf on the wall and the man, spotting the fake the next morning, survived his crisis and lived on.
—
For the first time in my life I voted in the caucus. Obama received my vote. I was one of many.
—
Newsweek magazine reports that in 2004 John McCain and Hillary Clinton had a vodka drinking contest. (Honest...2-11 issue)
—

Reid's Poem

If I ever reach the Pearly Gates and give an accounting of my life to St. Peter, there will be many things I will not recall. Much of it is too mundane, but I will be able to recall major events and personalities that have inspired me for one reason or another. I will recount here one of those events and the personality who gave shape to it. The person and I became acquainted a long time ago with him being a high school student and me being the high school principal. My tenure at that school lasted three years, after which I left for other places and things to do. Our paths did not cross again until a time two or three years ago.

Standing in my front yard in the dusky sunset of an early fall day a pickup stopped and a young man jumped out and strode towards me with his hand outstretched in greeting. I recognized him almost right away and called him by name.

We visited for a long while that evening and I was uplifted by his bright, positive attitude, yet saddened when he told of the tumor in his brain. He had apparently experienced quite a struggle with his affliction, and I thought he spoke with a wisdom that was beyond his years. Some months later I got news that he had passed away, but he left me with the seeds of a poem that I am sure he never had time to write. I dedicate it to him.


Reid’s Poem

It’s funny the things that stick
with you: the bleat of a lamb
in a snowstorm, the whistling
of a blizzard in the eaves,
a meadowlark’s song in spring,

or spoken words that linger.
Reid, you stopped to talk and left
rich thoughts that beg to be etched
deeply into lines of verse.
You shared tales of the cancer

you carried inside your head,
plus proud news of family,
a business, and your horses —
draft horses you liked to hitch
and drive in the countryside.

There, I’m sure, you reflected
on your fate to form this line:
“I wonder what old men think
when they lean on a fencepost
and look out across the fields.”

Some months later, you succumbed,
but those wistful words still haunt
me. I’d said, “That’s poetry,
have you ever tried to write?”
“No, but I’ve thought about it.”

You knew there was little chance
to grow old or write poems,
but there, reins in hand, that scene
floated dreamlike through your thoughts:
you, leaning, looking, yearning.

Florida Trip - Part 4

Odds and ends of the trip are still bouncing around in my head so I’ll have to empty them out on this keyboard. I looked in a mirror when we got home to see if the water I drank from the Fountain of Youth had had any effect. Unfortunately, the only change I could see was a little more flab jiggling on my neck. I think the guide there fibbed when he said he was 256 years old. That water didn’t even taste very good!

One of the last coffee stops we made was at Clear Lake, Iowa. Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper, and Richie Valens died there in that plane crash “the day the music died” while they were en route to Moorhead, MN for a concert. I wonder how many times Waylon Jennings thought about it. He gave up his seat on the plane for one of the others who wasn’t feeling well.

In the visitor’s center at Stone Mountain we visited with one of the employees whom we learned to be a grandniece of Bill Langer. Our discussion reminded me of the book in our library THE DAKOTA MAVERICK authored by Agnes Geelan, and now I intend to reread it.

Plains, GA was not very big so we could not miss seeing Brother Billy Carter’s gas station where he and some of the good ole boys hung out. It doesn’t seem that long ago when television cameras focused on Billy and made him out to be a big buffoon. I wonder if he really was or was he just dumb like a fox? Loads of peanuts sat waiting to be unloaded just down the street. Across the street in a little country store we ate peanut flavored ice cream that was very good, and at the Carter farmsite we picked pecans off the ground and ate a few.

In St. Augustine at the Lightner Museum we saw a great collection of artifacts and antiques. One of the items I studied closely was a carved mirror frame hanging near the entrance. It was done by one of the recognized masters of woodcarving, Grinling Gibbons. A high-end art studio sat in one of the outer hallways. I thought it looked too uppity for me to even enter and look. The manager happened to have the door open and heard me express my misgivings. She said in a British accent, “Oh, bring your bloody wallet and get in here!” She was fun to visit with, but I didn’t dare touch anything. One of the paintings carried a $15,000 price tag. I think they went much higher than that. Her expected sales pitch, “Art has done much better than the stock market.”

One of the couples on our tour found themselves second-in-line to a bank robber. They stood in line behind some guy who handed over a bag to a teller and told her to put the money in it. The teller walked away and left the robber and the couple standing there. The would-be robber realized his bag would stay empty and took off. I don’t think our fellow travelers got their banking business done either. A few minutes later we saw cops all over the area. I wonder if they ever found the bad guy.

I think I can write the last line about our trip and shift my thoughts to other matters. We traveled with a busload of genial folks and saw a good deal of new country. I’m already looking forward to next year’s trip to the southwest. Mary sent the deposit in yesterday.

Florida Trip - Part 3

One thing is very clear: wherever large crowds of people gather there occurs a flood of concrete and asphalt to cover the land. Maybe if I’d have listened more closely I would have heard how many acres are covered over by Disney World, MGM Studios, Epcot Center, and Sea World. The loss of the natural world is the price we pay. I see it occurring every time I pass through a growing Fargo where some of the richest farmland in the world disappears under that hard blanket. (Today’s Bismarck Tribune carries an article about the burgeoning price of farmland.) At the Epcot Center it was gratifying to see soil scientists experimenting with different methods of food production.

I marvel at the architecture of the Arch in St. Louis and the method used to build it. I wondered out loud how they found workmen to work on its dizzy heights and dangerous conditions and heard a response from one of my trip mates, “There’s always someone willing to work for wages.” I’m uncomfortable at the top; my claustrophobia really kicks in up there, but I never want to miss the experience. I think of the NE trip when Dick Huebner and I happened to look from the small window atop the Washington Monument and saw the President’s helicopter land on the White House lawn. The First Couple got out and walked across the lawn towards a small group applauding their arrival. If I had stayed on the ground, I would have missed that scene.

Beehives and ant colonies have nothing over the John Deere manufacturing plant in Moline, IL. The complexity of making and piecing together all those parts into a functioning, dependable farm machine boggles the mind. In graduate school I learned about system analysts and can imagine that is one place where their talents are used. The costs for this technology grows and is reflected in the prices charged. A showroom featured a large combine and tractor, each priced in the third of a million dollar range.

Anheuser-Busch brews oceans of beer in St. Louis, and it is only one plant. They have others. I quit drinking alcoholic beverages many years ago but still enjoy an occasional bottle of O’Douls, their non-alcoholic version. It’s their stable of beautiful horses that I think of when I hear the name Bud mentioned. While in the stable a couple other trademarks roamed among us looking for pats and scratches, their spotted Dalmatian dogs.

Well blogsters, I’m going to wrap up my impressions of our recent trip with one more blog.

(Florida Trip - Part 4 to follow)

Florida Trip - Part 2

In eighteen days a load of folks on a tour bus can see and experience many things: an Irish pub in Omaha; Truman Library in Independence, MO; the Arch and the Budweiser Brewery in St. Louis; the Hermitage (Andrew Jackson’s home) and Nashville city tour; Stone Mountain in Atlanta; Pres. Carter National Historic Site in Plains, GA; Georgia Agrirama; Disney World; MGM Studios; Epcot Center; Sea World; Arabian Knights dinner theater; Kennedy Space Center; Dayton Beach Speedway; St. Augustine with its museums, old buildings, Spanish fort, museums, and Fountain of Youth; Great Smoky Mountains; Ripley’s Aquarium in Pigeon Forge, TN; Black Bear Jamboree; John Deere plant tour in Moline, IL; Redlin Art Center in Watertown, SD; etc.

Historical sites always rest highest on my list of attractions. I believe our stop at the Truman Library was my fourth, but each time I see and remember something different. This time it was the brief, simple note in a display case which Truman hand wrote approving of the use of the atom bomb. I confess to feeling a bit emotionally overwhelmed and had to linger in front of that world-changing decision scrawled on a yellowing piece of paper; such a simply worded note had unleashed so much destructive power. With each visit, I find humor with his mother-in-law’s thinking that Truman was not good enough for her daughter to marry.

Truman’s humble beginnings are matched by Jimmy Carter’s. A tour of his boyhood farm home and the town where he was raised proves that point to me. And, even after rising to the top, he has never forgotten his roots since he still resides in Plains. Local residents told us he spends 75-80 percent of his time there and said the day before our arrival he had ridden his bicycle downtown to eat lunch. He was scheduled to teach Sunday school the next day. I kept looking down the street hoping he would ride in again.

I got an entirely different feeling at Andrew Jackson’s home. While I have little or no knowledge of Jackson’s boyhood beginnings, the Hermitage and its grounds spoke of wealth. In a history book, I found this passage regarding him, “Jackson was a land speculator, merchant, slave trader, and the most aggressive enemy of the Indians in early American history.”

The same author, Howard Zinn, also said, “Jackson was the first President to master the liberal rhetoric — to speak for the common man.” At any rate, he did permit the burial of his favorite slave near, but not in, the Jackson family plot.

(Florida trip - part 3 to follow)

Florida Trip - Part 1

I’ve just experienced the blur of 18 days rushing past me. Was I gone that long or was it just a dream, maybe a time-warp? Assuming it really happened, I’ll have to tell the tale. I think I’ll begin with the last: our group’s stop at the Redlin Art Center in Watertown, SD. We’ve visited there previously, but a comment Redlin made in his center’s introductory film struck me for the first time, something I experienced when I first started writing this blog. He said, “When you first start out you’re embarrassed at baring your soul.” I, too, was embarrassed at first but have gotten over that since I like to tell the story as I see it.

We’ve become fond of bus trips with 40 other people and the Farmers Union with its “Willer Way” of conducting them. If we were to drive to all the sites we have visited these past several years, we never would have gotten there. Always, the historical sites are the biggest draw for me, and one stood out because I’d been thinking about something a few weeks before I was reacquainted with it. An attraction in Georgia called Agrirama featured lots of century-old machines, buildings, costumes, etc. At the entrance stood a “Road Patrol” which was a small road grader that we would use for smoothing out the washboards on our roads. I had written a poem (with my usual seven-syllable line) about my experience with one, and when I saw it sitting there I had to step on its platform and reminisce.

The Road Patrol

The Greene Township road grader,
scaled small enough for horses
to pull, sat rusting in trees
until someone searched it out
and hooked a tractor to it.

Here’s where I enter the scene:
driver, pulling straight-away
while Dad stood on rear platform
working blade angle and depth
to smooth the washboard bumps

that banged and chattered a car’s
chassis so hard your teeth shook
and made you wish for a rain
to fall and soften the road bed
so that the little grader

blade could grab some bite and cut
the rough grade to a smooth shave.
The times cried, “Do-it-yourself
if you want to change your world.
No one will do it for you!”

(Florida Trip - Part 2 to follow)

Adios (for awhile)

We have finally suffered through the first of the presidential caucuses as witnessed through the fuzzy filtering gaze of the media. It is good these pundits and critics of the system give themselves something to do, but they surely get in each other’s way when they take their carnival acts out on the road. When they run out of topics of substance to view under their microscopes, they start in on how the candidates dress, comb their hair, treat their spouses, etc. A point in history draws quite a contrast between these times: few people in the country even knew that FDR was wheelchair bound during his presidency. Reporters did not intrude or trespass on the man’s right to keep this one part of his life private. Maybe there was some implicit threat to any media source who “spilled these beans,” but surely some muckraker would have delighted in purveying this information. It was a different time. No one concerned himself with such information.

I will be absent from this keyboard for a time since we will soon travel to Florida (where the temps have dipped below freezing and stiff iguanas fell out of trees). Last year we froze in Texas while the weather remained quite mild here in good ole North Dakota. I have never been in the southeastern part of the U.S. and look forward to seeing new territory. I'll be back in about three weeks.

Haircuts

We keep getting ready for our big trip to Florida. I just returned from the barber shop where I had him shear off a lot of hair. It was just another detail on our list of to-do’s. For some reason I was reminded of other haircuts, ones that I gave. The deed took place in the Wind River country of Wyoming. One evening we sat around visiting in a home, and the discussion came around to haircuts. For some reason, I stated I could cut hair (I must have been thinking about sheep shearing) and the two gentlemen both thought a little trim would be in their best interest. Bravado brought on by beer must have made me do it, but there I was pretending to be the barber. Everything seemed to be all right when I finished. We probably celebrated by opening another can of beer.

This was in the time that I was the high school principal. The next morning I sat in my office doing something at my desk when in walked one of the men accompanied by his wife. Words were not exchanged. Their reason for coming in was for display purposes only. He was nicked up pretty good! The wife who normally wielded a sharp tongue said nothing; he said nothing; they walked out. Never have I experienced a more poignant conversation where no words were spoken! I did not have to confront my other victim since he taught in another small town’s school. A few days later when I saw him I realized he had suffered the same fate. Fortunately, I did keep their friendship for the duration of our stay, but this subject was never broached.

Now, this afternoon, I’m going to the dentist...

Just A Bird on a Branch

When I sit at this keyboard I sometimes think the output only amounts to a bunch of doggerel and drivel, but I’m heartened and encouraged to go on when I read thoughts like the following: “If only the most gifted bird in the forest sang, the forest would be a very quiet place.” The world resounds with the voices of billions of birds, so I’m claiming a perch on a crowded branch, too.

I still enjoy going back to read old journals that I have kept at certain times in my life. Alaska used to hold a magnetic draw for me, and I had to go up there to look around. Here are some entries I made at that time.

“. . . being so far north, the natives of the area made their own entertainment, and I think I must have stayed overnight in one of their inns where almost anything goes. I believe it was at Watson Lake, the location of the well-known signposts, that I spent the night hearing all kinds of funny noises such as footsteps up and down the wooden stairs at all hours plus laughing and giggling behind flimsy walls. Earlier in the evening I had sat in the bar listening to an Indian singing and playing guitar, not well, but with as much emotion as I’ve ever heard.”

Later, closer to Anchorage I wrote “A man — a native — walking along the road catches my attention. He is what I call a typical Eskimo, and he has in his hand what my stereotypical mind should think he would be carrying — a pail full of fish, which he had evidently just caught in the nearby river. He smiles proudly lifting his bucket just a bit to show off.”

“I drive further and see something that is beautiful! The Matanuska Valley Glacier stands shimmering in the distance, and, at first, because it is so striking, I am not sure what I am seeing... The weather is fairly clear now and the sun is shining off the ice...The day is passing and I intend to make Anchorage by evening. So once again I get in my trusty Impala and proceed to drive.”

So, I get into Anchorage late that day and tour around the city and area for a couple of days. “The port area was large and expansive. A large lake on the outskirts was the scene of a busy pontoon plane airport. So the day went. Another night, another morning brought me to the employment office. Long lines met me as I walked in the door. ‘Sir, you’ll need a permanent address before we can process your application.’ Oh, oh. What a shock! ‘Won’t my motel address do?’ I ask. ‘I’m sorry.’ Reflecting on that experience now I realize that I was really a babe in the woods. If nothing else I could have fibbed and made like the motel was my permanent address. But how was a sheltered ‘til now young man like myself who was raised to always tell the truth be expected to be resourceful enough to work my way out of that situation? He couldn’t do it and was shattered. Maybe Alaska isn’t Valhalla, after all. The cost of living up here is frightful and with winter coming I could see my supply of money dwindling rapidly. There was only one thing to do — get out of here as fast as I can to avoid being stranded. I load the car and take off. Somewhere I had heard about the inland waterway where I could load my car on a boat as well as myself and ship straight south...”

More to follow . . .

A Potpourri

Winter has set in here along the Missouri River. I enjoyed watching the river freeze up in stages, i.e. a light skin along the banks, then a few floes bobbing in the current, next those same floes piling up into a solid mass, and finally, the complete freeze-up.
. . .
A year ago we stood under the “Survivor Tree” at the federal building bombing site in Oklahoma City. It was sad to see it yesterday on the news heavily coated with ice and in danger of breaking down. Workmen were trying to get the ice knocked off its branches in hopes of saving it.
. . .
Various voices in the media have accused the Bush administration of not knowing their history, a deficiency that affects decision-making! A glaring example recently occurred regarding the recent usage of “World War III” verbiage. Dana Perino, Bush’s press secretary, under questioning, admittedly did not know anything about the Cuban Missile Crisis. Well, I do! I still remember watching President Kennedy speaking to the nation about the seriousness of the situation. It did not take long to interpret his message that nuclear missiles could soon be exchanged between us and Russia if the situation did not cool down and fast! A heavy cloud of anxiety and fearfulness settled on me that night as well as throughout the country until it was resolved. Even if she’d use the defense that she is too young to remember it, history turned on that event. Ms. Perino certainly is history-challenged!
. . .
I’m going to go back to reminiscing in my journals again, but some of these other things have been on my mind. Christmas fast approaches, and we enjoy enjoying reading the messages that people are sending. Unfortunately, few exchanges of letters take place at other times of the year anymore.
. . .
I’m listening to a CD that just played the line, “...string around my finger, but I don’t know why anymore.” I’m glad I’m not the only one with that problem. Now, if I could just remember what it was that I was going to say next ... I’m reminded of the grizzled old timer who with his lifetime of experience says, “There are two kinds of people — those who have to say something and those who have something to say.”

Journals-2

Thinking about my old journals got me interested in going back to read more of the old thoughts regarding experiences I’ve had. Rummaging around my flotsam and jetsam stored here and there, I ran across my Alaska journal. I traveled up the Alaska Highway in the fall of 1968 because Alaska held an inexplicable draw to which I had to respond, a journey which I have never regretted.

After passing through Calgary and staying overnight in Edmonton, Alberta, I set out on the interesting part of the area, and I wrote: "The miles now carried me into an increasingly north country setting. Farms became less frequently seen, and forests were rapidly taking their place. Yet the highway was still busy, showing the heavy traffic of the vehicles needed to carry on the business activities..." Several hours down the highway the drudgery of driving turned again to some excitement: "Not until I came to Dawson Creek did I become excited again. It was here that Mile 0 of the Alaska Highway was situated. Finally, I thought to myself, I’m almost there. Little did I realize at the time that the hardest and most lonely part of the trip was ahead of me...Now the real journey began. The smooth paved highways I’d become accustomed to turned into the rough gravel surface...To compound the inconvenience, it had been raining quite heavily and, of course, the road’s surface became quite muddy."

I wanted to see new and different sights and I wrote about this scene: "A fantastic sight causes me to stop near Kluane Lake. A break in the weather that day permits me to look about a bit more, and I see beautiful white spots arrayed on a distant hill. I study them and conclude that they are Dall Sheep...I snap pictures with my Kodak and find only tiny white dots with no sense of perspective on the developed film. It is a picture I still carry in my head, though."

This trip was before the days of cassette tapes or CD’s or even FM radios for that matter. I enjoyed listening to my AM radio for company and recorded this: "The radio having been my constant companion is not very effective at certain points. The broadcasting stations are too few and far between so I am forced into solitary periods. No sound but the noise of the road gets very monotonous, and I drive on and on averaging 30, maybe 40 miles an hour because of the poor driving conditions. When I do get radio reception, I am subjected to an entirely different perspective than I have ever experienced. Messages between inhabitants were frequently relayed by the announcers, such as ‘Fred Johnson, meet John Olson at the river crossing at noon Saturday to pick up your groceries.’"

"The miles pass by. Inches are gained on the map. Place names are now behind me — Dawson Creek, Fort St. John, Fort Nelson, Watson Lake, Minto, Pelly Crossing, Stewart Crossing, Whitehorse, Haines Junction. I started out in North Dakota,crossed into Montana, then into Albertan, British Columbia, Yukon Territory, and now I am ready to enter Alaska. Milepost 1221.3...My car is loaded with mud clinging onto, under, inside, and all over. I promise myself a wash job as soon as I get to Anchorage."

I’ll have to return to this memory trip next week. Most of the good stuff is still to come.

Journals

Today I checked a new book out of the Bismarck library: The Journals of Joyce Carol Oates. It caught my eye since I’ve done some journaling, and, indeed, this web log is essentially a journal, best described by Ms. Oates herself as "... a place for stray impressions and thoughts of the kind that sift through our heads constantly, like maple leaves giddily blown in the wind..." While this web log was never intended to be a literary masterpiece, I’ve always welcomed any reader who chooses to look at it. Since beginning it over a year ago, I have found it to be a satisfying venture and have received a bit of positive feedback from readers. My writing skills had become very rusty, but these weekly musings give me the forum to improve. At any rate, I went back to some old journal entries I had made to see what ran through my mind at that time.

Today in Mandan it is very cold and windy, and my eye fastened on this entry from January 2, 1973. I was heading back to Dunseith after spending Christmas break at home and got caught in a snowstorm and ran in the ditch south of Alice: "I stepped from the car and was struck by the fierce gale which drove the snow like so many hundred needles searching out the pin cushion that was my exposed face."

I remember being pretty upset at the time I wrote this on September 21, 1982: "Today I dropped Clinton off at the daycare center for the last time. We walked in hand in hand and weren’t received by anybody. A dozen or so kids sat in the television room staring at a black and white picture of some x@&?! and three adults in the room working there had not the time to look or say howdy-do or anything else. So it will be the last time he needs suffer through that torment and intellectual wasteland. At his regular baby-sitter, he bounds up the stairs as carefree and happy as can be, and sometimes doesn’t even bother to say good-bye to me as I depart."

I worked at custom combining in Kansas and Nebraska in 1965 and still retain strong memories of the following entry: "His son had committed suicide. The plan was for him to take over the farm operation from his parents, but burdens too heavy for him to bear had led him to take his own life. Mr. Lake lost his future along with his son’s. His zest for living died there in the ditch with the gunshot. He just went through the motions of putting in a crop and harvesting it. Now the lackluster look in his eyes could be explained. He suffered despair. Another factor compounded his problem. His wife had lost her mind. On one occasion we drove into his yard and saw a once magnificent home needing paint and carpentry repair. The lawn was unkempt and scraggly trees needed trimming. The interior of the house showed some neglect. I felt very sorry for him and what his life had come to."

In a letter dated November 24, 1969 to my folks which Ma saved and gave back to me I have this memory preserved much like a journal entry: "Got the package of lefse today and already ate a couple of pieces — really enjoyed it. The past three weekends I’ve been hunting in these mts. — really enjoyed going out but haven’t gotten anything yet. The 1st weekend we went up north of Dubois. I didn’t see any deer that day but got stuck packing out a quarter of elk that my hunting partner shot the day before. It was really tough going climbing up and down the mt. sides with it on my back but I’m going to get an elk supper out of it tomorrow night for my work. He had a donkey that we were using to pack out the elk with, but she went so slow & could only carry ½ elk at a time. There were 2 elk to carry out so 3 of us each took a quarter."

Well, I’ve gotten interested in my old journals again and guess I’ll revisit more of them in the future. Thanks to Joyce Carol Oates for revving up my curiosity.

A Memory

Sunday we drove down to brother-in-law Mike’s place, something we hadn’t done for awhile, with the pretense of seeing the 200 foot wireless tower that had been erected on a high hill in Mike’s pasture. After the visiting and a good meal, we drove to the tower site. By the time we hiked to the top of that hill I was really sucking air but recovered quickly in the cool, brisk wind and was able to stand enjoying the view of the rugged terrain that spread out below that hill. The whole countryside down there emits a beauty that I am fond of. One of the prominent features of the area carries the name of the Dogtooth Hills. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see the jawbone of a dog filled with teeth drooling out along the horizon. Many of the topographical features of the area carry appealing place names. When you first drive out of Mandan you cross the Heart River, pass by Little Heart Butte, come to a sign indicating Whiskey Butte, see the aforementioned Dogtooth Hills, cross Cannonball River, and then Cedar River.

It is near the place where these Cedar and Cannonball Rivers join that my thoughts took me today. I recently hung on the wall of my study a picture of a man standing in a suspended wool sack who is packing fleeces into it. The man is a relative of Mary’s who lived close to the confluence of these two rivers. I was attracted to the picture because I don’t think I’ve ever seen one depicting this scene which I remember well. Indeed, the only picture I’ve possessed was the one in my mind where I was the one who stood packing wool in the sack. I’ve forgotten some of the particulars, but the wool sacks were 8-10 feet long and held 18-20 fleeces, that is, only if someone climbed in the sack that hung mouth-open on a scaffold and jumped up and down to pack them solidly. I’ve never forgotten how soaked with lanolin my shoes and pant legs got from the natural oil in the wool. Memories of sheep shearing time because of that picture were triggered by Sunday’s drive and remain strong in my mind, and I’ve written this poem to mark those springtime events.

Sheep Shearing Time

A man holding a clattering shears,
straddles an upended ewe,
and bends to strip away
the thick robe of wool
she wore through the cold.

Lambs separated from penned mothers
bleat hungry, lonesome tunes.
Clouds of dust hang
above the milling flock
where a helper
enters to catch and drag
another animal to her clipping.

"Good sheep shearers can do
a hundred head a day,"
goes the dinner table talk,
and this flock of 60
will be shorn by mid-afternoon.

The boy feels drawn to enter
this grown man’s world
and wants to tie and throw fleeces
into the hanging wool sack
and climb in to pack the bundles
so that by the end of the day the boots
he wears, soaked lanolin soft
from the wool’s drenching oil,
bring him another step closer.

The Road Ends

"But words are things, and a small drop of ink,
Falling like dew, upon a thought, produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think..."
by Lord Byron in Don Juan, Canto III, Stanza 88
. . . . .

The above quote from Lord Byron's poetry sets my own mind to dropping words on thoughts which, in turn, caused me to write the following verses. I've long been fascinated with the limits a mind runs up against when vocabulary, thought processes, experiences, etc. do not give a person the tools to understand something. A huge number of words flows through my mind each day, but many of them don't arrange themselves meaningfully into anything that amounts to much. If the words that Byron speaks of do not fall within the listener's ability to understand them, little relevant thought develops. At any rate, here is my way to express the limits and ends that I run up against.

The Road Ends

Just as the road concluded
when I drove to Alaska,

Just as harvesting ended
in Kansas and Nebraska,

Just as the pleasures of youth
abate and erode with age,

So, too, I have always come
to the limit that language
sets keeping alien deeds, feats,
and phenomenon unknown,
unexplored, or unfathomed.

The smooth, paved highway becomes
graveled road which reduces
to a rutted prairie trail
and ends at fenced enclosure,
blocking passage. No Trespassing
signs hang nailed to wooden posts.

For some the road stretches on,
letting them travel regions
where this pilgrim's map sprawls blank.

Empty Arguments

Often it just takes a word to get one’s mind working. When I first encountered the word sophism I filed it away in my memory bank for recall, something I’ve done several times. It’s defined in my Webster’s New World dictionary as being "a wise and plausible but fallacious argument or form of reasoning, whether or not intended to deceive." We’re in the political hucksterism season again where it can be easily observed, and in the run-up to the current war the public was subjected to the false argument of weapons of mass destruction being a compulsive cause.

Sophistry brought us to the present state of world affairs and also takes us elsewhere. A recent Newsweek ran a small 50 word article reviewing the book How Toyota Became #1 which caught the attention of my critical gaze. For reasons, some earned, some promoted through sales pitch, Toyota gained a lot of favor with the American public and people seemed to think they were the best. I always thought they were overpriced, but with buyers willing to give more for something they thought was better, sales numbers took Toyota to the top. But they have problems, too. The little article I refer to talks of engine-sludge lawsuits, more recalls than sales, and a top manager leaving to accept the same job at Chrysler.

A whole category of professionals exists to sway and convince people. Advertising agencies do nothing but peddle propaganda for clients who pay them to do so. Maytag claims their repairmen sit around with nothing to do because their product is so good. I doubt it. Gas stations claim to sell the best gas, but whenever I drive by a certain gas terminal on I-94 I see tankers from different companies waiting in line to load. TV preachers sell salvation for those willing to buy. With so many of them proclaiming that they hold the key to heaven, does it mean folks who don’t follow their persuasion will not get there?

When I was a little boy I remember seeing one particular fellow sitting on a bench on main street telling fish stories and stretching his hands wide to illustrate the length of that fish. Each time he told the story the distance between his hands grew bigger. His was the humorous lie.

How Big Is the Cage?

On my latest trip to the library I browsed through a favorite section, the biographies. I never know which book will jump out and beg to be read. This time it was Merle Haggard's Sing Me Back Home: My Life. I opened it and read in its prologue where he spoke of waking up, extremely hungover, in a prison. It was just one of the many brushes he had with the law, and he had to work his way through them all to reach a certain stage of maturity before he could turn his energy into something more creative and positive, in his case, writing songs and performing. The argument can be made, I suppose, that his early life validates the type of songs he writes. Maybe they are a rebellion against the growing constraints of society.

Recently, I had read a magazine article and made notes where Haggard was interviewed. One of the questions he was asked was what he misses about the America of 40 years ago. He replied, "I miss the freedom. I'm crazy about liberty and freedom, and they've taken all our freedoms away. You can't do anything. Everything's illegal ... People don't seem to realize it. People act like this is the way they want it." I recognize that philosophy as a strong theme running through his songs. I can't help but think about recent trends where the U. S. Constitution seems to have slipped in relevancy, and a small, select group of people in the upper echelon of government interpret or ignore it to suit their purposes. When I studied Political Science I learned that was an oligarchy.

Freedom is a notion that I've always considered important, too. It is one of the themes that catches my eye, especially when I see it shrinking away. I read once what the legal eagle Gerry Spence, the one with the cowboy hat and fringed buckskin jacket, said it about it in one of his books, "What if we have been born in a cage like the polar bear at the San Diego Zoo, and having known nothing else, we accept the cage as freedom?" Dad talks about remembering when highway stop signs first got planted at intersections and how there was an uproar from some who felt a freedom was being taken from them. Of course, there is the concept of protecting the greater good, and some laws need to be in place to protect us. But think of all the laws that have been passed since the stop sign law, and further, the interpretation of those laws. Are our grandchildren being born into a cage that they accept as freedom? Will succeeding generations be confined in smaller and smaller cages? Maybe the concept of freedom is being redefined! These are provocative thoughts!

Do Not Go Gentle ...

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
A line from the Dylan Thomas poem

In the not too distant past, whenever I went to the gym for my almost daily workout, I’d often come home and remark to Mary about a couple of the older gentlemen who frequent that place. I’d tell her how well I thought they were doing even though they were older men. It was quite the event when I discovered their true ages: one hadn’t reached 60 yet and the other was 62. The joke was on me with the glaring fact that I was the oldest of the three at 65!

On a wall in my study hangs a picture of a young boy at the age of two standing with his father behind a harnessed team of draft horses. The year would be 1944. Was it taken yesterday or 63 years ago? The answer is the latter and that little boy would be me. Much more time has passed than what remains to me, but I take my philosophy of life from the Dylan Thomas poem "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night," a line from which I used as the epigraph to this piece.

Death has been the subject of many a poet or philosopher through the ages, and I have never forgotten one quote from the historian Arnold Toynbee: "The Greek historian Herodotus reports that the Persian emperor Xerxes wept after he had reviewed his immense expeditionary force because he realized that not a single member of it would still be alive one hundred years later." It gave meaning to a banner that used to be displayed in the lunchroom of Bek Hall at UND when I attended that school: "All is transitory — Keats." At the time the quotation was too lofty and philosophical for me to give much thought. The more I think about it, the more those words hold meaning for me or anyone else who cares to contemplate them. A person can’t do much about the passage of time, so I’ll keep my thoughts in step with the aforementioned Dylan Thomas.

North Dakota Writers

Last Thursday evening I attended a one-hour presentation by the state poet laureate Larry Woiwode. He did not speak of poetry but discussed the writing of a memoir which he has done well and entitled What I Think I Did. He has earned some stature in the national writing community with his works which I always like to read. The program was directed and produced by Prairie Public TV and will be broadcast tomorrow, Thursday, October 11. With him on the same program was a singer-guitarist who I thought was very good. The musician teaches at Minot State University and writes his own songs. Woiwode had named him associate laureate when he was appointed state poet laureate. I’m looking forward to watching the program again.

In the foyer of the Heritage Center stood a table cleverly laden with copies of Woiwode’s book. Even though I had read it a few years ago, I decided to support this member of the arts community by buying a copy for my library. I stood in line for Woiwode to autograph it and exchanged comments with him. I knew he had collaborated with the poet Tom McGrath earlier in his career on one project and mentioned that I was from the same hometown as McGrath. Woiwode quickly told me to check out the NDSU Magazine, spring, 2003 (on SU’s website) where he had written a complimentary article about McGrath. Here he replicated the acceptance speech for the poet laureate that he gave before the governor, and he said something that shows his admiration for McGrath: "The great poet of our state, the one who should have been its laureate for decades, is Tom McGrath." In fact, he went on to fill the bulk of that speech with reference to McGrath and his work.

Those of us who know and appreciate McGrath and his work know why he never received the honors due to him: his politics precluded him from any positive acceptance by the "honorable" members of the community. I’ve read where McGrath called himself a communist with a small "c". My dictionary defines that as anyone advocating ideas thought of as leftist or subversive. That definition in and of itself can be interpreted very broadly as well as hotly argued. My interpretation of where he stood was that of being against the abuses of ownership who did not show any concern or compassion for those who worked for them. When I first read his book length poem Letter to an Imaginary Friend I was immediately struck by the early passage I've remembered which probably explains the beginnings of his political bent. A harvest hand for the family, Cal, a bundle teamster, befriended Tom, but because he became a labor spokesman for the crew. he received a severe beating from the boss, Tom’s uncle. A passage reads: "Cal spoke for the men and my uncle cursed him./ I remember that ugly sound, like some animal cry touching me/ Deep and cold, and I ran toward them/ And the fighting started./ My uncle punched him. I heard the breaking crunch/ Of his teeth going and the blood leaped out of his mouth..."

Once Around the Circle

Tomorrow, Wednesday, October 3 will be the last day of working as I have for the past six years driving a state employee around this 10 county area since she has accepted a promotion from her regional position to a state administrative position. I no longer will drive on a regular basis but have happily agreed to stand by on an on-call basis and take only an occasional trip. At the beginning of this year I told her I did not care to drive anymore after the end of the year, but this changes things and I might just hang around for awhile. We used to call these little jobs "beer money." Even though I no longer have need of beer money, I can always use a little extra spending money.
.....
Thursday marks one of my favorite days around here; the Bismarck Public Library starts its three day used book sale. It opens at 7:00 am, and I’ll be leaving here by 6:45 to get there. Prices are right: $20 or less buys a whole bag full. Then, that evening, our premier state writer Larry Woiwode makes a presentation at the Heritage Center regarding the writing of memoirs. For a little culture, what the heck, I’m going to go.
.....
Yesterday a couple lines of poetry popped into my head; something I had to memorize in college: "The world is too much with us; late and soon,/Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;/ Little we see in Nature that is ours..." I know I’m conservative (my wife calls me cheap), but when I drive around and see all the junk sitting in people’s driveways, I can’t help but think they’ve overspent and are hard-pressed to make payments on that little-used, unimportant stuff. I wonder how many of them have a library card.

Honyocker & Jehu

When I attended the Teddy Roosevelt Symposium at Dickinson State University, I studied some of the pictures hanging in the hallway that depicted old time North Dakota. The one that most interested me was titled "The Honyocker," a scene where a man walks behind a one-bottom plow pulled by a team of four horses. I had often wondered the etymology of that word but couldn't find it in the 1,700-some pages of my usually adequate dictionary to find its meaning and origin. A good, ole Google search gave me satisfaction. Obviously,its meaning is fast disappearing from the language through disuse, but some lady at www.honyocker.org wondered about it, too, and researched it some. In Standard German the word "Huhn-jager" means hen-hunter; in the Czech language a honyocker is "hunyak" and means a shaggy fellow; in the Hungarian dictionary it is spelled "hunyag and hanyak" and means negligent, careless, sloppy or forgetful; in North Dakota and surrounding states honyocker is often taken to mean a backward, old-fashioned type of rural person; and in the early 1900's the ranchers did not like the homesteaders who broke up the native prairie and called them honyockers, which gave the title to the plowman's portrait I saw.

When I was quite young I can remember hearing that word used occasionally; it stll had carried over to that period --- the 1950's. I can still hear someone using it in a conversation. I knew it to be derogatory but can now be at ease knowing I found its meaning and derivation.

While contemplating this, another word from the past popped into my head --- Jehu, pronounced yay-hoo, as I've heard it. Its meaning still has some use, and I have heard it used occasionally: a fast, reckless driver. Its primary usage is Biblical and comes from the name of a king of Israel in the 9th century, B.C., described as a furious charioteer. I find it fascinating the things a person thinks about on any given day. So much for the 25th of September.

The Old Hometown

Last week I attended a part of the interesting Teddy Roosevelt Symposium in Dickinson and listened to several historians speak on various aspects of TR. It got me anxious to start reading more history of that period and thought the best place to start was with my hometown newspapers on file with the North Dakota archives. The Sheldon Enterprise’s on file go back to early 1885 and that’s where I started. Once I got into reading them it was hard to stop. I wondered if Sheldon’s paper would make any mention of TR, and sure enough, I quickly found this reference in the May 19, 1886 edition: " Theodore Roosevelt, the prominent New York politician, has arrived at his ranch on the Elkhorn in the western part of Dakota where he expects to spend the summer." Other news that interested me in the first few issues I read were notices of General U. S. Grant’s illness and death and the vote of the Senate affirming the dividing Dakota into two states.

The local news, though, was the most entertaining. Some good examples from 1885-86 follow:

"Last Saturday was a lively day in Sheldon. Thirty or forty teams could be counted on Front Street at almost any hour of the day.

After four or five revolver shots, Mr. Creswell’s favorite dog gave up the ghost in front of the drug store last Wednesday evening. He had been poisoned.

Long lines of moving wagons are to be seen passing every day destined to new homes in the west.

Mr. Creswell and hired man were seeding all day last Saturday in their bare feet. Too warm to wear boots or shoes. How’s that for the 4th of April in Dakota.

Five Indians, well armed and carrying two canoes were seen making a beeline northward yesterday. Going to join Riel?

A lady passed through Jamestown, on a train, bound for Oregon, with a revolver stuck in her belt.

K. E. Rudd is setting up a sample McCormick binder, across the street from our office, this morning.

When ordering a pail of beer, be sure and instruct your clerk to see that he gets it fresh from the convenient slop tub, otherwise it might be too strong and make you sick.

Fourth of July to be celebrated at Sheldon in a grand style. A cornet band to be here on that day. Good speakers. Exciting races and games. Processions, etc., etc. and a prominent feature of the day - two balloon assentions (sp) and grand fireworks in the evening. All to wind up with a grand ball in the evening at the new skating rink.

Sheldon shipped the first car load new wheat this year from the field of P. P. Goodman that was shipped on any of the lines of the Northern Pacific Railroad.

Herman Schultz was in town Saturday and marketed a wagon load of extra nice cabbage.

Deputy Sheriff Tom Eastman has been having his hands full of wood thieves during the past week. He had four of them on his hands at once. Two paid their fines and the other two landed in the Fargo jail for 10 days.

Dr. Henning sports a new fancy cutter. Tell you what, it’s a daisy.

A team of mules, attached to a cutter, took a glorious tumble in the street, opposite our office, yesterday. The mules were not shod sharp and being driven on the smooth ice in the street, one of them went down and the other rolled clear over him. No damage except considerable scare and a broken cutter tongue.

(And my favorite) A Ransom County lawyer was found dead in his sleigh one day last week. Just how he happened to be sleigh riding, instead of having his hands in a client’s pockets, is unknown, but it is surmised that was because the client had had his pockets emptied by having previously called on another lawyer. His death was doubtless caused by attempting to tell the truth to a jury and then going out in the cold while he was still sweating."

I intend to keep mining those veins of entertaining news and gossip from the old home town papers. It makes for fascinating reading and maybe a poem or two will come from it.

September Miscellany

The weather moderated here on our hill in Mandan. The cool weather feels good. There was a light frost on the rooftops in our neighborhood early Sunday morning, but I don’t think any plants suffered because of it. The weatherman threatens it again in a couple of days. The beautiful alfalfa field below us produced a third cutting. It’s probably the nicest hayfield I’ve ever seen.
..............................
Saturday, September 8 marked the 49th anniversary of the life-changing accident I suffered. I told Mary if there were one thing I could change in my life it would have been to avoid that incident. Often times veterans will not talk of their wartime experiences. In my own way I understand what their silence means, and I will have no more to say of it.
...............................
I’m looking forward to tomorrow when I’m going to Dickinson to attend symposium at Dickinson State University: "Theodore Roosevelt and America’s Place in the World Arena." Dickinson is positioning themselves as a center of TR studies and is developing a digitalized base connected to the Library of Congress for research purposes. They are bringing in nationally prominent people to conduct the meetings, and I sent my money in to participate.

Pride, Empire, etc.

The sermon in church this week was based on the scripture reading of Luke 14: 7-14. It dealt with the teachings of Jesus on humility with the 11th verse holding the key idea where He is quoted as saying "For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted." At the start the priest related this story: Once there was a frog who wanted to go South and asked two geese on their migratory flight to help. The frog strung a string between his two new friends and clamped on tightly with his strong jaws. As they were flying along a hunter spotted them and shouted up, "Whose idea was that?" The proud frog opened his mouth to boast that it was he, and the hunter ate frog legs that evening. The story ended with a quote from Aesop’s Fables, "Pride goeth before the fall."

As I listened, my mind trailed back to the Newsweek article of last week that dealt with the unsuccessful hunt for bin Laden. The matter of pride seems to enter into the military’s efforts in this hunt, too. It would probably make the most sense to send in special operation units to hunt him down, units (termed "snake-eaters") that could live off the land for a long period of time and poke around the hills and caves of Afghanistan. The author says that military brass, though, doesn’t like "snake-eaters" because they don’t always follow rules or maintain spit-and-polish discipline. Instead, they would like to fight in the open and show off their firepower and new weapons. Therefore, they chose to fight in Iraq instead of Afghanistan. It’s unfortunate the military leadership hadn’t listened to the same sermon I just had.

I’ve never forgotten outgoing President Eisenhower’s warning that we should beware of the military-industrial complex. To further give a person food for thought our public television station last night on their America at a Crossroads series ran a show titled "Inside America’s Empire." It was indicated that the U.S. has a military presence in dozens of countries. The countries of Colombia, Georgia, Philippines, and another in Africa were featured and described to varying degrees our country’s involvement there. Whenever I see or hear the word empire I can’t help thinking of the Roman Empire and its fate.

Blank Spot

The countryside I drove through today brought to mind something I’d read several years ago in Eric Sevareid’s autobiography. A native North Dakotan, he wrote a passage to the effect that most people in this country think of North Dakota being a large, blank spot in the middle of the nation. The road heading north of Sterling, through Wing, past the ghost town of Denhoff and on to our destination twelve miles north of there seems at least as sparsely populated as anyplace I’ve encountered in Montana, Wyoming or Nevada. It shows on the map as a blank spot.

Mostly comprised of hilly pastureland and white-rimmed alkaline sloughs, I thought it was a big event to see something move besides grazing cows or flying birds: a farmer mowed hay in a long stretch of highway ditch, a baler worked in a field rolling large round bales, a couple of semi-trucks roared by, and a tractor with a mounted auger stood ready to dig yet another fencepost hole.

That part of the state would suit Michael Martin Murphey, the western singer and cowboy culture lover who told his Medora concert crowd last Wednesday evening that he thought the plains should be allowed to revert to grasslands. "It would take only three years," he told us. While that’s not a very practical, sure-to-happen proposition, he said something about the "foolishness" of all these ethanol plants being built that I had to agree with somewhat. When driving west to Medora one passes the town of Richardton and its brand new ethanol plant. While I commend community development and job creation, seeing that plant erected where no corn grows makes one wonder a bit. I venture to guess 95% of the corn they process will be trucked or hauled by rail, thus adding high-priced transportation costs.

Times change and maps forget old place names which adds to the blank spot. I looked on a new North Dakota map and could not find Venlo, a place my parents still talk about. It’s still clear in their memories. Anselm and Raleigh still show up, but their names, population and map co-ordinates do not since they are not incorporated. Sometime in the future they, too, will disappear into memories.

Instruments

While attending a wedding in Grand Forks about a week and a half ago, I listened closely to a musical instrument that I thought was remarkable in its tone. Mary and I sat close to the front for babysitting duties with Grandson Lucas when his mother, a bridesmaid, handed him, a ring bearer, over to us during the ceremony. The two musicians played a violin and a piano, and I thought the violin had an exceptionally mellow, rich tone. After the ceremony, I returned to our pew to fetch something left behind and stopped to visit with the musicians and remarked to the violinist how good I thought his instrument sounded. He did not act out with any sense of false modesty since he really was proud of it. He knew its history - crafted in Italy, its maker - whom I promptly forgot, and its year of birth - 1718. Almost 300 years old, I was quite impressed with it. It both looked and sounded great!

We attended the bluegrass music festival in Bismarck this past Saturday. Great musicianship was the rule. All the performing groups knew a thing or two about playing those strings: guitars, fiddles, banjos, mandolins, and upright basses. These groups are always great with their vocal harmonies, too.

More entertainment is on our calendar. Tomorrow we're heading to Medora for a Michael Martin Murphy concert and will stay over to take in the Medora musical the following evening. If that's not enough, we plan to go to the Czech Hall located in the hills south of Mandan and listen to some local musicians. To top it off, I'll probably go to my favorite coffee shop Saturday morning where a couple good local guitarists hold regular jam sessions. I'll even take my guitar to that one, but I will have little to offer. It's all learning for me!

Birthday

Yesterday, August marked the anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War II, thus ending the war. War weary, the people in this country, so says history, didn’t say, "We won!" but instead "The war is over!"

Wife Mary related an interesting anecdote in regards to the timing. She was born today, August 15, 1945, sixty-two years ago. I was 3 ½ years old and don’t remember this, but apparently there was much celebrating starting on the 14th. When it came time for her to be born they had to search for the doctor who was out celebrating himself. Details are a bit hazy after that, but they must have found him since she got delivered.

To commemorate her birthday, I wrote this poem:

I guess you can say the years really flew.
Here you are already at sixty-two,
but won’t you agree,
it’ll sure be nice to collect Social Security!!!

Borders

I read recently how a country’s borders, state lines, property lines, etc. define us as being an American, a North Dakotan, a Mandan resident, or what have you. It reminded me of a passage I’d read years ago in Elwyn B. Robinson’s book History of North Dakota where he described the splitting of Dakota Territory into the north and south designations we live with. As I brought that book down from my shelf a newspaper clipping from the May 2, 1983 edition of the Fargo Forum fell out. The headline was "Alex McKenzie was brawny, master manipulator." Robinson and the author of the Forum article probably borrowed from the same sources to write their stories, and they certainly agree as to the politics played to divide the territory and establish each one’s state capital site. Both sources plus others I have read agree that McKenzie was the "Boss."

McKenzie was an agent of the railroads who held their choking hold on commerce in this region. He allied with the corrupt territorial governor Nehemiah G. Ordway who held some grudge with people in the territory’s capital of Yankton. These two men succeeded in moving the capital to Bismarck because the NP railroad wanted the capital on its main line there. Political wrangling and maneuvering continued with some favoring statehood and others opposing it. But it all boiled down to an economic issue with the railroads and the wheat millers deciding the outcome.
Obviously the democratic process of decision making was a sham with only a few powerful people doing the manipulating.

We had reason to drive through the oldest cemetery in Bismarck one time, and the largest, most ornate tombstone begged our attention. The name carved in the stone: Alexander McKenzie.

Cliches

Reading the Newsweek magazine is high on my weekly must-do list. One interesting feature is the "My Turn" column where this week’s topic is "Let’s Think Outside the Box of Bad Cliches." The author works as a college professor who finds that students use too many cliches in their written work which the professor thinks leads to sloppy thinking. He gives examples such as the criminal being caught in broad daylight, as if there is such a thing to contrast it to narrow daylight.

Rather than re-using his other examples, I can recall many from my own supply. It’s easy to accuse someone of being a slow or shallow thinker by saying he (or she) has the IQ of a fencepost, runs a quart low, is a bubble head, or is as dumb as an ox. When someone dies it’s easy to say he’s gone to a better place, breathed his last, gone on to his reward, bought the farm, or made his last pit stop. Politics uses many cliches: he’s a visionary, a man of character, a dark horse in this race, or people will vote with their hearts. The sports world uses an abundance of them: he’s a franchise player, it’s a nail-biter, gut-check time, he always gives 110%, he has a rifle for an arm, or he’s a future hall-of-famer.

In the last couple of days I’ve heard these used. Regarding Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska who’s being investigated, one TV commentator said that the chickens were coming home to roost. Another announcer talked of the Pat Tillman shooting in Afghanistan as a perfect storm of mistakes. How about AG Gonzales facing a firestorm of controversy? A favorite of mine deals with a person who tries to portray somebody he’s not: all hat, no cattle.

Going back to the accusation that overuse of cliches makes for sloppy thinking, I would have to agree with the professor. It’s not often that we can read an author or listen to a speaker who uses proper English grammar for the bulk of his presentation. Most of the time they run around like a chicken with its head cut off. You know that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link and he has bats in his belfry. He brandishes his smoking gun and puts everyone on the same page as he goes for extra yardage. Oops, I just threw up an airball.

Memories

Last evening I was surprised with a phone call from someone out of the past. It’s always a good feeling to visit with someone like him and share memories. I have had other phone calls like that; not enough perhaps, but then some are better than none. As soon as they hang up my mind conjures up old times that I wish I would have mentioned, but there is always the promise of a future visit.

I’m always amazed how a memory can lay dormant in my head and how it can be dredged up from the muck with a simple reminder. It makes me wish, too, that I had read more when I was younger instead of following my errant ways which were a waste of time. Honest literary or historical allusions written by authors who knew what they were writing about greatly enrich the thought process. (Unfortunately, the GIGO principle might apply which simply translates to "garbage in, garbage out.")

I can’t help but think of our president who has stated in a less than glib manner that he’s never been much of a reader. I believe his ignorance, naivete, and inability to speak in complete sentences can be directly related in part to that. Dave Letterman’s humorous clips on Great Moments in Presidential Speeches show FDR uttering his "... only thing we have to fear is fear itself," JFK in his "Ask not what your country can do for you..." and Bush the Junior muttering duncelike syllables. I do hope the next president will dignify the office a bit better.

Happenings Around Here

Happenings Around Here

Things were hopping around here Tuesday night! Our yard was one of the featured gardens for tours in the month of July, an event sponsored by the Bis-Man Garden Club. Mary belongs to that club; I’ve seen the membership list which has about 250 names on it. The evening started off slowly with one or two people coming through, but as time went on the numbers grew to a sizable crowd which also included neighbors not belonging to the club who dropped in to find what the commotion was all about. We found out from more than one source that word started circulating among the membership that Mary’s yard was one that could not be missed. The word was "Be sure to see Mary Bueling’s in Mandan if you don’t go to any others." She modestly accepted all the compliments that were handed to her as if there was nothing to it. It seems to me she raised the standard. I refused to take any credit for the beauty she has created. I only admitted to mowing the grass. And, of course, more flower beds being planned for next season means I’ll have even less grass to mow.
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Ever since I hooked up with my wife over 33 years ago I’ve been driving by a site just south of Mandan on Highway 6 that I have been curious about: the Northern Great Plains Research Laboratory, USDA. They held an open house yesterday called "Friends and Neighbors Day," so we went on over, lured somewhat by their promise of free supper and entertainment. I was somewhat surprised by the enormous undertaking it represents. I thought maybe three or four people ran the place. Nope, there are 34 full-time employees plus many who work part-time or seasonally. Crops, livestock, tree plantings, landscaping, etc. make up part of their studies. This emplacement is one of three in North Dakota. I hope they do some good. There is a tremendous payroll out there. Your tax dollars at work.

Bad Dreams?

Bad Dreams?

Sometimes I think this is all just a bad dream and that I will wake up to a world filled with political harmony and peaceful international relations. But no, day after day the nightmares continue. It’s hard to accept the "gut feelings" and beliefs of the few in the administrative branch who go against the will of the electorate. I quote one of the writers from today’s Huffington Post: "We know you believe in a Higher Power, Mr. Bush, but why should any American mother or dad let you put their son in harm’s way just because you ‘strongly believe’ that his being wasted by a roadside IED in an Islamic civil war makes the world more peaceful and the U.S. more secure."

Every time someone tries to bring some major change in society the opposition marches out some slick talker to take issue. Michael Moore’s latest offering in film argues for a national health care system. Here comes Dr. Sanjay Gupta telling us he’s all wrong.
Senator Vitter from Louisiana got caught with his name showing up on the call girl list. I can just see Larry Flynt of Hustler magazine revel in this accomplishment. This not to excuse Vitter nor compliment Flynt; it’s just to further illustrate my point.

Mr. Libby received the commutation of his prison sentence, and more than likely will receive a full pardon on Bush’s exit from office. We’re constantly reminded of the sins of Bill Clinton in this case and others. If he did bad things, I guess it’s okay for them.

Maybe I’m not sleeping and this isn’t a bad dream. It’s seems to be reality. Well, a guy can dream about decency, can’t he?

Powder River, Let 'er Buck

Powder River, Let ‘er Buck

I’ve always liked to read and think about history and just borrowed a copy of a Theodore Roosevelt biography - Theodore Rex - by Edmund Morris. Those first few pages really pull at me to keep reading, and I’ll be spending a lot of time with it. Sometimes the measure of a man can be glorified through a clever, propagandistic style of writing, but I believe Roosevelt’s public life is well-documented enough that Morris didn’t get away with anything less than a truthful, objective assessment.

Another little history project of mine deals with a group of men who fought in the first world war. The 91st infantry division had as its battle cry or slogan, "Powder River, let ‘er buck." Most of the men in that division were from western states, some from Wyoming where the Powder River flows. The saying originated with some cowboys who were celebrating something in a drunken revelry. When I made that connection I started thinking there’s a good piece of poetry to be written regarding it, especially since my Grandpa Andrew Sandvig marched and fought in France with that outfit in the Meuse-Argonne offensive of 1918.

Grandpa carried a small New Testament with him (olive drab cover, probably government issue), and in it he made diary notations up to and including the wound he received. Unfortunately, the pencil notations are fading, but they have spoken volumes to me across these eighty-nine years. History texts further expand on the battle, and I’m in the process of reading all I can about it. It’s a small bit of history I plan to preserve.

Quotations

Folks who read a lot probably notice many authors quote the words of witty or pertinent sayings uttered by persons of renown. They try to make the quote validate, support, maybe confirm the point they are trying to make with their own thoughts and writing. In some cases it's the jumping off place for their thinking to develop. There's one quote I've found appropriate to my thoughts and actions that has stuck with me ever since I first saw it:

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worth cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt

This quote is known as the "man in the arena" quote came from a speech - Citizenship in a Republic - he gave in Paris, France in 1910. How does it apply to me? If I were to give myself credit for anything, it would be that I have not been afraid to try things that were above me. If I had not I would have always wondered how I could rise without the effort. I did not want to be one of those timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat. So easy would it have been to sit back and watch the world go by in some easy job. I never wanted to be the one in old age wishing that he should have tried.

Natural Disasters

I’m old enough to remember significant events that occurred fifty years ago: the tornado that destroyed a part of Fargo being a case in point. Today marks its 50th anniversary. That day from my vantage point fifty miles away, I stood in our farmyard and saw that godawful mound of clouds stacking up and stalling over Fargo. Weather reports at that time never warned of the immediacy of impending storms, and only after the carnage occurred did news begin to trickle out through media outlets.

With that I’m reminded of the tornado that snaked along a rural road near Walcott and destroyed a few lives and several farmsteads. That time, too, I saw those low, churning clouds passing overhead and listening to that rumbling freight train sound.

Natural disasters cut everyone down to size. Our world of cell phones pressed to ears, laptop computers, or any other highly technological gadgets can’t undo or control Mother Nature’s intentions. Floods, hurricanes, mud slides, blizzards, droughts, hail, etc. come and go in a steady progression. Occasionally a religious fanatic selling salvation on his television show says God’s wrath for sinful behavior brings on these events. I’ve never forgotten one voice of reason made by a sensible churchman. The Rev. Schuller of Crystal Cathedral fame was interviewed by Larry King at the time when some California homes were being destroyed in mud slides after heavy rains. When asked if God was responsible for causing the mud to slide, he responded, "I think they built in a place they shouldn’t have." With much of New Orleans built below sea level and expensive vacation homes lining the hurricane-prone Atlantic coastline, I can’t help but think of his words.

The Wind

I was sitting in a quiet farmstead south of Tappen yesterday while my rider went in the house to call on one of her clients. The squeaking and groaning of an old wooden windmill caught my attention, an enjoyable background noise while I sat waiting. Someone said once the only time around here that you notice the wind is when it isn’t blowing. Moving air is invisible in and of itself, but it’s not hard to see its effect on whatever it touches.

Last week Wednesday I drove into a strong north wind on my way to the town of Garrison. While crossing the causeway dividing Lake Sacajawea and Lake Audubon, I couldn’t help but notice the wild wind-whipped waves with their white-capped tips and the deep troughs between them as they broke on the south shore.

On Monday and Tuesday of this week I cut hay in large fields and watched gentle breezes wave the grasses just like the surface of water. Scandinavian immigrants thought this vast, rolling, treeless plain they settled on reminded them of the sea, and literature reflects that. A book named Sea of Grass, the song phrase "Amber waves of grain," plus many other examples bear testimony to the sense these settlers had of the plains.

As I drove home from Tappen my reverie of thoughtful literary contemplation burst like a bubble when I came on a damn turkey buzzard feasting on a dead crow on the highway. The car was almost on him before he decided to get out of the way by unfolding his six foot wingspan and flap away. A large bird, he would have put a nice dent into my state-owned car.

Growing Old (er)

Edgar Lee Masters has his character Samuel Gardner speak from his grave in the Spoon River Anthology, "And how shall the soul of a man/ Be larger than the life he has lived?" All the poems in this volume are written in the voice of the deceased residents of the mythical community of Spoon River. Each time I read from this volume I find scenarios that fit well with contemporary life. There are heroes, cowards, town gossips, unfaithful spouses, community leaders, outlaws, in-laws, youths, elders, etc. The one thing they share is their end - the graveyard in Spoon River.

No matter who we are or think we are, one thing we share in real life is growing older, day by day, each time the world spins on its axis or circles the sun. It probably doesn’t matter if we call ourselves young, middle aged, or old since it’s such a gradual process. I sometimes wonder where I am on this continuum. The age of 65 used to be considered quite old and not much more life could be expected. Now it seems as if the term middle-aged fits better and old age lies somewhere off in the future.

Dylan Thomas in his famous villanelle Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night has probably written of aging and death the best: "Do not go gentle into that good night,/ Old age should burn and rave at close of day;/ Rage, rage against the dying of the light." In other words, give it hell, there will be the eternity to sleep.

Good Times

Good Times
We spent the weekend in Medora attending and participating in the 21st Annual Dakota Poetry Gathering. It’s an event I hope to keep on my schedule. I took a turn on stage both Saturday and Sunday afternoons and got good audience response. The main thing that needs improvement is my guitar playing, but when I talk loud enough it drowns out the wrong notes. When you look out across the crowd that’s in attendance you see mostly an older crowd. I hope that younger performers get interested so that it continues on.
The term Cowboy Poetry doesn’t fit all that well, since only a few of the participants hold strictly to that point of view. A good deal of the work uses a more contemporary approach to rural life, myself included. I’m already thinking about future pieces and will enjoy writing them. One guy from a small South Dakota town that is celebrating a reunion this summer came asking if he could use the pieces that I performed on Sunday. I gave him copies provided he doesn’t forget who wrote them.
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The rain keeps falling here. It’s as green as I remember seeing this part of the country. Listening to radio reports tells us that crop conditions are nearly ideal. Crops, pastures and hay ground look good, stock ponds have risen, and everyone is in a pretty good mood because of it.
...
The flap about competing restaurant chains shows a cheap shot. Some chain that’s not in this part of the country accuses Hardee’s in their commercials that Hardee’s does not use good parts of the Angus in their burgers, something like if you take the "g" out of Angus what’s left. I think Hardee’s was trying to get it stopped.

On My Mind

I have trouble with terminology that smacks of extreme power. Why they use the term czar in our federal government troubles me greatly. We have had a drug czar and an energy czar in recent years, but the latest - war czar - brings too much comparison to a Russia that experienced a bloody revolution. I think it is an ill-advised use of a term that can be substituted with a word that befits a democracy.
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We ate our noon lunch today in the Grizzly's Restaurant in the mall, and I could see through the tables to a television set hanging in the bar area. The headline I read spoke of another explosion in Iraq. We've become so used to these repeated events that most people don't give second thought to it. Our death toll there keeps rising, and I wish someone could explain to me what good we've done.
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I'm giving my attention of late to preparing for the Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Medora this weekend. I told Mary that I hope I don't make a fool of myself up there on that stage. To prevent that I've been doing lots of practicing. The three pieces I've written for it deal with the severe winter of 1886-87, Teddy Roosevelt's experience in North Dakota, and an auction sale. A fourth piece is by Chris LeDoux - The Bull Rider, a comic piece. LeDoux was one heck of a performer but was felled by cancer a couple of years ago.

Forty Shades of Green

Timely rains have fallen this spring, and the many shades of green shine in the sunlight. Johnny Cash wrote a song he named Forty Shades of Green about his impressions of the countryside in Ireland. I think there must be 37 or 38 right here in North Dakota.
. . .

It's a bit sad to read and hear what's happening in my old home town. The school is closing and they're having an auction sale to clear out the building. The building is on the market, too, and a group in the community meets trying to come up with a plan to save it to use as a community center. Its future will depend on someone putting up the money to buy it; the school board stipulates $2000 must be deposited before a bidder can be eligible. If someone does buy it, it will cost plenty to maintain it as a viable structure when you consider insurance, utilities, maintenance, etc.

The city hall fell to a wrecking crew a couple of years ago because it was deemed unsuitable for further maintenance. It left one big, blank spot at the end of main street. For many years it served as the destination for ball games, dances, carnivals, plays, meetings, etc. If the school building disappears, it, too, will leave a big empty spot.

During its heyday Sheldon was a busy place. Many farmsteads surrounded it, and viable businesses were supported with their wants and needs. I have a picture on the wall of my study taken of the main street sometime early in the 20th century. There stands a solid, long line of storefronts; in front teams of horses hitched to buggies and wagons line the walk. That scene disappeared, and now another scene is about to.

Lovin' Spring

The week has come and almost gone; I'd better get this little laptop of mine typing away and write at least one blog. I've been spending a lot of time riding a tractor pulling a disk. It is the most beautiful time of the year in the countryside. Spring green contrasts with the black tilled soil in the fields. Cattle, mostly the black variety, stand likewise in the greening pastures. The rolling hills, buttes, and valleys paint their shades and shadows everywhere on the horizon, and weeds have not yet begun to show themselves. Somehow flowery language seems a bit incongruous with my style, but that is the way I see springtime in the countryside.
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I have to make sure to mention a workshop I attended last Saturday at the Med Center One hospital. Ric Masten has made a name for himself as a poet and entertainer, but his latest gig is battling prostate cancer. According to him he should have been dead some years ago, but with his aggressive response to the disease he survives. When he discovered his illness, it had already spread from the prostate gland into various locations within his body. His message this day was that he did not sit and wait to die from the disease but began studying it and how to combat it. One thing I found especially interesting is that he's discovered only a handful of doctors in this country who specialize in prostate cancer. Most doctors who treat it are general oncologists; therefore many of them do not have the time to know everything there is to know about the disease.

He set out to learn what knowledg there is out there and inform his doctor, an oncologist, how he then wanted to be treated. He calls himself the "captain of his own ship." Whatever, he's lived beyond expectations. I'd heard Masten interviewed on our public radio station a few days prior to his visit and knew then I wanted to hear him speak in person. Before the meeting commenced, I shard this with him. He asked when he started how many had heard the interview. My hand was the only one that went up. He and I had connected in some elemental way, probably because I told him I, too, had interest in poetry. When the meeting ended he brought a copy on one of his books and gave to me as a gift. I've read it; he is a good poet.