Eric Bergeson is a writer with 2 books and a weekly newspaper column.  We'll be adding his musings as we go along and actually creating a page where you can order his books and find out more about him.  He comes from a long line of nurserymen and no year is complete without a trip to Bergeson's Nursery in Fertile Minnesota.   

If you're interested in Eric's books, here's the Publishing Company  (More info at bottom of page)
Country Scribe Publishing
4177 County Highway 1
Fertile, MN 56540
Contact Eric via Email  ericberg@gvtel.com                                         new shoots on my Spruce Tree

June 2, 2003
After much reportorial legwork, sources have uncovered the founder of
the new 911 address system recently imposed upon rural areas, the
system whereby an old farmhouse on a mud road at RR 1, Box 126, has
been transformed into a suburban estate at 44502 520th Ave. SW.

Ralph L. Twinkledoofer, a career desk clerk at the State Department of
Bureaucracy Department in St. Paul, first made a name for himself in
the bureaucratic community when he succeeded in requiring farm people
to cover their garbage pits and install metal dumpsters instead.

The 911 address system, however, was Twinkledoofer’s crowning
achievement. With one brilliant stroke, Twinkledoofer accomplished the
bureaucrat’s dream: He complicated the life of millions for no apparent
reason, and with little opposition.

In a rare interview, the recently-retired Twinkledoofer revealed what
many have long suspected: The installation of the 911 addressing system
was all a big practical joke.

“I never thought it would go anywhere,” Twinkledoofer, said, sounding
surprised by his success. “Giving street names to every gravel road in
Minnesota was such an obviously ridiculous idea that I was sure it
would be laughed out of the legislature.”

That was before Twinkledoofer hit upon the brilliant idea of naming his
system, “The 911 Address System.” Once the powers-that-be were
convinced that 44502 520th Ave. SW would somehow be easier for
ambulance crews to find than a rural route address, all opposition to
the bizarre plan crumbled.

“I can’t believe they fell for that one,” Twinkledoofer said, somewhat
bemused. “I guess if you want to get something silly imposed upon
people, you just have to threaten their health.”

In retirement, an unrepentant Twinkledoofer collects stories of the
mayhem unleashed by his pet project. Stories of people who can’t
remember their own address. Stories of UPS drivers lost for days.
Stories of confused ambulance crews administering CPR to farmers who
thought they felt fine.

Twinkledoofer is the first to point out that his success was not
complete. His attempt to force high school students to memorize their
new addresses in order to graduate failed. “If only I had stuck with
four-digit numbers instead of five,” he said with a shake of the head,
“it probably would have been included in the Profile of Learning.”

But that small failure does little to dim Twinkledoofer’s dazzling
bureaucratic success story. “I never dreamed that I could force every
rural resident to order new check blanks,” he said with obvious
satisfaction.

To make it clear that he was kidding, Twinkledoofer added many
whimsical twists to his addressing system. For example, some gravel
roads are an avenue if you live on one side and a street if you live on
the other.

With a touch of humor, Twinkledoofer decreed that the streets and
avenues in a great swath of rural northwestern Minnesota be numbered
from middle of the tiny town of St. Hilaire.

“I can just see out-of-state visitors counting down from 540th Avenue
to 320th Avenue, thinking they’ll find skyscrapers when they finally
get to the single digits,” Twinkledoofer said with a chuckle. “Instead,
they find themselves at the liquor store in downtown St. Hilaire.”

Active in retirement, Twinkledoofer spends his days watching his
neighbors to make sure they don’t violate city ordinances. “I turned in
Mervyn Larson for a noise violation last Thursday,” he said with pride,
adding that he is working on getting an injunction to force the
Bjorkland’s down the street to spray for dandelions.
 

May 26, 2003
It is a singularly small town talent, and one I lack: The ability to
recognize oncoming cars soon enough to decide whether or not to wave.

I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to all of you who
have waved to me as we met at 120 miles-per-hour. I didn’t mean to snub
you. My intentions were good. In fact, I probably waved after we passed
and then spent the next couple of minutes hoping your feelings weren’t
hurt.

But all cars look the same to me, particularly when whizzing my way. To
recognize an oncoming vehicle soon enough to issue a convincing wave
seems to me a skill on par with hitting a Nolan Ryan fastball. I am
just not that good.

I could wave to everybody, I suppose, but that seems promiscuous.
Instead, I have divided area highways into waving roads and non-waving
roads.

Waving roads are side roads near home. On these roads, the odds are so
high that I will know the person in the oncoming car that I just go
ahead and wave at every one. I know that this means I might wave at a
strange car every now and then, but that is a risk I’ll have to take.

It goes without saying that all gravel roads are waving roads, even
those so narrow and frost boiled that you would be wiser to keep both
hands gripping the wheel as you meet. Not waving to a neighbor on a bad
gravel road is a snub that could start a long-running feud. Wave on
gravel, even if it means risking a head-on crash.

However, I consider major trunk highways and any highway more than
twenty miles from home to be non-waving highways. If you meet me on a
non-waving highway, don’t expect much, and please don’t think I am
stuck up.

The talent for recognizing oncoming cars knows no gender distinction,
and it is not genetic. Both my mother and sister have the talent of
recognizing cars, but somehow I missed out.

Small towns are filled with experts on recognizing oncoming cars, so
much so that I fully expect the Department of Homeland Security to tap
small town people to help with the fight against car bombers and other
forms of terror.

In fact, I feel like these people are spies already.

Who needs the FBI when you have locals who can say with confidence,
“What were you doing down by Barnesville last Thursday? I met you on
Highway 9.” I feel like asking, do you have my phone bugged, too?

I am just  lucky to find my vehicle in the West Acres parking lot
without first sticking my key in the locks of several other pickups
vaguely similar to my own. And those vehicles aren’t moving.

Once, while visiting a relative in California, I borrowed a car to go
to Barnes and Noble--and forgot what the car I borrowed looked like. I
stuck my key in the locks of so many cars that I was sure security
would pull me in for questioning.

I can tell a pickup from a car. That much I understand. But the
difference between a Buick and a Mercury eludes me. And all of these
monster SUVs look like tanks. Not a one of them stands out.

It is clear that I suffer from VRDD (Vehicle Recognition Deficit
Disorder). As a victim of VRDD,   I ask you to be understanding of my
sometimes erratic behavior in highway waving situations. I am powerless
over the situation, and am trying to find help.

May 19, 2003
One of life’s great mysteries: How is it that you can take a dozen
sensible, bill-paying, responsible, sober, mild-mannered folks, put
them together on a committee, and suddenly they become more dangerous
than a drunken twenty-one-year-old in a Camaro?

Even a committee of the most decent folks can quickly morph into a
many-headed beast. Nothing is safe. Old trees fall to the chain saw.
Beautiful buildings crumble. Ugly structures spring up in their place.
Antique church fixtures are auctioned off. Bulldozers are turned loose
to wreak random destruction.

Committees can create as well as destroy, but their creations are
usually limited to a list of infuriating regulations. In the committee
environment, silly rules spring up thicker than Canadian thistle on the
edge of a manure pile.

In the country, church committees are the usual culprit. In the
suburbs, condominium associations take the cake. Committees, boards,
associations, consortiums--all should come equipped with day-glow
orange warning signs.

Something happens to groups of people who are given power over other
people near them. Somehow, they manage as a group to be less
intelligent than any one of the group’s members. Even an Altar Guild of
gray-haired Lutheran ladies can turn into a snakepit of intrigue,
plotting and revenge.

Individual people can be reasoned with, but committees and boards
seldom respond to anything less convincing than a sledgehammer. Reason
means nothing. Good sense disappears. Humanity is elbowed aside by
sterile procedure.

In particular, any group that takes it upon itself to issue permits of
any sort sends shivers up my spine. Its a good thing I live in the
country. The thought of a neighborhood association or a city council
telling me to clean up my junk pile is enough to make me start
collecting guns.

Nothing beautiful has ever come out of committee. No committee has ever
written an inspiring piece of music, or created a beautiful work of
art, or designed a building of lasting merit.

No, the best that can be hoped for of a committee is that they deadlock
on every issue so they don’t do any damage.

Money matters dominate committees. We can save a few dollars on fuel by
blocking out all the windows, so we’d better do it. If we pave the
cemetery, we won’t have to pay for mowing. All in favor say aye.

It takes great strength of character for a member of a committee to
stand up for spending an extra dollar to save something beautiful or
old or of sentimental value. So, most committee members stay silent,
let the dullards with the calculators hypnotize them with numbers, take
a quick vote, and hope to get home in time for the ten o’clock news.

What good things there are in this world exist due to the unleashing of
individual genius. Great artists, musicians, composers and writers
submit to no judgment of their work but their own and that of a few
respected peers. Committees play no role except to grant silly awards
after the fact.

Leaders of people have to work through committees, but the great
leaders are great in spite of committees. In fact, great leaders often
become great leaders because they have an ability to bludgeon, shove,
and browbeat the committees in their path into allowing something good
to happen.

Such leaders are rare. Between those great leaders, we are stuck with
the mediocrity produced by committees of every sort, on every level,
everywhere around us.

May 12, 2003
The phone rings. You pick it up, but nobody’s there. It rings again.
You yell hello several times but nobody answers. It rings yet again a
minute later, you pick it up, and all you hear is a bunch of static and
snippets of a voice.

By now, you know. Somebody is calling from their cell phone while
driving on some county highway where reception is spotty. The signal is
strong enough to make your phone ring and force you up from the
recliner, but not strong enough to allow conversation.

When this happens, I have learned the hard way that it is unwise to
spit expletives into the receiver. The caller can sometimes hear you
even if you can’t hear them, and people tend to take rough language
personally no matter how justified the outburst.

Now, I take my remote phone along to the recliner so I don’t have to
get up six times in three minutes to answer a call from somebody who
isn’t there, yet another example of technology causing a need for yet
more technology to fight off the effects of the first technology.

When you finally do connect with a cell phone user, the reception can
cut out without warning. This can cause grave misunderstandings.

I once took a call from a friend I hadn’t heard from in a while. I
apologized to him for not making it to his Superbowl party two months
before. I was sure that he would understand, so I breezily said, hey,
sorry about that, I was really tired and really busy, maybe next time.

A long, sullen silence. It was clear that he was deeply hurt, so I
rushed to make amends. I said I felt bad for neglecting him, and
suggested we get together soon, maybe for coffee tomorrow.

More silence. Wow, I thought, this situation is worse than I had
suspected. It clearly required  some full-scale groveling. So, I went
on about how I had not been feeling particularly gregarious last winter
and really hadn’t been in touch with any of my friends, much less him,
and that he shouldn’t take it personally.

That did no good, which just made me mad. Good grief, I sputtered, if
you’re going to pout about it you can just forget it. I have no time
for this passive-aggressive codependent behavior. Why can’t you cut a
guy some slack?

No response. So I went off about how I don’t like football anyway and
the thought of sitting on a couch for five hours watching all that
overblown Superbowl hype gave me indigestion, which would only have
been made worse by his wife’s bad chili. I’d rather sit at home and
floss my teeth.

About then I realized something was wrong. “Are you there?” I said. No
answer.

Turns out, the phone had cut out sometime in the previous three
minutes. I had just conducted a three minute argument with a dead
phone, or so I hoped.

A few seconds after I hung up, the phone rang. It was the friend. He
sounded calm. His cell phone lost its signal, he said, so he switched
to the land line. He didn’t bring up the Superbowl party, so I didn’t
either.

I didn’t tell him that I had spent the past several minutes tearing him
to shreds. The call passed without incident, although my blood pressure
took a while to return to normal.

 

May 5, 2003
The local post of the Gitagadder Lodge held their spring banquet and
annual meeting at the VFW last Tuesday night. Twenty-two members
attended. A good time was had by all.

According to custom, Helmer Nelson roasted a pig and Harriet Skordal
brought her famous potato salad. Harriet’s potato salad is famous not
because it tastes good, but because she insists upon bringing a vat of
it wherever two or more are gathered. Most of it goes in the garbage,
stuck between paper plates, but she never seems to catch on.

After the meal, Gitagadder president Arvid Nelson opened the business
meeting. Although not a born leader, Arvid had been so flattered two
years ago when he was offered the presidency of Gitagadder only one
year after moving to town that he accepted immediately.

Little did he know that the only discernible duty of the president of
Gitagadder Lodge is to pick a date for the annual Christmas party which
offends nobody, an impossible task.

The issue reared its head at the annual meeting when Ervil Larson
announced that he and Elaine wanted to leave for Arizona December 15th
this year, and he sure hoped that the Christmas party could be held
before then.

Drawing on last year’s experience, Arvid said he couldn’t pick a date
until after the high school sports schedule came out in September. He
also knew not to interfere with Advent activities or Monday Night
Football.

Last year, the only open date was the Tuesday after Thanksgiving.
Nobody said a word in opposition until only seventeen people showed for
the party. At the January meeting, Arvid caught heck.

So Arvid learned the hard way that when the locals stare at you like a
herd of drugged Holsteins, it doesn’t mean that they agree with what
you have just said.

Poor Arvid. When he arrived in town to be the new loan officer at the
bank, he thought it might be a good idea to join some community
organizations. He didn’t realize that he was the first new member of
Gitagadder in twenty-five years, and that he wasn’t entirely welcome.
By making him president, the membership got their revenge.

In his first move as president, Arvid proposed a fundraiser to raise
the balance in the Gitagadder Ute Scholarship fund above $45.21, where
it had been stuck since 1993 when the lodge had allocated $25 to help
Jeremy Erickson travel to Australia on a basketball exchange.

No luck. The fundraiser idea died for a lack of a second. Turns out,
young Jeremy still hadn’t sent a thank you note to Gitagadder. Although
they never said a word, the membership felt that if that’s the way kids
are, they can pay their own way to Australia. So much for the Ute
Scholarship Fund.

Next, Arvid suggested that each member canvass ten homes in town in an
attempt to reach potential new members. But the stares he got in return
were so blank that Arvid knew the idea was doomed.

In despair, Arvid unilaterally appointed a committee of three members
to come up with a mission statement. What is Gitagadder about? What is
our vision for the future? But month after month went by and the
committee never found time to meet. The mission statement idea died a
slow death.

Finally, Arvid decided to just show up for the meetings and go through
the motions. No new business, no old business, no bright ideas, no
discussion.

His popularity soared to a level of begrudging acceptance. Members even
shared their opinions on the weather with Arvid over pumpkin bars after
meetings.

And so, poor Arvid learned a great truth. Most small-town organizations
exist for one reason and one reason alone: Lunch. Anything which delays
lunch or interferes with its digestion will be resented, resisted,
filibustered, and eventually defeated.

 

April 29, 2003
However low the rural economy sinks, let’s hope small towns never lose
their ability to throw a good funeral.

Oddly, one of the great comforts of a small town is the way people turn
out for funerals, even for the very elderly. In the city or the
suburbs, I doubt that you could fill half-a-room for a funeral of a
90-year-old, but in the small town, a full house is common.

In the city or suburbs, older people disappear from community life,
what there is of it, when they retire. In the small town, people
usually remain a part of the social fabric as long as they don’t move
away.

So, when an older person passes away in the small town, a whole bunch
of people feel as if they lost a friend. People of all ages, faiths,
and social groups fill up the old country churches with crowds seldom
seen on a Sunday morning.

Most older people have been a part of the scenery for the entire lives
of those younger than they. They almost attain historic landmark
status. They saw you grow up. You remember when they still lived on the
farm. Lately, you have run into them at the store, at the cafe, or at
other funerals.

Even though you might have only four or five brief chats with a person
per year, those little exchanges build up over the decades. Hearing of
an older person’s death can bring back poignant memories even if you
weren’t all that close.

Most of those memories are good. Some are mixed with guilt: Poor Lars,
I wonder if he ever found out I was in on the plot to fill his car with
live pigeons. Or if Emil found out that it me who called him late one
night pretending to be an Amway salesman.

And I wonder if Martha ever found out that I put a earthworm in her
soda thirty years ago. Martha, as it happens, later died of throat
cancer. As an eight-year-old, I was haunted by the thought that it was
the worm which caused her illness.

But if you stay around town long enough, you have time to grow up and
repair relations with most everybody. You have to, or life can become a
daily obstacle course of guilt and resentment.

Watching people near you go from positions of power and vitality into
old age makes one realize that the same thing will someday happen to
you. The dawning awareness that we all share the same fate tends to
breed civility in once brash youth.

Funerals bring together the community to see the best in one of its
members. Uncomfortable memories are tactfully avoided as the need to
forgive and forget is brought home forcefully without a word being said
to that effect.

Of course, the scrumptious food at small-town funerals isn’t a minor
matter. Not only is the food delicious, but it is unabashedly decadent.
There might be six dishes called “salads,” but not a shred of lettuce
pollutes any one of them. Just jello, whipped cream and marshmallows,
maybe a can of pineapple.

Coffee, cake, and loud chatter in the old church basement cap off the
funeral ritual on a less than somber note. Everybody is on their best
behavior, spiffed up, kind and considerate. The next-of-kin part, one
hopes, with a sense that their loved one mattered to many.

With each old-timer’s death, a little chunk of the way things were
disappears. A set of stories is silenced. A bit of wisdom is lost.

But the funeral itself brings out the best small towns have to offer.
Here’s hoping that small town funerals--with their tater-tot hotdishes,
jello salads and sturdy ceramic coffee cups--long endure.
 

April 21, 2003
Elton John, Billy Joel and their million-dollar speaker systems shook
the foundations of the Fargo Dome Saturday night. Due to the generosity
of a friend with an extra ticket, I was amongst the nearly 20,000
people of all ages in attendance.

Gathering 20,000 people in one room in a state as thinly populated as
North Dakota is no small feat, especially when one considers that the
average ticket price was over eighty dollars. As Billy Joel told the
crowd, “For what you paid to get in, we should be home washing your
windows.”

At their best, Elton John and Billy Joel are piano-playing balladeers.
Each has pumped out an endless stream of hits for the past thirty
years. Most of those songs bring a flash of recognition to people’s
faces within the first few notes.

Lilting 1970s songs like Elton John’s “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me”
and Billy Joel’s “Piano Man” awaken pleasant memories of endless grade
school summers for me. If the Twins weren’t playing on the radio, the
pop stations were.

Two of the first record albums I purchased in junior high were by Elton
John and Billy Joel. The Billy Joel album is still in a box somewhere,
but the Elton John record didn’t survive a fit of righteousness
inspired by one of those rock music seminars which made the rounds of
the church youth group circuit in the early 1980s.

I had thought Elton John was pretty mild compared to Led Zeppelin, the
Blue Oyster Cult, and other  evil rock groups preferred by my peers,
but I was appalled to find out at the seminar that Elton’s lyrics were
as nefarious as any of them and contained hidden messages which were
likely to corrupt my soul and had probably done so already.

Rather than attend the record-burning ceremony held at the city park, a
public display of piety I found unbecoming, I decided to just scratch
out the bad songs on the record with a hat pin and leave the harmless
ones alone. Although “Yellow Brick Road” was said to contain subtle
humanist messages, it was my favorite and survived the purge
unscratched.

But the message of the rock seminar soon faded away and I backslid into
old listening habits, habits which included generous doses of both
Elton John and Billy Joel. Whatever’s wrong with me now is probably
their fault, but I am so far gone now that I don’t care.

Elton and Billy didn’t seem very evil on the stage at the Fargodome.
They were way too loud, but not evil. Elton was pudgy and overdressed.
Billy Joel looks like the aging Brooklynite he is.

When they played together, one on each grand piano, alternating verses
on each other’s greatest ballads, it was priceless.  I got chills at
the first chords of “Crocodile Rock. I remembered hearing it on the bus
in sixth grade, in the pitch dark of a December morning in 1976, the
year daylight savings time was extended into winter to save energy.

But the pair’s unfamiliar newer music got lost in the horrible
acoustics of the Fargodome. The mediocrities in the band had to each
take their turn making their guitars screech. It was so loud that my
ears got sore.

I would love to hear Elton John and Billy Joel play a small concert,
with just their grand pianos, in a small auditorium free of overbearing
sound systems, screaming guitars, huge video screens, light shows, and
throngs of people. Both performers are talented enough to shine without
such props.

But when you are able to fill a stadium with 20,000 people at eighty
dollars a pop, I suppose that’s what you’ll do, no matter how much the
music is compromised.

 

April 14, 2003
On a recent perfect April morning, with temperatures approaching
seventy degrees, I happened to stop by an area school building. I was
surprised to find the dank gymnasium swarming with dozens of grade
school children, accompanied by their parents, coolers in tow.

It was a basketball tournament. On a Saturday. In April. For elementary
students, some of whom had traveled for hours to get there.

What is going on here? Shouldn’t a Saturday in April be a time when
grade school children scurry outside to catch frogs, dam up creeks, and
generally get into mischief? Shouldn’t their parents be out in the yard
raking leaves or washing windows? What perverse logic drives entire
families to spend a perfect April Saturday in a smelly gym?

I am appalled by how organized childhood has become. Activity after
activity. After-school programs for all ages. Organized, competitive
sports for near tots. Not even Saturdays or evenings are sacred!

These days, the thought of allowing a child a free, unplanned moment
seems to fill parents with fear and trembling. Programs, dance line,
organizations, clubs, play dates, elaborate parties. You wonder when
kids get time to just explore the neighborhood.

People want to do everything for their children, but they forget that
the best thing they could do is have interests of their own and provide
a close up example to their children of a person who has a life.

Modern children--those lucky enough to have a reasonably solid
family--seem to be excessively monitored, controlled, regimented, doted
upon, scheduled, kept track of, spoiled. Their parents seem to have
nothing better to do.

The children look dazed to me. Perhaps kids instinctively realize that
their success on the basketball court, even as a fourth grader, is
important because it helps their father forget his humiliating job, or
convinces their harried mother that she is adequate.

This perpetually organized childhood concept is a recent phenomenon.
When I was a child, kids were ignored. The adults had other worries. If
we wanted to be in sports, we drove bike in. We never expected our
parents to show up. They were too busy. Pity the poor sap whose mother
came to every game.

I was left to run wild on spring Saturdays. I cut down trees with a
hatchet and built a teepee. I dammed up the drainage ditch, then busted
the dam and watched the torrent with a sense of power. I brought home
baby birds, mice, rabbits and lizards. All of them died, so I held
funerals.

I tore apart a little old gas engine without permission. I smashed the
gauges on abandoned cars out back. I played with matches. I tried to
kidnap a neighbor kid and hold him for ransom. I sat on the roof  on
sunny days and used mirrors to blind passersby.

As long as I didn’t disrupt the economy, I was ignored. Grandparents,
neighbors and parents objected only when the destruction and mayhem
interrupted their work. I think most kids from my generation had the
same experience.

Earlier generations were even less watched. My dad attached a homemade
rocket to his bike and nearly blew himself into eternity. Later, to see
if gasoline really does burn, he attached a lit match to a door spring
and held it up to the gas nozzle. He squeezed the nozzle, only to have
the rush of gasoline put the match out. End of experiment.

Modern parents seem seem reluctant to let their kids make their own fun
and discover things on their own. They didn’t learn the wisdom of their
parents: Let kids be kids. They might get bruised up a bit, but they’ll
learn.
 

April 7, 2003
The wars fought by this country in its history cross the entire
spectrum, from the noble and memorable on one end, to the ignoble and
forgettable on the other.

The Civil War is remembered as the struggle to preserve the Union and
free the slaves. It was the most violent war in the world’s history at
the time, with tens of thousands dying each day of battle.

It was begun and waged, with utter agony, by a humble and humane man,
Abraham Lincoln, who, despite his resolute public face, searched his
soul during the long, dark nights of the war, wondering if he was in
the right, weighing the horrible human cost of battle against the
larger principles at stake.

World War II is also well-remembered. Few question the nobility of the
Allied cause. That war brought forth two great leaders, Winston
Churchill and Dwight Eisenhower, who, despite their conviction that
they were in the right and their determination to win, never lost sight
of the horrible human cost of the fighting.

As he watched newsreels of the Allied bombing of civilian Dresden,
Churchill stood up and shouted, “Have we become monsters?” He had deep
doubts, and they are to his credit.

Eisenhower’s dread of sending young men into combat drove him to smoke
four packs of filterless Pall Malls per day. When he accepted honors
after the war, he reminded his admirers in eloquent terms that he did
so only on behalf of those who died due to his decisions.

Both wars were epic conflicts. The outcome was uncertain, but the
consequences of not fighting were clear--and the results, however
imperfect, have stood the test of time.

At the other end of the spectrum are two forgotten conflicts, the
Mexican War and the Spanish-American War. Both were lopsided affairs in
which victory was never in doubt. Both were started with great acclaim
by men whom history has largely forgotten, Presidents James K. Polk and
William McKinley. Neither Polk nor McKinley regarded war itself with
anything more than a shrug.

The Mexican War ended in a great grab of territory by the United
States, territory which today includes much of the American Southwest.
The Spanish-American War ended with the United States in control of
Cuba and the Phillipines.

In both cases, the American public was lathered up for war by the
alleged threat the enemy posed to the United States, as well as the
corruption and brutality of their rule. But no matter the motive,
territory was the most lasting result.

Quick and easy American victories didn’t improve matters in the
long-term for the conquered countries. After many regime changes, Cuba
ended up with Castro, and the Phillipines wound up with decades of rule
by the murderous Marcos.

Perhaps for those reasons, the Mexican and Spanish-American Wars have
been largely swept under history’s rug. No documentaries on PBS trumpet
the virtues of the presidents who started them. No epic battles
inspired legends, songs or poetry.

To be remembered with pride, it seems, a war’s purpose must be clear.
Those who begin it must forcefully disavow and forbid less-than-noble
motives such as profit and territory. The threat prevented must have
been real, and the freedom brought to the liberated must be actual and
lasting.

In addition, it seems apparent that leaders who go to war, if they wish
to be remembered kindly by history or remembered at all, must do so
with soberness, humility, and a deep and sincere reluctance.

 

March 31, 2003
There must be a major goose airport near my house. Dozens of cackling
Canadians whoosh low overhead at all hours, sometimes in formation,
sometimes in pairs, honking away with an  noisy urgency which brings to
mind a suburban mom on her cell phone in rush-hour traffic.

So human, the geese. Forming groups, holding meetings, chattering
endlessly, following first this leader, then that, flying in enormous
but apparently meaningless circles, only to land again where they last
took off, in time for yet another meeting.

I don’t know what they talk about at goose meetings. I don’t speak
Goosian, and interpreters are scarce. At first glance, it would seem
that the availability of corn would be a likely topic, as would the
decision over who will lead the V formation tomorrow.

Some of the geese are sure to be chomping at the bit to get up early
and head north just after breakfast, while others just want to sleep in
and hang out around here for a couple more days. There’s a good
cornfield here, and who knows what’s up north? They say its nothing but
canola once you cross the border.

But further contemplation leads me to think that the geese have
developed extraordinarily effective coping mechanisms to deal with such
conflicts within the flock.

For example, if the flock reaches an impasse on the
should-we-stay-or-should-we-go issue, it seems that they simply split
up. The up-and-comers up and go, and the dawdlers hang around and
dawdle, with no apparent hard feelings between the two groups.

Such an elegant conflict resolution strategy separates geese from
humans, who would likely debate the issue for several hours only to
table it until the next meeting, at which time nothing would have
changed and everybody would just say the same thing over again, at
which time the whole issue would be assigned to a task force, which
would come up with the same recommendations as the last task force,
which is that further study is needed in order to arrive at a workable
consensus.

Geese, it turns out, have developed consensus-building strategies which
put humans to shame.

For example, geese have largely solved the the pressing issue of who
leads the V by adopting a “rotational command” strategy. Finding two or
four year terms impractical, geese instead change leaders several times
per day, with each goose taking his or her turn leading the V as his or
her energy permits.

Rotational command virtually eliminates the resentments and jealousies
which inevitably arise against the lead goose when he or she is elected
for a full four-year term. Such harping and infighting can seriously
erode flock morale over the length of the term.

Under the rotational command system, each goose takes a turn at the top
on a daily basis and sees firsthand that being lead goose is no picnic
and that he or she probably wouldn’t want the job full time even if it
were offered. Honking in the ranks continues, but harping ceases.

Self-esteem problems disappear under rotational command, as each goose
sees that he or she is a valued member of the flock and realizes anew
each day his or her interdependence upon other flock members. Teamwork
flourishes.

Motivational consultants are studying the goose leadership patterns for
possible application in human situations. However, due in large part to
ignorant human resistance to goose culture, such applications remain
unlikely in the foreseeable future.

Humans apparently remain too addicted to treasurer’s reports, new
business, old business, elections of officers and four-year terms to
adopt the effortless consensus-building strategies of the geese.

Marcy 24, 2003
Drastic change continues to roll across the countryside of Minnesota
with quiet but irresistible force. The harsh winds of economic reality
have ruthlessly felled the rugged old ways, old buildings, and old
institutions into streamlined modern swaths.

Isolated pockets of resistance hold out. A few country churches
struggle on, although the number of cars outside no longer requires
latecomers to park nose-in-the-ditch unless there is a meatball supper
or a funeral.

Some sagging barns remain, but only as relics. Dairy cattle have moved
on to the bovine equivalent of suburban apartment buildings, huge
computerized dairies so hidden that even rural children might be
excused for thinking their milk comes from a factory.

Farm machinery has become so efficient that the planting and harvest of
the quarter section next door can happen in one afternoon. The people
in the tractors might live twenty miles away. You still wave at them,
if you happen to be around the day they sweep across the field, but
that doesn’t mean you know who they are.

Not that long ago each quarter section supported a teeming farmyard of
kids, animals, rickety outbuildings, and noisy year-around bustle.

County fairs, originally meant to encourage for farm kids to show their
first attempts at raising animals and crops, or for their mothers to
show off their jellies and jams, have had to adapt to modern
entertainment demands or simply shut down.

And yet, despite this seeming tragedy, nostalgia for the old days isn’t
universal amongst the locals, and it tends to be confined to people
such as myself who didn’t have to live through the old days themselves.

Some old-timers express sadness and say, “Things aren’t like they used
to be,” or “We were poor, but we were happy.”  Yet the stories of
others, less often told, make it clear that the past was no picnic.

For example, increased openness has made it seem as if problems such as
alcoholism, domestic abuse, depression, and other social and personal
problems are recent developments. However, it is obvious that such
evils always existed, but were simply shoved under the rug.

What hope did an abused wife have fifty years ago? An alcoholic?
Somebody struggling with depression? It is easy to say that back then
people were tougher, and maybe they were, but you don’t have to dig
very deeply to hear stories of deep and unabated suffering.

Memory’s filter often sifts out the good and discards the bad. It is
easier that way, and probably for the best. But I have come to
understand why not every old-timer laments the passing of the old days
and ways.

Times were tough. The poverty was often grinding. The tight community
ties of the old days had their good side, and may seem idyllic to those
of us appalled by modern isolation, but those ties arose out of a
continual struggle to survive, and didn’t allow for much privacy or
individual difference.

The past was both better and worse than the present. I am for
preserving as much of it as possible, including the old barns, old
churches and old schoolhouses--not because the loss of the old ways is
a tragedy, but because the old days and ways can teach us how fortunate
we are today, and at the same time show us what we are missing.

March 17, 2003
The snowplows were out late last week. They had no choice, of course,
the roads were drifted, but if people could have just waited a couple
of days for our sudden spring thaw, the whole mess would have melted
off on its own, saving the county a little money in these financially
difficult times.

The property tax notice came in the mail a couple of weeks ago. My
house went up in value by a good chunk even though all I did for
improvements in the past year was clean the garage. I didn’t think the
garage was that messy, but it obviously was bad enough to hold my home
value down several thousand dollars.

They will probably raise my property taxes, although I would never
suspect that the county’s cash crunch had anything to do with the
increase in my home’s assessed value. I am sure it was the clean garage.

But even if county taxes do go up, we get pretty good value for our
county money. After a storm, the snowplows come by before I can even
get out of bed in the morning. Most county roads are well-paved and
well-maintained, and we need that.

Some property tax money goes to the school, which is a good thing. It
stays in town. It is good for kids to learn. Other money goes towards
county nursing, and everybody has good things to say about the county
nurse who comes out once per month.

As for the state tax bill, we are told we live in a high tax state, but
I am always impressed with how low the state tax bill is when it
arrives. Again, all of that money is spent in the state. Nursing home
aid is a good thing. We should take care of the weak and infirm, we
should have good roads, and we should have nice schools. That’s the
Minnesota way.

The university gobbles up a good chunk of the money, which I wouldn’t
mind so much if the football team weren’t so bad. For all that money,
you’d think they could win the Big 10 every now and then.

Granted, some university money goes to graduate students who write
dissertations nobody will ever read. I can’t complain about that since
there is a thesis of mine written at North Dakota taxpayer’s expense
gathering dust somewhere. It contributed almost nothing to the sum
total of human knowledge. However, the two years spent writing it were
so much fun I would never deny the experience to somebody else for
petty reasons of finance.

But it is the huge federal tax bill which makes gives me pause. You
wonder which defense contractor is going to get it, in which case my
contribution would probably purchase fifteen rivets, or if my money
might go to some artist in Greenwich Village who paints pictures with
elephant dung, or to some scientist at Berkeley who studies the mating
patterns of gnats.

In reality, I suppose federal dollars roll back into the area about as
fast they leave. As long as we keep having natural disaster after
natural disaster, federal dollars will continue to help clean up the
latest mess. And the feds are thoughtful enough to hire local people to
run around quizzing farmers for those agriculture statistics reports
nobody reads.

So, some of the money comes back to us from all the federal taxes we
pay, as much as it feels like legalized robbery when one writes the
check every spring.


 

March 3, 2003
After initial talk of the cold weather, small-talk conversation in the
north often turns to the all important question: “So how do you heat,
then?”

Wood heat seems to be the most cozy-sounding answer. If respond that
you heat with wood, you can expect people to say, “oh, that’s nice.”

There is a security to wood heat. If there’s an oil embargo, or if a
computer virus shuts off the electricity, you’ll still be warm. There
are enough fallen trees in the woods around here to keep all of us
toasty for a long time.

A clunky old fuel oil furnace is the next most cozy. It feels
dependable, traditional, comfortable. The tank isn’t pressurized, so
you can test it with a stick. I remember one old fuel oil furnace which
had a flame that you could see through a little window.

The chimney pipe from the fuel oil furnace in my grandparents old house
ran right past the stove in the kitchen. In the winter, Grandpa would
rub his back against the warm chimney like a horse scratching against a
fence.

I am too young to remember anybody heating with coal. If I smell a coal
fire, I immediately think of the old steam engines down at Rollag. I
have heard of coal bins with augers which automatically put more coal
in the furnace, but I’ve never seen one.

Coal and fuel oil often fueled a boiler which made steam heat, another
of the cozy old heat forms. It has been a couple of decades since I
have seen a house heated by those old radiators which hiss and wheeze
and carry on.

Some older public buildings are still heated with steam. I only know
because I have had to sit through a concert while the pipes in an old
church clanked and banged in the below zero weather.

Then come the modern heat forms. They aren’t as warm. I have a theory
that electric baseboard heat raises the thermometer up to seventy
degrees without making the room warm at all. Electric forced air does a
little better, but not much.

I think to feel warm, a heat source has to have a flame somewhere in
the house. Even if it is well hidden, there is a security to knowing
that there is a fire burning somewhere deep in the bowels of the
basement. Electric heat lacks such a flame.

Floor heat is a more cozy form of electric heat. It gives the building
a steady, penetrating warmth. But you don’t want the mice to get at
those wires under there! When floor heat goes out, it is usually done
for good, and that is a sinking feeling.

There are more newfangled methods. I just had a gas fireplace put in my
living room, and that thing really kicks out the BTUs. It gives me the
benefit of a visible flame without having to pull bits of bark out of
the carpet.

I don’t know much about heat pumps, nor do I know about those types of
heating which require you to dig dozens of wells. Milking heat out of
cold water doesn’t sound cozy at all, however.

Dependability is the main thing. Furnace trouble is a curse, enough of
a curse to get you lumped together with the heart attacks and strokes
during Sunday service.  “And please remember the Johnsons, whose
furnace went out last night,”  says the pastor as the congregation
quietly gasps.

Yes, in a climate such as ours, furnace troubles rank just below
serious illness on the sympathy scale.

February 23, 2003
Once a person’s vehicle is warmed up, cold, clear weather isn’t so bad.
Below zero weather is preferable having it right around freezing when
there’s usually sleet, slush, ice and general misery. There is
cleanliness and clarity to twenty below.

The scenery on the country highways is as crisp as the air. A trip in a
warm vehicle at sunset on a bitterly cold, clear winter day is
austerely scenic. The stark black outline of the leafless trees against
the pastel shades of the winter sky provides a picture made to paint.

People change with the cold, too. The colder it gets, the more people
sense that they are fighting a common foe. The kindness and camaraderie
of a shared disaster kicks in, but without all the hassle of a flood,
tornado or major blizzard.

The need to look nice goes out the window in below zero weather, at
least for everyone but adolescents. Cap-frazzled hair is acceptable in
all public spaces, including church. Boots so clunky that their wearer
can barely drag them along become objects of envy.

Cold weather creates a different moral climate as well. For example, if
somebody left their car running unlocked for a half-an-hour out at the
lake in the summer time and it got stolen, most people would think that
the victims were stupid enough to deserve it.

But at twenty below, parking lots outside of cafes, discount stores,
grocery stores and churches in towns both big and small are filled with
running cars, most of them probably unlocked. But you never hear of any
running cars stolen in deep cold, at least not around here. That
wouldn’t be right!

In July, if a drunk person knocks at your door at three a.m. and walks
in on his own claiming car trouble, you’re liable to chase him off with
a hunting rifle or maybe threaten to call the sheriff. When the same
situation arises in below zero weather, the only proper thing to do is
fix the poor sap some hot chocolate and visit with him until his
buddies arrive to pick him up at sunrise.

Same holds true for motorists stranded on the roadside. I avoid them in
the summer time. They’ll survive. Somebody’ll help them. They should
have been better prepared anyway. But if its ten below or colder, I
don’t think twice before helping.

Cold weather morality seeps into all areas of life up here, whether or
not weather is an immediate factor.

As I clunked out of the cold into a hotel lobby in Fargo last weekend,
I noticed a gathering at the front desk. An uptight-looking gentleman
stood looking miffed as a cluster of three clerks huddled over some
paperwork. Oh great, I thought, an argument over his bill.

The manager was called in. She pored over the bill as well. Things were
serious. The bill was for several rooms, and looked to contain many,
many phone calls. The manager furiously added it all up one more time.

“No,” she finally said, “I am afraid that’s the correct total.”

“Okay,” the man said, still skeptical. “It just doesn’t seem like
enough, and I wanted to make sure I wasn’t shorting you.”

“Nope,” said the manager, “you’re all taken care of.”

“Okay, then,” said the man.

Such an exchange could only happen in a very, very cold climate at a
very, very cold time of year.





 

February 17, 2003
A rare two days of clouds and rain made leaving Tucson slightly less
difficult, but only slightly. For ease of access, I threw my winter
jacket over the top of the boxes just underneath the tarp in the pickup
box, but didn’t really believe I would need to wear it two days later.

I remember my first trip to Arizona in the winter of 1995. When I
stepped off the train onto the platform in Tucson, I felt hot sun on my
face in January for the first time in my life. My mood lifted. I had
energy. I didn’t want to leave.

I have been back five times, and the effects have never dulled. I have
found Arizona in winter to be a powerful mood-altering substance,
available without a doctor’s prescription.

Minnesota’s cold winters drag me down and always have. In the
elementary grades, I invariably spent most of February home with
lingering diseases of some sort or another. My first grade class even
sent me a card saying that the gerbils missed me.

That pattern continued through college when I found it very difficult
to drag myself from bed to attend class in January and February. When I
made it to lectures, I nodded off or sat there in a numb daze. What a
mistake to take Ancient Roman history in the winter! A surer cure for
insomnia has yet to be concocted.

After college, it just got worse. I could work long hours and have fun
in spring, summer and fall, but when I would try to work in winter, I
couldn’t cut it. Over the years, I quit school twice and left several
jobs in either February or March.

So, when I felt the effects of the Arizona sunshine for the first time,
I resolved to sneak away and bask in the warmth as many winters as
possible--and right away, not after my joints have rusted in place and
my interests have narrowed to whist.

Not a lot goes on back here in the middle of winter anyway, at least
for those of us in seasonal work. People start living for ball games.
Or they linger at the cafe from breakfast until noon. Or they watch so
much television news that they turn into duct-tape hoarding wrecks.

Some people ice fish or drive snowmobile, but those activities freeze
my extremities. Plus, I would be the one to fall through the hole in
the ice or run into an oak tree with the snowmobile, probably on the
same day.

My Arizona life is pretty monastic. This trip I stayed in a little
apartment furnished with an air mattress, two folding tables, two
folding chairs, an old stuffed chair I eventually left in the dumpster,
and a box of books.

But the luxury of walking outside without a jacket! Of hiking in the
mountains, of watching the dazzling Arizona sunsets! Of driving with
your window down at 9 p.m. in January! Of real Mexican food!

Of course it had to end sometime. Reality hit when I had to dig my
jacket out of the pickup box in York, Nebraska. I was driving in thick
fog, and it was getting colder.

My windshield wipers iced up twenty miles later. Sleet turned to snow
at the Nebraska-South Dakota border. By Sioux Falls, winds reached 45
mph, and visibility was down to almost nothing. The temperature had
plummeted 40 degrees in three hours of driving.

A few hours later, my pickup’s tires crunched over the snow in my
driveway. It took 4-wheel drive to get through the big drift in front
of the garage. The cold air crinkled my nostrils. Cacti and burritos
were but a distant memory.

February 10, 2003
Abraham Lincoln’s reputation as a saintly martyr arose within hours of
his death and has obscured reality ever since. The Lincoln legend
contains some truth, but its growth was shaped by the politics of the
time.

At the time of his assassination, many Northern politicians and much of
the populace worried Lincoln was going too easy on the defeated South.
They much preferred to wring the Confederacy’s neck. Newspapers called
for the hanging of traitors by the thousand.

The Sunday after Lincoln died, prominent preachers in Northern pulpits
echoed the general feeling that the meek Lincoln was removed from the
scene by God to allow divine retribution against the South to flow more
freely. He was a saint, but his mission was complete.

Even Lincoln’s staunchest enemies in the North eulogized him as a
simple, pious man, martyred by the desperate and evil slave holders. No
harm praising the dead, they seemed to think. More importantly, the
murder of such a harmless man only proved that the South deserved
whatever rough treatment came its way.

But Abe Lincoln was not simple, nor was he particularly pious. In fact,
he was the shrewdest of politicians. He was our greatest president by a
large margin, but for complicated reasons long shrouded in myth.

The Emancipation Proclamation provides a good example. With that
eloquent document, Lincoln declared the slaves to be free. His great
words were destined to be etched in history books and  on granite walls
across the nation.

But a close reading shows that the Proclamation freed only slaves in
territory held by the South. In other words, because Lincoln had no
authority over those areas, the Proclamation freed absolutely nobody.
Furthermore, it kept in bondage thousands of slaves in territory held
by the Northern armies.

Historians still struggle to figure out Lincoln’s motives. Some say he
merely hoped that the Emancipation Proclamation would cause the
Southern-held slaves to rise up. Others note that Northern enthusiasm
for preserving the Union was waning as the battles grew more bloody.
The Emancipation provided a much-needed higher purpose to justify the
war’s carnage.

Yet others have found evidence that Lincoln hoped the noble words of
the Proclamation would arouse wild enthusiasm in the lower classes of
Europe, which would pressure European monarchs to quit supporting the
South. In fact, much to Lincoln’s satisfaction, this happened.

Lincoln could have issued the Emancipation Proclamation on his first
day in office. That he waited to do so until the idea became
strategically useful, and applied it only where it would cause the
enemy trouble, speaks volumes.

The Proclamation and countless other examples show Lincoln to be more a
brilliant lawyer than a moral crusader.

And Lincoln was a brilliant lawyer. In frontier Illinois, he was a
legend. If you killed a man in cold blood, Abe Lincoln was the lawyer
who could get you off, either on a technicality, or by convincing the
jury that the other guy deserved it.

Known to history as a placid and merciful gentleman, Lincoln was famous
on the Illinois frontier as a wrestler and fist fighter, perhaps the
toughest in the state.

Known to history as a martyr for a holy cause, Lincoln’s early
statements on religion reveal a testy agnosticism which only later
mellowed.

Known to history as comical storyteller, Lincoln frequently descended
into depressions so deep that friends considered him suicidal.

The misty idealism which causes us to celebrate Lincoln’s birthday as a
national holiday is appropriate. Lincoln was one of the greats. But
like many of the greats, he has been frequently, and often completely,
misunderstood.

February 3, 2003
The shuttle accident brings to the forefront a class of people who
don’t get much attention until disaster strikes: Scientists devoted
enough to their work to risk their lives.

The shuttle crew knew the risks going up. The astronauts must have been
aware that most commercial airliners have newer cockpit equipment than
did the Columbia. They, more than anybody, knew that the margin of
error when you hit the earth’s atmosphere at 16 times the speed of
sound is miniscule. Yet, they went.

Are such space missions foolhardy? To many of us they would seem so,
although a space mission is probably less foolish than Columbus’s trip
across the uncharted Atlantic in three tiny ships, or Lewis and Clark’s
plodding journey through thousands of miles of unknown terrain to the
West Coast.

Explorers aren’t normal people, whether they wrestle with the
microscopic complexities of DNA or the endless mysteries of outer
space. A curiosity few of us understand drives them, and drives them
mercilessly.

Most fourth-graders are full of curiosity, but with few exceptions,
their wide-eyed wonder at the world is boiled out of them by the time
they reach their teen years. Maintain a passionate interest in science
beyond your eighth grade project and you run the risk of hostility from
peers and indifference from parents.

By adulthood, most human minds have frozen into place on all levels.
People do not wish to have their ignorant bliss interrupted by facts.
New information, especially about some basic premise of our existence,
becomes downright irritating to people just trying to pay the month’s
bills.

For example, nutrition and diet scientists are more unanimous than
ever: To live longer and better, eat lots of fruit and veggies. Don’t
eat Twinkies. Eat whole foods. Eat lean meat. Cut out most sugar. The
information is simple and it is easy to find. Yet more of us are fat,
and fatter than ever before!

On a philosophical level, science has always been a threat to those
with beliefs too brittle to embrace with equanimity and gratitude the
wonders unveiled by scientific exploration and research. Their
constricted view of the world might be a cause for pity if such folks
weren’t so nearly in the majority.

Poor church-going Charles Darwin! He bore no malice, yet thanks to the
inordinate rage of those offended by his honest findings, Darwin has
spent the century since his death wearing horns. Earlier on, the powers
that be threw Galileo in the clink for having the gall to suggest that
the earth went around the sun instead of the other way around.

The scientists aboard the shuttle mission were amongst a rare few whose
passion for discovery survived the both the teenage pressures of
conformity and the adult temptations of lazy indifference. They broke
through the innate human resistance to the unknown and the new, and
accepted great personal danger to boot. They may well have been nerds,
individualists, perhaps eccentrics, but they were at the forefront of
our quest for knowledge.

We need more like them. We have been plopped into this magnificent,
mysterious world. To not look around with awe, openness and unbridled
curiosity at ourselves, at the universe, and at all living things is to
die an early death of our own.


January 27, 2003
Tucson’s clear desert skies make it a haven for astronomers. City
ordinances control outdoor lighting so city lights don’t obscure the
stars. Back yard observatories number in the hundreds. The largest
collection of telescopes in the world is perched on Kitt Peak, forty
miles to the west.

I have always wanted to look through a powerful telescope. I heard that
a Tucson astronomy club has a spot in the desert where they gather
twice a month on moonless nights. I looked on the internet and found
directions to the spot. I also found out they planned to meet there
last night.

The spot was remote. Twenty miles outside the city limits the road
turned to gravel and went over two rumbling one-lane bridges before
running through a ranch yard and into a pitch dark desert clearing.

A kid who looked about twelve ran towards my pickup with a dim red
flashlight, opened the passenger door and said, “Could you use just
your parking lights, please?” Oops. I had already managed to offend the
people I had hoped were going to let me see the stars.

Not to worry. I parked, and as soon as I shut the door of my pickup,
the kid said, “Wanna see Saturn?”

Of course. I looked in the eyepiece of his telescope, which was nearly
as tall as he. There was Saturn, just as in the pictures, the rings
casting a deep shadow on the golden globe of planet itself.

The kid, who introduced himself as Nick, took me to the next telescope
where his father was delivering an impromptu lecture to three
Australians who kept interrupting him with questions about UFOs. It was
so dark I could see none of their faces.

The Australians eventually got cold and left, and I was treated to a
private tour of the sky from a man who turned out to be one of the
professionals at the Kitt Peak observatory. Almost as impressive as his
knowledge of the sky was his ability to explain the stars in terms I
could easily understand.

He had a method of pointing out even the tiniest stars in the sky, and
soon I had spotted the only space object visible to the naked eye
outside of our galaxy--the Andromeda galaxy, one and a half-million
light years away, so dim that you have to avert your eyes from it just
a little to make it appear at all.

Through the telescope we looked at the Orion nebula, an astoundingly
colorful cloud of gas which has produced dozens of new stars, a cluster
of which sparkled within the multi-colored cloud like a handful of
diamonds in a velvet-lined box.

Nick hollered from his telescope that he had found a new galaxy. New to
him at least. He ran over to their minivan with his red flashlight to
enter the find in his logbook.

It was only then I realized that there were dozens of little observing
parties around the clearing. Each telescope was identifiable only by
the dim red lights blinking at the base of its tripod. I walked from
station to station. Each telescope focused on something different.

I saw Jupiter and four of its moons. I saw a star cluster so dense that
stars packed the tiny stretch of sky visible in the eyepiece like
sparkling grains of sand on the beach. I saw that the North Star, when
magnified, is actually a pair of stars.

As I pulled back onto the dirt road, my head was swimming. I was so
distracted by what I had seen that it took me a minute or two to
realize that the radio was quietly playing the song “Knock, Knock,
Knockin on Heaven’s Door.”

January 20, 2003
For a Sunday afternoon drive, I took a two-lane road south of Tucson
and ended up in a little town a dozen miles north of the Mexican border
called Patagonia.

Perhaps because it is as crumbling and decrepit as any dying small town
in the Midwest, Patagonia charmed me right away. Boarded up store
fronts. Porches sagging with junk. Empty lots grown up in weeds and
crammed with rusting cars.

But the school looked new, and was flanked by irrigated ballfields.
Mass had just finished at the little Catholic church, and huge Latino
families poured out onto the dried-brown grass in their Sunday best.
Tattered cowboy hats sauntered out of the little Ma and Pa cafe after a
leisurely Sunday breakfast.

Patagonia is snuggled in a picturesque valley between two dignified
desert mountain ranges. Through town runs a river which has created
what is called a “riparian” forest, a grouping of trees which forms in
the desert due to the almost continual presence of water.

And so Patagonia is shaded by an oasis of cottonwood, walnut, and old
gnarled live oak, a type of oak which doesn’t lose its leaves. Because
such a grouping of trees is so rare in the desert southwest, birds
flock to Patagonia--two-hundred and seventy five species of birds,
according to a pamphlet from the Nature Conservancy.

Patagonia is at 5,000 feet elevation. Its summers are cool. Its air is
clean and crisp. The evenings call for a crackling fire every night of
the year, according to a pamphlet from the Chamber of Commerce.

Scenery, birds, peace and quiet only an hour from bustling Tucson:
Clearly, Patagonia is doomed. There are early signs, which I didn’t
notice until my second slow cruise around town--discreet little signs
in fancy calligraphy.

Licensed acupuncturist. Medicinal herb consultant. Yoga instructor. Art
gallery. On the edge of town outside the gates of an enormous estate
was the kicker, a classy sign which said: “Life Rejuvenation Centre.”

One can only assume that a Life Rejuvenation Centre is where for $2500
per week you can bask in the desert sunshine, get your face caked in
mud, have a pedicure, get a massage and consult with a professional
spiritual advisor, all at the same time.

Poor Patagonia. It has been discovered by the SUV bunch. Soon it will
be overwhelmed by frazzled wealthy coastal types who see in its peace,
quiet, calm and quaintness a possible cure for their many psychological
problems.

Money will be no object. Old buildings will be turned into boutiques.
Dumpy houses on Main Street will sprout neon signs and smell of gourmet
coffee. Property values will skyrocket. The locals will wonder what hit
them.

The newcomers will bring their stress with them. There will be zoning
disputes. The new Italian restaurant and a sparkling convenience store
will combine to kill off the Ma and Pa cafe. The Broken Wheel will
close when Bill and Marie decide it just makes too much sense to sell
their liquor license to the new sports bar.

I felt like an intruder tiptoeing around with my Minnesota plates. I
could see suspicion in the eyes of the locals as I drove past the
church, the cafe, the bustling little grocery mart. They like that you
like their town, but they hate what you might do to it.

I could offer to cure their problem. My advice would be simple: The
Patagonians should just turn town the thermostat about 100 degrees,
level those darn mountains, and saw down those pesky trees in the river
bottom. Then their charming village could forever remain as pure as any
Midwestern farm town.

January 13, 2003
The southern Arizona desert is a flat plain. Out of that plain rise
several small mountain ranges. Each range appears as if it is an island
in a vast sea. The largest of these ranges, the Santa Catalina
mountains, forms a twenty mile wall which towers over Tucson.

The Catalinas loom as high over Tucson as the Rocky Mountains rise
above Denver. Yet to the untrained eye, the Catalinas look like little
more than a pile of rocks one could climb in a spare afternoon.

It is an optical illusion. Unlike the Rockies, the Catalinas must be
inspected up close to get a proper feel for their size. Hike a trail
into the mountains and soon you are snaking through impressive canyons
walled by massive cliffs. From the city, those cliffs look as if they
are about thirty feet tall. Up close, it is obvious they measure 500
feet or more.

You quickly realize it would take far more than a spare afternoon to
reach the top of the Catalinas on foot. Fortunately, one can drive to
the top of the range on the Mt. Lemmon Highway.

The highway climbs more than 6,000 feet in thirty miles. The road is so
curvy the trip takes over an hour. In those thirty miles, the
temperature dips thirty degrees. You pass through five distinct
climates before reaching the top.

The road starts in desert dominated by forests of the mighty saguaro
cactus. A few miles up the saguaro disappear, replaced by oak and
savannah grasslands. Some twists and turns later, the manzanita, a
bizarre green shrub with a trunk the color of copper tubing, takes over.

All along, breathtaking vistas pop into view. The hairpin turns of the
narrow road demand complete attention, so I pulled over to the side to
gawk lest I end up in a ravine.

Eventually the manzanita give way to junipers, and finally the road
tunnels through towering pine forests interspersed with groves of
aspen, just like in Montana.

Less than an hour before, I had driven past a bank thermometer which
read 80 degrees. Now, a wet blanket of snow lay on the floor of the
pine forest.

Near the top, three minivans with plates from Mexico sat with doors
wide open as about a dozen children tossed snowballs at each other,
perhaps for the first time in their lives. A snowman from previous
visitors stood off to the side, complete with a carrot nose.

By this time, it was three o’clock. My Norwegian blood was demanding
coffee. I had been dreaming that there might be a nice little coffee
shop at the top and sure enough, I was in luck.

A organic gourmet coffee shop, no less, with coffee made from beans
harvested by virtuous Central American peasants clothed in natural
fibers, and then roasted in kilns heated by domestic renewable fuels
produced by vegetarian union labor.

And pecan pie! I told the kid to warm me up a slice. That’ll be $5.81,
he said, and I jumped back about a foot. Turns out the pie cost $4.75,
and was not plain pecan pie, but “Chocolate Bourbon Pecan Pie.”  I said
what the heck.

Despite its virtue, the coffee was lukewarm. But the pie was worth
every cent, and I ate each bite very slowly, especially the layer of
dark chocolate pudding. So much for virtue.

Once finished, I sat back. Sunshine filtered through the pines and
filled the little mountain-top coffee shop with color. Thirty miles of
coasting downhill lay ahead. It was pretty clear that climbing the
Catalinas in a pickup was not a bad way to spend a spare afternoon.

January 6, 2003
Arizona is doomed to development and population increase. It doesn’t
take many sunny eighty degree days in January for one to figure out why.

The local paper here in Tucson is filled with the problems of
expansion: Zoning disputes. Overcrowded schools. Attempts to preserve
the desert. Water problems.

Most people here aren’t natives, but once they’ve moved here they seem
to do all they can to shut the door behind them. Yes, they live in a
new development, but they don’t want another new development on the
other side of the fence.

There is no shortage of hiking trails in and around Tucson, but there
are very few ball fields for the kids. Grass doesn’t grow naturally,
and every time somebody tries to build a park, the retirees, who don’t
care about ball fields, raise concerns over water use, traffic, noise,
crime, whatever they can come up with to put the ball field on hold.

Neighbors protest the new Home Depot, but it goes up anyway after
assurances from the company that they will be a good neighbor and that
the masses of customers they draw will drive nice and slow on local
streets and try to avoid hitting dogs and children.

We civic-minded, far-sighted citizens of rural northwestern Minnesota
have a thing or two to teach these Arizonans, that is for sure.

Most of our towns have had no trouble keeping Home Depot out. With few
exceptions, Wal-mart has been kept at bay, and chain restaurants are
prohibited except for those pizza counters at Cenex.

We have maintained large spaces of green grass in the form of football
fields, softball fields, fairgrounds, parks, playgrounds, and endless
yards. If enrollment continues to decline, our goal of one acre of
mowed grass per child will be attained early in 2010.

We have maintained strict limits on our population, forcing the biggest
polluters, people between the ages of eighteen and sixty, to move away
and do their polluting in the suburbs.

We have managed our water supply so well that for the past few years we
have had a surplus, which we are more than willing to sell to those
willing to suck it out of our basements or off of our wheat fields.

Environmental consciousness runs high. Wheat prices have been kept so
low that it no longer pays to clear trees to create new farmland.
Thousands of farmers have selflessly put their land in CRP in order to
provide enhanced habitat for the endangered pocket gopher.

The greatest stroke of genius, however, has been the maintenance of
bone chilling cold for five months per year. Nothing we have done in
rural Minnesota has done more to keep out large technology
corporations, families with small children, factories, industry,
diversity, and other evils.

Yes, it is lucky we in Minnesota don’t have 80 degree weather in
January or soon we’d be the ones stuck dealing with new Home Depots,
Wal-marts, strip malls, supermarkets and six lane streets.

Those are my thoughts as I sit caught in Tucson traffic, windows down,
in shorts and t-shirt, bopping my hand to the beat of the radio against
the side of my pickup on the fifth of January.

December 30, 2002
The new year brings an end to the eating binge which started in the
fall with church suppers, extended through Thanksgiving and into early
December with holiday parties for every group and organization, and
reached a climax with the feasts of Christmas.

With New Year’s, many people make promises not to eat so much. That is,
after they recover from the excesses of the New Year’s party.

New Year’s is one of the more feeble excuses for debauchery on the
calendar. Most people just stay home. That makes sense. I know I feel
more excitement when my pickup’s odometer hits a big round number.

New Year’s isn’t a holiday of wonderment for wide-eyed children, like
Christmas or the 4th of July. It isn’t an occasion for eating or
getting together with relatives after a long layoff, as is
Thanksgiving. It is an adult holiday, and one without any apparent
higher purpose.

Memorable New Year’s Eve gatherings? I really can’t bring any to mind.
I recall having the flu a couple of New Year’s. I spent another in the
hospital recovering from hernia repair.

One New Year’s Eve when I was in junior high, I called every 800 number
I could find in the ads in U.S. News and World Report and wished the
poor phone operators a Happy New Year. It felt good to spend my holiday
ministering to the unfortunate.

The two or three times I attended an official New Year’s Eve party, I
didn’t feel festive enough to hug and kiss people I barely knew at
midnight. Up to that point, people just sat at tables wondering why
they were there, why the music had to be so loud, and why they paid $10
at the door in exchange for a paper hat and a kazoo.

I suppose psychologists might call it holiday fatigue, the feeling of
wanting to get back to normal that sets in after the weeks-long binge.
You see it on the faces of people at parties. You see it on the faces
of people who are trying to find a store open on New Year’s Day. Let’s
get back to normal!

I even heard it in the voices of the phone operators of the 800
numbers. The woman who answered the number for Old Grandad Whiskey
wasn’t getting many calls that night, she said in her Kentucky drawl,
but she was glad to be working. Gave her something to do besides go to
a silly party.

She was glad I called, but she didn’t seem to feel she was one of the
unfortunate. I had no luck convincing her to send me a free sample.

The woman who answered the Dannon yogurt product information line was
glad to be working, too. She was based in Sacramento, and when she
found out I was in Minnesota, she asked what it was like to have a
white Christmas. I told her it was overrated.

This year features Christmas and New Year’s Day on consecutive
Wednesdays. Since holidays end up feeling like Sundays, you end up with
a month of Sundays in the space of ten days, bad news for people who
thrive on routine.

Yes, it is good to get back to a normal schedule, to start a new
semester, to begin a new fiscal year, to stay home instead of going
shopping, out for supper, or to another holiday program.

The days are getting longer. The ballplayers head down to Florida next
month. More seed catalogs arrive each week. Things are looking up.

December 23, 2002
During the holidays, it is traditional to get in touch with old friends
and otherwise lost relatives. But writing Christmas cards and letters
usually means giving an report on one’s life, a disconcerting prospect
for those of us who have fallen a mile or so short of perfection.

Some leap to the task with glee, penning Christmas letters filled with
dream vacations, high-achieving children, unbearably cute
grandchildren, new additions, new cars, topped off by the inevitable
little lecture on the True Meaning of Christmas.

The screed is photocopied, stuck with computer-generated labels, and
mailed out like campaign literature, as if there is an upcoming
referendum to determine Happy Family of the Year.

Such propaganda is understandable, I suppose. Nobody wants to hear the
bad news, and wrapping one’s life up into ten paragraphs of bliss with
a big bow on top must be enormously satisfying to those who can pull it
off.

But for most of us, the dishonesty required to pen such a letter, or
the alternative unpleasantness of spilling the messy truth, makes
writing a detailed Christmas report about as much fun as a colonoscopy
on tax day.

Christmas is a time when people feel more pressure than usual to make
their lives appear normal, sensible, happy, worthy of a Norman Rockwell
painting. Never mind that the truth is always more complex and that
such contrived happiness is usually skin deep.

Never mind, too, that the interesting people in the world are generally
those who couldn’t put their lives into a Christmas letter if they
tried, wouldn’t if they could, and who really have no need to broadcast
whatever happiness and normality they can muster.

Christmas can be an uneasy time for those who don’t lead
Christmas-letter perfect lives. It is a time when one is bombarded with
expectations. Those who fail to fulfill those expectations are expected
to explain.

You all getting together for the holidays? Maybe, if we feel like it.
But not necessarily. We have no plans. Have you done your shopping yet?
No, I don’t Christmas shop until I feel like it and if I feel like it.
You sent your cards yet? No, I think I’ll send St. Patrick’s Day cards
instead.

Others once led letter-perfect lives, only to have reality get in the
way. They could have written a shiny, happy Christmas letter, but
instead they got divorced to save their sanity. They might have all
gotten together, but Wilfred’s drinking is out of hand again and it
would just be a mess.

The perfect, happy Christmas gatherings often aren’t all they are
cracked up to be, either. Behind the pretty pictures lurk old
resentments and rivalries, cutthroat competition between siblings,
comparison of salaries.

The drive back to the suburbs is often a time to decompress, to say
“Can you believe she said that?” or “Why does he have to control
everything?” or “Aren’t their kids obnoxious?” or “Could he be any more
boring?”

Which is just to say that there are about a million ways to deal with
the pressures of Christmas, ranging from trying to make everything look
picture perfect to avoiding it all together.

So, here’s to a happy holiday to everyone, whether or not your life
fits well into a Christmas letter. If it isn’t always an easy time for
you, you aren’t alone. It can be a tough time for everybody, even those
who take pains to make their lives look perfect.

Merry Christmas, and keep the faith.

December 16, 2002
En route to Tucson, AZ from Minnesota, one travels hundreds of miles of lonely nothingness across South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and the
panhandles of Oklahoma and Texas. The scenery finally gets interesting midway through New Mexico.

The hazards of long, lonely highways go beyond the danger of falling asleep at the wheel. The worst thing about such long trips is that
there is nothing to do while driving but think.

I am okay on the road as long as I daydream of being President and solving the Mideast crisis, or of pitching shutouts for the Twins, or
of finding oil reserves on my land in Minnesota--all equally improbable scenarios.

But take a wrong turn down memory lane and pretty soon you can be reliving that time you got beat up in eighth grade and oh how you wish
you could have a crack at that guy now. Or the time your athletic ability was insulted by the gym teacher. Boy, will I give him an earful
if I ever see him at the mall.

Old embarrassments return to life. The time I forgot my lines for the play. The time I went to school with a rip in my pants. The time I
forgot to show up for a final exam in college. The time I accidentally rushed into the women’s bathroom at the Country Kitchen.

Even if you manage to purge your sordid past from your head, something else will likely creep in.

Isn’t that little lump behind my ear getting bigger? I should have it checked. Or maybe I shouldn’t. I can just imagine what they’ll find.
Probably a brain tumor.

Twenty miles down that hypochondriac road and you’re picking out hymns for your funeral, to which nobody will come because you’ve wasted your
life doing things like driving to Tucson.

Just then some jerk cuts in front of you and forces you to slam on your brakes. That jolts you back to reality, but then you spend the next
fifty miles plotting revenge on him. Man, if I was only driving a dented old wreck, I’d ram he and his fat Cadillac into the next ravine.

Time to try the radio, but that does no good. The preachers on rural Texas radio stations rant and rave up and down the dial. The signal for
All Things Considered fades in and out from the nearest college town.

So, I am learning a new technique to keep my mind calm on long trips. It is called: Look at the scenery. I try to find something interesting
in all scenery, even in the dull states. For example, a while back I noticed that none of the ponds in Indiana have cattails.

Now, why do Indiana ponds have sleek, weed-free shores instead of the masses of impenetrable reeds which border our swamps in Minnesota? I
spent about sixty miles pondering that one. If anybody has an idea, let me know.

Today, I discovered that there are oil wells in southwest Kansas. In fact, oil wells are about the only interesting feature of southwest
Kansas. Some pump so slowly you have to watch them for a minute to detect movement.

But at least watching them pump gives one something to do on the road besides think.

December 9, 2002
People who think Christmas is a time of goodwill towards men haven’t driven through a Wal-Mart parking lot lately. It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there in shopping land. Fight for the parking space, fight your way down the aisles, fight to get to the shortest checkout line.

I passed through Omaha, NE, the day after Thanksgiving, and the radio stations there reported several shopping related injuries, most of which happened at five in the morning when the doors opened to a few stores and people stampeded.

Advertisers must have the masses hypnotized. Why else would people do something so stupid and self-destructive as get up at five in the morning to shop for stuff they don’t need?

One recent afternoon venture into the shopping district of southwest Fargo was enough for me. I was thankful to get out without a fresh dent in my pickup. But I was amazed at the carts of junk in the checkout line. Pure junk.

An electric foot massager, for example. What do you suppose the chances are that one of those will get used more than three times before it gets stashed under the basement stairs? Not good.

I thought the economy was supposed to be in the doldrums. Heads are rolling in Washington. Politicians are panicking in St. Paul. United Airlines is going broke. Layoffs everywhere.

Yet, the buying binge goes on. New stores go up each day. New restaurants. New strip malls. All of them filled with crazed consumers.

This talk of hard times must make the old-timers snicker. What would happen if this country ever saw real hard times? Soup lines? Thirty-percent unemployment? A war with daily casualties?

About a year ago, I paid a visit to the suburbs and ended up in the living room of some people I barely knew. They were picking out paint for their kitchen. They had called over friends and neighbors to help with this major decision.

The kitchen paint problem was causing a rift in their marriage, it was clear. She favored a color called Puffin Beak Delight, and he preferred Tahitian Sunrise. The two colors looked identical to me. Each of the neighbors weighed in with their carefully considered opinions.

The debate was loud, endless and dead serious. The first color would tie in with the clock, it is true, but it wouldn’t bring out the colors of the china. The second, meanwhile, really does tone down the appliances, although it might overwhelm the curtains.

This went on for an hour. Trapped by circumstances beyond my control, I snuck into the living room and read a magazine on the $7,000 leather couch.

The debate in the kitchen reached an impasse, and I was called in to settle the matter. “What do you think?” they asked.

I puffed up my self-righteousness and said “I think I am glad we live in times when we can spend hours debating paint color instead of worrying about where we’re going to get our next meal.”

My attempt to introduce some historical perspective into an affluent American suburban kitchen failed miserably. The suburbanites just stared at me like I was an alien. I went back to my magazine, and they resumed the great paint debate.

I don’t wish hard times on anybody, but part of me would like to be around to watch those people try to feed themselves if things ever do go completely to pot.

December 2, 2002
When you visit relatives for the holidays, its a good idea to just go with the flow. The problem is, you never know where the flow is going to take you. On this Thanksgiving eve, I found myself at a baby shower in the basement of an old Methodist church in the wooded hills of southern Indiana.  The men of the clan were lured to the baby shower by the promise of food, combined with the threat of cruel and unusual punishment if they touched the food earmarked for Thanksgiving in the fridge back at the farm.  I’ve never been to a baby shower before. I always wondered what went on at those things. I half expected bizarre rituals of the sort that might go on at a Masonic Temple, or at the Sons of Norway.

The presence of a bunch of hungry males clearly goofed up the usual program. For one thing, I think the food is supposed to be served at the end. But as soon as the men got inside the door, they descended upon the fancy platters of crackers and cheese with a vengeance.  Each male had his own way of preserving his dignity in the female-dominated baby shower environment. One arrived in work boots and a baseball hat. Others ambled around and refused to sit down. For my part, I decided to conduct a sociological experiment.  In the interests of research, I kept track of how many times the word “cute” was used as the gifts were opened. I counted 33 usages of “cute,” fifteen instances of “look at that!” and 23 occurances of a long drawn out “awwww,” as in “awwww, isn’t that cute.”  I counted seven uses of the word “cool” to describe a gift. All of the cools came from males. The cool gift was not a little pink outfit or miniature blue jeans, but a sling-like gadget that you put around your neck which allows the infant to rest on your chest.

The future dad, a hulking former college fullback, first declared the baby sling cool. Others agreed, and gathered around to see how it worked. Future Grandpa, referring to Future Dad’s considerable bulk, chimed in, “Man, you’d better not trip and fall when you’ve got that thing on or you’ll have a pancake!”  Cake was served, after which a couple of the men started cleaning up, a signal that this had gone on long enough. Of course the women took over the clean up activities right away so things got done right, but it was the men who got the ball rolling. No need to sit around gabbing.  Instead, the caravan headed back to the farm for a bonfire. The excuse? A big brush pile and a stack of old lumber had built up to the point where it was an eyesore. It needed to go.

The pile was anointed with fuel oil and set ablaze. Flames roared towards the crisp Indiana sky. A rotten tree nearby caught fire. Live embers floated dangerously close to the house. One ember got in the woodpile and had to be doused. An old tractor tire caught fire and belched black smoke.  Nobody seemed too worried. One of the men pulled out a cigar. Another passed around a bottle of face-warming homemade wine. A neighbor came over to see if things were okay, and stayed on to swap stories in a soft Indiana drawl.  In the end, everyone survived both the bonfire and the baby shower. In fact, a grand time was had by all.

November 25, 2002
New York City is a great place to visit, but I am thankful to have been spared the trauma of growing up in its culture of scratch and claw competition. No wonder the city features a psychiatrist’s office every few yards! Brutal competition in all things, from the cradle to the grave. In Manhattan, parents hire coaches to prepare their children for kindergarten admissions tests. Is my child getting C’s? That can’t happen! Call in the psychiatrists!

Because competition is so intense, people limit themselves to a small specialty. If you decide you want to be a pastry chef, you scratch and claw your way up the pastry chef career ladder--and there is one. If you study 8th century Persian artifacts, you duke it out with other students of 8th century Persian artifacts.  Perhaps it is the dense population which makes people out here seem especially desperate to distinguish themselves. To do so, they either choose one vocation and do it very well, or they flaunt their inherited wealth, or they brag about their connections, or they inflate their resume until it nearly pops. When all else fails, they simply stand on the street and scream at passersby. That’s called going insane, and it is common.

Those lucky enough to obtain wealth end up just as miserable, for with wealth comes the obligation to be fashionable, eat at trendy restaurants, make a credible attempt to patronize the arts, and maintain a summer home in the Hamptons, wherever that is.  It is work being filthy rich. Magazines publish articles on how to dress for success, which cigars to smoke, whether cotton is in or linen is out, what is the right musical to like, who is the cool author to be seen reading, and which dog breeds are hip--as if you would adjust your tastes just to get ahead in the world!  Midwesterners who stumble into this dog-eat-dog culture are in for a shock. Most midwesterners work hard at the job in front of them, keep quiet, go home, watch TV, and expect good things to come their way. What they slowly realize out here is that working hard isn’t enough.

No, apparently you must also hang out with the right people, join the right clubs, own the right car, and wear the right clothes. I’ve met some Midwestern expatriates who have refused to play the status game out here, and they claim their career suffered.  The visitor to New York can take advantage of the competition without the need to suffer from it. Prices in New York City can be reasonable. Service is almost always superb. The arts are unbeatable. The music is out of this world.  But the visitor doesn’t see the drug-addled corpses of those the city chewed up and spat out. For every great performer or successful businessman, there are many more who were crushed by the competition, the pace, and the brutality of the pressure cooker that is New York City.

So I am happy to visit New York, take in some concerts and shuffle around the museums--and just as happy to head back home where the pace is slow, the people comparatively gentle, and where if anybody is so obnoxious as to judge you by your clothing or who your friends are, they can just go jump. 

November 18, 2002
They conduct Sunday evening services at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church just off Central Park on the Upper West Side of New York City--but Luther League they’re not.  Instead, they hold what is called “vespers.” Vespers is a term for an early evening service consisting of mostly music. At Holy Trinity last week, a well-rehearsed professional choir and chamber orchestra performed a cantata by Bach, and a talented organist led the congregation in several of the great old Lutheran hymns.  The congregation descended to the basement after the service, but there was no sign of the biblically-ordained Minnesota Lutheran lunch of open-faced Cheese Whiz sandwiches, cake and coffee. Instead, the sophisticated New York Lutherans sipped wine and nibbled aged cheeses.

New York City is a feast of the very best of art, music and food. It is true that if you can make it in New York City, you can make it anywhere, so the city teems with aspiring artists, performers and restauranteurs. Competition is so intense that only the very best survive. Bad restaurants go under in a hurry. Mediocre art is mocked and thrown out. Average musicians are not tolerated.  Hungry actors and artists seem to make good waiters and waitresses. Service in New York City is the best I have seen anywhere. No ditzy “my name is Mitzy, I’ll be your server” gushiness--just efficient, quiet and quick attention to what you need.  The city is unfathomably large but easily accessible, and full of serendipitous surprises. You may travel into Manhattan for a concert of Bach, but on the trip to and fro you will see and hear enough to keep your mind busy for days.

In the subway station deep underground near Holy Trinity Lutheran, friends and I struggled to reach the right train. However, a small crowd had gathered between two pillars around a group of baggy-clothed young men. We waited to see what was up.  And waited. The crowd grew, so we figured something good was in store. Our train came. We let it go. Some of the young men stretched out, others danced around a little, but nothing organized happened for a long time.  Suddenly, a boom box started pounding. One of the young men took a run at a brick wall, climbed it, did a back flip, and the impromptu subway show was off with a bang.

The performers took turns breakdancing on the cement. Each had a unique style. One was clearly a gymnast and punctuated his dance routine with dazzling flips. Others flew through the air and landed softly on the cement. The crowd cheered. Another train came and went. Finally, a formidable 300 lb. black man stepped forward to center stage. We wondered what he might do. Back flips seemed unlikely. We hoped he wouldn’t imitate the others and spin on his head or land on his neck.  Instead, the big guy stood perfectly still and merely twitched to the beat. He twitched his neck and bobbed his head. He jiggled his chest. He slapped his belly and sent waves of jiggles down his leg. Without so much as moving his feet, he performed a symphony of coordinated jiggles and twitches which, when finished, brought a joyous roar from the assembled crowd.

That is New York City. From Bach to break dancers within a few hundred yards, with a talented jiggler thrown in to boot. It is a big-hearted, crazy city that never fails to make this midwesterner smile like a kid at the circus. 

November 11, 2002
The main problem driving to the East Coast from the Upper Midwest is getting around the Great Lakes. The most direct route is to drive south of them all, but that means fighting through the drag-race traffic and frequent toll booths of Chicago. This trip, I decided to weave between the big lakes instead.

The longer, more remote northern route features endless woods, frequent swamps and long stretches of lonely two-lane highway. All the way from Bagley, MN to Buffalo, NY, the golden tamarack trees glowed, their falling needles dusting the road with bright yellow.

The wilderness, the empty highways, the small towns and the forests are a wonderful alternative to the freeways and big cities on the southern route. But it was close brushes with the lakes themselves that made the trip most memorable.

My motel room in Ashland, WI was fifty feet from the shore of Lake Superior. The sullen gray waters beneath the bruised clouds reminded me of a phrase sung by Gordon Lightfoot: “Superior, they said, never gives up her dead, when the skies of November turn gloomy.”  I was glad not to be out there on an ore boat.

US Highway 2 hugs the northern shore of Lake Michigan for over one hundred miles. Huge waves broke against the shore. When the road dipped down near the beach, gusts of wind pelted my pickup with a mixture of sand and spray.

Highway 2 is mostly two lane, but almost every mile of it from Duluth to Mackinac is newly paved. I got so carried away driving like a Gran Prix driver on the smooth curves that when “low fuel” light came on, and I discovered I was 39 miles from the next town. I made it, but the stress of driving on empty in the middle of nowhere took several months off of my life expectancy.

Big bodies of water mean big bridges. All told, I crossed five enormous high bridges between Duluth and Buffalo. The most impressive was the Mackinac suspension bridge connecting Upper and Lower Michigan. Far below churned the strait connecting Lake Michigan with Lake Huron.

For one hour I was stuck on the high bridge from Port Huron, MI into Canada, waiting to go through customs. In the channel way below, the cold waters swirled from Lake Erie to the right into Lake Huron on the left.

The bridge which crossed high above the harbor in Hamilton, Ontario was the most frightening. It seemed old and unsafe. A forty mile-per-hour wind pushed my pickup from side to side. Three feet from my left tires, the pavement abruptly ended. No curb, no barrier--just the abyss.

The final crossing of my trip was over the bridge at Niagara Falls, where the waters from Lake Erie tumble down into Lake Ontario. If you can block out from your mind all the various viewing platforms and towers, as well as the cluster of hotels on both the Canadian and American side of the falls, Niagara is everything you could imagine.

Niagara Falls was the crowning jewel of a three-day journey between the five biggest lakes in the world. I’ve seen the Great Lakes on the map since I was in elementary school, but until I saw them up close, their utter immensity didn’t hit home.

November 4, 2002
(webmasters comment:  I think Eric has Outdone himself on this one!!!)
I would just like to thank you all for your support last Tuesday. I couldn’t have done it without you. Your many kindnesses throughout the campaign have touched both myself and I very deeply.

Thank you for tolerating my campaign’s advertisements. I know they were an insult to the intelligence of anybody with a brain larger than a frog’s. But most elections are decided by the frog-brain swing vote, so what can you do? Get down there in the mud, I say.

Thank you for believing that my opponent is the devil incarnate. He’s actually a nice guy, now that he’s defeated, but we felt we needed to bring up the womanizing thing, even though we have no evidence. Did you see him squirm? Could have been something to the charges after all, in which case my campaign provided a valuable public service to his wife.

Thank you for believing that if elected I will provide free prescription drugs to all seniors, as well as juniors and sophomores. I have got a few boxes of free samples in my office. Stop by and we’ll fix you up.

As for my promise to save the family farm, I’ll get right on it. According to my staff, the lone remaining family farm is somewhere southeast of Grand Forks, and we are determined to save it if it takes a million sandbags.

I will also be revitalizing rural communities. We’ll be going from town to town with a John Deere Revitalizer 4650, which looks a lot like one of those big fertilizer spreaders. The revitalization should allow us to squeeze about five or ten more bushel per acre out of the grain planted in our small-town industrial parks.

I must take a brief moment to acknowledge my opponent’s efforts to convince small towns to plant crops in their industrial parks rather than letting them grow up in weeds. This brilliant revenue-generating scheme represents a major paradigm shift and has been replicated with success in small town industrial parks throughout the Upper Midwest.

Rest assured, I will never waver in my commitment to traditional values. Nothing beats traditional values-- like two for the price of one, double coupons, senior discounts, or buy one get one free. These time-honored values must be upheld and passed on!

I continue to believe that our children are our future. Scary thought, but its true. We need to invest in our future! Schools must be adequately funded. That means heat and lights, and enough computers to keep the brats so busy playing games that they don’t riot.

In fact, it is critically important that our children remain completely mesmerized by electronic devices in those crucial years before they join the workforce and finally make themselves useful. Just remember, a child clutching a bag of Doritoes in front of a television set is not joining a gang or doing drugs!

As for teachers, I firmly believe that all three of them should be well-paid. And they must be given the tools they need to do their jobs, be it handcuffs, chains, stun-guns, tear gas, whatever. We must not shortchange the future.

I will continue to be unabashedly in favor of choice. Nobody should tell others what to do! And I am in favor of life, too. Where would we be without it?

Yes, I look forward to serving you, my constituents, these next years. Wherever you may go, you can count on me taking the credit for leading you there.

October 28, 2002
In July of 1990, soon after Paul Wellstone was nominated by the DFL to run
against Rudy Boschwitz for the U. S. Senate, he stopped by the Polk County
Fair in Fertile, MN.

It was too early in the day for a good crowd at the fairgrounds. I was
working selling plants. Business was slow for me, and Wellstone could find
almost nobody to talk to on the grounds but his own staffer and editor of
the local paper.

I knew nothing about Wellstone except for that his politics were way off in
left field, he didn¹t look at all like a senator, and he probably didn¹t
stand a chance against Rudy Boshwitz¹s millions. The consensus at the time
was that Wellstone got the nomination because nobody respectable wanted it.

I decided to go shake his hand. Wellstone was friendly, of course, but so
short and funny looking that I didn¹t feel uncomfortable asking him in a
somewhat disrespectful tone, "So, what makes you think you can pull this
off?"

Wellstone laughed. He seemed happy to have an audience. He launched into one
of his trademark sermons on the spot, brow furrowed, arms going up and down,
finger jabbing the air.

He knew he was the underdog, he said, but money wasn¹t everything and gosh,
Eric, do you know what¹s going on in this country? Corporations are taking
over the farms. People are going without health care. Small towns are dying.

I was a smart-aleck college student selling petunias for the summer, an
audience of one, but Wellstone kept going as if I was a jam-packed
convention hall. Eventually he paused and asked me what I thought. How would
you run against Boshwitz? Do you think I can win?

I am sure I said nothing coherent in response, but I was charmed. Wellstone
brimmed with enthusiasm for causes which can seem so hopeless, so tired.
Plus, he had asked my advice on how to run his campaign.

As a freshman Senator, Wellstone made some unfortunate errors. He used the
Vietnam Memorial as a backdrop to protest the Gulf War, infuriating veterans
groups. He used a White House reception to hand the first President Bush a
stack of videos of citizens opposed to his policies. He stated that he
"despised" right-wing Senator Jesse Helms.

But only two years later, he received a "legislator of the year" award from
several veteran¹s groups for his advocacy of veterans causes. And after
Wellstone¹s death in last week¹s tragic plane crash, Jesse Helms would say
tearfully of his colleague that "He was my friend, and I was his."

Wellstone grew on the job, and won the admiration of people who opposed his
every idea. His earnestness was inexhaustible. His enthusiasm was
infectious.

But Wellstone¹s most lasting legacy will be with the thousands of ordinary
people--college students, cleaning ladies, security guards, waitresses,
farmers--he made feel important by treating them with the same dignity and
importance as if they were the President of the United States.

Wellstone loved the regular people, and they loved him back. They hugged him
and even patted him on the head. They called him Paul.

Yes, so good was Wellstone at making the little people feel important that
when I woke up the day after Election Day 1990 to the news that Wellstone
had indeed pulled off a victory, part of me thought that our little talk
that summer might have been the turning point.

October 21, 2002
In France, they have a handful of trains between major cities which travel
as fast as 180 miles-per-hour.

High-speed trains sound like fun, but they're not. Things go by so fast at
that speed that it makes you sick. To avoid nausea, nobody looks out the
window. You either look straight ahead or read a book.

I tried to nap, but the on-off flashes of sunlight alternating with the
darkness of tunnels and ravines penetrated my eyelids and prevented rest. It
was torture.

The trip is done in a flash, and thank goodness. The high speed removes all
fun from the journey, so it is just as well that the trip ends quickly.

The day before I boarded the high-speed train, I took a long walk in a
forest on a plateau overlooking Lucerne, Switzerland. The trails were wide
and well-traveled. There were signs giving directions to local villages. It
was plain that these walking trails were used for more than recreational
hikes.

Walking was the main mode of transport in Europe years ago. Martin Luther
once walked from Germany to Rome. J. S. Bach toured Germany on foot, giving
organ concerts wherever he found a church.

On those trails above Lucerne, I thought about the excitement of taking a
long walking journey centuries ago. Can you imagine the people you'd meet in
just one day with nobody cooped up in their fast-moving cars?

A business trip from Switzerland to Paris would take weeks on foot, but so
what. You would see every detail between here and there, talk to the locals
at every stop, hear the birds, the gurgling streams, watch the animals, see
the views.

You would learn as much on the journey as you would at the destination. You
would get exercise. With no electronic communication, problems at home
couldn't send their tentacles through the phone lines to entangle you from
afar.

And yet because you were on business, you could deduct the whole experience,
knowing that you had no choice but to travel as slow as molasses.

Winston Churchill lamented the speed of modern life. He observed that no
invention had done more to make the world ugly than the internal combustion
gas engine.

Churchill preferred horses. He wasn't big on trains, and, although he often
went up front to take the controls of the planes he rode, he would have been
just as happy if air travel had never been invented.

Churchill has a point. Gas engines make noise, cause smog, go too fast,
encourage the building of enormous roads, and, as it turns out, have an
unquenchable thirst for liquids found buried in regions of the world best
left alone.

All of that trouble for speed. But just where does all of this speed get us?
When ever I enter the suburbs of Minneapolis after months of driving in the
country, I am astounded by the breakneck pace of traffic, even on a Sunday
afternoon.

The suburbanites look grimly determined to get where they are going. So
determined, in fact, that if you get in their way and don't drive fast
enough, I've heard that they'll shoot you.

To avoid meeting that fate, I try to keep up. But what I really want to do
is ask them where they are going and why they have to get there so fast. If
we were on foot, I could do that. But in my pickup, I can only grip the
wheel, look straight ahead, and hope not to get shot.

There are advantages to high speed travel and communication. Poor Bach
returned from one of his long journeys to find that his young wife had taken
ill and died several weeks before. It took him years to recover from the
tragedy.

Speed might be helpful in such an emergency, but most of the speed at which
life moves today is unnecessary. Speedy transportation takes the joy out of
the journey, and speedy communication keeps us in constant touch with people
whose company we might enjoy more after an occasional long hiatus.

We can't go back, I suppose, but maybe we could learn to take 'er a little
slow every now and then. We might find that no hurry means less worry.
September 14, 2002
A modern proverb: No matter how low something is priced, if you buy more
than you need, you still get took.

However, the wisdom of not stocking up on sale items has not yet sunk in
with me. I can spend hours in a casino without spending a dime on anything
but food, but Wal-Mart is another matter.

I walked into Wal-Mart the other day with only one thing on my list: A
55-watt halogen bulb for my reading lamp.

I must have sensed a shopping binge coming. Without thinking, I grabbed a
huge cart. You don't need a cart to carry a lightbulb the size of a quarter.

I made it past the $37 microwaves without biting, but the men's clothing
department snagged me. First thing I saw was a rack of turtlenecks for
$7.93. Those are almost a rummage sale prices! I threw two in the cart.

Had I been thinking, I would have remembered that turtlenecks make me feel
like I am being choked. Last time I wore one, at least a decade ago,
somebody mistook me for a priest.

In fact, I have a garbage bag full of turtlenecks in the garage. I suspect
they'll sit there until the big auction after I go into the nursing home.
Do I hear two dollars for a big bag of never-worn turtlenecks?

I moved down the aisle. There were winter coats for cheap. I couldn't
remember if I had a winter coat with a working zipper at home or not--but
good grief, I might as well grab one for $45 while I am here just in case.

Twenty-five years ago when I first started buying my own clothes, shirts
cost at least $15, winter jackets of any quality went for $120, and jeans
were $25 if you didn't insist upon a cool brand.

Now, you can find clothes for less than half that price at the super duper
discount chains. But with such low prices, I buy three times as much, which
cancels my savings.

The binge continued. Can you believe--three household extension cords for
$4.98? Wow. I also picked up two of those big covered plastic bins to hold
junk for $3.99. I'll need them to store all the stuff I buy at Wal-Mart.

Now they've come out with wet towel dispensers to clean the inside of your
car. They are dampened with that polymer stuff that makes your dash look
shiny and wet, like it has been smudged with hamburger grease. The dispenser
fits under the front seat. Only $4.37. What a deal.

Vitamins were on sale. Never know when you'll run out of those. Mosquito
spray--which I know I will need next year--was on clearance. Probably a good
idea to stock up now and save.

Boxes of Lucky Charms, my favorite sinful cereal, were two for the price of
one. I grabbed a bale of white t-shirts for eight bucks. I didn't remember
until I got home that I bought a bale of white t-shirts last spring.

Did you find everything you were looking for? the lady asked at the till.
No, in fact, I had forgotten to find a halogen bulb. She waited while I ran
back and picked one out.

My total for the bulb and a few extra impulse items came to $180. Clearly,
Wal-Mart had won again.

Once at home, I nearly threw out the halogen bulb with all the bags. But I
found it, took apart the little lamp, pulled out the burned out bulb, and
tried to put in the new one.

No luck. I had the wrong bulb. What's worse, even if I brought it back, I
would still be out nearly $180.

September 7, 2002
The blissful torment of a Twins playoff run is upon us. For a
longtime Twins fan, could there be anything better? Or, when the
Twins are grasping for that last out, could there be anything worse?

I suppose it is silly to jump up and down in the living room because
some spoiled ballplayer caught a ball before it hit the ground, but
who cares if it makes sense. The masses demand opiates, and baseball
is a more harmless diversion than most.

When the Twins win, baseball provides Minnesotans with a shared
drama. Ancient societies nurtured their culture by passing down epic
poems about great hunters wrapped in loincloths.  Minnesotans chew
over ancient tales of Hrbek, Gladden, Morris and Puckett, and present
tales of Hunter, Radke and Milton.

Everybody in Minnesota talks baseball when the Twins win. Classical
radio hosts. Ministers. English teachers. I realize that the Twins
are really going places when I find myself explaining the game to
aunts.

Aunts are traditionally the last to jump on the bandwagon. When they
finally do, they want to know why. Why didn't they take that pitcher
out of there? Why did that guy swing at that ball that he couldn't
reach? Why don't they hit the ball where they won't catch it?

October baseball brings people together. During last week's games, I
spent more time on the phone than I had in a month.

A friend called from his cell phone on his combine to ask why in the
world manager Ron Gardenhire started his greenest rookie, Micheal
Cuddyer, in right field. A little later came a call from a Minnesota
expatriate driving on the New Jersey turnpike. What's the score? How
do they look? Do they stand a chance?

Cuddyer got a big hit, and the friend on the combine called back to
eat crow.

As the series gets more tense, the question "Where are you watching
the game?" becomes as important as "Where are you spending
Christmas?"  One has to make sure nobody is left out. Can you imagine
anybody having to watch Game 7 alone? How sad.

While watching, there is the problem of not causing the Twins to lose
through one's behavior.

At a friend's house, we started watching the game on the big screen
downstairs. The Twins pulled ahead 2-0 and looked in command.

Without thinking, we moved upstairs to the television on the sun
porch so we could keep an eye on the kids out in the yard. Bad
mistake. The A's scored a run and their pitcher, Mark Mulder settled
down.

Worried that things would turn against Minnesota, we ran downstairs
to the big screen. Immediately, the Twins put up four runs and looked
in complete command. Whew!

But instead of sticking with the big screen, which had so ably kept
the Twins in the lead, we went back upstairs to the television on the
sun porch for the last of the ninth.

Boom, the A's teed off on a shaky Eddie Guardado, nearly tying the
game. And, although the sun porch television was where Guardado got
the last out, who knows how many strokes could have been prevented
throughout the Upper Midwest if we had just stayed on the basement
big screen.

That's October baseball in Minnesota. Magical? Maybe. Excruciating?
Always.

September 30, 2002
Midway through the flight from London to Minneapolis, the pilot announced
that we were going to be treated to a clear view of Greenland, the world¹s
largest island.

What a sight. I put down my book halfheartedly at the pilot¹s announcement,
but when I spotted the first icebergs off Greenland¹s east coast, I sat
forward in my seat and pressed my face against the airplane window like a
kindergartner on a school bus.

From 30,000 feet, the view of the earth¹s surface is usually obscured by
haze and clouds. But the air over Greenland this afternoon was crystal
clear. Icebergs by the hundred glowed white in the deep blue waters of the
north Atlantic.

The icebergs floated out from Greenland¹s fjords. On each side of the fjords
rose rust-brown snow-capped mountains. As we moved inland at 600-miles-per
hour, the fjords turned into broad rivers. Finally, each river abruptly
ended with the sheer face of a glacier.

The glaciers, massive rivers of ice striped with gravel and rock, widened as
our plane continued inland. They eventually disappeared, along with the
mountains, underneath an endless field of perfect white.

That field of white is Greenland¹s massive ice cap, a monolith which
contains enough water to raise the world¹s oceans 22 feet if it all were to
melt. The ice cap alone covers sixteen times the area of England, and is up
to two miles thick.

From our vantage point, the ice cap was as flat as the Red River
Valley--with one exception: A tip of a mountain poked through which created
a snowdrift downwind which I figure was about five miles long.

We crossed only the southern tip of Greenland, so it wasn¹t long before we
reached the opposite side of the ice cap. The gravel-striped glaciers
reappeared, this time running west. They ended with tourquoise-colored
rivers and iceberg-filled fjords. The rusty mountains came back into view.

At the base of the mountains on the coast was a faint fringe of green, the
only green in the otherwise white and brown Greenland. On that fringe was a
meager sign of human habitation, an air strip amidst a handful of farm
houses.

Greenland¹s coast quickly disappeared behind us. Cloud cover once again
obscured the Atlantic. Yet, it was a long time after our half hour trip
across the island before I could settle back into my book.

I was beat from spending the previous few days in Paris and London. Paris,
for all its charms, is dirty, smelly and crowded. And to describe the
demeanor of the French in printable terms would be dishonest.

London is not much better. A day walking the streets of London leaves your
throat raw from diese