Well, this is a different spring. Field conditions were perfect last week, but farmers weren’t stampeding to plant like you’d expect. A cold forecast kept everyone not quite sure what to do with those $300-a-bag seeds.
“You gonna plant?” “I don’t know. What about you? You gonna plant?” It was like a game of chicken played with field cultivators.
Of course, every one of my forty-something springs has been different. That’s what keeps this work wildly entertaining. Farming is eternally interesting. That is why I have decided to not retire and to keep doing this forever. I’ll let you know how that works.
I spend a lot of winter wondering what kind of spring we’ll get. I know the conditions of the ground going into freeze-up. I know what work was done in fall and what needs to be done in spring. I know my equipment and I’ll spend days prepping it. All those won’t mean a thing if it rains five inches in mid-April.
In summer, I spend a lot of time wondering what kind of fall we will get. Springs and falls dictate how easy or difficult my life will be since I am in the field those seasons. With summers, I am more an observer. I don’t spend time wishing on them; summers will be what they will be.
I can wish all I want for a good spring. I can pray and set up votive candles in my pole barn. In the end, nature will hand me one to work with, whether I approve or not. Here in the northern reaches on the Corn Belt, with our heavy black prairie-slough soils, more often than not, we have struggled with wet conditions. I’ve spent a lot of time with mud.
Nature says each year, “Here you go. Here’s spring. Deal with it.” It’s a lesson in acceptance, especially of those things I don’t control. I’ve come to learn the things I don’t control is a very large category.
Fifty years ago, Stephen Stills sang, “If you can’t be with the one you love, honey, love the one you’re with.” Stills was singing about a girl, but I have found the general sentiment useful in a lot of life. “If you can’t be with the spring you love, honey, love the one you’re with.” “If you can’t be with the soil conditions you love honey, love the one you’re with…love the one you’re with.”
That song has spun around in my head lots of days. It even fits when I am with the one I love. There are days Pam drives me nuts. I’m sure the feeling is reciprocal. Even those days, especially those days, I am called to love her. Then the song goes something like, “If you can’t stand the one you love, honey, love the one you’re with.”
Speaking of people we love, I had a line I used with friends when we were raising our children. I remember conversations about how challenging children could be, especially in those teenage years. “You don’t get the kid you want; you get the kid you get,” I would say. That’s not a particularly helpful thought. But it gave us a moment in the conversation to nod our heads and sigh.
Now our children are adults, and I am grateful I got the kids I got. I’m not sure what I would have wanted, but the three of them are leading interesting lives, all doing good work. I’m glad God was in charge of that.
Acceptance of what you are given and what you have is a gift. We understand that even when we don’t feel it. Most things I have read about happiness have an element of assent to the things that come your way. A constant state of restlessness or agitation, always wanting something more or different, can be a formula for unhappiness.
We know the Serenity Prayer. “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.” I have seen those words on more walls than any others. Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr wrote that ninety years ago, though expressions like it go back to forever. Greek philosopher Epictetus wrote two thousand years ago, “Make the best use of what is in your power and take the rest as it happens.”
Serenity is the gift. But it is also a skill. We use it to accept the things that we cannot change, things that are immutable and unyielding. “The things I cannot change” range from global geo-political matters to someone cutting me off for the parking spot I was eyeballing at Schutz Foods. They range from the universal to tiny personal frustrations.
Of course, this is definitely not a call to passivity. The Serenity Prayer prominently includes the wish for courage to change the things we can.
Here on the farm, I accept the spring I am handed. But I constantly evaluate my tillage, machine settings, seed choices, etc. It’s not exactly courage, but I have to be open to changing things up. Plans get written on paper, not on stone.
Courage is the right word in other matters. On a personal level, it might take courage to admit I am wrong to my wife and change my thoughts and actions going forward.
Then, there is change we make as a community and as a nation. It might be that we are in one of those times right now, although it’s hard to tell in the moment. Can we change the ways minorities have been treated in our country? Can we call out and root out the moldy vestiges of racism that we keep in the corners of our collective conscience?
I pray that is among the things we can change, although status quo can be hard and unyielding as a brick wall. I heard a group of older folks being interviewed who had grown up in a segregated town in the South. Whites lived here with better schools, homes, jobs, parks, everything. Blacks lived there with worse and less. It was striking how many said of that world, “That’s just the way it was.”
God will give us the courage to change the things we can, but we have to seek the wisdom. We pray for that. The weather we can’t control; how we feel about and treat others we can.
I didn’t invite him. He just showed up and now he won’t leave. Don’t you hate when visitors do that?
I’m talking about the ten pounds I put on this winter. Old Mr. 180 Pounds. I hadn’t seen him on the scale since I happily tipped 170 a few years ago.
Like a lot of us, my weight has yo-yoed over the years. Well, more like trampolined or bungee-jumped. There’s been sixty pounds of me that have been more or less. That’s not unusual for Americans. There never has been a place as blessed with a reliable food supply. Alas, too much of a blessing becomes a curse. We have fruits, vegetables, and lean protein year-round in the grocery store. We also have cheddar-flavored kettle chips, jalapeno beef sticks, and honey roasted peanuts.
Good old 180 showed up when ankle surgery had me mostly inactive. Plus, it was Covid winter anyway, with less going on. Plus, Pam took some time off and decided to cook for four of us even though there’s only two of us. Plus, there are so many good beers nowadays. Those are my excuses. They aren’t great ones. But I’m sticking to them.
I hadn’t seen 180 for a while, but he moved in and acted like we’d never been apart. The thing about extra pounds is it’s not necessarily good that there is more of me. Pam loves nature, and the more of it she sees the better. She loves me, but her love for me does not increase as I increase.
I found myself digging through my pants for size 38s. I’d happily sent most of them to the thrift store when I fit into 36s. Now I only fit into 36s if I lie to myself and suck in my gut. Lying isn’t so bad; the waistline snugness hurts after a while.
180 likes to sit around and watch YouTube. Did you know you can find every song, TV show, movie, and game ever played online? You could literally watch things for the rest of your life. And maybe a few weeks beyond if no one noticed you had passed. YouTube keeps playing algorithmically driven content. If you die watching Dwight Yoakum videos, YouTube will eventually work its way through country music of the Nineties before moving on to Saturday Night Live episodes.
Last week, I had decided to go walking on a warm day, thinking a little exercise might help shrink the expanded me. When I told that to 180, he looked at me like I had grown a horn on my forehead. “Sure, whatever,” he said. As I started to put my shoes on, 180 announced with great excitement, “Hey look! It’s a rebroadcast of the 1965 All Star Game at Met Stadium. C’mon, let’s watch.”
I was nine years old when I watched that! I said, “Sure, but just a couple innings.” By the time Harmon Killebrew homered in the fifth, it was getting dark outside. 180 asked, “You got snacks?”
180 is a big fan of craft beers, the ones that are equivalent to three Keystone Lights in taste, calories, and cost. One night we were sitting around watching historic Twins playoff losses, when he said we should have a beer. I told him it wouldn’t kill me to go without one for a day.
180 pretended not to hear me. “You know that Schell’s sampler in the basement? There’s Schell’s Cream Ale in there. Isn’t that one of your Top Ten Beers?” He was right. Off I went to the basement. 180 didn’t exactly twist my arm. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. The flesh likes Schell’s Cream Ale.
One night 180 and I were enjoying a slice or three of summer sausage, when he mentioned that he had seen 190 and 200 around, and they wouldn’t mind coming back for a visit. I expelled them along with 180 and grimaced at the thought of lugging those pounds around. 180 ignored my frown. “190 and 200 said they really enjoyed their time with you. They were wondering if you still make those nachos with extra cheese?”
180 was getting on my nerves. Then he took things too far. “I saw 230 a while back.” I put my hands over my ears, yelling, “LALALALA!” I didn’t want to hear about 230. 230 brought back memories of Fat Albert, Fat-Fat-the-Water-Rat, and probably some other Fats I’ve suppressed.
My hope was once I got outside to work, 180 would go away. Have you noticed it’s a lot easier to put on ten pounds than it is to take off ten pounds? Why is that? Maybe it’s because it’s easier to convince yourself that a piece of braunschweiger would be good than the opposite. “I know, I won’t have a piece of wonderful braunschweiger. That’ll be fun!”
Besides eating a lot and taking up space in the house, 180 had other qualities which make him a bad guest. He takes things that aren’t his. Pam had a bag of Australian licorice. Pam is a disciplined snacker who can eat a single piece a day. One day, the bag was empty. 180 and I pointed at each other. Investigations are ongoing.
The other day 180 said to me, “We should get some donuts.” I reminded him that donuts are one of the things I swore off to get from 200 to 170. “There’s a peanut donut down in the freezer.”
I told him that’s a historic donut and to keep his hands off it. “That’s the Last Bakery-Made Donut in Sleepy Eye.” I loved the peanut donuts from Dan’s Bakery, and bought a bag when they closed. When I got to the last one, I realized I had a relic. I told Dan and Sue about it once and considered giving it to them in a frame. I never got around to that, and there it remains, in a baggie in the freezer.
“Let’s toss in the microwave and eat it,” persisted 180. “I bet it’s good.”
“It’s ten years old!” I yelled. “Besides, I’m thinking of donating it to the Historical Society.” 180 looked at me weird.
180 is annoying me, and I’d really like him to leave. Unfortunately, I just ate a large chocolate chip cookie while I finished this. 180 might be around a while.
Sometimes kids sure know how to ruin our fun.
Soon after hitting 65 on the age-ometer, I got my first dose of COVID vaccine. That prick in my left arm meant the beginning of the end of My Pandemic Year. I could anticipate a day when I have a beer uptown without any thought of regional transmission rates. Maybe I’ll hug the bartender.
Abby is working in Guatemala for an international organization in human rights. She has lately been travelling the towns and villages of rural Guatemala with a team. My news led to a discussion of the COVID vaccination on a wider scale than Brown County. That’s a benefit of a daughter working out of the country. She pushes my thinking beyond our line fence.
I was aware that no vaccines have been sent to third world countries. That’s an abstract concept. Then Abby pointed out that there was concern among Guatemala’s indigenous tribes that the virus could kill off an older generation. Those are the ones preserving their language and customs. If they died before transferring these to a younger generation, an entire culture would be at risk.
I imagined a peer in a mountain village in Central America, an old guy who farmed his whole life. It was a reach. He wouldn’t have a fleet of tractors to work his fields. More likely, some hand tools. He wouldn’t own a farm, since a small ultra-rich class owns all the productive land in Guatemala. But he probably loves his family and enjoys a hug from his grandchild same as me.
As I thought of him, and how vulnerable to this virus he would be for months, maybe years, my own celebration balloon deflated a bit. I said to Abby I would have given that man my shot if I could. Of course, I couldn’t. So it was easy to say.
Why do I have access to this possibly lifesaving shot and my fellow farmer in a village in Guatemala won’t for a long time? It’s complicated.
The older I get the more complicated things appear. I joke that I was smarter when I was young and thought I knew everything. Black and white is gray now. I like simple answers as much as the next person; they’re just not usually right answers.
When you start balancing the rights and needs of one group of people against another, it starts to look more like one of those 32-sided dice than a flat object with two sides. When you add in the generations that it took to get here and project ahead to generations to come, the dice has even more sides.
I wrote once about the disparity among people. I suggested that it was random luck that I was born a white male in a wealthy nation. Someone told me that was bad theology, that it was part of God’s plan. If so, I assume God means for me to darn well spend some of my time here trying to improve the life of the poor indigent dark-skinned person who was born into much less privilege.
My conversation with Abby led to another “It’s complicated.”
Abby described driving through a village. Like most in Central America, this was extremely impoverished. Most families live in shacks, tin nailed on spare wood, tarps covering openings. There is not a safe water supply, so infant diarrhea often leads to death. For those making it to adulthood, life expectancy is short. Cooking and heating are done by open wood fires. Poor ventilation means lung damage is common. Nutrition is poor. These are among the billion people we share this planet with who are chronically undernourished.
Abby noticed a small number of homes that are a step up, cement block homes that at least give decent shelter. They had windows and doors. They wouldn’t be anything to brag about in Sleepy Eye or New Ulm; they’d be in our worst parts of town. But they were above the shacks most families lived in.
Abby asked one of the locals as they were driving how these few better homes came to be. It turned out they were the homes of families where someone had been fortunate enough to make it to the United States.
That person, once in our country, found the lowliest job, the hardest work at the poorest pay. These are the jobs that most Americans don’t want. It’s important work, but work that is undervalued. Minimum wage (or less) earned while picking fruit or working in a nursing home, allows you to send a small amount of money back to your family in Guatemala.
That’s enough to move out of squalor. Enough to perhaps save the life of an infant, educate a child, or prolong the life of an elder. Should we care? I hope so. These, right there, are the least of our brothers.
It’s complicated. Immigration is complicated. We’re finding that out again. But please. Let’s agree on two things. First, no one is for open borders. We’ve been told repeatedly that one party is for open borders. Reasonable, sensible, and humane immigration policy is not open borders.
Can we also agree that we’re talking about human beings?
We spent the last four years hearing those seeking refuge spoken of in dehumanizing words: hordes, rapists, terrorists. At least those refer to types of people. “Catch and release” implies some animal. It was a strategy to make us fear and despise those people. The overwhelming majority of whom are desperate and vulnerable.
I don’t blame the former president. He is unintelligent and incurious about everything except himself. If he had found advocating for the expulsion of kittens led to cheering crowds stroking his ego, he would have. He is in an empty vessel. Unfortunately, a horrible gruel was poured into that by some awful people who surrounded him. Our nation’s refugee and legitimate immigration policies were gutted. Every conceivable way to demean and strip migrants of their dignity was used.
Until four years ago, our nation’s immigration policies were largely nonpartisan. Republican and Democrat administrations alike knew “it’s complicated.” Both knew we bear responsibilities as a wealthy nation. There was also acceptance that humanity and compassion were essential. Ronald Reagan may have been the most pro-immigration president we’ve had.
I found this quote by journalist Jonathan Blitzer who has reported from Guatemala: “The issues involved in immigration are nearly impossible to settle as long as policymakers regard decency as a political weakness rather than as a moral strength.” It’s complicated, but we can and will do better.
Photo courtesy of the Fuchs family Nicole Fuchs loved farming
Photo by David Buckland Dennis Sellner, in a 1991 photo exhibit.
It was a tough winter here west of Sleepy Eye. I don’t mean the weather. It was soft as far as winters go. I mean the loss of two good people.
As we turn toward spring, a crop will get planted. It always does. But I won’t be waving in my tractor cab to Nicole Fuchs and Dennis Sellner in theirs. Nicole and Dennis were two of my favorites, and our farming community is going to miss them.
Nicole grew up south of me, the daughter of Joe and Cindy Steffl. From young on, I would see her out helping her dad across the line fence, a real farmer’s daughter. After college, she came back to work on the farm and her family’s carpentry business. Those were a fit for her, as I can’t imagine Nicole being happy either sitting or being inside too long.
Nicole was simply put, good at things. As a kid, she was one of the best players in sports she tried. That led to college volleyball career. She was a skilled farmer. I teased her that it wasn’t good for my ego farming next to them as they were always done before me. Nicole was an excellent carpenter. Their family built a porch onto our house. I can picture Nicole being up on a rafter swinging a hammer one minute and the next on the ground working through the architect’s plans.
Nicole was good at things like smiling, too. She had a wonderful disposition, ever cheery and positive. She said nice things about my writing. Not because she always agreed with me, but because that’s the type of person she was.
Seven years ago, when Nicole was 30, headaches began that would lead to diagnosing and battling a rare form of cancer, chordoma. It doesn’t mean much that it’s rare when it happens to someone you know. Like I said, Nicole was good at things. Fighting cancer was also something she was good at, facing numerous surgeries and treatments nobly and courageously, always concerned about those around her.
Nicole and her husband Paul ended up living on the home farm when Joe and Cindy built a new house. It’s a good place to raise their boys, Brecken and Corbin. That will fall to Paul now. Paul walked the path the last seven years with Nicole with grace and fortitude. Blessedly, he will be aided by loving families that surround them.
Dennis Sellner was a fixture in the neighborhood by the time I came home to farm. He was one of the people I talked up as I took a crash course in farming. About every third sentence with him was a laugh, so learning was fun.
For a while Dennis sold Keltgen seed. Seed Order Days were in his heated workshop, and that was something to look forward to in mid-winter. Dennis’ wife Mary created a grand spread of food, there was a beer in the fridge, usually a card game, and lots of good farm talk. Pam wondered why it took four hours to place my seed order.
Near the end of last fall’s harvest, I was driving the gravel road past the Sellners. Dennis was pulled over and looking at an odd assemblage of bones on the side of the road and into the ditch. It turned out to be a deer but led to some interesting speculation.
Dennis was in his usual good spirits. I wish I’d have known that would be our last talk. That’s a thing I’ve noticed. When I hear of a friend’s passing, my first thought is, “Oh, I wish I could talk to them one more time.”
Dennis appeared in an early version of this column. Exactly thirty years ago, the photograph you see here was part of an exhibit at the Brown County Historical Society. It was a collection by British artist David Buckland.
Buckland had been commissioned to take photographs of a cross section of people involved in Midwest agriculture. He had some connection to here, so it had a strong local flavor. Besides Dennis, there were photos of Bob Greibel and sons, Jim and Elaine Braulick, and Sleepy Eye Farmers Elevator staff. The exhibit, called “The Agri-Economy” began at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts before moving around the Midwest.
Two photos stood out to me as a poetic juxtaposition. I wrote this in 1991:
“One pair of photographs leapt to my attention. Dennis Sellner farms down the road from me. Next to him is Robbin Johnson, Cargill’s Vice President of Public Relations who I met once at a workshop. Mr. Johnson’s job is to shed the best possible light on his company’s activities. He is basically a highly paid apologist for Cargill and he’s good at it. He is articulate and handsome, forceful, but not threatening.
Dennis is good at what he does, too. He works hard, farms hard, and hunts hard. I doubt either would do well in the other’s world. Mr. Johnson would have a tough go of baling hay for six hours under a July sun. I’m sure Dennis would struggle to get through one teleconference, much less eight hours in a suit and tie.
Here then, we have two players in American agriculture from very different places. Dennis, his family, his cows and fields, are firmly rooted in the family farm tradition. Robbin Johnson is an executive from the world’s largest and most powerful private company.
Oddly, they depend on each other: Dennis, on the markets Cargill offers; Cargill, on the commodities Dennis supplies. They are also locked in a struggle to define the future of farming. Cargill and other corporations are expanding their grasp into the production level which historically belonged to farmers like Dennis.”
Thirty years later, I won’t go into how that struggle has evolved. Suffice it to say there are 200,000 less farmers today.
Regardless, like I said, a crop will get planted. Sadly, Nicole and Dennis won’t be part of that in 2021. But in the way that winter gloom relinquishes to the warmth of spring, the story of my two friends turns to renewal. Nicole’s boys are smitten with farming and will be tagging along with Paul. Dennis brought his grandson Lee into his operation and passed his skills on.
I will think of Nicole and Dennis when I see their fields. I will think of them when the perfect green sprouts push out of the soil. Their time here has ended, but the work goes on.
Daughter Abby spent summer 2013 in Toledo, Spain. She was part of a University of Minnesota program studying Spanish culture and language, cementing a relationship with both for Abby. We took the family to visit her. It was good timing before our kids were too far down their own life’s paths.
I carried my Ultimate Guide to Travel in Spain wherever we went as we touristed around. The family teased me for that. It’s there in every picture. Hey, I like knowing stuff.
One day, I was sipping Sangria at a sidewalk café, paging through my book. That’s when I saw that St. John of the Cross was imprisoned in Toledo when he wrote the Dark Night of the Soul. To a Catholic, that’s like a baseball fan finding out they are at a ballpark where Babe Ruth played.
St. John of the Cross, Dark Night of the Soul, right there in the city I was! A young priest happened to be walking by. I took the chance he knew some English. I fear I nearly accosted him to ask where that had taken place. He was understanding of my fervor and pointed on a map to the place a small plaque marked the spot John was held captive.
John was born in a nearby village in 1542. When he was three his father died, and the family fell into deep poverty. Despite deprivations, he grew to be a devout young man. He came to study at a Carmelite Monastery and became a novitiate to that Order.
This was a turbulent time in Church history, and Spain was the epicenter of struggles within the faith. John became acquainted with Teresa of nearby Avila. Teresa was a Carmelite sister who had undertaken a great reform in that group, attempting to move it to deeper holiness. John was inspired to the same.
By 1577 tensions led to a split among the Carmelites, and the factions became violent. John was kidnapped, dragged to Toledo, and thrown into a windowless cell above the Tajo River. There he was for months, tormented by his captors to give up his crusade.
In that dim, cold place that John came to face his inner self. Stripped of everything, he was forced to confront the deepest, darkest parts of his mind and soul. It was here he crafted his epic poem, “The Dark Night.” From that loneliest and lowest point, John was drawn to God, the true light.
John, one of Spain’s greatest poets, ends the Dark Night joyfully as he finds God, his beloved:
“Oh, night that guided me!
Oh, night more lovely than the dawn!
Oh, night that has united the lover with the beloved!”
We were staying in the old part of Toledo, which looks much like the medieval city of John’s time. I could retrace John’s steps he trod at night after his escape. It turned my vacation into a small pilgrimage.
The Dark Night of the Soul is an important work in theology. John’s journey to the depths of his being has counseled believers for centuries. Many of the saints had similar experiences when they came to find the light, when they came to God.
The notion of a dark night spread to the larger culture. You don’t have to be religious to have an existential crisis. Minnesota writer F. Scott Fitzgerald penned this line, “In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning.” As someone who finds myself awake in the dark when I’m dealing with stresses, I can relate to that.
I’ve been drawn to John of the Cross since I learned his story. When I’ve hit my own bottoms, my own metaphorical nights, I’ve thought of John in that prison, tortured as much by his own mind as the guards. I wish I could say that each of my bottoms ended in joy and light. Sometimes it took a while to just crawl out of the hole I was in, only to find it was cloudy.
- Scott Peck began “The Road Less Traveled” with this: “Life is difficult.” One might add, life is short. Life is a struggle. Sometimes it just sucks. We will all have troubles; we will all have despairs. None of us purposely seeks those out, but they will find us.
Something about the dark night speaks to the human condition. All of us will know pain. It is part of occupying these earthly vessels we take at conception and abandon at death. It would be easier if there weren’t so many types of pain. Physical pain is obvious. But emotional pain can be as searing, as intense. Spiritual pain comes when we struggle with our purpose and the meaning of this all.
I have known people who suffer from chronic depression. For them, the dark night can be never-ending. The sun doesn’t come up. God doesn’t make himself known. That can take years to overcome, if ever. Then, you have to be lucky enough to have help available through therapy or medicine. Friends and family can be an aid. Having those are not to be taken for granted.
Even if we don’t have the diagnosable condition of depression, we will have depressing episodes. In the worst of those, we are alone. We might be surrounded by people, but at our lowest moments we feel as alone as John in his windowless cell. Terrible thoughts can creep in our heads. There is danger there. When you are with someone who is in one of those episodes, you pray you find the right words to help. Or at least not make it worse.
I remember conversations when I was young with friends who found themselves going through a hard time. The hot years of teenage and young adulthood are especially ripe with emotions anyway. Lower lows and higher highs mark that time.
Regardless of the age, we should look around and see if someone near us is in their dark night. Unfortunately, there are constant messages from the world to suck it up. Buck up, fight through it, be tough. There is nothing wrong with encouraging resiliency with people close to us. But then, be there with an open hand and a soft word.
Right now, as this pandemic fades slowly away, I fear there will be more than the usual opportunities to help someone who is in a sad and lonely place. The isolation, the stress of the disease, and the increased number of those who have died have doubtless had their impact. There will be works of kindness and understanding we are called to as we come out of this together.
I remember the single moment I heard that John Kennedy was shot. Lots of moments followed in the years ahead thinking and talking about who was responsible for that assassination.
Seventy minutes after shots were fired in Dallas on November 22, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested. Two days later, Jack Rubey killed Oswald. That happened on live television, seared in our memories. It was a bizarre couple of days, for sure.
The Warren Commission in its 888-page report concluded that Oswald and Rubey acted alone. Both floated in groups that had reason to loath John Kennedy. Multiple other investigations followed, some leaving open the possibility that one or more of those groups was involved, even that there was another shooter.
A cottage industry grew up around “Who shot JFK?” There were articles, books, and however it was we spread conjecture before social media. Theories put forth involved the Soviet KGB, the Mafia, Vice President Johnson, Cuban President Castro, the FBI, the CIA, and the U.S. military. Some of them were plausible; some were on the cover of National Enquirer.
I can picture being in a dorm room in college, all of us speaking in hushed tones about the counter-theories. It was as if we needed to be secretive, lest the people who killed Kennedy know we were on to them. It was fun, feeling like we were on to something big, like we knew more than we were supposed to. We may or may not have been under certain influences.
It was the conspiracy theory of my life. Decades later, if I search “Who shot Kennedy?”, I could spend the whole day reading. My thought is that the Warren Commission had it right. Despite the frayed and loose ends to the story, it’s hard to believe something could have remained hidden with all the light shone on that event.
That was the conspiracy theory of my life. Until now. Recently, a significant number of people came to believe that our presidential election was fraudulent, that the loser really won in a landslide. Only it wasn’t whispered in hushed tones. It was bellowed from the White House and shrieked across social media.
A subset of Americans believed that our country was home to one of the greatest deceits in history. The United States, the leading democracy on Earth, a model of voting integrity and stable governance for two centuries, had been rolled like some drunk in a gutter.
It wasn’t true. It just wasn’t. I know there are still people who believe “alternate facts.” Facts didn’t used to have alternates. Sadly, it seems the notion of truth has become nothing more than a talking point. Truth has gone from rock solid to Jell-O smooshie.
For a few weeks in November, one of the conspiracy patrons sent me messages about how the voting had been manipulated. They came in waves. Each message was followed with, “What about this?” In each case, a minimal amount of searching on my phone showed where the latest false claim had originated.
No, there weren’t overcounts in counties in Michigan. No, there weren’t dead people voting in Wisconsin. No, there weren’t boxes of ballots being added or subtracted in Georgia, depending on which conspiracy you believed. No, voting machines weren’t being manipulated from Venezuela or Germany.
Those weren’t even the crazy theories, like the bombing in Nashville set up to destroy evidence of the big steal. Irrefutable refutations didn’t matter to the conspiracists. It shifted from “Prove the election was stolen,” to “Prove the election wasn’t stolen.” It was like swatting away fog with your hand.
George Will wrote that, “Every one of almost 60 Trump challenges to the election has been rebuffed in state and federal courts, including the Supreme Court, involving more than 90 judges, nominated by presidents of both parties. But for scores of millions of mesmerized Trump Republicans, the absence of evidence is the most sinister evidence.”
And no, mail-in ballots aren’t ripe for malfeasance. For a couple decades, rural and coincidentally Republican places have been moving toward vote-by-mail securely. In a pandemic, it made sense more would. If you insist on searching out suspicious behavior, cutting postal services exactly before an election where vote-by-mail would be extensive seems criminal in intent.
It was all predictable. Weeks before, everyone knew the president would take a lead on election night when his supporters were more likely to vote in person, and that lead would dissipate as legal ballots were counted. We knew that. The former president knew that.
Speaking of predictable, remember that former president called his loss in the 2016 Iowa caucuses fraudulent. He said the 2016 election would be rigged if he didn’t win. After he won, he said it was rigged because he lost the popular vote. Two years ago, he said the 2020 vote would be invalid if he lost. These seem less a set of assertions, than an indication of a psychosis.
There are always votes that get screwed up due to human error. That’s dozens. To believe that thousands of votes have been purposely changed takes an immense amount of mistrust. Mistrust in thousands of staff who make elections work in fifty states. Mistrust in thousands of volunteers who work the polls from morning till close.
If you believe mail voting is fraudulent, I invite you to bring that up to employees at the Brown County Auditor’s office, where they took in 8,820 ballots. You can tell them how you don’t trust them, even though they’re our neighbors.
Do we really believe that reporters hungry to prove malfeasance would cover up the story of the century and their careers? That the right-leaning New York Post, Washington Times, and Wall Street Journal would hide evidence if it existed? That segment of the media would have exalted in revealing corruption.
A century and a half ago, Stephen Douglas told Abraham Lincoln, who had just defeated him for the presidency, ‘Partisan feeling must yield to patriotism. I’m with you, Mr. President, and God bless you.’” Losing graciously has been a hallmark of our nation. It is, after all, something we teach our young children. But it’s more than a matter of feeling good. It is a glue that binds our democracy and buffers us against our rages and disagreements.
Being capable of losing with magnanimity depends on a level of integrity, principle, and generosity of spirit. If there was any doubt the highest office in our country has lacked those for four years, that has been removed.
A few times during our oddly moderate winter, I noticed Pam’s Toyota had a slight slug when I started it. If you are a northerner, you notice those things. I was suspicious of the six-year-old battery.
Our winter is no longer “moderate.” Sure enough, after the car sat in below-zero temps, I went to start it Sunday and got a “ruhr, ruhr, ruh.” It was the sound of a car that had no intention of starting. A short time on a battery charger got it going. But now my concerns about that battery were less hypothetical. It couldn’t be trusted. Trust is essential in relationships, whether between man and woman, or man and machine.
Pam had to work Monday morning in New Ulm, so I lay in bed that night thinking of options. She could take the older vehicle that doesn’t really warm up and think unfriendly thoughts about her husband. Or she could take her Toyota that might start after sitting out all day. Or it might not, and she would think even unfriendlier thoughts about her husband. Neither of those sounded good. I have to live with this woman.
I decided on Plan C. Plan C was to get the old battery out with cold tools in the dim morning light, run to town when NAPA opened at 8:00, and try to get a new one installed before Pam had to leave at 8:30. Every part of the plan had to work well. I can’t remember the last time every part of a plan worked well. But with frosty fingers, I was able to get her off by 9:00. Frosty fingers being preferable to a frosty marriage.
Cars and trucks that start on deeply cold winter mornings are a blessing. A bowed head and a “Thank you God!” are called for. The Catholic Church has patron saints for all manner of difficult situations. We don’t have a patron saint of starting vehicles in bitter cold. That seems a void in the saintly register. Perhaps when we have a Canadian pope. Or Siberian.
I’d be willing to offer the name “St. Randy” to that unfilled role since there is currently no St. Randy. I have spent many winters trying to start things, so would qualify. Getting some of the old vehicles we’ve had to start counts as a miracle. But apparently there are background checks done in the process of naming a new saint, and those could be problematic. We’ll have to find some other unused name to bless this worthy cause. Maybe a St. Russ or St. Jeff.
All Minnesotans have bad memories of working with jumper cables in dreadful conditions. Red dead to red live; black live to black dead. Lighting up a cigarette is discouraged. Cursing isn’t helpful, but at least won’t cause an explosion.
Speaking of cursing, who invented the tiny battery posts screwed into the side of the battery with a quarter inch bolthead? Did it ever occur to this genius that the battery might need jumping someday? I try not to think ill of my fellow man. But this guy gets barbed thoughts his direction every time I have to hook up one of those mini-terminals. I say “guy” because I assume a woman would never invent something so dumb.
Getting cars to start is one thing. Getting ourselves to start at twenty-below isn’t easy either. Some part of you will be exposed when you step out the door. Eyelids hurt if it’s cold enough. Lips and tongue jell up at thirty-below. Noses fall off at forty-below. Gloves are great if you don’t have to do anything with your hands. Then, if you didn’t have to do anything, you would have stayed inside.
Taking care of animals is another layer of misery. Working on an outdoor hog waterer with ungloved hands in February is not fun. Waterers never have problems in July.
A more pleasant memory of livestock in the winter is bedding with straw. Given shelter out of the wind and a straw bed, animals make themselves quite comfortable. We made oat straw after the grain was harvested in summer. Part of the warming effect of straw comes from the fact that we baled and stacked it in when it was 100 degrees and muggy. Making those bales in the heat and spreading them in the cold is living in the seasons.
A couple times a winter, I pull out my dad’s Knipco kerosene heater to unthaw something. I learned to take it apart before turning it on, because the round housing is ideal mouse development property. My Knipco is fifty years old. Fifty years ago, subtlety wasn’t a thing. When you turn that baby on, it roars and blasts enough hot air to melt a small iceberg.
I looked it up once, and the average temperature around here for the whole year is about 50 degrees. Fifty is okay. We could live comfortably at that temperature. But would we want to? Average would be like the Twins finishing every season with 81 wins and 81 losses. Sure, we’d avoid those ugly years when they’re 30 games out by Labor Day. But there wouldn’t be a 1987 or 1991 with those stacks of memories. I guess we’ll take this week of frigid and a week of sweltering in July to make life interesting.
Speaking of average, there comes the time to set the thermostat before bed. Pam would like it at 90 and I’d like it at 50, so we set it somewhere in the middle. I get up early and turn it up for her. I know she dreads pulling covers back and stepping into chill air. One of these days I’m going to put the Knipco up in our bedroom and turn that on when I get up. She’d like that.
Last time I stepped outside and felt the life-sucking cold on my face, I had this thought. What if this is all a hoax? What if this weather is really the construct of MSM, Mainstream Meteorology? After all, how many times has your weatherman lied to you? It’s possible this is the latest working of the Deep-Frozen State. Or even that shady anarchist group Antifafreeze? CoolAnon is working on pulling back the curtain on this fraudulent weather. Stop the Cold!
Then again, maybe my brain has frost bite.
Time goes by. Sometimes it flies by. I decided I would grab it as it went past. I mean a minute of it. 4:48 PM Sunday, January 24, 2021 to be exact.
I don’t mean stopping time. It’s silly to imagine I could do that. But I wanted to take a moment and put it in my mind. Like pickling it in a jar so it would keep for a while. Writing this is sealing the jar.
Let’s say you are blessed to live to be 80. It’s an impossible number to comprehend, but that’s around 42 million minutes above the ground. Most of those minutes are forgotten immediately after their passing. Some, a relative few, are saved in our personal mental museum. The museum is otherwise known as our memory.
I’m soon to be 65. That’s come to be an important birthday. Medicare, Social Security, retirement: all happen around then, give or take. Friends and I talk about how time goes by faster as you get older. That isn’t strictly true, and it doesn’t make sense. But we all agree. Time goes by faster as you get older.
All the more reason to grab a moment. The particular 4:48 that I picked, I was walking the long driveway by the Schoenstatt Shrine west of Sleepy Eye. That place is a gem, a favorite place. Today, I wasn’t going to pray in the beautiful chapel. Rather, I was interested in the bare driveway.
It had snowed, and I was looking for a clear place to walk. I’ve begun walking after my Achilles tendon surgery. At 4:48, I was about halfway out the driveway. It was 12 degrees, but pleasant enough, almost calm, with a setting sun gamely trying to warm things before falling below the horizon.
My immediate task was putting one foot ahead of the other while watching for icy patches. Walking is not taken for granted after a month being on one foot. In the minute I was claiming for posterity, my head was filled with the usual clutter. I was thinking of chores I needed to do, people in my life, and events of the world.
I am a speck in Creation, so my thoughts went out. How were others spending this moment that I plucked out of eternity? I had a fairly good idea Pam was watching the show she was watching when I left the house. Our three kids are in places east, west, and south of me. Knowing something of their lives, I could make a ballpark guess as to what they were doing. Same for my sister and brother.
Once I got to nephews and nieces and cousins, it was more a scattershot guess as to what they were doing at that exact moment. I thought of two newborns, Pam’s grandniece and my great grandniece. Willa and Raelynn are a few weeks old. They won’t remember this moment or any other for a while. But their little minds are gushing forth with new cells and synapses. That’s exciting, as I cling to the ones I have left.
There was a football game on; I figured some friends were watching that. If not for the virus, I might have been watching with some of them. Off to my left was Sleepy Eye. I could see a handful of houses, some other buildings, the empty Del Monte plant prominent among them, and trees. In my view if not exact eyesight, there were Sleepy Eye’s 3,401 people, plus some on farm sites as I looked around.
Given the time of day, I assume some were preparing food, some watching TV, some reading, maybe cleaning up. Kids were playing. In a rural town like mine, there are a lot of elderly, some of them maybe napping before supper. Being a Sunday, not a lot were working. A few were at places that were open: grocery store, convenience stores, the couple bars. There were probably more people home then than at 4:48, January 24, 2020. A year ago, we were just becoming aware of the virus that would alter our lives.
Of course, it was only 4:48 PM in this time zone. I thought of friends on the East coast where it was 5:48, close to dinner time, maybe happy hour. I thought of a friend in Arizona, 3:48, probably on the golf course.
It was this time of day in this longitude, going back to my junior high geography. I saw from fooling around with the clock on my phone that it was 4:48 in Mexico City, although the sun was higher there closer to the equator. We share a time zone with people in Canada, Mexico, and down into Central America. Otherwise, it’s the Arctic to the north and Pacific Ocean to the south.
There’s 7.6 billion of us humans living right now, so a rough guess might be a couple hundred million were living my moment at 4:48. Other places, people were early in their day, some in the middle of their night. Light to the west, dark to the east. In the words of the song writer John Prine, “That’s the way that the world goes round.”
When I tried to think about sharing this moment with all those fellow travelers on this planet it was a bit boggling. Who knows what we were all doing right then around the globe? A lot of mundane things no doubt. A few billion probably sleeping. A few billion working in factories, fields, roads, hospitals.
If I could see far enough and through the planet below my feet, there were likely loving and kind things going on. And I suppose some bad things. There are multiple armed conflicts around the globe, so it was possible right then, somebody somewhere was trying to kill someone.
A mischievous thought entered my mind. I wondered right then how many people were, well, you know. Those 7.6 billion people had to come from somewhere.
Then, just like that, it was 4:49. My minute was past. On to a new one, one I would soon forget. My pickled and jarred minute will probably fade, too. Maybe I’ll read this in ten years, and it will come back.
Thirty minutes later, it was 5:18, the sun had set, and I’d turned into the breeze. I was cold and didn’t really want to save that minute.
Here at soon-65, I’m as aware as ever that each of these moments is a gift: the forgettable ones and the few remembered. Feel free to grab one of your own. They’re going by fast.
I have noticed listening to music and praying occupy the same space in my head. Use of either is a good sign, meaning my life has balance and harmony to it. Less time in prayer and music means I am caught up in the world and it’s immediate concerns, of which there are many.
I thought about music when I noticed our box of record albums in the basement. These are the 33rpm records that Pam and I collected in the Sixties and Seventies, our teen to young adult years. Mine go from pop, Beatles and Beach Boys, to dorm-room, Queen and Zappa, to folk/country, Prine and Kristofferson. I can relive 30 years of my life flipping through those.
Further back in the basement is a box of 45 rpms. These are smaller diameter, a hit song on one side and something forgotten on the other. If Pam hasn’t thrown them away, there are also some 78 rpms down there that belonged to my parents: Six Fat Dutchman and Fezz Fritsche. When I was a kid, we had a phonograph that still turned at 78 rotations per minute.
I have written about my father and the changes he saw in farming. Sylvester’s career began when all power came from animals and himself. When my dad quit, machines ran across the fields and technology was integral. That arc of history is impressive. It occurred to me that listening to music has undergone quite an arc, too.
Since the beginning of time, music was what you sang or played. It was here and now, in the moment, and then gone. Early last century, records became available. When music didn’t have to come from here and now, but rather from a spinning disc, that had to be an amazing thing. That sound in the parlor room on your farm could have been recorded in a studio in a big city far away.
About 100 years ago, radios also appeared in homes. Music came from these, too. There wasn’t even something you watched go around and set a needle on. Sound came from the radio was as if magically taken from the air. It was taken from the air, but it wasn’t magic. It was airwaves, although it might as well be magic to simple folk like me.
The radio of my youth was AM. We had a barn radio and a kitchen radio. both set to KNUJ. KNUJ was the Polka Station of the Nation and had an absolute monopoly on our farm.
Eventually I learned there were choices on the dial. But “choice” did not extend to the barn. Whenever I changed the radio to WCCO for a Twins game or WDGY for music-that-was-not-polka, I would find it put back to 860. The barn was not a democracy; my vote mattered none.
Up in the house, there was the record player. My mom and dad had too much to do to put on a record, so brother Dean and I controlled that. My earliest dancing was to a 45rpm record of the Hokey Pokey. It stands out in my memory because it was blue. Thanks to Google, I found that was recorded by Ray Anthony and his Orchestra in 1953. {By coincidence, Ray turns 99 today, January 20. He’s the last living member of the Glen Miller Orchestra.}
As I got older, the car became the primary place for music. In our teen years we didn’t have to be going anywhere. Driving around was an end in itself. That also was AM radio at first. After dark, booming clear channel stations could be heard literally across America. WLS from Chicago was favored. If you were of a certain age out past a certain hour, you tuned in Beaker Street from Little Rock, Arkansas, of all places.
Music eventually moved from AM to FM on the car radio. But around that time, came a great leap forward. We could choose what we wanted to listen to while we drove around aimlessly. 8-track tape players were a great revelation and cutting-edge technology. Looking back on how clunky they were, it’s difficult to remember that having one in your car was the height of cool.
I remember installing an eight-track player in a 1970 Chevy Impala with the aid of buddy Bill Moran. Neither of us was mechanical, so getting that to work was a grand accomplishment for our 16-year-old selves. One problem. After paying for that and necessities like French fries at the Tastee Freeze, we didn’t have money for tapes. We had Paul McCartney’s Band on the Run and played that poor tape to a premature death.
Eight-tracks weren’t around long. By the time I went to college, cassette tapes had displaced them. Cassette players were not only meant for the dashboard. They also came in the house, where they co-existed with record players for a while. The stereo I bought in college, the big purchase of my life at the time, had turntable and cassette deck.
In time, the records ended up in the box in the basement, and cassettes were king. You could sort of play the song you wanted, after rewinding and forwarding and rewinding some more. They also had a lifespan. After so many plays, problems could be expected. The little tape would crinkle or even tear. I became proficient at repairing family favorites, using a pencil to turn the tiny spindles.
Cassettes, too, became yesterday’s technology. Compact discs, CDs, were the new sheriff in town by the Nineties. Finally, you could play the song you wanted, over and over and over if you had kids.
Alas, now the CDs are in the basement. Music comes through my phone or computer. It plays on a tiny speaker, probably a hundredth of the size of the speakers I bought in college. Now I can choose from any song ever recorded. I’m probably as amazed by that as my ancestors were first hearing sound come from a record player.
From phonograph to radio to 8-track to cassette to CD to internet-download, music has taken quite a journey. It makes me want to do the Hokey Pokey and turn myself around.
(I completed this Wednesday morning. The events of that afternoon give everything a “before and after” quality, so we delayed running it. Pictures from the Capitol were the type we have seen of places far away or long ago, places where society has broken down. To see them here is beyond disturbing.
Much will be written of that day. I wish I felt optimistic, but I don’t right now. There is no proof in history that a democracy such as ours is anything but fragile. The guard rails of an essential media, an independent judiciary, and basic standards of decency have all been damaged. There is work to be done. If today you hate someone, try to not.)
I like money, but maybe you should quit sending it to me. By “you” I mean the taxpayers of the United States. Really, stop for a while.
A second COVID relief bill passed recently after the usual White House histrionics we’ve come to expect. The bill does some helpful things to get us closer to the end of this pandemic. Like all compromises, it came out of the meatgrinder with a little of this and a little of that. A case can be made for much of it.
But wait. Tucked in among the 5,000 pages, there is another $5 billion for crop farmers. I say “another” because farmers received over $50 billion in 2020 in federal subsidies, fully one third of net farm income.
Some of that 50 billion was in response to a downward spike in commodity prices that followed the March quarantine. Some was additional balm for damage done by ongoing trade wars, trade wars that have done more damage to our country than any other.
I decided to list the payments we received last year for our little piece of Earth. These are typical of most farms, although the amounts vary greatly. When I started to assemble these, I was surprised how many there were. I had forgotten a couple.
I thought of showing the dollar amounts of my payments. Somewhere or another it is a public record. Suffice it to say I could buy a car. Maybe a truck. And if me-of-small-acres could buy a car, farmers with much larger acres could buy a house. And a garage and a car and a truck to park in it. Or maybe a farm.
January: A small crop insurance payment for the 2019 crop. I pay a premium for that insurance, but it is subsidized by the USDA. That’s always seemed a good use of public dollars, alleviating some risk from farming. But there should be limits to acres subsidized. It has facilitated large operations’ expansion beyond what they might have on their own.
February: The third payment from the Market Facilitation Program that began in 2019. This was from the administration without congressional approval. Ten per cent of recipients got two thirds of the money the administration gave to “our great farmers.” Again, some limits would have made sense.
May: The Paycheck Protection Program. This was money meant for small businesses to pay salaries. Farmers were allowed in, even if the employee we were paying was ourselves. I won’t have to pay that back. I also received an Economic Injury Disaster Loan that I will have to pay back. Darn.
May: The Economic Impact Payment, or Stimulus Payment. Sure. Why not?
June: The first part of our Coronavirus Food Assistance Program (CFAP) payment. That was funded in the CARES act that Congress passed.
August: The second part of CFAP.
October: The CFAP2 payment. While the House and Senate were debating another pandemic relief package, the White House was able to find $16 billion more in the seat cushions to send to farmers. There are cynics who look at the timing of this, noting that much of it went to presidential battleground states in the Midwest and see it as a bribe before the election. Such cynicism.
October: The regular Farm Program payment. These are the ARC and PLC programs that no one understands. ARC and PLC payments are apparently based on low prices of the previous year, so give them credit for trying to have a purpose.
These October payments came during harvest, when I cross paths with farmers at the elevator and parts store. We were asking each other with a confused look, “Did you get more money? What was that for?” This was coming as we were harvesting nice crops and prices were beginning to rise. Here’s where it started to get a little embarrassing.
December: the Wildfire and Hurricane Indemnity Program payment. You’re probably wondering when I had a wildfire or a hurricane. You think you would have heard about such an occurrence in western Brown County.
Turns out Congress meant to pay people who had suffered from those catastrophes. Then the USDA nosed in on that for planting problems in 2018 and 2019 caused by excessive rains. Here again we can thank an administration that loves farmers for pushing this “interpretation” of the bill.
These are the same farmers who, coincidentally, voted 80% for the president. Meanwhile, the same administration has made ongoing attempts to reduce funding for nutrition and school lunch programs. Beneficiaries of those programs didn’t vote 80% for the president.
Some of this $50 billion made sense. I continue to believe government spending on agriculture, with a focus on securing a safe food supply and protecting the environment, is a good use of tax dollars. But there aren’t excuses for the slipshod and slapdash ways it is often spent. And another $5 billion during a price rally when so many businesses are hurting? C’mon.
This is made more pertinent amid all the fear and dread about “socialism.” As for government reaching into the realm of private enterprise, there is no better example of socialism than the billions given to farmers.
In hoping to bring common sense to this, it doesn’t help that Collin Peterson was defeated for reelection to Congress from western Minnesota. Peterson knows more about farming than anyone in Congress; it’s not even close. It’s hard to understand why the conservative pro-life congressman wasn’t good enough for the conservative pro-life district he has represented for 30 years. Could be proof of a unique craziness in the air.
