Wandering Toward My Shifting Self

Static Change

June 3, 2008 promised to be historical. This Super, Super Tuesday would likely produce a presidential nominee that would be a first – either a woman or a black man.

After supper, long, long before any returns could be reported the talking heads and the spin masters were prognosticating and proclaiming. All this generated far more heat than light about: Who would it be?

 

Polls closed late in South Dakota and even later in Montana. The South Dakota Polls closed. The hard numbers began to be reported. It was too close to call. This was getting interesting. It was also getting late.

 

Senator McCain decided to give an election night speech. The channels shifted to him live. I fell asleep in my chair.

 

When I woke, dawn was leaking around the window blinds. It was all over. I punched a few buttons on the TV clicker and heard a complete rerun of Senator Obama’s speech.

 

I remembered a story my Grandfather told about another election speech.

 

In the summer of 1898, President McKinley came to the Dakota Prairie to give a speech.

Of course, this was a much different time and certainly a much different culture. But he was running on a platform of change. He wanted to restore working class prosperity after the economic ruin caused by Grover Cleveland’s 1893 Depression.

 

It was an event for my Great-Grandfather Axel and his neighbors. Historic enough to take a day to go hear him!

 

At the first crack of dawn on the horizon, Axel had the team of horses hitched to a wagon and his neighbors assembled. The ten miles to town represented a three hour trip and they didn’t want to miss anything.

 

Axel and friends had a few free whiskeys common to these occasions to clear the road dust from their throats. They drove the wagon to a spot near the speaker’s stand. And waited in the summer sun!

 

McKinley started to speak. The crowd was large. He was hard to hear. Heat and drink made Axel drowsy. He slept through the speech.

 

Disappointed, he and his friends ate supper and headed the team home trough the long summer dusk. Axel read McKinley’s speech in next week’s local paper.

 

I wonder at the improvement in communication technology! Political speeches – not so much!

Zeitgeist

Back when MomD was a Girl Scout, her troop had a major impact on our family life. Every Friday afternoon, she and Grandma would cruise the grocery stores after school. Their quarry was Bananas. Lots of Bananas – very ripe and very on-sale cheap!

 

After a quick supper, the oven was fired up to bake Banana Bread late into the night. Next morning, they would gather their loaves and head for a designated Supermarket. There at a table set up at the entrance - rain or shine, cold or hot - they turned the loaves into cold hard cash for the Girl Scout Camping Trip to Hawaii

 

After more than a year, it was time to meet the Banana Bread Airline jet from Hawaii. We watched as the Troop slouched down the rear ramp jet lagged from the long eastbound flight. We quickly spotted MomD. She was signaling to us with a mirror on the front of her duffle bag. As she slumped closer, the mirror turned out to be six inches of the camp butcher knife that had cut through her bag. The bare blade was sticking out the front and catching the sun as she walked.

 

Fast forward a couple of decades or so. The whole family was headed for a beach vacation. As I stepped up to the uniformed guard, took off my shoes, emptied my pockets, and handed over my sport coat, red lights and bells went off. Pulled out of line, wanded and patted down, my terrorist weapon was identified.

 

For five decades I had carried a small pen knife. Its two inch blade was handy for opening letters and such. Its tiny scissors came in handy for a number of uses. Its nail file not only cleaned my fingernails but smoothed ones chipped in the rigors of daily life.

Despite my pleading and protestations my deadly weapon was tossed into a trash barrel and I was allowed on the airplane.

 

The Zeitgeist sure had changed!

 

This German word meaning an attitude of a particular culture in a specific era – such as Minnesota Nice, a New York Minute, Southern Charm, California Drifting and Dreaming – wandered into our American vocabulary. The literal translation would be, “Times Ghost”!

 

I wonder! When did "Casper, the friendly ghost” leave us! What or who invited his nasty cousin “The Bogeyman” to lurk behind every pillar and post ready to attack us?

Rude Encounter

Light snow fell as Dreamer and Grampa headed for the motel. Of course snow! It was November and Dreamer’s birthday!

 

When we drove up to his house, as always Grandma remarked, “They live a hundred miles too far!

Dreamer ran out to help carry in our bags. Talking all the time, he impatiently waited for Mom to pour Grampa a glass of wine. That done. He pushed Grampa in a chair. Standing close, he loudly began a long recitation of the latest adventures of Ninja Turtles that constantly live in his mind.

 

Mom interrupted, “You’d better show Grampa where the motel is so they can get a bed for their visit!”

 

Dreamer ran to get Grampa’s cane. As we walked to the car, his conversation switched from fantasy to present reality. “Let me help you get your sore leg in the car”.

 

School, his fights with Diva, his sister, and other good and bad things in his life enlivened our drive. When we pulled up at the motel, he ran around to my door. “Lean on me, Grampa, so you don’t fall.”

 

As we entered the lobby, Dreamer surged ahead and confronted the woman behind the desk. “How old are you? I’m gonna be 10.”

 

“None of your business kid!”

 

Dreamer doesn’t discourage easily. “Don’t you like birthdays? They’re fun!”

 

“You’re a very rude little boy!”

 

We booked a room and left for a fun party at the house.

 

I wonder why personal questions have become so offensive in our social conversations. Are we afraid answers might burst the comfortable bubble of our prejudices? Do we want to avoid entanglement in more intimate relationships? Are we worried questions might reveal our less than perfect knowledge?

 

Is belligerence a core American Value?

 

Before the “Stars and Stripes” the flag of the War of Independence was a rattlesnake with the motto “Don’t Tread on Me”. It became a banner for “Give me Liberty or Give me Death”! Has “Freedom” been reduced to ‘I growl therefore I am’?

U-Turn

Morning light flooded the hospital room. Its clarity painted Grandma’s pallid skin and gaunt body as she sat up in bed chatting with us. Cancer was eating her up.

 

Her doctor with his entourage walked in and sat down at her bedside. He launched into a bifurcated conversation, half dispassionate medical jargon and half soft words of human compassion. All therapies were failing and it was time to go into hospice. He wouldn’t or couldn’t say this plain but his meaning was obvious.

 

Grandma looked at me with clear and steady eyes. As our gaze met a luminous light between us blocked out the room. I saw laughing eyes and glowing skin framed in hair ruffled by the soft breeze of dawn. In the endless moment of our locked eyes we revisited fifty-seven years of greeting the sunrise hand in hand. As we floated out of time measured by the ticks of a clock on the wall, we savored our time – our lifetime of laughter and adventure.

 

The doctor rustled his papers. Our eyes fixed on each other seeing our intimate luminous eternity, I heard her say steady and soft, “I can’t fight anymore!”

 

In this moment tomorrow ceased to exist. Our life took a U-turn. No more clear light of sunrise. Now we lived in the dusty light of sundown.

 

My eyes looked at the sudden bustle of doctor, nurses, social worker and others with clipboards and papers to sign and arrangements to call up for transporting Grandma to the hospice. I looked but didn’t see. I signed papers and wrote checks, but my hand remained firmly in hers.

 

We got her settled in her last room with every comfort we could provide. I drove home in a cloudy afternoon of fading light to make funeral and burial arrangements.

 

I went to bed wondering about the blessing of grief. It is a difficult joy. To mourn is to remember, I drifted off to sleep with a crowd of images from a long and happy love.

I awoke next morning to a life of next days lit by a dappled light of memories and changed practicalities.   

 

T.S, Eliot describes my transformed life where tomorrow no longer exists in words more luminous than any I can speak:

Old men ought to be explorers
Here or there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.

Brave Veteran

When I picked up Pixie for our play date, he came out of school brandishing his homework folder wildly above his head. He eagerly showed me his assignment. “Work on initial‘s’ sound!”

I have no idea why ‘s’ sounds turned him on, but we merrily shouted out ‘school bus‘, ‘stoplight‘, ‘shop‘, etc. until we pulled into a parking lot at the VA hospital. “Do you want to come with Grampa while he gets his flu shot?” At the sound of this‘s’ word, the smile on Pixie’s face vanished. The sparkle went out of his eyes. His complexion paled. He shrunk back into a corner of the car seat. “NO”.

 

Not loud, but firm. Pixie is terrified of shots. He is a veteran of a couple of 911 rides with sirens and flashing lights and ER treatment for seizures. It took repeated assurances, ‘this is Grampa’s shot’, to get a soft “OK”.

 

We had to walk through long corridors lined with veterans in wheelchairs and braces and crutches and with oxygen bottles and drip stands and all the other apparatus of Pixie’s traumatic memories. Pixie trudged silently by my side, eyes set straight ahead, his face a doomsday mask.

 

As I filled out paper work, Pixie asked if he could sit in a chair in the far corner of the clinic. When I was next in the ‘shot line’, I looked back. He was scrunched as far back into the chair as he could get with both hands over his eyes.

 

A word to the nurse and she gently coaxed Pixie over ‘to watch Grampa get a shot!’ He came obediently. He watched open-eyed and was rewarded with a double ration of candy.

 

But this was serious business for him. Solemnly, he put the candy back into the basket. Hand in hand, we walked stoically through veterans waiting for treatment back into the bright autumnal sunshine.

 

Once home, we opened his ‘burger and fries’ treat, turned on the ‘bad guy’ cartoon. A couple of half hearted bites and Pixie was asleep, exhausted by his hospital heroics.

 

The play date was over.

 

I wonder. Mourning is a process of walking through crippling memories. The touch of a loving hand or speaking a kind word doesn’t heal the numbing fear and trembling.

 

They can, however, encourage the lonely heroic walk back into sunshine.

Wedding Guests

Mom and Aunt Selena were getting ready to attend a wedding. Mom’s lifelong best friend Birdie’s daughter was getting married.

They climbed up to the third floor of Grandpa’s fourteen room house and opened all the windows. It is hot in August on the Dakota Prairie. Digging around in a storage closet they found and set up a telescope at the back window. The geography of the village allowed them to focus the telescope through the open doors of the Norwegian Church a couple of blocks away. They focused carefully on the altar. With a pitcher of cold lemonade they waited for the ceremony to begin!

Strange you say! No stranger than the lifelong bond between Mom and Birdie.

One summer before WW1, the Professor as Mom’s father was commonly addressed, bought the first car in the village. Being a poet and allergic to any device that had moving parts, he refused to learn to drive. Mom became the designated family driver.

Birdie’s father bought the second car in the village.

The two sixteen year old girls soon found a way to wake up the village during sleepy afternoons. They lined the two cars up on the hill in front of Thora Graf’s Victorian house. Gunning to an astonishing speed of more than ten miles an hour, they drag raced down Main Street spewing gravel, dust and motorized uproar. With a screech of brakes they stopped four blocks away at the Railroad Depot on the other end.

This of course set the good folk in the village to tsk, tsking. These wild girls would destroy the village. The constable ought to arrest them. Of course, there were no traffic laws to enforce. That Swede girl had enticed Norwegian Birdie into this immoral auto racing.

Two Swedish households standing on Main Street in a proud Norwegian immigrant village is another story.

They both married and left the village. Mom married an Army Officer and moved far away. Birdie married a farmer and moved a couple of miles away. Better roads and faster autos allowed them frequent visits and kept their close friendship alive and vital.

So why did Mom and Aunt Selena sit at a third floor window with a telescope to attend the wedding? The answer is both simple and sad.

Birdie wanted Mom to be an honored member of the wedding party. The Norwegian Pastor made it clear Church rules forbad a Swede any place in the wedding party and further more he would prefer such a person not even be invited to sit in a back pew.

Blessed are the ingenious, for they shall be seated!

I wonder. You expect the institutions of Society – Church, Schools, Government, Courts, etc. as transmitters of Community Values to be conservative. But what kind of conservatism best guards values when patterns of Society are transformed by ten mile an hour technology, then sixty mile an hour technology and now speed of light Digital technology?

Bait Girl

For a number of years, the family would meet for a week at a NorthWoods fishing camp. When Diva was five-years-old, she and Grandma were fishing buddies. They both loved to fish and they loved each other. But this year they moved into a functional fishing partnership.

The lake provided us with several species of fish and several methods of fishing. Prized most of all was trolling for Walleye. This was the gold standard because catching a limit provided a delicious fish fry supper. They were also the most difficult to catch.

What turned fishing buddies into a functioning partnership were leeches. Black, slimy, ugly, bloodsucking leeches! They happened to be the most effective Walleye bait on the lake. Grandma would if necessary bait her hook with them. Diva absolutely delighted in baiting hooks with the wiggly creatures.

Each day Grandma, with her hi-tech walleye rod and newest scientific line, and Diva, with her old fashioned kiddy fish pole, would get Grampa to drive the boat on their quest of supper Walleye.

On slow fishing days, a pattern developed. Diva would bait the hooks. Grandma would troll off the front seat. Diva off the middle seat on the other side of the boat. After many trolling passes with no bites. Grandma would increase the intensity of focus on her fishing gear. Diva would hand Grampa her rod and turn her focus to the bait bucket and the leeches.

Diva would get these ugly black creatures to attach to her finger tips and pretend they were claws. She’d turn to Grampa and pretend to be a dangerous monster. Then she would pull them off her fingers and let them suck on her earlobes. Now she was a pretty lady preening for Grampa in her jeweled ear rings.

The fishing partners with hi-tech fishing gear and carefree courage toward leeches produced a good time and most days a golden fish fry supper.

I wonder!

Empirical facts confirm that Hi-tech Capitalism can indeed improve material life for large numbers of the world’s people.

But don’t we need a functioning partnership with joyful audacity in addressing the darker facts of disease and deprivation before the human family can enjoy a golden supper!

Battlefield

My sister suffers from Dementia. On a recent phone visit, she talked about the summer we built a battlefield. Characteristic of the disease, she remembered details back when we were eight and eleven years old.

That spring we moved into a development outside Dad’s Army Base. An entrepreneur bulldozed a cornfield flat. He lay down a circle of crushed rock for a road and built several dozen four room houses. I’m sure his profits justified the fancy name he gave this, but “Dirt Acres” reflected the reality. The only landscaping were random corn stalks that appeared with the coming of spring. 

The radio reported fighting in Europe and the Pacific. As patriotic Americans we gave up our “Cowboy and Indian” games. We mothballed our six-shooters. We carved rifles out of scrap lumber lying around the new construction. We went to war!

At the far end of the crushed rock road, we found a pile of dirt left by the bulldozers. Bringing shovels we dug foxholes and built our very own Battlefield.

We had few disagreements when choosing who would be US Army and who would be The Enemy. We had loud, unsolvable shouting matches about killing each other.

Our modus operandi was simple. A soldier, rifle at the ready, would pop up from a foxhole and shout, “Bang, Bang, You’re dead!” Of course, the recipient of this verbal bullet would shout back, “You missed. Bang, you’re dead!”

And so it went. Lots of shouting fights! Very few gun battles!

We resolved our problem. We got BB Guns! Now the shooter popped up and shouted “Bang, Bang, You’re dead!” pulling a trigger. If you heard a yelp of pain, the enemy was killed. If you yelped in pain, you missed!

Our war roared happily on.

One day, we saw Dad’s car pull up and stop. He and his driver came over to inspect our battlefield. He commented on the BB guns. We knew somebody had ratted us out.

He and his driver then talked about using weapons to guard the peace not make peace – standard military doctrine in our constitutional democracy.

They left. We tracked the car out of sight. Posting lookouts to warn us of approaching grownups, we resumed our BB Gun war.

All that ‘peace is our mission’ stuff was OK for grown ups, but we had proved Al Capone’s method worked! “You can get ahead with words, but you can get there faster with a word and a gun.”

I wonder . . . !

If kids today built a battlefield would it look like a wifi café? A recent news story reported the TVA electrical grid vulnerable to computer invasion. A tech savvy individual anyplace in the world can go ‘Click, Click, You’re dead!’ The generators burn up and the eastern half of the USA blacks out

God's Side

The Pub is a great place for serious conversation. The food is simple but good. The wait staff is attentive but not intrusive. Best of all it is family friendly. The Pixie can wander. Graze food and drink at the table. Beg quarters from Grampa to play video games. No need to be anxious about his well being.

Mom and I were deep in conversation when a waiter interrupted and quietly said, “I think your son is in trouble in the Men’s Room.”

She and I exchanged glances and I went to see to the Pixie. He was calmly lying on the floor of a locked stall with his bare butt hanging out under the door. His shoes were thrown to the other side of the room. His denim pants were crumpled in a ball around his ankles and sticking out the side of the stall.

“Do you need help?”

His small voice answers, “Yes.”

“Turn the knob and unlock the door!”

“I can’t!”

Mommy! We have a problem!

Long pause. A custodial type came in. He looked. Quickly emptied the trash can and left without a word.

“Can you slide out under the door?”

No answer. After some wiggling around, his head appeared under the door followed by the rest of him. We got him on his feet.

After a bit of negotiation the situation came clear. Sitting on the stool, his pants fell off. He tried with his gimpy arm to get them back on. Hence the discarded shoes. He managed to get his feet into the leg holes of his pants and up over his leg brace, but discovered they were on backwards. This was not right. He couldn’t in the cramped space get them off and turned around. So he lay down to relax and wait for help.

We got the pants on right. Pulled them up. Picked up his shoes.

The locked stall? This would be a minor inconvenience to the custodian. It was a major puzzle to us. We walked jauntily out hand in hand back to food and games and Mom.

I wonder. Does the isolating loneliness of Pixie’s disability give him a sense ‘God is on his side’? When you’re Beloved, you know how to peacefully curl up next to a stool in a toilet stall!

Ghostly Weekend

Cousin Mary went into hospice. I drove north to the hometown of our extended family to say good bye.

One bleak winter morning, Cousin Jane said, “Let’s go check out the home place.”

Jane is a very petite woman who drives a very big car very fast. Time moves on and old landmarks disappear. We whizzed past the turnoff to the farm. We ended up at the ‘Clan Cathedral’!

Wading through snowdrifts in the churchyard, we sought out the family graves. A ghostly scent rose – an aroma of summer prairie – a fragrance of sun-baked gravestones, musty earth of corn fields, and acrid dust of gravel roads.

The first of the family came from Sweden shortly after the Civil War - others from the homeland followed. When I was in knee pants, I was convinced every citizen in the County was kin.

Every summer Sunday of my childhood, after Church Grandpa would lead us in a guided tour of family graves – which was most of them in the churchyard. This dreary morning we sought out the graves of my four great-grandparents, my grandparents, my parents, my uncle, great uncles and great aunts, and a multitude of cousins. At each plot we remembered their story.

Now oriented we drove up to the home place.

In the dank chill of a February day, ghosts of a long defunct lifestyle swirled around me. The homestead slowly sinks into decay. The ‘south forty’ grows rows of houses instead of row crops.

On the occasion of my father’s funeral in March 1946, we stayed at the farm. A corncob range cooked food and warmed the house. Barnyard animals and vegetable gardens provided food. Water came from a muscle powered pump. Of course, there was an outhouse. Light after sundown came from the stinky glow of kerosene lamps. It all seemed very primitive to a city kid.

But! What was not primitive was palpable human interdependence. My relatives had highly developed skills of consoling a twelve-year-old when his father died.

Memories celebrate loss, but give dimension to the present. Part of our history, memories are not history. The light and shadow of these clan memories still illuminate my identity.

The farm was self-contained, independent from the rest of the world. Technologies of comfort and convenience bring reliance on plumbers, mechanics, supermarket managers and bureaucratic services.

While all this dependence developed, ‘we the people’ adopted an attitude of autonomy. As we lost communal skills, we shaped our lives on a fantasy of individual freedom.

Now that’s spooky!

I wonder if it is any wonder that we despair under our own trials as we grow immune to others tribulations.

Bad Words

In the 1940’s my Boy Scout Patrol was the laughing stock of our Troop. We didn’t have a single ‘good cusser’. In the macho world of boyhood, this was a serious problem. How were we going to learn bad words?

We solved our deficiency with the help of a neighbor. A high school science teacher lived at the end of our block. His neighborhood reputation included two accepted facts: he was a meticulous and passionate gardener; he hated kids.

We neatly combined these two facts to teach ourselves cuss words. We simply drove our bikes across the corner of his lawn. He’d come storming out shaking his fist and teaching us wonderfully bad cuss words.

I moved on to join the Church Youth Group. Here I sat through truly bizarre discussions. Like why “Gee Whiz” was a serious sin. ‘Gee’ obviously referred to Jesus. ‘Whiz’ obviously called forth a satanic wizard. Taking the Lord’s name in vain like this would obviously land me in Hell. It didn’t seem at all obvious to me!

My first job was in a small family owned Tool and Die Shop. Tom and I, when not needed to maintain the fast production presses at the front of the shop, were expected to operate the very big, very old presses in the back corner. These several hundred ton machines were also very cranky. The clutches were worn and the tool head would come crashing down at erratic intervals without warning. Tom would with dispassionate calm cuss it from the time he flipped START to the time he hit STOP. He rarely repeated a curse. He was my mentor not only in my trade, but in the art of virtuoso cussing.

Time moves on!

My grandkids don’t have any problem learning to cuss. I have to say, however, the steady stream of cuss words in the dialog of the popular cable programs is really banal. It uses common scatological and sexual slang words. There is no artistry, no imaginative virtuosity. Cussing standards have declined since I was young!

Despite this bad words are alive and well in the New Millennium. It strikes me the political pundits and talk show interrogators have simply found a new form. Not Scatological! Not Sexual Slang! But ‘sound bites’ that attack character and enthusiastically destroy reputations and demonize good governance in our country!

I wonder where to find virtuoso swearing? Is there a clue in the similarity between the acronyms for Talking Points and Toilet Paper?

Wildness

Our canoe glided quietly in the lee of a rock outcrop. The sun shone. The air carried a pine scented perfume. We were in no hurry.

Our goal was ancient pictographs marked on our typographical map. On the way, we relished an occasional glimpse of wild life. We slowed to admire geological formations. Tranquility, a feeling of harmony with our environment and within us, epitomized our quest.

There they were!

Disappointing at first sight, they were small and faint. We stopped the canoe and edged it up to the rusty red paintings on the rock face. We reached out and traced the pictographs with our fingers. They must have been painted from a canoe thousands of years ago on just such a day as this.

As we floated next to this ancient evidence of human habitation in the distant past, our conversation drifted into a mystical fantasy of identification with the prehistoric people of the Canadian Shield.

And fantasy it was!

Quetico Provincial Park is the creation of the Canadian government. They set aside fourteen thousand square miles of second growth forest and lakes after it had been cut over by timber companies in the early years of the twentieth century. It is maintained by several branches of the government.

We had to go through customs of both nations going in and coming out. Our identification papers were scrutinized both ways. We had to purchase proper permits. Our gear was examined for contraband.

Our clothing and gear were marvels of modern technology. The canoe was designed and custom built of man made material by an expert. Our clothing and tents were synthetic fabrics designed to keep us warm and dry and comfortable. Our food was freeze dried in aluminum packets and needed only hot water to make it tasty. Our cooking gear, including a small gas stove, was compact and lightweight. Our maps accurately guided us to every portage and campsite.

No way could we honestly identify with the painters of the pictographs.

Maybe there could be some correlation in our primal emotions – of fear crossing storm tossed lakes in small canoes – of awe when sky and lake and trees glow fire red at sunset.

But they battled the wildness of an untamed creation; we vacationed in a humanly shaped wilderness. Two different worlds that imagination can’t realistically bridge!

Still, humanly shaped or not, wilderness provided our family serenity; our frequent vacations were a restorative to the time stress and bureaucratic hassle of daily life.

I wonder if modern untamed wildness isn’t a chaotic mix of primordial emotions, medieval institutions and modern technologies that allow us to create our own environment. How do we harmonize these forces into a sustainable human world?

.

Strangely Hostile

My Grandma was born in a sod house on the Dakota prairie. My Grampa loved to tell a story of when she was a ‘babe in arms’.

They ran out of flour near the end of a bitter winter. My Great Grandfather strapped on his snow shoes and headed for a market town seventy miles away.

A day or so after he left, a band of four to a dozen Sioux Indians burst into the ‘soddie’ and sat silently down along the walls. (Factoids were flexible from telling to telling.)

My Great Grandma was scared stiff and clutched her child to her bosom for three days never sleeping. The Indians stared stoically at her the whole time.

The hundred pound sack of flour and my Great Grampa returned. The Indians jumped up and wanted to trade turtles they had under their robes for a measure of flour to get them through the winter.

All was well and spring came with peace and happy bellies for all.

Fast forward a hundred years or so.

I came over the hill and looked down at our house. Good Grief! My blond and bubbly daughter was trapped against the front door by a gang of black kids!

I screeched into the driveway and burst out of the car. “What’s going on?”

Settle down Papa!

She and her classmates had started an animated discussion at school over the question, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”. They continued this philosophical exploration while walking my daughter home. The debate raged on with good will and youthful exuberance.

I shut my mouth. Fast!

The only difference between her friends and my friends forty years earlier was the question. Ours was: “Does a tree falling in the forest make a sound?”

I’ll grant that “fear of strangers” may be part of the human genome.

I wonder though at those who enjoy stirring up hostility over class, color and culture differences that define each of us as unique individuals.

Would the rabble rousers shriveled hearts plump up if they could give up looking out for someone to look down on?

Fall Down! Go Boom!

Fifth grade boys are mischievous. My buddies and I decided teeter totters were boring. Up and down! Up down! Up down! Going nowhere.

We had a plan. When our partner was up and we were down on the ground, we would sneakily slide off the seat. Our partner without our counterweight would come crashing down on the gravel covered ground with a brain jarring thump.

Whoopee! We laughed with glee!

Life gave Diva three brain jarring thumps. In July, she stood death watch as her Grandma died in hospice. August, September, October she nursed her Dad until his death of brain cancer in November. When she returned to college, she was Date Raped.

She sits stunned on the emotional ground of her life. Tears of outrage blind her. Shadows of death, a fog of disease, a darkness of disaster, isolate her in a lonely angst.

Recent medical research on monks who are masters of meditation show a measurable increase of that natural body chemical that produces serenity. The research details are a complex examination of right brain/left brain function. But the conclusion of the brain doctors is that meditation is not a retreat into some other worldly mist. Rather as practiced by the monks it is an exercise in stretching their awareness toward life around them. A form of active mind training!

Sort of like fifth grade boys learning to focus alertly on our teeter totter partners.

Or like a toddler learning to walk. The child falls down and goes boom. We chuckle at their tears of outrage. We hold out our arms urging them to try again to come into our embrace. They do! Their freedom to walk often leads them into new misadventures!

No question about it. We live in a wounding world.

I wonder! Do we measure our life by spoonfuls of tearful pain? Or do we celebrate our steps toward growth! As we wobble toward a healing hug! As we walk up and peek at mischief over the next hill!

Webleos Cap

The deck door opened, Pixie and MomP stumbled in. Actually Pixie did the stumbling as Mom kept him moving. Fresh from his bed, he wore PJ’s, robe and slippers.

As I got up to welcome him to our ‘playdate’, I noticed he wore a new cap. A Boy Scout cap. Standing tall in my own robe and slippers, “I greet you with a Boy Scout salute!”

“No, Boy Scout” Pixie’s response was serious and urgent, “Webelos!”

I looked closer. Sure enough it wasn’t a Boy Scout emblem. “Well, then I give you a Cub Scout salute.”

“No, Scout!” Pixie was adamant. “Webelos!”

Because of his disability, words come hard for Pixie. He can be stubbornly clear about right and wrong when he has learned a new word.

As soon as Mom left we retreated to a more comfortable world of post-factual Good Guys and Bad Guys – precisely a Scooby Doo movie. Sitting side by side, with our coffee cups in hand Pixie gave me a running commentary to make sure I could separate the “good guys” from the ‘bad guys”. We sipped our coffee and cheered the heroes, warned them of dangerous traps and agonized with Scraggy and Scooby when they shivered with fear.

A good time was had by all!

We fixed our lunch. Dad came to pick up Pixie. Our ‘playdate’ was over.

Sometime later, Pixie was coming from his video games on his way to bed. As he passed through the kitchen, he asked his sister “Why Joker a bad guy?”

He got confused with his new game based on Batman’s adventures. Usually, the games are between the red army and the blue army. You choose your side and then try to wipe out the other side.

Batman wore black like Dark Vader in Star Wars but was the Good Guy. Joker wore white and was a Bad Guy! Pixie’s world was spinning out of control.

In the fact world of his kitchen after supper, his question was serious. Princess answered, “Because Joker was mean to his sister when he was little.”

Whoa! Pixie stopped in his tracks. His sister baby-sits him after school and when his parents go out. They have been known to go at it with shouting and kicking and punching - typical sibling bonding behavior. He paused and looked at Dad and Sammy his dog. Pixie locked his gaze on Princess. Slowly he spoke, “I like Mommy. I like Daddy. I like Sammy.” Long pause. His pointed his finger with a defiant glare. “I like Princess!”

He was not going to be a Bad Guy like the Joker wearing white. Unlike the fantasy world of Red guys making peace by destroying the Blue guys or vice versa, this was kitchen reality. Better make a compromise peace with Princess by admitting the family together was red, white and blue.

I wonder . . .!

Native Immigrant

“%^*# machine! Where’d that page go?”

I spend hours with my computer. I talk to my computer in Basic English. It answers in a strange language “If you want to compose in WYSIWYG you must edit in HTML.”

Reminds me of talking to Uncle Charlie on summer visits to my Grampa. My sister and I would talk to him in English. He would answer in Swedish. Aunt Selena translated for us.

He emigrated from the old country forty years earlier. For whatever reason, maybe just Stubborn Swede, he refused to speak English just as he refused to use the indoor plumbing preferring an outhouse in the old carriage barn. He spent his days tending a large garden, listening to the sounds of silence in his tiny prairie village

My computer communicates with Princess text-messaging. I write in Basic English. The answer comes back in ‘IT speak’ full of contractions, acronyms, smiley-face icons and punctuation symbols.

My Grandkids spend their days listening to the clatter of clutter in their media global village.

For an old print learner like me, I begin to feel an Immigrant in my own Land. I fear the coming wonders of nano-technology will make me an Alien Immigrant!

I’m told over and over that 9/11 changed our nation forever. I don’t know! Guns and Bombs are an ancient and enduring language of War.

I wonder if the digital revolution of ‘Google and Yahoo’ isn’t the more profound and enduring change agent in our more mobile, more portable and more accessible World.

My grandkids, who were born into the Digital Nation, can deal with these big issues. Do I want to assimilate? You bet! But just enough to make my published blog look like my finished draft!

Survival March

The Beaver Patrol was ready! All winter, we studied woodcraft, edible forest plants, topographical maps and orienteering. Our rucksacks were stuffed with ropes and axes and other tools of survival in the wilderness. Our belt knives were freshly sharpened. We were Boy Scouts and we were Prepared!

Our destination was Jones Wood. Our scoutmaster got permission from the farmer for our survival campout. The Time had COME.

Patrol ready - March!

We hauled out our prize tool – an official US Army Engineer compass. We adjusted the sights to orient to the north of the map. The dial swung to magnetic North.

Our first bit of LUC hit us. Topographic maps don’t show roads, only the elevations and position of natural features. We knew we were at the intersection of the main highway and the feeder road into our neighborhood. We didn’t have the foggiest notion of what the map and compass coordinates of our HERE were.

Oh Well! We knew from driving with our folks that Jones Wood was on County Road YY left off the main highway to the next town.

Patrol ready - March on the shoulder of the highway!

We arrived and swung into action. The forager team scattered to find food. The fire team gathered fuel and started a fire. The camp team began to layout shelters.

The second bit of LUC hit. Jones Wood was not natural growth forest. It was a woodlot for harvesting logs to supplement farm income. Straight grain logs brought a higher market price. So he kept it trimmed of lower branches and underbrush.

There were no saplings to chop down, rope together and thatch with pine boughs for shelter. There were a few mushrooms but no berries or other sources of forest food. We huddled around a puny fire of twigs.

Patrol ready - Panic!

We were Boy Scouts. We dug into our rucksacks. We were LUCKY. No Law of Unintended Consequences, we found happy useful stuff.

We had a couple of the new fangled coated Army issue ponchos. As it started to rain, we jury-rigged these into a ‘sort of’ shelter with our ropes.

Digging deeper into the packs, we discovered prescient Moms had snuck in Canned Soup.

We spent a soggy night huddled under the leaky shelter, drinking just about warm soup made by stirring together all the soup cans with water from our canteens. Dawn light almost warmed us.

Patrol ready - March home!

As we backtracked we sang lustily. After all we were city kids not Wild West Mountain Men. We were a bit damp with bellyaches from the weird soup, but we survived!

With some Luck supplied by our parents!

In spite of what TV News would tell you, most Americans and certainly Boy Scouts try to lead a righteous life. Many see it as a pursuit of perfect Goodness while suffering Sin’s shame.

I wonder! Maybe the quest means being aware of the geography of our life journey! Setting our compass to North! Knowing the coordinates of where we are. Then we can move East toward the dawn of our dreams! We can face South to enjoy the hot afternoon sunshine! As we turn West, we can find our way through sunset shadows!

Answered Prayer

My neighbor Earl drove a city bus. He took pride in his accident free driving record.

Earl and his wife were religious people. They prayed about everything.

They prayed especially hard over buying a car. For them a car was a luxury. The wife and son walked a few short blocks to job and school. Earl walked half a block to a bus stop and rode free to work.

For Earl a car was Henry Ford’s dream that every working man’s family could motor into the green spaces of God’s creation. They loved summer picnics in the parks that surrounded the city.

Winter almost did their dream in!

One balmy spring evening Earl called over, “Come see what I just got!”

I walked to the curb. Parked there was an ordinary used car. But Earl’s eager description was worthy of a Rolls Royce. I was happy for him.

His family relished their summer of Sunday picnics in the park.

Come January we were shoveling snow off our stoops. Earl told me a sad story. He stopped at the corner drug store to pick up a prescription. A bitter cold night, he left the car running as he whipped in for the medicine.

Some opportunistic low life stole his car. It was never found.

The next spring joy in another used car. A summer of Sunday picnics in the park.

The following January another sad story. Seems Earl’s family was late for the New Year’s Eve Celebration at their church. The only close parking space was on an icy hill.

During the festivities the car started sliding. A city bus sped down a cross street. Wham! Bam! The two met in the intersection. The car was totaled.

Spring brings hope!  Another car. Another season of delightful picnics.

No sad January story this year! Earl rented a garage. Put the car up on blocks. Safe for another picnic season!

January dumped thirty-six inches of snow in twenty-four hours. The garage collapsed under the weight. His car was squashed.

Next spring Earl and I sat on our stoop in warm sunshine. He was troubled. He’d prayed and prayed hard about another car. He’d heard no answer.

I listened, but my theory about mechanical things – cars, anything with moving parts – is that if there is supernatural control, it is a stainless steel computer in the bowels of hell that randomly turns up my name and says, “Gotcha!”

We moved before Earl resolved his automobile Gethsemane

I wonder! When our hi-tech society chooses to pass on their wants to a heavenly concierge; do the words of Meister Eckhart @ 1308 have resonance? “If the only prayer you ever say in your whole life is "thank you," that would suffice.”

Favorite Uncle

The morning PA announcements for my second week of Boy Scout Camp ended with my name and an order to report to the main gate.

The Boy Scout Code demands obedience! I trotted to the gate and there Uncle A stood. Big and hearty! “Remember me? We’re going to have a family reunion. Hop in the car.” I did.

I knew who he was from family snapshots. During the drive to a rented lake cottage I fell under his spell. He could tell stories. Boy oh boy could he tell stories! A life time as a traveling salesman for several companies had taken him all over the USA

One hand on the steering wheel, his other casually propped in the open window we sped across Iowa as he regaled me with funny stories. I heard heroic tales of placing product in reluctant small town stores. Enthralling stories of odd small town customs intrigued me.

By the time we cooked a simple bacon and eggs supper at the cottage, I had fallen in love.

The next three days were a blur of hustle and stories. Waiting and stories. We drove a couple of hundred miles north to pick up and bring back Grampa. Next two days, I listened to Grampa’s stories as Uncle drove east to pick up Mom and my sister.

The fifth day in the rental cottage we spent the ‘family’ part of the family reunion playing cards on the screen porch. I learned cribbage. It has been ‘my game’ ever since.

Next morning we checked out. Mom, my sister and I climbed on an eastbound Greyhound for home. Grampa and Uncle headed north to drop Grampa off as Uncle returned to his West Coast business.

Several years later, he dropped by my college dorm. Within hours he had the guys hanging on his every word as he charmed them with his stories. Next morning as he said goodbye, “Could you spare ten bucks for gas?”

He was divorced, bankrupt and on his way to Grampa’s to find money for a new start.

The last time I saw Uncle, my Mom had suffered a stroke. She lived with us during her convalescence and wanted to see her brother. We packed up Mom and our toddler and headed west. Fifteen hundred or so miles later we pulled into Uncle’s driveway.

The second evening he and I sat on the patio watching the desert stars. I asked Uncle about that long ago ‘family reunion’. He explained that after my father’s death he felt that he should provide a male role model in my life, but this proved inconvienent. “Remember, a man ought to keep his car tuned up and never own more than he can throw in the trunk.”

The next morning he told me Mom’s slurred speech was uncomfortable for him and his new wife. They weren’t used to children. Besides ‘houseguests and fish began to stink after three days!’ So I better pack up and leave. We did.

Uncle was a moral man. He was an extraordinarily skilled honest salesman. I loved him. I did not want to be like him.

There are many different moral codes in our country. The founding fathers bequeathed three dominant ones. John Adams had a community based code with a core idea of God dictating an immutable law that should be enforced by ruling elite. Thomas Jefferson also had a community based code, but saw the goodness of land-owning yeoman as the governing force. Ben Franklin introduced a morality of the self-sufficiency of the individual.

I concluded Uncle’s moral code was a modern version of Franklin’s. I called it “Amnesia Morality”. He forgets all who propped up his chosen lifestyle.

I wonder if Uncle would have been a happier man if he had extended to others in his life the kindness he lavished on himself.